Chapter 4 - The Nips are getting bigger

To McGee's horror, the 'Fried Green Graduate' case, as Tony had taken to calling it, resulted in him being sent into the far reaches of Abby's lair for an entire day. From the moment he entered the lab things rapidly descended to all out hostility for no discernable reason and he found himself on the end of a lot of arguments that he didn't even understand.

By lunchtime he had resolved to work in silence only exchanging the minimum information required to get the job done. Abby was still abusing him but he literally gritted his teeth and ignored her. By the time he called it a day, his entire jaw was aching and he felt completely drained of energy.

Despite his exhaustion, sleep evaded him and after tossing a turning for an hour or so, he got up and wondered around his apartment.

He gave up working on his novel when all he could think about was morbid death scenes involving Goth types stabbed through the heart. Instead, he sat in front of his computer and did some thinking. Didn't his old boss say he was welcome back anytime? Well it was time. There was simply no point in staying somewhere where he felt so unwelcome. He would gladly take a pay cut to get out of this place. Sighing resolutely, he started up his email.

The next day he walked in with his backpack across his shoulder and went straight to Gibbs. He knew what to expect and was not disappointed.

"Lab," said Gibbs without looking up.

McGee pivoted on his heel in silence and headed for the elevator.

The jaw clenching trick seemed enough to keep him sane but the lack of sleep was threatening to make him tetchy. Every time he felt the urge to explode, he concentrated on his escape plan. This situation would end. He just had to tough it out a little longer and he'd be free.

Just as the stress was becoming unbearable his cell phone rang. He had never before felt such a sense of relief to hear a ring tone.

"McGee, car, now," came Gibbs' curt voice.

"Yes!" in his head he was leaping around the room, in the lab he was muttering "gotta go" in Abby's general direction and shuffling out of the lab.

Gibbs offered him the front seat, relegating Tony and Ziva to the rear. This was a rare privilege and he wasn't sure if it meant he was in for a grilling, Gibbs was feeling sorry for him, or whether it was a long drive and Gibbs had heard of his car sickness. In many ways, he would rather have hid in the anonymity of the rear seat, but refusing the offer was tantamount to mutiny so he accepted with grace.

As they travelled, the conversation was, well, normal. He felt his jaw muscles start to relax for the first time in more than a day. As his stress and adrenaline levels slowly dropped, he realised with alarm that he was exhausted. He was physically and emotionally drained from enforced silence in the lab coupled with almost no sleep last night.

He desperately tried to keep himself awake digging his fingers into his thighs until they hurt. Usually Gibbs' driving was enough in itself to demand wakefulness but his fear of death was competing with a bone weary tiredness that was so bad it made him nauseous. His eyes hurt, his neck ached and he just wanted to crawl into a hole and sleep for a week.

He was pretty sure falling asleep in the converted front seat while the boss was talking to you was a bad career move but then so was throwing up ON the coveted front seat. If he just closed his eyes for a second, maybe the nausea would go away.

"McGee, I need you to give us a run down of academic life," Gibbs started, concentrating on the road. "McGee?"

He glanced over to see McGee slumped sound asleep next to him.

"McGee?" he reached over with one hand and tapped him hard on the shoulder. There was no response.

"Do the screeching stop thing Boss," Tony suggested enthusiastically.

"What is that?" Ziva enquired.

"Oh, it's great! You'll love it," Tony assured her.

"Not this time, DiNozzo," Gibbs replied.

"Boss," Tony whined. "You do it to me all the time."

"Let me ask you this, DiNozzo: How often do you sleep in the car when I'm driving?"

"All the time."

"How often does McGee sleep in the car?"

"Ahh, never."

"Exactly. Besides there are 50 cars around us doing 90 miles an hour."

When they arrived at NRL, Gibbs parked and turned off the engine. McGee was still out cold.

"We could just leave him here," Ziva suggested.

"Oh, no Boss," Tony begged. "We need him in there, you don't know what its like. It's like this sea of geeks. They're like cockroaches, they're everywhere. Don't send us in alone, please Boss."

"Calm down, Dinozzo," Gibbs sighed wrenching the door open and walking around the car to open the passenger door. Gently, he shook McGee's shoulder.

"McGee," he said firmly.

McGee snorted awake and looked around blearily.

"You OK, son?" McGee was surprised to hear genuine concern in Gibbs' voice.

In his head a voice screamed "you left me alone with that she devil for a day and a half and you ask me 'are you OK?'!"

"Um, I'm fine," he mumbled, heaving himself out of the car with Gibbs' help. He swayed for a moment and held onto the car.

"You sure?"

The fresh air was starting to revive him. "Yeah, just a bit drained from working with the energy vampire this morning."

"I hear you," Tony sympathized.

"Let's go."

To Tony's relief, today was the day to interview the supervisors, rather than the students. The sight that greeted him when he walked into the small conference room, however, made him stop in his track. There were eight men, all in their fifties, all bearded, slightly overweight, wearing glasses and at various stages of balding. The T-shirts and jeans were gone but in their place were too tight shirts and ties which were relics from the sixties. 'So this is what geeks evolve into' he thought to himself. He opened his mouth to say something but a little voice told him he should save the comment for the ride home.

The men were in discussion, all leaning back in their chairs with hands folded behind their heads. Identical coffee cups were lined up before them. McGee stopped behind Tony as he entered the door and then stepped around him to enter the room.

"Is this a private interferometer or can anyone join?" he quipped approaching the men.

To Tony's surprise, this caused spontaneous laughter and one of the men arose and extended a hand with a warm "you must be Tim McGee".

Tony caught Gibbs' eye and slowly mouthed the word "scary".

Gibbs smiled and motioned him further into the room. "Look behind them," he said in a low voice.

Tony looked and suddenly all was forgiven. On the bench behind the Druids were three coffee machines. There was a drip filter, a cappuccino maker and even a plunger. These were a people he could understand, a people where 'coffee break' meant the time you weren't indulging in coffee. Even better there were clean cups on the bench just for them.

"Must have known you were coming boss," he replied.

"Help yourself to coffee," came the invitation and Tony almost bolted across the room.

Once they had settled, Gibbs took control. "Do you think you push your students too hard?" he began.

"What sort of metric are you talking about?" came the reply.

"What about student fatalities," McGee offered.

"That's probably a little harsh," the man retorted. "The real world wants graduates to be resourceful and take risks to get the job done. That's what we do."

"Do you regulate that in any way?" asked Gibbs.

"Do you?" came the challenge.

Gibbs sighed. "Ok, I think we're done here. I think this is one for JAG."

He packed up his things as Tony desperately tried to down the last remnants of his coffee.

Back in the car, Gibbs reiterated his question. "McGee, tell us about academic life".

McGee still had the coveted front seat but this time he felt worthy.

"It's a sort of hierarchy with grad students as the serfs. I was once sent out with a group of graduate students to the desert to test cables in waveguides."

"That doesn't sound too bad," came Tony's voice from the back seat.

"Except that the cables were black. There were supposed to be 16 cables per box but because the winter nights were so cold, the local snakes used to live in there to keep warm. So you'd open the box and you'd see like 20 cables and you know that 4 of them could bite you. You had to get pretty good at getting your current levels right. Too much amperage and you fry the cable, to little and the snake wouldn't react."

"Yeack," Tony shuddered.