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An epilogue, of sorts, to Season 9 . . .

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing . . .

AS LONG AS WE BOTH SHALL LIVE



I.

“Okay,” she says, sitting back, soft fingers tracing the side of his face tenderly. “Let me put something on and then we’ll go take care of this,” she motions around the suite, encompassing the generous number of wrapped presents and gift bags.

“I’ll talk to your parents,” he offers shyly and she smiles as she crouches down to unzip her suitcase.

“Don’t worry about my parents,” she soothes, “I can handle them.”

“Do you think they’ll be disappointed? In me?” he asks quietly, and her heart aches for this sweet, wonderful man.”

“Of course not!” she says, completely turning back around to meet his eyes. “They love you.” And she waits until he smiles at her before she returns to the Great Suitcase Excavation and the intrepid search for her elusive t-shirt.

She’s only successful in locating a pair of shorts, and so she leans back on her heels and calls over her shoulder, “Hey, Jimmy?”

“Yeah?”

“Could you look in the bathroom for my button-down? It should be right by the door.”

“Yeah, one moment . . .” and she hears him get up and move into the in suite bathroom, flicking the light switch as he goes. She sighs and glances out the large bay window, watching the grey-green water roll onto the shore. The sand is undisturbed from last night’s rain, and it’s almost as if they are on an uncharted island, all by themselves, far away from civilization. And it would be romantic, she thinks, if they weren’t about to call off the wedding, which, really doesn’t matter that much to her anyway, but she’s dreading telling her mother. She watches a lone figure stroll up the beach, slowly coming into focus out of the mist that lingers at the water’s edge. Her lips curve upwards in a fond smile because the good doctor would already be donning his tuxedo.

She sighs because she doesn’t want to have to tell him the news, either, though she’s sure he will understand. She loves Jimmy, adores him, and she loves his surrogate family, of course, but there is something about the wizened medical examiner that just puts her at ease . . . He’s taking a phone call, now, pausing and looking out at the immense ocean, at the grey-green water that is churning almost hostilely.

And she’s only vaguely aware of Jimmy asking, “Hey, Bree, is it this white one?” because she’s suddenly on her feet, and her heart is suddenly in her throat, and she’s gasping past the fear that’s suddenly squeezing her . . .

“Oh my God, Jimmy! Dr. Mallard!”



II.
He barely has enough time to shield her before the basement windows erupt inwards as the ground heaves and a raging inferno scalds the air above their heads. And the explosion is loud; loud enough that it reverberates in his chest and makes his ears ring.

Of course, his ears are ringing because the fire alarm has been triggered as well.

“OhmyGod, ohmyGod, ohmyGod.” And Abby has her face pressed into his shoulder, and she’s trembling hard, and then there’s a loud prffft noise that he realizes is just the damn hippo. He lifts his head to glance around, and there’s glass everywhere, and smoke, and water because the sprinklers have kicked in.

“Abs? Abby!” he says loudly in her ear, and she ceases her murmuring and tilts her face up to meet his eyes. And hers are tear-blurry and terrified, and he does the only thing he can think of: He pulls her closer and presses his lips to her temple. “You okay?” he asks, and his hip is throbbing from the impact with the floor. She’s having trouble catching her breath, though, so she just nods.

“Come on,” he says, climbing to his feet and tugging her up with him. He bends down and picks up the hippo, passing it to her wordlessly before grabbing her hand and leading her toward the exit.

And sirens are wailing outside, and there’s shouting, and screaming, and he and Abby are both nearly doubled over coughing, and, oh, the others better be out of this building  . . .

. . .

Later, all he will remember is a bright white flash before total darkness and then an all-encompassing nothing.

. . .

The elevator pitches sideways and she knows that they are either too late, or Harper Dearing is too early. She turns to Tony and half-tackles, half-stumbles into him. His arm goes around her waist as the floor shudders and the sound of protesting metal nearly drowns out the mighty boom of the explosion. Tony breaks her fall as they both are tossed to floor, the lights blinking out, and the ceiling raining down on them.

And then there is nothing.

The emergency lights flicker on, bathing everything in an eerie blue glow, and the world seems to have momentarily stopped.

Tony is breathing heavily above her, having somehow managed to roll her between his body and the wall in an effort to shield her. She can feel his chest press into her back as he tries to gulp in a lungful of air, and his warm breath against her neck is oddly reassuring.

“Are you okay, Tony?” she asks softly, turning her head to perhaps see him.

His lips brush against her nape as he replies, “I think so. You?”

“Yes.” Then, “Do you think you could get off of me?”

“I’m afraid to move,” he tells her honestly, and his voice is also soft, as if he doesn’t want to disturb the stillness. She understands because plummeting to her death holds no appeal to her either.

“Do you think it is unstable?” she asks in reference to the elevator that is easily imagined to be hanging precariously by a cable’s thread. And she has the disconcerting sensation of balancing on a precipice.

“I don’t know,” he says, shifting minutely above her. “I do know one thing though.”

“And what is that?”

“That we would fall together.” And if he wasn’t so serious she thinks she might laugh.

Instead she says, “You are strangely poetic in these types of situations.”

“Yeah,” he says thoughtfully. “I wonder why that is?”

“I do not know.”

And then, suddenly, he’s no longer above her.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” he says in mock disappointment from somewhere to her left.

She makes a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat as she places her right hand down to lever herself upward. The pain, however, that lances through her right wrist and slices up her arm sends her curling in on herself with a poorly stifled whimper.

“Ziva?” Tony calls, alarmed. She can feel him leaning toward her, the heat of his hand hovering just above her back. “Ziva?”

“I am fine,” she says. She’s staring at the well-worn carpet of the elevator’s floor, blinking rapidly to clear her eyes of the tears that had sprung, unbidden, at the sudden and unexpected tide of pain. “I think I sprained my wrist.”

Gingerly, she twists into a sitting position, leaning heavily against the wall, cradling her arm in her lap. Tony scoots closer to her, maneuvering himself so that they are shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh.

“Let me see,” he coaxes, extending a tentative finger to brush the back of her hand. Her wrist is already swollen, and evidently very tender, or at least, that’s how he’s translating the sharp intake of breath she emits when he probes the area. “Can you wriggle your fingers?”

“I would rather not.”

“Ziva.”

Her fingers twitch minutely in response, and he almost thinks it was an unconscious movement, but then she’s looking at him questioningly, as if to say Satisfied?

He meets her eyes and declares firmly, “Broken.”

“How could you possibly know that?” she demands defensively. “You cannot possibly know that-”

The trill of Tony’s cell phone interrupts her, however, and they both go very, very quiet. And then Tony is extracting the device from his pants pocket and pressing a button, and pressing the phone to his ear, uttering a faux-cheery, “Hello?”

“DiNozzo.” And from where she’s sitting beside Tony, Ziva can easily make out Gibbs’ end of the conversation, and the worry that manifests as irritation in his gruff voice.

“Oh, hey, Boss,” Tony greets as if their situation is anything but dire. And Ziva knows he’s just relieved Gibbs is able to call him at all.

“Where the hell are you?”

Tony drops all pretenses, “I’m in the elevator with Ziva. Where are you?”

“You have Ziva?”

“Yeah-”

“McGee?”

And Tony pales slightly at the implication. “He isn’t with you?” and the question is tentative at best because the answer is a blatant ‘no’.

“No, he’s not with me. When did you last see him?”

Tony remains silent, clearly unsure, so Ziva has mercy on him and whispers, “He was heading to the bullpen to secure his computer before evacuating.”

Tony gives her an appreciative glance before relaying this information to Gibbs.

“Are you and Ziva all right?” Gibbs asks after a beat, and Ziva has a sinking feeling about McGee.

“Yeah, yeah, just a little shaken up. Ziva thinks her wrist is broken and I agree. I don’t know how stable the elevator is though . . .”

“I’m handing the phone over, DiNozzo. Stay on the line.”

“Right.”

There’s a fuzzy sound as Gibbs presumably passes the phone on to someone else, and the ominous sound of wailing sirens can be heard over the line. “Agent DiNozzo? My name is Ted, I’m with the fire department. You’re in the elevator, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Are you alone?”

“No, Agent David is with me-”

“And her wrist is broken?”

“I think so.”

“Okay, Agent DiNozzo, I’m going to send a team to survey the shaft and make sure you guys aren’t in any immediate danger. It’s going to take about fifteen minutes, so just hang tight. Is the elevator cabin tilted?”

Tony glances around the tiny space, “I think so.”

“Are you at the lower end of the tilt?”

“Um . . .”

“Yes,” Ziva whispers. “Say yes.”

“Yes,” Tony repeats into the phone, still not understanding but just going with it.

“Okay, don’t move.”

“Okay.” There’s an audible click and then nothing.

“Well,” Tony says after a moment of staring blankly at the now silent cell phone. “He didn’t even say goodbye.” And Ziva knows what he’s doing, that he’s trying to relieve some of the tension, that he’s trying to pretend that McGee isn’t missing, and that they aren’t stuck, and that her wrist isn’t possibly -probably - broken.

She stays silent and he looks down at her.

“Hey,” he murmurs, reaching for her uninjured hand and giving it a squeeze. “It’s gonna be okay, we’re gonna get out of here.”

“McGee,” she whispers and they both ignore the catch in her voice.

“They’ll find him, Ziva,” Tony reassures her, and he, mercifully, sounds so sure of this and she wants to believe him. “He may already be out of the building.”

“Without his phone?” And she can’t help but be the skeptic.

Tony seems to mull this over. “You know, he may be better off not being outside the building, you know? If it turns out he was in the parking lot and not answering Gibbs’ calls . . .”

And she does smile a bit at this.

Tony leans his head back against the wall with a dull thunk, and Ziva tilts her head onto his shoulder, slouching into him. And his warmth is reassuring, and his incessant babbling is comforting.

“You know,” he says idly, “It could be worse. I saw this in a movie once -no, it was a Twilight Zone episode. Yeah, that’s it. Anyway, the elevator had this killer spider at the bottom, or something  . . .”

Killer spiders aside, Ziva finds herself praying that this day doesn’t get any worse.

Later, she’ll think she should have known better.


III.
Seventeen minutes later and there is no sign of the fire department, and Tony’s cell has remained stubbornly silent. The emergency light is still on, and they are still stuck, still sitting on the ground, shoulders touching. Ziva has her hurt wrist lying limply in her lap, and she’s worrying the pinky finger on her other hand with her teeth. Tony has his head tilted back, his nose pointing toward the ceiling, his eyes closed. And he’s already entertained the thought that he could have a concussion, but there’s little he can do about it right now.

He steals another glance at his watch, and suppresses a groan at the fact that only a minute has slipped by since he last checked.

“You okay?” he asks quietly and he feels her shift beside him.

“No,” she murmurs, and there is something in her voice that startles him, a quality he’s heard maybe once before. He opens his eyes and gazes down at her.

Her face is pale and her eyes are wide as she glances up at his face. She seems to be vibrating, she’s so tense. He reaches over, tugging her good hand from her mouth and wrapping her fingers in his. And she’s trembling like a leaf.

“Ziva,” he says softly. He can feel her pulse hammering in her wrist, and she’s trying, valiantly, to take deep even breathes.

“I will fine in a -moment,” she whispers, and she’s borderline hyperventilating.

“Panic attack?” he asks, rubbing his thumb across her hand reassuringly. He’s only ever had one once, and he was alone at the time, and he honestly thought he was going to die. It felt like a heart attack, or at least, what he would imagine a heart attack to feel like. Of course, actually dying at that point would have been a huge relief, seeing as it had been one of the worst days of his life and, ironically, Ziva David had been involved . . .

“I will be okay,” she repeats, but he can’t tell if she’s talking to him or herself.

There’s a mighty thud and the elevator shudders, and Ziva lets out a startled gasp that has her wiping her eyes on Tony’s shoulder as light suddenly floods the tiny cabin. Dust and tiny particles of debris rain down upon them as one of the ceiling tiles is lifted away. A hulking figure peers down at them, its silhouette illuminated by the light that filters in through the elevator shaft.

“Agents DiNozzo, David, are you alright?” asks a deep voice that belongs to the figure.

Tony takes a breath to respond, but ends up choking on the dust in the air. The sudden coughing fit rallies Ziva into calming herself and she squints up at the light. “Yes,” she calls loudly, and then someone says something to the shadowed man, but she can’t make out all the words.

“I’m with the fire department,” the fireman says. “The elevator’s stable for now. Y’all are stuck between two floors, but you’re closer to the third floor than you are the second. We’re gonna send somebody down there in a minute, so just hang tight, ‘kay?” And Ziva resists the urge to point out that they aren’t going anywhere and that they have no choice but to ‘hang tight.’

Anxiety claws at her lungs with the realization that she is at this stranger’s mercy.

. . .

He pauses in his pacing along the sidewalk to watch a large portion of the building façade crumple and fall several stories before hitting the ground with a crack. The air is thick with the acrid smell of smoke and the high whine of sirens. The flashing lights from the fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars are painting the surrounding pavement red and blue and it almost looks like an ethereal monster is writhing on the ground in pain.

Flames burst forth from an upper storey window, and the glass rains down onto the firemen below, but they seem to ignore it, instead keeping a steady stream of water pulsing onto the livid flames.

The ambulance behind hi suddenly peals away, the driver laying on his horn and adding to the cacophony of the blaring siren. Nine people are dead, though probably more, and at least twenty are wounded. And the fact that he can only account for half of his team is chillingly disturbing and all too surreal . . .

He only saw McGee briefly when they brought him out, and he came very close to being sick.

Blood was everywhere, all over McGee’s face, his suit, and the sheet covering his lower body was blooming with crimson as well. He was unconscious, and the EMT had him in a neck brace, an intubation tube between his lips. He was way too pale and way too still, and, oh dear, God, don’t let him die. The older woman who was loading him into the back of the ambulance refused to let Gibbs ride, an argument he decided not to engage in since he still had two agents MIA.

He had turned Abby over to another paramedic when she had started hyperventilating after McGee had been taken away. Now, thirty minutes later, he can just make out her pigtails from behind the tree she leaned up against. He had checked on her several minutes ago only to find that she had her eyes closed, her rosary wound between her fingers, and her lips moving in silent prayer.

If Tony and Ziva don’t materialize in the next sixty seconds, he’s going in after them himself.

And what the hell were they thinking, taking an elevator in the midst of a bomb threat?

New rule: If there’s a bomb threat, take the stairs. Always.

There’s movement out of the corner of his eye: Four figures emerging from the building and picking their way across the debris strewn ground toward a waiting ambulance.

He forces himself to walk, briskly, over to them.

A paramedic has already placed an oxygen mask over DiNozzo’s face by the time Gibbs arrives at the bumper. Ziva is sitting beside Tony, her face pale and drawn, as another paramedic pokes and prods at her alarmingly swollen wrist. Both agents have scratches on their faces -Tony has a particularly deep gash over his cheek- and both agents have dust and bits of plaster in their hair and on their clothes. They look like hell, but they’re alive, at least, and conscious.

Tony notices Gibbs first.

“Hey, boss,” he calls, his voice muffled behind the mask. And Ziva looks up quickly, her dark eyes clearly relieved.

“DiNozzo.”

“I’m fine,” Tony reassures. “Just breathed in too much dust and crap.”

Gibbs seems to relax a little before turning to Ziva: “Ziver.”

“They think my wrist is broken. But I, too, am okay.”

“What about McGee and Abby?” Tony asks cautiously, and Gibbs is suddenly exhausted.

“Abby’s fine; a little cut up and definitely shaken.” And he’s evading the question . . .

Ziva’s eyes are bright as she stares at him. “And McGee?”

But she’s already seen the answer in his eyes.


IV.
He feels a headache coming on as he disconnects his call from Palmer. If today gets any worse, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do.

He wanders back to the examination room he left Tony and Ziva in, not wanting to put off the conversation any longer. The door is open so he doesn’t bother knocking, but just sweeps in, the pungent smell of antiseptic contrasting sharply with the bitter aroma from the stale hospital coffee he’s gripping like a life preserver.

Tony is sitting in a molded plastic chair pulled up alongside the examination table Ziva is perched on. There’s a thin line of stitches across his cheek, and a Band-Aid on the side of his neck, and he’s washed the dust from his face, but he doesn’t look much better. Ziva has a butterfly stitch above her left eyebrow and there is an impressive bruise blooming across her temple. Somebody has scraped her hair back into a ponytail, but that just seems to make her look so much younger all of the sudden.

“Hey, Boss,” Tony greets lightly, trying in vain to infuse some enthusiasm into their dismal situation. He fails by leaps and bounds.

“Any news on McGee?” Ziva asks, ignoring her partner’s brave attempt at levity.

Gibbs takes a deep breath, and says frankly, “He’s in critical condition.”

And for few heartbeats, nobody speaks.

“How bad is it?” And now Tony has surrendered to the circumstances, his voice adopting the hollow quality of a man expecting nothing. Which Gibbs supposes is fitting, since they must be out of miracles by now.

“Bad,” he says, wishing that he could give them something, anything, to cling to. Alas, though, he has nothing to offer. “He’s got bleeding in his brain. The doctors are worrying about pressure building up.”

“Can’t they do something about that? I mean, it’s treatable, right? People survive that kind of thing, don’t they?” And Tony sounds so helpless.

Gibbs blinks, utterly at loss, and so very exhausted. “I don’t know, Tony. Best case scenario is a he has mild brain damage.”

Silence descends on the group and then Ziva says, slightly hysterical, “That is the best case scenario? Mild brain damage? Gibbs . . . Gibbs . . .” Her face crumples and she presses her good hand to her mouth, choking back a sob. And before Gibbs can even move toward her, Tony is already standing, wincing as he shuffles closer to his partner. She leans into his shoulder, her uninjured hand fisting in the fabric of his rumpled shirt, her slender frame trembling with silent tears. Gibbs watches wordlessly as Tony rubs her nape, attempting to soothe her.

“Excuse me?”

The two men glance over to the young nurse now standing in the doorway, her warm smile and bright pink clipboard seeming too cheerful to the three agents drowning in despair.

“I need a Ziva David to come with me for an x-ray.”

And Ziva lifts her head from Tony’s shoulder, swiping her eyes roughly with the heel of her good hand. She slips down from the examination table without assistance, composing herself in a few shaky breaths as her old façade slides into place with minimal effort. This is her brave face, Tony thinks, watching as she nods to him and Gibbs in turn before following the nurse from the tiny room. He wonders absently how long she can maintain the pretense this time around.

Gibbs waits until he’s certain Ziva is out of earshot before he turns back to Tony to deliver the -pleaseGodletitbe - final blow of the afternoon:

“I got a call from Palmer.”

“Yeah?” And it is obvious DiNozzo is somewhere else in his headspace so Gibbs waits for a few moments. Then, “Shouldn’t he be on his honeymoon, or something?”

“Ducky’s had a heart attack, Tony.”

He waits for the younger man to say something, half expecting some utterance of disbelief, but instead DiNozzo surprises him by suddenly striding toward the door. “I gotta go be . . . I gotta . . .” He pauses and looks to Gibbs over his shoulder. His eyes look grey in the light as he looks pleadingly at the older man. “What do I do, Boss?” he whispers, clearly at a loss. And Gibbs can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen Anthony DiNozzo this uncertain.

Gibbs sighs. “Go. Your partner needs you.” And you need your partner.

Tony nods, squaring his shoulders, and leaves, presumably to find radiology and the one person in the world who can help him through this.

. . .

Ziva’s wrist is broken, something the doctor referred to as a distal radius fracture, and while Tony doesn’t think that that sounds very good, the doctor assures him it will heal just fine. While Ziva’s cast is being put on, Tony decides to locate Gibbs to give him an update and inform him that he and Ziva are taking a cab home. And after fifteen minutes of wandering aimlessly throughout the labyrinth of hospital corridors, Tony finally finds him in deserted waiting area, sitting beside a civilian Tony has never seen before, talking quietly.

“Um, Boss?” And while he doesn’t want to intrude, he really wants to collect Ziva and get the hell out of the hospital because, frankly, it’s starting to freak him out. Both Gibbs and the stranger look up at interruption, though neither give him verbal acknowledgement; Gibbs merely arches a silver eyebrow and excuses himself.

“What?” he asks gruffly when he’s in earshot of only Tony. His blue eyes are tired and his face drawn as he waits impatiently for an answer. And Tony is struck by how old his boss suddenly looks.

“DiNozzo!”

“Sorry, Boss! I, um,” he takes a deep breath, shakes his head. Regroups. Tries again: “Ziva’s getting a cast put on and then we’re heading out, I already called a cab. Just thought you’d want to know.”

And Gibbs blinks and nods, slowly, “Yeah. Thanks. She staying with you tonight?”

The question takes Tony off guard, and he stumbles over it in his head for a few moments before stammering a pitiful, “I don’t know.”

Gibbs’ lips quirk up in a sad half smile. “Watch her six, Tony.”

“I will . . . Who’s that?”

Gibbs glances over his shoulder at the man sitting beside the window and staring forlornly out into the view of the parking lot several stories below. Gooseflesh erupts across Tony’s arms as he realizes that the man has been crying: His grey eyes are red-rimmed and bright with unshed tears, and there’s a crumpled tissue clutched tightly in his fist.

Another wave of foreboding crashes over Tony, bringing with it an odd wash of déjà vu. And haven’t they met their crises quota for today?

“Michael Rodriguez. He’s Ned Dorneget’s partner.”

Tony just looks at Gibbs blankly, clearly not understanding the significance of Michael Rodriguez’s presence . . .

Then, “God, Boss, is Dorneget okay?” And he’d forgotten that the detonation has affected other people, other agents, as well.

Gibbs glances back over at Michael Rodriguez before looking Tony in the eye.

“Special Agent Dorneget passed  away an hour ago, Tony.”


V.
“I was a heavy heart to carry, but he never let me down;

When he held me in his arms, my feet never touched the ground . . .”

Heavy In Your Arms, Florence + The Machine

By the time they leave the hospital, any fire left in Ziva has been extinguished. She sits silently beside Tony on the backseat of the cab, gazing pensively out the window, her lower lip between her teeth. She hasn’t said anything since Tony had shepherded her into the taxi, and even then it had only been a murmured, “Thank you.” Her carefully constructed charade is gone, tucked safely away for the next occasion in which she needs to be calm, collected, and virtually unflappable. Now, though, she can be tired, and weary, and sad because the cabbie doesn’t require a performance and Tony is too exhausted to care. So she sits, slumped beside her partner, her wrist firmly incased in a blue fiberglass cast up to her elbow and resting limply in her lap. She has her forehead pressed against the cool glass of the car window and she lets her eyes slip closed briefly . . .

Somehow, they wind up at Tony’s apartment, which looks markedly different since the last time she’s been here. When she asks him about this, her voice soft in the quiet of the young night, he seems mildly surprised. “It’s been awhile, Ziva; I’ve lived here almost three years . . .” but his voice trails off because at this point they’ve both realized that, yes, it has been that long since she’s seen him, and longer.

She stands in the living room, looking around, lost, as he moves through the apartment, flicking on lights. She recognizes the couch, though the leather armchair is new and so is the ebony-stained entertainment center pushed up against the far wall. She doesn’t quite remember the coffee table, but then again, coffee tables tend to be unexceptional-

“Do you want to shower . . .?” Tony winces when she startles, his eyes apologetic when she turns around to glare at him. She softens at the fatigue clinging to his features, however, and shakes her head. “You go ahead. I, um, I . . .”

“You’re more than welcome to anything in the kitchen,” he offers politely, and the formality seems awkward to her, as if they shouldn’t be so proper. “I can’t promise you that you’ll find much,” he continues with an embarrassed almost-grin. “I think there’s some Chamomile tea in cabinet above the stove.”

She wants to say, Since when do you drink tea? But, alas, she cannot muster up the energy so instead she just nods, “Okay.”

He watches her for a few more heartbeats before turning toward the small hallway just behind him. He pauses, though, with his hand presumably on the doorknob and, after a brief internal debate that plays out across his face, calling out, “Ziva?”

She just looks at him.

“I know you said you didn’t need anything, but there’s some Vicodine in the cabinet with the tea. You don’t need to be a hero; broken bones hurt like a bitch.” And then he’s gone and she’s alone, standing in his living room, wanting to tell him that she never wanted to be a hero, but the words get stuck in her throat.

. . .

She makes tea, if only to give herself something to do for the thirteen minutes Tony is in the bathroom. And she does locate the bottle of pain killers, and some saltines since she hasn’t eaten anything since lunch and she shouldn’t take anything on an empty stomach. A handful of crackers later, and she shakes out a tablet from the little orange bottle and swallows it dry.

When Tony emerges, he finds her sitting in his armchair, watching the evening news with the volume turned down, and clutching a mug of tea. She glances over at him, takes in his flushed face and dripping hair, sweat pants and fresh undershirt, and is hit with a sudden need for water so hot it will scald her skin.