Curtain Line, NCIS
May. 20th, 2009 05:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lit_galCurtain Line
Past of Tony/Ziva, moving into Tony/Gibbs
Major spoilers for "Aliyah" In fact, I'm not sure the story makes sense without reading it.
Sequel to Manipulation in Five Acts.
Summary: After the events of "Aliyah," I just can NOT have Tony subbing for Ziva. So, I feel a need to address the way I left things at the end of "Manipulation." Yes, Tony subbed for her. Yes, he was sexually fulfilled. Yes, Ziva betrayed him,and now Gibbs is left to pick up the pieces.
"Hey, boss." Tony shifted nervously at the sight of his boss standing at his doorstep. "Um, something I can do for you?" he asked. Obviously, there was something he could do. He could disappear so that Ziva would come back to the team, and Tony had been expecting Gibbs to ask him to do that ever since Gibbs got in the plane. And now, the time had come. Tony tightened his hand on the door and he waited for this last blow.
Gibbs stood there with that inscrutable look of his. Tony had to give the man credit--he had the best poker face Tony had ever seen. Even now, Tony didn't know whether Gibbs was transferring him to another team or just firing him. After all, with Tony's discipline record, there weren't going to be many team leaders who wanted him, and with Vance in the big office, Tony wasn't getting another shot at a team of his own. Hell, maybe he should have just told Ziva to shoot him. Everyone would have been happier.
"I know, Tony," Gibbs said.
Tony had no idea what Gibbs was alluding to, but he went with this strength, sarcasm. "Okay, I can explain the silly string, boss. It's not...."
"I know about Calluna, about Ziva."
Gibbs soft-spoken words ripped Tony's life apart and shredded any hope that he could come out of this with any dignity. Calluna. The club where he'd been thinking with his dick and let Ziva take him as a sub. He'd knelt for her, come as she'd spanked him, worshiped at her feet. He'd been everything except the person she trusted or the man she'd loved.
Tony turned his back and headed for his couch. "Close the door when you're done," Tony said wearily. He really wanted to be sitting for this next part. Damn, he was an idiot. He fell in love with Jeanne when he knew their whole relationship was based on lies, and he'd kept serving Ziva when he knew she was falling for Michael Rivkin.
But then Michael was the real man. He wasn't crawling for Ziva's attention, he was the hot-shot Mossad officer who simply demanded it. Or at least he was, all the way up until the point that Tony killed him. And the sad thing was that Ziva would have been happier if Tony had died. He knew that. He knew it, and it shredded his heart about as bad as getting fired was about to shred him. Oh well, tomorrow he'd pick himself up, get his cocky face back on and hope Gibbs hadn't shared Tony's sexual preferences with every agency in town.
Rubbing his chest where Ziva had pressed the gun to it and threatened to murder him, Tony closed his eyes and waited for some sort of condemnation from Gibbs. All he needed now was for Agent McBlab to hear about this, and write about the sexually perverted and pathetic agent who got fired in one of his books.
The door closed, and Tony just waited. If Gibbs had fired him quickly and left, that would have been easy. Okay, it wouldn't have been easy, but Tony could have pulled himself back together and had his game face back on before he went to clean out his desk. If Gibbs wanted to push the issue, Tony had no doubt that the older man could break him and leave him crying on the floor. No doubt at all. A little tiny part of Tony wondered whether having Gibbs break him would be worse than having been taken down to those interrogation rooms in Mossad headquarters. There the torture would have been impersonal.
"Tony?"
"Yeah, boss?" Tony didn't bother opening his eyes.
"Something wrong with your chest?"
Tony dropped his hand. "Nope." No, it was his arm that actually hurt. When Ziva had laid him out and shown him just how unimportant he was to her, she'd broken his arm again. The doctor had made unhappy noises about a potential need for an operation as he'd reset it. That hurt, and Tony hadn't bothered taking any pills.
Gibbs was perfectly silent, and the little part of Tony that had some common sense wanted to open his eyes and check to see where he was. Tony vetoed any common sense.
The couch tilted. Tony waited.
"She asked me to choose," Gibbs said. Tony nodded. That explained why Gibbs had, even for a moment, chosen Tony over Ziva. Gibbs didn't like getting backed into a corner and manipulated, and Ziva was very good and backing people in all kinds of corners. Looking back, Tony had gone right along as she'd backed him into a corner. She'd even asked explicit permission that first time when she'd tied him over a spanking bench at Calluna, but still, she'd pushed him in a corner and made him feel so much need that his brain had gone on hiatus.
"I chose you, Tony."
Tony just waited, bracing himself for the next part of that statement. 'But I'm sorry I did.' 'But now I want Ziva back.' 'But that was before I knew you were a spineless little shit.' Yeah, Tony didn't exactly live up to Gibbs' ideal of manhood.
"Tony, look at me." The commanding tone forced Tony's eyes open even if he wanted to stay in the dark solace of his own closed lids.
"I know you want her back, boss," Tony hurried to say. Shit, he was pathetic. He was about to get fired, and he was still crawling around trying to make things easier for everyone else. The Mossad director had dug his fingers into Tony's recently dislocated shoulder until the pain was a heat that burned him, and he'd still focused on getting Ziva the evidence she needed to protect herself. He'd still cared more about getting Director David to say something incriminating than protecting himself, even if that led to him getting dragged into some dark corner of Mossad headquarters and disappearing. Vance certainly wouldn't put up a fuss for him. And Gibbs... Tony didn't know where he stood with Gibbs anymore.
"I do," Gibbs agreed. "I don't like the choices her people give her."
And there you had it. Gibbs wanted Ziva, Ziva never wanted to see Tony again, and Tony... he could just go whistle Dixie. Tony had always thought of his life as a modern Cary Grant movie, and sometimes his mind nominated Gibbs for the title role, but he was part of something heroic. Now, he was starting to think his life had a little more Terry Gilliam than Cary Grant--like it was just one big joke interrupted by some illogical and dangerous flights of fancy.
"I don't want her back at the cost of my senior field agent," Gibbs added.
Tony nodded, appreciating the attempt at respect.
"Talk to me Tony."
Tony laughed. Gibbs wasn't normally one for talking, but who was he to refuse an order. He'd followed orders into this mess and he might as well just condemn himself. "Look, boss, if you know about Calluna, then you know you can't trust my judgment. Rule number twelve--don't sleep with co-workers. Not that Ziva and I actually slept together. Well, I don't suppose you have a lot of illusions about who did the cuffing and who got cuffed." Tony put on his best cocky grin. Gibbs, however, didn't show any emotion at all. Oh yeah, this was going to be ugly.
"Rule number twelve is don't sleep with your partner. Ziva wasn't your partner."
Tony's gut clenched, but it was the truth. Ziva was a Mossad agent who had chosen another Mossad agent over him. She wasn't his partner.
"Why did you go to her apartment, Tony?"
"I went through all this with Vance." Tony was just too tired to go through another interrogation, and he really didn't have the energy to fight Gibbs.
"Go through it with me, Tony. Tell me the story so I understand it."
Tony looked over at the suggestion that Gibbs didn't believe him. He'd worked at Gibbs' side for years, and that didn't even warrant a little trust. He was too tired to even feel hurt.
"I found out that the laptop had been accessed from Ziva's place. I went over there to talk to her."
Gibbs raised an eyebrow.
"Okay, it wasn't protocol, but I wanted to talk to her off the record. Of course, now I know that Rivkin had traded laptops with the terrorist, so it makes sense that Rivkin's laptop would have been used at Ziva's apartment, but the evidence.... It looked like Ziva was having terrorists over for tea. I wasn't going to let that information touch Vance's desk without some sort of explanation."
"Because she was your Domme."
Tony blushed. It took a lot to embarrass him, but Gibbs had summed up the whole mess in one sentence. Tony was so tangled in the sexual relationship he'd shared with Ziva that he'd compromised the investigation and put himself in a position where he'd had to fight for his life against a trained Mossad officer. Thank God Rivkin was drunk, or Tony would be dead in Ziva's apartment, and Tony really had trouble imagining Ziva mourning for him the way she had mourned for her real lover.
"Is that why you antagonized Director David?"
"I'm just naturally antagonistic," Tony replied wearily.
"Tony, were you in there as Ziva's sub trying to protect her position or were you in there as my agent trying to get intel for me?" Gibbs' voice was lower now; it carried danger in its tone.
"Does it matter."
"It didn't until now, but now, yes, it matters." Gibbs leaned forward, his eyes pinning Tony like one of those frogs you lay out right before you dissect it. Director David thought he could manipulate Tony, but he had no idea the kind of pressure Tony was used to working under. "Now that there is clearly a difference, I need to know where your loyalties are."
Tony exploded off the couch. He flew half way across the room and stood with his less injured arm clinging to the entertainment center. Gibbs kept poking this, and Tony didn't know what he was supposed to say.
When he'd been loyal to Gibbs, Gibbs had walked away and left him in charge of a team that Tony didn't have the experience to lead. Hell, the second Gibbs came back, the others had been quick enough to turn on him and remind him that his place was the class clown. So then he'd put his loyalty in Jenny, and she'd asked him to do things that still haunted his dreams. He'd put his loyalty in Ziva, and she had kept him at her feet while she bedded a Mossad agent who'd already killed one American. Where did he put his loyalty? It was pretty clear that he didn't have the good judgment required to know where to put loyalty.
"Tony?"
"What do you want me to say?" Tony demanded. "Hey, how about I'm the screw up who's always going to put his loyalty in the worst possible place. There's an answer for you." The anger in Gibbs' eyes stopped the flood of words that wanted to spill out of Tony like pus from an infected wound. Instead he swallowed them, he swallowed the pain and the insecurity and the failure and he digested it so it would seep into every cell of his body.
"I want you to tell me who your gut trusts right now." Gibbs stood up and took a step forward. He stopped only when Tony pressed himself back against the wall.
Who did his gut trust? Tony didn't have an answer for that.
"Tony," Gibbs said slowly. "If Ziva walked in here right now and pulled a gun on me, who do you trust, her or me?"
The thought of that made him want to throw up all the guilt and failure he'd just swallowed.
Gibbs took a slow step forward. "Who do you trust, DiNozzo?"
"You," Tony whispered. The word cut the last tattered strings to Ziva, and he felt the loss of that. The memory of her fingers ghosting over his cheek as he knelt at her feet vanished. He didn't have a right to remember happiness submitting to her because their relationship was over and it would never be revived. He'd betrayed her in every way possible. His presence on Gibbs' team had pushed her out of her home. His gun had taken her lover. His report had cast doubt on her loyalties in NCIS.
Gibbs closed the distance and reached up. Tony expected a slap on the head... that was the only contact he got from Gibbs. Instead, the man laid a hand on Tony's arm.
"You'll have my resignation tomorrow, boss," Tony said quietly.
"You think I'd take it?" Gibbs gave him a smile that Tony couldn't return.
"Yeah, boss, I do. I'm so turned around that I'm not safe on the streets, and I know it."
"By the time your arm heals--"
Tony did the unthinkable; he interrupted Gibbs. "I'll still be fucked up." Tony gave a dark laugh. "What, you want an agent that might go to his knees if a strong personality comes along?"
"Tony, how do you think I know about Calluna?"
"Bad luck?" Tony guessed.
Gibbs pulled Tony back toward the couch. "I was there, Tony. I'm a regular there, and if anything, you seem to be on the pretty mild end of the kink scale. You certainly didn't shock me the way Abby has." Gibbs pushed Tony down onto the couch, and Tony stared at this unfamiliar man in Gibbs' body as he went into Tony's kitchen. Gibbs went to Calluna? Even more shocking, Gibbs knew about Abby and hadn't broken anyone into little tiny pieces? The water ran in the kitchen.
"Um boss, have you ever eviscerated any of Abby's partners, by chance?"
Gibbs appeared at the kitchen door with a glass of water. He walked over and handed it to Tony.
"No, only threatened them with evisceration if they pushed too far."
"Define too far." As far as Tony was concerned Abby's foreplay was enough to be too far.
Gibbs shrugged. "She has to set her own limits. But people certainly know that if they violate her limits, I'll be the one who addresses any transgressions."
"Damn." Tony blinked at the thought of Gibbs walking into Calluna and taking out some bastard who had made Abby cry. "Next time you have to do that, can I watch?" Tony actually would like to kill every guy who took a whip to Abby's back, but he was too scared of what Abby would do to him if he tried.
"Deal," Gibbs agreed. "But if you resign, you aren't going to be around to see it happen."
Tony closed his eyes and kept his mouth busy by drinking water. Surprisingly, Gibbs' hand stroked his hair, and Tony's eyes flew open in shock.
"I brought Ziva to Calluna. I knew what you needed, and I didn't think you'd react well to a man making the offer, so I thought she could address those needs." Gibbs made a face. "Tony, you know how I feel about apologies."
"They make you look weak," Tony finished. It was one of Gibbs' cardinal rules.
"Well, I made a mistake. I thought that you would ground her, give her something other than her hate to fight for. What I did wasn't any better than Jenny asking you to sleep with a target."
Tony shook his head. Gibbs hadn't done anything wrong. He'd certainly done a few things that surprised Tony, but he hadn't done anything wrong."
"I made my own choices, boss." A bit of conversation from earlier floated up and demanded his attention. "Wait, what do you mean you mean you didn't think I'd react well to a man?"
Gibbs chuckled. "Abby wanted me to step in, but that was a bad idea on a lot of fronts, including the fact that I didn't feel like dealing with any heterosexual panic. You say stupid shit when you panic, DiNozzo."
"But that means... but... " Tony's brain stopped working. While a lot of people were under the impression that his brain often turned off at critical points, it was actually pretty rare that Tony could not figure out what to think of something. Even when he thought Vance was going to give him to Mossad as a peace offering, he still could form plans. True, most of his plans included him dying, but they'd been plans. But right now, his brain was totally incapable of coming up with anything.
"For me, compatibility is more about whether another person is a top or a bottom and what kinks they indulge in," Gibbs offered with more honesty and more openness than Tony had ever seen before. "If a bottom is into pain, I can't go there. I've seen pain in too many real situations to be comfortable using it in the bedroom. I look for someone who wants a firm hand and a lot of bondage. Whether that person is male or female doesn't matter, although I am more likely to publicly show affection for a woman. It's one of the hazards of the job." Gibbs leaned back, and Tony's brain was still not processing the words.
"I'm not trying to push you, Tony. I'm just pointing out that I'm not going to hold your preferences against you. After all, if there weren't any subs out there, I'd have a fairly boring sex life. And being a sub does not make you weak. I've had a lot of strong subs at my feet, but I never had one of them with the guts or the stupidity to go head to head with the Mossad director his his own house."
"But Ziva." Tony closed his mouth. He had no idea what he wanted to say about that mess.
"If she comes back, and I do hope she does, she doesn't get to hold this against you. She's the one who doesn't know where to put her loyalty, and you risked a lot giving her that intel on her father. My guess is that a part of her knows that. She also does not get to cuff my senior field agent again. Her judgment is a little too compromised to trust in that position. Clear?" Gibbs was using his 'don't fuck with me' tone of voice.
"Got it, boss."
"And you will get your head together before that arm heals. This was Ziva's mess, and you don't carry her burdens. You screw up enough on your own, DiNozzo. You don't need to borrow trouble." Gibbs had said similar words a thousand times, but this was the first time he had his fingers slowly stroking through Tony's hair as he said it. Tony looked over, confused and a little freaked out, but at least that emotion pushed out a little of the pain from earlier.
"I'm on it, boss."
Gibbs gave Tony's head one more stroke before he stood up. When Tony looked up at Gibbs, he couldn't help but feel his world had shifted. Without another word, Gibbs headed for the door.
"Take a couple of days off to let that arm rest. If I find out you've broken your arm a third time, I'm going to have to hunt someone down and eviscerate them, got it?"
"Yes, boss," Tony agreed. He knew he had to look like an idiot, but he just couldn't seem to get the smile of his face. Gibbs stared at him for a second, his face devoid of all emotion, and then he turned and walked out the door, closing it behind him. It was an exit worthy of Cary Grant.
Curtain Line: The final line of a scene or act which gives the cue for the curtain to come down. Gibbs is giving the cue for Tony to bring the curtain down on this relationship!
Keep Reading with Aesthetic Distance
Past of Tony/Ziva, moving into Tony/Gibbs
Major spoilers for "Aliyah" In fact, I'm not sure the story makes sense without reading it.
Sequel to Manipulation in Five Acts.
Summary: After the events of "Aliyah," I just can NOT have Tony subbing for Ziva. So, I feel a need to address the way I left things at the end of "Manipulation." Yes, Tony subbed for her. Yes, he was sexually fulfilled. Yes, Ziva betrayed him,and now Gibbs is left to pick up the pieces.
"Hey, boss." Tony shifted nervously at the sight of his boss standing at his doorstep. "Um, something I can do for you?" he asked. Obviously, there was something he could do. He could disappear so that Ziva would come back to the team, and Tony had been expecting Gibbs to ask him to do that ever since Gibbs got in the plane. And now, the time had come. Tony tightened his hand on the door and he waited for this last blow.
Gibbs stood there with that inscrutable look of his. Tony had to give the man credit--he had the best poker face Tony had ever seen. Even now, Tony didn't know whether Gibbs was transferring him to another team or just firing him. After all, with Tony's discipline record, there weren't going to be many team leaders who wanted him, and with Vance in the big office, Tony wasn't getting another shot at a team of his own. Hell, maybe he should have just told Ziva to shoot him. Everyone would have been happier.
"I know, Tony," Gibbs said.
Tony had no idea what Gibbs was alluding to, but he went with this strength, sarcasm. "Okay, I can explain the silly string, boss. It's not...."
"I know about Calluna, about Ziva."
Gibbs soft-spoken words ripped Tony's life apart and shredded any hope that he could come out of this with any dignity. Calluna. The club where he'd been thinking with his dick and let Ziva take him as a sub. He'd knelt for her, come as she'd spanked him, worshiped at her feet. He'd been everything except the person she trusted or the man she'd loved.
Tony turned his back and headed for his couch. "Close the door when you're done," Tony said wearily. He really wanted to be sitting for this next part. Damn, he was an idiot. He fell in love with Jeanne when he knew their whole relationship was based on lies, and he'd kept serving Ziva when he knew she was falling for Michael Rivkin.
But then Michael was the real man. He wasn't crawling for Ziva's attention, he was the hot-shot Mossad officer who simply demanded it. Or at least he was, all the way up until the point that Tony killed him. And the sad thing was that Ziva would have been happier if Tony had died. He knew that. He knew it, and it shredded his heart about as bad as getting fired was about to shred him. Oh well, tomorrow he'd pick himself up, get his cocky face back on and hope Gibbs hadn't shared Tony's sexual preferences with every agency in town.
Rubbing his chest where Ziva had pressed the gun to it and threatened to murder him, Tony closed his eyes and waited for some sort of condemnation from Gibbs. All he needed now was for Agent McBlab to hear about this, and write about the sexually perverted and pathetic agent who got fired in one of his books.
The door closed, and Tony just waited. If Gibbs had fired him quickly and left, that would have been easy. Okay, it wouldn't have been easy, but Tony could have pulled himself back together and had his game face back on before he went to clean out his desk. If Gibbs wanted to push the issue, Tony had no doubt that the older man could break him and leave him crying on the floor. No doubt at all. A little tiny part of Tony wondered whether having Gibbs break him would be worse than having been taken down to those interrogation rooms in Mossad headquarters. There the torture would have been impersonal.
"Tony?"
"Yeah, boss?" Tony didn't bother opening his eyes.
"Something wrong with your chest?"
Tony dropped his hand. "Nope." No, it was his arm that actually hurt. When Ziva had laid him out and shown him just how unimportant he was to her, she'd broken his arm again. The doctor had made unhappy noises about a potential need for an operation as he'd reset it. That hurt, and Tony hadn't bothered taking any pills.
Gibbs was perfectly silent, and the little part of Tony that had some common sense wanted to open his eyes and check to see where he was. Tony vetoed any common sense.
The couch tilted. Tony waited.
"She asked me to choose," Gibbs said. Tony nodded. That explained why Gibbs had, even for a moment, chosen Tony over Ziva. Gibbs didn't like getting backed into a corner and manipulated, and Ziva was very good and backing people in all kinds of corners. Looking back, Tony had gone right along as she'd backed him into a corner. She'd even asked explicit permission that first time when she'd tied him over a spanking bench at Calluna, but still, she'd pushed him in a corner and made him feel so much need that his brain had gone on hiatus.
"I chose you, Tony."
Tony just waited, bracing himself for the next part of that statement. 'But I'm sorry I did.' 'But now I want Ziva back.' 'But that was before I knew you were a spineless little shit.' Yeah, Tony didn't exactly live up to Gibbs' ideal of manhood.
"Tony, look at me." The commanding tone forced Tony's eyes open even if he wanted to stay in the dark solace of his own closed lids.
"I know you want her back, boss," Tony hurried to say. Shit, he was pathetic. He was about to get fired, and he was still crawling around trying to make things easier for everyone else. The Mossad director had dug his fingers into Tony's recently dislocated shoulder until the pain was a heat that burned him, and he'd still focused on getting Ziva the evidence she needed to protect herself. He'd still cared more about getting Director David to say something incriminating than protecting himself, even if that led to him getting dragged into some dark corner of Mossad headquarters and disappearing. Vance certainly wouldn't put up a fuss for him. And Gibbs... Tony didn't know where he stood with Gibbs anymore.
"I do," Gibbs agreed. "I don't like the choices her people give her."
And there you had it. Gibbs wanted Ziva, Ziva never wanted to see Tony again, and Tony... he could just go whistle Dixie. Tony had always thought of his life as a modern Cary Grant movie, and sometimes his mind nominated Gibbs for the title role, but he was part of something heroic. Now, he was starting to think his life had a little more Terry Gilliam than Cary Grant--like it was just one big joke interrupted by some illogical and dangerous flights of fancy.
"I don't want her back at the cost of my senior field agent," Gibbs added.
Tony nodded, appreciating the attempt at respect.
"Talk to me Tony."
Tony laughed. Gibbs wasn't normally one for talking, but who was he to refuse an order. He'd followed orders into this mess and he might as well just condemn himself. "Look, boss, if you know about Calluna, then you know you can't trust my judgment. Rule number twelve--don't sleep with co-workers. Not that Ziva and I actually slept together. Well, I don't suppose you have a lot of illusions about who did the cuffing and who got cuffed." Tony put on his best cocky grin. Gibbs, however, didn't show any emotion at all. Oh yeah, this was going to be ugly.
"Rule number twelve is don't sleep with your partner. Ziva wasn't your partner."
Tony's gut clenched, but it was the truth. Ziva was a Mossad agent who had chosen another Mossad agent over him. She wasn't his partner.
"Why did you go to her apartment, Tony?"
"I went through all this with Vance." Tony was just too tired to go through another interrogation, and he really didn't have the energy to fight Gibbs.
"Go through it with me, Tony. Tell me the story so I understand it."
Tony looked over at the suggestion that Gibbs didn't believe him. He'd worked at Gibbs' side for years, and that didn't even warrant a little trust. He was too tired to even feel hurt.
"I found out that the laptop had been accessed from Ziva's place. I went over there to talk to her."
Gibbs raised an eyebrow.
"Okay, it wasn't protocol, but I wanted to talk to her off the record. Of course, now I know that Rivkin had traded laptops with the terrorist, so it makes sense that Rivkin's laptop would have been used at Ziva's apartment, but the evidence.... It looked like Ziva was having terrorists over for tea. I wasn't going to let that information touch Vance's desk without some sort of explanation."
"Because she was your Domme."
Tony blushed. It took a lot to embarrass him, but Gibbs had summed up the whole mess in one sentence. Tony was so tangled in the sexual relationship he'd shared with Ziva that he'd compromised the investigation and put himself in a position where he'd had to fight for his life against a trained Mossad officer. Thank God Rivkin was drunk, or Tony would be dead in Ziva's apartment, and Tony really had trouble imagining Ziva mourning for him the way she had mourned for her real lover.
"Is that why you antagonized Director David?"
"I'm just naturally antagonistic," Tony replied wearily.
"Tony, were you in there as Ziva's sub trying to protect her position or were you in there as my agent trying to get intel for me?" Gibbs' voice was lower now; it carried danger in its tone.
"Does it matter."
"It didn't until now, but now, yes, it matters." Gibbs leaned forward, his eyes pinning Tony like one of those frogs you lay out right before you dissect it. Director David thought he could manipulate Tony, but he had no idea the kind of pressure Tony was used to working under. "Now that there is clearly a difference, I need to know where your loyalties are."
Tony exploded off the couch. He flew half way across the room and stood with his less injured arm clinging to the entertainment center. Gibbs kept poking this, and Tony didn't know what he was supposed to say.
When he'd been loyal to Gibbs, Gibbs had walked away and left him in charge of a team that Tony didn't have the experience to lead. Hell, the second Gibbs came back, the others had been quick enough to turn on him and remind him that his place was the class clown. So then he'd put his loyalty in Jenny, and she'd asked him to do things that still haunted his dreams. He'd put his loyalty in Ziva, and she had kept him at her feet while she bedded a Mossad agent who'd already killed one American. Where did he put his loyalty? It was pretty clear that he didn't have the good judgment required to know where to put loyalty.
"Tony?"
"What do you want me to say?" Tony demanded. "Hey, how about I'm the screw up who's always going to put his loyalty in the worst possible place. There's an answer for you." The anger in Gibbs' eyes stopped the flood of words that wanted to spill out of Tony like pus from an infected wound. Instead he swallowed them, he swallowed the pain and the insecurity and the failure and he digested it so it would seep into every cell of his body.
"I want you to tell me who your gut trusts right now." Gibbs stood up and took a step forward. He stopped only when Tony pressed himself back against the wall.
Who did his gut trust? Tony didn't have an answer for that.
"Tony," Gibbs said slowly. "If Ziva walked in here right now and pulled a gun on me, who do you trust, her or me?"
The thought of that made him want to throw up all the guilt and failure he'd just swallowed.
Gibbs took a slow step forward. "Who do you trust, DiNozzo?"
"You," Tony whispered. The word cut the last tattered strings to Ziva, and he felt the loss of that. The memory of her fingers ghosting over his cheek as he knelt at her feet vanished. He didn't have a right to remember happiness submitting to her because their relationship was over and it would never be revived. He'd betrayed her in every way possible. His presence on Gibbs' team had pushed her out of her home. His gun had taken her lover. His report had cast doubt on her loyalties in NCIS.
Gibbs closed the distance and reached up. Tony expected a slap on the head... that was the only contact he got from Gibbs. Instead, the man laid a hand on Tony's arm.
"You'll have my resignation tomorrow, boss," Tony said quietly.
"You think I'd take it?" Gibbs gave him a smile that Tony couldn't return.
"Yeah, boss, I do. I'm so turned around that I'm not safe on the streets, and I know it."
"By the time your arm heals--"
Tony did the unthinkable; he interrupted Gibbs. "I'll still be fucked up." Tony gave a dark laugh. "What, you want an agent that might go to his knees if a strong personality comes along?"
"Tony, how do you think I know about Calluna?"
"Bad luck?" Tony guessed.
Gibbs pulled Tony back toward the couch. "I was there, Tony. I'm a regular there, and if anything, you seem to be on the pretty mild end of the kink scale. You certainly didn't shock me the way Abby has." Gibbs pushed Tony down onto the couch, and Tony stared at this unfamiliar man in Gibbs' body as he went into Tony's kitchen. Gibbs went to Calluna? Even more shocking, Gibbs knew about Abby and hadn't broken anyone into little tiny pieces? The water ran in the kitchen.
"Um boss, have you ever eviscerated any of Abby's partners, by chance?"
Gibbs appeared at the kitchen door with a glass of water. He walked over and handed it to Tony.
"No, only threatened them with evisceration if they pushed too far."
"Define too far." As far as Tony was concerned Abby's foreplay was enough to be too far.
Gibbs shrugged. "She has to set her own limits. But people certainly know that if they violate her limits, I'll be the one who addresses any transgressions."
"Damn." Tony blinked at the thought of Gibbs walking into Calluna and taking out some bastard who had made Abby cry. "Next time you have to do that, can I watch?" Tony actually would like to kill every guy who took a whip to Abby's back, but he was too scared of what Abby would do to him if he tried.
"Deal," Gibbs agreed. "But if you resign, you aren't going to be around to see it happen."
Tony closed his eyes and kept his mouth busy by drinking water. Surprisingly, Gibbs' hand stroked his hair, and Tony's eyes flew open in shock.
"I brought Ziva to Calluna. I knew what you needed, and I didn't think you'd react well to a man making the offer, so I thought she could address those needs." Gibbs made a face. "Tony, you know how I feel about apologies."
"They make you look weak," Tony finished. It was one of Gibbs' cardinal rules.
"Well, I made a mistake. I thought that you would ground her, give her something other than her hate to fight for. What I did wasn't any better than Jenny asking you to sleep with a target."
Tony shook his head. Gibbs hadn't done anything wrong. He'd certainly done a few things that surprised Tony, but he hadn't done anything wrong."
"I made my own choices, boss." A bit of conversation from earlier floated up and demanded his attention. "Wait, what do you mean you mean you didn't think I'd react well to a man?"
Gibbs chuckled. "Abby wanted me to step in, but that was a bad idea on a lot of fronts, including the fact that I didn't feel like dealing with any heterosexual panic. You say stupid shit when you panic, DiNozzo."
"But that means... but... " Tony's brain stopped working. While a lot of people were under the impression that his brain often turned off at critical points, it was actually pretty rare that Tony could not figure out what to think of something. Even when he thought Vance was going to give him to Mossad as a peace offering, he still could form plans. True, most of his plans included him dying, but they'd been plans. But right now, his brain was totally incapable of coming up with anything.
"For me, compatibility is more about whether another person is a top or a bottom and what kinks they indulge in," Gibbs offered with more honesty and more openness than Tony had ever seen before. "If a bottom is into pain, I can't go there. I've seen pain in too many real situations to be comfortable using it in the bedroom. I look for someone who wants a firm hand and a lot of bondage. Whether that person is male or female doesn't matter, although I am more likely to publicly show affection for a woman. It's one of the hazards of the job." Gibbs leaned back, and Tony's brain was still not processing the words.
"I'm not trying to push you, Tony. I'm just pointing out that I'm not going to hold your preferences against you. After all, if there weren't any subs out there, I'd have a fairly boring sex life. And being a sub does not make you weak. I've had a lot of strong subs at my feet, but I never had one of them with the guts or the stupidity to go head to head with the Mossad director his his own house."
"But Ziva." Tony closed his mouth. He had no idea what he wanted to say about that mess.
"If she comes back, and I do hope she does, she doesn't get to hold this against you. She's the one who doesn't know where to put her loyalty, and you risked a lot giving her that intel on her father. My guess is that a part of her knows that. She also does not get to cuff my senior field agent again. Her judgment is a little too compromised to trust in that position. Clear?" Gibbs was using his 'don't fuck with me' tone of voice.
"Got it, boss."
"And you will get your head together before that arm heals. This was Ziva's mess, and you don't carry her burdens. You screw up enough on your own, DiNozzo. You don't need to borrow trouble." Gibbs had said similar words a thousand times, but this was the first time he had his fingers slowly stroking through Tony's hair as he said it. Tony looked over, confused and a little freaked out, but at least that emotion pushed out a little of the pain from earlier.
"I'm on it, boss."
Gibbs gave Tony's head one more stroke before he stood up. When Tony looked up at Gibbs, he couldn't help but feel his world had shifted. Without another word, Gibbs headed for the door.
"Take a couple of days off to let that arm rest. If I find out you've broken your arm a third time, I'm going to have to hunt someone down and eviscerate them, got it?"
"Yes, boss," Tony agreed. He knew he had to look like an idiot, but he just couldn't seem to get the smile of his face. Gibbs stared at him for a second, his face devoid of all emotion, and then he turned and walked out the door, closing it behind him. It was an exit worthy of Cary Grant.
Curtain Line: The final line of a scene or act which gives the cue for the curtain to come down. Gibbs is giving the cue for Tony to bring the curtain down on this relationship!
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