Friable

Gibbs threw the friable wood away in disgust. It had rotted leaving it soft and easily crumbled. It wouldn’t stand up to anything. He couldn’t use this. He’d have to have a talk with his supplier.

“Hey! Ow!” Tony complained in surprise as the wood hit him and shattered all over him.

Gibbs turned around to stare at Tony, his woodworking apprentice and local disaster. Gibbs sometimes despaired of Tony ever learning how to avoid trouble. If there were bullies around, you could count on Tony to be involved in any fight that happened.

If there was something to trip over, Tony would find it and trip. If there was a disease around to be caught, Tony would catch it. Gibbs couldn’t count the number of times he’d had to nurse Tony back from the flu or a cold, even one memorable time the plague.

Heck they lived in a small town where bombs weren’t plentiful and Tony still managed to find a car with a bomb attached to it. Well to hear Tony tell the tale, Tim had found it and Tony had heroically saved Tim from the bomb. Tim was another woodworking apprentice, though Gibbs knew Tim didn’t have the talent for it.

Tony, on the other hand, occasionally had brilliant flashes of insight and would turn out beautiful furniture or wooden decorations. Of course, he also flubbed up a number of pieces by accidentally stabbing himself when whittling and getting blood all over them. There was a girl in town, Abby, who seemed to buy most of those pieces, so it wasn’t a complete loss.

Gibbs had no idea what she saw in blood covered wood. People had the strangest tastes sometimes. Of course, Tony wasn’t just a human disaster, he was also warm, caring, and loving.

If someone needed help with something, Tony was right there offering help. Most of the time, Tony’s help even didn’t go awry. It was only when Tony was doing things on his own that he ran into disaster, except in the kitchen.

You’d think with all the knives around that Tony would injure himself more in the kitchen, but somehow the kitchen was the one place that Tony had never seriously injured himself. Bumped his head on cabinets a few times, but no serious injuries. Tony made some amazing food, much better than anything Gibbs could come up with.

With all of Tony’s tendencies towards accidents, Gibbs had considered instituting a rule that Tony could only do woodworking when he was present. He’d quickly decided against it, however, aside from the double entendres that Tony would torture him with, it would also make it harder for him to hide his crush on Tony. He’d had a crush on the younger man for a while, probably since before he talked Tony into apprenticing under him after seeing how the young man did with finishes under the painter. Gibbs startled out of his thoughts when Tony yelled again.

“Stay there. Don’t move.” Gibbs commanded. It would be best for him to clean up the mess from the rotted wood before Tony ended up hurting himself even worse. Gibbs was pretty sure Tony already had a splinter.

Quickly brushing Tony off and sweeping up the wood chips, Gibbs dumped them all into the trash. He then turned to Tony, hustling Tony into the bathroom adjacent to the woodshop, so that he could remove the splinter and check Tony for any other injuries. He loved the accident prone man and no one could fault him for spending some extra time making sure he was ok.