NCIS: Tuesday Morning, 2 a.m. (Gibbs/DiNozzo)

[waldos_writings]

Title: Tuesday Morning, 2 a.m.
Rating: R
Pairing: Gibbs/DiNozzo
Word Count: 980
Author's Notes:  Written for the talk_bingo challenge at Dreamwidth. Prompt: "Don't jump to conclusions."
Summary: Gibbs always said that Tony did his best work at night.  He just isn't sure what to do when Tony leaves his bed in order to go back to the office.

Gibbs had been a sniper for quite a while. This had required taking certain natural talents and developing them into skills. Like taking being a light sleeper and turning it into the ability to wake without moving a muscle, establish what had woken him and decide how to handle the threat in seconds.

Lately there hadn’t been too many threats to his sleep, so his talent had morphed into the ability to wake, establish what little thing had woken him and drop straight back into sleep.

This thing between him and Tony was pretty new, but not so new that it was awkward for them to share a bed anymore. Whenever Tony shifted or got up, Gibbs would wake, realize it was just Tony and go back to sleep. Until Tony moved again.

So it was odd that he was woken by lack of motion. He stretched a hand out to see if Tony had come back – he’d noticed him getting up about five minutes ago. Gibbs had assumed he’s just gone to the head and he’d gone back to sleep. But now he could feel the passage of time even without checking the clock, and Tony hadn’t come back. He opened his eyes and glanced around the street-lit room. Tony’s shirt wasn’t hanging on the hanger on doorknob any more. Gibbs stretched and pulled himself to his feet, padding out after Tony in his boxers and t-shirt.

Tony was sitting in the dark living room, fully dressed, tying his shoes.

“Goin’ somewhere?” Gibbs asked through a yawn.

Tony scrubbed a hand through his hair and stammered, “Uh… I was um…”

“Leaving?” Gibbs asked, dropping on to the ottoman across from Tony.

“No! Well, yes, but… no…” Tony dropped his face into his hands. “I was gonna come back. Probably.”

Gibbs just cocked his head and studied Tony. He knew that if he waited Tony would start talking again eventually. One thing Tony couldn’t stand was an extended silence.

Tony finished tying his gym shoe and let it plunk to the floor. “I was just … I was going to get my duffle from my car and get my sweats and go running. I would have come back.”

“It’s two-fifteen in the morning, DiNozzo. Who the hell goes jogging at two-fifteen a.m.?” Tony bit his lip and looked down and away and Gibbs realized that he’d caught him in a lie. He sighed. “Look if you’re not comfortable staying here – “

“That – that’s not it.” Tony jumped up and began pacing. He noticed how Gibbs had suddenly adopted very defensive body language. “Don’t go jumping to conclusions. This nothing about –“ he waved his hand in the vague direction of the bedroom. “It’s not about that. I just needed to get out for a while.” Tony crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back on the wall. This hadn’t happened since he and Gibbs started spending the night together and he’d been hoping that it wouldn’t. Or at least that it wouldn’t before Tony could work up the nerve to explain to Gibbs that it might.

“So what’s it about?” Gibbs asked quietly, and Tony could hear in his voice that Gibbs didn’t believe him about the fact that he’d said it had nothing to do with him and Gibbs sleeping together – literally and figuratively.

Tony let his head fall back with a thunk against the wall. “I was going into the office for couple of hours.”

Gibbs turned to look at him in the streetlamp light that streamed through the windows.

Tony almost laughed at the expression on Gibbs’ face. Gibbs had known for years that Tony was prone to bouts of mid-night work, but clearly he hadn’t expected Tony to leave his bed for one. “You come up with something on the Levander case?”

“Nothing I didn’t think of earlier, but there’s stuff I didn’t get done.”

“It’s a money laundering case, Tony – granted it’s a truckload of money – but there’s not the kind of urgency that would have you up and working at two a.m.”

Tony huffed again, realizing he was going to have to explain. The long version. The version he’d been avoiding. The reason that he knew would have Gibbs coddling him in the morning and seeing him as weak for the better part of a month. “It’s not that. I just… I just need to be up for a couple of hours.”

“Insomnia?” Gibbs asked, though the fact that Tony had said he ‘needed’ to be up didn’t really make sense for an insomniac.

“Nightmares,” Tony finally whispered. “If I just go back to sleep the dream will pick up right where I left it off. I need to get up and think about something else for a few hours and then I can get a few more hours of sleep before morning.”

Finally at the heart of the matter, Gibbs consciously relaxed his body language and held a hand out to Tony. “You think you gotta run out of here because you had a nightmare? You think I don’t ever have nightmares?”

Tony stepped over and took Gibbs’ hand, dropping back onto the sofa. He shrugged. Somehow he’d figured Gibbs had plenty to have nightmares about, but he’d never thought Gibbs would have admitted to them. “Like I said, I just need to take my mind off stuff. I didn’t figure you’d appreciate me putting on a movie too much. You wake up if I roll over.”

Gibbs smiled wryly, not having realized Tony had picked up on that. He moved next to him on the sofa and put his arm around Tony’s shoulders, tipping Tony’s head against his shoulder. “I think I’d like it better than waking up and finding you gone.”

Tony sat up, pulling away, feeling even more frustrated. He hated feeling like he couldn’t get anything right.

Gibbs pulled him back. “You want to put a movie on or you want to go work for a while? Let me just say that either way, I expect you back in bed with me before the alarm goes off.”

Tony sank back into Gibbs’ shoulder. He realized, rather suddenly, that he wanted to sit on the couch and talk to Gibbs for a while until he felt like he’d shaken off dreams of rogue Mossad agents and his team crumbling around him and him getting shipped back to the Seahawk enough that he’d be comfortable going back to sleep. “I’ve got the DVDs of Hogan’s Heroes in my backpack,” he finally said. He couldn’t outright ask Gibbs to sit up with him, but maybe if hinted.

“You’re going to run around all day at work tomorrow going, ‘I know nuffink!’, aren’t you?” Gibbs asked as he pulled Tony’s backpack up from where it sat next to the sofa. “Go, put it on. I’m going to get a glass of water. You want something?”

“I’m fine,” Tony answered as he pulled out the DVD folder he kept in his backpack. “I’m good.” And for the first time in a long time after a nightmare, Tony realized that he actually was.