Title: Executive Decision
Disclaimer: These characters belong to Donald Bellisario, and I hope he won't mind that I've borrowed them for awhile. The story is not connected to any particular episode or storyline from NCIS.
Warning: This story contains the spanking of an adult. If that's not your thing, it would be best if you didn't read it, or at least that you refrain from telling me about your displeasure.
Tim was staring intently at his computer screen when he felt something bounce off his forehead. Looking up he saw Tony smirking at him from behind a straw, and glancing back down Tim saw the small wad of paper now lying innocently on his desk. 'A spitball?' Tim thought to himself. 'Seriously, are we in seventh grade?' Deciding not to waste his breath on such a juvenile act, Tim merely shot Tony a disapproving look and then refocused on the monitor.
"What'cha up to, McGee?" Tony prompted impatiently.
"A Sudoku." Tim replied.
"A soo-what?"
"Sudoku." Tim tried to avoid becoming engaged in conversation.
"You eat that with wasabi?"
Tim felt a sudden wave of nostalgia for graduate school. He missed the level of intellectual conversation that was perpetually flying about. Even when they were goofing off there had been something kind of cerebral about it. He loved his job at NCIS, but sometimes he felt like the gifted kid who'd been sent accidentally to the detention room.
Tim sighed. "It's not a food, Tony. It's a puzzle."
Tony grinned, and Tim wondered if Tony had just been trying to get a rise out of him. "Well, I'm having Chinese for lunch. Moo goo gai pan!" Tony said in an absurd parody of a Chinese accent. Tim was about to admonish Tony for his offensive use of a cultural stereotype, but realized the futility of this action and resumed his study of the numbers in his puzzle grid.
Tim didn't hear the footsteps behind him before Tony announced "Hey, Boss! Probie's playing a video game!"
The hand connected with the back of his head.
"I'm on my lunch!" Tim sputtered. "And it's not a video game! It's a numerical brainteaser requiring logical analysis and deductive reasoning, and there's one in every daily newspaper that doesn't have a pin-up girl in a bikini on Page 2!" Not that Tony would read such a paper, he thought irritably.
"You finished the report I asked you to do this morning, McGee?" Gibbs asked.
"Um, no, Boss." Tim lost some of his righteous indignation. But still, it was his lunch break. Every civilized job in the world had a lunch break during which employees could do whatever they wanted.
"Then I don't care whether she's wearing a bikini or not. Get back to work."
Tim was momentarily thrown off by the non-sequitur. He was about to clarify to Gibbs that there were no bikinis in his Sudoku when he grasped that this hadn't actually been his boss's point and let the matter drop. Still, he was a bit offended by the insinuation that he was slacking on the job. He was the hardest working of any of the agents on Gibbs' team, and it irritated him to be addressed with the same tone that their boss usually reserved for Tony's antics. Tim wondered how much of Gibbs' autocratic leadership style had been driven by Tony's need to be closely monitored and firmly disciplined. Sure, Tim knew that Gibbs was used to giving orders in the Marines, but he was pretty sure that Gibbs understood the difference between the expectations of a civilian boss and a military CO. Tim could appreciate why Gibbs had to handle Tony with a strict, almost parental, approach – Tony needed clearly defined rules and boundaries, and a firm hand to enforce them, but Tim was self-motivated and hard-working, and he got the job done when it needed to be done. Yes, he'd been punished by Gibbs a few times early on, but mostly those had been instances when emotion or naiveté had clouded his judgment and he'd done something stupid as a result. But that was in the past, and anyways he certainly didn't need to be punished – or threatened with punishment – to give his best at work, as Tony seemed to require.
To be fair, Tim had the highest esteem for Gibbs, sometimes bordering on awe. And he realized that a lot of the characteristics that he admired in his boss were skills that the man had likely honed in the Marines – his tracking instincts, physical strength and stamina, a forceful presence that demanded attention from anyone in proximity, and a masterful ability to conduct interrogations. Not to mention Gibbs' seemingly infallible sense of intuition – Tim would kill for that one. But as much as he respected Gibbs for all these talents, Tim had to acknowledge that his boss didn't really share his aptitude for more intellectual matters. Gibbs had no patience for Tim's technical or scientific explanations, and he couldn't understand a piece of technology more complex than a toaster oven. It wasn't that Tim couldn't recognize that Gibbs thought that he did good work, but Tim wondered if maybe Gibbs would never fully appreciate his true value to the team, given that their strengths were so disparate, and that so much of what Tim did was on a computer or otherwise behind the scenes. He could live with being undervalued as long as the cases got solved – that was all the satisfaction he really needed in the end – but in the meantime he was starting to wish that Gibbs wouldn't hold the reins so tightly. After all, he had a graduate degree from MIT, so he was pretty sure that he could handle making independent decisions, including how to spend his lunch break.
A sharp voice interrupted his internal monologue. "You think that report's going to get written by magic, McGee?"
"No, Boss! I'm on it!" The reply was almost like a reflex. 'Pick your battles, Tim,' the junior agent's inner voice chided. Fighting over the right to have an unscheduled lunch break was hardly a worthwhile cause. Besides, what Gibbs appreciated was product, not process. Tim couldn't count the number of times that his mentor had cut him off mid-technobabble and instructed him to skip the explanation and get to the end result. So perhaps all he really needed was to start making a few more autonomous choices about the efficient use of his time. If the job got done, and it got done well, then he couldn't see that Gibbs would be concerned with the means by which Tim had gotten there. It would be a win-win situation, and in the end they'd both be happier.