Vociferous

“You don’t have to lie to me, guys. It’s fine if you’re in a relationship together.” Tony used his vociferous voice to try and drill into them how much they didn’t need to try and make him feel better about them being in a relationship together.

Gibbs and Palmer looked at each other in shock before they both moved to Tony. Each of them grabbed one of his hands. “No Tony, listen.” Palmer whispered urgently squeezing Tony’s hand.

Gibbs squeezed his other hand. “We’re not in a relationship, DiNozzo.” Gibbs growled at the same time.

They both reached to rub Tony’s shoulder and try to calm him down in eerie synchronicity to Tony’s eyes. “You guys are creeping me out. If you’re not in a relationship, how are you moving together so seamlessly.”

Jimmy smiled at Tony. “Oh well that’s your fault actually.”

“What? How is your relationship with Gibbs, my fault?” Tony questioned hurt that they were blaming him for something else that he had nothing to do with, now.

“Oh, not like that, silly.” Jimmy dug his fingers into Tony’s shoulder trying to work out some of the tension he was carrying around. “We can tell you the whole story over dinner if you want, but suffice it to say Gibbs was glaring at me worse than a bear who’d been shot because you and I had gotten closer while he was in Mexico.”

“After I confronted him over it, we got together and started talking about how much we loved you. You see we really don’t have much in common except for our love for you, but that love has connected us and we’ve spent so much time together talking about you and how much you mean to us. How we love your smile. How we love your carefree attitude and many of your other qualities.” Jimmy expounded his eyes shining with sincerity.

Tony looked back and forth between Jimmy and Gibbs. Gibbs squeezed Tony’s hand to indicate he felt the same way Jimmy did and the idea that they both loved him so much overwhelmed Tony. Falling back on his vociferous mask, Tony gleefully stated. “Well let’s have dinner, so you can tell me all about it.” One of his huge fake grins stretched across his face.

Both Gibbs and Palmer noticed how fake his grin was, but didn’t mention it for now. They knew this was bound to come as a shock to Tony and that his mask was his default response when he didn’t know how to respond and needed time to process. “Sure, Tony.” Palmer said standing up, but keeping his hand on Tony’s.

Gibbs also stood up and together Palmer and Gibbs got Tony standing and led him to the table where dinner was waiting.