lit_gal | (no subject)

Aesthetic Distance (Part of the Stageplay universe)
Warnings: Dom/sub
Pairing: Gibbs/Tony (memories of Ziva/Tony)
Pre-slash

And yes, this has its own graphic now; however, I will probably wait until the new season starts before I get too into this... maybe. I think I said part two was my last part before the season started, and I lied. However, this is like my Toys universe--no cliffies.

Sequel to: Manipulation in Five Acts (Ziva/Tony) and Curtain Line (no pairing)

Tony is flailing, and Gibbs decides he has to step in before it's too late.

"Tony," McGee complained. Tony danced backwards with a smile on his face. If he was still reeling from Ziva's loss, he wasn't about to share that with McGee.

"Oh, come on McGeek. It was just a joke." Tony dropped into his desk chair.

McGee lifted out a pen draped in limp spaghetti Tony had liberated from the cafeteria. "This is my favorite pen."

"It's a pen. Requisition another one," Tony said with a shrug. After McGee took down a suspect, two local LEOs and an unlucky cook with a giant pot of spaghetti, he really couldn't expect anything less. Tony hadn't smiled that wide in a long time. Even Gibbs thought it was a little funny; Tony could tell by the way he just stared at the scene as all four men tried to get to their feet in the mess.

"It was my favorite pen." McGee threw it in the trash and started pulling handfuls of spaghetti out of his desk drawer.

"The inventiveness of the Italians knows no bounds in pasta or practical joking." Tony put his hands behind his head and leaned back to watch McGee try to separate pasta from paperclips. McGee muttered something under his breath, and Tony smiled. Life was good.

"DiNozzo," a voice snapped, and Tony almost got whiplash he sat up so quick.

"Boss?"

Gibbs was striding across the room, and he did not look amused. Tony wondered if Vance was poking at the boss's buttons again. Gibbs stopped in front of his desk and leaned on it, his face devoid of emotion, but Tony would still sense the disapproval, even without the facial expression. "Tonight, be at my house at 8pm sharp." Gibbs said the words quiet enough that McGee couldn't hear. Tony froze. He had no idea how he was supposed to react to this, but Gibbs just stood up and went on to his desk.

McGee looked at Tony, the question obvious in his expression. Tony could only shrug. He had no idea what was going on.

"McGee," Gibbs barked, and the man jumped.

"Boss?"

"Get down to Abby and find out who else our dead guy was chatting with."

"Don't you think—"

McGee stopped when Gibbs slowly looked up with one of those Gibbs-looks that made you wonder if your life insurance was paid up.

"I'll just go check with Abby," McGee said before he headed for the elevator, a long strand of spaghetti still stuck to the cuff of his jacket. The elevator door slid shut before Gibbs said anything else.

"Tony, you have until he gets back to get his desk cleaned out," Gibbs said without looking up from his computer. Tony opened his mouth to argue... after all it wasn't like McGee hadn't pulled his own pranks. In the past few months, McPrissy had finally started striking back, so he'd lost any tiny wisps of guilt for picking on someone so soft. All was fair in love and mutual torture among coworkers. However, no one said 'no' to Gibbs, and Tony was not going to be the first one to try. He moved over and started pulling the spaghetti out of McGee's drawer. What a mess.

Tony was standing on Gibbs' front lawn at 7:50, wondering what he was doing here. If Gibbs wanted to chew him out for pulling one or two pranks, he was perfectly capable of doing it at work. Hell, Gibbs was the master of backing someone into a corner and chewing them out without ever raising his voice. Tony wondered, and not for the first time, what Gibbs would be like as a Dom. Ziva had been all about touch. Once a scene started, she wouldn't speak much, and sometimes she whispered words in Hebrew. Mostly she would put hands on him. He knew firsthand how many pressure points the human body had because Ziva would use them. If he moved exactly where she wanted him, her hands were gentle across his warm skin. But if he moved the wrong way, fingertips would find some pressure point to bring him back in line. He'd learned to not move wrong.

"Get in here before someone reports you for loitering, DiNozzo," Gibbs called, and Tony jumped. Hurrying up to the door, Tony tried to calm his nerves, but being ordered to the house was sending his brain off into a dozen different directions—very few of them good. Jenny used to do that—call him for meetings at unusual times. Usually it was when she wanted to go into great detail about the Benoit case and she didn't want the meeting to show up on her schedule. Those weren't his most pleasant memories.

"Hey, boss." Tony gave Gibbs his best smile as he passed the man at the door and strolled into the living room with every bit of casualness he could muster. Gibbs just watched him, and the blank stare made Tony squirm more than Jenny's barely concealed frustration or even Director's David's smug arrogance. Tony knew how to manipulate emotions, but Gibbs never gave him enough to work with.

"Sit," Gibbs said, pointing at a couch as he took a seat in a chair facing it. Tony did, feeling even more uncomfortable. He sat and Gibbs watched him.

"You wanted to see me about something, boss?" Tony finally prompted. He wasn't even going to pretend that he could outwait Gibbs.

Gibbs leaned forward. "You've been joking a lot lately." The words sounded like a simple statement, and Tony knew they were true enough, but he was already marshalling his excuses and defenses by the time Gibbs continued. "I think I understand why, but I've made enough mistakes that I'm going to come right out and ask for an explanation."

Tony frowned and waited for the punchline. Gibbs wanted him to explain himself, and he'd made Tony come all the way out here to do it?

"It was just spaghetti."

"And giving the recruits a hard time?"

"You heard that?"

"Yes, DiNozzo, I did. Commenting on a recruit's flexibility and her history as a gymnast was over the line."

Tony hid his desire to flinch at that memory. Okay, so he'd been a little over the line with that one. "Not my finest moment," he admitted with a sheepish grin that generally got him out of trouble. It didn't look like it was working with Gibbs.

"And when you spent nearly sixteen hours in two weeks on a site dedicated to making strange faces into a camera?"

This time, Tony didn't even try to hide his reaction. Yeah, he'd been an idiot that time. His air guitar had gone to number three, and his psycho face went up to two, which was way ahead of McGee, but even when he'd been playing, he knew he was compromising his investigations. He couldn't seem to get his head in the game. His jokes had always been camouflage. If he acted like the idiotic frat boy that someone turned loose with a badge, then people weren't as careful around him. They let things slip. Hell, the director of Mossad had fallen for that ploy, and even Tony was surprised about that. However, lately he sometimes had trouble pulling himself back out of the role. It was like he was stuck in this costume, and he didn't know how to get out. It was like the need to keep people away from him... the real him... was taking over his life. He couldn't let them get closer than this facade that was taking over his life.

"Tony." Gibbs said the name and then stopped, but Tony could feel the disapproval dig into him like fishhooks, and there really wasn't anything he could say to defend himself. He'd screwed up.

"Maybe it wasn't as funny as I thought," Tony said before Gibbs could say anything even more condemning. Tony didn't know if he could take any more condemnation.

"Oh, it's funny, but I would use the word to mean 'causing suspicion' more than 'amusing'."

"What?"

Gibbs leaned so far forward that Tony thought he might fall out of his chair. "There's definitely something funny about your behavior lately, Tony, and I'm wondering if you can tell me why you seem to be pushing so hard."

Tony stood up. "If you have a problem with my work, we can deal with it at work."

"Sit down." Gibbs hadn't raised his voice, but the tone sent a shiver through Tony. For a second, he stood by the couch, caught between running and obeying. If Gibbs hadn't been looking up at him with the calm expectation that he'd obey, Tony might have pulled a runner. Instead, he slowly sank back down onto the couch.

"Tell me when you started to lose control." Gibbs sounded so calm, but Tony could feel his heart pounding heavily, like rabbit caught in a trap, and Tony did not like the way his body was reacting to the combination of fear and the deep-set belief he was safe.

"Boss, maybe this isn't such a good idea." Tony scooted back on the couch and tried to hide his growing erection. Geez, of all the times for his body to get the wrong idea, this was pretty high on the list of humiliation.

"I think this is past due. Tony, I'm not going to take this farther than you're comfortable going, so if it makes you feel any safer, I can promise you that I'll stop the minute you tell me you can't handle this. However, you need to objectively evaluate your own behavior lately, so turn a little of your observational skills on yourself."

Tony let his eyes fall closed. The last thing he wanted to do was look at the disaster of his own life. He'd made so many mistakes that he was surprised Vance didn't fire him even if Gibbs was trying to protect him. Hell, he didn't even know why Gibbs was protecting him because somewhere along the line he'd turned from a senior investigator who used juvenile humor into a practical joker who couldn't stop.

"What would make this easier, Tony?" Gibbs' voice was uncharacteristically quiet.

Tony couldn't even answer. When the couch moved, he jerked his eyes open. Gibbs sitting next to him on the couch was a surprise, and Tony had no idea what the rules were for this. He'd stayed with Gibbs once when he had a problem at the apartment, but even then, even back when Tony was still being a good investigator, they never sat this close.

"Tony, I'm not upset."

"You should be."

"Maybe."

Tony stared at Gibbs trying to understand where this conversation was going, but the guy had decades of experiences with being enigmatic, and he wasn't tipping his hand at all.

"I contributed to this by encouraging Ziva to pursue you, so I'm not going to blame you for having a very predictable reaction."

"Predictable? I'm falling apart." The words slipped out before Tony could stop them. Honestly, he didn't even know he was going to say it, but the minute the words came out, it was like the words created the reality. Now he did feel like he was falling apart. Cracks were forming even as he sat on the couch next to Gibbs. He was surprised when Gibbs' hand reached out to rest on his knee.

"Do you remember that asshole that Abby was dating?"

"Which one?" Tony asked, happy for the change in topics. "The stalker who just about got her killed or the asshole who left her back covered in score marks from his cane?"

"She liked the one with the cane." Gibbs didn't sound amused, but then Tony wasn't surprised about that. Neither of them was particularly comfortable with how hard Abby liked to play, but they had to respect Abby's choices. "I was thinking of that guy who had her so turned around that she started considering more sensible shoes and dressed like...." Gibbs stopped, but now that Gibbs reminded him, Tony did remember the incident.

"She dressed like an escapee from the suburbs." Back then, Tony didn't even know about Abby's preference for subbing, but the way the normally confident woman had become so unAbbyish had really bothered him.

"She did," Gibbs agreed. "She'd invested a lot in that Top, so when he turned into an asshole, it was hard for her to find her balance. She was too close to the relationship, and she lost sight of herself."

"You're making a point here, aren't you?"

"Maybe." Gibbs wasn't looking at Tony, but he did have the beginnings of a smirk on his face.

"You think I've lost my balance?"

"I think you're a little too close to the problem to see it clearly. You need to get some distance on this."

Tony leaned back and ran his hands through his hair. That's what he'd been trying to do for weeks now... months if he was honest. He'd slipped into this relationship with Ziva, and watching her chase after some Mossad agent... knowing that she needed a man who didn't kneel at her feet... he hadn't handled it well. Now that he looked back, he could see the jealousy and the rage behind his jokes. He hated Ziva for not wanting him. He hated McGee for being a normal man who didn't need this shit to get his rocks off. He hated Jenny for using his need to submit to bring him to heel and he hated Vance for the way Vance looked at him... like he knew. Like Tony disgusted him. Tony took a deep breath and tried to control the emotions that swelled up like the gases in a dead body that threatened to explode.

The entire time, Gibbs' hand continued to rest on his leg.

"Maybe I should take some time off."

"You've had quite a bit of time off."

Tony's hand went to his arm, rubbing the now-healed injury. However, he didn't have any other answers. Even if he acknowledged that he was in trouble, that didn't mean he knew how to get out of trouble.

"Tony, do you need help?"

"A real man wouldn't." Tony gasped as a slightly harder than usual Gibbs' slap caught him upside the back of the head.

"Don't be an ass." The sympathy of earlier had vanished under something a little harder, and Tony actually preferred that. He couldn't handle pity from Gibbs. "Marines who don't know how to ask for help die young. Do I look like I died young?"

"Um, no?"

Gibbs rolled his eyes. "Tony, I lost my balance after I woke from the coma, and running to Mexico didn't change the fact that I was in trouble."

"Until Ziva called you." Tony didn't mean for that to sound so aggressive, but he could hear the anger in his own voice even without knowing where it came from.

"I would have come just as quickly if you called." Gibbs reached out, and Tony braced for another headslap, but this time Gibbs ruffled his hair. "I told you, Tony, I'm a Top. I woke up and I realized the person who had relied on me to be the Top, and the person I relied on to need me... she was gone. She was gone and she'd died so long ago that I didn't even feel like I had a right to be so lost. Ziva's call just reminded me that I had other people relying on me, and as a Top, that gave me some of my balance back."

Tony frowned. "Uh, boss, not that I'm complaining, but what's up with the sudden sharing?"

"Because you need it. It's in the nature of a Top to protect the people in his care just as much as it's in the nature of a Bottom to serve."

Tony shook his head. "What?"

"I didn't see it at first." Gibbs stretched out his arms over the back of the couch and crossed his legs. Since he was in the middle of the couch, the pose crowded Tony, but he just shifted closer to the arm. "You wanted attention. You wanted the attention Ziva had promised you before she took it away."

Tony laughed. "I'm not a five-year-old throwing a tantrum."

"And you're not coming up on fifty and quitting to go sit in Mexico and sulk, either."

Tony blinked as he looked at Gibbs. He'd had a lot of anger about Gibbs walking out on them, all mixed in with his fear that he'd screw up as team leader and his uncertainty with secret mission for Jenny. That had not been a pleasant time, but he'd never accuse Gibbs of sulking. He certainly wouldn't expect to live if he ever did have the thought.

Gibbs slipped a hand around the back of Tony's neck, and Tony shivered at the touch. It was a dangerous place to grab someone, especially since Gibbs had demonstrated on him more than once how easily a Marine could subdue a suspect with a neck hold. However, Tony's cock got all the wrong messages this time around.

"I know some women who could step into this void." Gibbs made it sound so very normal.

"You're offering to pimp for me?" Tony tried to put on a salacious expression, but he wasn't sure he was succeeding. He'd thought about that exact thing—about going back to Caluna and finding someone else to scratch this itch, but the fact was that he didn't want someone to play with him for a night or even for a week before she got bored and moved on. Tony wasn't sure he could handle that right now.

"No. This has nothing to do with sex. I'm offering you a chance to submit." The way Gibbs said it, like he was offering to order in a pizza, made Tony close his eyes and struggle with a growing tightness in his pants.

"Thanks. I think I'll pass." Tony tried to sound as casual as Gibbs, but he couldn't keep his voice from slipping up into that girlish range McGeek used when someone touched his computer.

"Would you allow me to help?"

"Help?" That time Tony sounded almost completely like McGeeky. Hell, he sounded like McGeeky after someone accidentally dropped a coffee with extra sugar onto his laptop.

"I know you're not gay, Tony. I'm not looking for this to be sexual, but we could indulge in a little mutual satisfaction, and then we could take care of any built up tensions on our own."

Tony suddenly realized that Gibbs was very aware of his erection. He shifted to hide it better, but that just made his jeans pull tight and he had to blink as his eyes watered. Okay, this was very embarrassing. Tony opened his mouth to make his excuses before he ran for the door.

"I'd like," Gibbs said firmly before Tony could say a word, "to take your shirt off and use a rope harness to tie your arms firmly behind your back. I think I'd prefer you to lose the shoes, too. Then I'd take you downstairs and tether one ankle to the railing of the stairs."

"And then?" Tony had no idea where those words had come from because he had planned to turn Gibbs down firmly but respectfully enough to not endanger his job. He couldn't afford to lose his job because he was way too much of a headcase to find another right now.

Gibbs tilted his head. "Then I'd work on the boat and we could discuss our open cases. You have a way of seeing things when you don't have your head so far up your ass that you can't see straight. I think I like the thought of you tied and tethered and forced to focus on what I want you focusing on."

Tony opened his mouth and then closed it without answering. Gibbs wanted his ideas. And Gibbs obviously didn't think Tony was all that fucked up because you just didn't accuse nutjobs of having their head up their ass. It made crazy people go a little crazier. "Okay," Tony said before his mouth could check in with his brain.

Gibbs nodded and gave Tony a pat on the shoulder. "Get rid of your shirt and shoes. I'm going to get some rope."

"Um, boss?" Tony swallowed, not sure how in the hell he had gotten himself to the point where he was agreeing to this. Gibbs just raised an eyebrow and waited. "Could I use the bathroom?" Tony tried to look casual about the request, as if he just needed to take a leak.

Gibbs smiled. "Go right ahead," he agreed. Then he was up and gone, and Tony was left trying to decide if he was really going to do this. In some ways, this was no more than a normal debriefing. Gibbs wanted him to sit in the same room and review details from case files. Tony could do that without looking at his computer, unlike McGee. However, Gibbs wanted him barefoot, bare-chested, and tied while they did it. Tony's cock twitched painfully.

Well, hell. He was going to do this. Tony hurried into the bathroom, already pulling his shirt off as he went. He didn't want to keep Gibbs waiting, but he definitely needed to jerk off before the first rope touched his skin or he was going to embarrass himself. There was letting your boss tie you up, and then there was letting your boss see you prematurely ejaculate all over yourself. Tony had certain standards that he had to keep up.

Aesthetic Distance The distancing of the audience from the action on stage so as to retain the theatrical illusion.

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