Hi, everyone! Time for another chapter!

Thanks to quintawrites for pre-reading for me, and thanks to the reviewers on the last chapter - Troubled-Angel-26, Luvreading67, Sarai, Loads of Randomness, Suzy Q1068, and didemi!

Enjoy!

...

PUNCH

"Answers. Now."

Abby and Tim exchanged a look of shared agony before they turned to Gibbs.

"Still nothing?" he asked in nigh disbelief. His two computer geniuses were struggling on this case, sure, but he had been hoping for something - anything! - to give them a start on locating where this suspect was currently located.

"We're sorry, Gibbs," Abby said, shamelessly breaking his rule on behalf of herself and Tim.

"Don't apologize, Abs. Just get me answers," Gibbs ordered before turning and leaving the lab.

"He must be pretty worked up over this. He didn't even get me a Caf-Pow!," Abby observed.

"Well, at least he didn't head slap me, so he must not think it's entirely our faults," Tim mused, blinking hard and trying to stop seeing spots whenever he looked at the screen.

"Want me to go get us Caf-Pows!?" Abby asked, twiddling her fingers in an anxious caffeine low. "Regardless of if Gibbs thinks I earned one, I need one."

"I'll go get them," Tim said, standing up from the stool he had been sitting on. The lack of back support was clear as his back crackled a little as he stretched. "I can't see straight anymore. I need a break before I can focus."

"Then you go. I'd like to go with you, but if Gibbs comes back and neither of us are here working on this ..." Abby left the rest unspoken. Tim nodded in agreement.

"I'll be back soon. It shouldn't take long."

...

The line was long and Tim was not exactly in a hurry. He bought himself a muffin to extend the time he could spend away from the lab, as Abby was anti-crumbs in her hallowed space of science. He ate the muffin slowly, his eyes closed between bites, trying to restore his vision. Then he rejoined the line to buy the Caf-Pow!s, but by the time he got there the large cups were gone. Knowing that Abby would be displeased, he got three mediums - one for himself and two for her - and then carefully balancing them headed back to the lab, where he was immediately accosted by a glaring Abby.

"Took you long enough, McGee," she snipped, grabbing the two containers destined for her. "And they always taste better in the bigger containers."

"That makes no sense!" Tim protested.

"Oh, want to know what else doesn't make sense, McGee?" Abby replied tartly. "How a ten minute Caf-Pow! run took you half an hour. Gibbs was wondering that too, McGee, something that I'm sure he'll mention to you next time he's in, probably with a head slap. It'd better be a good one."

"Abby!" he squawked.

She turned and glared at him, and he recognized the smudging of her mascara. She had been crying a little. He breathed out long and waited for a moment to compose himself before asking, "What happened?"

"Gibbs came. He asked where you are and I told him and then he got annoyed and said my addiction - can you believe he called it an addiction?! - anyway, the Caf-Pow! stuff was getting in the way of your work, and then I said that if he had brought me one when he came already then you wouldn't have had to leave and so really it was his fault..."

Tim winced, guessing where this story was going.

"And he said I needed to fix the attitude and I said that there wasn't an attitude and he said fix it or else and I said that if he'd just keep up his end of the Caf-Pow!s then there'd never be anything that even looks like an attitude even though there definitely wasn't one, and then he said not to expect any Caf-Pow!s until after I changed the attitude and ..."

Abby stopped short and rubbed her bottom, swallowing hard. Tim could fill in the rest. He hugged Abby.

"It's okay, Abs. Hey! Oww!"

He let go of Abby and pulled back. "You punched me!"

"I don't want your sympathy! I just want it to be fair," Abby grumped, turning her back on Tim as she went back to work.

Tim frowned at her.

"It isn't all my fault."

"I don't care," Abby grumbled, glaring pointedly at the screen of the computer, trying to break the code by the force her concentration.

"Well, if you want fair, then we each get one and a half Caf-Pow!s," Tim argued.

"No! I get two because you took so long," Abby argued loudly and passionately.

"I paid for them!"

"Don't care. These two are for me. Hey! You can't do that!" she yelled in her frustration as Tim tried to take one of the containers from her to "fairly" split it. This frustrated Abby further, who was already fueled by too much bluelight and too little caffeine and sleep.

"I can take it if I want to ... oww! I told you, no more punching!" Tim yelped.

Abby twirled away with two Caf-Pow!s, then circled back and tried to grab McGee's as an extra irritation. Patience gone, he lightly punched her arm in retaliation, just as he had done multiple times before in their "punching exchanges" while working. This time, though, it startled her and she ended up splashing Caf-Pow! onto herself.

"McGEE!" she screeched before stomping off to her inner office, locking the doors behind her while she focused on trying to prevent a stain from appearing on the collar of her shirt.

McGee - banished from being Tim until he regained her favour - glared at her. When she made a face at him, he regressed to juvenile retaliation and made one back before turning back to the computer. He knew he had a head slap coming and he wanted it to not be too bad.

...

Abby's wish was granted. The head slap was hard and made Tim wince and his eyes tingled with aggravated tears.

"Stop disappearing," Gibbs growled.

"I needed a break," Tim mumbled. Gibbs raised an eyebrow and Tim explained a little louder, "I needed a break, Boss. I needed to be able to see straight."

"If you take a break, take a break. Don't just leave for drinks and then not come back when expected," Gibbs said firmly.

"Understood, Boss."

Gibbs leaned forward and looked at Tim's arm.

"What happened there, McGee? You're a bit bruised."

Tim was silent and Gibbs sighed. He walked over to Abby, who had reappeared when Gibbs arrived to avoid looking like the two were sulkily ignoring each other ... which was pretty much the truth of the matter. Gibbs took her and spun her around to look at her arm. Seeing the matching bruising on her too, he shook his head a little.

"I thought I told you both to stop the poking and pinching."

"We didn't," they chorused.

"Then what? Punching again?" he asked speculatively, having seen the marks before during cases where the two got competitive. The silence spoke and he shook his head. "I said no more."

"We didn't!" they chorused again with more frustration than agreement. As annoyed as they were with each other, they still did not want to get in trouble for fighting.

"Last warning," Gibbs said firmly, then motioned back at the screens. "Back to work."

He left the lab, then hesitated next to the elevator, far enough out of sight that the two could not see him but that he could still listen for any sounds of scuffling.

"Told you he'd give you a head slap!" was Abby's triumphant half-whisper.

"Well, he gave you a swat earlier, so it's not like he thinks you're some angel," Tim was countering.

Gibbs suppressed a sigh and just barely refrained from rolling his eyes.

These kids...

"Look, as long as we don't argue in front of Gibbs we won't get in much trouble, so just don't let him hear you saying those things."

Brilliant, Abs, brilliant.

"Don't let him hear you. You're the one who started it," Tim countered.

"I'm going back to my office and locking the door," Abby argued. She started stomping away.

"Don't forget your Caf-Pow!s," Tim said. Gibbs smiled to himself as he heard Abby stop and trot back in her heeled shoes.

There was a pause, then a reluctant, "Thanks, Tim."

"It's okay."

There was another pause, then an adorably hesitant Abby: "Mind if I stay out here after all?"

"Nope." Despite the monosyllabic answer, Tim's tone was back to his usual friendly timbre.

There was a contented duet clatter of keyboards being tapped and clicked, and Gibbs finally felt at peace. He quietly headed to the stairs, not wanting the elevator's ding to draw attention to the fact that he had been listening to his two kids to prevent any more arguing.

...

Hope you enjoyed! I hope to have more soon. ;)