Work Text:
Title: Marines
Fandom: NCIS
Rating: FRT
Dedication: For Joan because I miss her.
Author: Neichan
Summary: What is love? Tony's POV.
Warning: More Gen than slash, but Genslash to be safe. Maybe a touch angsty.
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I have seen him many times with many people. But what fascinates me the most is the way he is with Marines. He is always aware, always listening, no matter who is talking, but when the person who needs him is a Marine, something more takes him over.
I've seen it, how he touches those men, big guys, or small and wiry, fearsome fighters, true warriors. He is never more gentle not with the youngest child, than he is with them.
I've watched him dress them, smooth their hair, run a thumb over a lean cheek. He has given them his medals, his time, his love.
There is nothing else to call it. Love. Something makes it OK for the tough men, the men who can kill you ten times with one finger, to care about each other. To actually embrace or touch each other when men far less masculine can not.
I wish I knew what it was. How to make it work for me. My father taught me that was wrong, men didn't need other men that way. Men take care of women, children. Not other men.
Perverts. That's what my father thought of men who cared for other men.
But there is nothing ugly, nothing wrong with the way these men's-men act. When they pick up one of their own and carry him five miles across enemy lines--that is anything but wrong. How they listen, even if they don't say a damn word back, the way one reaches out and gives another his hand.
I've made jokes all my life. I've joshed and sneered out sarcastic taunts. And all the time it's been me who was wrong. All it took for me to know it, was to see the way he adjusted the medals on a young man's jacket. The way he lay his hand on the back of a bowed head. The way he met the anguished eyes of a Marine who needed his help.
All my life. It took me that long to understand.
I want him to look at me that way. To touch me like that. To care about me like he cares about them.
It's taken me all my life, but here, at last, I am.
nei