A/N: Yes, I know, I should be working on 'Medical Condition'. But this idea just came to me, and wouldn't go away. I'm suffering from writer's block on MC now, anyway (Tate, Tabby, Mcabby?), and this practically wrote itself, which was a refreshing change. This is a gift to all those people reading MC – I owe you a completed story. Enjoy! Oh, and I did do this to a friend once.
Disclaimer: A 15 year old Aussie chick owns a huge TV show that isn't even shot in Australia, with thousands of adults under her. Yeah, right, I'm still trying to convince my Dad that my formal dress isn't 'too revealing'.
Oh, and Kate isn't dead, just sleeping.
Tony was bored.
The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and Tony was about to bash his little bored brain in.
He knew Kate was being sick just to spite him – he just knew it. That's the only reason a healthy young woman would suddenly come down with the chicken pox – again. He looked through her files – she had already got the damn thing when she was two, so why was she getting it again? Normal people get it once, and after that they could prance naked in a room filled with sick people and still not catch it.
Then again, Kate wasn't exactly normal.
Drumming his fingers impatiently on his desk, he eyed the large pile of paperwork looming before him with contempt. Paperwork that, thanks to Kate, he had actually started to do.
Noticing a new contact suddenly appear on his MSN, he quickly clicked on the name, and typed in 'Who are you?'. Better keep it friendly for now, in case it was a hot chick who just happened to stumble across his e-mail address (once, one of the girls he was dating left his e-mail and photo in her dorm room after she left – he was still getting contacted about that.)
'You miss me, Dinozzo?'
Tony did a double take. 'Kate?'
'Yeah. You know, it would have been cooler if you had pretended I was one of the girls on your contact list you haven't spoken to in ages. That way you wouldn't have to admit you missed me. Nice to have your thoughts, though.'
'Very funny, Kate. But most of the girls I date call me Tony, Ton-Ton, or even 'The Italian Stallion'.' He was slightly off his game – throwing out witty comebacks was something he found much easier to do when he could actually see the person's face.
'Ew. I'll add that to the list of things I never wanted to know. What's going on over there?'
'Paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork. I'm getting more done without you around.'
There. Nice and casual.
'Wow, that makes me feel missed.'
Oh, not the guilt thing. Please, not the guilt thing.
'I'm also bored out of my skull. When are you coming back? I've just learnt this new trick that makes it look like you've cut off your own thumb.'
He fell for the guilt thing.
'Tony, everyone knows that trick. Really cut off your thumb, and I might consider coming back early.'
'Hey, if I'm gonna cut off my own appendage, I'm gonna need some guarantee that you will come back early. Although, if you wait long enough, I might cut it off out of sheer boredom, along with several of my less attractive toes.'
'Ah, your high maintenance toes, always encased in designer shoes. I'm sure you'll give them a proper burial, with tiny coffins, flowers and little headstones. And maybe even put make-up on them to disguise the tinea.'
'I do not have tinea.'
'Oh, please. I've seen your feet.'
Tony couldn't believe it. Here he was, having a conversation with his sorely missed work partner, whom he hadn't seen in three weeks – about ringworms.
'Come back and I will personally show you my feet and prove to you that they are baby soft.'
'Nice try. I'm not leaving my bed in a long time.'
'Ew. What do you do if you have to take a leak?'
'See, this is a moment when I wish I actually was there so I could hit you.'
'Easily fixed. Hop in the car, drive over here, then slap me silly. Come on, I promise I'll stay still.'
'Goodbye, Tony.'
'No no! Don't go! Don't leave me to talk to myself!'
'Bye!'
'I scare myself! Don't leave me with myself! You don't know what I'll do to me!'
Tony grumbled to himself as the Yellow Box of Doom popped up in the top of the window, telling him Kate was no longer online.
…But she was awake.
Kate felt like a giant mosquito bite.
The lotion wasn't helping – just turning her skin a lovely pasty white. It took all her willpower not to scratch her arms, as she shut down her laptop and put it on her bedside table, next to the telephone, lamp and 10 random DVDs she had rented, just so she had something to do.
Contemplating whether it was still too early in the day to go to sleep, she rolled over, about to slip into a lovely daydream involving the characters from 'Sweet Home Alabama', when one of the items on her table started to ring. Since ringing isn't a sound you would usually expect to hear from a lamp or pile of DVDs, she deduced it was the phone, blindly fishing for it and picking up the receiver reluctantly, silently swearing that if it was a salesman he would be sorry he ever layed eyes on her number.
'Kate! I'm booooored! Come on! Get up, get up, get up!'
A Dinozzo, however, would be sorry he was born.
Alright, so calling her wasn't the best idea. At least she kept him entertained for a couple of hours. Now all he had to do was purge his mind of the various threats she presented to his manhood. He didn't even know she owned a nail gun.
But she had slammed down the phone about half an hour ago, and he was getting restless. McGee and Gibbs were still out interviewing a suspect. And he was still bored.
Letting his eyes wander (which, he had discovered, was a dangerous activity, yet he couldn't seem to stop), he noticed how empty and lonely Kate's desk looked without her sitting at it. A lonely little pencil, a sad eraser, a melancholy notepad… She wouldn't mind if he went over and 'filled the void' for a while, right? Just so her stationary wasn't all droopy when she returned…
Scrambling from behind his desk and practically vaulting into her seat, the first thing that hit him was how incredibly unfair it was that her seat was so much more squishy than his. Like the Mother Bear's in contrast to the Father Bear's in 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears'. Musing quietly to himself, he wondered if McGee's chair was 'just right', as he switched on her computer.
No password. Sweet.
Now, the cleanliness of her computer scared him. All the little icons were neatly lined up on the left-hand side of the screen, arranged according to type, then alphabetically. She hadn't even personalised the desktop, which was still sky blue with the Windows logo on the right-hand side.
Nothing personal on the computer. At all.
Feeling a bit let down, it occurred to Tony that maybe she couldn't figure out how to apply a password, and was keeping all personal files off this computer, in case an event such as this should arise.
Well, Tony, being the ever so charming and helpful man that he is, decided to sacrifice his afternoon to help.
It was nearly time to go home, and Tony was idly wondering as he put on his coat – If he was Father Bear, Kate was Mother Bear, and McGee was Baby Bear, who was Goldilocks?
At that moment, Gibbs walked in, grabbed Tony's Chinese out of his hand, and flopped down in McGee's chair, looking through Probie's notes, ready for a long night of work.
Tony stifled a snicker and hurried toward the elevator.
Kate applied an extra layer of make-up the morning she went back to work, to cover the last remaining scars on her face. She didn't want to show up looking terrible, otherwise Gibbs would just make her lie down and not do anything for the rest of the day. Literally. She was pretty sure that if she didn't lie down immediately on order, he'd tackle her, knock her out, and tie her to a seat in some secluded place with Enya playing over the radio.
Tony had conveniently come up with a family emergency on her first day back, but she was pretty sure he did it to put her through what he had to endure for several weeks. Total, all consuming boredom. Or just leaving her alone with Gibbs (who was currently off somewhere scouting for coffee, separating the strongest one from the herd and dragging it back to his den.)
Sitting in her desk, the first thing she noticed was a large yellow Postix note stuck right in the middle of the monitor.
He was so dead.
Ripping it up into tiny pieces and throwing it in the bin, she switched on her computer.
And was confronted with a password box.
Her computer did not have a password.
Rising slightly in her seat, she scanned the room, just to make sure that she was, in fact at her own desk, and that no-one had replaced her computer. Well, this was where her desk was supposed to be… It sure looked like her computer…
Staring blankly at the demanding little window, she tried a couple of shots in the dark, including 'Hello' and 'Swordfish'. Nothing.
Pausing for a moment to contemplate the spelling of , she suddenly remembered the Postix note.
No.
He wouldn't dare.
She typed in the 8 words that would haunt her for the rest of her life.
Her computer sprang to life displaying a desktop cluttered with hundreds of icons covering a big picture of herself in a wet T-shirt competition.
He was so dead.
It took Kate the majority of the morning to clean up her desktop, (the first thing she did was change the desktop picture) having to open each and every single file before deleting it or re-naming it. You see, Tony hadn't deleted her work, just moved it to different places on the screen and re-named it things like 'La Cucaracha' and 'Tiny Bubbles'. All the other files, she discovered, contained everything from '101 Things to do in a Public Toilet', screenshots and lists of various movies, and 'Tony's Favourite Things'(which she decided to keep for future reference and/or blackmail), to the word 'Pickleweasel' repeated thousands of times and 'HELLO!' in big, bold letters that took up the entire page.
Having finally cleaned up her computer, after opening several sound files that played fart noises or Tony's voice repeating 'Kate, Kate, Kate' over and over, Kate finally leaned back and looked at her clean computer with satisfaction.
Now she would just change the password, so this would never happen again.
Kate then realised she had no idea how to change the password.
He was so dead.
A/N: I hope you enjoyed it! Cookies all around! (distributes cookies) Please review, if you have time! Yes, I have thought of various ways Kate could get back at Tony, but I think I'll leave it up to your imagination. (Think glue. Lots and lots of glue.)
9/8/2011 - I've gotten a few notes asking what those eight words were that made up the password to Kate's computer. Tony's not totally mean - he wrote it down on a Postix note for her. 'Anthony Dinozzo is the love of my life'.