Chapter Two

McGee nodded quickly, suddenly reverting back to his classic ways. "Yeah, uh, yeah, it would probably be just a little awkward to do . . . it in a car. Not that I'm thinking about doing . . . it with you. Not that I wouldn't be thinking of it." He saw the look on Tony's face and stopped talking. "I'm just gonna shut up now."

Tony's bemused expression wasn't helping Timothy's awkwardness at all; finally taking pity on Timothy, he just pulled him into a tight hug and whispered in his ear in a voice filled with humor, "God, you're cute when you're flustered. I hope you've been thinking about it because I sure have been. A lot."

McGee felt his face burn. "Wow. Well, I guess I have." Tony pulled away a bit and gave him a dubious look. "Okay, yeah, I have been. But I didn't want to say anything. Whole rule 12 and everything." Tony continued with the look. "But I guess it's okay to admit to now that we've . . . admitted to it?" Tony smiled at him. "Right." He smiled himself. "You think I'm cute?"

Tony teased lightly. "If I say yes, you're not going to run around like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, are you? You know, that whole 'she thinks I'm cute' scene? Cause that's so junior high, Timothy. And we're at least at the high school senior level, don't you think?"

McGee had always wanted to be able to shut Tony up, and he now knew how. He simply grabbed Tony and plastered his lips to his. But McGee was wrong; it didn't really shut Tony up. Oh, sure, it kept him from talking, but Tony's eyes never stopped twinkling in humor and he knew the minute they came up for air, Tony would tease him again.

When Timothy finally let him go, Tony was flushed and his breathing heavy and erratic. He tried to nonchalantly tug on his pants to give himself a little room but it didn't work well. He laughed at himself and said, "Oh, yeah. We're definitely seniors in high school. It's when I lost my virginity the first time. Seems fitting that I would be a senior all over again when I'm finally ready to lose my other virginity."

McGee's eyes widened. "You've never been with another man before?" The thought surprised him. He assumed Tony was experienced in every area possible when it came to sex, and to hear that he was still a "virgin" in one area, well . . . it made him feel a little more comfortable.

Tony opened his mouth to give a response, but McGee quickly stepped in again, silencing him. "Well, then, we'll both be newcomers."

Before Tony could respond, the car chose that moment to stall. McGee quickly tried to turn the engine back over but it just wouldn't cooperate. He looked at the gauges and realized why the car wouldn't start and dropped his head to the steering wheel and groaned. Tony looked at him, confused, and said, "We can't be out of gas; you filled when we got munchies."

McGee simply stared at him. "I thought you filled the tank. I was in the bathroom, remember?"

Tony's voice hitched up a notch. "Um, nnnooooo, I was in charge of the coffees and junk food, you were in charge of the gas. This is so not good, Probie."

McGee let out a sigh, running a hand through his hair. "Well, we're going to have to think of something. We can't walk out of here because of your knee. I guess we're just going to have to hope Gibbs realizes we're lost before it's too late. Until then, all we can do is sit and wait."

It was one thing to be stuck in a car with Timothy all night when they could run the car and keep warm, but the thought of being stuck out in a blizzard with no heat and no guaranteed rescue coming made Tony a little wild eyed and hysterical around the edges. "We're gonna freeze to death, Timothy."

McGee swallowed hard, trying to remain calm for both their sakes - the last thing they needed right now was him to be freaked out. He already could see that Tony was in freak out mode. "No," he finally said, ignoring Tony's chattering teeth - the man couldn't be more of a drama queen, he swore, "no, we'll just have to use body heat to keep warm."

"We're gonna get pneumonia. I'm gonna die. I have bad lungs, you know, from the plague. I can't get cold and wet. Ducky's gonna kill me if I die from pneumonia." Tony's mind had shifted entirely into panic mode and his mouth was just going a mile a minute.

McGee shifted in his seat and placed the tip of a finger over Tony's lips to stop his babble. The older man's panicked eyes met McGee's calming ones, as McGee soothed him. "Hey, hey, we're going to be okay. We have to be." He gave Tony a small smile. "I don't want to miss out on those twelve hundred count sheets."

"You don't? I mean, you don't. I'm babbling, aren't I?

McGee gave him another small smile, placing his hands on Tony's cheeks."Tony? Please shut up."

Tony smirked and teased lightly, "Aren't you bossy for a Probie?"

McGee shook his head. At least Tony was returning to some semblance of his normal self. "I figured you wouldn't mind, considering that I'm your probie."

"So you don't mind being the probie in this relationship?"

"I thought we agreed we were both probies when it came to this sort of thing."

"Well...technically, I think the better term would be newbies. Probie in this connotation conjures up visions of something else entirely."

McGee raised an eyebrow. "Anyone ever tell you you have an incredibly dirty mind, Tony?"

"Hey, no one's ever complained about my dirty mind before. Well, okay, Kate did, but she doesn't count. I'm just saying that there are probies and probers in a thing...you know...like...what we want to do." Tony stammered out, oddly embarassed by the topic.

McGee noticed Tony's babbling and held back a smirk. Was it possible that Tony was embarrassed? Oh, he could work with this.

"Well, if you want me to be the probie, then I guess that means you want to be the prober," McGee started, watching as Tony's facial expression changed to something like humiliation. "But you know what, Tony? I don't think I like that idea." He leaned in close to the other man, mouth inches from Tony's. "I've been a probie too long. I want to know how it feels to be in control."

Tony gulped hard. Timothy's tone of voice and the images of what he had just said shot a bolt of lust right through him, and he tried yet again to unsuccessfully adjust his pants to relieve a little of the stress. His brain tried to engage and come up with a witty retort, but nothing would come to him. He wondered if he should admit to Timothy that in all of his little fantasies, Timothy had always been the one in control. He knew his face must be glowing red in embarrassment - it was one thing to think about having sex with another man, but it was altogether different to actually talk about it. "You do?"

McGee nodded slowly, his tongue snaking out to wet his lips. His heart was pounding in his chest at the idea of holding Tony down and stripping those pants right off the man. If they didn't get out of here soon, McGee knew he was going to end up doing just that. "Yeah, Tony," he finally spoke, words laced with lust. "I want to see just how submissive you can be."

"Um, Timothy?" Tony cleared his throat, trying to bring some sense of normal back into the car, since it obviously had slipped into the realm of the surreal when it slid down the embankment. "We really need to table this ah, conversation till we get out of here. Because wet, sticky boxers are not my idea of fun while we're stuck in a blizzard in a car with no heat."

McGee blinked, returning to his normal self. That was weird. He normally didn't get all alpha male. Ever. "Uh, right. Not mine, either." He looked around, searching for something to change the subject. Nothing was keeping his mind out of the gutter at this point. He sighed and settled for a lame, "Are you getting cold yet?"

Tony's eyes flashed with humor, the comeback out of his mouth before he could stop it. "Why? Offering to warm me up?"

He saw Timothy drop his chin with his eyes closed, just shaking his head in exasperation at Tony. He broke the quiet by back pedaling. "Sorry, Timothy, mouth got ahead of me again. I just can't think of anything today that isn't a double entendre. But to answer your question, the temperature in here is starting to drop, which is really not gonna do wonders for my knee in a while."

McGee nodded. They had to think of survival here, not sex. That could wait. "Do we have blankets? Extra clothes? Anything that's not wet?" He closed his eyes and bit his lip at the innuendo. Damnit. Keeping his mind off sex was going to be really hard.

"There should be one of Gibbs' standard issue wool blankets in the trunk. I didn't pack any extra clothes this trip - it wasn't supposed to be an overnighter. You?"

"Nope. I assumed we'd be back in D.C. by this point." He turned away, looking out the window, and muttered to himself. "And we would have been, had I been driving."

Tony's eyes narrowed. "Are you trying to pick a fight, Probie?"

McGee sighed. "No, forget it, Tony. I'm sorry. We have to focus our energy on getting out of here, staying alive, not fighting about petty things." Tony continued to glare at him. "I said I'm sorry! What else do you want?"

Tony took a deep breath, and said quietly in a thoughtful tone as he looked down at his hands, "You don't think we're gonna fight all the time, do you, Timothy?" Tony had lived that growing up, with two people that spat nasty, sarcastic remarks at each other all the time, each of them competing to dig the barbs in deeper. He had made himself a vow a long time ago that he would never be in a relationship like that. Teasing and bickering were part of life, but he had no desire to live out the death of a thousand cuts with anyone, not even Timothy.

The snarl that had been on McGee's face melted away as he heard Tony's words. He swallowed, searching for the right words. "No, Tony, I don't want to fight." He chuckled softly to himself, trying to lighten the mood. "Give peace a chance." When Tony didn't even crack a smile, he let his laugh fade away, sighing again, and reached for Tony's hand, the older man finally looking his way. "We're gonna make this work, Tony. We have to."

"I just..." Tony started to say, then stopped. He turned away and looked out the fogged up, snow crusted window. He reached up and drew a squiggle in the condensation with his free hand, gently squeezing back on Timothy's with the other.

McGee sensed that whatever Tony had started to say was important, and held his tongue, giving Tony time to put together his words.

"You wanna know the real reason I've never dated anyone more than a couple weeks? I'll tell ya. See, my parents would snipe at each other all the time. Just constantly, and they'd do it with a smile on their faces. They knew just what to say to hurt each other the most. I never wanted to be like them. And the reason I never got close to anyone is because I never wanted anyone to really get in my head and be able to know just what to throw back at me like that." He turned to face Timothy. "And what scares me is that I've really wanted to let you in for so long. But my self defense instincts keep kicking in and my stupid mouth runs." He looked down at their joined hands. "I just don't want us to be them."

McGee swore he could feel his heart fall into his shoes. "I don't . . . " he started, then gathered his words and started again. "We won't be that. You're not that mean-spirited, Tony, and I know you'd feel incredibly guilty saying even half the things I'm sure they said." He grimaced. He hadn't meant to accuse Tony's parents of being bad people . . .

"Tony, look at me." Tony looked up from their joined hands, and it took everything McGee had to keep talking after seeing the look on his face - that look of complete and utter hopelessness. "You can't possibly, possibly think our relationship would ever get to that point. I . . ." he took a breath and continued before he lost his nerve, "I care way too much about you to let that happen."

The wind howling outside, beating ice crystals onto the windshield, was the only sound until Tony asked quietly, "Promise?"

McGee replied simply, "Promise."

"I'm gonna hold you to that, Timothy," he said in a tone much lighter than it had been in the past few tense minutes. Without letting go of Timothy's hand, he tried to shift his position a little, his knee getting cold and stiff. He found himself shifting towards the middle, where he met up with Timothy's strong shoulder. Giving into the urge, he leaned on it, wincing as he straigtened his leg out. Wanting to be distracted, he asked, "How's your sister doing?"

McGee let out a breath. Now that the drama had passed . . . "Pretty good. I mean, she hasn't been accused of murder lately. That's saying something."

Tony laughed and the tension in the car was gone, and Tony wondered if he could really do this relationship thing with Timothy, give him little pieces of all the things he held inside and not scare Timothy away. He had a good feeling about it all. They talked about this and that for quite a while, just enjoying each other's company. Both of them started to get really cold after a while, though, and he suggested, "Hey, maybe we should grab that blanket and stretch out in the backseat, it'll probably be warmer."

McGee immediately tensed again. "Are you sure that's a good idea? I mean, both of us back there . . ."

Tony laughed. "I think we can handle it; we'll just have to be mature, and think about frostbite." He slapped Tim on the thigh and put his hand on the door handle. "Coming?"

McGee closed his eyes at Tony's choice of words and mumbled to himself, "Hopefully not for a long time," before opening them again and nodding to Tony. "Yeah. Let's get warm."

to be continued . . .