Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by the writers, producers, et al of the television show 'NCIS'. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.
A/N: See the note from the prologue. Oh, and I actually went to Walmart's website to come up with the total Tony spent there… Just in case y'all were, ya know, wonderin'…
When it Rains
Monday, November 16, 2009
0315
Northernmost Corner of Anacostia Park
Just off Benning Road, NE
"Where the hell is DiNozzo?" Gibbs barked, his latest coffee clenched tightly in hand.
Bravely, Tim answered the only way he could, "Don't know, Boss. I called him, he said he was on his way, that he'd meet us here." White puffs of breath gave temporary physical substance to his words in the dim light from a nearby streetlamp.
"Perhaps he punched traffic, yes?" Ziva offered her theory while working on taking photos of their latest crime scene – a dead staff sergeant who was rapidly getting covered by the very first snowfall of the season, which was itself unseasonably early. Gibbs made no reply and stalked off to interrogate the patrolman who'd found the body.
Tim finished sketching the scene and tucked the sketchbook into his bag. "Hit, Ziva."
"Hit what?" She didn't look away from her work.
"It's 'hit traffic', not 'punched'," Tim corrected her mangled expression and switched over to scanning the area for whatever trace hadn't yet been covered by the rapidly-accumulating snow.
"Whatever," Ziva replied. "You understood what I meant. Perhaps there was traffic –"
"At three in the morning?"
"So maybe it was a flat tire."
"Wouldn't he have called?" Sometimes Tim really hated the side of himself that just had to play Devil's advocate.
Further conversation on the possible whereabouts of Tony stilled as the coroner's van pulled up. Climbing out, Ducky called Tim over to lend him a hand with the gurney. "Where's Palmer?"
Ducky frowned, "I was unable to reach him. All I keep getting is voicemail."
Tim sighed and shook his head, "That seems to be catching."
"Whatever do you mean?"
"Tony's not here yet, either, and none of us are reaching anything but voicemail when we call his cell."
Looking down at his latest patient, Ducky frowned again. "Dear me. I do hope they simply got caught up in a video game or some such. As for you, my dear boy," he switched to addressing the corpse, "let's get you out of this worsening weather and into a place a bit more hospitable, shall we?"
Normally, Tony slept really well after successfully closing a case, but tonight he was filled with a restless energy that had him pacing his apartment, Hitchcock's Psycho playing on the television, unwatched, with the sound turned low. Figuring hot water might help him relax, he headed for the bathroom. Half an hour later, his skin stung pink by the shower, he was more awake than ever, but since his phone was what called him from the steamy confines of his rather hedonistic multi-headed shower stall, that was probably a good thing. At two-thirty in the morning, it was either a drunk-dial or work. Tony was betting on work.
It was. Specifically, it was McGee, calling to inform him about a dead body in Anacostia Park. After telling Probie that he'd meet them there, Tony quickly dressed and attempted to dash out of his apartment.
Tried, and failed spectacularly.
There was something blocking his apartment door – at first glance, it seemed to be a basket of someone's laundry, but as his feet tangled in the trailing edge of a hunter green towel and sent the basket sliding several inches even while pulling Tony to a graceless heap on the hall floor, some part of Tony knew it wasn't as simple as a misdelivered basket of jeans from the laundry room in the basement.
And that was before the sudden movement of the basket triggered its contents to start crying.
Shit, Tony quickly untangled his feet, the call from work all but forgotten. Thankfully, of the three apartments that shared the fifth floor of Tony's building, 5C was empty and 5B's tenant had gone for the week to visit his grandchildren in New Jersey. Tony scooped the basket and its contents back into his apartment and shut the door.
Setting the basket on the end of the bar that separated his kitchen area from his living room, Tony cautiously peeled back the green towel, irrationally hoping that it was just a doll or tape player – just a joke, nothing more.
The squalling noise began to mercifully die down, and Tony held his breath as he finished removing the towel from the plain white laundry basket. Nestled among the terrycloth of a bright blue beach towel, wrapped in a dishcloth that had orange-and-yellow checks decorating it, was a newborn.
That's a baby, his brain unhelpfully supplied. "I know that, I can see that." Tony was unaware that he was talking to himself – likely, he wouldn't have cared at that point. "Question is why it's on my doorstep."
You know why. You've always feared something like this would happen. That one of the flavors of the week would hunt you down and start demanding child support.
"Not quite the same thing here, is it?" Noticing a piece of paper tucked among the folds of cloth, Tony reached into the basket and slowly removed the scrap. As he unfolded it, it dawned on him that he should probably be wearing gloves, but the thought evaporated as he read the two words printed on the scrap of notebook paper.
She's yours.
Jimmy woke to the sound of his cell phone shrilling at him. He first peeled his eyes open, then peeled his face off of the massive medical tome that had been serving as his pillow, before answering it with a yawn. "Hello?" he managed to get out, somewhat mangled, as he readjusted his glasses. The voice on the other end of the line had him fully awake in a matter of heartbeats. I've never heard Tony this freaked before – he almost sounds like Abby on a caffeine and sugar OD. After taking a moment to de-code the hyperbabble, Jimmy grabbed his keys and headed for the door. He kept talking to Tony – most of his side of the conversation was simply variations on 'calm down' or 'I'll be right there' – ignoring several beeps which indicated missed calls. Whoever it is can wait.
After what seemed like an eternity, but in reality was only the normal twenty minutes or so, Jimmy was letting Tony know he was just outside the apartment. Tony met him at the door, looking just as frantic as he'd sounded on the phone. With a level of competence no one else at NCIS would have believed had they been there to witness it, Jimmy quickly took charge of the situation.
Steering Tony into his massaging recliner while tucking his cell into his coat pocket, Jimmy noted the location of the basket that had Tony so freaked, all while saying, "Calm down, Tony. We'll figure this out. Besides, if don't get your breathing under control and you work yourself into a full-blown panic-attack, I'll have to call an ambulance and then Dr. Pitt would tell Dr. Mallard, and they'd both be after my head on a pike."
Tony seemed to take the words to heart and made a conscious effort to calm down, going so far as to lean forward and rest his head on his knees – or, rather, as close as he could, with his shoulder-holster and suit-jacket constricting his flexibility. Seeing that Tony was about as well-off as he was going to get for the time-being, Jimmy turned his attention to the basket on the bar.
The newborn was sleeping, though from the way it kept moving its head back and forth while making sucking movements with its mouth, Jimmy was positive it wouldn't remain so for much longer. Carefully, Jimmy lifted the baby out of the basket. It had skin slightly darker than Tony's, with wispy black hair, and though he wasn't going to say as much just yet, it also had Tony's chin and brow. There was a subtle cast to its features which indicated its mother was black. Even with its head still misshapen from birth, I'm willing to bet real money that it – correction, she – that she's gonna be really pretty when she grows up.
Jimmy had quickly unwrapped the baby from the dishtowel, redoing the towel to serve as a temporary, makeshift diaper. As the oldest of his generation among his family by a good ten years, taking care of a baby was something he'd done far more times than he could count – his mom was the oldest of six and his dad had been the oldest of nine, and of them all, only Jimmy was an only child. Familiarity with Tony's apartment from innumerable visits for games and movies over the past few years had Jimmy quickly locating the improvised items he needed.
A latex glove, thoroughly washed and pierced with a pin, became a make-do bottle. Tony's bottle of half-and-half from the fridge had to stand for formula for now. By the time he had the creamer heated to the right temperature and offered to the newborn (who rapidly started sucking it down, rather greedily – She's got Tony's appetite, too – Jimmy grinned at the thought), Tony himself was looking more like normal, though still not wholly himself.
In fact, Tony had moved to stand at the breakfast bar to watch Palmer. "You're really good at that."
Jimmy nodded, "I know. Last time I counted, I had twenty-four cousins, all at least ten years younger than I am. I'm kinda glad Mom and me moved to DC – I don't get stuck babysitting all the time now."
Tony sat on one of the two '50's style diner barstools that stood for seating for his breakfast bar. When no further conversation was forthcoming, Jimmy maneuvered the baby so he could burp her and asked, "What do you plan to do?"
Tony shook his head, seemingly incapable of forming words just then. The borderline panic from earlier began creeping back into his expression. Jimmy didn't much care for it, so he asked a question he already knew the answer to. "Any chance she's not yours?"
"Well, yeah, Palmer," even almost panicking, sarcasm came easily to Tony, "I'm sure there's a chance, but I've got eyes." Even as young as she was, Tony could see the bits of her that had come from him, though he phrased the observations more along the lines of 'Dad's chin, Grandma Patterson's forehead' than 'my' anything.
"Who's the mother?" Palmer's voice was quiet, almost like he wasn't sure if he should ask.
There were only two possibilities, considering the baby's lack of age, and her coloration was too dark to be the second. Tony shook his head, "Don't know her real name. Called herself Stardust. It was that night we went to Fantastique down on DuPont."
Smiling to himself about his own adventures that night – namely, a pair of blonde twins by the names of Myron and Marian – Jimmy could almost, but not quite, recall the woman that Tony had taken home. A bitter laugh interrupted his pleasant memories. "What?"
Tony grimaced. "Just realized something."
"What?" Jimmy repeated.
"I didn't pay enough attention to her face to be able to do a sketch."
Jimmy could see that the panic from earlier hadn't really receded very far. Tony was still very much on the verge of losing it altogether. Swaying slightly to lull the baby back to sleep, Jimmy took a moment to gather his thoughts before speaking. The last thing he needed right now was another instance of choking on his own feet. "Hmm…" he said. "The way I see it, there's a couple of options. First option – you can simply call CPS and be done with it."
"Hah," Tony's voice was more like a bark than he intended. "Yeah, that'd go over real well with Gibbs – 'yeah, Boss, I have a kid, no, I didn't know about it beforehand, but I still sentenced her to a life in the system'."
"Hey," Jimmy glared at his friend. "That's not the only option. The next option is that you keep her for a short while, put her up for private adoption." Before Tony could shoot down that option with the same argument which met the last, Jimmy pushed onwards. "Or you could keep her. If you decide to keep her, be it forever or just until you find someone to adopt her, you've got about ten billion details to take care of."
Tony had always done better with a definable goal than without, and that second option was sounding better and better the more he thought about it. What the hell do I know about babies anyway? He settled some more, the panic from earlier almost fully dissipated. "Such as?"
"Well, first things first, you'll want to have her checked over by a pediatrician. I doubt she was born in a hospital – she can't be more than a few hours old and the cord's been tied off with what looks like a piece of shoelace." Jimmy checked on the baby and seeing that she'd gone back to sleep, he gently nestled her back in the laundry basket. "You'll also need to have a paternity test done. Even though we can both see the resemblance, it's best to have real proof, just in case." He didn't bother to go into just what 'just in case' might entail; both of them had enough life experience that they could easily fill in the gaps. "You also are gonna need to pick up a few things for her – diapers, formula, some clothes, and probably a car seat, too."
"Jimmy…" Tony met his friend's eyes. Palmer was a little shaken by the confusion and helplessness he saw – it was almost as disturbing, in its own way, as Tony's panic of earlier.
"You don't have to ask," he said.
An hour later found the unlikely trio in the baby section of the closest Super WalMart. Though Jimmy had held the baby on the way over in Tony's car, she was currently buckled into the carrier bolted to their shopping cart. She was awake, but mercifully quiet. Tony was a little disappointed, though even he would have been hard-pressed to admit as much, even to himself, to see that her eyes were a nondescript shade of dark blue before an almost-forgotten snippet of dialogue from Gone With the Wind surfaced, something about how all babies had blue eyes.
As Palmer added more stuff to the mostly-full cart, Tony couldn't help but ask, "You sure we really need all this?" He gestured to the mound of merchandise. Granted, most of the space was taken up by the car seat's box, but still!
Jimmy nodded, "Sure am. If she stays with you for even a week, you'll wind up using everything here at least once. And I'm almost positive I'm forgetting something that you're going to wind up needing, but not having."
Tony stilled any further questions, though he did wince when they went through the check-out. Five hundred bucks? With the exception of the car seat, everything else purchased fit into six plastic bags.
On arriving back at Tony's apartment, Jimmy set to removing packaging and tags from their purchases while talking Tony through diapering and clothing the baby. Once successfully dressed, she began fussing again, and Palmer switched to talking Tony through making up a bottle for her. Tony was just about to set the bottle in the microwave when he noticed the time shown by its glowing green numerals.
"Shit!" It was almost six o'clock – over three hours had passed since he'd gotten the call from McGee about the body at Anacostia Park.
"What?"
"I totally forgot!" Tony sat the bottle in the microwave and turned it on. "We got a case, it's why I was heading out this morning to begin with! Gibbs is gonna kill me."
Jimmy took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and slowly released it while scrubbing a hand across his face. "Hey, no he won't."
Tony leveled an incredulous look at Palmer. "You're joking, right?"
Jimmy grinned. "Nope. Way I figure it, you've got probably the only reason Gibbs would accept for being late – aside from winding up in the hospital."
"Still gonna hafta call in. I don't think I'll be going to work today." Tony reached into his jacket pocket for his cell, only to discover that neither he nor Palmer had disconnected from their call earlier. "Shit!" This time, the cuss word was hissed with enough venom that paint should have peeled from the ceiling.
"What now?" Jimmy asked. The baby's fussing was rapidly turning into whimpers that he knew from experience would rapidly escalate to all-out screaming.
The microwave dinged as Tony answered, "We never hung up. Probably have about a million missed calls… You, too, for that matter."
Jimmy grimaced a parody of a smile. "You're probably right." He retrieved his cell from his own pocket and glanced at the display while Tony screwed the nipple onto the bottle.
"You're positive this is what she's supposed to be eating? It smells like it's gone bad already."
Tony was right – there were eighteen missed calls on his cell. "Absolutely sure, Tony. It actually smells worse if it has gone bad – which it only does if you make a bottle and forget about it in the fridge or something. The powder will store for forever."
Unsure how anything that already smelled like sour milk could possibly smell worse, Tony took Jimmy at his word and approached the fussing infant in the car seat on the bar.
"She's not a bomb about to go off, Tony," Jimmy looked up from his phone and grinned at his friend. Not yet, anyway. Wait until that stuff works its way through her, though. Standing, Jimmy returned the phone to his pocket. "I'm going to go in, see if Dr. Mallard needs me for anything. If not, then I'll be back shortly."
"Why not just call him?" Tony asked, trying to figure out how to feed the baby without having to pick her up.
"That won't work," Jimmy said. "You'll need to hold her, or else she's going to wind up swallowing more air than she should. She won't break, you know. And because I'm sure Dr. Mallard's worried – I missed eight calls from him and ten from Abby." While Tony figured out how to pick up the baby and make sure she got fed, Jimmy headed for the door. He paused with his hand on the knob. "What – if anything – do you want me to tell them?" There was no need to clarify which 'them' Jimmy was talking about.
Tony sighed. Jimmy wasn't exactly the best liar on the planet, and even omitting the truth seemed to cause more problems than it was worth in most cases. "If you see them, and they ask, might as well let them know the truth. I fucked up – might as well get the gossip out of the way sooner rather than later."
"Back later, then," Jimmy said, leaving. He knew better than to argue with Tony when he got like that. In that sort of mood, he can convince himself that he's the single, sole source of all problems on earth. No sense in trying to talk him out of it before he's ready to listen. One of the oldest reasons the pair were still friends, unlikely as the friendship might seem from an outsider's perspective, was simply because they never tried to make the other be anything but who they were, bad moods and all.
On his way in to work, though, Jimmy fretted, wondering just what he was going to say to describe what was going on – that is, what to say that wouldn't wind up as the topic of conversation in the break room for the next six years. Though it took the entire trip, Jimmy made up his mind. Squaring his shoulders, he strode into the building. He headed for Autopsy, and as soon as he stepped into the room, his tentative plans crashed down around his ears – Gibbs was in with Ducky.
Had it been any other day, Jimmy would have simply stammered out an apology for being late and hurried off to clean something until Gibbs and Dr. Mallard finished their conversation. Though the day had barely begun, it was already hardly a normal day. A hasty revision of his earlier plans had him quietly waiting for a gap in their discussion of bruising on the latest cadaver's neck. Or did, until Gibbs said, somewhat sarcastically and without even looking up from the dead man, "Nice of you to join us, Palmer. You don't happen to know where DiNozzo is, do you?"
Normally, the tone of Gibbs' voice would have been enough to start Jimmy stammering and babbling, but, as already mentioned, it was anything but a normal day. Instead of getting flustered, Jimmy's temper – a rare thing to see, indeed – flared. He drew himself upright, and noticed that he was exactly the same height as the almighty Gibbs; but the thought was fleeting, especially as his mouth had already opened. "Well, I'd apologize for being late, except you see that as a sign of weakness – only you could confuse common courtesy with weakness. I've had a hell of a morning already, and to come in here to discuss the situation with my boss only to be met with snide comments from you is not making it go any better! But to answer your question, yes, I know where Tony is – he's at his apartment, dealing with an emergency that had him calling me to his place at three o'clock this morning, and I imagine he'll call if he gets the chance to! Were it not for the fact that it's a favor to Tony, if it were up to me, I'd leave you wondering!"
The end of Jimmy's rant had an unforeseen side-effect – Ducky was stunned speechless. Neither Jimmy nor Gibbs noticed, however. Though somewhat taken aback by the uncharacteristic show of temper, Gibbs took a step closer to Palmer, edging into his personal space. "What the hell's gotten into you?" Gibbs' own temper was beginning to boil up from the steady low simmer it had been running at since Tony failed to show at the crime scene earlier that morning. Before Palmer had a chance to respond, however, what he actually said repeated through Gibbs' head. He quickly switched tracks. "What emergency, Palmer? Why's DiNozzo not in yet?"
"Don't you think that should have been your first question?" Jimmy's temper was rapidly winding down – his mom had always joked that he was a firecracker with a three-hour fuse, it took a lot to wind him up, but it was usually all over with in a matter of one big flash – helped along by the genuine look of concern Gibbs sported. He sighed, "Look, if it were up to me, I'd just leave you in the dark and let Tony deal with you – but I won't do that to a friend of mine. Besides, Tony told me to let people know if they asked."
"Come to the point, Palmer!"
Sighing again, Jimmy decided that the morning had already contained far more drama than anyone should have to live through outside a Mexican soap opera, rehashed his morning.
Back in apartment 5A, Tony was just finishing up feeding the baby. Slowly, he was coming to terms with the fact that he probably wasn't going to drop her. "You know, you're actually kind of cute," he murmured to her, only marginally aware that he was speaking out loud. With a couple of tablespoons of formula still remaining in the bottle, she let go of the nipple and yawned.
Tony figured she knew better than he did about when she was full, and so set the bottle down on the counter. Following Palmer's instructions and example from earlier, he lifted her to his shoulder. Moments later, she let loose a belch which had Tony blinking in surprise. "Damn, girl," he grinned at her, "I've heard wimpier burps during beer-pong with professionals!"
And then he realized that something thick and slimy was oozing its way down the back of his Armani suit jacket.
Tony, who had seen some of the most stomach-churning crime scenes ever, gagged when the stench of lightly-used formula hit his nose. "Now that's just plain gross." Not even that time he'd come across the body of an elderly woman, forgotten in her car in a mall parking lot for nearly three weeks during the height of summer could match the stench.
The baby didn't seem to care. She simply yawned again and closed her eyes.
After snugging her back into the car seat, Tony quickly stripped out of his jacket. "My dry-cleaner is never gonna forgive me. Sure, he does wonders with mud, blood's not a problem, heck, even the occasional wine stain's not an issue, but that? I wouldn't wish that on anyone." He also took the time to put his gun away and change into jeans and a battered, old Ohio State T-shirt. Checking the time, he found that it was nearing seven-thirty. Another half-hour and Vance should be in. He sighed and headed for his desk, situated in a corner of his living room, next to the French doors to his balcony. He powered on his laptop and absently hit the 'on' button for his stereo.
The light tones of Frank Sinatra's All of Me album filled the air as he dug into doing some research into private adoption online. Within twenty minutes, Tony's brain was hurting – there really were far too many options out there. What he'd assumed to be a relatively simple process of matching a kid to prospective parents and signing a few papers was, in reality, far, far more complicated. To start with, there was the matter of what agency – if any – to go through. Did he want an open adoption or closed? Was he willing to adopt to single or same-sex parents? Did religion matter? And that didn't even touch on the fact that he couldn't locate a single helpful online article that did more than mention 'birth father' in more than passing terms, to say nothing of anything remotely resembling his situation.
Sighing for the umpteenth time that morning, Tony decided to shelve the possibility for the moment. First things first, he retrieved his cell and dialed the number for Vance's secretary.
Ten minutes later, he had secured a full week's worth of personal time, as well as a strong suggestion by the secretary to contact HR if he wanted to use the six weeks' worth of paternity leave guaranteed to all new parents. Tony mentioned he'd think about it before disconnecting the call. Considering all he'd asked for was a few days to deal with 'an emergency', he now knew that Jimmy had let them know what was going on, and that gossip was still the only known force that could go faster than the speed of light.
At eleven o'clock, Jimmy was released from NCIS – after having told of his morning adventures to first Gibbs and Ducky, then to Abby and McGee, then to Ziva, then to Agent Balboa, then to… Well, needless to say, by the time he made it back to his car, the whole of NCIS knew why Tony was missing work. Jimmy went first to his place and gathered his books, laptop, insulin kit, and a couple of changes of clothes. There was no way in hell he was leaving Tony to deal with this on his own.
He also stopped at an actual baby store and picked up a few more things he'd forgotten that morning. If Tony decides to keep her, I'll see about contacting Aunt Marne and Uncle Jake – see if they still have Therese's baby stuff. He then swung by Tony's favorite pizza place and grabbed lunch for the two of them.
On arriving back at Tony's, he got as far as opening the door before coming to a dead stop.
Soft jazz filled the apartment, not unusual as that was Tony's favorite music, overlaid with quiet snoring. Tony was stretched out on his massaging recliner, his head canted slightly to the left, with the baby wrapped in his OSU stadium blanket and cuddled protectively to his chest.
Quietly setting the bags from the boutique down with his backpack, Jimmy withdrew his cell and snapped a couple of quick photos. He'd just put the phone back in his pocket when Tony's nose twitched. "Is that pepperoni I smell?" he asked, without opening his eyes – only two people had keys to his apartment, and though both were likely to bring pizza, only Jimmy would try not to wake him.
"Yeah, from Dominic's. Figured you were probably hungry by now."
Tony's eyes cracked open and he grinned, "Absolutely." He frowned slightly. "Gimme a hand?"
Palmer sat the pizza box on the last bit of clear counter on the kitchen bar and stepped around the piles of baby stuff littering the living room to pick up the baby. Tony clamored to his feet and stretched, a series of crackling noises emanating from his spine. Jimmy forced himself not to take notice of how the stretch caused Tony's T-shirt to ride up, exposing a strip of golden skin and the top bit of the trail that traced its way down from Tony's navel. Just because Tony knew that Jimmy 'swung both ways' and was fine with it didn't mean that he would appreciate leering. So, instead of leering, Jimmy distracted himself with the baby.
"You find out anything?" he asked, noticing that Tony's computer was still on and there was a stack of print-outs next to it on the desk.
Tony headed for the pizza box and grabbed a slice. "Yeah. Found out I'm in way over my head on this." He bit into the slice of pepperoni, sausage, and extra cheese. "How'd it go at work?" is what he attempted to say, but it merely came out as a muffled series of vowels.
Long-accustomed to deciphering DiNozzoese, Jimmy just shrugged. "Good enough, I suppose. Think everyone knows about this, now, though. And Dr. Mallard said he'd come by this evening to see how she is, make a recommendation for a pediatrician. And Abby volunteered to do the paternity test for you. Oh, I also yelled at Gibbs and lived to tell about it."
Tony almost choked on his food. "You what?"
Palmer smiled and set to making a 'crib' out of the stadium blanket and two of the sofa pillows for the baby. "He was being an ass and I lost my temper. He didn't yell back, though he did look a little like someone slapped him with a dead fish." Settling the baby in the nest of blanket and pillows, Jimmy joined Tony at the pizza box. "I have this suspicion that he's not nearly so much as a bastard as he lets on."
Tony couldn't stop the laughter from bubbling up and exploding into full-blown belly-laughs. It was almost bad enough to have him sinking to the floor, but before it could develop to that level, the baby woke and began crying.
Quickly settling down, Tony, still chuckling a little, traded his half-eaten slice of pizza for the baby. "Shush, girl. There's nothing to cry about – promise," he cooed to her, cuddling her to his chest, the OSU stadium blanket trailing to the sofa. "Jimmy-boy just did something that tickled my funny-bone."
Surreptitiously, Jimmy snapped another picture from his phone. Helping himself to the pizza, he watched Tony calm the baby down. Once he got over the nerves, he's actually pretty good at this. Something inside Jimmy melted a little and he sighed mentally. Come on, Palmer. It's one thing to have the hots for a sexy beast of a man, but it's another thing entirely when said sexy beast is probably the best friend you've ever had. Pull yourself together. The internal pep-talk was nothing new. He had to repeat it at least once a week, especially since he and Tony started hanging out when Gibbs was gone to Mexico.
It didn't help matters much that he was the only person that Tony worked with who knew that the agent wasn't quite as straight as people assumed. Jimmy could understand the whys on that, though – his cousin Marcus had come out a year ago, as a junior in high school, and wound up in the ICU because the football team had taken exception to having 'one of them' on their team. Jimmy could only assume that it would be as bad, if not worse, in law enforcement. After all, no one really cared if the 'Autopsy Gremlin' was a little… weird. Hell, it was almost expected. But it was another thing entirely for a Special Agent – particularly when said agent dealt almost exclusively with the military. So he knew why Tony played the womanizer at work; he just prided himself on knowing what Tony meant when he mentioned he spent the weekend with a 'leggy blonde with a great ass' or a 'smoking-hot brunette gymnast'.
Slowly, Tony managed to get the baby to calm down, though she didn't go back to sleep just yet. Once his attention wasn't focused entirely on his… the girl, he glanced over to see Palmer gnawing half-heartedly on pizza crust, with an odd little smile tugging the corners of his mouth. "What?" Tony asked.
"What what?" Palmer replied.
"You just…" Tony shook his head. "Never mind. So, you said Ducky'd be by today? Did he mention what time?"
A/N2: I'm going to be writing/uploading chapters for this three at a time, hopefully I'll actually have a little more time to write from now on, but I refuse to promise anything.