"I've decided to have my DNA ran. I'm not expecting any hits, but I can hope, right?" Tim said to Fornell over a beer a couple weeks or so later, on the back deck of Tim's house. Neither of the men had work the following day and Tim invited his friend Tobias over as a thank you for all his hard work, helping out with the house. They had grilled, swam and drank and generally enjoyed themselves, bonding a little more in the process.
Gibbs had been called away on another assignment two weeks ago, this time to New Orleans and had taken Abby with him, which was fine by Tim. Except that his marble bench tops were still sitting in his garage waiting to be installed, along with his kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities. Work had essentially halted on his house. He and Tobias had moved everything he had in storage into the house and down into his basement, or bedrooms, except his bed. As he was still technically living across the road at the Fornell family home. Tim had a whole new alarm system installed throughout the whole house and his shed, as well after he'd caught a nosey teenager snooping around. That was all he needed, more delays because someone broke in and stole his cabinetry and counter tops.
"That's a huge decision, Tim." Tobias said. "But I think it's a great idea. Good luck with it all. I'm always here for you, if you need to talk. If you get a hit, we'll check them out and make sure they're not some crazed lunatic. We can ask Diane to see if they owe anything to the IRS too, that way they won't hit you up for cash?"
"What cash? I'm a lowly government employee." Tim jested mockingly.
"Yeah, with two number one best selling novels and a third book that is sure to be better than the first two combined." Tobias argued playfully.
"Who just bought their first house." Tim argued vehemently.
"Tim, I'm not going to get into your business, that's your business. But I know you have more than just the one nom de plume. At least two, by my guess." Tobias guessed and Tim gulped, almost audibly.
"I don't know what you mean." Tim wondered out loud, feigning his innocence.
"Kid, we need to work on your lying skills, pronto." Fornell said with a wink. "It wasn't exactly rocket science to work out. You haven't received any inheritances, you're a government employee and best selling novels don't pay that much, unless you've written a few of them, as in more than the two that we know of."
"You're not mad?" Tim asked and it reminded Tobias of a little boy, asking if he was in trouble.
"I don't know what the other nom de plumes are and I don't care. As long as you're not breaking the law, I don't care how your making extra money. I care about you, though, why would I be mad? If I had the talent to write a best selling novel, I would too."
"Thanks Tobias." Tim smiled and offered Tobias another beer, which he gladly took. "Think Vance will tie my DNA back to the Admiral's old case and see if there's any matches in AFIS?"
"That's pushing it, honestly." Tobias told him, breaking what could have been an awkward stalemate.
The duo began talking about other things. "I noticed that your team and Abby haven't seen the place yet." Tobias observed, as they were tidying up and readying the house to be closed up for the evening.
"Well yeah, I'm smart." Tim told him with a smile. "Tony's nosey but even he sees the sense in buying. He's not going to come over just for something to do, he wants to come for a party. It's too much of a long term commitment for Abby, she can't even commit to what she wants for dinner tonight. Ziva however, she's so sweet. She told me, she doesn't want to see it until it's done." Tim finished the rest of his beer in one mouthful. "Then she said, she's going to come over and cook me dinner in my kitchen to celebrate my new home." Tobias smiled at that. He saw Tim's ears redden and a small blush grace the younger man's face.
"Cool. Is it like a team dinner?" Tobias asked, playing dumb. He'd noticed when Tim was the hospital that he bought out a softer side of Ziva David that wasn't always on show to the outside world.
"She told Tony he wasn't invited, so not really sure. She's hosted a team dinner or two without him before." Tim shrugged and the blush turned a deeper red.
"I think you like Ziva a little bit more than you should." Tobias teased his friend. Before Tim could deny anything, Tobias held up his hand. "Hey, I'm an old man here, but if I was thirty years younger…"
"I'm going to tell her you said that …" Tim teased him, lightly. "On that happy note, I'm off to bed."
"Hey, you better not have bikini photos of Ziva in there." He chastised him gently, teasing his shy natured friend.
"Hey, I don't. They're on my laptop, at home." Tim answered straight up and Tobias wasn't sure if he was kidding or not now. "Relax. Tony took them when they were in LA with Shepard and Ziva asked me to hack into his computer and delete them off his computer. I did, but kept a copy of them."
"Why?" Fornell chuckled at him. "Why? She's former Mossad. She could snap you like a twig."
"Never know when you might need them." McGee said, shrugging his shoulders. "Or better, never know when you might need them to get to her to do something for you."
"That takes some pretty big ones, Tim. She's going to kill you when she finds out." Tobias added, half serious.
"She knows." Tim smarted back.
Gibbs was back in the office on the following Monday morning, but said nothing to him regarding finishing the work at his house. "Ready McGee?" Vance asked as he entered the bullpen at lunchtime.
"Almost," Tim said and picked up the printed page from the printer and signed it on Gibbs' desk, leaving it facedown. Gibbs was on a coffee run, he'd see it when he got back. "Ok, ready." He said. He'd grabbed his gear and his clip, knowing that he wouldn't be returning to the bullpen today.
The plan was that Tim and Vance would have lunch at the café across the street, before going across to an external lab on Louisiana Avenue to start having his DNA ran and then he was accompanying Vance to seminar about using the latest technology to combat terrorism, that was downtown.
Vance hadn't originally planned to have McGee accompany him to the cyber-terrorism seminar ran by the DoD, but Fornell had called him, expressing a concern about how McGee might actually benefit from the seminar. It'd take his mind off what was happening and that the seminar is in an area of the law where he's interests and expertise lies. Leon had thought it was a good idea, as added bonus it would give the young JFA a chance to network and meet people from other agencies.
Leon Vance looked around the room and noted that nearly everyone was taking copious amounts of notes. He had thought that maybe he should too, he looked over at Tim and saw he too was taking notes. He was happy to see that Tim was taking it seriously. He knew in the past that Tony and Ziva had both been to seminars and he'd had reports that they hadn't taken in as much as they should have.
From Fornell's vantage point, up stage on the panel, he could see both Vance and Tim. As expected, Tim was taking notes. It did surprise him that instead of taking the notes with a pencil and pad like most in the room. He'd had the foresight to bring his laptop with him. The FBI agent thought about how Tim probably typed faster than he wrote anyway and the mental image of McGee, hunt and pecking the keyboard, the way Gibbs and DiNozzo typed, amused him greatly.
The seminar broke up for a coffee break and Fornell approached the NCIS duo immediately. "Hey, sorry about lunch. Tying up my cold case ran into overtime." He explained immediately to Tim.
"It's a cheek swab, Tobias. I was fine." Tim placated his friend.
"He even got a lollipop." Vance quipped with a chuckle and Fornell laughed. Two other agents that Tim recognised as FBI agents looked on, dumbfounded at Tobias as he chuckled and ruffled Tim's hair before leaving with Tim to grab a cup of coffee.
Fornell introduced Tim to Assistant Director Sweeney of the FBI. "I've heard so many good things about you, Agent McGee." The AD had said, shaking his hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, finally."
"Thank you, Sir." Tim said firmly, shaking his hand. Fornell noted that his days of being a fumbling probie were gone. He was now a confident and firm agent.
"I have to ask," The AD of the FBI said, pulling him in closer to him, as if to conspire with him. "Did you really tell Deputy Secretary of State Anna Elliot to 'stick it' ?"
"Yep." Tim confirmed, proudly.
"Well done. You're a hero to a lot of people everywhere. Not many Junior Field Agents would have the balls to say that to anyone, especially to her."
"It happened when I was a Probie." Tim gently corrected him, causing AD Sweeney to burst out laughing in a full bodied laugh. A few FBI agents stopped and looked over at the normally serious AD in a full bodied laughing fit.
"I love it, you're a pistol, McGee." Sweeney patted the JFA on his back. "Has Tobias offered you a job yet?"
"Every time we see each other." Tim jested, half serious.
"Good, on a serious note. There's always a job for you at the FBI, whenever you're ready to jump ship." Sweeney told him, now his composure was all business-like again.
"Thank you I shall keep that in mind, Sir. However, I still have a lot to learn at NCIS." Tim politely turned down the offer. He was telling the truth when he'd told Assistant Director Sweeney he still had a lot to learn.
Vance had worried when he'd saw that Sweeney was talking to McGee. He saw the two men shake hands and wondered if that's why Fornell had been so pushy about getting McGee there. When he saw Sweeney laugh like that, he wondered what McGee had said to make him laugh like that. They re-took their seats and the second half began.
"Where the hell is McGee?" Gibbs snapped, returning from his coffee run.
"Out with the Director." Ziva supplied and Tony looked on, wondering what Gibbs would do with that information.
"Did he say where?" Gibbs asked, looking at his phone for any messages from either man. "We are supposed to be doing our re-quals at the gun range this afternoon."
"Ah Boss, that's next week. Todays the 15th not the 22nd." Tony corrected the man.
"Still doesn't explain where McGee is, bring up the team calendar." Ziva promptly bought it up and put it on the plasma. Gibbs and Tony moved over to look closer. She clicked on Tim's name and saw the lunch date marked in with Vance and unspecified appointment below, before the seminar that looked as if it ran the rest of the day.
"I thought only SFA's and their partners got to do seminar's ran by the DoD?" Tony asked, feeling slighted he hadn't been asked to go. He loved going to seminars, mostly so he could snooze and pretend he was paying attention.
"Vance obviously wanted McGee there for something." Ziva added, fed up with both Gibbs and Tony's behaviour.
Gibbs was frustrated, he knew Fornell had to have been instrumental in getting McGee a spot at that seminar. 'What's his end game?' Gibbs asked himself in reference to Fornell. He knew he rated him as an agent. "Back to work." He barked at the other two agents and decided to bring up McGee's 201 file.
He skimmed through the file, past the usual information about family. Although he did note that he'd removed the Admiral as father and left it as unknown. He saw the three recent additions. One was a letter of commendation from Vance about working cohesively with fellow agencies and his level of professionalism.
He saw a letter from Assistant Director Sweeney from the FBI commending him in the closure of a fifteen year old cold case, before offering him a position with the FBI and another commendation letter from Fornell, for the day care terrorist case. He knew as a rule Fornell didn't normally write letters for Agents who weren't part of the FBI because he'd asked him to write Tony one once when he'd tried to get the senior agent his own team.
Gibbs was surprised to see that Tim hadn't even seen the letters. There's a partition in each 201 file that lists the people who have accessed his file. Scanning the list, he was surprised that AD Sweeney had been keeping tabs on his youngest agent for a while. As was AD Michetti at the NSA and AD Barnes at Homeland.
Gibbs closed the file and for the first time, genuinely feared that Tim may be almost ready to leave NCIS for bigger and better things. Especially since he and Vance had had a lunch meeting together. He made an appointment to discuss his concerns with Vance. Vance was with him at the seminar and would be aware of any other agencies approached the young protégé.
"I'm home," Tobias called out and Emily came out of her room. She looked upset, but he didn't want to know why. She'd just spent a week at her mothers and didn't really want to hear if her and her mother were fighting again.
"Hey Dad, might want to steer clear of the kitchen. Tim's making something in there that looks totally gross, but smells amazing." Emily told him, before retreating to her bedroom.
"Thanks," he called back through Emily's closed door. Before he entered the kitchen. "How'd you beat me back here? I came straight from the seminar to the Hoover building and home."
"Vance dropped me off. I pointed out my new house to him. He told me he pays me too much money to afford a house that nice." Tim told him which caused a chuckle. "After dinner, you need to talk to Emily." Tobias stood taller at that new information.
"About?" He asked hoping Tim would elaborate.
"Diane was here earlier and they were talking when I came in. It seemed important, so I continued through the house and into my room, before heading across the road to go for a swim."
"And look all the stuff Gibbs still hasn't done that he promised would be done already. Probably have a minor freak out, too." Tobias added, knowing his friend well. "Go on."
"When I came back, Diane told her everything would be ok and to ask you. Thought you should know."
"Thanks for the heads up, Tim. Now what is that and why does Emily think it's gross?"
"I'm making some sausage rolls for dinner, from scratch. Doesn't look like it's going to be nice, but I guarantee it'll be delicious. Plenty of leftovers to take to work for lunch on Monday too." Tim told him as he rolled out the last of the meat into the pastry.
"They do smell good." Tobias praised him and stole a small one off the cooling rack. "Yum, you're actually a good cook." Tobias complimented him, surprised at how good they were.
"Well yeah, taught myself too. How's the pastry, haven't made that recipe before?" Tim asked.
"Too good." Tobias admitted, before stealing another one and going down the hall to talk to his daughter.
"Well, it's official." Fornell said to Tim later that night. As they were watching the late night news. Emily had long gone to bed, not really re-emerging from her room after dinner. "I'm now the father of a young woman, now." He sighed.
"Oh Tobias." Tim sympathised with the young man. "That explains Diane and Emily actually communicating and not arguing part of my day. Got to admit, I was alarmed when I saw then not arguing for a change."
"Apparently Diane gave her the very basics, barely the basics at that. Choosing to leave the rest to me, since the last couple of years she spends more time with me than with her and Victor." Fornell explained. "How the hell do I explain the mechanics of that to her? It also means I've got to give her the sex talk, now. She's thirteen, she shouldn't need a talk like that yet."
"Ouch!" Tim exclaimed. "But isn't it forewarned is forearmed? It'd be weird if I spoke with Em about it, but I do have a BS in biology and a Masters in biomedical engineering, so if you need some help with how to make your point, feel free to ask me. I'm sure whatever I don't know, Ducky or his lady friend Dr Hampton would know."
"I do know a thing or two about sex too, you know?!" Tobias jested. "I guarantee I've been doing it since before you were born ... well not recently, but I do have it, on occasion."
"And one of my nom de plumes is writes romance and erotica novels. They routinely make the best sellers list. Last year I had three books at numbers one, two and three from that nom de plume for an entire year."
"Shit! I know which books you're referring to now. You wrote them? That trilogy came from your brain? You had three quarters of the FBI staff in heat. Those books were all anyone was talking about for months." Tobias asked, shocked that those books had come from Tim's imagination.
"Try being in close quarters, on board a navy submarine with Ziva and Gibbs while they were both reading them." Tim supplied and Tobias laughed at the mental image it presented. He could imagine Ziva reading them, after all the women in his office were obsessed with them and he knew that quite a few of the men had read them too.
"Gibbs read erotica?" Fornell laughed out loud at that. "Surely not?" He couldn't believe it.
"He stole one of Ziva's books, read the whole book before he called it glorified smut and threatened to throw it overboard. Luckily Tony wasn't there or we'd never have heard the end of it." Tim surmised.
"Wait … I thought your degrees were in computer science and forensics." Fornell said confused, breaking the silence after a couple of minutes. "I didn't know you had a BS in Biology and a Masters in Biomedical Engineering."
"You've never read my 201 file, then." Tim laughed. "I have a BS in biology and Masters in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins, a BS in computer science and a Masters in computer forensics from MIT and a doctorate in Justice and Criminology from Georgetown U."
"Wow, your student loans must be through the roof." Tobias commented, thoroughly impressed. "I knew you were smart, but that's crazy, next level smart. Wait a doctorate?!""
"yes and I had a full ride academic scholarships at Johns Hopkins, MIT and Georgetown U." Tim answered proudly.
"With that doctorate, why are you only a JFA?" Tobias asked seriously. "You could be a team leader or a training officer. Hell your computer qualifications alone would let you run any cyber crimes department in the alphabet soup."
"Probably because no one at NCIS has read my file recently and knows about it. I finished it at the end of my my first year as a case agent in Norfolk. Would have been after Gibbs read it and began getting me as TAD." Tim said earnestly. "Only person who knew was Kate. She was at the graduation ceremony. Her sister got her doctorate in psychology at the same time. Afterwards she invited me out for dinner and we celebrated. She even told me she was proud of me."
"Kate, she protected the president. She knew a good agent. I have no doubt she'd have her own team by now, if she thought that highly of you, she'd probably be your boss."
"Sometimes I wish she was." Tim resigned, sadly.
The two men sat in silence as Jill Meriton explained the weather forecast in a barely there blouse and mini skirt. "It's her birthday tomorrow." Tim said softly. "She'd be forty."
"Have you ever been back to visit her?" Tobias asked. "The first agent I ever worked with that was killed in the line of duty. I visit them every year. It helps remind me, why I do my job. You should visit her, might give you the perspective you're looking for."
"It's a long drive to Indiana." Tim stated. "I looked it up once. It's like ten hours."
"So Em and I will go with you and we make a day of it." Tobias offered. "We could fly there and back in a day."
"You can, or we could make a weekend of it and do some sightseeing." Tim suggested.
"Now you're talking. We could do the Motor Speedway and Lake Michigan." Tobias was beginning to get excited about this. 'They'd probably need to take the Friday and Monday off work, but it'd be a great trip.' He thought excitedly.
"Indianapolis Museum of Art, Washington Park and the USS LST museum ship." Tim added and Tobias threw him a look. "Hey, I'm an NCIS agent. The man I thought was my father my whole life was an Admiral. My Mum's father was an admiral, as was the man I thought was my grandfather on the McGee side too. I've always liked the navy." Tim explained, as he too was a getting excited.
"We should take in a football game at Notre Dame Stadium or a ballgame at Victory Park too." Tobias planned, excitedly.
"Sounds like we should ask Em what she'd like to do too. We're only going to be there for the weekend." Tim suggested.
"Emily will want a waterpark. I guarantee it."
"Before we make anymore plans we better make sure we can get the leave from work." Tim laughed. "Don't know about the FBI, but days off work are hard to come by on the MCRT."
"When you work for a workaholic, what did you expect?" Tobias quipped.