Chapter Text
Standing in the middle of the bullpen, Tony DiNozzo tightly clutches a pair of scissors. He keeps one eye cast on the elevator, the other on his intended victim.
Junior Agent Tyler Brahe’s plant sits on her desk, basked in its purple glow light.
Ever since the thing showed up, it’s mocked Tony. The plant sits there with its too perfect green foliage, its cheery pink pot and the alien-looking glow light. No matter how much time Brahe spends watering it and whispering sweet nothings, the plant never gets any bigger. The color never changes, the leaves never drop or lift. Brahe never even turns off the light.
“’You still don’t understand,’” Tony mutters under his breath, “’what you’re dealing with, do you? Perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.’”
Tony approaches the plant, scissors raised like Norman Bates in Psycho. Those long shears select what he deems a decent specimen. A leaf about halfway down where, hopefully, Brahe won’t notice. He puts the blades around it and –
“What are you doing, Tony?” a familiar voice breaks the silence.
Nearly leaping out of his skin, Tony’s hand spasms. That causes him to slash one of the stems and a huge hunk of the plant topples to the floor. His head snaps up from his victim on the floor.
Tim McGee stands at the entrance to the bullpen. His lips are downturned with confusion, his hands rest on the strap to his laptop bag. He blinks once. Twice.
He eyes the scissors. “Are those mine?”
“Of course,” Tony says, breathing a sigh of relief.
Then he goes back to trimming his original piece of Brahe’s plant. He sweeps it into an evidence bag before he snatches the other piece from the floor. He’ll be damned if he leaves any evidence behind because Jethro Gibbs taught him better than that. Forgetting to wear gloves during his crime was the first cardinal sin he committed. He’ll be damned if he commits another one.
Tim surveys the scene for a long moment. Eventually, he shakes his head.
“I don’t want to know,” he says.
Tony’s busy sealing the evidence bag. “If you’d been lookout like I asked, I wouldn’t have gotten caught red-handed.” He snaps the scissors in Tim’s direction. “Edward Scissor-handed.”
“You’re lucky I’m not Brahe.” Tim makes a face. “She’s going to kill you.”
“For what?”
When Tony’s face turns into a picture of innocence, Tim jerks his chin at the plant. Tony slides the evidence bag into his pocket and Tim’s scissors back into the cup on the younger man’s desk. Without touching them, Tim bags the scissors into his own evidence bag.
“Et tu, McGoo?” Tony says. “I thought we were in this together.”
“Oh no, we’re not. I’m not taking the fall for you.”
Tony throws out his hands. “You want to know if it’s real as much as I do.”
Tim purses his lips. “I’m not the one who just hacked up Rocky.”
“’Yo Adrien!’” Tony smirks. “You were the one who plantnapped Roscoe last year and took him to Abby for testing. Or are you conveniently forgetting that fact?”
“Only because you won’t stop complaining about it. And even Abby couldn’t figure it out. Her results came back inconclusive. She said I contaminated her sample.”
They stare at the plant for a long beat. Tony pats his pocket because, this time, he’s going to learn the truth. Abby Scuito promised, with time and a better sample, she could run more advanced tests to give answers. This shouldn’t be a big deal and to everyone else, it absolutely isn’t. Though, as time marches past, Tony finds himself wondering about it more and more. Whether Roscoe is real or fake or, at this point, just a figment of his overactive imagination.
Tony’s still staring at the plant while Tim sits down at his desk. As he gets settled, Tim bangs around more than usual. He chucks his weapon and creds into his desk. Then, he closes the drawer with a loud thud. Whatever it is, it’s more than Tony trying to use Tim as a patsy.
Tony looks over. “What’s eating you, Gilbert McGrape?”
“Nothing.” From the sound of it, it must be big.
When Tony fixes him with a look, Tim fiddles with his keyboard. As soon as Tony narrows his eyes, Tim mutters something unintelligible. Tony continues at stare at him. The flush rises to Tim’s cheeks.
Grinning, Tony straightens his tie and smooths his suitjacket. It’s been too long since Tony had a chance to needle Tim about something, too long since he felt comfortable enough to. Ever since Ziva David blew up the team years ago, there was a seismic shift in Tony and Tim’s relationship. Tony took a step back from harassing the younger man while Tim regained his footing. Occasionally, Tim will ask Tony why he doesn’t treat him like he used to. Tony never really knew how to answer.
Tony leans forward, hand cupped to his ear. “Say it again for those of us in the back, McGee.”
“Regina proposed to me this morning,” Tim blurts out.
For a moment, Tony’s shocked into complete silence. Tim’s cheeks blaze even redder. When Tony comes out of his stupor, he claps his hands.
“That’s so fetch!” Tony says.
“Stop trying to make fetch happen.” Tim parrots the movie line.
“No, seriously. That’s great news, McGroom! Congratulations!” When Tim doesn’t share Tony’s enthusiasm, the grin slides from his face. “What’s the problem, Tim? I thought you would be happy.”
“I am.” Tim’s brow furrows. “I just…it’s just that…um, yeah…I didn’t handle it right.”
“What’d you do this time?”
Tim cringes. “I said, ‘I see.’”
Tony scrubs his hand over his face. “Oh my G-d, McGee. What were you thinking?”
“I wasn't. It’s not that I don’t want to marry her.” Tim is rambling now. “Regina’s great and I really do love her, but the timing isn’t right…and…and I thought I should be the one to propose. I have a whole plan for when the time is right. I wanted to – “
“You snooze, you lose,” Tony says. “Did you talk to her?”
“She got really quiet. Then, she bolted right before I could say anything. She said we’d discuss it later.” Tim releases a world-weary sigh. "That's bad, right?"
“You have no idea...” Tony makes a face. “At least she didn’t dump you. Yet.”
That makes Tim’s already foul mood worsen. He glares at his computer while Tony heads to his desk, humming a generic, jaunty tune. Thankfully, they don’t have a current case, but Tony busies himself with finalizing the paperwork for their last one: a murdered Navy lieutenant. He reviews Tim and Brahe’s reports before returning them with notes for corrections. Tim must check his e-mail because he huffs at his computer before he starts typing away. Tony starts working on his own report, but there aren't any corrections from Jethro Gibbs yet. Not that Gibbs ever returns Tony's reports for corrections. At this point, Tony doubts Gibbs even reads them anymore.
While they're working, Tyler Brahe traipses into the bullpen. Her hands are weighed down by a huge blue metal tin. She places it on her desk with a heavy thunk before she removes her backpack.
By the look of it, Brahe is continuing her disastrous culinary adventures. Whenever Tony takes a break from his on-again-off-again—and it’s very off right now—long distance girlfriend, Brahe takes to filling the baked good void Sasha leaves behind.
“Good morning,” Brahe chirps. “Who wants cookies?”
Sure as hell not me…
She beams at the men. “They’re habanero chocolate.”
Tony and Tim share a terrified look. Tim mouths, Habanero chocolate?
“I’m on a diet,” Tony announces.
Brahe’s brow furrows. “Since when.”
“Since right now.”
Brahe frowns before turning to Tim. “What about you, McGee?”
Without missing a beat, Tim shakes his head. “I’m..uh, I’m allergic to chocolate.”
She tilts her head. “But you ate the s’mores ones last week.”
Please don’t make them any s’more, Brahe.
“Yeah.” Tim makes a face. “And…and uh, I got a rash. Yeah, a real bad one.”
Brahe turns crestfallen and for a split second, Tony feels a little guilty. Though, if her cookies were even slightly edible, he’d try to choke them. Except she isn’t a decent cook on her best day. Instead of trying to improve her recipes by practice, Brahe seems to think she’ll get better by being more adventurous.
“I’ll make my low-carb, sugar-free lemon squares tomorrow,” she says resolutely. “They won’t have chocolate for you, McGee. And they’re low-fat for your diet, Tony.”
When she turns to set up her desk, Tim throws Tony a wide-eye, horrified look. The thought of what diet horrors she could bring tomorrow turns Tony’s stomach. He never thought he’d find himself wishing for a case that could turn into an all-nighter.
Just as Tony’s about to return to his paperwork, Brahe releases a strangled noise. Her face disappears into her plant while she picks through the foliage.
Tony drops his shoulders, pretending to be absorbed in his work.
“Who did this to you?” Brahe murmurs to her plant.
The sound of faster typing comes from Tim’s desk. Tony looks around but he catches how Brahe is eyeing him and Tim.
“Do either of you know what happened to Roscoe?” Brahe asks.
Leaping to his feet, Tony darts out of the bullpen. “I need to…”
Tony nearly gets away before Tim calls out, “Where are you going, Tony? Because Gibbs will want to know when he gets here.”
Stopping, Tony turns around to glare at Tim, who merely smiles back.
“I need to talk to Harris,” Tony lies.
Without taking her eyes off the plant, Brahe picks up the cookie tin. Tony eyes it as though it could be radioactive until she shakes it at him. Eventually, he draws closer to take the tin.
“Give them to Harris.” She sighs. “He eats everything.”
“Right,” Tony says.
As he starts to leave, Brahe’s sweet nothings to her plant carry. It sounds like she says, “Don’t worry, Roscoe. I’ll find out who did this to you.”
-oooooooo-ooooooooo-ooooooooo-
It takes Tony longer than he would like to find Internal Affairs Agent Schuyler Harris. First, Tony checks his huge office—of course Harris got a promotion and a cushy office with his transfer to Washington for closing the Ziva David case. Instead of using the cheery and brightly lit space, Harris tends to lurk in the darker areas of the building like a lost ghost.
Tony checks the dark snack lounge where Harris likes to take his coffee, interrogation and even the men’s room. In the end, Tony discovers Harris in his least favorite place: Conference Room Three.
It’s the place where Harris occasionally goes to mull over his more difficult cases. Tony, he tends to avoid the room entirely because that was where his team unraveled at its very seams. During Harris’ investigation to the team, Conference Room Three served as the Internal Affair agent’s homebase. There, Tony learned he didn’t know who he could trust, that Ziva was spying on them and where Tony nearly lost Tim entirely. He almost lost himself in the process.
As Tony edges into the conference room, the lights are set down low. Only the glow of a laptop screen reveals the back of its sole inhabitant. The darkness and the tightness of the room sets Tony’s teeth on edge because it takes him back to those days.
Schuyler Harris is hunched over his laptop. With his back to Tony, he looks a little like the girl from Poltergeist before she gets sucked up in the television.
“They’re here,” he quotes.
Tony’s voice startles Harris into whipping around. When Tony turns up the lights, Harris blinks owlishly at the sudden brightness. Despite the early hour, Harris still wears yesterday’s grey suit, but his tie is long gone. His dark hair is starting to curl over his ears, but it doesn’t detract the jagged scar running down the left side of his face.
He touches his forehead. “What are you doing here, Agent DiNozzo?”
“Visiting you, Schuyler,” Tony says.
When Harris tries to smile, it looks like a slash mark. His entire face pulls violently to the right.
“Tony,” he tries.
Tony grins back. “Harris.”
When Harris stretches, he arches his back like a cat. Tony drifts closer to the table, but he avoids looking too closely at Harris’ setup. Whatever Harris works on isn’t for Tony to know, but that isn’t why he won’t look at it. The scene resembles Harris’ own during the investigation into Tony’s team. There are piles of case files, his laptop, notepad with pen and the ever-present voice recorder.
“You have a case,” Tony surmises.
Harris nods. “Yeah.”
From the rumors swirling around the office, Harris has his sights set on an agent who allegedly took a bribe from a suspect. It should be open and shut, if you believe the rumor mill. And yet, after his experience with Ziva David, Harris turned into an agent who believed even the easiest case could be window dressing for the agency’s latest conspiracy. When other agents would be likely to close the case out and move on, Harris keeps digging until there’s nothing left. Since he came to Washington, he discovered an agent with mob ties, another espionage case and a slew of dirty agents. But it makes even the easiest cases turn into ordeals because he keeps digging even when there isn’t anything to find.
“Got any plans this weekend?” Tony asks.
Harris just looks at him as though he doesn’t understand the meaning of the word.
“Tomorrow’s Thursday,” Tony says. “Then comes Friday. Then, it's the weekend! My team isn’t on rotation this week. I was thinking we should head to Chuck’s bar. You, me, and McGee. It’s been a while since we’ve had a chance to grab a drink together.”
“We went to karaoke last Friday,” Harris says.
Tony tiles his head. “Like I said, it’s been a while.”
“It hasn’t even been a week yet.”
“That’s seven whole days.”
Tony makes a show of leering at him.
Harris smirks because he must know it’s Tony’s feeble attempts to keep him from being buried in his work. Sometimes Tony thinks if it weren’t for him and Tim, Harris might never willingly leave the building. There are times when Tony has to physically drag the man away from his work.
Tony bats his eyes at Harris, who laughs.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Harris says. “If I get my case wrapped up, I should be able to. I can’t make any promises.”
That’s what you said last time, Schuyler. And you still came with us.
Tony shrugs because Harris’ cases are never truly ‘wrapped up.’ Even after he submits his final reports, Harris still obsesses about something he might’ve missed. He won’t admit it when he’s sober, but Tony’s heard more than his fair share about Harris when they’ve shared a few drinks. He has yet to see Harris’ little black book of cases where he records his evidence.
“’All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,’” Tony says.
Harris throws out his hands. “Here’s Johnny…”
Tony laughs.
“This is different,” Harris says.
“Is it?” Tony asks.
Just as he seems about to reply, Harris sniffs the air. His good eye lasers on the tin in Tony’s hands.
“I see Brahe’s back at it again,” Harris says.
“Yeah.” Tony hands over the tin. “She said they’re chocolate habanero today.”
“Things not going well with Sasha at the moment?”
Tony wrinkles his nose. “It’s a long story.”
Harris’ good eyebrow jumps. “Do you want to discuss it?”
“You’re busy.” Tony gestures at the table. “With your case.”
Harris shakes his head. “At some point, you have to deal with the fact that she’s moving to Washington.”
Tony just shakes his head as if to say, No, I don’t.
There are times, like this one, where it’s easier to bury your head in the sand. If you pretend like it isn’t going to happen, maybe it won’t. He liked—no, he enjoyed—what he and Sasha had. Her visits were easy and fun, condensed into two whirlwind days before she went back to her life and he, to his. It got more complicated when she visited more frequently as her grandmother got older, but now that she’s going to be moving into the same building as him. Now he won’t be able to have his cookies and eat them too.
Just how am I supposed to deal with that?
Shaking his head, Harris opens the tin to reveal what appears to be burnt hockey pucks. After sizing one up, Harris lifts it for a huge bite. Tony waits for him to vomit or gag like Tim usually does after consuming Brahe’s baking failures. But that’s one thing Tony still doesn’t understand about Harris. Somehow, he has worse eating habits than Tony and lives to tell about it.
Harris roughly chews the cookie.
“How is it?” Tony asks.
Harris shrugs. “Passable, but not spicy at all.”
"Should I tell the chef that?"
"Tell her that I'll return her tin when I'm done."
Suddenly emboldened by Harris’ comment, Tony grabs a cookie from the tin. It feels heavier than it should. Solid and dense, like a real hockey puck. It smells vaguely of chocolate and something else he can’t quite place. He finds himself missing the delicacies Sasha makes.
When Tony tries to eat it, his stomach revolts. Biting into it like trying to eat a car tire. The outside is rock-hard hard, the interior chewy. He barely manages to swallow down the lump before the fire erupts in the back of his throat. Instantly, the sweat pricks to his brow. His tongue is burning.
Harris moves on to a second cookie.
Tony chokes out, “water,” like a dying man.
Nonplussed, Harris looks around. “I don’t have any.”
Tony swallows hard while he feels like flush creep over his entire body. His body instantly becomes drenched in sweat. Harris’ brow pulls with concern while he casually munches on his hellfire cookie.
“Are you okay, Tony?” Harris asks.
“They’re so spicy,” Tony rasps.
Considering, Harris takes another bite. “No, they’re not.”
While Tony is sweeping the sweat from his brow, Harris herds him out of the room. They end up in Conference Room Two where Harris grabs the full pitcher of water. He fills a cup for Tony, who downs it. Then he drinks another. If he still had taste buds, it would be the best thing he ever tasted. But they’re long gone, burned away by Brahe’s molten lava cookies.
Cautiously eying Tony, Harris hooks a thumb toward his unofficial office. “I’m afraid need to get back to work, Agent DiNozzo.”
“This weekend,” Tony gasps out. “We’re hitting the bar, Schuyler.”
“Sure, Tony,” Harris says. “Of course.”
As Harris slinks away, Tony doubts he was even listening. Tony would head back into the room to distract Harris a little more, but he can’t bring himself to. He always hated Conference Room Three, but after what happened with Ziva David, he hates it even more.
He swallows more water, but after the cookie, it tastes like ash.
Conference Room Three shouldn’t set him on edge like it used to.
His team is still holding their new normal.
Tim McGee is still safe. Ziva David is still locked up in a maximum-security prison. Jethro Gibbs is still working them like he always did. Schuyler Harris is still absorbed by his work.
Everything is just as it should be.
But still…there is a simmering just beneath the surface of his comfortable like. An undercurrent he can’t quite place. As if even the tiniest change could turn everything on its head.
Or maybe it’s just what's left of the cookie burning his stomach from the inside out.