The pain was intolerable. It spread from the tip of his temples to the back of his skull. A dull hammering sensation accompanied the searing pain which was only a side act compared to the deathly rumblings coming from his stomach. He rolled over with a groan and groggily opened his eyes. His screech woke the entire room as he stumbled from the bed in horror. Agent Ellis sleepily stirred at the histrionics. Eying the crumpled mess that was his temporary team draped here, there and everywhere around…what looked like a hotel room, he shrugged. Before promptly flopping back down to the cold side of the pillow, his snores doing little to assuage Tony's migraine. Tim was the next to stir, and he looked like Tony felt. On the far side of the room, in another double bed, Abby and Ziva moved slowly and stiffly, each as pale as the other was green.

"What…what the hell happened?"

McGee's voice was gravelly and confused. Tony merely groaned into his hands as the room began to spin like a demonic carousel. Abby and Ziva were sitting on the side of their bed, looking at each other in nonplussed pain. They were all in the same clothes they'd worn to the office yesterday and the pungent aroma that hung in the air was a testament to that fact. Trying to think, Tony scanned the room but was distracted by the insistent beeping of his cell. Fishing around in his crumpled pants pocket, he pulled it out and quickly learned that it was possible to stand upright with your heart stopped in your chest.

There were missed calls.

There were so many missed calls. There were so many voice messages.

They were from Gibbs. They were from the Director.

The pristine beige piled carpet was suddenly splattered with alcohol pickled vomit. Tim and the girls stared at their SFA in horror as he wiped a shaking hand across his mouth. Memories were coming back, they were flooding back. Calls he'd ignored, calls he'd drunkenly answered. AWOL status fluttering around in the back of his mind as he'd downed shot after shot at one of the most exclusive bars in city. He fought the urge to upend once again as he stared at the once again ringing cell in sickly horror.

He knew better, in the cold light of sobriety ridden day, to ignore this call.

"Boss."

The girls and Tim instantly felt the same urge to vomit as they stared with bulging eyes.

If he thought his headache was bad, he had no idea just how bad it could be. The yelling was to be expected, but it was no less painful. Tony squirmed on the spot as he tried to find the words. Ellis' snoring really wasn't helping matters. Gibbs fired off question after question without waiting for an answer before firing off dire threat after dire threat. Scrunching a hand through his hair as the full weight of their field trip hit home, Tony locked eyes with Tim and saw the despair mirrored there was as pure as he had expected. The yelling was so loud at the end of the one sided conversation that it could be heard without being on speaker.

"You just wait until I get back there, the whole lot of you. Now put that ass Ellis on the line. Now!"

All four's eyes turned to the slumbering Brent in horror.

"Uhh….uhh that might be….uhm…." Tony stuttered, "Boss, he's-"

"I swear to god DiNozzo if you don't do as I say I'm getting the first flight out there. Put him on the phone. I don't care if he's about to give birth, you get him on the damned phone! In the next ten seconds or I hang up and I start making my way out there." Feeling the panic setting in like a viral infection, Tony threw a helpless look at the rest of the team. He moved quickly and shook Brent roughly by the shoulder. The guy jerked away from him. He shook harder and spoke with a low intensity. "Ellis. Agent Ellis….damnit, Gibbs is on the phone and he is….he's pissed. He wants to talk to you. Wake up man…c'mon, wake the hell up."

Brent stirred sleepily and to their collective amazement, chuckled. Tim felt faint with painful suspense and the girls paled even further. Reaching out, Brent rolled over on his back and plucked the phone out of a shocked Tony's hand. His voice was cheerful, breezy. Suicidal. "Hey hey, Gibbs my man. How's it hanging? You calling to check up on your brood? Not to worry. They're great; you got a great team man. As a matter of fact, we bonded over-"

"I will rip your head off your shoulders and shove it so far up your ass it's gonna pop back onto your shoulders, right before I rip it off your shoulders all over again."

Brent's eyebrows shot up like a rocket. But he didn't get a chance to ask questions.

"I don't know what the hell your angle is and I don't give a damn. What I do give a damn about is I left my team with your sorry ass and in one day you've managed to allow them all to go AWOL. Just what in the hell do you think you're doing? I told Jenny that you weren't ready, especially for my team. You still have diaper rash on your sorry ass. Your career is over, you hear me? You will never have your own team as long as I'm breathing. I don't know what you've done to my people, but I'm sure as hell gonna find out. Unless they tied you up and forced you to do whatever the hell it is you've been doing, you're never going to work in-"

"Agent Gibbs, I think it is me who should be voicing the complaints here, not you."

Brent's mind was working quickly and he swung himself upright, his shirt crumpled around his neck. His carefully cultivated carefree image was slipping fast and was being rapidly replaced with a stony, calculating expression. He'd gone too far, been too rash. He'd tried something new and it was backfiring. He hadn't planned on an overprotective as all hell boss. Clearing his throat, he cast a furtive look around the room and decided on his course of action.

"I'm not gonna keep lying to try and protect them. Your team are a disgrace. I had suggested a little field trip of sorts to get to know them, but after the workday was done. I even phrased it as an order, so the geeky guy from autopsy wouldn't feel left out that he wasn't invited. I was clear on the outing being an after work thing. Sure, I asked them to go on a quick coffee run with me so I could get to know the good joints in the city. Simple, right? But just when I think we're getting close to the coffee place, they pull into a damned bar and go in and get blitzed. I did everything I could. I'm new, you know, not that sure how to handle such insubordination. I decided to stay with them so nothing adverse happened; they were getting so drunk so fast. I even said I was going to call you, but they said you let them blow off steam whenever they needed to, especially when there was no active case. That it was no big deal."

He stole a look around the room and nearly felt sorry for the intense shock and despair he saw there.

Nearly.

"I had to babysit them all night. They're an absolute disgrace. So I don't need you ringing me up to give me an earful. You ought to be focussing your efforts on them." Gone was his drawling accent and in its place was the stiff, clipped tone of a much older, much wiser man. There was someone to be thrown under the bus, and he was damned sure it wasn't going to be him. He was a shrewd man, but he was a weak man and the idea of owning his own actions was something alien to him.

"I'm leaving now. I will never deal with your team again. They're all yours; I don't care what they do in your absence. You can check the video surveillance in the bull pen, it will show that I left with your people in good faith and voluntarily. To the coffee shop. What happened after that was something you should really look into. I don't know how you run your team on a day to day basis, but I do know it's not the kind of management style I'm looking to adapt. So, goodbye Agent Gibbs, thank you for a valuable learning experience in how not to run one's people. I'll hand you back to Tony."

He stood with ease and tossed the phone into a gaping DiNozzo's hands.

With a sweeping wink around the room, he crossed it in three strides and was gone before any of them could blink. Looking down at the phone in his hands like it was the most dangerous of bombs; Tony glanced at the other three in pleading desperation. With shaking hands, he put the phone on speaker and placed it on the crumpled sheets. Sucking in a shaking breath, he clutched his hair in desperation and forced words to spill from his mouth.

"Boss. Please, you can't believe anything he just said. That's not what happened. He-"

"I'm on my way back. I will deal with you all when I get there."

The click of the phone hanging up was like gunfire in the deathly silent room.

He was gone.

…

TBC

…