fic: every city in between (ncis)
ncis_ficathon ficathon: littlesammy requested Tony/Ziva, on the run together, preferably not just a few hours but a few days.
STATUS: Complete
SUMMARY: Hide and Hope-They-Don't-Seek.
RATING: R
CLASSIFICATIONS: Tony/Ziva
ARCHIVING: Do not archive. Please ask.
NOTES: Unbeta'd. Sorry. And very, very late (my bad). Gibbs' rules in mouseover.
WORDS: 1,918
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Don't sue.
Copyright anr; January 2012.
* * * * *
Every City in Between by anr
* * * * *
Ten miles into North Carolina, Ziva says, "you could go back. You should go back."
How? he thinks. She's here, not there, which kinda rules out any possibility of his being elsewhere. Checking his mirrors, he says, "no."
He changes lanes.
*
They torch a bomb not all that dissimilar to his first car (hell, if it weren't for the lack of his and Katie Miller's initials burnt into the edge of the dash, it probably could be his first car) in a wreckers yard outside of some town he hasn't bothered to learn the name of yet, the alcohol they rubbed over every touched surface burning bright and hot and glinting off the maze of sharp edges and broken glass and metal chunks hiding them from the main road.
Abby might still find them, he knows, but it won't be because they didn't at least try.
*
In Wisconsin the waitress hitting on him assumes Ziva's his sister and, while he doesn't agree with her, he doesn't correct her either, and then Ziva doesn't talk to him.
For three days and four nights.
Until he learns.
*
It's tempting to stop and find a computer, sometimes, to check the bulletins and wires, but if he's learnt anything computery from McGee over the years, it's that fingerprints exist on the internet the same as they do on upholstery. They're better playing this game in the dark.
(He still hasn't figured out the name of the game just yet but Hide and Hope-They-Don't-Seek has a pretty good ring to it, so.)
*
Ziva gets caught shoplifting by store security in West Virginia.
He gets arrested for unpaid traffic violations -- and that's the last time, he thinks, I steal a car from Chinatown -- in San Francisco.
Rinsing the blood off her cut and bruised knuckles, he ignores the way his own hands are trembling. "We need to be more careful," he says, quietly, as a truck roars past their motel.
Resting her head on his shoulder, she closes her eyes. "Yes."
*
They see McGee, once.
They're in a supermarket giving each other the silent treatment (he wants bread, she wants something that is not bread, no matter what she thinks the label on that loaf-shaped package says), and he's leaning over her shoulder in a deliberate attempt to piss her off as she chooses a handful of apples when he looks up and sees McGee's reflection in the mirrored wall behind the root vegetables.
Letting go of the trolley, he centers his body against hers and places both his hands on her hips. When he ducks his head, his mouth brushes her ear. "Probie," he says quietly, "seven o'clock."
She keeps testing the apples like her entire body hasn't just tensed like an over-tuned guitar string. Out loud, she says, "I'm still not talking to you," but he knows she's watching the mirrors as well and calculating the distance to their nearest exit (back of the store, through the butchery to the loading dock, twenty-five and a half paces) just the same as he is.
Nuzzling her neck, he watches McGee grab a bag of pretzels and a six-pack of soda and head for the checkout. Watches him pay cash, and grab his bag, and head outside.
Neither of them moves.
*
They steal a highway patrol car on a Monday, have sex on a Tuesday, sleep on packing crates in an abandoned warehouse on a Wednesday, tear verbal shreds off each other on a Thursday, hide in a sewer pipe on a Friday, participate in a tiny little insignificant barely-worth-even-mentioning firefight with the FBI on a Saturday, and hold hands as they walk along the Santa Cruz boardwalk on a Sunday.
All things considered -- best week (on the run) so far.
*
The Mexican border is too obvious a choice, the Canadian border likely too honest (even assuming they could arrange for a large enough bribe).
She gets them a hotel room overlooking the Falls, the nicest place they've hidden in to date, and he knows it's not a real honeymoon, not even close (at the very least they'd have to be married for that to be true) but it feels like it, a little, with the soft Egyptian cotton sheets inside and the constant mist outside, Zi naked and golden and incredibly alive beside him.
Rolling over onto his side, he pulls Ziva up against him, her back to his chest. She hums softly under her breath, some unfamiliar tune he's pretty sure he's never heard before, and slides her leg between his, over his. Her right arm reaches up and back until she's gripping the back of his neck, anchoring them together.
He slides into her from behind, easy and gentle, like they have all the time in the world, like they're not being hunted, like there's nothing else more important than right here, right now, this hotel room and this moment. His right hand smoothes over her side and across her stomach, warm pressure to hold her, to keep her against him, around him, with him.
Slow fucking in the evening glow of the Falls, salt spray in the air and the sound of her humming. Pressing his mouth to the curve of her shoulder, he smiles.
*
They stay for a week.
*
Michigan to Missouri to Mississippi.
Ziva sees Gibbs from a distance, at a coffee shop in Pensacola, and if they've moved quicker before this, it was only ever that first day, that day when he picked her up halfway through her morning run and never looked back.
Texas.
*
He buys her the kit in Oklahoma and makes her take it in Arkansas and he's not sure what's stranger, the fact that he knows her schedule better than her or the fact that it being broken now has her acting like she's the next guest zombie on The Walking Dead, but he pays for the worst of the damages to the motel room when she sees the result, and moves them two states over before their truck starts acting like it's going to overheat again, and he buys her a loaf of that not-bread she loves so much.
It's probably the least he can do.
*
They don't talk about it. At all. For five more cities.
Standing outside their motel room, standing in the slow falling snow, he rolls the cigar he bought in Tennessee between his fingers and wonders -- boy or girl, girl or boy, boy or girl -- and tries to ignore the sounds of puking coming from inside.
Logically, he knows, there's positives to go with the negatives. Sure he now has twice as much to lose, and therefore twice as much to protect, but a new family will also be less obvious, most places, than a couple currently being advertised across every bulletin known to law enforcement, and even if the worst should happen -- well. Who's gonna want to shoot a pregnant lady? Forget about the bad karma -- the PR backlash would be a nightmare.
When the retching stops, he slips the cigar back into his pocket and picks up the six-pack of soda water and box of crackers he'd grabbed from the 7-11 on the corner, and heads back inside.
Nausea or not, her aim's still good. Ducking the King James' she throws at his head, he holds out the paper bag in defence. "Crackers?"
*
He wants to send a text to Gibbs (he figures he can count on the delay between Gibbs receiving it and McGee reading it to him to give him enough time to destroy the cell phone chip and toss the handset before it's traced back to them) and tell him that he's okay, that Ziva's okay, that they're both safe and even kind of happy, living in a little bubble of unreal reality where normal is a different motel room every night and a new car every fortnight, Dr Spock books and pickle-icecream shoplifted from every other city, but that's an awful lot of information to condense into a text message, so.
Maybe he'll tweet him instead.
*
They chance fate, the NCIS, FBI and local law enforcement. In Utah they stay a month; in Georgia, two. It's as risky as hell, staying in one place for so long, but bigger picture? Probably less risky than that day he got his orders and made the choice not to turn her in. And the day he knocked up his partner-best friend-fellow fugitive.
Probably.
*
What he didn't know about long term hiding, he thinks, can be encapsulated with one, small word -- boredom.
As in mind-numbing, brain-draining, soul-sucking tedium.
Stuck in a two bedroom country cottage in the middle of nowhere Iowa, with a cable-less television and a woman who's hormones are steadily turning her into Rebecca De Mornay's character in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, he thinks he'd give anything for a decent surge of adrenaline.
*
"I take it back! I take it back! I take it back!"
Hair whipping around her face, Ziva reloads her SIG and fires another clip out her window in about ten seconds flat. "Tony," she says flatly, crisply, "shut up and drive."
*
They cross the country in a non-stop car-stealing, midnight-driving, no-sleeping frenzy until they're in Forks, Washington, and his head is so full of Twilight trivia he can't hardly say any single word at all.
"Sleep," Ziva says, pushing him down onto the mattress. "Talk in the morning."
"Isabella," he says, tiredly, reaching for her, "for a girl. And Edward. Promise me."
She lets him pull her down too, lets him hook his leg around hers, his arm around her waist, her belly between them. "Not a chance," she whispers. She brushes her nose against his. "Sleep."
Jacob, he thinks.
*
He dreams Abby gets in contact with him, a secret message only he can cipher, and when he gets it, when he understands it, there is Gibbs, smiling and head-slapping and proud. He's yelled at for leaving, backhand-complimented for doing it so well, frowned at for obliterating rule twelve, and congratulated on his and Ziva's impending pending.
They're allowed home again, no questions asked or jail sentences contemplated, just personal little arguments between him and Ziva about which movie should they watch when they get home from work, and what pizza topping should they get on their dinner, and in what order should they get married and buy a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and live happily ever after for as long as they both should live, amen.
It's a good dream and, in the morning, he wakes up and wings two LEOs in the arm and bundles Ziva into the trunk of a police car and drives like hell for the border.
*
Thirty miles into Vancouver in an Impala that's seen many a better day; as he drives, Ziva rests her head on his shoulder and curls one arm around her belly.
"So," he says, conversationally, smiling, like they have all the time in the world, like they're not being hunted, like there's nothing else more important than right here, right now, a Sunday drive through the country, "where to now?"
Smiling, she rubs her cheek against his arm and starts to hum.
* * * * *
The End.
FEEDBACK: Always appreciated. *g*
STATUS: Complete
SUMMARY: Hide and Hope-They-Don't-Seek.
RATING: R
CLASSIFICATIONS: Tony/Ziva
ARCHIVING: Do not archive. Please ask.
NOTES: Unbeta'd. Sorry. And very, very late (my bad). Gibbs' rules in mouseover.
WORDS: 1,918
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Don't sue.
Copyright anr; January 2012.
* * * * *
Every City in Between by anr
* * * * *
Ten miles into North Carolina, Ziva says, "you could go back. You should go back."
How? he thinks. She's here, not there, which kinda rules out any possibility of his being elsewhere. Checking his mirrors, he says, "no."
He changes lanes.
*
They torch a bomb not all that dissimilar to his first car (hell, if it weren't for the lack of his and Katie Miller's initials burnt into the edge of the dash, it probably could be his first car) in a wreckers yard outside of some town he hasn't bothered to learn the name of yet, the alcohol they rubbed over every touched surface burning bright and hot and glinting off the maze of sharp edges and broken glass and metal chunks hiding them from the main road.
Abby might still find them, he knows, but it won't be because they didn't at least try.
*
In Wisconsin the waitress hitting on him assumes Ziva's his sister and, while he doesn't agree with her, he doesn't correct her either, and then Ziva doesn't talk to him.
For three days and four nights.
Until he learns.
*
It's tempting to stop and find a computer, sometimes, to check the bulletins and wires, but if he's learnt anything computery from McGee over the years, it's that fingerprints exist on the internet the same as they do on upholstery. They're better playing this game in the dark.
(He still hasn't figured out the name of the game just yet but Hide and Hope-They-Don't-Seek has a pretty good ring to it, so.)
*
Ziva gets caught shoplifting by store security in West Virginia.
He gets arrested for unpaid traffic violations -- and that's the last time, he thinks, I steal a car from Chinatown -- in San Francisco.
Rinsing the blood off her cut and bruised knuckles, he ignores the way his own hands are trembling. "We need to be more careful," he says, quietly, as a truck roars past their motel.
Resting her head on his shoulder, she closes her eyes. "Yes."
*
They see McGee, once.
They're in a supermarket giving each other the silent treatment (he wants bread, she wants something that is not bread, no matter what she thinks the label on that loaf-shaped package says), and he's leaning over her shoulder in a deliberate attempt to piss her off as she chooses a handful of apples when he looks up and sees McGee's reflection in the mirrored wall behind the root vegetables.
Letting go of the trolley, he centers his body against hers and places both his hands on her hips. When he ducks his head, his mouth brushes her ear. "Probie," he says quietly, "seven o'clock."
She keeps testing the apples like her entire body hasn't just tensed like an over-tuned guitar string. Out loud, she says, "I'm still not talking to you," but he knows she's watching the mirrors as well and calculating the distance to their nearest exit (back of the store, through the butchery to the loading dock, twenty-five and a half paces) just the same as he is.
Nuzzling her neck, he watches McGee grab a bag of pretzels and a six-pack of soda and head for the checkout. Watches him pay cash, and grab his bag, and head outside.
Neither of them moves.
*
They steal a highway patrol car on a Monday, have sex on a Tuesday, sleep on packing crates in an abandoned warehouse on a Wednesday, tear verbal shreds off each other on a Thursday, hide in a sewer pipe on a Friday, participate in a tiny little insignificant barely-worth-even-mentioning firefight with the FBI on a Saturday, and hold hands as they walk along the Santa Cruz boardwalk on a Sunday.
All things considered -- best week (on the run) so far.
*
The Mexican border is too obvious a choice, the Canadian border likely too honest (even assuming they could arrange for a large enough bribe).
She gets them a hotel room overlooking the Falls, the nicest place they've hidden in to date, and he knows it's not a real honeymoon, not even close (at the very least they'd have to be married for that to be true) but it feels like it, a little, with the soft Egyptian cotton sheets inside and the constant mist outside, Zi naked and golden and incredibly alive beside him.
Rolling over onto his side, he pulls Ziva up against him, her back to his chest. She hums softly under her breath, some unfamiliar tune he's pretty sure he's never heard before, and slides her leg between his, over his. Her right arm reaches up and back until she's gripping the back of his neck, anchoring them together.
He slides into her from behind, easy and gentle, like they have all the time in the world, like they're not being hunted, like there's nothing else more important than right here, right now, this hotel room and this moment. His right hand smoothes over her side and across her stomach, warm pressure to hold her, to keep her against him, around him, with him.
Slow fucking in the evening glow of the Falls, salt spray in the air and the sound of her humming. Pressing his mouth to the curve of her shoulder, he smiles.
*
They stay for a week.
*
Michigan to Missouri to Mississippi.
Ziva sees Gibbs from a distance, at a coffee shop in Pensacola, and if they've moved quicker before this, it was only ever that first day, that day when he picked her up halfway through her morning run and never looked back.
Texas.
*
He buys her the kit in Oklahoma and makes her take it in Arkansas and he's not sure what's stranger, the fact that he knows her schedule better than her or the fact that it being broken now has her acting like she's the next guest zombie on The Walking Dead, but he pays for the worst of the damages to the motel room when she sees the result, and moves them two states over before their truck starts acting like it's going to overheat again, and he buys her a loaf of that not-bread she loves so much.
It's probably the least he can do.
*
They don't talk about it. At all. For five more cities.
Standing outside their motel room, standing in the slow falling snow, he rolls the cigar he bought in Tennessee between his fingers and wonders -- boy or girl, girl or boy, boy or girl -- and tries to ignore the sounds of puking coming from inside.
Logically, he knows, there's positives to go with the negatives. Sure he now has twice as much to lose, and therefore twice as much to protect, but a new family will also be less obvious, most places, than a couple currently being advertised across every bulletin known to law enforcement, and even if the worst should happen -- well. Who's gonna want to shoot a pregnant lady? Forget about the bad karma -- the PR backlash would be a nightmare.
When the retching stops, he slips the cigar back into his pocket and picks up the six-pack of soda water and box of crackers he'd grabbed from the 7-11 on the corner, and heads back inside.
Nausea or not, her aim's still good. Ducking the King James' she throws at his head, he holds out the paper bag in defence. "Crackers?"
*
He wants to send a text to Gibbs (he figures he can count on the delay between Gibbs receiving it and McGee reading it to him to give him enough time to destroy the cell phone chip and toss the handset before it's traced back to them) and tell him that he's okay, that Ziva's okay, that they're both safe and even kind of happy, living in a little bubble of unreal reality where normal is a different motel room every night and a new car every fortnight, Dr Spock books and pickle-icecream shoplifted from every other city, but that's an awful lot of information to condense into a text message, so.
Maybe he'll tweet him instead.
*
They chance fate, the NCIS, FBI and local law enforcement. In Utah they stay a month; in Georgia, two. It's as risky as hell, staying in one place for so long, but bigger picture? Probably less risky than that day he got his orders and made the choice not to turn her in. And the day he knocked up his partner-best friend-fellow fugitive.
Probably.
*
What he didn't know about long term hiding, he thinks, can be encapsulated with one, small word -- boredom.
As in mind-numbing, brain-draining, soul-sucking tedium.
Stuck in a two bedroom country cottage in the middle of nowhere Iowa, with a cable-less television and a woman who's hormones are steadily turning her into Rebecca De Mornay's character in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, he thinks he'd give anything for a decent surge of adrenaline.
*
"I take it back! I take it back! I take it back!"
Hair whipping around her face, Ziva reloads her SIG and fires another clip out her window in about ten seconds flat. "Tony," she says flatly, crisply, "shut up and drive."
*
They cross the country in a non-stop car-stealing, midnight-driving, no-sleeping frenzy until they're in Forks, Washington, and his head is so full of Twilight trivia he can't hardly say any single word at all.
"Sleep," Ziva says, pushing him down onto the mattress. "Talk in the morning."
"Isabella," he says, tiredly, reaching for her, "for a girl. And Edward. Promise me."
She lets him pull her down too, lets him hook his leg around hers, his arm around her waist, her belly between them. "Not a chance," she whispers. She brushes her nose against his. "Sleep."
Jacob, he thinks.
*
He dreams Abby gets in contact with him, a secret message only he can cipher, and when he gets it, when he understands it, there is Gibbs, smiling and head-slapping and proud. He's yelled at for leaving, backhand-complimented for doing it so well, frowned at for obliterating rule twelve, and congratulated on his and Ziva's impending pending.
They're allowed home again, no questions asked or jail sentences contemplated, just personal little arguments between him and Ziva about which movie should they watch when they get home from work, and what pizza topping should they get on their dinner, and in what order should they get married and buy a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and live happily ever after for as long as they both should live, amen.
It's a good dream and, in the morning, he wakes up and wings two LEOs in the arm and bundles Ziva into the trunk of a police car and drives like hell for the border.
*
Thirty miles into Vancouver in an Impala that's seen many a better day; as he drives, Ziva rests her head on his shoulder and curls one arm around her belly.
"So," he says, conversationally, smiling, like they have all the time in the world, like they're not being hunted, like there's nothing else more important than right here, right now, a Sunday drive through the country, "where to now?"
Smiling, she rubs her cheek against his arm and starts to hum.
* * * * *
The End.
FEEDBACK: Always appreciated. *g*