Tony’s Dry Spell

 

Tony went to his special room the minute he got home. Lots of people have a special room. Most of them use their special rooms for sex requiring special equipment. Tony’s special room wasn’t this kind of special room though. No, Tony’s special room contained a wall chart, spanning one entire wall, of all the people he’d ever slept with. It included the date the event took place, and the polaroids he’d taken when they were sleeping naked in his bed after the hot sex.

 

Tony surveyed the wall chart with a sad sigh. He hadn’t had occasion to come into this room for a long time. Too long. In fact, if he just examined the dates on the wall chart he’d see exactly how long. He scrunched up his face and then took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. He had to face the terrible truth. He’d been avoiding it for far too long.

 

He went up to the wall chart and peered at the last entry.

 

Jeanne Benoit.

 

And the date. Oh shit. Two years. It had been almost two years since he’d last had sex!

 

“That’s not just a dry spell – it’s a drought,” he muttered mournfully.

 

He did what he always did in a crisis – he got out his cell phone and called his boss.

 

“Gibbs.” His boss sounded kind of breathless.

 

“You okay there, Boss?”

 

There was a humping sound, followed by some panting, and then another humping sound.

 

“I’m fine, DiNozzo. What do you want?”

 

“Uh…” Hump. Pant. Hump. “What are you doing, Boss?”

 

“I’m moving a dead body down a flight of stairs, Tony! What does it sound like?” Gibbs snapped. Tony frowned.

 

“Well, it does sound a bit like you’re moving a dead body down a flight of stairs, Boss.”

 

There was silence.

 

“What do you want, DiNozzo?” Gibbs sounded kind of irritable, which was normal for Gibbs – but also kind of breathless, which wasn’t. Tony decided to call back later.

 

“Nothing, Boss. I’ll…uh…see you in the morning.”

 

Tony closed his cell phone, feeling kind of disgruntled that he hadn’t been able to have a good conversation with Gibbs about his current “dry spell”. After all, Gibbs *knew*. He’d told him so earlier. Tony didn’t question *how* Gibbs knew he hadn’t had sex in almost two years. He’d long ago reconciled himself to the fact that Gibbs knew everything.

 

Tony was, after all, a seasoned investigator. And despite becoming increasingly less competent at his job over the past few years some basic facts hadn’t escaped even his short attention span and they were this: Gibbs was never wrong. About anything. Ever. He knew everything, saw everything, and heard everything. Tony was comfortable with this. It all made sense to him. In fact, it was kind of reassuring.

 

There might well have been a time when he was a more able agent and might have asked more questions, and maybe even opened an investigation of his own into this strange phenomenon, but that time was long gone. Nowadays, it was all he could do to get through the day without making a silly face, saying something unbearably stupid, or embarrassing himself in the thousand and one ways he’d found to embarrass himself of late. He’d gotten better at it over the past year and now was able to embarrass himself almost effortlessly for most of the day if he really tried.

 

Tony stared at the wall chart mournfully. He’d spent hours on it, using various different colours according to how good the sex had been, drawing lines between entries where he’d seduced siblings, and colouring in little hearts over the conquests he’d particularly enjoyed. He’d even devised a special colour coding sequence for orgies.

 

Then Tony remembered that he was a DiNozzo! DiNozzo men didn’t cry over their barren wall charts! No, they went out to clubs and indiscriminately found women (or men – Tony had never been fussy) to sleep with. It all seemed incredibly simple now that he thought about it. Tony made an embarrassing pratfall in the direction of the wall chart, which seemed as unimpressed as his co-workers generally were, and then he turned out the light and left the room.

 

He put on his best “I’m gonna get laid tonight” outfit, which consisted of a pair of tight black jeans and a red tee shirt bearing the words: “I’m gonna get laid tonight” on it, and then he set off.

 

He tried the singles nightclub just down the road first. It all seemed promising when he walked in. If the numbers of gyrating people on the dance floor thinned when he got on it he didn’t notice because although he’d once been rather a good investigator he was now quite incompetent and generally didn’t notice anything very much any more.

 

He boogied up to a pretty blonde girl with big red earrings.

 

“Hey,” he said, pointing at his tee shirt. She smiled at him benignly. “So, how about it?” he asked. This was his usual seduction technique and it rarely failed. He was, after all, very good looking and charming, even if he was now quite a bit sillier than he’d once been.

 

“Maybe,” Blondie replied with a coy wink. “I’m Debbie.”

 

“Tony.” He winked back at her. “Tony DiNozzo.”

 

She froze. “Uh…I have someplace else to be,” she said hurriedly, and then she disappeared.

 

Tony frowned. Weird. He hadn’t even started telling her about Jeanne and that whole fucked up undercover assignment where he’d pretended to be a university professor. Back then, he’d been smart enough that people had actually bought the notion he could be a professor of something, even if it was only film. He wasn’t sure he could pull that off now, what with being much more stupid these days. He hadn’t been totally smart even back then of course. Jenny had told him his deep cover was really, really *deep* – she’d even shown him the driver’s licence in his fake name to prove it – and that had been enough for Tony. In retrospect, that might have been a mistake. He’d been so sure that Jeanne’s wealthy, international arms dealer father wouldn’t have the resources to have him followed when he went to work at NCIS instead of the university every day. Tony thought maybe it had been a giveaway when he went to work crime scenes wearing his “NCIS” baseball cap, and his jacket with “NCIS” written on the back. Jeanne’s dad had been a very smart bad man, according to Jenny, and these clues might have given Tony away.

 

So Debbie’s behaviour was kind of strange – he hadn’t cried, or talked about his feelings, or any of that shit yet, but she’d still been in a hurry to get away.

 

Tony tried again with a pretty brunette, with much the same result. Hmmm. Now he thought about it this had happened a lot lately. If he’d been a more competent federal agent he might even have noticed this trend awhile ago, but he wasn’t.

 

Tony left the club despondently. Maybe he should try the gay club opposite. Gay men always liked him, and while Tony didn’t technically view himself as gay, or even bisexual, he loved cock as much as the next straight man. Nobody would go out of their way to prove to their co-workers that they were heterosexual with as much desperation as Tony DiNozzo had over the years if they weren’t secretly fond of a bit of a cock.

 

A little buzzing whisper went up when he entered the club. He looked around, frowning. It was almost as if they were all talking about him, but he decided that was just paranoia. This was perfectly normal as it had been almost two years since he’d last had sex and that probably explained a lot. Such as the fact that he was a lot more stupid now than he had once been, and his co-workers mocked him more often and with less affection than they once had. Or, if he was honest, no affection at all. Sometimes he was surprised he hadn’t woken up from falling asleep at his desk to find McGee’s knife buried in his back.

 

“Rule number nine,” he said to nobody in particular. “Never go anywhere without a knife.” He nodded sagely. He was glad Gibbs had invented the rules because otherwise he wouldn’t know how to be a good federal agent at all.

 

He got a bit misty-eyed whenever he thought about Gibbs. He loved his boss so much! Some people might think it was weird just how much a fun-loving, fratboy federal agent type such as himself loved his boss, but Tony thought it was perfectly normal. After all, Gibbs was fascinating! Of course Tony was obsessed with him and wanted to go meet his dad, and everyone in his hometown, and listen to stories about how scary Leroy Jethro had been, even as a young lad! Who wouldn’t be obsessed by someone as fantastic as Gibbs?

 

Okay, so he’d never met anyone else quite as obsessed with Gibbs as himself, but most of the rest of the world was pretty damn obsessed with him! You could hardly move for killers trying to catch his attention with bizarre murders that they filmed and put on the internet, and kids writing Gibbs’s marine number in blood at crime scenes, and folks from his past turning up who might or might not be his son, or his daughter’s best friend, or one of his ex-wives.

 

Then there was that mysterious year – 1991 – when Gibbs seemed to have been everywhere at once. Surely only a being of mystical powers, such as Gibbs, could have been fighting in Operation Desert Storm in Iraq, recuperating from a coma, burying his wife and daughter, conducting a revenge killing, joining NCIS, AND working a black ops mission in Colombia all in the same year! No wonder Tony revered him so!

 

Which brought him back to the gay bar. Tony frowned as he noticed the line of people running towards the exit. That was kind of strange! It wasn’t *that* late.

 

“Hey,” he said to a tall, handsome black guy, pointing at his tee shirt. “Want some of Tony DiNozzo?”

 

The black guy looked scared. “No. Please…please…no,” he said, backing away.

 

Tony frowned. He knew he was having trouble “closing the deal” these days, as he never tired of telling people he hardy knew, especially if they were mind-reading type people who could tell he hadn’t had sex in ages just by looking at him. Even so, he didn’t think it had got as bad as this! Usually he at least managed to buy them a drink before putting them off with his long, boring stories about Jeanne, and how great Gibbs was to work for, and how every little headslap made him glow in that special place inside because it showed Gibbs really cared.

 

He hadn’t even had a chance to cry when he told them about the four months he’d had to spend away from Gibbs on a *boat* of all things, and how Gibbs hadn’t slapped him once since he got back – until today when he’d actually slapped him *twice*! Tony felt all happy inside when he remembered that. Gibbs cared about him again!

 

Tony looked around the gay club in surprise, noting that it was now completely empty. Nobody wanted to have sex with him! Nobody even wanted to dance with him! He was really sad about that and thought about maybe going up to a complete stranger in the street and telling them about it. Only, knowing his luck, Ziva would pop up and look at him meaningfully just as the complete stranger was telling him to “hold on for the right woman”, or “look closer to home”, or something like that. That happened to him a lot.

 

Tony was so upset by the fact that nobody wanted to have sex with him that he decided to do what he always did when he was upset and couldn’t speak to Gibbs. He went back to the office. He liked going to the office when it was late and dark. He usually did lots of the paperwork he couldn’t get done during the day because he was too busy being embarrassing and stupid. Sometimes he solved several cold cases at night when nobody was looking, and occasionally he was even quite competent.

 

The office was empty, but Tony noticed that Gibbs’s jacket was still hanging from the back of his chair. He hesitated, and then, after glancing around the room to make sure nobody was watching, he went over, knelt beside the sacred jacket of Gibbs, and sniffed it. It smelled so good! It smelled of Old Spice, and sawdust! It smelled of Bengay, and coffee, and all things Gibbs! It smelled of murder, and dead marines, and there was even a faint whiff of irritability to it. It was the essence of Gibbs. Tony worshipped beside the jacket for some time and then got to his feet. Gibbs’s jacket was here, so Gibbs had to be here somewhere – and Tony intended to find out where.

 

He put his nose in the air and followed the scent of Old Spice, sawdust, Bengay, coffee, murder, dead marines and irritability all the way down to Autopsy.

 

The door was open when he got there, and Tony could see Gibbs and Ducky standing beside a dead body laid out on an autopsy table. Tony hesitated. Although he wasn’t a very competent federal agent these days, he did still know how to sneak around when the occasion called for it. He decided that was what he’d do right now, so he lurked in the doorway.

 

“Oh for goodness sake, Jethro!” Ducky remonstrated. “Not another one! You really must learn to control yourself, my boy.”

 

“I can’t, Duck,” Gibbs snapped irritably. Tony didn’t read anything into this. Gibbs always snapped irritably even when he was actually quite happy.

 

“What did this one do?” Ducky asked. “Stand too close to Tony in the elevator? Accidentally brush up against him in a crowded shopping mall? Stare at him for too long while serving him his coffee? He is a handsome boy, Jethro. People will stare!”

 

“Staring’s okay, Duck. Touching isn’t,” Gibbs said gruffly. Tony didn’t read too much into this. Gibbs was always gruff, even though he had a naturally sunny personality.

 

“So this unfortunate young man made a pass at Tony – is that it?” Ducky huffed. “But was it quite necessary to kill him?”

 

“Rule number 37, Duck.” Gibbs shrugged. Ducky sighed.

 

“Nobody makes a pass at Tony and lives?”

 

Gibbs nodded curtly. Tony didn’t read too much into this. Gibbs was often curt, even though he was really singing inside.

 

“I killed him quickly though, Duck!” he pointed out. “I save the long, slow deaths for people who actually sleep with Tony. Luckily there haven’t been any of those for a couple of years.”

 

Tony gasped out loud. “You!” he said, abandoning the sneaking around thing and walking into Autopsy. Gibbs and Ducky swung around guiltily. “You!” Tony pointed at Gibbs. “You’re responsible for my dry spell!”

 

Gibbs glared at him. Tony didn’t read too much into this. Gibbs was like a clown with a painted-on smile who was really crying inside. Only in reverse.

 

“I’ll leave you two boys to it,” Ducky muttered. “I think you might have something you need to talk about.”

 

He sidled out, leaving Tony alone with Gibbs.

 

“You’ve been killing all my dates!” Tony accused. Gibbs looked a tiny bit abashed. He scuffed his boot on the floor and glanced up at Tony through his eyelashes.

 

“Yeah. So?”

 

“But why?” Tony gasped. Although he had been a federal agent for eight years, and before that had worked as a cop for many years, Tony wasn’t the brightest button in the box these days. His maturity level and IQ had actually been dropping steadily for several years. Nobody knew why.

 

“Because.” Gibbs shrugged. He had never been a man of many words.

 

“And word has got out!” Tony exclaimed. “And now people are too scared to have sex with me!”

 

“Maybe,” Gibbs muttered.

 

“How long have you been killing them?” Tony demanded. Gibbs looked shifty.

 

“Eight years,” he said sulkily.

 

“EIGHT YEARS?” Tony was flabbergasted. Then he looked thoughtful. “I did think it was kind of odd that they always stopped calling me after a couple of weeks. I thought they just decided they hated me, or had moved to a foreign country to avoid me, or had found out that I took polaroids of them while they were lying naked and asleep in my bed. But really, you had killed them!”

 

“Yeah.” Gibbs looked defiant.

 

“All of them?” Tony asked.

 

“Yeah.” Gibbs shrugged.

 

“Even Naomi?”

 

“Naomi?” Gibbs raised an eyebrow.

 

“You remember Naomi – you said that only she and you were allowed to call me ‘honey buns’,” Tony told him.

 

“Oh. Right. Her. She’s buried under my rose bushes.”

 

“WHAT?”

 

“Well, like I said, only me and her are allowed to call you ‘honey buns’,” Gibbs explained. “And I don’t share, so she had to go.”

 

Tony looked at him sternly. “And all the women who used to call me ‘spanky’? They all stopped calling after you borrowed my cell phone when I had the plague.”

 

“Nobody gets to spank you except me,” Gibbs growled. “And not all of them were women, Tony, as you well know.”

 

Tony flushed. Then a thought occurred to him. “Oh my god. Jeanne?”

 

“Bottom of the ocean.” Gibbs shrugged.

 

“I don’t believe it!”

 

“Well why the hell else do you think I need to build so many damn boats?” Gibbs grouched. “You sleep with a lot of people, Tony! I have to make a lot of trips out in the dead of night with body bags.”

 

“Used to sleep with a lot of people,” Tony complained. “Used to – until you killed them all. Now nobody will sleep with me.”

 

“Well, that’s not quite true,” Gibbs muttered.

 

Tony looked at him. “Who?” he asked, because he might be a trained federal agent, but he had the mental capacity of a five year old most days.

 

Gibbs flushed and traced a pattern on the floor with his foot. Tony glanced around the room, wondering if Ziva was nearby, because usually this was when she popped up and made strangely ambiguous comments to him about not wanting to ‘pretend’ any more. Nobody popped up. Tony glanced at the dead body on the table.

 

“That’s the guy I sat next to in MTAC yesterday!” he exclaimed.

 

“He asked you for your phone number,” Gibbs growled.

 

Tony tried to piece all this together. Gibbs was killing everyone he’d ever slept with – but why? Why would he do that? Tony wasn’t really any good at solving mysteries by himself though, so Gibbs had to help him out in the end. He stepped over to Tony, put his hands on either side of Tony’s face, pulled him towards him, and kissed him on the mouth. Hard.

 

“Oh,” Tony said, when Gibbs finally released him.

 

“Yeah.” Gibbs shrugged.

 

“Oh!” Tony said, pulling Gibbs back for another kiss.

 

Gibbs loved him! Gibbs wanted him! Gibbs wanted him so much that he was prepared to kill everyone else in Tony’s life in order to have him! That was SO romantic. Gibbs was the hottest guy in the whole world and more wonderful and fascinating than anyone Tony had ever known. This was so fantastic!

 

Tony could feel Gibbs’s erection pressing into his thigh, and he drew back with a grin.

 

“Does this mean my dry spell is over?”

 

Gibbs grinned back at him. “Oh yeah.”

 

“You could have just said something,” Tony commented, as Gibbs took his hand and led him over to a spare autopsy table, so they could have some hot sex. “You know, you didn’t have to go around killing all those people.”

 

“I’m a man of action – not words,” Gibbs said, and then he proceeded to demonstrate this fact by throwing Tony down on the table and ripping off his clothes.

 

The sex was extremely hot. Tony was pleased about this even though he didn’t have his polaroid camera on him, so he couldn’t take photos of a naked Gibbs afterwards. But still, it HAD been two years, so Tony was very happy about having hot sex again. Especially as it was hot sex with Gibbs, who smelled of Old Spice, sawdust, Bengay, coffee, murder, dead marines, irritability, and all that stuff that Tony found so erotic.

 

Afterwards, as he lay in Gibbs’s arms on the autopsy table, he thought he should probably tell his new boyfriend some stuff about himself.

 

“You remember Colonel Mann,” he murmured. Gibbs nodded. “She isn’t in Hawaii.” Gibbs raised an eyebrow. “Bottom of the Potomac,” Tony told him.

 

“Oh.” Gibbs nodded. “Thought it was weird she never sent a postcard.”

 

“And remember how I got lost on my way to save Jenny from certain death at the hands of the scary gunmen?”

 

Gibbs raised his other eyebrow. Tony didn’t read too much into this. Gibbs often raised his eyebrows.

 

“I didn’t really get lost,” Tony admitted.

 

Gibbs slapped the back of his head affectionately. Tony kissed him again and then leaned in close and whispered in his ear:

 

 “And you know how nobody’s seen Fornell around lately…?”

 

The End

 

 

Index