AN: Just a small little something I wrote to kill some time on a plane :)

Tony knew that paperwork was the worst part of the job, even worse than being chained to a serial killer or being shot at. It seemed for every small detail that occurred in a case you had to fill in a form in triplicate. He had known that the paperwork was bad as a Police Detective, but a Federal Agent seemed to have it much worse.

He had even more paperwork than his teammates Kate and Tim, as being Senior Field Agent meant that there was more forms and paperwork that came as part of the job, including things like evaluations and reports about his subordinates. Recently however it seemed as though the paperwork was breeding again, there was more of it all the time. He had started turning up during the night when he couldn't sleep just to keep on top of it all.

It hadn't taken him long to come up with ways to work smarter and not harder. Instead of leaving all the monthly paperwork to the end of the month he worked on it as things happened. As soon as he signed off on a case and passed it on to his boss he entered it into the monthly case report. He did the same type of thing with as many of the monthly reports as possible, updating them constantly so that he didn't have a lot of work to do at the end of each month.

He looked up from the form he was filling in to take a quick look around the bullpen. Kate and Tim were both working on the corrections he had sent back to them on their reports, grumbling about it as they did so. Gibbs was nowhere to be seen, no doubt on a coffee run, paperwork needing lots of sustenance in the boss's case. Tony was pretty sure that is how he had ended up doing half of Gibbs' paperwork. It had just been the odd bit at first, but it had grown again recently.

Tony didn't mind too much, he knew that he could get through the forms much quicker than Gibbs could. The man was also much less grumpy when he didn't have as much paperwork to complete, which Tony thought was a good thing.

The main issue with the never ending paperwork wasn't really even the fact that there was always more to be done, it was the paper cuts. On days when they had no case and were working exclusively on paperwork and cold cases Tony sometimes felt as though he could bleed to death from the amount of paper cuts he seemed to end up with. He would take a bullet wound over a paper cut any day. Paper cuts were lethal painful little things that were easily forgotten until you touched something against them or ran your hands under water. At least with a bullet wound you didn't forget it about it and were able to protect it from further accidental pain.

Looking down at his hands which were covered almost completely in band aids to protect all the little cuts he sighed a little. When he printed the last form he needed for the day and started to put everything in the correct folders to go on Gibbs' desk he smiled in relief that it was done. Then just as he placed the file folders on Gibbs' desk he managed to catch his finger on the corner and gave himself one last paper cut for the day.

Growling round the finger in his mouth he hoped for something different tomorrow. He would even take a seminar, a protection detail, or even taking Gibbs on in the gym, anything as long as it wasn't just more paperwork.