Ziva should have known that their trip to that Christmas tree farm wouldn't be the end of things. In the short time she had been in America she had never seen an undecorated Christmas tree. Is that what made it a Christmas tree? The decorations? Probably.

Anyway, that's what needed to happen to the tree they picked up the other day. It had been safely delivered to the office, all wrapped up. Yesterday evening some of the maintenance staff had undone the strings to let it "fall out", whatever that meant and today it could be decorated.

And the decorating of this tree suspiciously fell to them. Privately, Ziva thought Abby had a hand in that. She tended to do so for these sorts of things. But it beat having to do the seemingly endless supply of cold cases so she was not going to complain. The baubles and lights were quite pretty, though they didn't look a bit odd set against the garish orange walls. At least Jenny had decreed that the lights were never allowed to be set to the 'flashing' setting because that was just far too much. And extremely annoying. Who even liked lights turning rapidly on and off like some over-enthusiastic child discovering light switches for the first time?

Ziva had been handed the box of baubles and instructed to put them on the tree. Which she was quite happy to do as it meant that she did not have to struggle with untangling the incredibly long string of lights. No, that task had been given to Tony because he had said something inappropriate and Jenny had deemed that his punishment. He couldn't foist it onto McGee either because Jenny had decided that they needed supervision which was probably a good call. Ziva had already threatened Tony with the baubles and Tony had somehow managed to lasso someone from HR with the lights.

"Why is it only McGee who can behave?" Jenny asked in exasperation.

"Because he's boring?" Tony suggested looking decidedly flushed after thoroughly apologising to the disgruntled HR person.

"Because I'm staying out of things and getting my job done," McGee corrected.

"You are up a ladder," Ziva agreed.

Definitely a good way of staying out of things.

She looked down at the box of baubles she had been provided with a lifted out two red ones. Should a sparkly one go on next or a striped? Ziva hated glittery things, she didn't do glitter but Abby loved it and she had been the one to supply the baubles because of course she had a random supply of them.

"I still think we should have gone for red, white and blue," Tony commented. "You know, a tried-and-true patriotic design."

"Red and gold are the colours of the Marine Corps flag," Jenny said patiently, in a tone that implied that she had explained this before.

Which she had. Several times. Gibbs had stated that if she had to explain it then the point was kind of lost but her glare had shut him up and the tree was going to be in red and gold. Ziva had no complaints, they were quite lovely colours, all warm and inviting. Except for the glitter, of course.

"I wonder if the CIA puts Christmas decorations up?" Tony wondered. "Do they do it all in black?"

"I would have thought that's what the Secret Service did," Ziva couldn't help but joke.

They were always in black every time she saw them. Especially those blank sunglasses of theirs.

"Nice one," Tony complimented.

"DiNozzo, have you got anywhere with those lights yet?" Jenny asked. "Everyone else is working except for you."

Tony pulled a face at Ziva but when he turned around to Jenny, he had a smile on his face.

"Nearly."

Jenny was not impressed by this so Tony hurriedly got back to his task. And then not five minutes later got distracted again.

"McGee, that is not how you drape tinsel!"

"Then why don't you do it?" McGee said in exasperation, throwing down the end of tinsel he had been holding.

"I will," Tony said stubbornly, climbing up the ladder McGee was perching on.

"Wait, Tony," McGee said in alarm.

"Don't worry, McNervous, I'm not going to climb over you or anything."

Tony was given a look before he just sighed and let Tony do what he wanted. He was already directly below McGee anyway.

"Pass it here," Tony directed.

McGee dropped one of the ends making it land in Tony's face. Now that was definitely a deliberate action and Tony knew it too and gave McGee a glare which McGee promptly ignored.

"See, you just have to lean forwards a bit and-"

Tony's leaning forward involved him only having one foot and one hand on the ladder while his other foot was in mid-air and his other hand was waving the tinsel about. Tony's hand swung back and forth once, twice and then he threw the tinsel in an effort to get it where he wanted it to go. Which did not work. The whole piece got all bunched up on one side.

This meant that Tony felt like he had to fix this. And he did that by leaning as far as he could off the ladder in order to try and grab the end of the tinsel that was out of reach.

That, of course, tip-toed everything off balance. And when things were off balance, they tended to...

'CRASH!' went Tony and McGee right into the tree. Quickly followed by the tinkling noise of shattering ornaments. Wow, those made an awful lot of mess. There was a cloud of glitter hanging around everything as well. It had even got into Tony's hair; he was not going to like that.

The tinsel drifted down on top of the two men like some sort of sparkly scarf. The two men look incredibly sorry for themselves.

"Does this mean we have to go to that tree farm again?" Ziva asked.