Chapter 2

The man almost had an orgasm on the spot. He smiled again with a lick of his lips. Gibbs, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, was actually trying to bully him, and he loved it!

"Because you're mine. If you'd care to step outside, I think you might have a better chance of believing me." Because the house wasn't on the same street as it should have been. The house wasn't even in the same state it should have been. Everything but the yard around it was different. "And then we can come back in here and watch a nice show on the television. It's called NCIS ... and you two are the stars."

Tony blinked, his hand unwavering but his naturally cocky attitude when under stress coming out at hearing that. "I bet I got top billing."

That made the man laugh. "Sorry DiNozzo, but when it comes to you and Gibbs, there's nothing top about you."

He winked at him, and Tony started to gasp. "Wh ... Wh ... What?"

There was some Tv show crap again. He was sick of all the confusion. He wanted answers. Now.

That smile and that damn smirk and innuendo ... Gibbs shoved his fury down by sheer Marine self control and will. "I'm nobody's and him? He belongs to me." Knowing Tony had this little weasel covered, Gibbs let him go after driving his knee against what he felt hardening against him.

"Cover him. He moves, ya shoot." Gibbs lowered his voice to an almost whisper, the malice evident in his tone. "To kill."

With that threat/promise delivered, Gibbs strode outside but his steps faltered before be was off his porch. He glanced back but he knew this was his house. He knew every nuance of it. But the rest was foreign to him.

He rushed around, looking at the back yard, the hedges, even the front yard where he'd reburied Kelly's lunchbox again last year...

All of it was as he knew it, but everything else? He'd never seen this before...

"DINOZZO!" he called out, trying like hell to keep the control and command in his voice. He had to keep Tony calm while he figured this out. "Come look. Gotta see this..."

"Let's go, PeeWee," Tony grunted, grabbing the gasping man by the arm and yanking him outside to where Gibbs was. The little smirks and sexual innuendo had definitely gotten to him. He felt gross just touching the intruder and was more pleased than he should have been to have seen Gibbs knee him so ruthlessly in the crotch. "Oh ... Oh... " Tony's hand fell away, his other hand holding the gun almost dropping it, only years of law enforcement training keeping it tenuously there in his shocked fingers. "Jesus Christ ... I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Boss."

"Ya think, DiNozzo?" Gibbs replied, finally letting a little unsteadiness into his tone. He moved close, taking the gun from Tony though he holstered instead of aiming in. "Breathe evenly," he said in an undertone to Tony. It always worried him when DiNozzo breathed shallowly, remembering him struggling for air and fighting for his life.

Gibbs turned his attention back to the other man. "Start talking." It didn't matter if the explanation didn't make sense. There had to be something they could hold on to.

"I'd be delighted to." The man swept his arm out at the strange neighborhood around them and said with a grin, "It's not Oz, it's Havensport, and neither of you have ever been here before because in your reality it didn't exist. And I use that term lightly," he chuckled. "Reality. Here is where it is, where you were wasn't true ... not one bit." He put his hand out to them. "I'm Thomas Hilton ... yes, related to THOSE Hiltons." Meaning, he had a lot of money and time on his hands. "And I can't tell you how pleased I am that my little experiment is showing signs of promise. I knew you two were being held back by those chickenshit writers afraid to buck the system and show the world what was hiding in your eyes. I knew it!"

"Experiment?" Tony was definitely breathing shallow. "I don't feel so good, Boss," he mumbled, finding it even difficult to swallow now as he started to become light headed, swaying slightly on his feet.

It still didn't make any sense and he was disgusted by the grins and smirks. "Explain," he growled again. What was all this bull about TV and writers and DVDs. He didn't care who the guy was related to.

Gibbs saw that Tony was starting to lose it, whether it was whatever drugs he'd been given or what, Gibbs wasn't sure. He glared at the man, slinging Ton's arm over his shoulder. "Easy. Gonna go inside ... easy." He had bottled water in there at least. His own cast iron stomach didn't feel so good and panic was threatening to rear up if he let it have its head.

"If you hurt him I will kill you. Slowly," he said to the stranger.

"I don't doubt that for a minute," Thomas said, sighing with pleasure to see Tony immediately fall into Gibbs, throwing his arms around the man and hanging on as if for dear life. Superior, best friend, father figure, Tony felt it all as he softly moaned in anguish, letting Gibbs bring him back into the home and take care of him.

Tony was essentially a deadweight that Gibbs hauled into his rarely used den and placed on the couch. "Gonna get ya some water. Bottled," he said, crouching down and trying to look into Tony's eyes. "Tell yourself you're gonna be fine, DiNozzo."

Gibbs went into the kitchen, grabbing two fridged bottled waters and a large saucepan. He filled the saucepan with water and dropped the bottles in, squeezing gently to see if any bubbles appeared. When none did, he pulled the bottles out, doing a quick visual exam before wiping them down. Didn't look like they'd been tampered with.

He slipped back silently into the den, cracking the one bottle and handing it to Tony before sitting on the arm of the couch in a casually relaxed but still ready position, making in clear any advances or aggression from the weasel would be dealt with. His own bottle sat beside him, ready to either be drunk or used as a weapon.

"Didn't I tell ya to explain? I have to do it for ya?"

"I'm gonna be fine," Tony muttered to himself, rocking back and forth on the couch as he held that bottle of water in two hands almost as tightly as he'd held Gibbs. "I'm gonna be fine." It hadn't been easy for Gibbs to get a clinging Tony off him, and now that he was, now that Tony wasn't holding onto the one constant in his life he trusted more than anything, he was falling deeper into that anguish, not quite able to pull himself together yet in this unbelievable situation he'd woken into.

Because it was very unbelievable; the more the man spoke, the more agitated Tony became.

"Clones. Everything you know of your lives, your friends, families, all of it ... never really happened. They don't exist. They never existed, and neither did either of you, until I paid to have you cloned. Which means," he added with a snicker, "you may very easily run into another Gibbs and DiNozzo out on the streets some day. In fact, I know of at least one other pair of you in Havensport." He opened his suit jacket and threw down a stack of DVDs. "Watch them. Your whole lives are on there, things no one should know ... but they do know ... because you were nothing more than characters on a show until I chose to bring you to life ... as my clones."

"Oh God I'm not gonna be fine," Tony whimpered, the rocking gaining speed as his knuckles on the bottled water turned white and the plastic held on his clenched thighs exploded water all over him under that pressure.

As he spoke, Gibbs moved forward, lost in his own rage and fury. Control was a thing of the past and he growled low, grabbing the man by the throat. "My family is real," he said in a near whisper. "They. Are. Real."

It had been so long since he'd been in hand to hand combat and even then he had never laid his hands on anyone with this depth of anger. He was gonna kill this weasel. But something came through to him, a whimper? And that broke his fury just enough. He needed this bastard. He hated it, but they needed him.

Instead, he knocked the man out by working the pressure point at his neck, letting the little weasel fall to the ground. "Pissed yourself, figures." Gibbs crossed the room and back to Tony, glancing down at the DVD packaging, knowing that could be faked.

"DiNozzo," he said quietly. "Stay with me here. This is bull. Has to be bull." Tony was rocking, covered in water, and it aroused every protective instinct in Gibbs. He sat on the arm of the couch again, turning to face Tony and pulled him close. "C'mere, DiNozzo.C'mere." His hand went into Tony's hair as he pressed the shaking man against him. "C'mere. I'm here..."

Shaking visibly and near tears. Tony's face fell right into Gibb's chest as he clung to the man again, his mouth opening to draw in huge gasping breaths, close to hyperventilating and only the scent of the man filling his lungs keeping him from screaming. "It's not fine, Boss, it's not fine. It can't be fine. It'll never be fine."

Tony didn't care that his crotch was soaking wet and he was trying to climb into Gibbs, desperate for body contact. This wasn't sexual. This was a frightened young man dropping his guard completely and utterly in the arms of an older man.

"I know," Gibbs whispered into Tony's hair. "I know." He was shaken to the core as well as he was used to shoving his emotions away. But the thought that they hadn't existed that he didn't have a wife and daughter, hadn't experienced that pain...

And Abby ... Duck ... Jenny, who he'd cared about once, McGee, Ziva. KATE.

He tightened his arms around Tony, sliding down the arm of the couch and pulling Tony almost onto his lap. He was desperate to hang onto someone, some thing. And it seemed fitting that his second in command was the one he needed to hang onto.

"We're real. I'm here. I'm here, Tony. Hang on..."

Moving on instinct only, not at all thinking rationally, Tony did go into that lap. He sat in it like a child and buried his face in the man's neck, squeezing his eyes tightly shut as if he were in a nightmare and at any moment he could open them and he'd be back in bed with the blonde.

"Don't leave me, please don't leave me too," he begged, terrified that somehow, some way, Gibbs would be taken from him as Abby and Ziva had. "I need ya, Boss, I really need ya, please don't go too."

It was the thought of being alone, truly and completely alone if Gibbs was taken away too, that finally pushed Tony DiNozzo over the edge. He started to cry.

Gibbs blinked a few times in shock when he could almost feel Tony crack and then the tears start. This position should have been ridiculous, should have been almost comical, but their emotions were so raw that he didn't care if their audience woke up and mocked them. "I'm not leaving, Tony. Not going anywhere." He knew they had to look at those damn DVDS. They had to get clearheaded, but he was falling apart, Tony was even worse.