"I'll give you one!" Gibbs looks serious for a second and breaks into a happy laugh. Everyone else, especially Abby joins in on that, and though the rest of the crew had been somewhat doubtful about snow angles, if Leroy Jethro Gibbs was willing to do it, they can, too.
It takes a few minutes for everyone to get geared up for the snow, but soon enough they're out of the elevator and onto the cold white expanse of what is usually grass.
Abby flops into the snow. "It's really deep!" Arms and legs scissoring, she begins to sing, "'Have yourself a merry little Thanksgiving'… Hmmm… Doesn't really scan."
As she's saying that, Jimmy flops down next to her, and adds in his pleasant baritone, "'Let your potatoes be light.'"
Tim laughs at both of them, not flopping, but sitting down carefully and spreading out, "'From now on, our waistbands will be really tight!'"
"God, Tim, you really can't sing, can you?" Palmer adds, getting up, and giving both Tim and Abby a hand up as Ducky sings, "'Have yourself a merry lil' Thanksgiving.' Now it scans properly Abigail. 'Make the feast-time gay, From now on our troubles will be miles away.'"
"You're not snow angeling," Abby says, dusting herself off, looking at both Gibbs and Ducky who have not tossed themselves into the snow. "I mean," she turns to face the three angels they've already made, "look at how pretty they are! You've got to add—" She shrieks as a snowball hits her in the back of the head. "Jimmy you're dea—" But as she's kneeling, grabbing up a handful of snow to pummel Jimmy with (who is holding his hands out in a 'it wasn't me' gesture) she notices Gibbs grinning from ear to ear, packing a second snowball.
"Faithful friends who are dear to us, gather near to—" Between grinning at Abby and the singing, Gibbs misses Ducky scooping up his own handful of snow, but the well-tossed missile hit him right in the side of the head.
From there, all that could be said of the ensuing snowball fight is that it was epic, and that all involved had somewhat sheepish looks on their faces when Leon headed down, but as soon as he tossed one off at McGee, the fight was on.
And it did end with six snow angels, three snow forts, and several hundred snowballs littering the central square of the Navy Yard.
Cocktails at a bar are a great idea, unless you're frozen and in soaking wet clothing.
So, instead of going out, they end up in Abby's lab. Tim and Gibbs, with their go-bags packed, are able to change into dry clothing, so they look pretty much like they always do. Granted, wet hair is different, as is the blanket Tim's got wrapped around his shoulders, but for the most part, they look like themselves.
Likewise, Jimmy and Ducky in scrubs isn't exactly different, either. Though the missing t-shirts they usually wear under them is one difference and once again wet hair and blankets don't look like a usual day at work.
Abby's also in scrubs, wrapped up in a blanket, hair down, wet, curling slightly, makeup scrubbed off by playing hard in the snow.
She's got hot cocoa going on a Bunsen burner, and with the addition of some of the scotch Ducky keeps in his desk, it's doing a good job of warming them inside and out.
Sure, it's not a bar, but sitting around the lab, dim lights from the computers and equipment, Christmas carols in the background, everyone in socks or bare feet (after all, even Tim and Gibbs don't have spare shoes in their bags) it's way better than a bar.
Jimmy's halfway through his first cup of cocoa. "I can't wait to do that with the kiddos. This time next year she'll/he'll be eightish months old. Should be sitting up by then. We've got a little hill in the backyard, and we're getting a sled and riding down it. Five years from now, me, Breena, two kids, romping around in the snow…" He grins at McGee. "How about it, Tim? You and Delilah going to add some other kiddos to romp with us?" Tim blushes and looks away.
Abby's smiling at that. Growing up in New Orleans and school in Georgia means snow isn't part of her childhood memories. She was about to say something along those lines, but Tim says, "I haven't done that since I was six."
"Six?" Ducky asks.
"Come on, even you aren't that uptight," Jimmy adds.
Tim shrugs a bit. "Six was the last time I was a kid and lived somewhere it snowed."
"You went to… MIT and… Somewhere else in the north, right?" Jimmy asks.
"Johns Hopkins, but no, by that point I didn't play in the snow anymore. Not really."
"What's 'not really' mean?" Abby asks; she hasn't heard this story.
Tim takes another drink of his cocoa, and Abby remembers that he rarely drinks hard alcohol of any sort, usually sticks to wine, and usually just one glass, and if he's had as much cocoa as she thinks, he's already past that.
"One year at MIT, CompSci had a massive snow war with Engineering, and that was fun, but… They… Um… Well, we kind of had to stop when the administration… sort of… threatened all of us with expulsion."
Now everyone, even Ducky and Gibbs, are staring at him in amazement.
"Uh, we might have… sort of… I mean, look, if Engineering had done their job properly, it never would have happened, but they let some freshman take a whack at designing the supports, and it was completely their fault that four tons of snow ended up burying the President of MITs car, and… well, it was kind of a convertible, which is really an awful car to have in Massachusetts anyway, but the snow, kind of crushed the roof and totaled it. We really had nothing to do with it. Our half of it worked just fine and there was no collateral damage."
Eyes are wide as Tim finishes saying that, and he starts to blush a bit, and takes another drink of his cocoa.
"So, wait, why were you being threatened with expulsion?" Jimmy asks.
"I… okay, I was a grad student, so I was in charge of one of our attack units, and, well, I've got an engineering background, too. Bio-medical engineering isn't building bridges, but some of the skills are the same, and I might have, kind of, noticed that those supports were badly designed, and I, may have, planned and led the attack that took them out and resulted in the snow crushing that car."
Now everyone is staring and giggling. Tim flashes a quick little smile, too, and drinks more of his cocoa.
"Timothy, why didn't you get expelled?" Ducky's curious about this. Thousands of dollars of damage to the personal property of anyone at the University of Edinburg would have gotten him tossed out in a heartbeat.
"It was MIT. If those supports had been properly designed, my attack would have failed. The attitude there was if you were dumb enough to build a central fortification over the parking garage the President of the University used, and do it badly, it was your own fault if someone broke it."
"How did you break it?" Jimmy asks, images of Tim in commando gear refusing to form in his mind.
"They used arches made of snow for support, which is a good plan, strong, stable, but if you take the keystone out of an arch, the arch falls, which is why it's a bad construction option for something that melts if you park a few cars and strategically angle their mirrors and windshields so the sun is shining directly on the keystone for two full days. If they had braced with wood or plastic, both of which were in bounds for the rules of the war, I couldn't have taken it out by careful parking. If they had situated the fort differently, I couldn't have angled the sun properly. If they had been paying attention they would have noticed a few of the cars in the parking lot had moved and were shining light right on their fort. A good engineer understands his materials and his location. They didn't pay attention to it, and drip, drip, drip… whomp!" Tim looks very amused and satisfied by that. He's got that little sassy smile on his face as he takes another drink of his cocoa.
"Was in Germany back in '80. No one does a snow war like a bunch of bored Marines who can't get off base." Gibbs is smiling at that memory. "Forts, turrets, trenches designed for enfilading attacks, catapults, booby traps. We had to stop when Johnson gerry-rigged a snow mortar and it blew up." Gibbs sips his drink, laughing. "Probably could have used some engineers on that, but all we had were scroungers."
They're all looking at him, waiting for more, but Gibbs just looks amused and continues to drink is cocoa.
"I'd never seen more than half an inch of it until I moved here back in '98," Abby says.
Gibbs smiles at that. "And you begged me to drive you home every time it snowed that whole winter."
"Not every time."
He gives her a look.
"Most of them. I was practicing driving in it over the weekends, but I wanted to get good at it before I got on real roads." She looks over to Ducky. "Does it snow a lot in Scotland?"
He smiles. "Where I grew up we had proper weather. Autumn started in September, and by the end of November there was a true chill in the air. Every Christmas was white. We didn't celebrate Thanksgiving, but Sunday would start Advent, which began the Christmas season. We decked a literal hall with boughs of Holly, a tree covered in candles and tartan bows, Mother made sure there was shortbread available at all times, even when butter and sugar were rationed." Ducky's looking far away, past the other five of them. "Night time in December in Scotland is very long. The sun rises after eight and sets before four. As a very young child, I can remember the lights of all of the nearby homes spilling out into snow covered streets. Then the war came, and everyone kept tight light discipline. Can't let even a peek of light out, Gerry could see it, and boom! I can remember walking through town, which was almost pitch black, freezing cold, snow everywhere, Mother holding my hand, to go to Church, then stepping in the foyer, which was dim and dark, shutting the doors behind us, and then opening the black-out curtains into the church, and being almost blinded by the blaze of light from inside. It was like being bathed in showers of warm gold.
"That would be the first Sunday of Advent. Every year one of the children would be picked to light the candles, and that year I was picked to light the first candle.
"We had a splendid wreath. It seemed like it was enormous, and in reality was probably the size of a small car tire. It lay on its side, on a table that only came out for Advent, and in the center was a huge white candle, around the sides were three pink candles and one purple one. I can remember standing there, holding the candle lighter. We had a proper lighter, a long, taller than I was at that time, bronze pole. One end had a handle, the other split into two curves, on one curve was a bronze bell-shaped snuffer, and on the other curve was a retractable wick. I can remember standing there, so straight and tall, so proud to have the lighter, and then touching the flame to the first candle and carefully extinguishing the wick when I was done."
"Awww…" Abby coos at the image. "Light blonde hair, little kilt, did you have glasses then?"
Ducky smiles. "No glasses until I got to my fifties. But I did have light blonde hair, and a fine wee kilt, which I hated in the wintertime, though Mother always told me that if I wanted to complain about cold legs in the winter, I could wear her stockings and heels instead of my thick woolly socks and boots and see how it was."
That gets a laugh out of everyone.
Ducky takes one last sip from his cup of cocoa. "And now it's getting late. Time for me to head off."
They check the clock, it is getting onto 01:00.
"You need a ride home, McGee?" Abby asks. It is late, and he's had more cocoa than any of the rest of them.
He shakes his head. "Gonna stick around for a while. Give Delilah a call. Want to show her the debris from the fight."
Gibbs smirks at that, nods slowly, says, "Gonna show her the debris, huh?" and Tim blushes scarlet. "Say 'Hi' to her from me."
Tim's got his face in both hands as he nods at that.
Jimmy's looking at him as he pulls on his coat, grinning widely, "You know, that tiny conference room up on the fourth floor is a really good place for a quiet conversation. No one ever goes up there. Door doesn't lock, but you can block it with one of the chairs easy."
"Uh, yeah Palmer, I'd… um… noticed that."
"Oh, good." He pats McGee's shoulder as he heads off. "Have a good chat."
Tim rolls his eyes, and looks at Abby. "Tony told literally everyone in the whole office about that call, didn't he?"
She nods, kissing him on the cheek and pulling on her own coat. He gives her a quick hug. A moment later she's linking her arms with Ducky and Gibbs. "Yep, and it got more salacious every time it got retold. It made the Diane stories look tame."
Tim winces. "God." He waves good night to the three of them, and once they head out, he goes to the elevator, taking it up to the fourth floor. It's true that there is a very good conference room for… whatever it is you might want to do without an audience. He's used it for coding binges, gaming, and yes, chatting with Delilah.
But right now he's happy to be up there because it's got a splendid view of the square they were playing in. He shuts the door, opens the window, and starts taking pictures.
A second later, after he's sent them, he punches in her contact number sees her smiling and hears her say, "Looks like you've been having some fun."
"Oh yeah. Wish you were here to play with us, too."
Her eyes slide away from him, back to what he knows is her computer screen and assumes is shots of six snow angels littered with snowballs. "Me, too, Tim, me, too."