NCIS Fic: Snowball Fights
For Nat, who requested that I ramble to her about “Ziva’s first snow in DC, because snow is fluffy.”
Tony/Ziva, snow, set in Season 3 & my made up Season 13, PG.
They’ve barely arrived at the crime scene when fat flakes of snow begin to fall from a dusky sky. Ziva hasn’t been with NCIS for long, and though she prides herself on being a quick learner she finds she struggles to keep up as everything starts moving at twice its regular pace.
Ducky hastily examines the body, then calls Gibbs over to offer a succinct, to-the-point report on his findings - forgoing his typical rambling digressions for perhaps the first time in his career, as far as Ziva can guess (she has never known anyone to ramble on as Dr. Mallard does). Meanwhile, rather than wasting his time harassing McGee, DiNozzo is shooting rapid-fire photographs of the victim - the area around the victim - the blood trail that disappears off into the woods - everything and anything upon which he can focus the camera. For his part, McGee somehow manages to stay one step ahead of the senior field agent, setting down crime scene markers and jotting notes in anticipation of where the lens will turn next.
Ziva stands amidst it all, unaccustomed to feeling quite so useless and able to think only of how much she really and truly detests the thing that has caused the unpleasant experience: snow.
“David!” Gibbs barks, glaring up at her from over the body of their dead marine. She jerks to face him, squares her chin, and awaits her orders.
“Get the witness statements before they scatter.”
Ziva hesitates, because she hasn’t been trusted with this on more than a handful of occasions, and each time it’s an adjustment. She knows how to get information from marks and enemies and people who happen to make themselves temporarily useful: she knows how to lie; she knows how to seduce; she knows how to torture. But simply asking for information from innocent civilians has never been second nature to her. She doubts it ever will be.
“Now!” Gibbs says, eyes plainly asking, Why are you still standing there like an idiot? She cannot blame him. She feels like an idiot.
Gibbs bobs his head to the left, and Ziva sees a small group of people milling about one of the local LEO’s cruisers. A young police officer is speaking to them and holding his hands out in a placating gesture, but even from several feet away Ziva can tell they are getting antsy. That they want to get home, to warmth and dry clothes. Perhaps their loved ones. On almost all counts Ziva feels the same, and this one fact that she and the witnesses have in common centers her. She takes in a deep breath, exhales her feelings of ineptness, and makes her way over.
“Good evening,” she says, plastering on a smile. “I am Officer David, with NCIS. I am sure you are all anxious to get indoors, but…”
It feels like both an eternity has passed and yet barely any time at all when the whirlwind of activity finally stops. Ziva sends the last of her four witnesses on their way in time to see Ducky loading the marine’s body into the M.E.’s van, and DiNozzo emerging from the nearby tree line. McGee and Gibbs are mysteriously out of sight. She checks her watch: it’s been less than half an hour since she began taking statements.
One of the two remaining police cruisers - when the other two left, Ziva does not know - peals away with a salutary woop woop. DiNozzo raises his empty hand in acknowledgment; the other is overburdened with a pile of the plastic markers McGee had been laying out earlier. He continues to carefully pick a path across the white-blanketed pavement of the carpool-turned-crime scene, and Ziva walks over to the team’s NCIS-issued SUV to wait.
She opens the trunk and leans against the back fender, eyes taking in the veritable - what is the phrase, Winter Wonderland? - around her. Wonderland, indeed. Ziva wriggles her toes in her perfectly sensible shoes, and grimaces when she finds that the perfectly insensible weather has managed to soak through the leather. No wonder her feet are growing so cold.
She scuffs at the ground, and estimates there must be nearly two inches of snow already.
“Why the long face?” DiNozzo asks, finally reaching the vehicle. He drops the markers into its trunk with a grateful sigh and rubs his wrist. “Those are deceptively heavy. I may have sprained something.”
Ziva rolls her eyes - which, incidentally, she has likewise worried about spraining since she came to work at NCIS. “My face is not long, and your wrist fine.”
DiNozzo shoots her a doubtful look. It glimmers with something else, too, that immediately has her hackles rising. “What’s wrong, Zee-vah? Not a fan of old Jack Frost?”
Annoyed, and knowing it is in only in part because he has managed to catch her up yet again with an idiom she doesn’t understand, Ziva responds, “I do not know who this Jack Frost is or what he has to do with anything. If my face seemed ‘long’ it is because I am suddenly realizing what it means to spend winter in Washington, D.C. Had I thought about how it would be so…blustery… I might have considered this liaison position a little more carefully.” She lets her gaze travel deliberately up and down DiNozzo’s body, now mirroring her position propped against the SUV. “Though perhaps I should have done so for other reasons as well.”
DiNozzo clutches at his chest. “Pooh Bear, you wound me.”
Taken aback, Ziva draws her eyebrows down into a confused frown. “Pooh Bear?”
“Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day? 1968, won the Academy Award for animated short film…Based on the book by A.A. Milne? No?”
Ziva shakes her head. She will never understand this man’s love of movie references, although she is somewhat impressed that the latest implies he may have also read a book. Once. In his life.
DiNozzo sighs and, where his shoulder brushes against hers, she can feel him deflate a little. Unfortunately, the defeat is apparently but momentary. He gasps and clutches at his chest again. Ziva regards him warily.
“What?”
“Ziva - is - is this the first time you’ve seen snow?” DiNozzo’s eyes are widened in a mockery of childish wonderment. Ziva resists the urge to hit him.
“Special Agent DiNozzo - ”
“- Very Special Agent -”
“- I may be from Israel, but I have visited more countries than you can likely even name. Including, yes, ones with snow.” Ziva looks back out at the ever-whitening world beyond the limited shelter of the SUV. “Is this the first time you’ve seen snow,” she mutters. At her side, Tony shifts. The back of the truck dips a little with the movement. Ziva ignores it and continues muttering, louder, “I am Israeli, and from a warm climate; I am not a child.”
“Uh huh.”
Ziva swivels her head to glower at her companion once more. He’s smirking at her, and the glimmer is back. “What.” she demands, longing for the days when she had only her father to answer to and might have gotten away with just shooting DiNozzo. (In the leg, of course.)
“Oh, nothing, nothing,” he says congenially. “Just, tell me Officer David - in these countries about which I’ve never heard, do they have things like snowmen?”
Ziva rolls her eyes yet again - can one sprain their eye muscles? - and says, “Yes, DiNozzo. They have snowmen. And snow cherubs -”
“Angels.”
She waves the correction away. Whatever, there is a point to be made. “And snow forts. I am quite. Familiar. With snow.”
Across the carpool area, Ziva notices Gibbs and McGee have re-appeared, picking up the remaining crime scene markers as they approach. Everyone else that had been lingering at the scene is now gone.
“How about fights?” DiNozzo is asking.
“Hmm?” Ziva wonders if she should offer to help the two other members of their team. On one hand, perhaps it would make up for her earlier hesitance. On the other…at least where she is it is almost dry. And marginally less cold.
“You know, snowball fights. Making projectiles out snow, then hurling them at your friends…clipping little Billy from down the street with one made of ice, right in the face.”
“Yes,” Ziva says absently. She stands, having decided to go be of assistance, before continuing, “I am familiar with the concept. As I have said -”
Without warning, the nape of her neck is doused with a frozen shower of snow that melts almost immediately upon contact with her skin, trickling in icy rivulets down her spine. Ziva barely manages to contain an undignified yelp, but cannot prevent herself from executing a combined jump-and-wriggle motion that she would be embarrassed about except - she is Mossad, not a robot. And she does not at all like, nor as she ever liked, snow, and certainly not when it has been shoved down the back of her jacket.
“DiNozzo!” she yells. And then, because she is Mossad, she whirls on him, anchors one hand in the crook of his right elbow, and pulls. Before DiNozzo knows what’s happening, Ziva has him on his feet, then on the ground face down, his right arm twisted behind him and one of her knees digging into his left kidney.
Beneath her, DiNozzo wheezes as he attempts to draw oxygen into his lungs. The whistle he adds is clearly exaggerated - she is not cutting off his air supply that much. Exasperated by the dramatics, Ziva is busy informing him of this fact when Gibbs’ feet come into view. She cuts herself off to glance up at her superior, but refuses to look apologetic.
“Boss? A little help?” DiNozzo asks. Ziva digs her knee in harder, and he lets out a satisfying squeak.
Gibbs cocks his head to one side.
“Boss?”
A second more passes, then Gibbs crouches down. He doesn’t say a word, but begins drawing snow together into a small pile with his bare hands.
“Boss?” Tony says again, this time with a hint of worry colouring his tone.
Ziva feels her lips twitch into a smug grin, which becomes a full-blown smile upon being handed a perfectly shaped snowball. Gibbs rises, says, “Make sure ya get it under his shirt collar, too,” and walks away.
“Boss!” The shout is one of deep betrayal.
“You made your bed, DiNozzo!” Gibbs calls over his shoulder. “Time to lie in it.”
Somewhere in the distance, McGee laughs.
* * *
Nearly ten years later, Ziva finds herself driving home on a wintry evening much like that first one in D.C. Beyond the slightly fogged windows of her red sedan large snowflakes drift lazily down from the sky, accumulating on even the well-travelled road and slowing end-of-day rush hour to a crawl. She clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth in annoyance, leaning forward to squint through the sedan’s windshield as the car in front of her flashes its brake lights. Ziva reluctantly taps her own brakes and comes to a stop.
While she waits for traffic to begin moving again, she notes that the haloed streetlights are causing everything to sparkle a little. There is no doubt in her mind that some of those in nearby vehicles must think the sight pretty, especially set against the backdrop of deep twilight as it is. She, however, has been awake since 5 a.m., at work since 7 a.m., and just desperately wants to reach her beloved La-Z-Boy couch and not move for several hours.
Feeling antsy despite her bone-deep exhaustion, Ziva flicks on the radio. A familiar, upbeat Christmas song filters through the sedan’s speakers and she cranks the volume, drumming her fingers against the steering wheel to expend some of her impatient energy. Outside, snow continues to fall in a heavy mantle upon the ground. To the amount of time she has left before she can put the long day behind her, Ziva mentally tacks on the 20 minutes it will take her to clear the driveway, or at least a path to the front door. As the cars ahead finally resume their painstaking march forward, she reflects wryly that although Tony will likely claim his ‘bad’ back renders him incapable of helping her shovel, it will undoubtedly be up for other activities later that night. A strange (and, for him, convenient) paradox.
It is almost a full half hour more before Ziva turns onto their street. With a burst of pleasure, she sees that the driveway in front of her and Tony’s two-storey is nearly bare but for a fine dusting of white. Perhaps she owes her husband an apology.
Ziva parks, grabs her beat-up NCIS gear bag from the passenger seat (she still uses it out of nostalgia, even though these days it carries little more than her wallet and lunch), and forces herself out into the bitter cold. The click of her heels echoes in the night’s muted silence as she makes a beeline for the refuge of home. On the way, she takes in the too-neat edges of the snow banks lining her path and immediately rescinds her intended apology.
“Gibbs came by, I see,” Ziva calls, swinging open the unlocked front door. She stops short when she’s met with two pairs of green eyes staring up at her from the floor of the entranceway. “Oh,” she says, startled. Ziva inches further into the foyer so she can shut the door behind her, careful to avoid tripping over Tony’s feet where they are extended behind him in a kneel.
“Hey,” he greets, after an equally surprised pause. His hands are frozen on either side of their son, Jacob’s, head, grasping the bright green hood of a snowsuit Ziva doesn’t recognize. “Yeah, Grandpa came over with the plow about an hour ago. And he brought a new snowsuit for you, didn’t he, buddy?” Tony untwists the fingers of his left hand from the bunched neon fabric to ruffle the two-year-old’s dark hair. Jacob nods dutifully.
“I see,” Ziva says. The tip of her nose, chilled from even just those few short moments exposed to the elements, tingles. “I hope you said thank you.”
Jacob nods again, and Tony responds, “Sure did. Planted a big ol’ kiss on that cranky face, didn’t you?” He resumes tugging Jacob’s hood up and over his head, pulling the drawstrings so it fits snugly around cheeks that are chubby with youth. Abruptly, Ziva recalls Tony standing nervously in front of Leon Vance’s children, discomfited and unsure how to relate to them.
How things change.
“Borin keep you late after class for detention, or was it just a busy day guarding our coasts?”
Ziva hums non-committedly. She’s more focused on whether or not she’s about to have to step back outside. Taking in the toque on Tony’s own head, and the pile of mittens on the ground next to him - one set large, one set so, so tiny in comparison - she inquires with mounting dread, “What are you two doing?”
Tony turns to look up at her once more, this time with a little kid grin that she has always thought matches Jacob’s perfectly. “It’s the first snow of the year! And this time around Jake’s a big enough boy to really enjoy it, aren’t you, Jake?”
Jacob nods earnestly at his mom. “You play too, mama?” And there it is: the matching grin.
Ziva thinks helplessly of how cold it is outside, and of how her nice, felt coat was not meant to keep her dry under the fall of such wet snow as is currently coming down, and of how - after all these years - she still really hates this kind of weather. Then she sighs, drops her NCIS backpack to the floor, and kneels down beside her husband who is little more than a giant child himself, sometimes.
“Of course,” she says. “Now, let’s get your mittens on while your father ties up his boots, yes? We don’t want him to trip and fall on his bum, as funny as that would be.”
Jacob giggles.
In far too short a time, Ziva is watching from the driveway as Jacob stumbles through the freshly fallen snow, shrieking and laughing while Tony gives chase. Ziva can’t help but smile even as she wraps her arms around her middle and bounces up and down, trying to retain some semblance of body heat.
In the middle of the lawn, Tony suddenly gasps dramatically. “Do you know what we have here?”
“WHAT?!” Jacob shouts, trundling over.
“Packing snow!” Tony exclaims, losing none of his exaggerated enthusiasm. Ziva rolls her eyes at his antics, a reflexive motion that is now practiced, and worn, but which has gained a certain fondness she can’t seem to help. “And you know what that means…snowman time!”
Joining them is not a conscious decision. Before Ziva properly processes what she is doing, her dress pants are getting soaked through at the bottom and she is building a snowman alongside her family. It is peaceful, in its way. As the snow melts against her reddened fingertips, somehow the day’s cares are melting into nothingness, too.
Of course, because it is after all her family, the relaxed atmosphere cannot last.
Ziva is helping Jacob round out the snowman’s base when the back of her coat collar is abruptly tugged away from her neck. She has a split second to choose between possibly knocking her son over but preventing the imminent attack, or allowing Tony to carry through with his intent. The choice is easy: a handful of icy cold snow ends up shoved against her skin.
“Tony,” she says forcefully, though she knows her voice is pitched an octave higher than is truly threatening. She reaches awkwardly behind her in an attempt to brush some of the snow away.
Tony, who had allegedly been rolling the next part of the snowman around the yard to increase its girth, chuckles. He pulls her closer so he can help, eyes glimmering in the same way they always have but no longer putting her on the defensive.
He presses a kiss to the top her head. “Have you ever been in a snowball fight, Zee-vah?”
“Once,” she responds, leaning automatically into the arm he wraps around her shoulders. She thinks of a certain blustery crime scene, and of tackling Tony - DiNozzo, then - to the ground. “A long time ago.”
Having lost his parents’ immediate attention, Jacob quickly grows bored. He sends a booted foot flying into the giant ball of snow he and Ziva had constructed, a full-hearted ‘H’YA!’ issuing from his lips as he does so. Tony groans something about raising ninja babies. Ziva smirks softly, and then pulls away from the warmth of her husband’s embrace to go assist in the carnage.
She has never learned to love the snow, but there are other things she has come to love that more than make up the difference.
Tony/Ziva, snow, set in Season 3 & my made up Season 13, PG.
They’ve barely arrived at the crime scene when fat flakes of snow begin to fall from a dusky sky. Ziva hasn’t been with NCIS for long, and though she prides herself on being a quick learner she finds she struggles to keep up as everything starts moving at twice its regular pace.
Ducky hastily examines the body, then calls Gibbs over to offer a succinct, to-the-point report on his findings - forgoing his typical rambling digressions for perhaps the first time in his career, as far as Ziva can guess (she has never known anyone to ramble on as Dr. Mallard does). Meanwhile, rather than wasting his time harassing McGee, DiNozzo is shooting rapid-fire photographs of the victim - the area around the victim - the blood trail that disappears off into the woods - everything and anything upon which he can focus the camera. For his part, McGee somehow manages to stay one step ahead of the senior field agent, setting down crime scene markers and jotting notes in anticipation of where the lens will turn next.
Ziva stands amidst it all, unaccustomed to feeling quite so useless and able to think only of how much she really and truly detests the thing that has caused the unpleasant experience: snow.
“David!” Gibbs barks, glaring up at her from over the body of their dead marine. She jerks to face him, squares her chin, and awaits her orders.
“Get the witness statements before they scatter.”
Ziva hesitates, because she hasn’t been trusted with this on more than a handful of occasions, and each time it’s an adjustment. She knows how to get information from marks and enemies and people who happen to make themselves temporarily useful: she knows how to lie; she knows how to seduce; she knows how to torture. But simply asking for information from innocent civilians has never been second nature to her. She doubts it ever will be.
“Now!” Gibbs says, eyes plainly asking, Why are you still standing there like an idiot? She cannot blame him. She feels like an idiot.
Gibbs bobs his head to the left, and Ziva sees a small group of people milling about one of the local LEO’s cruisers. A young police officer is speaking to them and holding his hands out in a placating gesture, but even from several feet away Ziva can tell they are getting antsy. That they want to get home, to warmth and dry clothes. Perhaps their loved ones. On almost all counts Ziva feels the same, and this one fact that she and the witnesses have in common centers her. She takes in a deep breath, exhales her feelings of ineptness, and makes her way over.
“Good evening,” she says, plastering on a smile. “I am Officer David, with NCIS. I am sure you are all anxious to get indoors, but…”
It feels like both an eternity has passed and yet barely any time at all when the whirlwind of activity finally stops. Ziva sends the last of her four witnesses on their way in time to see Ducky loading the marine’s body into the M.E.’s van, and DiNozzo emerging from the nearby tree line. McGee and Gibbs are mysteriously out of sight. She checks her watch: it’s been less than half an hour since she began taking statements.
One of the two remaining police cruisers - when the other two left, Ziva does not know - peals away with a salutary woop woop. DiNozzo raises his empty hand in acknowledgment; the other is overburdened with a pile of the plastic markers McGee had been laying out earlier. He continues to carefully pick a path across the white-blanketed pavement of the carpool-turned-crime scene, and Ziva walks over to the team’s NCIS-issued SUV to wait.
She opens the trunk and leans against the back fender, eyes taking in the veritable - what is the phrase, Winter Wonderland? - around her. Wonderland, indeed. Ziva wriggles her toes in her perfectly sensible shoes, and grimaces when she finds that the perfectly insensible weather has managed to soak through the leather. No wonder her feet are growing so cold.
She scuffs at the ground, and estimates there must be nearly two inches of snow already.
“Why the long face?” DiNozzo asks, finally reaching the vehicle. He drops the markers into its trunk with a grateful sigh and rubs his wrist. “Those are deceptively heavy. I may have sprained something.”
Ziva rolls her eyes - which, incidentally, she has likewise worried about spraining since she came to work at NCIS. “My face is not long, and your wrist fine.”
DiNozzo shoots her a doubtful look. It glimmers with something else, too, that immediately has her hackles rising. “What’s wrong, Zee-vah? Not a fan of old Jack Frost?”
Annoyed, and knowing it is in only in part because he has managed to catch her up yet again with an idiom she doesn’t understand, Ziva responds, “I do not know who this Jack Frost is or what he has to do with anything. If my face seemed ‘long’ it is because I am suddenly realizing what it means to spend winter in Washington, D.C. Had I thought about how it would be so…blustery… I might have considered this liaison position a little more carefully.” She lets her gaze travel deliberately up and down DiNozzo’s body, now mirroring her position propped against the SUV. “Though perhaps I should have done so for other reasons as well.”
DiNozzo clutches at his chest. “Pooh Bear, you wound me.”
Taken aback, Ziva draws her eyebrows down into a confused frown. “Pooh Bear?”
“Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day? 1968, won the Academy Award for animated short film…Based on the book by A.A. Milne? No?”
Ziva shakes her head. She will never understand this man’s love of movie references, although she is somewhat impressed that the latest implies he may have also read a book. Once. In his life.
DiNozzo sighs and, where his shoulder brushes against hers, she can feel him deflate a little. Unfortunately, the defeat is apparently but momentary. He gasps and clutches at his chest again. Ziva regards him warily.
“What?”
“Ziva - is - is this the first time you’ve seen snow?” DiNozzo’s eyes are widened in a mockery of childish wonderment. Ziva resists the urge to hit him.
“Special Agent DiNozzo - ”
“- Very Special Agent -”
“- I may be from Israel, but I have visited more countries than you can likely even name. Including, yes, ones with snow.” Ziva looks back out at the ever-whitening world beyond the limited shelter of the SUV. “Is this the first time you’ve seen snow,” she mutters. At her side, Tony shifts. The back of the truck dips a little with the movement. Ziva ignores it and continues muttering, louder, “I am Israeli, and from a warm climate; I am not a child.”
“Uh huh.”
Ziva swivels her head to glower at her companion once more. He’s smirking at her, and the glimmer is back. “What.” she demands, longing for the days when she had only her father to answer to and might have gotten away with just shooting DiNozzo. (In the leg, of course.)
“Oh, nothing, nothing,” he says congenially. “Just, tell me Officer David - in these countries about which I’ve never heard, do they have things like snowmen?”
Ziva rolls her eyes yet again - can one sprain their eye muscles? - and says, “Yes, DiNozzo. They have snowmen. And snow cherubs -”
“Angels.”
She waves the correction away. Whatever, there is a point to be made. “And snow forts. I am quite. Familiar. With snow.”
Across the carpool area, Ziva notices Gibbs and McGee have re-appeared, picking up the remaining crime scene markers as they approach. Everyone else that had been lingering at the scene is now gone.
“How about fights?” DiNozzo is asking.
“Hmm?” Ziva wonders if she should offer to help the two other members of their team. On one hand, perhaps it would make up for her earlier hesitance. On the other…at least where she is it is almost dry. And marginally less cold.
“You know, snowball fights. Making projectiles out snow, then hurling them at your friends…clipping little Billy from down the street with one made of ice, right in the face.”
“Yes,” Ziva says absently. She stands, having decided to go be of assistance, before continuing, “I am familiar with the concept. As I have said -”
Without warning, the nape of her neck is doused with a frozen shower of snow that melts almost immediately upon contact with her skin, trickling in icy rivulets down her spine. Ziva barely manages to contain an undignified yelp, but cannot prevent herself from executing a combined jump-and-wriggle motion that she would be embarrassed about except - she is Mossad, not a robot. And she does not at all like, nor as she ever liked, snow, and certainly not when it has been shoved down the back of her jacket.
“DiNozzo!” she yells. And then, because she is Mossad, she whirls on him, anchors one hand in the crook of his right elbow, and pulls. Before DiNozzo knows what’s happening, Ziva has him on his feet, then on the ground face down, his right arm twisted behind him and one of her knees digging into his left kidney.
Beneath her, DiNozzo wheezes as he attempts to draw oxygen into his lungs. The whistle he adds is clearly exaggerated - she is not cutting off his air supply that much. Exasperated by the dramatics, Ziva is busy informing him of this fact when Gibbs’ feet come into view. She cuts herself off to glance up at her superior, but refuses to look apologetic.
“Boss? A little help?” DiNozzo asks. Ziva digs her knee in harder, and he lets out a satisfying squeak.
Gibbs cocks his head to one side.
“Boss?”
A second more passes, then Gibbs crouches down. He doesn’t say a word, but begins drawing snow together into a small pile with his bare hands.
“Boss?” Tony says again, this time with a hint of worry colouring his tone.
Ziva feels her lips twitch into a smug grin, which becomes a full-blown smile upon being handed a perfectly shaped snowball. Gibbs rises, says, “Make sure ya get it under his shirt collar, too,” and walks away.
“Boss!” The shout is one of deep betrayal.
“You made your bed, DiNozzo!” Gibbs calls over his shoulder. “Time to lie in it.”
Somewhere in the distance, McGee laughs.
* * *
Nearly ten years later, Ziva finds herself driving home on a wintry evening much like that first one in D.C. Beyond the slightly fogged windows of her red sedan large snowflakes drift lazily down from the sky, accumulating on even the well-travelled road and slowing end-of-day rush hour to a crawl. She clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth in annoyance, leaning forward to squint through the sedan’s windshield as the car in front of her flashes its brake lights. Ziva reluctantly taps her own brakes and comes to a stop.
While she waits for traffic to begin moving again, she notes that the haloed streetlights are causing everything to sparkle a little. There is no doubt in her mind that some of those in nearby vehicles must think the sight pretty, especially set against the backdrop of deep twilight as it is. She, however, has been awake since 5 a.m., at work since 7 a.m., and just desperately wants to reach her beloved La-Z-Boy couch and not move for several hours.
Feeling antsy despite her bone-deep exhaustion, Ziva flicks on the radio. A familiar, upbeat Christmas song filters through the sedan’s speakers and she cranks the volume, drumming her fingers against the steering wheel to expend some of her impatient energy. Outside, snow continues to fall in a heavy mantle upon the ground. To the amount of time she has left before she can put the long day behind her, Ziva mentally tacks on the 20 minutes it will take her to clear the driveway, or at least a path to the front door. As the cars ahead finally resume their painstaking march forward, she reflects wryly that although Tony will likely claim his ‘bad’ back renders him incapable of helping her shovel, it will undoubtedly be up for other activities later that night. A strange (and, for him, convenient) paradox.
It is almost a full half hour more before Ziva turns onto their street. With a burst of pleasure, she sees that the driveway in front of her and Tony’s two-storey is nearly bare but for a fine dusting of white. Perhaps she owes her husband an apology.
Ziva parks, grabs her beat-up NCIS gear bag from the passenger seat (she still uses it out of nostalgia, even though these days it carries little more than her wallet and lunch), and forces herself out into the bitter cold. The click of her heels echoes in the night’s muted silence as she makes a beeline for the refuge of home. On the way, she takes in the too-neat edges of the snow banks lining her path and immediately rescinds her intended apology.
“Gibbs came by, I see,” Ziva calls, swinging open the unlocked front door. She stops short when she’s met with two pairs of green eyes staring up at her from the floor of the entranceway. “Oh,” she says, startled. Ziva inches further into the foyer so she can shut the door behind her, careful to avoid tripping over Tony’s feet where they are extended behind him in a kneel.
“Hey,” he greets, after an equally surprised pause. His hands are frozen on either side of their son, Jacob’s, head, grasping the bright green hood of a snowsuit Ziva doesn’t recognize. “Yeah, Grandpa came over with the plow about an hour ago. And he brought a new snowsuit for you, didn’t he, buddy?” Tony untwists the fingers of his left hand from the bunched neon fabric to ruffle the two-year-old’s dark hair. Jacob nods dutifully.
“I see,” Ziva says. The tip of her nose, chilled from even just those few short moments exposed to the elements, tingles. “I hope you said thank you.”
Jacob nods again, and Tony responds, “Sure did. Planted a big ol’ kiss on that cranky face, didn’t you?” He resumes tugging Jacob’s hood up and over his head, pulling the drawstrings so it fits snugly around cheeks that are chubby with youth. Abruptly, Ziva recalls Tony standing nervously in front of Leon Vance’s children, discomfited and unsure how to relate to them.
How things change.
“Borin keep you late after class for detention, or was it just a busy day guarding our coasts?”
Ziva hums non-committedly. She’s more focused on whether or not she’s about to have to step back outside. Taking in the toque on Tony’s own head, and the pile of mittens on the ground next to him - one set large, one set so, so tiny in comparison - she inquires with mounting dread, “What are you two doing?”
Tony turns to look up at her once more, this time with a little kid grin that she has always thought matches Jacob’s perfectly. “It’s the first snow of the year! And this time around Jake’s a big enough boy to really enjoy it, aren’t you, Jake?”
Jacob nods earnestly at his mom. “You play too, mama?” And there it is: the matching grin.
Ziva thinks helplessly of how cold it is outside, and of how her nice, felt coat was not meant to keep her dry under the fall of such wet snow as is currently coming down, and of how - after all these years - she still really hates this kind of weather. Then she sighs, drops her NCIS backpack to the floor, and kneels down beside her husband who is little more than a giant child himself, sometimes.
“Of course,” she says. “Now, let’s get your mittens on while your father ties up his boots, yes? We don’t want him to trip and fall on his bum, as funny as that would be.”
Jacob giggles.
In far too short a time, Ziva is watching from the driveway as Jacob stumbles through the freshly fallen snow, shrieking and laughing while Tony gives chase. Ziva can’t help but smile even as she wraps her arms around her middle and bounces up and down, trying to retain some semblance of body heat.
In the middle of the lawn, Tony suddenly gasps dramatically. “Do you know what we have here?”
“WHAT?!” Jacob shouts, trundling over.
“Packing snow!” Tony exclaims, losing none of his exaggerated enthusiasm. Ziva rolls her eyes at his antics, a reflexive motion that is now practiced, and worn, but which has gained a certain fondness she can’t seem to help. “And you know what that means…snowman time!”
Joining them is not a conscious decision. Before Ziva properly processes what she is doing, her dress pants are getting soaked through at the bottom and she is building a snowman alongside her family. It is peaceful, in its way. As the snow melts against her reddened fingertips, somehow the day’s cares are melting into nothingness, too.
Of course, because it is after all her family, the relaxed atmosphere cannot last.
Ziva is helping Jacob round out the snowman’s base when the back of her coat collar is abruptly tugged away from her neck. She has a split second to choose between possibly knocking her son over but preventing the imminent attack, or allowing Tony to carry through with his intent. The choice is easy: a handful of icy cold snow ends up shoved against her skin.
“Tony,” she says forcefully, though she knows her voice is pitched an octave higher than is truly threatening. She reaches awkwardly behind her in an attempt to brush some of the snow away.
Tony, who had allegedly been rolling the next part of the snowman around the yard to increase its girth, chuckles. He pulls her closer so he can help, eyes glimmering in the same way they always have but no longer putting her on the defensive.
He presses a kiss to the top her head. “Have you ever been in a snowball fight, Zee-vah?”
“Once,” she responds, leaning automatically into the arm he wraps around her shoulders. She thinks of a certain blustery crime scene, and of tackling Tony - DiNozzo, then - to the ground. “A long time ago.”
Having lost his parents’ immediate attention, Jacob quickly grows bored. He sends a booted foot flying into the giant ball of snow he and Ziva had constructed, a full-hearted ‘H’YA!’ issuing from his lips as he does so. Tony groans something about raising ninja babies. Ziva smirks softly, and then pulls away from the warmth of her husband’s embrace to go assist in the carnage.
She has never learned to love the snow, but there are other things she has come to love that more than make up the difference.