Title: What might have been
Author: Ceindreadh
Email: Ceindreadh@eircom.net
Website: n/a
Permission to archive: Yes to WWOMB, anybody else, please ask first.
Fandom(s): NCIS
Genre (general, hetero or slash) Slash
Pairing/Characters: Gibbs/Tony
Rating: FRT-15
Summary: Kate was wrong about what Tony's worst nightmare was
Warnings: Spoilers for Bikini Wax,
Also, you may need tissues for this.
Disclaimer. I don't own the NCIS characters, I'm only borrowing them, and I promise to return them in minty fresh condition when I'm finished.
Just a little fic idea that landed in my head. Unbeta'ed so all mistakes are my fault.

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(Bikini Wax)
Gibbs "She knew she was pregnant, any idea about the father?"

Tony "She used a payphone to call him, but his cell was turned off. She said she left a message."

Kate laughs, "Heh, that's your worst nightmare, Tony."

"How's it going with those letters, Kate?" asks Tony as he returned to his desk. He doesn't really care about the letters, he doesn't even care that he'd just deliberately brought Kate's lack of progress to Gibbs's attention. He just wants Kate to get off his back before he blurts out to her that no, no it *hadn't* been his worst nightmare.

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Tony whistles to himself as he takes his shower. It's Friday night and while he doesn't have a date for the evening, he's pretty sure that he won't be ending his evening alone.

He exits the shower and grabs a towel to wrap around his waist. He attacks his hair with another towel, rapidly drying it. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he pauses in his drying. Towel draped round his shoulders, Tony pulls on it like it's the lapels of his tuxedo and addresses the mirror in his best Sean Connery as James Bond impression. "Well hello there, Miss Moneypenny. You're looking ravishing tonight." He winks at his reflection. "I believe M has ordered a spot of 'debriefing'...would you care to oblige?"

Laughing to himself and very happy at the prospect of a night out, Tony heads back to his bedroom just as the phone rings. His first instinct is to pick it up; after all, it could easily be Gibbs dragging him back into the office to work on a case. Tony's been working for the guy for less than a year, but he's lost more than one Friday night to N.C.I.S. and he really doesn't want to lose another. But he knows that when Gibbs says jump, he's gonna say how high, so the prospect of ignoring the call doesn't occur to him. And if he's honest, he'll jump at the chance to spend time with Gibbs, in any capacity. However, in concession to the fact that it's Friday, Tony lets the answering machine take it figuring he can always pick up if it's important.

But the voice on the line isn't the gruff tones of Tony's boss. It's the voice of a woman, which to Tony on a Friday night is *much* more interesting.

However he's learned from experience that it's not always a good thing to answer calls from women in his life...at least not until he's figured out if they *are* in his life, or were in his life, or want to be in his life and whether he wants them there or not. So he continues to towel dry his hair while listening to what she has to say.

"Tony? I...this is Mary. Um, I really wish you were there...I didn't want to tell this to a machine..."
Tony has stopped toweling dry his hair as he listens to the voice. Mary, Mary...he tries to think of all the Mary's he knows. He would pick up and see what this one wants, but again, he's learned the hard way that chicks aren't overly happy when you mistake them for another woman you've slept with. He doesn't have that problem with the guys he sleeps with, mainly because few of them ever bother calling him the next day so he doesn't *have* to remember their details.

So anyway, he figures it's better to just let Mary get what she has to say off her chest and see if she happens to mention a last name somewhere in there.

"Anyway," continues Mary. "I wasn't sure whether to tell you this or not...but I think I'm pregnant..."

Tony just stares at the phone open-mouthed. Shit, this can't be happening, he tells himself. He's always so careful. Never has sex without a condom, and if his partner is on the pill, so much the better. His legs have suddenly gotten shaky and he stumbles over to his bed to sit down and try to figure out how he's gonna get out of this.

"...I haven't been sleeping around, so you're the father...and...and I just wanted to let you know. I...I'll phone you again, I really don't want to leave this to a machine. Goodbye..."
And then there's the click of a dial tone and Tony is going "Oh shit oh shit oh shit" to himself and he still doesn't know her last name and she hasn't left a number so he can't call her back.

And then he's thinking that maybe he should just erase the message and pretend he never got it. Yes, he could do that, and then he could change his number so when Mary calls back she'll think she misdialed or something and if she can't contact him then he doesn't have to deal with this.

But even as he's thinking this, Tony knows that he can't just abandon a woman in need, and Mary sounded really needy. And if he *has* gotten her pregnant, then he can't just ignore it. That's the way that *his* father operates. Something happens that DiNozzo senior doesn't like, he'll either ignore the problem, or he'll throw money at it until it goes away. And Tony has always promised himself that he's better than that...that he'd face up to his responsibilities no matter what, and if this Mary is having his baby, well...it takes two to tango, and it's his duty to stand by Mary and his kid.

His kid...the words send a sudden thrill through Tony. Okay, he's still kind of freaked out by the prospect of being a father...especially since he didn't exactly have a great example of one growing up... But the thought of having a kid...a son that he could take to the park and teach how to play football...a son that he could watch from the stands and cheer like crazy as he scores a touchdown. "Anthony Junior" says Tony to himself. "Kind of a nice ring to it." And of course he'll be a jock like his old man, but he'll be smarter as well, and Tony can just imagine how proud he'll be to see *his* son graduate top of his class.

Of course it could be a girl, he tells himself. A pretty little girl, his little princess. He'll treat her right, he promises himself. He'll buy her pretty clothes and dolls and drive her to sleepovers and swim meets. And he'll scare off any boy that dares to try and date his precious little girl. And when the right guy finally comes along for her, Tony will walk her down the aisle and choke back a tear as he gives her away.

Tony lies back on his bed, staring at the ceiling. First things first, he thinks to himself. Weddings and graduations are a long way in the future...before that, there's OB appointments and baby scans and Lamaze classes and doing up a nursery...and then he'll have to sort custody stuff with Mary. He's starting to remember her now, a sort of a scatterbrained kid, but pretty...so at least their son or daughter should have no problems in the looks department. Anyway, Mary, if he's thinking of the right Mary, was a fairly easygoing chick, so he's sure they'll be able to sort things out amicably.

He's been lying there for almost an hour now, building castles in the air, when the phone rings again. This time he sits up and grabs it before the answering machine can kick in. "DiNozzo," he says, hoping that it's Mary ringing back and not Gibbs.

"Tony?" He's in luck; it's a female voice and Mary by the sound of things.

"Yep, who's this?" Well he doesn't want to be *too* eager. Besides, he's gotten it wrong before, mistaking women's voices on the phone...and lets just say the results weren't pretty.

"Tony, it's Mary." Tony gives himself a mental thumbs up as she continues, "I left you a message earlier, don't know if you got it or not," her words are spilling out quickly.

Tony is about to say that yes he did get the message and he's very excited about it, and then Mary says "Well I just wanted to say to ignore it...it was a false alarm" and Tony's castle in the air comes crashing down around him.

"A...a false alarm?" he says, hoping that his voice sounds steadier than he feels.

"Yes, I'm really sorry to have freaked you out like that," says Mary, "But I was late and I panicked and I thought I should call you and then my period started and it was probably just because I was stressed." She pauses for breath but Tony is just too stunned to say anything as she continues, "Anyway, I'm really sorry for worrying you like that. I'm sure you were all freaked out, thinking I was going to screw you for child support."

"I..." Again, Tony just can't seem to bring himself to say anything.

"I guess we both dodged a bullet then, right Tony?" Mary laughs and Tony doesn't understand how she can possibly laugh when she's just shattered his plans for the future.

He finally manages to get his emotions under control and fakes a laugh, "Yeah Mary, guess we were both lucky!" It takes all his skills honed at working undercover, to be able to finish the conversation politely.

When Mary has finally said goodbye, with yet another apology, Tony replaces the handset and lies back on the bed. It's for the best, he tells himself. He's nowhere near ready to be a father, and he'd probably have made a lousy one anyway. But no matter how much he tries, he can't seem to shake the feeling of gloom.

Tony doesn't go clubbing that night. He consoles himself with the thought that even if this little DiNozzo Junior never existed, somewhere out there there's probably a whole bunch of his offspring running around. Definitely all those donations to the sperm bank he made in college won't have gone to waste. But he still feels like he's just suffered a bereavement, and the worst thing is, there's nobody he can tell about it...nobody who'll understand.

Tony knows that if he tells his frat brothers, they'll just clap him on the back and congratulate him on being a lucky son of a bitch to have had such a narrow escape. If he tells his father - yeah, like that's gonna happen - the old man will probably berate him for being so stupid and tell him that he needn't expect a cent of DiNozzo family money to support any of his bastards.

So he bottles it up inside him, knowing that nobody will understand, and he doesn't tell anybody. Until one night when he's stuck in a hotel room with Gibbs, because they closed a case late one night and it was too late to drive back to Washington, and Tony knows that he's drunk more than he ought and he knows that Gibbs probably doesn't want to be hearing all this crap, but he can't stop himself from blurting out about the baby that never was and how wished it hadn't been a false alarm. And as soon as he's said it, he wishes he'd taken it back because what the hell is he doing, spilling his guts to his boss, and surely Gibbs is going to be just like all the other men Tony knows and he'll think that Tony was just a wuss for being so upset over something like that when he should have been thanking his lucky stars that it had been a false alarm.

But Gibbs isn't like any other man that Tony has know, and there's something in his eyes, an acknowledgement of shared pain, and he doesn't laugh at Tony's feelings, but instead he acts like it's okay that Tony still wonders what might have been. And he doesn't exactly offer Tony a shoulder to cry on, but he offers him the next best thing and when Tony is entwined in Gibbs's arms, he forgets for a little while what might have been.

It's many many nights later when Tony finds out that Gibbs too has thoughts about what might have been. It makes Tony feel a little guilty that he was getting upset over an imaginary child when Gibbs had lost a real one, but Gibbs tells him that it doesn't matter how long you have a child for, once you lose one, there'll always be an empty space in your heart where once there was a castle in the air filled with dreams and promises.

Tony knows that he can never make Gibbs forget what might have been; he knows that Gibbs will always have that empty space in his heart. All he can do is try and fill the rest of Gibbs's heart and be there when he needs him. He knows that his heart is all the less empty for having Gibbs in his life.

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So Tony holds his tongue and doesn't let himself tell Kate that far from being his worst nightmare, it had been one of his happiest moments. He knows that she wouldn't understand even if he tried to explain it to her.
He knows that Gibbs heard Kate's remark and he knows that Gibbs knows just how deep her comment cut him. And he also knows that tonight it'll be Gibbs's turn to fill the empty space in Tony's heart. And Tony believes that someday maybe he and Gibbs will both stop wondering what might have been, and end up focusing on that which is.

But not today.

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The End