Work Text:
Let sleeping pilgrim's lie
by Ceindreadh
Tony DiNozzo does not sleep with many people.
Oh he has sex with plenty of people, but as a rule, once the deed is done - and usually pretty damn well done, even if he says so himself - he's out of there, disappearing as fast as Gibbs's coffee during a difficult case.
It's the intimacy that he can't handle. Physical intimacy is easy; he's been doing it long enough to be pretty damn good at it. He knows all the right words to say, all the right places to touch, all the moves, all the lines. That's the easy part. Enough practice and anybody could do it. Heck, McGeek could probably do it if somebody wrote it down in a nice handy 'seduction for dummies' pdf file.
But it's the aftermath that he can't handle. Oh sure, he'll stay with his partner for a while afterwards; sometimes he'll even make small talk for a bit. But his partners frequently feel that having connected on the physical level that then it's time to connect on an emotional level. They'll want to talk about how good it was and how great he is and when can they do it again, and the next thing you know they're talking about crazy stuff like feelings and relationships, sometimes even the dreaded 'L' word, and Tony is just not ready to deal with that sort of commitment.
So as soon as he can, he'll grab his clothes, make his excuses and leave. Sometimes his excuses aren't quite as well received as others, and more than once he's ended up hopping around trying to finish pulling his trousers on outside a suddenly locked door.
Sometimes though he can't make his excuses. Sometimes he has to see it through to the bitter end, because a good boyfriend doesn't just bail on his girlfriend after they've had sex. And if he's not a good boyfriend, if he doesn't behave like a good boyfriend should, then he's going to end up not being a boyfriend at all, and then the mission will go to hell, and he'll never get close to the arms dealer, and more weapons will be sold, and more people will die, and it'll all be on his head. So he clamps down on his instincts and he stays in the bed, and God help him he even cuddles up to her afterwards and tells her what she wants to hear. And all the time he knows that she's going to think more of him than she ought to and sooner or later the 'L' word is going to rear its ugly head and he knows it's all going to end in tears.
And when it does, Tony takes no pleasure in knowing that he was right about the dangers of sleeping with people. He tells himself that that's it as far as emotional intimacy goes. He vows to himself that he will never again 'cuddle' with anybody.
Which is why he's still wondering just how on earth he ended up with an armful of sleeping Autopsy Gremlin?
Oh Tony is well aware of how he ended up having sex with Jimmy Palmer. He can tell in great detail the story of how a comradeship born of necessity had turned into a slowly growing friendship. He can pinpoint the exact moment he'd looked at Jimmy, and he means, really looked at him, and noticed that under the baggy scrubs was a great body. He can recap the entire conversation between them which had started with an explanation of a cause of death, and ended with a 'your place or mine'.
It had been Jimmy's place of course, it always is. Tony knows from experience that it's always easier to leave after sex than to get somebody else to leave. And he always leaves, well until this time.
It had been late, it had been raining and Tony gets back to his car to find it had a flat. So he accepts Jimmy's invitation to spend the night, figuring that just this once it can't hurt.
He hasn't counted on Jimmy's sleeping habits. No more than Tony himself, Jimmy is clearly a guy not used to sharing his sleeping accommodations. They start out, each with their clearly defined sectors of the mattress. Tony makes a half-hearted 'good night John-boy' crack, closes his eyes and lets himself drift off.
He wakes what has to be barely an hour later, to find that his territory has been occupied by what at first feel seems to be a multitude of invaders, but on closer inspection is simply a sound asleep M.E's assistant spread-eagled over the double mattress, pushing Tony to the very limits of the bed.
Tony figures that Ducky would likely have something psychological to point out about how a person's true nature shines through in their sleeping positions. Might even have a commentary on how somebody who spends their day being an invisible subordinate, will in their relaxed state want to take up as much space as is available. But right now he doesn't care about that, he just wants to get his own share of the bed.
So Tony rolls Jimmy back onto his own side of the bed, waits for a few minutes to see if Jimmy will awake, and then settles back, trying to return to the dream he'd been having. He's pretty sure it was something to do with judging the nude round of the Miss World competition, if only he could figure out why Gibbs and McGee had gone undercover as contestants.
But Jimmy's subconscious clearly has other ideas, and Tony wakes once again, this time to find himself hanging half way off the side of the bed and Jimmy sprawling in the center.
Tony knows what the simple option would be. He could just get up, grab his clothes and head for home. Heck, he could have even just grab a blanket and try to crash on Jimmy's couch. But the couch is cold and the bed is warm, and in the end it's really just pure self-defense Tony tells himself as he rolls Jimmy back to his side of the bed and wraps his arms around him.
"It's just so I can sleep properly," Tony tells himself as he holds Jimmy close. "If Jimmy can't move, he can't push me out of the bed." He lets his head rest against Jimmy's shoulder as he closes his eyes, barely noticing the way his breathing slows until it's almost in sync with the younger man.
The next night that Tony agrees to stay over, he automatically reaches for Jimmy to hold him close as they sleep.
Twenty years later Tony is saying that cuddling is just the best way to stop Jimmy kicking him out of their bed in his sleep. Jimmy has stopped trying to win that argument long ago, but he's also long since convinced Tony that it doesn't matter which of them does the cuddling; they both sleep the better for it.
The end