The saga continues because I haven't been able to put McGee back in his cage. Please enjoy responsibly...
Symbiosis
4
White hot anger, a feeble writer's cliché, is now a description bounding toward insufficient.
Every dawn comes with its own unique challenges and Tim McGee's refrigerator magnet, a square practically welded to the door by his sister, reminds him to embrace them. But he also finds that every new set of twenty four hours comes with its own habits. For instance, some days he can't quell the thirst for Yoo Hoos. Some days call for silent and repeated recitations of soothing Elton John lyrics. Some days are filled with meticulous checks of his rather disloyal hairline.
And some days are today.
It should be logged in the mythical ledger of the Higher Ups that it's not his habit to oversleep. But he's cuddling slumber as though it has solid mass, the bliss of a cushy new mattress and toasty covers defying the ring of an alarm that simply doesn't appreciate his comfort. While last night's half moon passed over sleeping DC, he'd been engaged in a fit of manic typing, sweating and hyper as a madman, only more productive. Words had come in the yawning hours, beautiful and evocative words that captured the essence of daily Tony/Ziva interaction in such a way that his fictional version ensured the account-brimming cha-ching of a bestseller.
But there's a price to pay for creative ecstasy.
When the first thing one sees upon waking is a message from one's boss time stamped two hours prior, no level of hurry is fast enough. The tone is regrettably familiar; 'waiting on you, McGee.' Crime scenes aren't known to be terribly transient but Gibbs prefers his evidence as fresh as his molten lacquer coffee.
The items in his field kit must be reproducing at bunny-rate because it grows heavier with each step toward his destination. At the curb, there is a line of standard vehicles that McGee leaves in his rushed wake, but the population inside seems insufficient for the number of transports. Everyone must have self-driven today. Certainly Tony and Ziva have avoided arriving at any official location together, though for whose sake Tim has yet to discern.
The garage is the sort of nondescript, rundown place every seventies cop show features, except the smell, a rank mix of turpentine, spilled beer and extract of road kill is exponentially worse than portrayed on screen. Finding the silver-topped head of a stern man hovering over a body lacking appropriate length, McGee prepares for the public lashing. That doesn't come.
"Glad you could make it, McGee."
It's delivered in an unperturbed voice, the kind of tone that suggests the speaker has mastered the calm of Zen. Gibbs merely sips his coffee while the faint strobe light effect of rapid photo flash points the way to his customary tormentor, who hasn't bothered to fill the space with snide comments on Tim's time-telling ability. It's all very worrying.
McGee pulls his blue cap further down on his sweating brow. "Sorry, boss."
The apology is lobbed over his shoulder with enough sincerity to avoid the appearance of disrespect. In the past, his stuttering apologies could take eons to express, earning him no more forgiveness than DiNozzo gets when uttering a hasty 'sorry boss.' Tim has stolen Tony's superbly simple method and he's not giving it back. Stammering is a habit Tim is aggressively striving to drop. Along with those final five pounds.
Tony's gotten back into shape in the last few weeks, looking as trim and chiseled as he had when McGee first started at NCIS. Standing over a legless corpse, McGee orders pale skin to stamp down the blush that the others will cite as adolescent modesty, as the severed stumps and everything else is quite naked. Hardly. He's reddening because he can't ask Tony for pointers on the man's current workout.
It likely involves a veritable quagmire of ninja sex.
The over-exercised pair is huddled at the base of the garage's back wall; she poking at a gash in the plaster and he snapping pictures before giving her the go-ahead to extract the debris. Ziva digs at the jagged slash, producing a small piece of metal and holding it aloft with her pliers.
"I have a broken saw blade," she announces.
Tony studies the economic movement of Ziva's skillful fingers as the nub is bagged and her precise lettering is applied with permanent marker to identify time, place and position. Likely watching the DiNozzo family fortune waving before him in a sparkling silver loop. There is, McGee notices, the continued presence of the ginormous bauble, struggling for space inside a tight latex glove. Three days and no one speaks of the impending matrimony of the two most unsettled people he's ever met. Tim keeps waiting for Abby to craft a daily newsletter for the event, surely a delightfully morbid creation.
Gibbs takes the baggie, eyes narrowing on the fragment while he turns it over in his palm. He looks for all the world like he wants to interrogate it.
"DiNozzo?"
"Question the neighbors," Tony supplies, rising on apparently stiff knees. The how and why of the discomfort will only sidetrack Tim's brain. And then keep him up all night typing.
Gibbs nods to the departing agent before addressing his tardy junior. "Get moving. I want the rest of this saw five minutes ago."
"On it, boss."
And if 'on it' means searching fruitlessly for sixty seven minutes through every closet and crawlspace on the premises, then McGee's got the concept, as well as his pants, covered. The amount of dust he's breathed in will manufacture a dust bunny colony in his throat and when he returns empty-handed, ardent prayers are mumbled under sickened breath for the sinister vermin to kill him. Here. Now. Because they're all waiting expectantly, the soul mates and the gallows master.
"Nothing?" Gibbs can do incredulous in his sleep.
The team waits at the curb for McGee, who's biting back the heartburn of a familiar scenario; he's the kid who forgot his homework. Shrugging, McGee swallows the rambling apology bubbling in amongst the clog in his throat.
"Maybe the killer took it with him. Or ditched it elsewhere."
"Like you ditched your alarm clock this morning?" It only took three hours to show up but Tony's dig is surprisingly gentle, all things considered.
"Couldn't work the buttons last night," McGee mutters as the lid on his field kit is shut gingerly. "I was still too blinded by that audacious ring."
With the expression of a fresh tombstone, Gibbs grabs Ziva's hand and rips the engagement ring from her protesting finger. The mammoth diamond is dropped on the pavement and with a mighty stomp, Gibbs' boot has crushed the expensive jewelry to staggering bits. The Israeli's face slides into something akin to horror while Tony, who must have hocked his car and kidneys to afford it, simply shakes his head at the shattered rubble.
Wait…
"That wasn't a real diamond," McGee fairly shouts over the morning commute in progress. "That was, like…"
"Like," Gibbs interrupts, "rigging the pool."
"Like," Tony sneers, "payback for betting against me."
"Like," Ziva huffs, "deserved for thinking I would accept something that gaudy."
She waves what is now a far lighter hand in disgust, which fans the flames of Tim's almighty righteous anger. It burns now, a wildfire his inner chi tries to focus on the trio of evil beings and their damned rotten, grinning faces. He's shocked entirely and yet not at all. When coasting around life's orbit with people proficient in dishonesty, one must never be surprised, once the game is exposed, that one has been duped, defrauded, swindled and by all other terms spectacularly played. Which leaves only one question.
"So, who won the pool?"