Fic: Dark Chocolate and Red Wine [1/5]

[snowdarkred]

Title: Dark Chocolate and Red Wine
Author: snowdarkred
Words: 12,950+
Pairings: [deep breath] Gibbs/DiNozzo, Trent Kort/Tony, Tony/Dr. Brad Pitt, Tony/Abby friendship!, Tony/Multiple OFCs (though not all at once), and very, very one-sided Ziva/Tony.
Rating/Wanings: R for language, brief mentions of child rape and murder in a case related setting, and copious amounts of off screen sex.
Summery: Tony liked the taste of dark chocolate because it was bitter and smooth, and went great with a glass of '98 Zinfandel. He'd never told anyone about it because it would ruin his macho, over-sexed, frat boy image, and besides, dark chocolate was traditionally served with port, not red wine.
Author's Notes: So, I figured something out about how to post this to get around the error. Okay, same declarations of gratitude apply: dinozzo111 , you're amazing. Truely the best damn beta a girl could ask for. Thanks to everyone at gibbs_dinozzo and linguaphiles for your help! Here's a proper post! Cross-posted at the usuals.


Dark Chocolate and Red Wine

 

 

Tony liked the taste of dark chocolate because it was bitter and smooth, and went great with a glass of '98 Zinfandel. He'd never told anyone about it because it would ruin his macho, over-sexed, frat boy image, and besides, dark chocolate was traditionally served with port, not red wine. But really, his silence on the matter was due more to privacy than anything else. Sitting in front of his jumbo plasma cost-him-two-months-salary-and-then-some TV, watching It Happened One Night, and indulging in two glasses of Zinfandel and a pound of Godiva was how he dealt with all the wrong turns, missteps, and fuck ups his life seemed to attract.

 

(Looking back on it now, Tony conceded that perhaps It Happened One Night had been a bad choice in movies to watch after the Horribly Awful Jeanne Break Up Slash Disaster in Slow-Mo HD. The movie, a classic black-and-white directed by Frank Capra in the glory days, involved a street-smart reporter hero looking for a story and willing to use anybody to get it, a feisty love-worn heroine who falls head-over-heels, a rich over-bearing father, and hidden secrets all over the place. It was a little too close to the truth, and the happy ending found him kneeling over his toilet bowl at two in the morning thinking of could have beens and fate.)

 

Among other things, one significant advantage in his lust for dark chocolate was unlikelihood of being arrested, as he had been while partying at that extremely questionable club in Philadelphia . And now, he thought as he stared around at his belongings, packed into boxes for the first time in eight years, he was running again, just like he had in Philly, from Peroria, from Baltimore. Just like he always did.

 

What the hell, he thought. Might as well go out with a bang.

 

And with that, he finished off his glass of wine, consumed the last bit of chocolate, and taped up the final box labeled flicks.

 

----

 

Tony hated going in to work now. Before, he had usually been the one who arrived first, the one who sat at his desk and actively contemplated how goddamn lucky he was to have a job he loved. His job at NCIS was his life, the thing he thought about with joy and glee. But that was before. Now, he was the last one in the mornings and the first one out the door in the evenings. He spent more time in Abby's lab than he did in the bullpen, preferring to spend his time breathing air that didn't feel like so much dead weight against his chest.

 

He hated how empty he felt.

 

He had moved his desk so that he couldn't see her's directly. He didn't even know which "her" he was thinking of, whether it was Kate or Paula or Ziva. One night he concluded that it was all three, and then he got himself spectacularly drunk. He called in sick the next day, hung up on Gibbs, and then felt guilty doing so. And then he hated that he felt guilty at all.

 

Gibbs chewed him out in the middle of the bullpen for that stunt, and if Tony were being honest with himself, he'd say he deserved it. But lying was something that came naturally to him, and besides, he was good at it. So instead he blew up at Gibbs and got desk duty for a week. His "coworkers" gave him slaps on the back (out of Gibbs' earshot—because none of them were as suicidal as Tony) for standing up to the Big Bad Bossman, but Tony knew that he really just wanted Gibbs to fire him. He was just too much of a wuss to say so.

 

Gibbs didn't fire him, and Tony kept showing up late for work, and everyone went on pretending that nothing had changed. Tony spent most of his time staring at McGee because it was better than staring at her desk, but then McGee started staring back and that was just too awkward even for Tony. He wound up staring at the elevator doors instead.

 

Other agents kept telling him that things would get better, that he'd get a new partner, and everything would be okay. After he'd nearly punched Agent Ragnel in the face, they quit telling him face to face and started sending emails instead. He deleted them all and didn't bother replying.

 

Tony hated going into work.

 

----

 

"What's going on with Tony?" he heard McGee whisper to Abby. Tony wanted to roll his eyes, but he didn't because he had a hangover and he already felt nauseated. He didn't hear what Abby whispered back, but he did hear what Gibbs told the office in general:

 

"Don't know, don't care! But he better work it out soon, or he's gonna be in the unemployment line. Got that, DiNozzo?"

 

Tony grunted a non-answer and finished deleting his overfull inbox. Who knew NCIS had this many agents? Didn't they have something better to do than to barrage him with emails?

 

----

 

After the third week, Tony had finally mastered the art of not looking at her empty desk, and that was when human resources choose to put someone in it, of course. The replacement was a woman—that much Tony noticed before he was racing for the bathroom because she looked too much like Jeanne and the thought of Jeanne made his stomach burn and his heart clench. After he finished puking, he wiped his mouth and flushed the toilet and wondered if someone could really die from a broken heart. If so, he wished that a shard of his heart would hurry up and pierce his lungs so that he could drown in his own blood in peace.

 

Gibbs was waiting for him when he left the stall, and Tony felt like he was gonna hurl again under the scrutiny. He washed his hands and waited for his boss to say something.

 

"What was that?"

 

Real eloquent, boss, Tony thought.

 

Tony didn't answer. He blow-dried his hands and wondered what it was that kept bringing him back to this job. He knew there was a reason, but it seemed that he was quickly forgetting about it. Guilt, that ever present companion he'd known since he was ten, was growing stronger inside him. Why was he here?

 

"Well?"

 

I hate you. I hate it here. I want Ziva to be back. I don't ever want to see her again. I want to run and never stop. I want to curl up into a ball and never move. I want you to act like you give a damn. I want you to lie. I want you to fire me. I wish I couldn't feel. I don't want to be numb. I hate waking up. I hate being awake. I hate dreaming. I wish I was in Spain with my own team. I wish nothing had changed. I hate being alone. I hate being at work. I wish you really did give a damn. I hate you.

 

"I don't remember," he said instead. He paused, contemplating leaving it at that. He could leave, just walk out and keep going until his Italian shoes were in shreds and he had no idea where he was. But that would be a waste of a good pair of shoes. "I don't remember why I keep showing up for work."

 

"To get a paycheck," Gibbs replied, trying for a light tone. Tony didn't react; he just kept staring at the door and wondering if he'd ever feel at home.

 

"She looks like Jeanne," Tony stated. God, he felt like shit. His apartment was full of boxes and he hadn't watched a movie in a week. He spent almost all of his time in someone else's bed. That morning, he'd woken up a strange house at dawn with no memory as to how he got there. He was falling apart, and he wished Gibbs would swoop in and fix everything, but Gibbs was just as fucked up as he was.

 

"Yeah," Gibbs said. "I know. But she won't last."

 

----

 

Tony found himself driving that weekend. He didn't know where he was going; he didn't really care. He drove without paying attention, and it really was a miracle he didn't wrap his car around a tree. Maybe that was what he wanted. He pulled over and slept when he felt tired and it was too dark to see anything, and when he woke up he realized that he was in Louisiana. He pulled into an itty-bitty town to buy gas and food, and maybe some alcohol.

 

The girl behind the counter was in her early twenties. She was cute and obviously into him. Tony found himself flirting back like he had in the Great Before. Before Ziva left, before Jeanne left, before he became someone else. It felt good. He smiled and laughed and got her phone number. He made a note of the little town's name (Bond, which made him laugh again) and hit the road with a six-pack of Dr. Pepper, a box of donuts, but no beer. He jammed a random CD into his stereo and cranked the music up as loud as it would go.

 

He barely made it back to DC in time to come to work that Monday. He walked in wearing the same clothes he'd worn that Friday, albeit washed through the kindness of a nameless motel somewhere in Tennessee. People gave him strange looks at his appearance, because he hadn't shaved and his suit was wrinkled. Tony whistled Frank Sinatra and walked with a bounce in his step. McGee did a double take and called Abby, who immediately rushed up to see. Gibbs observed his Senior Agent silently from behind his desk with raised eyebrows. Tony was so distracted clearing out the fresh batch of "It'll Be Over Soon" emails that the Entire International Staff of NCIS insisted on sending him that he didn't notice that her desk was empty again.

 

Abby arrived, amid fanfare and Burt the Farting Hippo, ready to interrogate him. But no matter how much she begged, Tony told no one what he'd done that weekend.

 

He'd fled across state lines like a felon, he'd driven hard to the point of nearly crashing, and then he'd slept in his car. He hadn't had sex the entire weekend, and he was planning on calling the cute girl in Bond the minute Gibbs stalked off to get more coffee.

 

----

 

Baylee was cute and witty with an adorable accent. Tony called her more and more frequently. They traded emails and text messages and after two weeks Tony drove to Bond, Louisiana to meet her parents. They thought he was charming and fun and great for their daughter. He liked them and wished his parents had been similar. They told him straight up that they wanted him to be their son-in-law.

 

He stopped going out at nights to get drunk and instead watched movies with Baylee. They'd tune into the same movie on TV and trade commentary over the phone.

 

Tony showed up at work on time the following Monday.

 

----

 

Baylee drove up to DC to see him one weekend a month later. Tony loved how she ran to him across the NCIS parking lot and threw her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist—just like he was a returning war hero and she was his hometown sweetheart. He loved how she instantly loved the little French cafe he took her to and how she giggled when he whispered Italian into her hair.

 

Sei fantastica.

 

She didn't say anything when she saw Tony's box-filled apartment, simply arched an eyebrow and glanced over her shoulder at the Federal Agent. He grinned and left it at that.

 

She stayed all of Saturday and headed home early on Sunday morning. She left him with a kiss and a warm feeling. He watched the road as she drove away and wondered when he had started feeling again.

 

----

 

He got the call at work. McGee stared at him as the phone slipped from his hand and hit the floor. Dead. Baylee was dead. Smiling Baylee, perfect Baylee, the woman he'd held in his arms only yesterday, was dead.

 

Tony barely heard McGee pick up the phone and talk to Baylee's tear-choked mother.

 

Dead.

 

Morta. Lei era morta.

 

Gibbs gave him the rest of the day off and Tony went in search of alcohol.

Part Two--->>>

------

Comments warm my heart!

Comments

[laura-trekkie.livejournal.com]

*eeep* Just how much more can Tony take before he shatters completely?! C'mon, Gibbs; pay attention. Tony needs more from you than the rest of the day off!

Laura.

[snowdarkred.livejournal.com]

Heh, I was going to say something, but them I realized that you might not be done reading the fic, so I'll just say:

Thanks for reading!