Just a silly, fluffy piece I wrote last night… I felt like I wanted to do something nice for Tim after that last story!

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Tim McGee – Day One, Take Two

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Tim took a quick short breath as the alarm sounded and the cog door rolled aside. The dress code still baffled him, so when shopping for suitable work attire, he'd opted for the familiar. Slacks and a jacket… not a matched set, just neutral coordinating colours… and a dress shirt. He was carrying a soft brief case and he had his laptop slung over one shoulder, in a protective case.

The team seemed slit down the middle on ties. Bobby and Ianto wore them, Jack and Mickey didn't. Tim decided to emulate the boss and skip the tie, although he left the emulating there. He wasn't going to ask why Jack was stuck in the nineteen fifties… or if he'd really been around as long as he claimed.

Abby said he had.

But that would make him over a hundred years old. Nobody could be that old… then again, on his first day, he'd gotten himself exposed to alien angel dust and met a real live werewolf.

Right. Welcome to Torchwood, Tim told himself, forcing a congenial smile. He wanted to look professional when he stepped through the door. Eager, willing and able to do a good job despite the way he'd started his employment with Torchwood three almost a week ago.

(He'd been cleared to leave the hospital after only a couple of days, so long as he had someone to look after him. Abby volunteered to take him home. He was still sleeping on her sofa…)

As soon as the cog door rolled open, he became aware of yelling... instinctively, he went for the gun he wasn't carrying… then he heard Jack's distinctive laugh rise over the commotion… and… something… squawked?

The secondary doors swung open.

"Heads up!" the blond Australian grinned as he came in, ducking. "Catch!" Bobby tossed a basketball right at him.

Startled, Tim dropped his brief case just in time to catch the ball, although he'd never been that good at sports and he had no idea what he was actually supposed to do (other than the obvious… not that there was a basket anywhere obvious.)

"No fair!" Gwen protested. "Now you've got two more players than we do!"

"Boys against the girls," Jack clarified the teams, "Pass it here," he held his hands open to receive the ball.

"And watch out for Myfanwy!" Ianto called out urgently as Tim made a less than graceful toss to the Captain.

Tim didn't know what Ianto was talking about until the pterodactyl swooped down, gliding over them less than a few feet from the tops of their heads. She let out another indignant squawk.

"Hey, she's a girl," Abby declared, "Maybe we should put her on our team." (Tim never, ever, thought he would see the day he'd see Abby Sciuto playing basket ball, especially wearing that pleated little black skirt and knee-high boots with the thigh high socks… not that he particularly objected to the way she looked…)

"How exactly are you going to put the bird on your team?" Mickey wanted to know.

"She's not a bird!" Abby corrected him in an indignant tone. "She's a dinosaur!"

"Hey, I watch the Discovery channel," Mickey countered, just as indignantly, catching the ball from Jack. "Dinosaurs are birds." He started to throw it, but Gwen intercepted the ball and threw it to Abby, shooting a very smug little grin at Mickey as she did.

"Is there an actual basket around here somewhere?" Tim wondered aloud, hoping to clarify the rules of the game before someone threw him the ball again… if they did. He was the new guy after all… and he really hadn't excelled in sports… it might be just as well if they didn't throw him the ball again.

Ianto got the ball away from Gwen and passed it back to Jack.

"The bins," said the Captain, taking aim at the bin behind Wendy's desk.

Tim crooked an eyebrow. "Bins?"

"Waste paper basket," Bobby clarified, blocking Wendy, who was trying to get to Jack to get the ball.

"I think maybe they need more players," said Wendy, nudging Bobby back out of her path.

Abby eluded Ianto's attempted block and bounced the ball out of Jack's hands. She passed it to Gwen, who landed it into the basket at Mickey's desk.

"Oi! Just because I missed the last shot…" Mickey protested.

"The last several shots," Gwen reminded him, continuing to look smug.

"The girls shoot into the bins at the guys' desks, we shoot our balls into their bins," Jack told Tim with a lascivious grin as he retrieved the ball and threw it back into the fray. "Not that I'm opposed to putting my balls into the basket of any man here," he added with a wink.

Tim blinked… he'd really just said… and meant… one look at Ianto assured him that yes, Jack had meant that just as literally as anyone cared to interpret it.

Wendy caught the ball midair; Bobby snagged it away from her and passed it to Mickey, who passed it to a startled and nervous Tim.

"Afraid of missing another shot, Mickey Mouse?" Wendy taunted him.

"I was bein' nice!" He defended himself.

Tim took a quick little breath and tossed the ball… he was profoundly relieved when he got it into the waste paper basket next to Gwen's desk.

Laughing, Jack retrieved the ball again; clearly that was his role in the game. "Ok Kids… time to get to work."

"That is really no fair," Gwen socked him in the arm.

Jack just smirked.

"So who won?" Tim asked, bewildered. This was nothing like his first day at NCIS – or anywhere else for that matter.

Abby's sour face, directed right at him, told him that it must have been the guys who won and he probably shouldn't have asked.

"He cheats," explained Ianto with a wry little grin. As he took the ball from the Captain, his fingers slid across Jack's hands… it was clearly no accident.

Jack leant in and whispered something into Ianto's ear that made the younger man grin.

Then Jack walked over to Tim. "Nice shot, by the way. We could have used you twenty minutes ago. The girls were killing us."

"Erm… sorry…" Jack had said 9 am… he'd arrived at 8:45…

Jack just laughed and clapped him gently on the back. "There's always next time."

"So… do… you guys do this a lot?"

Jack shrugged, "When your life is on the line every day, it helps to be able to blow off a little steam."

Tim nodded; that made sense.Hewatched as Bobby headed back down towards the medical bay. Abby slipped into her lab coat and went to work on something. Mickey was still pondering the thing. Gwen was sitting at her computer reading her book… Wendy was looking at something on her computer. He had a hard time looking at her and not seeing what he'd seen last week… what he thought he'd seen. What he never would have believed he'd seen if Jack hadn't told him she was real and really what he thought she was… she looked up noticed him staring.

Feeling heat overtake his cheeks, Tim flashed a shy smile. She returned it, seemingly not taken aback by his stare, and went back to whatever she was reading on her computer screen.

"It's a lot to take in, isn't it?" Jack asked quietly.

"Yeah."

The Captain smiled good-naturedly. "Let's start out with the basics…" he began, steering the younger man towards the archives…