The two of them were the only ones left in the bull-pen. McGee, of course, had finished his paperwork early, and Gibbs had disappeared to MTAC or the Director's office. Or the head. Tony wasn't quite sure which.
"Doing anything special tonight, Katie?" Tony asked, without looking up from his case report.
"Nothing in particular, no. I might have a bath," she replied, stacking the last of her papers.
"Not going out for a romantic dinner with Dr. Boring?" Tony smirked, now cocking his head toward her.
Kate stopped tidying the rest of the items on her desk. "No," she said, simply.
"Is there no Dr. Boring anymore?" he asked cheekily.
"Please, Tony. Could you not irritate me for one night a year? And of all nights to choose, you'd think tonight you'd be in a more caring mood."
Tony saw the weary look in her eyes and decided not to push it further. He smiled shortly and put his pen to paper once more.
Kate sighed ahead of him, flung her thick coat around her shoulders and flicked her hair out from underneath it. Tony noticed once more the chained yellow glint that was missing from around her neck. The result of yesterday's tussle with the suspected arms dealer.
"You know, why did you even think you could take Sise?" he asked, coming out a little more harshly than he'd intended.
Kate paused, shocked from the sudden onslaught. "I'm fine, Tony. I'm fine," she finally said, a little more to reassure herself than him. She didn't have a choice. She had to be fine.
His eyes met hers and Tony stared at her as if he could see the lie spilling from her mouth. For a second she thought she noticed a flicker of something deeper in clear blue. She'd normally see it every time she looked at him, but it had been noticeably absent since she'd tried to take Sise by herself yesterday evening. She never knew what had been before, though suddenly it came to her.
Faster than it came, though, it was gone. She recognised the look that replaced it, his eyes blank and emotionless, and it stung more than his looks of crestfallen disappointment ever did.
---
It was almost quarter to eleven when Tony finally finished his paperwork.
In the water yard he passed a group of carollers he thought he saw earlier downstairs in the lobby when he went to collect a suspect file. They managed to look cheerful about their predicament: they all smiled and waved at him from behind chattering teeth and turned-up collars as he walked by. Amazing, the spirit, and apparently the endurance, that Christmas seemed to bring out among some.
In the blanket darkness of the night, their voices didn't sound so completely unlike the rich chime of sleigh bells. Their singing reminded him of a time long past, a time when he was small but not so young, a time when his agnostic parents dragged him to church every Christmas Eve until he was just about ready to proclaim himself a Buddhist.
Thoughtful, Tony watched them sing for a few moments. Before he left, he waved back.
But all too soon, he disappeared again beneath the murky waters of his memories. He felt the world slip away, once again a child, once again in his Sunday best, and once again finding himself sandwiched between his mother on his left and his father on his right, neither of whom he knew as well as he wanted to or loved as much as he should've. The pew was hard against the edgy bones in his rear and legs were too short to reach the ground. They grew restless and kicked out on their own.
This inevitably earned him a look of disapproval from his mother. He squirmed beneath her watchful eye. When she finally turned away to bow her head, he was always sure that she was not praying but dreaming up some cruel and unusual punishment for him. Although what could've be more cruel and unusual than this particular family tradition, he didn't know and he didn't think he wanted to find out.
The book his father placed upon the spindly legs of his lap seemed bone-crushingly heavy. But its cover was soft like a spread and the pages fascinated him: they were thin and translucent like flower petals. They were so thin, in fact, that he imagined he could see right through them, all the way back through time to see the faces of the men who had once written this heavy book with their heavy hands and their heavy hearts.
He opened his mouth, but whether it is to ask a question or something else, he never knew, because it is drowned out by the sudden blast of a car horn.
The memory fled from his fingertips like water. In the end, he was just a man in a pair of expensive Italian shoes standing among deserted, iced-over cars in a barren carpark.
The thought saddened him and he took a moment to collect himself. His hands groped for a handhold and came to rest on a rear-view mirror beside him. He was surprised to find not metal or ice but the prick of pine needles against his skin.
He looked down. The mirrors were wreathed with garlands that smelled like the deep, dark forests of fairy tales and ribbons so scarlet they reminded him of particular pieces of evidence he'd collected earlier that day.
Tony remembered that it was Christmas Eve.
---
The soft knock at Kate's apartment door was enough to make some of her wine slosh over the rim and splatter against her pants. Instinctively she cursed and reached out for a tissue or a towel, both of which she knew were not there.
One set of fingers drummed against the leather arm of her couch; the other clutched at the now slick wine glass. She made no movement to answer the door. It was probably her neighbour asking, for the fourth year in a row, if she had any spare carrots or lettuce left over, which he'd forgotten to buy for his kids to put out for the reindeer. The answer was yes, but tonight she had neither the energy nor the cheer to fetch it.
The knock came again. She swore under her breath once more and realised that she couldn't even pretend she wasn't home due to beeping oven in the kitchen. Suddenly annoyed, she downed the rest of her wine and dragged herself to the door. The locks and chains came undone under her experienced fingers and she yanked open the door with a practised smile already prepared. It suddenly fell.
"Were you expecting Santa Claus?"
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