Taptaptap.
Taptaptap.
TaptapTAP.
Across the room, Ziva closed her eyes in apparent frustration. "Really, McGee, must you do that?"
McGee, who had been absently tapping his pen against the face of his desk, looked sheepish. "Sorry. It's just that Tony's late."
"Hardly unusual," Ziva remarked.
"It is when Gibbs has specifically called him in for a case," McGee pointed out. "He knows better."
"Damn straight he does," Gibbs mumbled over his morning cup of coffee.
With his usual graceless timing, Tony chose that moment to stumble through the elevator doors. "Sorry I'm late," he gasped while hauling an awkward armload and finally placing it on his desk. "I got…held up."
Everyone was too busy staring at what he had been carrying to reply right away. Finally, McGee managed to snap out of it. "Say, Tony…what's that you have there?"
Tony rolled his eyes and collapsed into his chair. "Gee, McGee, are you sure you're an investigator for a living? You'd think you'd be able to recognize a baby when you saw one."
At this confirmation of her obvious fears, Ziva scooted further away from what she now recognized as a car seat. "Get it away from me."
McGee had to remind himself that laughing at the Mossad agent wasn't generally a good idea. "It's not contagious, Ziva."
She glared at him and continued to huddle in her chair. Gibbs, in the meantime, had come off his warpath to gaze down at the little figure sleeping in the mass of plastic and cushions. "Why do you have a baby, DiNozzo?"
Tony, who hadn't moved from his prone position, laughed hollowly. "Well, I didn't think leaving it in the hallway in front of my apartment was the best idea, Boss."
"It? You don't even know if it's a boy or a girl?"
"Well, I certainly wasn't going to check, McGee."
"I don't understand," Ziva piped in finally. "Why would anyone leave a baby in your hallway?"
Tony sighed, finally looking up. "Well, if the note pinned to the top of the car seat is to be believed, that would be because it's my baby."
--
Specifically, the note read: It's yours. I can't do this. Sorry. ~E.
Staring at it through a plastic bag, McGee looked at Tony in a way that made him immediately defensive. "I can't believe you bagged it," McGee said.
"It's evidence!" Tony insisted.
"Evidence of what, exactly? Your out of control libido?" Ziva quipped from her station across the room, where she refused to move from as long as the baby was near Tony. In fact, Tony was pretty certain that she had actually scooted her desk a little further away when no one was looking.
Not that he could blame her – a little distance from this mess right now would be more than welcome. Really, Tony was caught so off guard that everything around him seemed to be happening to someone else. It had been that way the entire morning. From the moment he had opened his front door, life had seemed a little too surreal to be true – like something out of a soap opera or an inexcusable Lifetime movie. So, because he lacked the mental acuity to come up with a witty reply, he just resorted to glaring at her from across the room.
"You know, it's really a very cute baby," McGee said, gazing into the car seat. "Can I hold it?"
Tony's eyes widened in spite of himself. "And risk waking it up? I don't think so, Probie." The one thing he had going for him so far was the fact that the kid was asleep.
Ziva eyed it with suspicion. "Well, at least it's quiet now."
Tony's thoughts mirrored hers exactly. "But we can't very well take an infant to a crime scene," she finished, which was…an excellent point.
Gibbs, who up until this point had remained ominously silent, shook his head. "No. We'll hand the case over to another team. We take care of this before we work any more cases."
McGee frowned. "Take care of what, exactly? It doesn't exactly take an entire NCIS team to take care of a baby."
"You'd be surprised," Gibbs intoned dryly. "No, I meant that I assume DiNozzo wants to find out who, exactly, left this baby on his doorstep so that he can...return it."
To Tony, this seemed like the most obvious thing in the world. Of course he was returning it! This was all just…well, not a joke, but maybe some twisted form of revenge. God knew he had pissed off enough women in his lifetime to have it coming. But there was a limit to the amount of sadism Tony could handle, and that limit certainly did NOT stretch to infants. "You bet, Boss. Unfortunately, until I know exactly how old it is, the mother could be one of…several…people."
At this revelation, even McGee rolled his eyes. "Of course."
Gibbs, on the other hand, just shook his head and got down to business like Tony had prayed he would. Tony needed to remember to get Gibbs a really good Christmas present. And birthday. And possibly Groundhog's Day. "DiNozzo, take the note and the baby down to Abby. Have her check the note for fingerprints and do a DNA swab. Then get the baby to Ducky for a thorough examination and estimated time of…birth."
Digesting that particular order took a moment before Tony shook it off and let his training kick in. "Sure thing, Boss."
Gibbs nodded, turning to McGee. "You have any experience with babies?"
"Sure! I baby-sat in high school."
There were good jokes that could be made of that statement, Tony knew. It was a testament to his current emotional state that he couldn't think of any.
"Go with Tony. Just in case."
Lastly, Gibbs turned to a slightly exasperated Ziva. "This is what we're doing now? Really?" she asked.
"Yep," Gibbs confirmed, walking over and grabbing Tony's PDA off the desk, tossing it to her. "Start uploading the E section to the main computer."
With a shake of her head and a few muttered Hebrew curses, she complied.
--
McGee had gone ahead to get Abby to turn down her music and explain the situation, so by the time Tony entered with the car seat, Abby was practically jumping up and down with excitement. "Lemme see the baby!"
Tony had barely managed to put the carrier on her lab table before she pushed him violently aside, peering down at the little body curled there. "So cute!" she exclaimed. "What's the baby's name?"
"How should I know?" Tony asked. Honestly, he had been avoiding thinking about the particulars of this situation as much as possible.
"He doesn't even know if it's a boy or a girl," McGee explained with an annoying air of condescension in his tone.
"What?! You guys! Why didn't you just look? Poor baby, surrounded by a bunch of stupid boys."
Somehow, when Abby said it, Tony really did feel like a stupid boy.
"Hey, Ziva wouldn't look either," McGee said defensively.
"Well, of course she wouldn't!" Grumbling under her breath, Abby lifted the baby gently out of the car seat, efficiently peering under the diaper. She grinned delightedly. "It's a girl!"
McGee followed suit by grinning inanely. "Tony, it's a girl!"
"I heard Abby the first time, Probie," Tony stated slowly, wondering when exactly he was going to wake up.
But this response was obviously the wrong one, because Abby's features darkened. "You could be more excited, you know, Tony!" Looking at the baby's sleepy features, she grinned devilishly. "You know, she kind of has your nose."
Somehow, that observation pushed Tony a little too far. "Yes, Abs. Because this is exactly the sort of thing I'd get excited about," he said pointedly. "It's a baby. A baby was left at my front door. It's not a joke and it's not some joyous event. It's my life. And this kid's life. So can we please get on with things?"
He tried to cover the panic in his voice.
Judging from the look Abby and McGee shared, Tony hadn't succeeded. And it was when the teasing stopped and a tense silence filled the room that Tony realized this wasn't a dream or a mistake and this day really wasn't going to get any better.
The baby, seeming to sense the sudden tension in the room, chose that moment to break into an unheralded round of screaming. Alarmed at the racket, he looked at the squalling infant. "How do we turn it off?"
McGee moved towards it, but Abby just held the baby tighter, smoothing a hand down her back and crooning in its ear softly. "Hey, now. Shhh. I know that this is a new place and your daddy is sort of inept, but he grows on you. Honest."
"Kind of like a fungus," McGee chimed in.
Tony gripped the bridge of his nose. "With friends like these… Look, can we just do the mouth swabs? Please?"
Story Notes:
Okay, so I sort of feel the need to issue a preemptive, blanket apology for this infliction of baby!fic on the fandom. I honestly have never committed this particular fic cliché in any fandom before, and really, it’s all kate98’s fault that this happened in the first place. She encourages where she should most definitely DIScourage. So, if you feel offended by the baby, blame her. Also, the title is the title of a song by The Fray that I listened to incessantly while writing this and has sort of become part of my thought process for this fic, so…yeah.
Thanks to control_freak80 for putting up with me on a daily basis despite my very special kind of crazy and to kate98 and pixie_on_acid for the betas.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Tony wakes up to a surprise at his front door....
Chapter End Notes:
Author’s Note: Okay, so I sort of feel the need to issue a preemptive, blanket apology for this infliction of baby!fic on the fandom. I honestly have never committed this particular fic cliché in any fandom before, and really, it’s all kate98’s fault that this happened in the first place. She encourages where she should most definitely DIScourage. So, if you feel offended by the baby, blame her. Also, the title is the title of a song by The Fray that I listened to incessantly while writing this and has sort of become part of my thought process for this fic, so…yeah.
Thanks to control_freak80 for putting up with me on a daily basis despite my very special kind of crazy and to kate98 and pixie_on_acid for the betas.
Oh, quick note? This isn’t an update, really. I just did a few edits and decided to switch the format a bit. Sorry to those of you who came look for new stuff!
Thanks to control_freak80 for putting up with me on a daily basis despite my very special kind of crazy and to kate98 and pixie_on_acid for the betas.
Oh, quick note? This isn’t an update, really. I just did a few edits and decided to switch the format a bit. Sorry to those of you who came look for new stuff!