It's a Long Way Down

by channeld

written: as a fic exchange gift for the 2011 NFA Secret Santa. The prompt given was:

Somewhere between Once a Hero and Leap of Faith, McGee developed a fear of heights. What happened? Was someone else from the team there? Did they realise what happened? The story is up to you.

rating: K plus

author's note: I've reied in incorporate as many relevant canonical points between those two episodes as I could. The rest were made up!

disclaimer: I (still) own nothing of NCIS.

Chapter 1

"For the last, and I mean the very last time, the book is not about you guys!" Now, how many times have I had to say that to them? Ever since that day in mid-November when my sister had let the cat out of the bag about my novel, Deep Six, Tony and Ziva had been hounding me. It bothered me a bit that Ziva, who I had thought was a true friend, harbored all that resentment, but at least she was mostly quiet about it. Mostly. And I could always turn away from her venomous looks. Tony, though, made sure I would hear him, every time.

"I think that's the twenty-seventh time this week that you've said that, McEcho!"

Thank you, Tony, for keeping count. Now, get out of my brain!

"You'd just like to forget that, wouldn't you, Probie?" He rounded my desk, unwilling to let the matter drop. "While you go home at night to your computer, throw a ream of pristine white paper in—"

"I use recycled paper," my mouth said before I could stop it. I hadn't mentioned that I used a typewriter instead of a computer, yet. "It's off-white," I added, my mind churning to life one second behind my mouth, and screaming at it to stop working! It's just going to make Tony say…

"Oh! Excuse me! Your conservation-ness makes it permissible then, McGreen!"

"That's not what I meant!"

He was still at it, and the end of January was approaching. Almost ten weeks had gone by since they'd learned of the book, and he wouldn't let it go. Sometimes he would leave a printout on my keyboard—one of the bestsellers/fiction list. This week Deep Six was number three. He had it circled, as usual.

Gibbs, when he came in, commented on the bags under my eyes. "Spend less time typing, and get more sleep, Skippy," he said, before segueing into the status of our current case.

Tony, who'd just gone back to his chair, shot up like a jack-in-the-box. "You are writing! Again!" he exclaimed, and I realized then that his comments of just a few minutes ago had been a fishing expedition. Now Gibbs' intuition had given Tony ammunition.

"DiNozzo, sit down. Last known address for the sergeant's mother," Gibbs demanded.

I held back a sigh of relief. Safe…for the moment. When we were coming back from Edenvale, aka The Boondocks, the other day, Tony had already accused me of working on a second book. What would he say when he found out I was already halfway done with the sequel to Deep Six?

A few days later Ziva arrived at work earlier than usual. I was already there; Tony and Gibbs weren't. "Have you noticed that Tony is being secretive?" she asked me.

A difficult question to answer. No, I hadn't, but that wasn't the point. I feared that whatever I said would only eventually turn the conversation back to Deep Six. Ziva's anger was making her more like the "emotionally distant Mossad Officer" that was Officer Lisa. But she was waiting for an answer. "Uh…maybe," I said.

"He has two cell phones!" she exclaimed.

I stared at her. "Okay; I'll swear out a warrant for his arrest," I said, reaching for my desk phone.

"That is not what I meant! I was saying, why would anyone do that? Anyone who is not down to something."

"You mean, 'up to something'."

"See? You agree with me! It is suspicious, yes?"

"Are you sure he has two cell phones? Maybe one is an iPod."

"Even drunk, Tony would not mistake his iPod for a cell phone. No, he definitely has two of them! I have seen both at the same time. I am a trained investigator."

"You know, the rest of the world calls them mobile telephones. Only in the US are they called cell phones. I wonder why that is?"

Ziva, as I knew, could be distracted for hours…well, minutes, anyway…by discussion on word use. I hoped this would keep the subject away from me.

No such luck. "You are trying to change the subject," she accused. "Are you in on this, too?"

"I don't even know what this is!"

She got into my personal space. "Well, if you find out…I want to know."

"Okay," I said meekly. But in truth, I was perfectly ready to let Tony lead his own life outside of work. It had nothing to do with me.