AUTHOR'S NOTES: Yes, indeed it's yet another five-fic, this time with an added introduction. Also, might be considered holiday fic, since it's about gifts and everything. I know people generally imagine Tony's father as a heartless bastard who could never be bothered with his son, unless said people are really into tortured pasts and then he's also a drunken abusive insert very bad word. But a father can be thoughtless and never understand his offspring and still care.

Reviews very welcome :)

SPOILERS: Tiny one for 3.04

Disclaimer: NCIS is property of CBS and D.P. Bellisario, I'm not making any profit.

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Tony’s father had always had peculiar ways of showing his affection, and one of them was insisting on always, always choosing gifts personally, even when he didn’t have the faintest idea what the recipient would like. But DiNozzo Sr. had never let that stop him because he had never outgrown the childish belief that what he liked others liked, and that what he didn’t like no one else liked either. As much as he was a business genius, he had never truly understood people. The problem was that he honestly didn’t realize this: he was dead certain that everybody had his same tastes, or at least that his family and friends did. Which was why when holidays and birthdays loomed near his close circles had learned to square their shoulders and roll with it. Tony had taken to storing what he absolutely had to, and had made an art of re-gifting everything else.

1

He had told him about his boss building a boat in his basement because he knew his father’s secret childhood fantasy had been to become a master carpenter. Somehow this translated over the phone line to I’ve taken up boat-building or wood carving or whatever, because when his birthday came up about a month after that it was punctuated by the arrival via UPS of a hand-held circular saw, one of those infomercials’ contraptions that could be outfitted with all kinds of different rotating tools. It had probably been pretty expensive too, and Tony was sure that it was top of the line in hand-held circular wood tools, or at least Gibbs seemed to think so judging by the appreciative nod it got.

That one was easy.

2

The only good thing he could think about the bottle of men’s perfume he got the following Christmas was that at least the old man had made a bit more of an effort this time. He had met his father for a quick dinner while he was between flights at Dulles International in November, and it hadn’t gone well. It seemed that every other remark out of DiNozzo Sr.’s mouth was some kind of negative judgment on Tony’s lifestyle, or Tony’s job, or Tony’s love life, or lack thereof. Tony had finally snapped back that just because he didn’t marry all his dates it didn’t mean he didn’t get around, and it only got worse from there until at some point they were arguing, of all things, about how much grooming a man should get before it stepped into the dangerous “effeminate zone”. Tony used cologne, had been since he started shaving, liked the cool feel of it on his newly-shorn face, made him feel better prepared when he went out with a girl, and his father felt that everything above deodorant (Old Spice only) was too frou frou.

Apparently he didn’t know the difference between cologne and perfume, because Tony didn’t use perfume and the bottle, for all that it was Calvin Klein and expensive, was useless to him. So when he talked about it with Kate and she told him that she often used men’s perfumes because she found them fresher than their feminine counterparts, he repackaged it and gave it to her at valentine’s day.

While not exactly easy, that one had been just this side of smooth.

3

The ten-year subscription to the Financial Times had surprised even Tony, who had come to expect almost anything of a man who regarded cutting off his only son from his fortune as the “gift of poverty”, the chance to know the joy of making one’s own way into the world, the great American dream, DiNozzo’s style.

Apparently his father was still suspicious of Tony’s claims that business didn’t interest him, and this must have been some sort of cunning plan he had devised: one day Tony would surely come to his senses, and then he’d at least have a place to start. Or maybe he thought that if it arrived at his doorstep every month Tony would start reading it and discover a latent love for stock trading. He’d already donated five copies to the conference room, still sealed, when he realized that the McGeek was sneaking them back out.

Transferring the address was a pain, and the June issue must have been lost in the mist of the in-between because the earliest he saw the Probie with one was July, but in the end it worked out.

4

He’d already kept the hat for five years in a box in the closet because he hadn’t figured out what else to do with it when he decided that enough was enough. Of course telling them that he had been the bucket-boy at those stupid civil war re-enactments had been bad, but at the time it made sense. Or maybe he was just drunk. McGee was telling them something about violin recitals in front of the whole family at Christmas and Kate had countered with something about getting the same haircut as her brothers once as a punishment and Tony had thought it only fair to tell them about his past as “lil’ poo boy”. They were commiserating so well, and the alcohol was flowing and he’d regretted it since the moment he’d opened his eyes the next morning.

Ziva finding out was kind of inevitable, considering their case. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t tease her back. He printed out leaflets and stuffed them in her bag, left her e-mail address at three sites asking for regular updates on their activities, and finally took out the hat. It was a hand-made, genuine replica (like that wasn’t an oxymoron) of the standard issue to enlisted scouts with the Confederate Cavalry, with the full insigna and ribbon of his father’s unit. He wrote “ninja David” with a sharpie on the inside (because above all Ziva was confused by mixed pop-culture references) and left it on her desk.

That was particularly laborious, but rather satisfying.

5

The pipe was almost expected. His father had recently taken up pipe smoking and found it suited him, so he gave one to Tony as well. The fact that Tony didn’t smoke, that he had taken great pains to quit after Philly, didn’t factor in.

It was a beautiful piece, briar wood with an inlaid mother-of-pearl design. Fifty-fifty said that it was custom made. He was going to give it to Ducky even if he didn’t smoke because it was a great knick-knack and it would look good in Ducky’s house with all his antique furniture, until he heard, by chance really, that Abby liked pipe smoking. After making sure that they were talking about the same kind of pipes and the same kind of smoke, he gave it to her instead.

That was a little awkward because she could tell how expensive it was, but he was glad that she appreciated it so much.