Written for the NFA WEE exchange.

Prompt: (courtesy of purple-muse - thank you)
A tag/follow on to the recent episode "Dressed to Kill," with Tony getting to know his future step-family. It can be in any capacity you want; Tony attending the wedding, the dinner they were going to at the end of the episode, the birth of Taylor's baby, even some bonding between Tony and Tim over their younger sisters.

I chose to concentrate on the family dinner and Senior's denial of having an affair with Linda Turner while Tony's mother was still alive. It's not what you think...

Timeframe and other notes: Story picks up immediately after S11's "Dressed to Kill." Goes a bit AU after that. I've named Tony's mother Stella. Story may contain a non-canon pairing.

A Certain State of Grace

by

K9Lasko

for purple-muse

They didn't make it through dinner. The wreckage of the evening still smoldered where they'd abandoned it. A total loss.

"You should call him," Linda said as she folded clothes - his and hers - and packed them tightly into their rolling suitcase. "Apologize. Explain. Something."

They had a flight booked for the next morning. It wasn't early enough for DiNozzo Senior, not after last night. He'd descended into a dark and caustic mood. His son had given his blessing, of sorts, before they'd left for dinner - and before Senior had opened his big mouth. But now what? Back to square one? It was hard to tell, considering Junior's oftentimes mercurial temperament. Just like his mother. The familiarity of it nagged at him, and it made her absence - even after all of these years, decades - all the more conspicuous. That wound had never fully healed.

"Apologize for what?" Senior called out from the bathroom. "Explain what?" He hated speaking so crossly with Linda, but after the several high and low points during this visit, plus getting wrapped up in yet another NCIS case, he was feeling stretched thin.

"He left angry," Linda went on, unbothered by his tone - familiar with it, even. "I thought you two were beyond all that. He seemed so happy for you." She glanced his way. Her gaze was a hell of a lot more knowing than her innocently prying words.

He was happy for you, Senior repeated inwardly. Not with you. Never with you. He knows better. "Listen Linda," he spoke aloud, wanting to put this issue to bed and forget about it. Tony had been the last hurdle on their race towards marriage, and they had nearly cleared it. "Junior will be Junior. You know him."

"I knew him when he was a boy, Tony. But he's a man now, and when we do talk, it's only over the phone and it's only about birthdays and mother's days and what the weather's like. Nothing real. He got that habit from you." Linda closed the suitcase and zipped it up. She then just stood there, a frown on her face. "I feel guilty," she admitted, swiping brown hair, gently graying and natural, behind an ear.

"About what?"

"What we're doing. I can't help it. To me, he's still a little boy, and I feel like, in some way, we've just upended his world."

Senior snorted in half-amusement. "Linda, please. What we're doing is really none of his damn business. I wanted him to be happy for me, for us, for all of us. I don't know why he can't handle that for longer than two days. Taylor is taking it in stride. Should have kept my mouth shut, I guess. Should have left when things were good."

"You lied to him. You only told him a half truth."

"What was I supposed to say? He sprung that accusation on me. You and I, an affair! Point blank. That glare of his; it's unnerving. And you know how much he loved Stella."

"Of course he did!" Linda exclaimed, incredulous.

"That's my point. In his eyes, she's done no wrong. In his eyes, I've done everything wrong. Everything that went wrong went wrong because of me. That's how Junior looks at things. Believe me; I know."

"She was his mother. And she was my best friend. Maybe if you shared things with him, things about Stella-"

But Senior ignored her, already on a tangent: "He hears something he doesn't like, blows it out of proportion, and leaves angry. That's what he does. But he'll come back. Eventually."

"Somehow," Linda snapped, voice sharpened by sarcasm. "I think you're forgetting your son's feelings in all of this."

Senior let out a frustrated, barking laugh. "I swear he does this just to make me feel guilty. I was never good enough for him, and he won't ever let me forget that."

"I can't blame him, you know," Linda said. "Much of what he thinks he knows about you and Stella just isn't true."

Senior sank into a nearby chair and put his head in his hands. "You're right about that point. It's never easy."

Linda's expression softened when she noticed the exhaustion in his slumped shoulders. Arguments took a surprising amount of life out of the oftentimes emotionally oblivious man. She had long realized that Senior's love for his son was a complex and unruly animal, and sometimes she couldn't quite understand it. This was the hardest part of their new relationship. Blending families was difficult enough, but there was so much that Tony didn't yet realize. He had only been eight when Stella passed.

He finally looked up at her. "You know, if he'd settle down himself, have a kid or two or whatever, he could stop obsessing over all of the wrongs he perceives I do to him. None of us are getting any younger. I just want our relationship to remain intact long enough to see the grandkids."

"Then tell him the whole story," she urged gently. "He'll understand."

"I don't know."

"You have to communicate. Talk to him, about real things." Linda moved around the chair and wrapped her arms around him. She kissed him under the ear. "He chose to let you in, after how long? Don't let him doubt that decision. If Taylor had shut me out for that long... I can't even imagine."

"You two are different," he countered, groaning when she began rubbing his shoulders. "You've always had a great relationship with Taylor. Tony and I..." Senior shook his head. "I was in over my head. I wanted Stella to stay."

"I know you did, and I know you tried."

"I thought if we had a child together..."

She kissed him again, this time on his temple. "You'll never tell him, will you." Not a question.

"No," he whispered. "I'd rather lose him than ruin how he sees his mother."

"What makes you think it would?" Her lips brushed against the lobe of his ear.

He didn't have an answer for that.

Gibbs wasn't in his basement when Tony opened the front door. He paused for a moment in the entryway, before he continued to the kitchen table, where he set down the offertory six-pack. Gibbs, who was sitting on the couch under a reading lamp, didn't bother to look up from the crime novel in his hands. He already knew who his late night visitor was. Hell, he already knew who it was long before the door even opened.

"Thought you had dinner plans," Gibbs spoke as he turned a page.

Tony stood in the kitchen's half-light, where he lingered, uncertain of his welcome and uncertain of his reasons for coming here in the first place. Gibbs ought to be in his basement, where he belonged on nights such as this, but he wasn't. And maybe it was that fact alone that threw Tony. He didn't think this was what he needed right now, what he'd been looking for. But at this point, it would be rude to leave. He answered, "I did."

"I already ate, DiNozzo. No food to find here, if you didn't eat."

"Not looking for food, Boss."

Gibbs said nothing, perhaps waiting for Tony to shake off the mental funk he'd brought along with him and make himself at home... like he always did when he came around for a visit, which hadn't been often, not these days. A distance had begun to separate them over the past couple years. Neither of them were sure when it had first showed up, but it had decided to stay for a while. Gotten comfortable, too. Maybe it was because Gibbs had lost much of his mystique. Or maybe it was because Tony was looking less and less for direction and more for a kindred soul.

They were moving, perhaps, towards a different and new kind of relationship - a warmer, more familiar kind of friendship. The transition was always hard, this delicate shifting of emotions, shared experiences, and boundaries, as they worked to make a new whole.

"Come 'ere," Gibbs offered. "Sit down, will ya? You're making me nervous."

Finally, Tony handed Gibbs a beer and then sank onto the well-worn couch beside him, making sure to leave at least half of a cushion between them. The living room was small and intimate, sparsely decorated while still feeling lived-in and home-y. The whole house was as utilitarian and practical as its occupant.

Gibbs grunted his appreciation, and then turned another page.

"Good book?" Tony asked.

Gibbs grunted again.

Tony nodded slowly and took a long drink from his beer. It stung his throat. He then began picking at the bottle's label, softened by the sweat beading on the dark glass. He went on, "I haven't heard of that one."

"That so."

Tony soon gave up on conversation and drank some more before moving to get up, but then he felt something warm anchoring his knee to the couch. He looked down and stared at Gibbs' hand.

"You don't have to go," Gibbs said.

"Oh I'm not going yet; I just gotta take a piss."

Gibbs' mouth twitched into some ghost of a smile. Tony looked him in the eye and returned a smile of his own. "Use the upstairs bath, then," Gibbs said. "The one down here leaks."

When Tony returned, he brought another beer with him. "Need one?" he asked.

"Nope."

Tony sat back down and stretched out his legs. "You repainted up there. Looks nice."

"Put new tile in, too."

"Huh." Tony drained half of the second beer in one chug. "Same plans for the downstairs one, then?

"Gotta fix the leak first."

"Maybe I can paint for you," Tony suggested randomly.

"I trust you with a gun, DiNozzo, not a paintbrush."

Tony smirked. "Funny color you picked. Some sort of baby shit yellow."

"Mustard yellow," Gibbs corrected. "Shannon was always asking me to paint it that color. Just never got around to it. Now, after years and years, figured why not."

"Oh." Tony shook his head in embarrassment at having indirectly insulted Gibbs' first wife. That was awkward. He nudged the edge of the coffee table with a sock-covered toe. It moved an inch. Then he scratched at the back of his neck. When he glanced at Gibbs, he noticed the man was staring at him, as if waiting for something. "What?"

"You goin'ta say something profound, Tony, or are we just gonna sit here and chat about home improvements?"

Tony opened his mouth, then shut it. He shook his head. "Kinda just wanna sit here"

Tim headed back to work. There was nothing for him to do at home or at Delilah's - not with her in another one of her moods - and somehow vacuuming the carpet and washing the odd dish or two, or picking away at the computer tower he was rebuilding, or even catching up on television didn't sound appealing.

He called Sarah along the way. They chatted about nothing much. He enjoyed hearing her grad school stories. Classes, TA nightmares, ramen noodles, almost-boyfriends, part-time jobs. She's brilliant, but she didn't always realize it. She underestimated herself and her potential, and wasted her time with doubt. But then he had to backtrack, because he remembered how he was at her age.

"You okay, Tim?" she asked when the story about a mishap during a American Literature discussion group petered out.

"I'm fine."

"You seem down."

"Just work stuff."

There was a pause.

He finally admitted, "And Delilah. She's having a tough time with everything, you know"

"You always know what to say," she assured.

To which he countered, "Don't know about that."

Then Sarah had to go. Something about a writing workshop early tomorrow morning.

The employee parking lot was largely empty at this time of evening, and he didn't immediately recognize any of the vehicles. NCIS wasn't exactly a police department. Overnight activity was minimal at best. The team didn't have a hot case. It was pretty much the usual. Half-baked leads from the tip line and overdue paperwork, the bulk of which sat on Tony's desk. Tony, who had been disappearing right at five o'clock lately.

"You kidding me?" Tony would say, usually while beating his personal best score at whack-a-terrorist. "The government can't afford to pay me overtime to complete paperwork. Hell, the government can hardly afford to pay me to get shot at on a bi-weekly basis."

Never a mention that they were all salaried, and overtime hours were as elusive as unicorns. Tony was lazy; that was a better explanation. Or maybe he had simply recognized the value of living his life rather than working it away, nose glued to a desk.

Tim used the stairs instead of the elevator. He sat in the darkened bullpen, flipped on his desk lamp. It flooded his desk with harsh white light. He turned on the computer and rearranged a few things on his desk while he waited for everything to load. He'll work on Tony's backlog, maybe, after he finished his own.

He looked over again at the stack on Tony's desk. The stack was more like a small mountain. It leaned precariously against a lamp. He looked away, but then looked back, noticing something. There was a black backpack leaning against the filing cabinet adjacent to Tony's chair, and the computer was still running, even though the screen was dark. There were crumbs on the desk and an open can of Sprite. It still looked cold, judging by the beads of moisture forming on the aluminum. Tim glanced around the bullpen cautiously, half expecting someone - namely, Tony - to be hiding behind a cubicle wall. But he could see no one, and the place was eerily quiet.

Strange.

He reached for his cell phone to call Tony and give him a heads up that he was here in the building too, but then he thought better of it. Tony had been in a fractured mood lately, and Tim had attributed that to the yearly, much unanticipated appearance of DiNozzo Senior. Although, really, a lot more than that had served to toss Tony off the merry-go-round. The man was as resilient as a cart mule - and stubborn as one, too - but there had to be a limit.

If Tony was resuming his late night work habits, it was probably best to leave him to it. Probably best... Sink or swim, right? Tim really didn't know anymore, but he did know that the idea of prying into Tony's personal business made him uneasy. Even after years working together, there were still sides of Tony that were largely unfamiliar. If you dug under all of the hair gel and the thin layer of classic film trivia and smarmy, sexist witticisms, there was a loveable man with uncanny insight and a panache for emotional theatrics.

...And that was scary combination, but also sort of exciting.

Maybe that was what prolonged their friendship, that exciting unknown; they certainly didn't have much else in common, except for their job and their rocky familial relationships. They were opposites that tempered one another. Tony had more ups and downs than a theme park roller coaster, but the whiplash hadn't yet broken Tim's neck. Sure there were times when he saw Tony as nothing more than a foolish ass, a jestor of his own make-believe castle of self-destruction, but-

"McDaydreaming?"

Tim jerked in his seat. He stared wide-eyed at Tony, who'd managed to make it all the way to his desk, undetected. He had a bag of Chinese takeout in his hand.

"Jesus," Tim frowned. "You scared the liver out of me."

"I thought you'd fallen asleep with your eyes open again." Tony rounded his desk and sat heavily in his chair, jiggling the mouse to wake the computer.

Tim watched Tony first pull up a game of whack-a-terrorist. Then he opened a container of General Tso's chicken with a side order of cream cheese wontons, both of which he promptly began shoveling into his mouth in between whacking pixelated terrorists with a simple tap of the keyboard.

"I don't do that," Tim shot back, on the defensive. Instead of asking why Tony was here - at work, doing nothing but eating cheap Chinese takeout and playing an incredibly un-politically correct computer game - he decided to go the more general route: "Are you okay?"

"Me? I'm fine. My father? He is, apparently, a whoring pirate who can't keep it in his pants," Tony answered, voice beyond sour and edging more towards full-on acerbic.

"Uh, should I ask?"

"I sort of blew up at 'family' dinner tonight. In front of Linda and Taylor. I felt justified at the time, but now I'm just embarrassed." Tony dipped one of the wontons in duck sauce and brought it to his mouth. A couple drops of sauce landed on his wrinkled dress shirt. "Shit," he mumbled as he wiped hastily at the stain with greasy fingers.

"So what happened?" Tim asked, ignoring his friend's disgusting eating habits.

"He came clean." Tony hummed, fingers stabbing the keyboard, yet another terrorist going up in smoke. "Linda and him were running around while he was still married to my mom."

"Oh, wow. That's-"

"Soap operatic?"

"I was going to say 'messed up.'"

Tony shook his head. "You know, I almost can't believe how not shocked I am. Yet I still ripped him a new one, and then practically lit the table on fire."

Tim's eyes widened. "Really?"

"Figuratively, Tim. Come on."

"Right." Tim looked back at his own computer. The silence was awkward.

"I went to Gibbs' house, but that didn't help." Tony shook his head, mouth full of chicken. "I mean, we talked, for once, which is good. You know he's been fixing up his house?"

"No?" Tim had no idea why that point was even relevant.

"You think he's going to sell it?"

"Tony-"

"I know. None of my business." Tony's fork mined for bits of pork in the fried rice. "What are you doing here? Trouble in paradise?"

Tim looked away from Tony's probing hazel eyes. He didn't want to talk about Delilah. Not with Tony, not with anybody, really. Their fledgling relationship had barely been able to grow wings before this massive change of circumstances occurred, and frankly, neither one of them knew quite how to carry on as usual. Ironically enough, it was Delilah who seemed content to forge on, while Tim was the one left flailing. He'd never done this before. "What paradise?" he mumbled, hoping the topic would drop.

"Oh." Tony made a 'uh-oh' face. "That bad, huh?"

"It's not bad," Tim countered. He should have known better.

"That weird look on your face says otherwise."

Tim pushed away a file he'd been working on. "I don't know what to do for her."

"Nothing?" Tony suggested.

Not knowing if he was being sarcastic or serious, Tim frowned at him. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Don't you get it?" Tony pushed. "She doesn't want you to do anything for her. That's part of the problem. She's an independent lady. Before and after."

"She talks to you, and she smiles. She talks to me, and... I feel like it's a chore for both of us."

"Hey, I'm sure-"

"It's easy for you, Tony. Why is it so easy for you?"

"Easy, how? Because I can sit here and joke and make a fool out of myself and play pop culture wheelchair trivia?"

"Not just with Delilah. I mean relationships in general. You get a girlfriend, and you have a great time. I get a girlfriend, and it's an absolute ordeal."

Tony chewed slowly. Easy. "Easy" like falling hopelessly, dramatically, uselessly in love with women who had no intention of returning the same sentiment? Maybe "easy" like becoming so obsessed with Ziva that he traveled across entire oceans, searching high and low and everywhere in between, driving himself so wild with the idea, the possibility that he'd thought he was genuinely going crazy. "Easy." Hell, Tony was easy - he'd be willing to screw anyone who gave him a second glance. Relationships? Not so easy.

"Tim, you're over-thinking this." Yeah, right. Tim wasn't the only one doing the over-thinking.

"I don't think we'll make it," Tim whispered. His shoulders slumped, dejected.

"Fatalism won't fix whatever's broken," Tony chimed in brightly, or at least as bright as he could get right now. Weren't they a sad pair? "But you probably already know that..."

"Sometimes I wonder what we're even fighting to save," he admitted.

"Hey." Tony had an idea.

"What?" Tim seemed to perk up from his doom-and-gloom downward slide. This was what he'd wanted, sort of. He would never admit it, but he took a certain enjoyment from living on the fringes of Tony's fun bubble.

"How about we go for a drink?"

Tim glanced at his watch. It was late - very late - but downtown on a Friday night always drew a crowd well into the early morning. "Just one."

"Whatever you want, Tim."

Tony was drunk. Drunker than Tim had ever known him to be. DiNozzo was a man who knew how to hold his liquor, especially after eating. But tonight, he seemed to have thrown all dignity out with the baby and the bathwater.

They sat in a corner booth at an unusually raucous piano bar. As they were about to order yet another round, which Tony clearly did not need, Tim felt a hand rest just above his knee. Tony leaned against him and spoke into his ear. "Whatever you want, Tim," he slurred, repeating what he'd said before the alcohol began taking him for a seriously fucked up ride. "Whad'ya want?"

He had to push Tony away. It was getting too weird. And he also wanted to imagine that Tony's hand wasn't trying to migrate further up his leg, of its own accord.

Tony hardly even seemed to notice.

Saturday morning came, bringing with it a knock at his door and a hangover the likes of which Tony hadn't experienced in years. It surpassed the Japanese sake-bomb incident by leaps and bounds. Memories resurfaced hodge-podge, more than a little blurry. He and Tim had met up with Abby somewhere along the way. At one point, he remembered laughing so hard he almost pissed himself. He also remembered ranting about his father off and on. He had hit on - and was shot down by - at least one woman half his age.

He remembered Abby guiding him up the stairs to his own apartment, tugging his arm. He remembered how she kissed his forehead goodnight.

"Don't let the bedbugs bite."

Remembered a warm leg under his hand while he leaned against Tim - practically edging onto the other man's lap - as they ordered another round.

God, he'd been drunk.

Knock, knock, knock.

Oh, right. Knocking.

Tony groaned, clawing around the sweaty sheets for his cell phone to check the time. Instead he found one new text message. From Tim.

We need to talk.

Knock, knock.

Sweet Jesus.

He stumbled for the door, turned around half-way when he realized he was buck-naked, then made his way back to the door dressed in loose sweatpants and a hoodie. He cracked the door open. "Who's it?" And then he blinked. It sure wasn't Tim.

Linda stared back at him, gray eyes apologetic. "I should have called."

He shook off the surprise. "No, no, it's fine. Hang on a minute." He shut the door and undid the chain, but before opening it again, he hastily tried to tame his hair and give his apartment a cursory look over. Linda - a woman who was much like a second mother to him - always seemed to bring him back to an awkward thirteen-year-old state, no matter how old he was. Right now, Tony was pretty sure he looked like he'd just crawled out of some gutter. He opened the door, swinging it wide. "Come in, come in. You want some coffee? I can start a pot."

"No, baby," Linda smiled, indulging Tony with the nickname she'd used when he was small. She stood in the center of the living room, between the sofa and the entertainment center. In her hands, she clutched an envelope. "I don't have much time. Our flight leaves in a few hours. It was a stretch even to stop by. I had to convince your father..."

"Have a seat, at least."

"Tony-"

"I'm sorry for what happened at dinner," he cut her off. "I feel like an idiot, Linda. I don't want you to leave thinking I'm angry with you. I'm not. You were there for me when no one else wanted to be, and I never really thanked you for that."

"Water under the bridge." Linda fingered the envelope, before going on, "Stella was a special person to a lot of people, Tony. She's deserving of all the love and adoration you have for her. I can't - and won't - speak in place of your father, but there are certain things about him and your mother that went unspoken. They'd been separated for six years before she passed away, but they never divorced. Baby, I want to help you understand."

Tony furrowed a brow, unsure of where this was going. Even if his parents were separated, which he'd realized even as a child, they had still been sort of a family. He'd been young, not oblivious.

"I wanted to give you something." She held out the envelope. "Maybe you can help it find its way back where it belongs. I'm sure she'd appreciate that... and getting to see you again."

He gave her a funny, confused look, but took the slightly crinkled envelope anyway, out of reflex, and immediately moved to open it.

But Linda stopped him with a gentle hug. "I have to go. Don't be a stranger, okay? Give us a call? It was a joy seeing you, no matter how short it was."

With a small frown, Tony watched her walk out the door.

Slowly, he opened the envelope. He pulled out a single photograph, a few decades old by the looks of it. Along with it came a small slip of paper. He looked at the photo first. He blinked once, twice, and then kept staring at it.

His mother, with long blond hair and laughing green eyes, sat close behind a brown-haired woman, her round face frozen in laughter and both of their hands intertwined in her lap. They sat on the grass amidst a crowd of other people. On the back of the photograph, there was smudged writing, the letters cramped and curvy, despite the amount of empty white space allowed for such written sentiment.

NYC Pride. 1973.

And below that:

Let's not forget.
Yours,
Lyza

He'd known her. Lyza.

Tony's pulse thudded in his ears as memories tied themselves together. Clues. All of this time... why hadn't he known? He bolted for the door, swung it open, but Linda was long gone by now. Why hadn't she at least explained? Why had she left this here?

He now looked at the slip of paper that accompanied the photo. A name - Lyza Reneau - and the name of an art supplies shop in the East Village - A Brush of One's Own.

Photograph still in hand, Tony hastily dug out the shoebox where he'd stashed the old photos of his mother that he'd gotten developed a year or two ago. Kneeling next to the closet, he flipped through the stack, finding one in particular.

Four people - three of them women - sitting at a kitchen table. Stella, Linda with an unfamiliar man, and the third - Lyza.

Tony sank back onto his haunches.

His phone chirped again. New text message. Another from Tim.

Delilah's moving back to Wisconsin.

Again, he found himself at Gibbs' place. Tony pitched in with the Saturday yard work. They had raked and mulched, trimmed up the hedge, measured a spot where Gibbs wanted to build a wooden arbor, and caged a few tomato plants in the garden. Now they sat out on the deck in sweat-soaked t-shirts, the sun warming their faces and melting the ice in their glasses.

Last night and tonight combined, they hadn't spent this much time together in a long time - apart from work. Maybe things were finally changing, and maybe this was what Tony had been waiting for.

Silence had reigned, for the most part, while they had completed their tasks, but now Tony felt compelled to say something. And this time it would be about something more than home improvements.

"My mom was dating a woman while she and dad were separated," he mentioned casually before crunching a piece of ice with his teeth. "I had it all wrong. At dinner, when my father admitted he and Linda got together for the first time while mom was still alive... Guess I really didn't want to consider the other side. Or see the big picture. They'd both grown apart - she had more than he had, I think -and the only thing that kept them together was me. If I'm honest with myself, I'd say I was probably a last ditch effort to keep the marriage going. Pointless, really."

Gibbs watched Tony carefully. "How the hell'd all this come about?"

"Linda. She stopped by this morning. Gave me a photograph, a name, and where I could find her. I knew her, when I was little. Her name's Lyza. I'm in shock right now."

"It'll sink in. You have a thick skull; it just takes longer," Gibbs smirked.

Tony smiled, grateful for the humor - unusual though it was - from the other man. "Why didn't anybody tell me earlier? Why wait until I'm in my forties? Christ."

"It wasn't anybody else's secret to tell. Maybe your mother was waiting for the right time."

"She waited too long. Too long. I would have loved her regardless."

"You say that now."

A spark of anger flared in Tony's eyes. "Why would you say that?"

"Relax, bubba. Coming out then wasn't always easy. Still not easy. Who knows what you would have thought."

The anger fizzled out as quickly as it had flared. Tony leaned back in the deck chair, scratched a mosquito bite on his leg, and gazed at Gibbs across the weather-beaten wooden table. "Fair enough."

"So, are you going?" Gibbs then asked.

"Where?"

"To find this Lyza woman."

"Oh," Tony shrugged, but his shoulders felt stiff. "Not sure yet."

"I think you should," Gibbs urged.

"That an order?" Tony asked, quiet voice mixing with the summertime drone of insects.

"No, Tony," Gibbs replied, just as softly, "It's a suggestion. From a friend."

The store was still much like he remembered it, located on a funky stretch of commerce in the heart of the East Village. Finding parking had been a bitch. But now that he was here, standing in front of A Brush of One's Own, he felt a strange emotion curling in his gut. He wasn't regretting his choice to travel up here. Rather, he knew how momentous this was.

Nervous anticipation. That's what it was.

Before he could rethink the idea of showing up unannounced, he opened the door and stepped inside. It shut with a jangle. The shop was cramped, and the mustiness of the old building mixed with a spicy masala of paint fumes, paper, wooden pencils, pastels, and other assorted items. There was a cat bed - complete with sleeping tortoiseshell cat - nestled in the window ledge display. The window was cluttered with a mess of small posters advertising drawing classes, yoga, this year's pride march, handmade goat's milk soap, fair trade coffee... and there was a sticker to the left of the cat, blue with a yellow equal sign. Although the shop seemed empty of patrons right now, there were voices coming from the back, behind the register littered with various books and papers. He approached it, while also taking in the nearby merchandise.

A short woman with closely cropped blond hair came out to meet him. "Can I help you?" She had paint smudged on her hands and on her clothing, loose jeans and a red plaid button up over a white ribbed tank top.

She wasn't familiar. Not even a little bit. He grinned, congenial as ever, and asked, "Is Lyza around?"

"She's always around," the woman replied before turning around and ducking a head into the back room. "Hey, Lyz! Someone's looking for you!"

Tony waited with bated breath.

When he saw Lyza for the first time in years, he recognized her immediately. Her hair was longer, and now completely gray, but her face was the same, if a bit sun-beaten and creased. Crows feet deepened when her smiling eyes landed on Tony.

"Tony," she greeted, reaching out to squeeze his hand. "I'm so glad you could make it."

When Tony asked how she knew he was coming, she only winked and said, "Let's go upstairs. I've some old photo albums you might enjoy looking through."

A week later, Tim was working a late night on paperwork. His phone chimed.

Text message. From Tony.

Let's go for a drink.

Tim replied, Just one?

A quick reply: Whatever you want.