Gibbs stepped out of the elevator and headed for his desk. He saw Tim look up as he approached, the blood draining from his face as he leapt unsteadily to his feet.

'B...B...Boss...'

'Well done, McGee,' he told the younger man bluntly, hoping to head off the panic attack he saw looming.

Tim just stared at him dumbly for a long moment.

'You put Tony on his ass today, didn't you?'

Tim flushed.

'Uh, yeah, Boss. I... uh...'

'Good job. I'm glad to see all those sessions in the gym paid off.'

'But... I... it was... you said... uh... fighting with... uh...'

Gibbs sighed.

'Tim, did you know that it was DiNozzo?'

'Uh, no, Boss... but...'

'No buts, McGee. It was a crime scene. Someone grabbed you from behind. You reacted. Sounds to me like you did exactly what you've been trained to do. What you were supposed to do. It's not your fault that Tony was acting like an idiot.'

Tim stared at his feet.

'Ducky said pretty much the same thing...'

'But you didn't believe him.'

'No. Uh...'

'You weren't trying to hurt Tony. Why would you think that I'd punish you for it?'

'Because I should have known that it was the kind of thing he would do, and not...'

'Tim, if you didn't bother defending yourself, because you assumed it was just one of Tony's pranks, and it wasn't him...'

Gibbs trailed off, letting Tim make the connection on his own.

'Dammit, Tim... I made sure you developed that reflex! Why the hell would I punish you for using it? Don't ever second-guess yourself about something like this. It might save your life someday.'

Tim nodded slowly, his eyes wide.

'Seriously, Tim. I don't want you putting yourself in danger because you're afraid of a spanking. If this is going to be a problem...'

'No, Boss,' Tim interrupted. 'I... it won't happen again.'

Gibbs eyed him carefully for a few moments. He wouldn't hesitate about never spanking the younger man again, if it came to that. The whole point was to keep Tim safe. If his discipline was having the opposite effect, then something would have to change. Tim seemed sincere, but he'd keep an eye on him all the same.

His scrutiny of McGee was interrupted by Tony's arrival. He suppressed a grin as Tim's eyes grew wide in surprise. Tony's face was still red, and he was moving in a way that made it obvious that he'd been punished for his ill-conceived joke.

'I'm sorry, Tim. I should have acted like a senior field agent instead of like the annoying older brother you never had. Time and place and all that. From now on I'll only be a pain in the ass when we're not in the field.'

Gibbs caught Tony looking over at him, clearly trying to gauge his reaction to the irreverent 'apology'. Seeing Tim's thin smile, he decided it was exactly the right tone to strike under the circumstances, and he nodded almost imperceptibly.

Tony breathed an obvious sigh of relief and turned around, taking a step back towards the elevator.

'Ok, well, I'm heading home...'

'No.'

Tony spun in place, looking confused.

'Uh... Boss? Ducky said...'

'DiNozzo, there is no way in hell that you are driving yourself home with that wrist...'

'Uh, ok... I'll call a cab...'

'Tony, you are not staying alone with a possible concussion...'

'I don't have...'

'...or when you're loopy on pain killers.'

'Ducky didn't give me anything stronger than aspirin, Boss.'

Gibbs held up a small square of paper. He'd picked it up from Ducky before coming upstairs.

'I've got your prescription right here, DiNozzo. We can stop at the pharmacy on the way home.'

Tony grinned, obviously pleased enough by the prospect of relief from the pain in his butt as well as his wrist to have already forgotten the argument about whether he would be allowed to stay alone.

'My home,' he added, almost laughing at the way the younger man's face fell. 'It's not a debate, DiNozzo.'

'Yes, Boss,' Tony conceded, with an overly dramatic grimace and a loud sigh.

'Join us for pizza, Tim, if you don't have plans. You can set up that projector thingy...'

Gibbs waved his hand vaguely. Tim and Tony had turned up at his place once, armed with a laptop and some kind of gizmo that projected the screen onto the wall of his living-room, insisting that he wasn't going to watch the PBS documentary he'd mentioned, about one of his old Marine buddies, on the tiny TV in his basement.

'...put a movie on...'

Tim hesitated, obviously unsure about spending the evening hanging out with the man who, just a few minutes earlier, he'd believed was about to take a leather strap to his bare ass.

'C'mon, man, don't leave me alone with him all night,' Tony cajoled, with a sideways nod in Gibbs's direction.

Gibbs glared at him, his hand twitching.

'Concussion, Boss. No head-slaps allowed,' Tony reminded him with a smug grin.

Gibbs raised one eyebrow, then reached out and swatted his agent hard across the backside. Tony yelped dramatically and danced away, out of reach.

He was relieved to see Tim chuckling at his partner's antics. Any concern that the day's events might produce lasting tension between the two men evaporated. Tony had been right. It really was like sibling roughhousing, and the two 'brothers' were apparently already ready to move on.

'Uh, sure, Boss. What do you want to watch?'

'Why don't you pick, Tim?'

'Oh, c'mon, Boss! You let McGeek choose the movie, and we're going to end up watching Star Trek or...'

Gibbs silenced him with a hard look.

'Hey! That's right! I think the movie collection is still in the trunk of my car! Abby and I were planning to watch a couple of them, and then we got called out on the Patterson case and I forgot... Boss? d'you mind...'

'Go get her, then,' he said, anticipating the question. 'I'm going to go get Tony's meds. Meet us at my place.'

Tim scurried off, obviously excited, to catch Abby before she left her lab for the day. Gibbs crooked a finger at Tony and headed towards the elevator. So much for an evening with his boat and his bourbon, he thought.

To his surprise, he realised that he didn't mind at all.

A/N: Yeah, yeah... the pics in the latest TV Guide have a TV in Gibbs's living-room. I'm relying the scene in Left for Dead where Tony says, "Boss, I know the Farm Report when I hear it. You've only got one TV, and it's in your basement".