Title: No Peeking
Rating: FR13
Spoilers: None
Summary: Tony and McGee search the Navy Yard for their Christmas presents…

Author's Note: Written for Zak/Caos Accidentale for NFA's Secret Santa 2009... he didn't guess it was me. XD

"Pssst!" Timothy McGee looked up from his computer screen at Tony's hissed attempt to get his attention, frowning. The senior agent cocked his head toward the elevator, and McGee followed his line of sight to watch Abby and Ziva disembark, laden down with shopping bags.

With a quick glance at Gibbs' vacant desk to check it was safe to slack off for a while, McGee leaned forward, asking Tony in a hushed tone, "Christmas gifts?"

"I think so," Tony confirmed, a devilish glint in his eye. "How are your sneaking skills, McPeeky?"

"They'd kill us," he replied, shaking his head. "I wanna get through Christmas with all my limbs intact."

Tony rolled his eyes. "Don't make me Biff Tannen you, Marty McFly…"

McGee opened his mouth and shut it again as the girls moved into earshot, settling for a glare. The glare deepened to a scowl when Tony softly began to cluck like a chicken, smirking.

"We're back!" Abby announced, setting the bags down on Gibbs' desk to rest her arms.

"Good time shopping?" Tony asked innocently.

Ziva kept a protective hand on her bags, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Actually, no. Christmas is three days away, the stores are far too crowded, and I am not allowed to use my knife to clear a path through the indecisive masses to the one item I knew I wanted before I went in. Why are you looking at me like that?"

"McGee wants a peek at the Christmas gifts."

While Abby gasped, looking reprovingly at him, McGee protested, "What?! I didn't even-"

"Ha!" Dismissing the pair of them, Ziva gathered up her shopping again. "You would have to find them, first."

"Find what?" Gibbs strode past, looking preoccupied, and Abby cleared her bags from his desk as he sat down.

"Never mind – just make sure Tony and McGee stay there for the next ten minutes, okay?"

"Was gonna do that anyway," Gibbs replied, turning an expectant eye to DiNozzo, then McGee. "You track down the brother yet?"

Abby and Ziva left them to it, walking quickly toward the rear elevator as Tony began to lay out what they'd been working on. By the time Gibbs' attention was focused elsewhere, Ziva was slipping back into her seat with a satisfied smile, and the bags of gifts were nowhere to be seen.

A few hours later, when the culprit of their latest case had been apprehended and the day's work was nearing an end, Ziva accompanied Gibbs up to the Director's office to give her arrest report. Down in the squad-room, Tony sprang from his chair as soon as she was out of sight. "C'mon, Probie, we're going gift-hunting!"

With a wary glance up to the balcony, Tim sighed. "Is it really worth it? I mean, it's only a couple of days until we hand out the presents anyway."

"Oh, come on, McCurious – you know you wanna see what they bought you…"

It was useless to try to talk Tony out of it, and he had to admit, he was feeling a few inquisitive pangs. After checking again that the coast was clear, McGee rose from his chair and followed his co-conspirator to the rear elevator, his brain skimming through all the possible places Abby and Ziva would think to hide their gifts. "Where do we start – the lab?"

"Nah… Abby's still down there, I think. Let's start on neutral territory." Pressing the button that would take them down to the morgue, Tony grinned. "What d'you think Abby got me? Handcuffs? Some of that cologne she said made me smell good?"

Irritated – trust Tony to think about making a move on his ex – McGee answered, "Maybe she did us all a favour and got you a one-way plane ticket to China."

Never one to be deterred by a put-down, DiNozzo looked thoughtful. "I'd prefer Japan – the Japanese are the masters of the modern horror genre. They do a film festival in Tokyo every October, and one day I'm gonna make it…"

The elevator doors opened, and they stepped out into the corridor outside the morgue. Cautiously, the two men peered through the window into Autopsy, but there was no sign of Abby. "Coast's clear," McGee murmured.

Ducky and Palmer glanced around as they entered. "To what do we owe the pleasure, gentlemen?" Ducky enquired, both hands deep inside the thoracic cavity of the corpse on the table.

"Hey, Ducky. Don't suppose Abby and Ziva hid any of their Christmas gifts down here, did they?" Tony asked.

McGee rolled his eyes. "That's real subtle, Tony."

"Relax, McGee… we can trust 'em. Right, Ducky?"

Amused, Ducky excised a lung from the body and placed it carefully in the scales above the table. "There's nothing to trust us with, my dear boy. I'm sure there are far better hiding places than down here. Places they'd be able to easily keep an eye on, perhaps."

"That's what I figured," McGee said, leaning around the doorway of the storage room by the desk. "Which means we might as well give up, Tony."

"How about you, Palmer? You seen where Abby and Ziva hid the gifts?" Tony watched Jimmy's reaction closely, a grin stealing over his face. "A-ha! You did! Come on, Jimmy, spill it!"

"I-I don't know what you're talking about," Jimmy stammered, taking a step back as Tony attempted to invade his personal space.

"Mortuary drawers," Tim called, noticing the way the assistant's gaze briefly flickered to the other side of the room.

Tony reached them before he did, and began to open and peer inside each one without pulling out the drawers. "No… no… no… no…"

McGee pulled open the door for number four, and winced as the dead Marine they'd been seeking the killer of all day met his eyes. "Sorry, Corporal."

"Pull the drawer out," Tony recommended.

"Please, Tony. They're not gonna hide our Christmas gifts in a drawer with a corpse."

"That's what they want you to think," Tony said, muscling him out of the way and pulling the drawer out of the unit. "No disrespect, Corporal, but we gotta search your drawer."

While he examined the corpse's resting place, coming up with the expected nothing, McGee opened one of the remaining doors. "Found 'em!"

Tony hurriedly slid the Corporal back into the drawer and peered over McGee's shoulder at the cluster of shopping bags in number six. "And you wanted to give up, McPessimist."

Behind them, Palmer sighed, and Ducky told him, "Don't feel bad, Mr. Palmer. They are federal agents, after all. Investigation is their job."

"Ziva's gonna kill me," Palmer said glumly.

Tony and Tim pulled the bags from the drawer, setting them on the tiled floor. "You're the master gift-unwrapper, McGee. I'll keep watch."

Tim pulled the first bag open, expecting to find a store-wrapped gift inside. "Uhhh… Tony?"

Together, they stared at the note penned in Abby's handwriting, which had been tucked into the bag atop empty food containers and soda cans. Nice try, guys!

"Palmer! You could have told us!" McGee said, scowling up at the bemused Jimmy.

"What? I didn't know – I thought they were the real gifts!" he protested, seeming relieved to have avoided Ziva's wrath.

"Are they all like that?" he asked Tony, who was rifling through the rest of the bags.

"Yeah." Leaving the dummy gifts on the floor, DiNozzo stood up, sighing. "Back to square one."

Back in the elevator, they deliberated on the best way to search, deciding to split up and call if either one of them was successful. DiNozzo took the evidence garage, gymnasium and first floor, while McGee elected to search the second floor, MTAC and the cafeteria. Neither one of them volunteered for lab-duty or the squad room, knowing that they'd most likely not get past Abby until she was engaged elsewhere, and that Ziva would by now be back on the third floor to keep an eye on anything there.

Tony found dummy parcels in the mortuary van, the women's locker room – luckily abandoned by that time of the evening – and a filing cabinet by the elevator on the first floor. Each of them had notes written by either Abby or Ziva attached to them, taunting them to give it up and go back to work.

Tim came up with similar results under a desk in the records department, under an abandoned NCIS jacket in the back row of MTAC, and behind a potted palm in the cafeteria. While he threw the junk into a trash-can, Abby sauntered past on the way to the vending machine, unable to suppress her grin. "Hey, McGee. Having fun?"

An idea began to form in Tim's mind, and he casually followed her to the machine, leaning against the wall next to it. "Did you manage to get rid of the Trojan on your computer?"

"It's a work in progress," she told him, dropping change into the machine and making her selection. While she bent down to retrieve her candy bar, beginning to outline the processes she'd used so far, McGee typed out a brief text message to Tony: Abby here, get to lab!

Up on the third floor, Tony received the message just as he was stepping out of the elevator. Acting fast, he hit the button for Abby's lab instead of going back to work, fidgeting as he waited for the elevator to travel the four floors down. "Come on… come on…"

When the doors opened at his destination, he quickly moved into the lab, ready for some quick-and-stealthy searching. In the inner lab, he found Bert the hippo atop Abby's desk, sporting a Santa hat and a sign around his neck. DO NOT RAID MY DESK! :/

"Score one for team DiNozzo," Tony murmured, pulling open the bottom drawer, which was deep enough to hold at least some of the gifts. Sure enough, there were the bags, and he opened the first one with a grin–

"Are you looking for something, Tony?"

DiNozzo froze guiltily, then turned with a mental curse to see Ziva leaning against the doorframe to the ballistics lab, her eyebrows raised expectantly. Looking back into the bag he'd just opened, he glimpsed a couple of old newspapers and some orange peel, and sighed. Foiled again.

Just as he straightened from his crouch, opening his mouth to answer Ziva, his cell rang. He turned away to answer, grateful for the opportunity to delay the conversation with her.

"Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, how may I help you?" Behind him, Ziva snorted at the overly professional wording of his greeting.

"Tony, get out of there! I couldn't hold Abby for long – she's on her way back down there now!"

As if on cue, the elevator dinged as it arrived at the lab, and Tony sighed, watching Abby approach with two candy bars in hand. "We've been outfoxed, Probie. Ziva was down here all along."

Hanging up, he turned to face Abby and Ziva, both of whom were eyeing him with amusement. "Enjoy your candy, girls."

"Thanks, Tony!" Abby called after him with a grin.

Half an hour later, Gibbs called Abby's lab, setting aside the last of his reports. "Wrap it up, Abbs. We're done."

His agents all looked over at him questioningly, waiting for him to cut them loose. Gibbs took his time hanging up the phone before nodding. "See you in the morning."

He left them to gather up their belongings, and as soon as he was out of sight, DiNozzo demanded, "Okay, Ziva, spill it. Where'd you hide the gifts?"

Abby approached from the direction of the rear elevator, carrying her purse and jacket. "In the one place you'd never dare to look…"

As Tony and McGee looked on, she leaned over and opened Gibbs' bottom drawer, pulling out the shopping bags with a flourish and handing over half to Ziva. "We moved them from the lab when you went to interview Corporal Jennings' wife," the Mossad officer explained, smiling sweetly.

Tony groaned. "We were alone here with the gifts right at the start of the search, Probie. I thought you were supposed to be smart – why didn't you see that coming?"

"Why didn't you?" Tim retorted.

"If it makes you feel any better," Abby tried to console them, "you did find all of the fake gifts we hid around the building, so you were pretty thorough."

"Does that mean we get to see what's in the bags now?" Tony asked hopefully, giving them his most charming smile.

Neither of them was swayed in the slightest. "Nope!" they replied in unison, grabbing their respective bags and making for the elevator.

Left alone in the squad room, Tony and McGee exchanged resigned glances. "Looks like we're gonna have to wait till Christmas, Tony."

"Bah, humbug," DiNozzo said, shrugging on his jacket. "Let's go get a pizza."

END.