Vacation Part 3
The 3rd day went by without much if any incident, it was nice, 'Thankfully they were acting their proper age again.' Gibbs thought, not that he minded them acting silly when they were in private, but work would be a different, on the job these kids had to be adults. 'So maybe Jen was right, it was good to get them away from work for a little while, let them get all those jittery childish things out of them.'
"Gibbs! Gibbs! Gibbs!" Abby was shouting as she bound down the stairs.
"Abby?" He looked up from his book he hadn't really been reading.
"Gibbs!" she jumped on the sofa next to him.
"What Abby?" he asked her.
"Do you think we could go to the lake today?" she asked with those rather large eyes, whenever Abby was excited her eyes seemed to quadruple in size.
"Sure, Abby, you know you don't have to ask me." He said.
"Oh, but I was meaning all of us, including you."
"Why don't you just go with Tony, Ziva, and McGee? That would be more fun for you guys, you don't want to get slowed down by the old people do you?" he asked her.
Jenny walked in "Speak for yourself on being old Jethro."
"I was just saying it might be better for them to go out on their own without our supervision." He said to her.
"Yea, just keep trying to dig yourself out of that hole." She said as she sat herself on his other side.
"Ok, so I guess you're not going to go with us then?" Abby asked. They both shook their heads 'no.'
After the others left it was rather quite. "Still think this was a bad idea?" Jenny asked him.
"I guess it wasn't as bad as it could have been, everyone is in one piece, no trips to the emergency room, McGee didn't get covered in poison ivy, Ziva didn't snap anyone's neck."
"You have such faith in them." She said.
"So you keep telling me." He said. They sat snuggled up on the sofa for a few hours before deciding to move and make dinner. "Do you know when they were planning on coming back?"
"I'm not really sure, they'll return when they return." She said whilst chopping some vegetables.
"I could have told you that." He said.
They finished making dinner when the children came in, "Gibbs! Gibbs! Gibbs!" seemed to be Abby's favorite cry as of late.
"What Abby?"
"Its McGee! He fell, and its not pretty." She said as McGee was held up with Ziva and Tony on either side of him. Poor McGee, damn poison ivy and he had a pretty bad cut on his forehead.
"So much for no hospital visits." Jenny said trying really hard not to laugh. She grabbed a washcloth and placed it over his wound.
"Car, now." Was all Gibbs had to say, everyone was piling into the car, McGee used to the GPS on his phone to find the closet ER to make sure he didn't need stitches.
"Are you the family of Tim McGee?" a woman in scrubs asked.
"Yea, where is he?" Gibbs asked.
"He's being stitched up." She said.
Abby looked terrified, "Stitched? Is he ok? Was it really that bad? I mean I know it looked bad, but I've seen worse, like this one time I was working in the lab and Ducky got a body and there were several shards of glass poking out of …."
"Abby." Gibbs said slightly irritated. "So doctor, what all was done?"
"He need three stitches, the cut was pretty bad, washed his face up, and gave him a shot to control the swelling and irritation from the poison ivy, also we did some X-rays on his right arm, he has hairline fracture, so he'll need to be in a soft cast for a week or two. Other than that he's fine, you should be able to take him in a few minutes."
"Wait, what is a 'soft cast?'" Gibbs asked.
Tony jumped in, "Oh Boss its like a splint, he can take it off to shower and stuff." Gibbs just stared at him, "It's a good thing, means Probie is fine."
The doctor nodded, "You can fill his prescription upstairs at the pharmacy on your way out."
"Thank you Doctor." Gibbs said. They sat and waited another ten minutes or so for McGee to come out, poor kid looked worse than when they brought him. He looked so sad with his stitches, cast, and over all blotchiness. "Did you get your meds, McGee?"
"Not yet." He said quietly. He felt bad, why was it always him? Why couldn't Ziva get hurt once and a while? That was simple enough she'd never let anything happen, not in her ninja code. And nothing bad could happen to Abby, it would be tragic, Abby's too happy and awesome to ever get hurt, and well there was Tony…Nothing would happen to him simply because if it did they would never hear the end of it. All that left was McGee. Poor McGee defiantly had middle-child-syndrome.
"Let's go then." Gibbs said, then he turned back to Jenny, "Can you manage to get the rest of them in the car ready to go?" she nodded.
Once McGee and Gibbs were safely in the elevator away from the others Gibbs finally turned to him to ask, "What happen? And I want the truth. And if you recall one of the first things Abby said to you, I'm like Santa Claus, I know when you've been naughty." He said with a grin.
"Well Tony and I were hiking."
"And how did you end up at the bottom with a blood coming out of your head?"
"We were just goofing around and we saw Abby and Ziva…." McGee had suddenly found his hands incredibly fascinating.
"Still don't see how you ended up at the fall go boom part."
"So you know how you said we should work together more…" Tim was looking everywhere but at Gibbs. Thankfully the elevator dinged and the doors opened. They walked over to the pharmacy counter and handed the nurse his script.
"McGee, I'm not going to wait all day to find out what happen. Spill or I won't let you have your pain meds."
"Sir, I must impress upon you that Mr. McGee's medication is not something you can…" the nurse said.
"Did I ask you?" Gibbs asked curtly giving her a patent 'Don't talk back to me' glare that made even the manliest men cower in fear. Then he turned his attention back to McGee, "Come on Tim, you're not in trouble, and if it makes you talk faster I offer you immunity for whatever fool-headed stunt you attempted."
"Ok ok ok. So we saw Abby and Ziva and decided it would be fun to pull a prank on them. So Tony thought it would be funny if we made it look like we we're having a huge fight, and so we started to take swings at one another."
"Is that were the bruise on your cheek is from?" he asked.
"No nothing like that, we didn't actually hit one another, that was a rock or a tree stump or something from the fall. Well once Abby and Ziva rushed to break us up, Ziva was a little over-zealous and when she grabbed me and spun me out of the way of the 'fight' I slipped and well you can guess the rest." Poor McGee, he looked even worse now, if that was some how possible. He felt terrible ratting out his friends like that.
"So it was all an accident?" Gibbs asked after a minute or so of watching him squirm. McGee nodded furiously. "Alright then. Lets get you home so you can go to bed." Gibbs said as the nurse handed the meds to him.
After McGee was safely tucked away in bed and the others were watching yet another movie, seriously how many movies could DiNozzo have brought? "Ziva." Gibbs called from another room.
Tony and Abby gave her encouraging looks as she perp walked to the kitchen. "Gibbs?"
"Have a seat." He said, she sat and he passed her a cup of tea, "McGee told me what happen."
"Come on Gibbs, it was an accident, you don't think I would purposefully harm McGee do you?" she sounded panicky.
"Calm down, I know it was an accident." He said before taking a deep swig from his coffee cup.
"Then why call for me?" she asked.
"I wanted to know if you're ok?"
"Of course I'm ok, do you see any blood trails?" she asked.
"That's not what I meant. McGee is hurt, and even if it was an accident it doesn't mean that you wouldn't feel any guilt. Especially sense he had to go to the ER." Gibbs said.
She just looked down at her tea, it was blueberry flavored, tasted just like a blueberry muffin in liquid form, "Who makes this tea? I must get some when we get back." She said trying to avoid the conversation.
'That's my little assassin.' Gibbs thought, 'Emotions aren't her thing, I got that, but she is probably eating away on the inside.' "Celestial Seasonings."
She nodded and they sat in silence, finally she managed to say the thing she never thought she would, "I've killed many men, I've harmed countless in so many ways, but when Tim fell, I don't know. Something was different." She said quietly.
"Its ok Ziver, McGee doesn't blame you. Its his own fault really for trying to play a prank on you." She shot him a confused look, "He and Tony thought it would be funny to 'fight' to see what you and Abby would do."
"Well next time I see Tony swinging at him I'm going to let it happen." She said quietly.
"You do that. Do you want to go finish whatever movie it is now?" he asked her.
"No." She said as she stood up to leave, "Goodnight Gibbs."
"Night, Ziva."
Gibbs sat alone in the kitchen drinking his coffee, several minutes later Jenny came in, "All good?"
"By this time tomorrow, yes, as soon as we are all back in our own homes and beds. We need to get back to something normal." He said into his coffee mug.
"Normal is good, but I had fun with the abnormal." She said quietly.
"You always were a strange one Jen." He said.
Finally the blessed moment arrived, everyone was piled back into the car, they were going home. No one could be as excited as Gibbs, they needed to be back to something normal, they're nice but its good to go home and spend time away from them.
After dropping everyone off at their various homes Gibbs returned to his, and to his one true love, the boat in the basement.
sorry idk if i care for it, but after numerous emails i figured i owed a few people at least something