April Fool´s Day again

Disclaimer: I don´t own any characters or anything.

Summary: It´s the end of March again and Tony starts to plan a new attack on his boss for April Fool´s day. (As I have not watched Twilight, I will assume that this is happening pre-twilightish)

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6- McGee Production presents…

Gibbs was irritated for the rest of the afternoon and wondered why everyone kept looking at him. "Dinozzo, do I have something on my nose?" He barked at Tony and wondered why Kate took a dive behind her desk the same second. McGee made a beeline for the elevator and disappeared out of sight only a few seconds later.

"No, boss. I was just thinking and looking at nothing specific." Dinozzo replied and continued to type his report. It was nearly 6 pm, time to go home. Gibbs wasn´t too thrilled to spend the evening with Ducky. Usually, that meant a bingo tournament with Duck´s mother or one of those old black-and-white movies that didn´t have speech in them.

After getting off from work, Kate followed Tony to his apartment to help him prepare everything. "Did you get coffee for Gibbs? If he´s pissed off, he´ll need a whole load of it." She said as they started to move the TV set up against the wall. They needed a lot of space for everyone to fit in. "I still think we should have done this show at Ducky´s house -there´s enough room."

"There´s his mother. You know how she would start asking you if you were dating her son..." Tony said and she cringed inwardly. He grinned as he threw four large cushions onto the floor. "This should do. I´ll go ahead and order our food. They should be here in about half an hour. Can you put the beer into the freezer for just a few minutes? I can´t fit all of it into the fridge." He picked up the phone and started to rattle off a long list of food to the guy at the restaurant.

The doorbell rang and Kate opened. Outside were Abby and McGee, both grinning widely. "I got us some ice cream." Abby said and went ahead to put it into the freezer after giving Kate a brief hug. McGee walked to the TV and checked all cables to make sure they wouldn´t have problems there. He knew that Tony was sometimes a bit brief about technical issues.

Next to arrive were their directors. Both Tom Morrow and Jenny Shepard seemed to be in a good mood as well. Kate had been a bit hesitant about having her superiors in on this, but when Shepard pulled out a large bag of homemade cookies, the ice seemed broken. Everyone settled down after Jimmy Palmer had made it as well. They had asked Ducky to come in last, just to make sure they had enough witnesses to keep Gibbs there. He would try to get away as soon as he saw them.

At 8:05 pm, the doorbell rang again and Tony could already hear his boss complaining. "You said nothing about Dinozzo´s place, Duck." He heard before he opened the door and let them in.

"Good evening, Anthony. Are we still on time?" Ducky asked and winked at the younger agent.

"Sure are, come on in. We were just waiting for the two of you." He closed the door and locked it, just in case. "Food is in the kitchen, beer is in the fridge, just help yourself."

Gibbs put his coat on hanger before following Mallard through the hallway into the livingroom. He wondered briefly why Mallard seemed to know his way around here rather well. He had never mentioned being to Dinozzo´s place before. His jaw dropped slightly when he entered the livingroom, finding half of NCIS sitting there. When he tried to turn around and leave, someone grabbed his sleeve. "Hello to you too, Jethro. Why don´t you grab some food and sit down."

He had to look twice when he noticed Director Morrow smiling at him. Something was odd today, very odd. "Dinozzo..." He said in a low voice, but just received a grin as an answer.

"Everyone settled? I did some editing on the whole thing this afternoon, just to make it look at bit better. And in case someone should wonder, no it´s not computer processed, this is real material." McGee said as he turned on the TV and sat down next to Abby.

A title screen came on. Kate stiffled a laugh when she read it. "Probationary Confusion. Hell, that´s great, Tim." She told McGee who seemed to blush a bit, but it was too dark to be sure. Gibbs sat on a cushion between her and Tom Morrow. She noticed that he was looking at her and smiled. "Just enjoy the movie." She told him, but he seemed rather hesitant.

When the first picture came on, everyone grinned, well everyone except for Gibbs, who was obviously confused. There was a clock on the upper lefthand corner, showing 9:00 am. Ducky walked into the picture and handed out coffee to everyone in the room. The sound on the tape was crystal clear and he suspected that there had been audio devices hidden somewhere. When he was about to turn around and ask something, he felt a hand on his arm.

He met Kate´s eyes and somehow it calmed him down again. When he saw himself falling asleep on the desk, he was a bit puzzled. There was music now, like in one of those old films Ducky loved to watch. Everything seemed to be fast forwarded for a moment until the clock read 9:28 am. He noticed that the office had changed and suddenly understand. "Dinozzo..." He growled, but everyone shushed him to be quiet.

For about 90 minutes, he was forced to relive his nightmare again, only that he now knew it hadn´t been a nightmare after all. When the credits were rolling over the screen, he still stared at the TV while everyone else started to applaud. "Wow, great job, Tim. That looks so professional." Tony said and Gibbs noticed the use of McGee´s first name.

Confused, he looked at Ducky, who was wiping tears from his face. "This was indeed quite amusing. Thank you for letting me be part of it." He told Tony and grinned.

Jenny Shepard seemed equally amused and turned to Gibbs. "You have a wonderful team there, Jethro. I doubt that anyone would have thought about doing something like this to me ever. They must really like you a lot." She said and all agents suddenly found something very interesting somewhere else to look at.

Gibbs thought for a moment, then got up. "See you tomorrow." He told all of them and simply walked out of the door. He could literally hear the questioning looks behind him, but didn´t turn around. When he reached the street, he realized that he didn´t have his car with him, but somehow that didn´t matter. Tony´s place was about five blocks from where he lived and it was a nice evening. He started walking down the road, smiling. Tomorrow he would make sure that McGee pulled him a copy of that DVD. He wasn´t sure why, but he started to like April 1st somehow.

END