Normally, an unsolved case meant nights spent snoozing in his chair, waiting for someone to come up with the next big break. Sometimes, if Tony was lucky, he claimed the rollout in Abby's office before McGee could get to it. And while that sort of job dedication was a bit unusual (some might say obsessive), Tony figured that at least he hadn't gotten as comfortable as Gibbs, who still routinely grabbed a few winks in Autopsy while waiting on a case.
Thanks to the addition of Baby Girl DiNozzo, however, pulling an all nighter was out of the question. Hell, Tony figured that he was just lucky Director Sheppard was out of town until the next morning, or he would have been sent home straight away to deal with the whole mess himself.
So, despite the fact that Ellen had turned out not to be their perp (so to speak) and they didn't even have a last name on Emily, at five on the dot, Tony was sent packing with only a slightly drowsy infant for company.
"Okay, kid. Let's hit the road," he muttered while finally managing to reattach the car seat to the back of his sports car.
And while this whole day still had an eerie, sort of surreal quality to it, Tony couldn't help but notice that on the way home, he drove more cautiously. He checked the belts strapped across her three times to make sure they weren't too tight. He even pulled over once to find her skull and crossbones rattle after she dropped it under the seat and wouldn't stop screaming.
The normal fifteen minute drive took almost forty minutes. By the time they pulled into the driveway of his brownstone, he was starving. The baby, if her continued screaming was any indication, was also starving.
Now, he faced a dilemma. Baby was pissed off and hungry. In order to feed the baby, the car had to be unloaded. But somehow, Tony didn't really think the baby would accept this as an acceptable delay and wait quietly.
So after some frantic searching, he found the bag of food supplies. Thankfully, the bottle warmer came ready to use, and while it warmed up, Tony tried to tackle the assembly of the bottle itself, because that of all things, had come in pieces.
After several false starts, he managed to get it to look almost right. "Okay," he muttered. "Formula, formula…formula!"
He grabbed it, opened it with a pop, and fine, white powder promptly exploded everywhere. "Great. Just great."
By the time the bottle was ready, the baby was bright red and seriously pissed. And, as Tony discovered while feeding her, the bottle must have been put together wrong, because it leaked.
Still, the kid eventually stopped crying, which was progress. Right now, he'd take the small victories.
"Okay. Now I get to eat," he muttered to himself, awkwardly trying to shuffle the baby (who he was still not comfortable holding) and the cordless phone long enough to order some carry out.
For ten minutes, there was peace. There was a quiet baby and after some quick channel surfing, a Cary Grant marathon on AMC. This was okay. He could do this.
Until she started fussing again.
Eyes narrowed, he held her eye level. "Okay. I fed you. I am holding you. I have the TV volume low. You have the rattle. What's your problem?"
In response, she twisted a little one way, then wriggled another, and then proceeded to let out a huge burp while vomiting all over his Armani tie.
Not surprisingly, she found this more amusing than he did.
And, of course, that's when the doorbell rang.
--
Somehow, even the destruction of prime designer clothing seemed like less of a tragedy after a quick change and an entire carton of lo mein. In fact, with Cary Grant still playing in the background and the kid changed into one of her new outfits all fresh and happy, Tony had started to believe that really, this wasn't so bad. It certainly wasn't how he wanted to spend his evenings for the next eighteen or so years, but for one night, he might be able to manage.
Of course, the fact that she had essentially been asleep for most of the day didn't really make bedtime a thing that was going to happen anytime soon. But she was quiet, and when she wasn't screaming or making doe eyes at McGee or Jimmy, Tony had the time to stop freaking out and sort of enjoy her.
In a completely non-paternal way, of course. Just in a baby way.
After all, her laugh was really cute. And when she grabbed at his fingers demandingly, it was sort of endearing. And, he discovered, it wasn't a myth that most of the time, babies smelled really good.
He managed to change her diaper without too much trouble (it almost seemed like she was humoring him) and by midnight, she was had finally dozed off.
Tony took two seconds to double check and then happily followed her lead.
That is, until he woke up precisely three a.m. to the now all too familiar sound of shrieking.
--
Director Jen Sheppard liked being the first one in the office in the morning on her first day back after a trip. There was something almost covert about it, a chance to observe the average state of the office when the agents knew there was no one up in MTAC breathing down their necks.
This particular morning, however, it was clear before she even stepped off the elevator that someone had beaten her.
She just didn't understand how that someone could be a baby with an ear-shattering wail.
Curbing the impulse to cover her ears as she exited the elevator and walked into the main bull pen, she couldn't have been more shocked to see Tony huddled at his desk, a car seat full of pissed off baby sharing the space. "Agent DiNozzo," she said loudly enough to be heard over the racket. "Why is there a crying baby in my bull pen?"
He looked up at her wearily. "Well, because she won't stop, Director. She's been like this since three in the morning. I've tried everything. Twice. I changed her. Fed her. Burped her. Played with her. Sang to her. Walked her. She just…won't stop."
That much was obvious. "She can't be here," Jen pointed out.
Tony, however, seemed too frazzled to be impressed with her louder-than-usual Director voice. "Do you know how to make her stop?"
Jen's experience with babies began and ended with her nephew, who had just entered middle school. "No."
"Well, then I'm waiting here for Gibbs." At this declaration, Tony almost collapsed in on himself. "Gibbs will know how to make it stop."
Honestly, Jen had no ready response for that. On the one hand, his desperation was clear. On the other, people were going to start arriving soon and this was hardly conducive to a good work environment.
Luckily, before she had to make a decision one way or the other, Gibbs appeared as if from nowhere. "What the hell are you doing to that baby, DiNozzo?" With a disturbing ease, he scooped the baby out of her carrier and cradled her in confident arms.
"Nothing. She's just crying," Tony explained once more.
"Ah," was all Gibbs said as he began to pace, the baby's cries already waning. "They do that sometimes."
--
With the baby magically calmed down and secretly tucked away down with Ducky, Tony was able to think a little more clearly. Although when Gibbs returned from dropping her off bearing not one, but two coffees and proceeding to hand Tony one, it took a few seconds to shake off the weird feeling that overtook him.
Blowing on it, Tony looked at the information on the screen. "I met Emily at the Georgetown Library."
"You know where the library is?" McGee asked, sounding genuinely surprised.
Rather than disabuse McGee of his set-in-stone shallow image of him, Tony just let it slide. "They have a great movie section."
"Ah," McGee nodded. "Of course."
Tony just rolled his eyes. "Anyway, she worked as a clerk there, taking a year off between graduation and med school to study for her MCATS." He smiled, remembering that she could ramble for hours if you got her started. "She could have passed them right away, but she didn't want to just pass – she wanted to blow them out of the water."
"That would make her what, about twenty-three, Tony? Isn't that a bit young, even for you?" Ziva chastised.
He didn't reply, because the truth was that at the time, he had wondered the same thing. It obviously hadn't stopped him, but he liked to think that the ten days they had spent nearly joined at the hip had been enjoyed by all. "It's a long shot, but we can try the library. She might still be working there."
"Sounds like a plan," Gibbs agreed. When they all waited for his next order, he just raised an eyebrow. "Well, what are you and McGee still doing here?"
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