"Congratulations, Tony!" Ducky said cheerfully. "You have a beautiful baby girl."
Tony curbed the impulse to point out that they wouldn't know for certain if she was his for another six to twelve hours.
"Abby sort of beat you to that discovery, Ducky," McGee said helpfully.
"Ah, yes, well did Abigail tell you the approximate age of our delightful visitor?" Ducky asked while slipping the baby's outfit back on and allowing her to grab his glasses. "Because I may be able to give you an estimate."
"Please," Tony pleaded.
"It's difficult to say exactly – a date of birth is a bit harder to estimate than a time of death, you know. But judging from her weight and development, I'd say this lovely lass was born about three months ago. Do allow a month in either direction, though."
The doctor picked her up off the scale and, completely without warning, went to hand her to Tony, who couldn't help but feel distinctly panicked at the thought of holding her. "Here you are."
"Oh, no, I…" but before the protest could fully form, she was in his arms, staring at him quietly while sucking on her fist. "Hi," he said inanely, because his mind had blanked.
In response, she made a happy baby sound in a really high pitch that, if Tony spoke baby, he would assume meant ‘hi' back.
That was…kind of cute.
But not really. And she'd better stop wriggling, because the floor was hard and he had no idea how to hold her. "I…Duck, could you?"
Seeing his obvious discomfort, Ducky took the baby back easily. "If you like, Mr. Palmer and I can watch her here while you agents try to track down the whereabouts of her mother," Ducky offered. "At the very least, it is usually quiet down here."
"I would hope so," McGee muttered.
Ducky laughed. "Yes, yes. However, my point is, she shall not be in the way here."
Tony was beginning to think it was a good idea. After all, the kid was already nodding off again – seemingly to the sound of Ducky's voice, which honestly, was an urge he could relate to. "If you're sure you don't mind, I'd really appreciate that, Duck."
"Of course, of course. Are there…ah…provisions?"
Tony winced just thinking about it. "I sent Abby out with my credit card." A decision he was already regretting.
"Ah. I see. Very well. I am certain she will arrive shortly with ample supplies. Off you go, then!"
Tony went, unarguably relieved and at least a little concerned about whether or not the kid would still be piercing free by the time he saw her again.
--
By the time Tony got back up to the bull pen, Gibbs was more than a little annoyed. "About time, DiNozzo."
"Sorry, Boss," Tony replied immediately, keenly aware that this was all a favor to him and therefore, he was treading on even thinner ice than usual.
"Can we get this over with and onto a real investigation?" Ziva asked, very obviously irked by the whole thing.
"Hey, I'm just as eager as you are," Tony pointed out. "Boss, Ducky said that the kid is around three months old, give or take. Unless I'm remembering wrong, that narrows it down to…."
"Two possibilities," Ziva interrupted, pressing a few buttons efficiently. "I had to pull them from your appointment calendar, as your contact list is pathetically out of date, so I only have names. The first, one Ellen Lanyer."
Tony grinned, leaning back in his chair. "Ah, Ellen. She could do this insane thing with her…."
"Please, Tony. Spare us," Ziva implored. "And the second, someone listed as Emily. No last name."
"I never got one," Tony admitted, feeling a bit ashamed of that in retrospect. "Now she was a great ten days." Surprisingly, he didn't mean that in a dirty way – he and Emily had had some good times together. But between her MCATs and the new case that popped up, it had fizzled just as quickly as it had begun.
He had thought about calling her a few times. Not surprisingly, he had never gotten around to it.
As he stared at the names now on the overhead screen, Tony was surprised to find that he felt vaguely disturbed by this public display. It was one thing to share some idle talk about your sex life and quite another to have it literally front and center. And these two names…well.
"Any ideas which one is more likely?" Gibbs asked from right behind him.
Still eyeing at the screen, Tony tried to sort out his thoughts, which were decidedly jumbled. If this was all real and the kid was his and someone, somewhere had thought for whatever deluded reason that dropping it off at his house would be a good idea…well, if it was real, then there was only one answer.
After a few minutes, he turned and looked straight at Gibbs.
"No," Tony lied.
Gibbs held Tony's gaze for a few minutes, staring him down. Tony didn't flinch and he didn't look away and he didn't squirm, and that was more than he had ever managed with Gibbs before.
"Okay," Gibbs finally relented. "Then, seeing as we have a last name for her, we go after Ellen first."
--
Tony had met Ellen Lanyer at a local bar, as cliché as that was. She was a first year associate lawyer who had needed to blow off some steam. After taking one look at her incredibly long legs, Tony had been more than willing to oblige. They had continued this mutually advantageous arrangement until she had dropped the bomb that somehow, blowing off steam had transmuted into "I want to introduce you to my parents."
Not surprisingly, he had suddenly lost her phone number.
Needless to say, he hadn't been expecting a particularly warm reception when he showed up at her office that afternoon.
Actually, to be more accurate, he had been shocked when she agreed to see him right away.
Now, standing across from her ominous figure glowering at him from behind a ridiculously oversized desk, he realized that he shouldn't have been. In fact, he was starting to think that calling ahead might have been a good idea. Or really, maybe this could have just happened over the phone entirely. "Ellen," he said tentatively.
"Asshole," was her greeting. Yeah, this meeting was going to go real well.
Well, one plus of her conviction that he was Satan's spawn was that he could live up to her expectations and cut straight to the chase. Just get through the whole thing as quickly as possible and get the hell outta dodge. "Happen to misplace any babies lately?"
"Excuse me?!" she exclaimed, beginning to rise from her chair.
"A baby. Girl. About this big," he clarified, gesturing.
Funny, he didn't remember Ellen ever being that particular shade of red before.
Nor did he recall her apparent penchant for throwing things, but seeing as he was suddenly forced to duck a file, he began backing out of the room.
"You…you…jerk! You think I would just…I wouldn't even have your baby, you self-obsessed, egocentric pig! How dare you waltz in here and just…ugh!"
He put up his hands as a motion of apology. "Hey, I'm sorry, but I had to check. You were one of my prime candidates."
That was when her hand went for the paperweight.
--
"Well, you don't seem to need stitches, Tony. A good cold compress should do the trick," Ducky assured Tony back at the office, checking the nice-sized egg on his head. "Come downstairs and we'll see what we can do."
Tony mournfully followed Ducky down to Autopsy, holding a hand to his head. As if the pounding wasn't a constant enough reminder of his current predicament, the first thing he saw as they entered was Abby and Jimmy huddled together, fawning all over the baby. Specifically, Jimmy was holding her while Abby…signed?
"Abs, what are you doing?"
Abby glanced over, her face lighting up at his arrival. "I'm signing! Don't you know that if babies are exposed to sign consistently enough, they can learn basic communication signs as young as six months? She'll be able to tell you if she's hungry or thirsty almost an entire year before she could verbally express it."
To Tony, this seemed massively irrelevant. "Even if I was planning on keeping her long enough to experience that particular delight – which I'm not – it wouldn't do me much good, seeing as I don't know sign."
Abby, of course, didn't seem to see this as a barrier. "I'll teach you. It's easy."
The first (and more important) part of his sentence was blatantly ignored.
How had he gotten here again?
Abby just barreled along, obviously not noticing (or not caring about) his pained look. Not that she could, with her back to him once again. "Anyway, I'm glad that you're back. I want to show you everything I bought. Did you know that Hot Topic has a baby section? I got her the cutest little onesies with band logos and a rattle with this really cool skull on it and…."
Yeah, letting her loose with his credit card had definitely been a bad idea. "I don't suppose you remembered the prosaic and less cool things like say, diapers? Or bottles and formula?"
"Don't be silly, Tony. I even got a crib! It has wrought iron details and looks totally…oh. And there's something else."
"What? Did you find an infant-sized bustier?"
"No. Look," Abby said, fishing a folded piece of paper out from under one of the bags. "DNA results."
Tony knew before looking, before she even finished her sentence. Really, he had known all along. Still, the words, "It's official. You're a daddy," seemed to echo in his ears.
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