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They really should have expected this, Tony thinks; Gibbs had stopped the elevator enough times that sooner or later, this had to happen.
They’re stuck, and Tony blames Gibbs.
They’ve just returned from chasing a suspect and Tony feels sweaty and out of breath; he’s certain his wrist is sprained, not broken, from when he threw himself to the ground to avoid a bullet, giving Gibbs time to sneak up on the guy.
Still, all he wants is a long, hot shower, followed by a movie and some pizza. Instead, they’re back at NCIS to write their reports and to interrogate the suspect.
That’s the plan, at least – and Tony is really not looking forward to typing out his report with a sprained wrist, but he doesn’t want to mention that to Gibbs; it’d likely only earn him a head slap – but then the elevator lurches and stops.
At first, Tony thinks Gibbs has something to do with it, and he mentally tallies up all that he might have screwed up in the last 24 hours, anything Gibbs might berate him for, anything he might have missed. (Very briefly, he also considers if there is anything that deserves praise, but he discards that thought quickly.)
Gibbs remains silent though, eyebrows drawn together in a frown that wasn’t there a moment ago, and Tony quickly realizes that for once, Gibbs had nothing to do with this.
“Please tell me we’re not stuck in the elevator.”
Gibbs’ only answer is a sardonic look.
They call McGee, who tells them all the elevators in the building have just frozen. Tech support is on their way, but no one knows what happened.
Gibbs tells Ziva to interrogate the suspect—who is decidedly not stuck in an elevator, and Tony ponders complaining about that, loudly, but Gibbs looks ready to murder someone already and Tony would very much like to survive, thank you.
“What now, Boss?”
“Now we wait,” Gibbs replies as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Tony really should have seen this coming.
Tony’s tried pacing the length of the elevator. There’s two problems, though: first of all, the elevator is small. Secondly, Gibbs didn’t take too kindly to the attempt.
Tony thinks his head still hurts a little from the head slap.
“Sit down and keep quiet, DiNozzo,” Gibbs had barked.
Tony hadn’t planned on actually sitting down. He was wearing one of this favourite suits and God only knew how many people used this elevator every day and where their shoes had been. On the other hand, his suit was already ruined from his fall, and Gibbs had told him to.
Tony sat and waited, trying to be quiet.
“So did I tell you about that time when Magnum—“
“DiNozzo.”
“Sorry, boss.”
Tony looks down at his watch.
“Has it really been only forty minutes? It seems like more than forty minutes, doesn’t it? I think it’s been longer. Do you think maybe my watch is broken? I bet it’s been more than forty minutes. At least fifty—“
Gibbs’ glare shuts Tony up.
“Think there’s some kind of way they could get some food in here? Maybe Abby could invent a teleporter. ‘m getting kinda hungry.”
Gibbs grunts, which Tony takes as a sign that Gibbs is agreeing. Or just really missing his coffee.
Tony just hopes that they’ll get out before the caffeine withdrawal combined with Tony’s innate annoyingness (though he likes to think of it as part of his charm, thank you) will lead to Gibbs attacking Tony. They both still have their guns, but Tony knows he doesn’t stand a chance against Gibbs, certainly not in close quarters such as these.
They’re leaning against the wall of the elevator. Tony’s wrist is throbbing with every beat of his heart.
He tabs a beat onto the ground with one foot, his leg moving along. He’s not singing, but he wants to—anything to pass the time. They’ve been stuck for close to two hours.
Gibbs puts one hand on Tony’s leg, just above the knee, pushing it down so that Tony stills.
“Okay,” he says into the sudden silence, his mouth dry, “okay.”
Gibbs leaves his hand where it is.
Three hours and seventeen minutes into their captivity by elevator, Tony remembers.
It’s not so much that he forgot, really; rather that he suppressed the fear, wilfully ignored it until it went away and left him alone. Denial has always worked rather well for Tony.
“I’m not claustrophobic,” he tells Gibbs, earnestly. He can feel the walls closing in around him, though, and his breathing coming faster. He just had to remember, and did the elevator’s light just flicker? Tony remembers the darkness and swallows, then swallows again.
“I’m really not. ‘s just that my stepmother used to lock me in the closet to get rid of me, you know. I mean. In the beginning I always searched for Narnia, but I figured out quickly enough that it wasn’t there. No Narnia in my closet, no sir.”
Gibbs is looking at Tony, steady and calm; Tony can’t figure out what it means. For all that he is attuned to Gibbs, sometimes he cannot read the man at all.
“Always took me ages till I’d get out of the closet.” Tony pauses, plays back the words to himself. “Not like that, obviously. I mean, I was only ten. People aren’t usually in the closet when they’re ten, are they? I mean, the other way. Not literally in the closet, because obviously, well, I was. The figurative, gay sort of way, I mean.”
He waves a hand around vaguely, “Never much liked being in the closet, me. Either way, figurative or literal, that is. Closets are dark and no fun.”
Tony frowns a little and realises he may have just outed himself as bisexual to his ex-marine boss. Gibbs takes his hand away from Tony’s leg - the spot feels cold. Tony had almost forgotten about Gibbs’ hand there.
“Boss—“ he starts.
Gibbs slaps the back of his head, but it’s surprisingly gentle and Gibbs’ hand stays right there, in Tony’s neck, slight pressure. It’s grounding.
“Tony,” Gibbs says and he sounds almost amused, and perhaps a little worried. There’s a tightness around his mouth that doesn’t match up with his voice, though, and Tony figures Gibbs must be angry with him after all, just not letting on. “Breathe,” Gibbs commands.
Tony does.
Four and a half hours into their captivity, Tony is back to talking about Magnum. This time, Gibbs lets him.
Gibbs calls McGee again.
“Sit-rep,” he barks into the phone (and how do they have reception in the elevator, Tony wonders).
The elevators still aren’t functional and no one is certain what’s causing the problem, but tech support is on scene. Their suspect broke under Ziva’s stare and gave a full confession. That’s something, at least. “We don’t know how much longer it’ll take to get you out of there.”
Gibbs sends McGee and Ziva home once he hears that they’ve already typed up their reports. “Take the stairs,” he barks and flips his phone shut.
Five hours and twenty-three minutes in, Tony’s stomach is grumbling loudly and he’s ready to just give up and fall asleep right there, leaning against an elevator with the walls too close.
The pain in his wrist keeps him awake, and he moves it, cradling it against his chest.
“Let me see.” Gibbs’ voice is gentler than Tony would have expected and it startles him into complying rather than deflecting.
A moment later, Gibbs has fashioned a makeshift sling for him and Gibbs’ hand is back to resting on the nape of Tony’s neck.
Tony really doesn’t know what to make of that.
The sixth hour of their captivity, they spend in silence.
Tony’s reached a point where all the tiredness and the fear that he refuses to admit - except he sort of his mention it to Gibbs, didn’t he? – and the pain are making him hyperactive rather than silent.
“We’ve been in this elevator for seven hours,” he tells Gibbs.
Gibbs grunts, and Tony takes that as a sign to talk about James Bond and to ask what MacGyver would do, to elaborate on every single elevator scene he’s ever seen in any movie he’s ever watched.
He’s relaying in great detail one of his favourite elevator sex scenes – it’s not porn, it’s tasteful, not that Tony wouldn’t watch elevator porn, but he probably wouldn’t be talking about it to Gibbs – and he’s just gotten to the part where the girl’s skirt hikes up when she wraps her legs around the guy’s waist after he’s pushed her up against the wall of the elevator, when Gibbs growls.
The sound is predatory and shuts Tony up quicker than anything Gibbs has done so far.
Gibbs leans closer and for one breathless moment, Tony thinks Gibbs really will kill him, now.
Instead, Gibbs kisses him.
Gibbs’ lips are soft and dry against Tony’s and if he had ever imagined this (he hasn’t, really he hasn’t, except maybe sometimes late at night or in the shower if he just got off the phone with Gibbs) it would have been nothing like this. If he’d imagined this, it would have been all rough and dirty, a fight for dominance, all teeth and tongue. Instead, Tony feels himself acquiesce with a soft sigh against Gibbs’ lips, his eyes sliding closed and his good hand coming up to rest on Gibbs’ shoulder, and Gibbs keeps the kiss slow and calm, lips moving against lips in an unhurried and languid manner.
Gibbs pulls back, but his hand tightens on Tony’s neck, and it keeps him quiet, makes him look up to Gibbs. “Boss?”
“Okay, Tony?” It isn’t the roughness in Gibbs’ voice that sends shivers down Tony’s spine, it’s the fact that Gibbs would ask at all.
Rather than answer, Tony leans in, presses his lips against Gibbs’ again. He can feel stubble, wonders if Gibbs is as unused to kissing another man as he is, or perhaps even more, wonders if Gibbs is only doing this to shut him up and then loses his train of thought completely when Gibbs deepens the kiss.
They spend almost an hour – Tony had better things to do than look at his watch, but he can guesstimate – kissing. Tony wants to crawl into Gibbs’ lap, wants to feel Gibbs’ body against his, wants to touch and feel and get Gibbs off more than he wants to come himself.
“I could blow you,“ he suggests when Gibbs breaks the kiss to breathe. He almost doesn’t recognise his own voice, the raw edge of need in it. “Wouldn’t leave any stains.”
“Christ, Tony.” But Gibbs holds Tony up, doesn’t allow him to slide down Gibbs’ body. He could, he knows he could, can see it unfold in front of his eyes clearly. “When we do this, we’re not doing it in an elevator,” Gibbs growls, and Tony feels something in his chest loosen; Gibbs said “when”, not “if”.
Gibbs kisses him again, then, and this time it is exactly as Tony imagined (except of course he didn’t imagine it, no sir). Gibbs nips down on Tony’s lower lip, soothes the worried spot with his tongue and chases all thoughts out of Tony’s mind. The walls no longer seem to close in on Tony; he understands, for the first time in his life, the appeal of ‘Seven Minutes in Heaven’. Gibbs’ hand never leaves the back of his neck, stays and grounds him like nothing else could when everything else Gibbs does makes him want to soar.
The elevator lurches into motion and they break apart.
“Looks like we’re saved, boss” Tony mutters and runs his good hand over his hair to smooth it down. He knows he looks rumbled, but he’s lost his perspective and a look in the mirror won’t tell him whether it’s rumpled in an ‘I just spent hours in an elevator’-sort of way, or rumpled in an ‘I just spent an hour making out like a horny teenager with my boss’-sort of way.
He doesn’t get much chance to contemplate either option, because the elevator stops and dings, and the doors open. From the corner of his eye, Tony sees Gibbs’ smile. “Didn’t need to be saved, DiNozzo.” It’s not so much the words as the warmth in Gibbs’ voice that tells Tony all he needed to know.
They both school their features into neutrality, or what passes for it by their standards. Gibbs’ glare means that there are no questions.
Gibbs insists on Ducky – who’s remained behind at NCIS even though everyone else has already gone home – checking out Tony’s wrist and Tony bears it with a minimal amount of whining.
After, Gibbs smiles and puts a hand on Tony’s neck again. “Lemme take you home,” he says and they both know he isn’t talking about Tony’s place at all.
By mutual agreement, they take the stairs when they leave.