She helps him down the hallway, matching his slow pace, and she is reminded of her rotation on the geriatric floor. But she keeps this to herself, knowing he wouldn't appreciate her comments. And she doesn't want to hurt him. He's hurting enough already.

And even though she knows he's badly injured and should be in a hospital, she lets him stay. Not simply because she is a doctor and knows he isn't dying—though he probably feels like he is—but because she is seeing something different in him tonight and she feels like she needs to understand it.

And it's not just the vulnerability she's never seen in him before.

"Here, sit," she says, levering him down onto the cold edge of the bathtub so he sits directly under the bright light.

Her hands are slowly unbuttoning his shirt, and he can think only of sex.

And Ducky.

The thoughts are so shocking that they threaten to split DiNozzo/DiNardo straight down the middle.

He shoves away thoughts of the gentle doctor helping him unbutton his shirt that time he nearly got killed when that car blew up and focuses on thoughts of the gentle doctor unbuttoning his shirt right now. It's not hard when she gasps as the shirt falls away and reveals the livid bruises on his side.

Anthony DiNozzo feels an odd pride at making a doctor gasp at his apparently awesome bruising.

Tony DiNardo feels his heart clench as he realizes she is feeling his pain. She's hurt because he's hurt. And she doesn't like to see him suffer.

Her hands gently hurt him as she prods the broken ribs, but she apologizes and looks at him with such tenderness and sympathy that he doesn't mind.

He never wants her to stop touching him.

In a way, he knows she never will.

DiNozzo is feeling uncomfortable with the intense emotions and might do something stupid.

DiNardo says, "Thank you, Jeanne. I knew you had a good bedside manner, but this…"

He expects her to smile but she just frowns, her eyes on the bruises staining the delicate arch of his ribcage. "Tony," she breathes, the worry back in her eyes—as if it had ever left, he notices. "What did the guy hit you with?"

"A baseball bat."

The lie falls from his lips, and he feels suddenly ashamed at the ease with which it slipped free.

Maybe the blood lubricated its path.

And DiNozzo is doing shtick in their head again.

Bravo! That makes sense. Baseball bats do happen to be pipe-shaped.

Or are pipes baseball-bat-shaped?

Either way. Well done, good sir!

Her fingers are prodding his lip now, and he wants to kiss her even though it will hurt. He feels fear grab hold of his heart, squeezing it tighter than the pain choking his breath, and he realizes he is afraid he's going to mess this up and this will be his last night with her.

He wonders why that hurts so much.

He always knew there would be a last night, right?

Right?

"This needs stitches," she says, wondering where this dark intensity in his eyes has come from.

Anyone else would have read it as pain, but she has seen pain. She's seen all kinds of pain in her life: physical, psychological, emotional, faked. She has seen it all.

But never this.

So she doesn't read it as pain even though she got it right in one.

"No thanks," he says, his words still gloppy and gooey. "I hate needles."

Sounds true enough. Most everyone I know hates needles. Except maybe Abby.

But DiNardo doesn't know Abby.

Screw that. Everyone should know Abby.

He sees the moment she gives up, knowing it's a battle she won't win. At least not right now.

She stands, and she helps him up, locking a small arm around his waist, looping it low to keep the pressure off his damaged ribs. He leans heavily on her, and the doctor in her head screams at her that she's being stupid.

And something about malpractice, but she shoves that away.

They make it halfway down the hall before he has to stop, slumping against the wall and struggling just to breathe through the pain. She can practically see the dizziness in his eyes and it's no trick they taught her in medical school.

"Tony, this is crazy," she says. "I'm taking you to the hospital."

"No," he barks, and it is a tone she has never heard from him before. He sounds angry, and she can't for the life of her figure out why.

But the darkness is back in his eyes and she almost lets it drop.

Almost.

"Tony—"

"No, Jeanne," he says firmly, and she's impressed with the force he puts into the words even as he's gasping, his arms wrapped tightly around himself protectively. She looks down and sees he has disentangled his body from hers, and she wonders how he did that without her noticing. "I don't do hospitals. End of story."

She looks like she's going to press it, and he thinks wildly.

Do whatever you have to. You can't go to a hospital with her. No way. Trot out whatever demons you must. Pull a dead uncle, cousin, brother, mother, father, sister from thin air. Pull their corpse straight out of the imaginary ground. Hell, pull out the big guns if you really think you need to in order to get her to drop this.

Kill a fake child.

It won't feel a thing.

"All right, Tony," she says softly and leads him to her bed even though a tiny part of her is screaming at her to stop. To notice that his eyes are no longer his. That they have been captured by some dark demon who is not the Tony she thinks she knows.

But people in pain are not always themselves.

She knows this.

She is a doctor, after all.

It takes her a while to get him undressed—a lot longer than normal, that is. Their clothes usually end up in heaps that need sorting like laundry the following morning. Or afternoon.

But her struggle tonight is different.

Right now, she's mostly trying not to hurt him.

And she does a good job at it—just like she's doing a good job pretending she's not a doctor so her professional worry won't make her anger and upset her lover by insisting he go to a hospital.

It's funny how I can just partition my brain like that, she thinks.

She finally manages to get him into bed, but she knocks his cell to the floor, and when she sets it on the nightstand, she notices his eyes widen upon seeing it. He looks at it like he's arachnophobic and it suddenly just sprouted eight hairy legs.

"What is it?" she asks, driving spikes of fear through his face. She looks worried, and he wonders if he's bleeding again. "Tony?"

He closes his eyes.

Just pesky DiNardo stealing DiNozzo's cell and placing it on his secret lover's bedside table.

With all of his secrets tucked inside.

Shit. I have goddamn Metro Homicide programmed into that thing.

Just how the hell are you going to explain that? Are you writing a book, DiNardo? Do you need it for research? You could ask the Probie for advice, and—

Oh, wait.

Better question: Is she the jealous type? Will she go through it while you're asleep? Will she confront you when you wake, concussion-dazed and groggy, and demand to know who this Gibbs is and why he calls you so often? And at three in the morning?

"Hurts," he whispers, trying to distract the good doctor from what he knows was panic on his battered face. He just hopes the bruising will have made the expression as murky as his brain feels.

She looks down at him for a moment, debating.

It makes him wonder if he should fear for his life as well as his heart.

She is an arms dealer's daughter, after all.

"I shouldn't do this," she says finally. "But I've got some leftover painkillers I can give you."

She gets up and crosses to the bathroom door. "Are you allergic to anything?"

DiNardo? Are you?

Oh wait.

Same body.

Let DiNozzo answer.

But keep it to one word, please.

"Nope."

Good boy.

Thoughts of painkillers make him remember he still doesn't remember leaving the hospital.

But he remembers being there. Remembers feeling cold as he stripped off his blood-stained shirt with a wince and a joke about ruined Armani to cover his real pain. But he can't remember who is with him. He thinks back, trying really hard—but it's exhausting. And he's exhausted.

It seems all he does these days is try really hard.

He's suddenly in the exam room again, though, and he sees that it is Gibbs with him. In an impressive arrangement of facial features, the lead agent looks annoyed and concerned all at the same time; and DiNozzo knows Gibbs is looking at his bruised ribs but seeing his stupid probie mistake of letting the dirtbag get behind him.

DiNozzo doesn't apologize because even though being in a hospital is making him want to revert to DiNardo, DiNozzo will never forget Rule No. 6: Never apologize. It's a sign of weakness.

But considering the weakness in his knees he remembers feeling when Gibbs looped an impossibly gentle arm around him to help him in here, he wonders if it's okay.

Gibbs opens his mouth, and DiNozzo tells DiNardo to take cover.

But all Gibbs asks is another impossibly gentle, "How ya feeling, DiNozzo?"

He wonders if Gibbs is the one who has forgotten himself, forgotten who he is.

His thoughts return to the present as she returns with water and sweet mercy in pill form, and he swallows both without caring about the consequences.

DiNozzo might take a hard left into Crazytown while on the narcotic wagon, but maybe DiNardo's different.

Isn't that what you've been hoping this whole time?

She is suddenly tucked against the undamaged side of his body, and suddenly he wants her.

Bad.

But he can't have her.

Ya think?

He really needs to stop hearing Gibbs' voice in moments like this.

DiNozzo's going to start thinking there's something hinky going on with DiNardo.

But all both of them can feel now is icy-hard pain melting away under the intensity of sunny-strong painkillers—and her body. Her leg is draped over his thigh, her hand cradling the side of his neck as if to stabilize it.

In a last moment of lucidity, he realizes her thumb is pressed to his split lip, trying to stop the bleeding.

That can't be right.

Film professors don't bleed in doctors' beds.