AN: Okay, so I'm sitting at home, sick with the flu, watching the potentially most boring World Cup in the history of World Cups and the vuvuzelas are hurting my head, so this is what my medicine befuddled brain came up with.
No offence to any football players, american football players and figure skaters out there and special apologies to Wayne Rooney and anyone else I may have inadvertently or diliberately offended.
Other that that nothing has changed. Still don't own NCIS or any of its characters. You're free to sue me, but I can't promise you'll get more than a few bucks.
Something was wrong.
Well, maybe not exactly wrong, Tony decided. But different. Out of place. Hinky.
Silently grabbing Abby's arm to stop her from walking right into the potential danger, he nodded his head in the direction of the automatic metal doors that lead to Autopsy.
The right half was almost completely covered with a single huge flag. White with a red cross.
"What's that mean?" he whispered, careful not to disturb whatever was making the dreadful noises that were coming from behind the doors.
"Don't know." Abby whispered back. "Maybe it's a new warning sign. You know, like the red or the blue lights. Maybe some wild animal got lose in there."
Tony contemplated that for a moment. It sounded almost plausible. The noise from Autopsy did sound a lot like a large, very angry swarm of bees, only occasionally interrupted by desperate cries.
"Do you think someone's hurting Ducky and Jimmy?" Abby asked worriedly, still eyeing the door with caution.
If a swarm of angry bees had somehow been let free in Autopsy and the vicious insects were attacking the M.E. and his assistant, they had to go in there and help them. Then again, that whole scenario sounded utterly unrealistic.
Unrealistic, as in people contracting the plague in the 21st century or the government using genius kids to crack military codes. Unrealistic, like spontaneous human combustion inside a Navy hospital. Unrealistic like…all right, maybe the bee scenario wasn't entirely unlikely.
Getting ready to burst into Autopsy, Tony drew his sig and approached the doors.
Before he could open them however, another agonized scream was heard, the doors burst open on their own and Jimmy Palmer practically fell into Abby and Tony's arms.
"Hey, Jimster, what's wrong?" Abby asked the panting young man, while Tony took in his entirely-not-covered-in-bee-stings appearance with some sorrow. Pity. He had really liked the bees-lose-in-Autopsy-scenario.
"You guys have to help me!" Jimmy exclaimed. "Dr Mallard has lost his mind!"
"What?" Tony and Abby asked in almost-unison.
"He…he's been acting like this all day. Playing weird British songs and talking in this…this…accent. I realize it's probably his original Scottish accent, but it freaks me out. And he's been playing that dreadful trumpet thing and hanging his English flags everywhere and..."
"Oh…" Abby and Tony chimed, this time in actual unison, finally recognizing the English flag on the automatic doors for what it was.
"And then an hour ago he turned on the TV and I thought he was going to finally stop, but it got worse! They were broadcasting some soccer match and he's been screaming and yelling at the screen ever since and I don't know how to stop him! I mean…he usually doesn't even follow soccer. He's all about cricket and he never gets this worked up over cricket."
Abby turned to Tony with wide, hopeful eyes, as he himself felt his lips curl into an eager grin.
"Is it time again?" Tony asked, almost not believing his luck.
"Must be," Abby nodded enthusiastically. "He's describing all the typical signs."
"What're you guys talking about?"
Jimmy looked back and forth between his two friends who weren't at all showing the appropriate amount of concern for the elderly doctor who had so obviously lost his senses.
Tony and Abby gasped.
"Are you telling me you have never seen the Duckman like this before?"
"No…what…?"
"Where were you the summer four yours ago?"
"Visiting family…will you please tell me, what's going on?"
"You have much to learn, my young friend. Once every four years, Ducky goes through an amazing transformation. Our usually genial doctor turns into an unabashed soccer hooligan. Complete with authentic music and war paint, providing the rest of us with a never ending source of entertainment."
Abby bowed slightly, making extravagant circles with her right hand in appreciation of Tony's speech. When another scream could be heard from the other side of the door, her smile grew even wider and she moved to push the doors open, motioning for the two men to follow her.
"C'mon, Jimmy. Don't be afraid. It's just the World Cup."
Making the trip down to Autopsy was the best decision Tony and Abby had made all day. The situation was amazingly similar to the one four and eight years ago – and probably twelve and sixteen and for all they knew sixty years ago.
The M.E. was sitting on one of his Autopsy tables, red and white stripes adorning his cheeks, a long plastic trumpet-like thing in his hands, staring transfixed at the flat screen on the far wall. But while he was usually ecstatic during these moments, yelling and singing and waving the flag he was wearing as a cape, today a different energy radiated off of him.
"What's wrong, Duck?" Tony asked innocently.
The simple question was enough to make the older man explode.
"What's wrong?" Abby's eyes grew to the size of tennis balls. Jimmy had been right. Ducky's Scottish accent was more pronounced than usual. "What's wrong is that we are losing! England is losing! To America! This is a disaster of the widest possible proportions!"
"Score sais 1:1," Abby pointed out. "How're you losing?"
"Because it's America! England is playing America! Everything that isn't a clear victory must be considered a grave defeat. All because of that tosser Green!" He practically spat the name.
Tony chuckled, as his eyes met Abby's and Jimmy's. Jimmy's spoke of pure horror, sending the clear message of 'See? He's even cursing!'
Abby was practically bouncing with joy. They usually liked their calm, friendly Ducky, who never lost his nerve, so it was even more enjoyable to watch him lose control over something as arbitrary as soccer – or football, as the M.E. tended to point out.
"Why aren'tcha supporting Scotland?" she asked, assuming that – like last time and the time before that – Scotland hadn't qualified.
"We didn't qualify," Ducky muttered absentmindedly, as his eyes followed some maneuver on the screen, before suddenly throwing his hands up in the air in exasperation. "Oh, please! Who told that twat to become a professional football player? My dead mother could have scored that goal!"
"Why didn't Scotland qualify?" Abby continued sweetly, knowing full well that if Ducky could get this worked up over the England game, his reaction to the Scots' misfortune would be even better.
"Because, Abigail, apparently the Scottish football team have taken it upon themselves to embarrass their fellow countrymen a third time in a row. We lost against Norway, we lost against Macedonia, we lost against the Netherlands. Twice!"
Frustrated, he turned back towards the flat screen and demonstratively blew into his plastic trumpet, producing a gut wrenching, high pitched sound.
Realizing that they had pushed the older man for as far as they could for now, Abby and Tony nodded at each other, announcing that they were going back upstairs.
"Wait," Ducky called after them, almost sounding his normal, amiable self for a second. "Do either of you have any cases to work?"
Tony turned slowly, shaking his head, dreading what was to come, while Abby whispered a slightly alarmed "No…"
They had stayed too long. They should have left after the first outburst, but they had been greedy and now they had to pay for it.
Sure enough…
"Would you like to stay and watch the rest of the game with me? There are only forty minutes left, after all."
Tony seriously doubted the 'only' part of that statement, but without any active cases to run, they really had nothing to get them out of this situation.
Reading their hesitation for what it was, Ducky tried for a different approach.
"Look, I know neither of you is interested in football, but I really appreciate some company when I'm watching a game and Mr Palmer over there is far from interested in sports of any kind. I would gladly spend the afternoon watching a game of American football with you, if you asked me to."
He had them. They couldn't say no. They just couldn't.
Sighing, the agent and the forensic scientist hopped onto a second autopsy table, mentally prepping themselves for three quarters of an hour of boring lectures on 'the beautiful game'.
Beautiful game, my ass, Tony thought, glaring at the screen, where currently three people were yelling at the referee over the legitimacy of his call. One would think that as a Phys Ed major you'd learn to appreciate all kinds of sports, but in reality Tony found soccer about as appealing as all male figure skating.
"Oooh!" Abby suddenly interrupted Ducky's in depth analysis of why England's latest free kick hadn't been a success. "I like that one."
A feral grin appeared on her face, while pointing at the flat screen that was showing a close-up of a bloated looking English player.
"Really?" Tony tilted his head to the side, trying to find an angle at which the guy might seem even halfway attractive.
"Yeah! I mean, he's not gonna win any beauty pageants, but he's got that whole rugged, English, Daniel-Craig-y, strangely attractive quality to him. Plus, I bet he's got a really nice accent. I bet he could…"
"Oh, Abby, please!" Ducky interjected heatedly, turning his attention away from the screen for a few seconds to scowl at her. "His name is Wayne Rooney and he is here in his official capacity as a football player, not some extra in one of your outlandish fantasies!"
"Killjoy," Abby muttered, sticking her tongue out, once the M.E. had turned his back again. It took mere seconds for him to resume his running commentary on the failings of his team.
Finally, after forty agonizing minutes of boredom that not even Ducky's occasional outbursts could alleviate, it was over. Tony blinked at the screen in confusion.
"So…that's it? They end the game like that? With a draw?"
"Well, yes. It's part of the – "
"But that's just wrong! They just spent ninety minutes playing, I spent forty minutes watching and they're just gonna leave it at that?"
"Well, what do you expect them to do?"
"Go to overtime, do shootouts, do something! They wasted ninety minutes of their lives and nobody even won! What's the point of playing in the first place, if you're gonna end with a stupid tie?"
Ducky gave him a look that suggested that he couldn't even begin to describe in how many ways that statement was wrong and potentially offensive.
"If you're getting so worked up over it not going to overtime, may I gather that you found the game not quite as tiresome as you thought it would be? Perhaps, it isn't the most boring game on the planet, is it?"
Tony escaped a slightly hysterical laugh.
"Oh no, Ducky. Not one of the most boring games on the planet. It's one of the most boring things in the history of mankind! The only thing possibly more boring would be Miley Cirus doing stand up comedy and I'm not even sure about that! Face it Ducky: Soccer is one of the most pointless games ever!"
"Will you stop calling it soccer!" the M.E. hissed, slamming his trumpet-thingy against the autopsy table he was sitting on. "It's called football. It is played with a ball and your feet. What you people call football is played with your hands and an egg. The rest of the world would appreciate it, if you came up your own names for your own games!"
Abby chuckled in the background at the accidental rhyme.
Tony huffed, the former college football player in him deeply offended by the insinuation that his sport wasn't as original a sport as Ducky's.
"And besides," Ducky continued his tirade, releasing all of his pent up fury over his teams 'loss'. "A real athlete, a sports enthusiast, as you claim to be one, could appreciate any sport for its intrinsic beauty, not just the game he has randomly decided to support."
That had Tony stop short, remembering something the M.E. had said earlier. His grin from before he had been put through these forty minutes of torture returned.
"Well, in that case, Dr Mallard, I formally invite you to my place, to watch New Orleans play Minnesota in the first game of the season in September."
The anger immediately left Ducky's face. It took him several seconds to compose himself. What a dreadful idea. Spending hours of his life watching men in armors running up and down a field, carrying a ball!
"Well, I will try to make it," he announced, making a mental note to ask Director Vance to be sent to a medical conference that weekend.
"Oh no, Ducky, you won't try. You'll be there," Tony's grin couldn't have been any wider, had he just accidentally stumbled upon the Victoria's Secret Halloween Party. "You will be there, because you promised."
"I did no such thing!"
"Actually you did," Abby piped up, almost feeling sorry for her friend. Almost. He had made her watch half of that stupid game after all, so he deserved to be treated to the same favor. "You said you'd gladly watch a game of football, if we asked you to."
Abby giggled at the M.E.'s horrified expression, both at her horrendous butchering of his native accent, as she was trying to imitate his voice and at the realization that we wouldn't be able to escape Tony's 'invitation'.
"Oh, and be there early so I can fill you in on all the important tricks and inside intel."
Oh, Lord. How was he going to survive that?
Tadaaa, that's it. Finally finished something after my self imposed hiatus over my finals at school. God that feels so good!
Anyway, you guys know that lovely review button right below, right? Wanna click it and tell me what you thought? ^^