Loose Ships Sink Fics

or

McGee and the Terrible Ships

Ships: NONE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Claire, she knows who she is, for the title. THANKS!!

DISCLAIMER: Not my characters. No infringement intended.

Summary: This is for every reader here who is tired of every character doing every other character in every imaginable AU pairing (CANON pairings do NOT bother me, just want to be clear on that!!!) NO OFFENCE INTENDED TO AU SHIP FANS.

Tim McGee groaned in misery.

"Uuuuuuhhhhhhhhgggggggghhhh. Shoot me now Tony, please," he begged.

Tony DiNozzo looked over at his friend and colleague and shook his head. "What now McGoo?"

"McGee, you're green as a ghost," Ziva commented, glancing up.

Tim would have corrected her malapropism, if he felt well enough to care. Tony, on the other hand, had no such inhibition.

"White as a ghost, Ziva. How long have you lived here in America again?" Ziva glared at him with an expression of irritation.

"Oh, relax, Zee-vah. You know I only rag on you because I love you."

McGee moaned again in agony. "Don't say that Tony, please."

"Don't say what?" Tony asked, with feigned innocence, and perhaps, genuinely not understanding quite yet - though, as the reader knows, he will understand soon enough. "That I love her? Of course I love Ziva. Same way I love you and Abby and Ducky, and dare I say, even Palmer and Gibbs." Tony stared at his colleagues with a "so there" air of finality.

Tim groaned, and Tony shrugged. "It's strictly platonic, you understand… being part of a team makes people close. Dare I say… friends, even… Of course…"

"What is it McGee?" Ziva asked, cutting Tony off and stopping him from digging himself in any deeper. She rose from her desk and casually sauntered over to where Tim was at his computer. "Ah. I see," she said, glancing at the screen.

"It's his… how do you say it… his weakness on boats."

"Ships, Ziva. It's the ships that are making me so… so… oh, no…" McGee said, suddenly jumping up and dashing for the elevators.

Tony raised a curious eyebrow. "I gotta see this," he muttered to himself, before shouting across the squadroom, "Suck it up Probie... we're on dry land, what's the problem?"

Ziva motioned him over with a swing of her head. "Over here, Tony."

Tony moved over to where Ziva was standing, took one glance at the screen, and nodded in comprehension. "Ah. Ships."

Ziva shook her head sadly as she skimmed over the fanfiction website. "Too many ships, not enough stories that are exclusively case-oriented. Even the case fics have ships. I see now why he was so ill," she commented, glancing at one particularly unlikely pairing.

Tony squinted, turning pale himself. "Wait, Ziva… did that person have me paired with… oh, man. I don't feel so good…"

"DiNozzo!" Gibbs glowered, coming towards their little corner of the squadroom. "You got something better to do besides your job?" Ziva quickly closed the webpage before dashing gracefully back to her desk.

Tony gulped. "No, Boss. We were just discussing why McGee is feeling so sick all of a sudden," he said, elaborating as little as possible.

"It's not that fanfiction website, is it? I had him looking into a suspect who allegedly writes fanfiction as a way to show off his homicidal prowess."

Ziva sighed. "Actually Gibbs, we think it is. You know how McGee suffers terribly from seasickness at times?"

"Well, actually it's not seasickness so much as an irrational phobia of… um… boats… shutting up now Boss," Tony said, noting the hairy eyeball he was receiving. He blinked as Tim rounded the corner, returning from the men's room.

"Too many ships, McGee?" Gibbs asked, with a surprising amount of compassion and a knowing look glinting in his blue eyes.

"Yeah. Sorry Boss," Tim apologized, dabbing his brow with a damp cloth. "I'll be okay now."

Under normal circumstances, Gibbs would have glared at anyone attempting to apologize, but this time, instead he simply smiled with sympathy – almost as if he had once been in the same boat, as it were, and understood. "I know," he said, in his understated way.

The team weren't quite sure they'd seen it, but later on, over coffee and a short respite from their investigative duties, Tony, Tim and Ziva all agreed that they could have almost sworn that in that moment of sympathy for his Junior Agent, they had actually seen Gibbs wink.