Work Text:
Chances
by Pari
'Fifteen percent.'
It wasn't a death sentence, even if it sounded like one. Seeing Tony...
Didn't help. Under those damned ultraviolet lights... Like DiNozzo would fall for that crap.
"Tony." Gibbs wasn't trying to whisper. His voice only sounded that way. "Listen to me."
Tony's breathing was unnatural and loud. Gibbs had never heard anyone breathe like that. He'd stood by sickbeds, deathbeds, before; listened to fluid - blood - rattle around in the lungs of soldiers and special agents who'd been shot or stabbed or poisoned.
The sound of Tony breathing was somewhere between a rasp, a pant, and a whimper. Emphasizing how wrong this whole thing was. Men didn't die of the Plague these days. There shouldn't even be a Plague anymore. Gibbs' men shouldn't have been sent to these sickbeds, while there were terrorists out there with bombs and guns - and none of that had taken them down before.
Tony shouldn't be dying on a sickbed. Skin pale and waxy; eyes sunken like he hadn't been perfectly healthy little more than a day earlier. Hair soaked with sweat. If anyone should have been here because of that letter-
"You listening?"
The rasps/pants/whimpers increased. But Tony was so still, his eyes closed. Almost as if he were asleep. Then he finally spoke. "I'm lis..." Gibbs realized the heavy breathing was Tony trying to talk. The amount of effort it cost him chilled Gibbs like nothing else.
"I'm listening." Tony tried again and, this time, successfully formed two words.
Gibbs' eyes lingered on Tony's lips. Perhaps there was some purpose to the ultraviolet lighting, after all. If it hadn't been for his knowing better, and the blood that stained Tony's mouth, Gibbs could almost have pretended that the blue tint of Tony's flesh was just a trick of the overhead lights.
Gibbs spoke slowly, clearly. Putting every bit of determination he had into his words, as if he could transfer a bit of that determination to Tony himself.
"You will not die," Gibbs said. "You got that?"
Tony didn't respond.
The silence was like a sting. Gibbs had spent the trip to Bethesda deciding he didn't care for 'rates of survival' any more than he did statistics. But now his restraint was wavering, faced with the reality of what could happen. What was happening.
Gibbs slapped Tony on the topside of his head, in a gentle parody of all the times he'd whacked him on the back of the head before.
Tony's eyes opened.
"I said," Gibbs repeated, making it an order now, "You will not die."
Tony responded almost immediately, perhaps as much out of habit as actual understanding of what Gibbs had said.
"I got you, Boss."
He really did.
Gibbs stood, biting back words that didn't belong here, throat suspiciously tight and blinking, twice.
"Good."
He pulled DiNozzo's cell phone out of his pocket, pressing it into the palm of Tony's hand and closing Tony's fingers around it. It was as good of an excuse as any to-
Gibbs placed Tony's hand atop his chest, then stepped back.
"It's your new cell," he said, in case Tony hadn't dozed back off. "I'd get the number changed."
Gibbs managed to school his tone at last, speaking as if nothing was out of the ordinary. He wasn't standing in a quarantine unit in Bethesda. He and Tony were back at the office.
Where Tony belonged. With him.
There wasn't a chance Gibbs would let that change...no matter how lopsided the probability.
"Women keep calling asking for 'Spanky'."
[ end. ]