Chapter 2: Nerd-fish Out of Water Part 2

That Same Morning at NCIS…

McGee pulled into the parking lot at FBI headquarters and walked in and went through security, then, after wandering around for a while, trying to figure out where he was supposed to go, he asked them where he was supposed to go, and they directed him toward an elevator off to his left and told him to go to the fifth floor. The walls around him were a bluish-gray, cold, detached, professional, not the warm, welcoming orange of NCIS. Up until now he had actually disliked the walls on the third floor of NCIS, his whole team had even suggested, when the building had been blown up and they had to redo a lot of it, that it change. It had been the director who had vetoed that idea. Now though, he was sure that after this experience, he would never even think a complaint about the orange walls again. On the ride up the elevator, he tried to compose himself. He didn't want to walk in there looking or sounding sacred, because if he gave into the fear he'd start stuttering like an idiot.

Please…please don't let anything else go wrong today… He thought to himself. Then he heard the small Ding of the elevator, signaling that he had reached the floor he'd requested. He got out, and headed for the glass doors that led into the Behavioral Analysis Unit. The glass doors were locked tight, so he slid his ID badge through the key-reader, but it lit up bright red, and the screen read out "Access Denied".

"Oh come on!" He railed. He calmed himself down and tried it again. It didn't work. He had been told that his NCIS ID should work, temporarily authorized for the next two weeks. So why wasn't it working?

"Come on door… open… please…? I'm going to be late if you don't let me in…" he said, tugging right on the door handles.

"Is there a problem?" Came a familiar melodic voice. That's when he saw her, he knew it was her, he just couldn't believe it.

"Penelope?!" he exclaimed in surprise.

"Tim? Is that you?" Garcia asked.

"Black Queen?" he asked tentatively.

"Elf Lord?" She responded, in a mixture of elation and surprise.

"Yeah…yeah it's me…"

"Tim… oh my God, how long has it been since I've seen you outside of cyber space?" Garcia asked.

"About eight years, since we figured out that we were living in the same city and decided to meet for coffee and a sandwich at that little 24-hour diner after we both got off at one in the morning…"

"That feels like forever-ago…" she replied.

"I know…"

"Wait, so you're the agent from NCIS who's going to be here for the next two weeks?" she asked.

"Well yes, but only if I can get through this door… the lock won't accept my ID for some reason…"

"Oh that's my fault, I haven't gotten the temporary authorization done yet… sorry about that…I'll do that right now…"

"Thank you…"

"You're welcome… thank you for being the new person, saves me the time of running an unauthorized deep background check…" She told him as she typed away at her tablet screen.

"Excuse me?"

"What? I'm not just gonna let some strange new person travel with my family and not find out who they are…" She replied. "You're in…"

"Thank you…" he said gratefully.

"It was my pleasure Elf Lord…" She told him, holding the door open.

But he didn't go through.

"Oh no… ladies first my queen…" He replied, holding it open for her.

"Always the gentleman…" She replied, as they both headed in.

The BAU looked surprisingly similar to the NCIS office, just, larger and busier, which made sense. NCIS had one field team per major city, the BAU was a specialized unit that only worked out of Quantico, they had several teams working out of this place, and in terms of field agents their teams were slightly larger too.

Again McGee was faced with the dilemma of not knowing where to go. He couldn't wander around like a creeper, looking at everyone's work area until he found the right one, but he couldn't just pick at random and take a seat either, he felt like a complete idiot.

"Tim…" Penelope said, breaking into his private thoughts and dragging him back to the here and now. "You're over there…" She told him, pointing toward Reid's desk.

"Ah… there we go… thank you…you just saved my hide a second time…"

"That's kind of my job around here… unlike you, I'm still a technical analyst. I also handle resources… You should meet the rest of the team. Morgan, Rossi, and Hotch, our unit chief, are all in their offices upstairs…"

"You guys have separate offices?" McGee asked in surprise.

"Some of us do… Rossi just kind of has one, Hotch has one because he's our unit chief, and Morgan has one because he took over for Hotch, temporarily at one point…why? You guys don't at NCIS? Not even you're unit chief?"

"No…no Gibbs is down in the bull pen with the rest of us, he prefers it that way. Says it works better if we're all in the same room."

"Huh… well I'll go tell Hotch you're here ok?" she asked, as if sensing his apprehension.

"Ok… see you later…"

Garcia headed up the stairs to Hotch's office where she found him finishing up the reports from the previous case.

She poked her head in and knocked twice on the inside of the door.

"Come in…" he said.

"Good morning Sir." She replied.

"Good morning Garcia."

"Sir, the agent is here from NCIS… I know you said that you wanted to introduce everyone before we did the profile briefing…"

"Thank you…go tell Rossi and Morgan and I'll find Blake and JJ…"

"Yes Sir…"

Morgan and Rossi were in Morgan's office, talking about the whole situation.

"I don't like it Rossi…I just don't like it…"

"Look, nobody likes a group shake-up, but you heard Hotch. It's not our decision to make, and the best thing we can do right now, is accept this agent, play along with what the brass wants, and not make him feel like our frustrations about the whole thing are his fault." Rossi replied.

"I mean seriously, what do we even know about this guy?"

"I know that the Unit Chief he's used to work with, doesn't take crap from anyone, especially his subordinates… I know that he doesn't have the patience to put up with mediocrity and that he would make sure it was ingrained in them. NCIS and FBI handle things differently, and we handle things a little differently than ordinary agents because we're profilers, but we're getting a decent agent. I don't doubt that for a second, and he deserves for all of us to give him a chance."

That's when Garcia popped in and told them that Hotch wanted everyone down in the bull pen.

Tim watched as the rest of the BAU approached, trying, to notice details that allowed him to match faces to the names he'd heard from his cousin's anecdotes over the years.

There was a short blond woman with pretty blue eyes and a kind expression. That must be JJ… he thought. Tall guy with black hair, professional vibe, little to no indication of a sense of humor…so that's Hotch… Let's see, strong-looking, bald, African American, that's gotta be Morgan… which means the older guy has to be Rossi, and the brunette must be Blake…

"Agent McGee…" Hotch called out, drawing him out of his own private thoughts.

"Yes sir?" He responded out of habit.

"I'm Agent Hotchner, your new unit chief, call me Hotch. These are your teammates for the next two weeks, JJ, Morgan, Rossi, Blake, and our technical analyst Penelope Garcia… Welcome to the BAU.