Written for the 2017 NCIS Holiday Holidays Advent Challenge over at ncis-discuss.
Arriving at work at 0700 hours was the norm for Gibbs, he was always in before his team, some days he was even earlier than that. The only one who ever beat him to the office was DiNozzo when the man had one of his bursts of intuition and had come in to work in the early hours of the morning and started tearing through cold cases with zeal or finishing off mountains of paperwork effortlessly.
This morning when he arrived his Senior Field Agent was nowhere to be seen, but his coat and backpack where at his desk so he was already in the building. He wondered what cold case he had cracked open that morning, as he was already up to date on all his paperwork, that had been deposited on his desk yesterday.
He had a quick look at Tony's desk, looking for a clue as to what they were getting into today, but his computer screen was off, and there were no open files on his desk. Shaking his head he made his way to his own desk to see if the man had left anything there for him or if he was going to make a production of revealing the case to him. He often did that when he had managed to tie up all the loose ends on a case himself and just needed help to actually confirm his findings.
On his desk was an envelope with 'Gibbs' written on it in Tony's precise handwriting, he looked around looking for his SFA but he was still nowhere in sight. Curious about the envelope, Tony never normally put anything in envelopes for him it was normally just straight on his desk. He just hoped nobody had pissed the other man off and this was Gibbs getting his resignation letter, as Gibbs would be majorly pissed and no-one wanted that in the last few days before Christmas.
Giving in to his curiousity, with a little trepidation, he opened the envelope and pulled the contents out. There were two tickets to a woodworking show and nothing else, not even a note. He looked at the tickets for a moment, as if they would provide an answer or explanation, but they weren't forthcoming. A voice behind him spoke up, and he was surprised for a moment that Tony had managed to sneak up on him without him noticing.
"I got them for you for Christmas, months ago, I thought you could take Jack with you, it would have given you both a chance to spend more time together doing something around an area you both enjoyed. If you haven't got anyone else in mind for the other ticket, I'd like to come with you Boss." Tony explained, looking a little nervous about his gift.
"He would have enjoyed it." Gibbs spoke quietly, then looked at the tickets taking in the dates. "Book us both the weekend off." He ordered not saying more, but nothing more was needed Tony knew that Gibbs was inviting him along.
As Tony walked out of the bullpen ten minutes later to take the paperwork requesting the time off to HR he heard Gibbs mutter under his breath about it being a great gift and that it was definitely better than that honey dust stuff. Tony chuckled to himself quietly amused that his Boss still thought about his gag gift many years later.