This is a birthday present for Velveteen Habit! Enjoy, VH! (This story is AU – after SWAK, but Kate is alive and well.)

It was one of those days when DiNozzo had to keep telling himself that he was an adult, and as an adult, there was no reason to get his feelings hurt by his boss being short-tempered and grouchy boss.

He should be used to it by now, he'd been working for the man close to four years, but for some reason today just wasn't a good day to be the man's scapegoat for whatever had him rattled. He didn't feel good, hadn't since last night, and it made him whiny and want to just lie down and take a nap.

"These need double checkin'." Gibbs ordered, slamming a pile of files down on Tony's desk. "Kate did most of 'em, just need you to sign off on 'em."

Tony cleared his throat without looking up at his boss, and swallowed back a retort.

"Got a problem with bein' SFA today, DiNozzo? Cause I can take care of it now, and you won't be tomorrow."

"No, Boss. No problem." Tony assured quietly. But there was a problem. 'A big ole stick up Gibbs' butt' problem.

Gibbs grabbed his suit coat and coffee and breezed through the bullpen, but not before stopping in front of his second's desk. He had been noticing the off-color of Tony's face and the way the younger man had been avoiding looking him in the eye. The kid was hiding something, and he didn't like it, it put him off his game, and he was already feeling wrong-footed lately.

"You feelin alright, Tony?" Gibbs asked with what looked suspiciously like concern in his recently stormy eyes.

What the...from zero degrees to humid in the span of thirty seconds? Tony huffed a disbelieving grunt, and went back to his files.

"Jus' peachy, Boss. Thanks for askin'." His voice squeaked on the last word, betraying his scratchy throat, and he cleared it again and took a swig of lukewarm tea to try to ease it. Fat chance. It felt like he was swallowing glass, even with the tea. He hoped none of his sarcasm had leaked through along with the squeak. All day long he had felt ragged, and hot, and achy and...now it was almost 18:00 hours and Gibbs was finally noticing? Well, to be fair, how could his boss have possibly known he was too warm, or his entire body ached, or that he just wanted to go lie down and take a nap?

"I'm goin' down to see Ducky, come on with me, he can give you some aspirin er somethin;."

"Boss, I just wanna finish these and go home..."

"With me, DiNozzo, now!" Gibbs bellowed, rousing Tony from his stupor and making him knock his keyboard onto the floor.

Okay, back to the 'Arctic Gibbs', he grumbled to himself, but followed the man after righting his computer equipment.

The elevator ride was silent, at least it seemed that way to Tony. His ears were kind of stuffed up, too, probably one reason why his boss had become short-tempered with him – the man hated having to repeat himself; saying things once was bothersome enough. But Gibbs heard more than he wanted to – a decided wheezing coming from his SFA that he hadn't noticed before. Christ. How long had the kid been doing that? His mind raced with the past few days activities. Had he let Tony work in the rain without thinking? No, he couldn't remember any rain. It had been on the cool side, but not damp. He didn't recall DiNozzo taking any swims trying to retrieve a suspect or evidence and inhaling any water.

What the hell?

"You let Ducky look you over once we get there." he ordered, still looking straight ahead.

"Boss, I -"

"Not up for vote, or discussion. Yer wheezin' like you just ran a marathon."

He was wheezing? God, when had that started? Great. Why not just admit yourself to the hospital now and get it over with?

"Boss, I - don't think I can go through that again."

"Wont' have to." Gibbs stated matter-of-factly. "Just a cold, need some decongestant and some sleep."

In all truthfulness, Gibbs knew he was talking out of his ass. He had no idea whatsoever if Tony just had a 'cold'. After his SFA had decided to join the living and come home from the hospital, Gibbs had all but held the kid hostage in his house to make sure he didn't do anything stupid that would cause him to have a relapse. Only Ducky had known Gibbs' stark terror of losing Tony to the plague, and he swore as long as he lived, no one ever would. He would pace the kitchen floor while Ducky sat patiently at the table, waiting, listening, reassuring the man that DiNozzo had defied the odds and turned the corner of the grim prognosis.

FLASHBACK

"He sounds horrible, Ducky, how can you say he's fine?"

"I did not say he was fine, Jethro, I said he had turned the corner and was out of the woods. Providing he keeps himself warm, dry and out of the water, he should, miraculously, go on to greater things."

This was the first time Gibbs had had a chance to vent, really vent, over the past couple week's harrowing ordeals of spiked fevers, hallucinations, strange drug reactions, and DiNozzo nearly drowning in his own fluids. He remembered how terrified he'd been when Kelly had been little and battling the croup one night, her frightened crying and gasping for air, and he and Shannon struggling to calm her. Fear and crying made the symptoms worse for her, and he'd sat on the edge of the tub cradling her little body to his chest for almost fifteen minutes while the shower ran at its hottest and steamed the small bathroom like a sauna until she could breathe easier again.

He couldn't hold Tony like that, and his condition had been worse than the croup, robbing him of breath to the point of panic attack, and then having to be given a sedative and an oxygen mask. Hour after hour, day after day it had gone on, until Gibbs thought Tony would give up and die just out of sheer exhaustion. Gibbs was exhausted himself, but he had work to do, and that was to be a combination of coach, drill instructor, and all around pain in the ass until DiNozzo was so sick of him,

that he would rise from near death just to be able to throttle his boss for all the harassment the man had dished out to him. In the end, Tony had survived, only to be brought back to Gibbs' place, weak as a kitten, for more TLC, Gunny style. Kate and Abby had despaired at the man's gruff bedside manner, but his gut told him he was giving Tony exactly what he needed, and to coddle him the way they did was the last thing the young man wanted from him. Gibbs kept DiNozzo from doing more than he was capable of just to prove himself, and bullied him into doing the less mundane things, such as eating an entire sandwich at a meal, and going to bed before he got over-tired and then couldn't sleep. Life had been fractious in the House of Gibbs, but fractious was better than the abysmal grief of loss, so Gibbs endured, and consequently, so did his SFA.

Now he was looking at the possibility of repeating those weeks, and like DiNozzo, he just wasn't sure if he had it in him. Ducky had warned him that there was a chance for Tony to relapse even months after recovery, and here they were, on their way down to the M.E as if it were just another visit, as if Gibbs merely wanted the man's opinion on a cold case autopsy. Making things worse, he had been unmercifully nasty to the younger man from the very start of their day, wrapped up in the grip of sad memories that DiNozzo had inadvertently and unknowingly triggered with a look, a flash of a smile along with a request for a hot chocolate with mini-marshmallows. His eyes weren't the same color as Kelly's, but his taste in drinks and the pleading, hopeful grin when he'd asked for it had matched her perfectly.

So he had taken it out on Tony for reminding him of his treasured, deceased daughter, because Gibbs had finally, finally been able to find a long stretch of days when no one said, did, or liked anything his baby girl had. And he had liked it, a lot. He never, ever wanted to forget the child who was so precious to him, but he wanted to think of her on his own terms, when he was strong enough. Drunk enough. Not get blown sideways in the middle of a case. And he had taken it out on him because he knew he could, that the kid would let him go at him all day long until Tony shut down and totally ignored the man unless it was to respond to him in a clipped, tense yes or no, or sometimes just an impatient grunt.

Times like this, Gibbs wondered if he had hired Tony just to have someone who would finally take the crap he dished out and still come back to work the next morning. Then he'd start feeling guilty about that, and that would make him even more short-tempered. And so the vicious cycle went.

All this because Tony had asked for mini-marshmallows, without ever knowing what he'd done 'wrong'.

Once in Ducky's tender care, Gibbs had stepped back and feigned indifference, closely examining x-rays on the wall as if he actually understood what he was looking at. He heard the M.E ask Tony to breathe deeply, and the harsh, hacking bark that had followed, and he cringed inside his brown plaid suit coat, closing his eyes. As if he could block out the memories that sound caused by closing them.

There was subtle murmuring and discussing between the patient and doctor, and more coughing after another deep breath. Ducky left Tony's side to retrieve some bottled water, and Gibbs took the moment to look over at his second. A pasty, slightly frightened face looked up at him, then quickly away, and Gibbs sighed. It didn't look hopeful, he thought.

"Here you are, Anthony, drink as much of it as you can after you take these. I'll have Mr. Palmer run the samples to Abigail, she'll be instructed to analyze them post haste. We should know something in an hour or so. In the mean time, why don't you go lie down on my office couch, you should start feeling the effects of the pills within a few minutes." He assisted Tony off the metal table, and gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. "All will be well, Anthony, you will see." he assured him in a soft voice beyond Gibbs' hearing. He waited for Tony to shamble off to the little room before turning to the other waiting man.

"And what may I do for you, Jethro?" he asked pleasantly enough, though he hardly felt that way at the moment.

"You can tell me what's going on with Tony, has he got the plague again?"

The M.E stood his ground against the force to be reckoned with, but the friend in him understood Gibbs' fire. Incorrigible as the Senior agent was when it came to thinking before acting concerning Tony's feelings, he knew that the man was in over his head with his own feelings about Tony. As much as Gibbs had liked Stan Burley, the younger man had been able to keep work and emotions separate, and his boss was more than happy to follow suit. Then Anthony had come along and blown that set-up right to hell with his damaged-child - swaddled – in - a – titanium - blanket aura and triggered a long dormant gene in Gibbs that he couldn't seem to turn off, no matter how irritated or uncomfortable it made the older man. Tony himself was not that thrilled with the situation, having never had anyone so fiercely protective of him, and it took him awhile to get used to opening himself up to that sort of treatment – trusting male authority figures came hard to him, not made any easier by some less than upstanding bosses when he was a beat cop and then a detective.

But that didn't stop Gibbs from pulling the papa bear card on him, as Abby loved to tease. In fact, DiNozzo presented a particular challenge for him, and the former Marine Gunny had made it his mission to win that particular battle. Even if he lost the war in the end by letting himself get too emotionally invested in the kid.

"I don't know, Jethro, that remains to be seen. While not highly probable, it is highly possible. And I'll not stand here and give details you 're not privy to. Suffice to say that that boy should be home sleeping and drinking plenty of fluids, at the very least."

"And at the most?"

Ducky knew what Gibbs was asking. Were they destined to have another agonizing go – round in Bethesda with a medieval bug that had no business still being in existence, let alone wreaking havoc in his SFA's lungs?

"We shall take it one step at a time, Jethro."

"I swear I didn't make 'im work in the rain or cold, Ducky, and he hasn't fallen into any water that I know of."

"Relax, Jethro, I doubt it was anything you did or didn't do. The air is rife with all manner of germs this time of year, he could have merely contracted a simple rhino virus. Abigail's tests should confirm or deny, and we will work from there. If Anthony was run-down or under undue stress, it would be much easier for him to be susceptible to viral infections. It seems that whatever it is, it was caught in its early stages, and will therefore make things easier on all of us. Go now, I'll keep an eye on him and let you know when the test results are done. I'll of course first discuss them with Anthony, and what he chooses to share with you, I will relay the information as soon as I'm able."

Lost in thought, he stared into space for a while longer before turning towards Ducky's small office and watched the sleeping figure curled up on the too-small couch.

"It'll be a battle royal getting him back to the hospital if he has to go." he told the M.E quietly as he gazed at Tony.

"He will go where you tell him to go, Jethro." Ducky replied sotto voce. "And I will not send him there unnecessarily as you well know. Let him sleep here for a while while Abby runs the his tests."

Gibbs nodded, turned on his heel, and strode out of the lab, and the M.E sighed heavily, a bit apprehensive himself as to what the next several days would bring. He had spent nearly as much time at Tony's side as Gibbs had during the dreadful plague recuperation, and shuddered to think of having to witness that sort of suffering for the young man and his boss again. Well, there was nothing for it that was what ailed the agent, they would have no choice but to suffer through it again. Shaking his head, he returned to his work, and kept an ear out for any sounds of distress from Tony.

Less than fifteen minutes later, Gibbs was coming back through the door, loaded down with a cardboard container of pastries, hot drinks and file folders. He opened a box of donuts for Ducky to choose from, handed him a steaming cup of his favorite tea just the way he liked it, and retreated with the rest to the little office to join his sleeping SFA. Very quietly he parked himself in the small armchair across from the couch, and made to wait for Tony's test results with a couple of fresh 'brews' and some crullers. He tried to relax a little, knowing that the situation was under control now, and Ducky would know what to do. A situation, he reminded himself once again, was steeping right under his nose and he was too busy being a jerk to notice. He took a slug of coffee and leaned back in the chair to peruse the files, but ended up instead simply watching his second sleep. Another half hour later, and Ducky came to the office door.

Gibbs stood up to go talk to him, but the M.E made his way into the cramped room instead.

"You might as well both hear this together, Jethro. Abby's tests show that it's not a relapse."

Tony's eyes blinked open as he heard Gibbs let go a loud, long-held breath.

"It is however, a very nasty case of streptococcal pharyngitis."

"Strep throat, Ducky?" Tony squeaked out, trying to rise to a sitting position on the couch and getting tangled in the afghan Gibbs had thrown over him.

"I was doubtful of it at first as strep symptoms normally do not include coughing, but I believe that in your particular case it's more likely to happen. You will get started immediately on a course of antibiotics for it, we will take no chances. Abigail is on her way now to retrieve them from the corner pharmacy. You will also take over-the-counter pain and fever reducers, which she is picking up along with the Amoxicillin. Plenty of rest; sleep, preferably, and as much liquid as you can tolerate to keep your respiratory system moving and loose. You will stay with Jethro until I say otherwise, or he will stay with you. It is for the two of you to work out."

If Tony had ideas of protesting any or all of what Ducky had just said, all thoughts of it left his head at the strange look his boss was giving him. And the fact that his throat hurt too damned much to say anything. He closed his eyes and slid back down onto the sofa pillow, and Gibbs once more arranged the afghan around him.

"That's it, Duck? No hospital check over or x-rays?"

"Not at this point, Jethro. Granted, this is serious enough, considering his recent history, but unless things worsen for him, he will just be miserable with his symptoms for a few days and it should run its course with the help of the penicillin."

Gibbs relaxed his shoulders a bit as he sat back into the armchair again, and the older man smiled at his visible relief.

"I will call you when he wakes up and you can take him home. I would arrange a few days off rotation if possible, none of you have had time off in weeks, and that in itself has contributed to his current state."

"Got it, Ducky. I'll go talk to Morrow, he'll be fine with it once I explain the situation. Have Abby call me when she gets back, I'll send her out for groceries, I'm down to crackers and beer."

The M.E shuddered at the last part of Gibbs' statement as the agent slipped past him to head back upstairs, but he knew that the Goth would do right by Tony and find just the right foods that she and Gibbs and Kate could force down the young man's sore throat.

-00-

Gibbs was just signing off on the last of his paper and computer work when his cell rang, with Ducky reporting that 'young Anthony' was awake and awaiting transport to his boss's couch. He snapped the cell closed and turned to Kate.

"We're done here, Tony's ready to go home."

"I'll stop by later, gotta run a few errands."

"Sounds good."

"You can't keep running him into the ground, Boss, this is from having no sleep for like, weeks."

"I know."

"And he was sick all day and you were still nasty to him."

"I know."

Gibbs knew she had been as worried about her partner's health situation as he had, and was determined to protect him even if it was from her own boss, so he let it slide, in fact, he was just a little bit proud of her for doing it.

"So you're gonna apologize to him for being such a bastard when you knew he didn't feel well."

"Don't push it, Kate."

"I'm just saying...we could all use some down time before we end up sick."
"Taken care of." Gibbs stated smartly as he powered down his computer. "Off rotation for four days. Should be enough time for us to get DiNozzo back on his feet enough to pull desk duty."

"Four days? All of us?"

"You can thank Tony for that. Morrow about had a stroke when I told him the kid was sick again."

"Hmmff. Somehow I don't think he'll appreciate the gratitude." She grabbed her coat and purse and headed for the elevator. "I'll bring dinner."

"Abby's got it, I sent her for groceries."

"Great. I'll help cook dinner."

Gibbs smiled and caught up with her, thinking it was too bad it had taken the plague to get their odd little group to find how much they actually enjoyed each other's company. He'd even let the guy Tony called McGeek come to dinner with Abby a few times, and was considering utilizing the kid's mad computer skills if he could make some sort of arrangements with McGee's present field office.

Down at the M.E's lab, Abby was ecstatic to find out about the team's days off, and even though she wouldn't enjoy the same mini-vacation as them, she knew she would have a captive audience at Gibb's place when she was done with her work day.

"Take him home and put him on that atrocity you both call a sofa." Ducky ordered, handing Gibbs the bag of drugs from the pharmacy and a new bottle of water. "Start a fire in the grate, tuck him in, and let him sleep some more. He has already had some Amoxicillin, he should have some soup before he goes to bed for the night. He won't eat a lot, so don't try to force him to. Just make sure he keeps some sort of food and liquid in him or the meds will make him more nauseous than he is already."

Gibbs grabbed the bag and water bottle and stuffed them into his pocket, then gave Tony a light shove towards the door.

"I'll stop buy later to take his temperature and give him a general look over, Jethro. No detours on the way home, I want him put to bed straight away. It's where he should have been all day if either of you had had the sense that God gave geese."

The lead agent harrumphed as he guided an unusually quiet DiNozzo out the door and to the elevator, and vowed that from now on he would try to be more vigilant concerning his SFA's talent at hiding even physical symptoms so well. He had thought Tony had simply shut down from being the target of Gibbs' sour mood. Well, now his boss was paying for it by having to listen to Ducky, Abby and Kate's none-too-subtle accusations of mistreatment of their friend, besides feeling pretty guilty himself, which he would never admit to. And now he had to look forward to four days of down time keeping a grouchy and recalcitrant DiNozzo confined and properly fed and drugged, instead of being able to work on his boat like he had hoped to do during his next time off. Tony would call it instant karma. Gibbs just called it stupidity.

TBC