Chapter Six

Too bad Tony had never been given the choice.

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Tony looked at his watch for the umpteenth time, sighing sadly when he saw that it had only moved about five minutes since the last time he'd looked at it. Two hours. They'd been stuck for two hours. That meant Gibbs would be coming for them soon, right?

Tony hoped so.

"You know, looking at it every five minutes isn't going to make anyone come find us any faster," McGee said.

How the man knew he'd looked at it again, Tony didn't know. McGee hadn't opened his eyes for at least the last half hour.

"Yeah well it makes me feel better," Tony replied with a sigh. "Besides it's not like I have anything better to do down here."

"You could try coming up with a plan to get us out of here. After all you are the Senior Field Agent," McGee replied and there was no mistaking the sneer in the comment.

Tony closed his eyes and put his head against the wall, choosing not to rise to the bait. McGee's attitude hadn't exactly improved in the past couple hours, if anything it was getting worse by the minute. Knowing that the other man was in a lot of pain and probably more afraid than he would admit, Tony was letting it slide. He'd been doing it for two hours, he could do it again.

If McGee thought that Tony wasn't trying to think of anything he could to get them out of there (preferably each in one piece), then the junior agent was mistaken. Tony had let his mind wader through a multitude of scenarios, everything from smoke signals to threatening the bad guys with the stolen rifles they'd found. Of course the guns were useless without bullets but maybe the enemy wouldn't remember that there was no ammo in any of the crates (a sad fact Tony knew for sure, because he'd spent nearly an hour looking).

Unfortunately no matter how Tony looked at it, they were outmanned and outgunned. McGee's injury making their situation even more complicated. For now, there was no other choice but to wait. Wait for help. Wait to see what the enemy would do next. Whichever came first.

The Senior Field Agent also knew that things could change any second. The peace and quiet they'd had for the past couple hours could end in a flash, or more likely, gunfire. Once that happened, Tony had some desperate measures up his sleeve. Most involved him probably not making it out alive, but possibly giving McGee a chance. Since Tony wanted to make it home, he was content to wait until things became desperate enough for said desperate measures.

For the moment, all they could do was wait it out. Tony was used to waiting, though. He'd had to do it a lot as a child.

The thought made him smile. "You know, this reminds me of…."

"Tony I swear if you say a movie I will hit you again, dislocated shoulder or not." McGee interrupted before the other man could finish.

Tony opened his eyes and turned his head calmly to his partner.

"I was going to say that it reminded me of my childhood."

"Oh," McGee didn't really know to say to that.

"You see after my mom……," Tony hesitated, unable to get the word out. After a few seconds he continued. "Well, when it became just me and my dad, I used to wait for him to come home from work.....at least at first."

"What do you mean 'at first'?" McGee asked, slightly curious.

"After a while, I stopped waiting. My dad started coming home later and later, until finally he was hardly home at all. But at first, I used to wait for him. Our house may have been full of people - nannies, cooks, assistants, but I was always lonely. Sometimes I just wanted my dad to play with me, you know?"

McGee snorted. "Aw poor baby, I bet it was really hard being stuck in a mansion all by yourself. Being born with a silver spoon in your mouth must have really sucked."

After he said it, McGee almost expected Tony to haul off and hit him. His anger was still boiling underneath the surface and the comment had come straight from there, without pausing to check with his brain first. So McGee really wouldn't have been surprised if Tony had retaliated. He'd certainly given the man more than enough reason to do so in the past couple hours.

Instead, Tony turned his head again to look straight ahead, still smiling slightly.

"Silver Spoons. That was a good show actually. Starring little Ricky Shroeder… before he decided to be called Rick. Not that it really helped his career much."

McGee tried again in vain to find a position that didn't hurt his shoulder. He found the effort fruitless and was almost happy when DiNozzo's voice spoke up quietly, wanting the distraction.

"It wasn't like that, you know."

"What?" McGee asked.

"Growing up. The money. It wasn't like the show."

Still squirming around, McGee grunted as an inadvertent motion caused a twinge.

"Ricky had it better."

"Who?" McGee found the perfect spot to rest on against the wall, sighing as the pain nearly disappeared momentarily.

"Ricky. On the show, Probie."

"I thought you said he wanted to be called Rick now."

"Rick is the actor. Ricky was the character."

"Oh," McGee replied. "How did he have it better? Did he have a better train set?" McGee asked sarcastically. Once again surprising himself by how he sounded. Why couldn't he stop himself? What was it about Tony that was bringing out this vicious side of him?

"I never had a train set," Tony's voice softened even more and McGee noticed that the other man's eyes weren't focused, remembering something from a distant past. "My dad thought they were silly."

"You never had a train set? Not even on Christmas?" McGee was interested despite himself. His parents may not have been able to afford much, but he and his sister always loved pulling out the train at Christmas. It was a tradition that as soon as the tree went up, the train soon followed.

"Nope," Tony replied, still looking off into space. "The Decorators never put one around the tree. I think they knew what my father would have said if they saw it."

"Decorators?"

"Yeah. When I was little, mother decided that she didn't want to put up decorations. Not after the broken nail incident of 1977. After she died….." Tony got the word out that time, swallowing quickly before continuing. "Well, my dad wasn't about to start decorating a tree so he continued to hire them. They did a pretty good job every year, but a train would've been nice."

McGee didn't know what to say. A lot of people (himself included) teased Tony about his upbringing in a wealthy home. Most of the time the other man went along with it, acknowledging his expensive taste in shoes, clothes and cars. Now Tony was admitting that things weren't as perfect as they appeared.

The junior agent realized he didn't know what to do with this Tony. A Tony who spoke softly and sadly about a past that the younger man couldn't begin to understand.

"Tony?" McGee began hesitantly.

"Yeah?"

"You said Ricky was lucky. How?"

Settling his back up against the wall, Tony brought his knees up to his chest. Placing his elbows on his knees he clasped his hands together, rubbing his thumbs thoughtfully. Just when McGee thought he had either chosen not to answer the question or hadn't heard him, the older man spoke.

"He had a Dad."

For one second McGee almost argued that Tony had had a father too. What could he be talking about?

Then it struck him.

As a kid, McGee had seen the show Tony talked about and remembered the basic premise. A young boy and his father lived in a large home after the mother died. McGee remembered the dad on the show as a cool guy. He had loved his son and even played with him, acting more like a kid himself.

The little boy on the show may have lost his mom, but he still had a dad who loved him. The more McGee learned, the more he saw that Tony hadn't had that. He may have had a father but the younger man found it very hard to picture the senior DiNozzo playing with his son or riding around with him on a toy train.

For the first time since he met the man, McGee realized how much luckier he was than DiNozzo. He'd always assumed that money and privileges had meant a sweet life. He now knew that wasn't necessarily the case. .

"McGee?" This time it was Tony who hesitated.

"Yeah Tony?" McGee asked, brought out of his thoughts by the soft query.

"What was Christmas like at your house?"

The simple question, asked so innocently, surprised the younger man.

"You really wanna know?"

"Yeah."

"Well….," McGee's eyes unfocused as he too remembered his past. "the first thing we did was get a tree. My dad would load us all in the car, which sometimes had working heat and sometimes didn't. My sister and I used to fight on trips a lot but never on the way to get the tree." He smiled, remembering the good times. "When we got there, my dad would let us pick out what we wanted……as long as it was under six feet. He never could afford anything bigger than that."

"Really?" Tony was surprised, remembering the nearly 15 ft trees of his own childhood.

"Yeah…well, it's not like we really had the room for anything much bigger," McGee shrugged, trying to hide his embarrassment. He knew that Tony probably thought his Christmas sounded pretty lame compared to what had probably been some very opulent celebrations in the DiNozzo household.

"What else?" Tony pressed.

"When we got home my mom would pull out the Christmas music. Every year it was the same thing. We always started with Elvis' Christmas Album."

"The King? That's some pretty cool Christmas music. I'm impressed."

"Then we'd pull out the decorations and my sister and I would argue over which ornament went where. We each had our favorites and always wanted them in a good spot. Before it got out of hand my mom would bring in hot chocolate. That always shut us up really fast."

"I bet," Tony chuckled.

"Once it was done, we'd rush around to turn out all the lights in the living room and kitchen. Then all of us would sit around and just stare at the tree, listening to the music until my mom ordered us to bed." McGee finished softly.

"Sounds nice," Tony said thoughtfully.

"Yeah. I guess it was. Nothing fancy of course."

"Still sounds pretty good to me."

McGee heard the sadness in his partner's voice and when he looked over, thought he saw tears glistening in the other man's eyes. He'd never thought that his life was anything special but as he looked at Tony, he realized he was wrong. Tony may have had money but he never really had a family.

If he had to choose, McGee knew that he'd pick his family any day of the week over a nice house and lots of presents.

Too bad Tony had never been given the choice.

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A/N: McGee's X-Mas music "tradition" is mine, though it was only w/my mom. In a way I'm kinda like Tony, as I didn't always have my dad around during the holidays. So mom and I came up w/our own traditions. Now I can't think of decorating without bringing out Elvis' Christmas album. When I was a kid we had it on 8-track (for those of you who even remember what that is), then I bought it on cassette, then on CD and last year was the first year I uploaded it to my iPod.