Fic: The Last Unspoken Summer 2/4
Fic: The Last Unspoken Summer 2/4
Author: katy_moon_beam
Warnings: As previously.
Spoilers: Still the summer between Hiatus & Shalom, so for both lots of episodes and much...interpretation....between.
A/N: Thank you for all the reviews on the previous section, they are much appreciated, especially as this is my first foray into the NCIS fandom and I'm still trying to get all the voices and such correct in my head. Any thoughts/comments/advice is always greatly appreciated.
***
Protection
She fumbled with her keys. Of the three keyholes her eyes could see, her brain could not quite work out which was the real one, and she growled in frustration as she missed the lock again. The porch-mounted lamplight made her fragile head ache, and she squeezed her eyes shut against its invading presence.
“ Here, let me do that.” The keys were taken from her grasp and slid easily into the door with his free hand; the other retained a steady presence at her elbow.
Her feet were unsteady, but once inside the apartment she pulled away from him and concentrated on walking across the room unaided. “ I do not need a baby-sitter Tony. I am quite capable of taking care of myself.” She held her head up high, but her words were undermined by the way she clutched at the back of the couch, the butter-soft cashmere throw bunching between her white-knuckled fingers.
Closing the front door behind him with a click, Tony watched as she made her way to the bedroom, keeping one hand in contact with a steady surface at all times. “ I’m sure you can, but Ducky said you shouldn’t be left alone tonight, so I’m not.” As she disappeared into the shadows of her room muttering under her breath, he found himself wandering, eyes scanning her tall wooden bookshelves. His fingers trailed along the keys of the piano, leaving a pitch-perfect scale echoing around the room. The books on display were vast and varied, and in so many different languages he thought she must have been being modest when she said she only spoke five.
He was in the middle of studying the photos on her walls - and trying to figure out where in the world each one was taken - when the sound of a crash and vehement cursing in Hebrew caused him to step hastily up to her bedroom door left ajar. “ You okay?” he asked as he entered into the shadows - not waiting for an invitation - his eye quickly adjusting to the dim light. He found Ziva knelt on the floor next to a now-crooked end table, picking up scattered remnants of what he assumed used to be her side lamp. Her legs were bare amongst the shards, and she had at some point removed her blood-spattered sweater, leaving it in a ball on the distressed hardwood floor.
“ I have crazy glue in my head and I just broke my lamp, do I look as though I am okay?” she exhaled, frustrated. She sounded annoyed, and for a moment he hesitated in helping her, but the sight of her crumpled on the floor, half dressed, her forehead resting in her palm made him come to his senses. He reached out for her arm and she didn’t protest.
Making her sit on the bed, he picked up the remaining pieces of the lamp-base himself and deposited them in her trashcan. Crossing his arms over his striped-shirted chest, he regarded her with a frown. Brushing the side of her shoulder with his hand, he held the other up in front of him he asked, “ How many fingers?”
Laughing, she didn’t answer, but swatted him away, slipping under his outstretched arm and walking across the room before he had a chance to stop her. “ I am taking a shower. If you insist on watching over me, you may join me. Otherwise, I will not be long.”
Although his body urged him to take up her offer and join her under the pelting spray, his brain made him shake his head. “ You go ahead. Yell if you need any help.” His suggestion was met with a raising of her eyebrows, and she disappeared into the bathroom with a barked laugh. Moments later her heard the shower turn on, and decided to leave her to it.
By the time she exited her room, rubbing her hair carefully with a towel as so to avoid her wound and clad in nothing more than a grey NCIS sweatshirt and a pair of hiking socks, Tony had settled on her couch and was flicking through channels on her tv. Leaning his head back, he looked at her upside down. “ I ordered us a pizza.”
“ Kosher?” she teased, pushing her still damp hair behind her shoulders and draping her wet towel over the back of a chair. She dropped down onto the couch next to him, pulling her legs beneath her so that their thighs were touching.
Taking a small brown bottle from his pocket, he shook two white pills into his palm. “ Half vegetable.” Holding out his hand to her, he nodded his head towards to glass of water on the coffee table that she hadn’t even noticed until that moment. “ Take these. Ducky said two before you eat.”
Even as she took them from him, she argued, “ Do I look like I am in pain, Tony?” She didn’t mention the throbbing behind her eyes, or the way her skull still ached from being smashed into the concrete floor of the warehouse, hard enough to get blood everywhere and warrant an impromptu trip to the ER.
Picking up the glass of water, he rolled his eyes. “ Stop arguing, Ninja Girl, and just take them already.” He didn’t give voice to the way his chest had tightened when he had seen their suspect throw her across the room like a rag-doll, or the way the sickening crack of her head had made him almost fumble his weapon.
After she had acquiesced and taken the pills, they argued over what to watch as Tony picked through what he called her ‘pitiful’ collection of dvds; mostly foreign language, he made her explain all the plots to him as he carefully considered their choices. He wouldn’t admit it was a way of checking her memory - even though she suspected - and they became so sidetracked by a rambling narrative about Tony’s first time watching ‘Stand By Me’, they hadn’t even picked anything by the time the pizza arrived.
Tony almost laughed at the pizza boy’s stunned expression - for Ziva has answered the door in a sweatshirt that barely skimmed her thighs - but used his best ‘Gibbs-glare’ just to see the boy’s eyes flare in panic, and hear him stammer as he asked for the money. Though Ziva rolled her eyes, Tony placed a mock-possessive arm around her waist and waited for the kid to scurry back to his moped before he broke into a grin.
Across the street, there was a brief flash. Tony puzzled over it for a second, and then, assuming it was the neighbours’ tv through the not-quite-drawn curtains, went back inside, closing the door tight behind him.
**
Haven
Since getting out of MTAC almost fifteen minutes previously, Tony had been searching for Abby. She was not in her lab, not in Autopsy with Ducky and Palmer, not even at the Caw-Pow machine or in the ladies’ room (he had bumped into Claire from Accounting outside and asked her to check). Odd thing was, she hadn’t called up to tell him she was going home, as had become her habit in the last couple of months. Entering the Squad Room, Tony could feel the frown on his face, and knew his consternation was apparent when McGee looked up from the only occupied desk in the room.
“ Something wrong Tony?”
“ You seen Abby? She was meant to be walking me through ballistics from the Crane case and she’s done a Houdini on me.” Sitting down at the desk-which-wasn’t-quite-his-desk, he tapped at his computer, pulling up the files that he had already read over so many times that the words blurred together, and the pictures were burned in his memory.
His attention was diverted from the screen when McGee spoke. “ She was waiting for you when she got a call, said she had to go. She left her coat here though, so I’m sure she’s coming back.” His voice was calm, without even a hint of the irksome puzzlement that Tony was feeling.
Sighing, Tony picked up his coffee and took a long sip. He still thought it tasted like dirt, but the cream and sugar went some way to masking that, and at least it kept him awake. His earlier conversation with the Director raced around his head, and he shook it to try and make it go away. He really didn’t need the distraction right now. Lifting the receiver, he punched a familiar number into the phone.
The line rang twice before it was picked up, and he was almost deafened by the sound of Death Metal blaring through the speaker. Pulling the phone away from his ear, he just about heard her yell, “ Tony? Hang on!” before the music was turned down, and she spoke again. “ Hey! Sorry, was having an Android Lust moment. I mean, you can listen to ‘em quiet, but it isn’t really the same. It’s like this time, I was at this gig and I stood too close to the speakers - ”
“ Abs!” he cut her off. From her tone, he could tell that the number of Caw-Pows she had ingested that day had seriously outstripped the recommended allowance, and if he didn’t stop her now he’d never be able to break into her flow. “ Where are you? I thought we were going over the case?”
“ We were! We are!” Her tone was apologetic, and he could hear the engine in her hearse straining as it rattled along. “ It’s just, Ziva called and she needed picking up, and then I got stuck on Capital again and there’s a protest on Pennsylvania so I had to go the long way round. Did you know we’re not paying our teachers enough?”
“ Abby…” Tony couldn’t help but keep the fatigue out of his voice. It had been a long couple of days filled with far more clandestine meetings with the Director than he would have liked, which meant he really wanted to get out of there, and this really wasn’t helping.
“ Sorry. Right. I’m just pulling into the Yard now. Meet me in my lab.”
He hung up the phone without even saying goodbye, setting it in the cradle with slightly more force then he really needed. Pushing himself up from the desk, he grabbed his coffee cup and would have stalked to the elevator without another word, save McGee’s curious expression.
“ Apparently our Mistress of the Dark is an errand girl now” - then, off McGee’s questioning look, added - “ She had to do some favour for Ziva.” Pressing the button of the elevator, he called back over his shoulder. “ Go home Probie. Nothing going on that can’t wait until tomorrow.”
McGee coughed slightly before answering, gesturing towards his computer with a shrug. “ I’ll just, uh, finish up some stuff. See if Abby needs any help defragging the Ensign’s hard drive after you’ve talked to her.”
Tony raised his eyebrow, but for once, said nothing, and let the elevator doors slide shut behind him.
He had been down in the lab for just over a minute - trying to ignore the multiple eyes of his ex-Boss watching him from the numerous computer screens - when Abby ran in, pigtails bobbing behind her and car keys jingling in her hand. “ I’m here! I’m here!” Throwing her keys down on the side, she fired up her computer, whizzing around to pull a sheaf of paper out of one of the printers. Her computer flicked through image matches at a speed that made him almost dizzy. “ Sorry Tony!” she continued, picking up an earlier-abandoned Caf-Pow and sucking on the straw. “ Ziva got thrown off of her bus so I had to go pick her up. And her house isn’t that far away but you know my hearse doesn’t like to go more than sixty and if I have the stereo on then the lights are kind of hinky.”
Part of her babbled speech, at least, sunk into his brain, and pulled his attention away from the flicking screen. “ Ziva got thrown off her bus?”
Nodding, Abby tapped at her computer as it beeped at her, scanning through results with a look of concentration. “ Apparently these two guys got in a fight, and then she tried to break it up and she ended up punching one of them and so the bus driver man made her get off in the middle of nowhere. Okay, the middle of nowhere is probably a stretch ‘cause this is DC and all, but you know, she was way up on Franklin…” She trailed off with a shrug, taking a hearty sip of her drink. “ So I picked her up and took her home.”
Rubbing his hand over his weary, stubble-rough face, Tony sighed. “ I’m gonna kill her.”
In an instant, Abby was bouncing on the balls of her feet and waving her hands around. She gulped her mouthful of liquid down with a wince. “ Ouch! Brain-freeze!” she exclaimed before grabbing his shoulders. “ You can’t be mad Tony. It’s Ziva, you know, she was trying to do the right thing.”
“ By punching him?”
Abby responded with only a guilty looking shrug.
“ Whatever. Alright Abs, let’s get this done. Don’t know about you, but after this week, my bed is really calling me.”
*
Climbing into bed was still on his mind as he drove through the city, hastily parked his Mustang, and ran up onto the sidewalk. Knocking on the solid wood, he leaned for a moment against the doorframe, reaching up and brushing aside the trailing leaves with his fingers. Hearing careful footsteps inside, he waited for only a moment before the door was pulled open.
“ I think you and I need to have a conversation about good spanking and bad spanking,” he teased with a tired grin, watching as she took in his appearance and rolled her eyes.
“ The man was a ben elef,” she shrugged, knowing that he would have already heard the whole story from Abby on her return to the Navy Yard - unless told specifically, Abby was terrible at keeping other people’s secrets. “ I showed restraint by not shooting him.”
Noting how she flexed the knuckles of her right hand, he dropped his head to his chin and looked up at her, his expression almost one of disappointment. “ Why didn’t you call me?” His tone wavered somewhere between hurt and accusation, and was accompanied by a deep, cavernous sigh.
The look she gave him was almost unreadable; he understood shades and glimpses, but not the whole picture. Moonlight glinted off her olive-skinned shoulders, left bare by the plain white halter she had changed into since getting home. “ Because I called Abby. You were in with the Director.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, but she studied him carefully. The tension in his stance worsened at the mention of Jenny’s name. “ What’s wrong?”
His fixed smile did nothing to hide the conflict she could see in him. “ Why would you think something’s wrong Ziva?” he asked, drawing out the first syllable of her name in a poor imitation of his teasing normalcy that fell completely flat.
“ Tony?”
“ Just - ” he ran a hand over his face, and she could almost feel the weariness radiating off of him. “ Can we not talk about it tonight?”
She paused. “ Of course.”
Then turning around, she held a hand out backwards to him, and watched him sigh, relieved, as he followed her in.
***
Author: katy_moon_beam
Warnings: As previously.
Spoilers: Still the summer between Hiatus & Shalom, so for both lots of episodes and much...interpretation....between.
A/N: Thank you for all the reviews on the previous section, they are much appreciated, especially as this is my first foray into the NCIS fandom and I'm still trying to get all the voices and such correct in my head. Any thoughts/comments/advice is always greatly appreciated.
***
Protection
She fumbled with her keys. Of the three keyholes her eyes could see, her brain could not quite work out which was the real one, and she growled in frustration as she missed the lock again. The porch-mounted lamplight made her fragile head ache, and she squeezed her eyes shut against its invading presence.
“ Here, let me do that.” The keys were taken from her grasp and slid easily into the door with his free hand; the other retained a steady presence at her elbow.
Her feet were unsteady, but once inside the apartment she pulled away from him and concentrated on walking across the room unaided. “ I do not need a baby-sitter Tony. I am quite capable of taking care of myself.” She held her head up high, but her words were undermined by the way she clutched at the back of the couch, the butter-soft cashmere throw bunching between her white-knuckled fingers.
Closing the front door behind him with a click, Tony watched as she made her way to the bedroom, keeping one hand in contact with a steady surface at all times. “ I’m sure you can, but Ducky said you shouldn’t be left alone tonight, so I’m not.” As she disappeared into the shadows of her room muttering under her breath, he found himself wandering, eyes scanning her tall wooden bookshelves. His fingers trailed along the keys of the piano, leaving a pitch-perfect scale echoing around the room. The books on display were vast and varied, and in so many different languages he thought she must have been being modest when she said she only spoke five.
He was in the middle of studying the photos on her walls - and trying to figure out where in the world each one was taken - when the sound of a crash and vehement cursing in Hebrew caused him to step hastily up to her bedroom door left ajar. “ You okay?” he asked as he entered into the shadows - not waiting for an invitation - his eye quickly adjusting to the dim light. He found Ziva knelt on the floor next to a now-crooked end table, picking up scattered remnants of what he assumed used to be her side lamp. Her legs were bare amongst the shards, and she had at some point removed her blood-spattered sweater, leaving it in a ball on the distressed hardwood floor.
“ I have crazy glue in my head and I just broke my lamp, do I look as though I am okay?” she exhaled, frustrated. She sounded annoyed, and for a moment he hesitated in helping her, but the sight of her crumpled on the floor, half dressed, her forehead resting in her palm made him come to his senses. He reached out for her arm and she didn’t protest.
Making her sit on the bed, he picked up the remaining pieces of the lamp-base himself and deposited them in her trashcan. Crossing his arms over his striped-shirted chest, he regarded her with a frown. Brushing the side of her shoulder with his hand, he held the other up in front of him he asked, “ How many fingers?”
Laughing, she didn’t answer, but swatted him away, slipping under his outstretched arm and walking across the room before he had a chance to stop her. “ I am taking a shower. If you insist on watching over me, you may join me. Otherwise, I will not be long.”
Although his body urged him to take up her offer and join her under the pelting spray, his brain made him shake his head. “ You go ahead. Yell if you need any help.” His suggestion was met with a raising of her eyebrows, and she disappeared into the bathroom with a barked laugh. Moments later her heard the shower turn on, and decided to leave her to it.
By the time she exited her room, rubbing her hair carefully with a towel as so to avoid her wound and clad in nothing more than a grey NCIS sweatshirt and a pair of hiking socks, Tony had settled on her couch and was flicking through channels on her tv. Leaning his head back, he looked at her upside down. “ I ordered us a pizza.”
“ Kosher?” she teased, pushing her still damp hair behind her shoulders and draping her wet towel over the back of a chair. She dropped down onto the couch next to him, pulling her legs beneath her so that their thighs were touching.
Taking a small brown bottle from his pocket, he shook two white pills into his palm. “ Half vegetable.” Holding out his hand to her, he nodded his head towards to glass of water on the coffee table that she hadn’t even noticed until that moment. “ Take these. Ducky said two before you eat.”
Even as she took them from him, she argued, “ Do I look like I am in pain, Tony?” She didn’t mention the throbbing behind her eyes, or the way her skull still ached from being smashed into the concrete floor of the warehouse, hard enough to get blood everywhere and warrant an impromptu trip to the ER.
Picking up the glass of water, he rolled his eyes. “ Stop arguing, Ninja Girl, and just take them already.” He didn’t give voice to the way his chest had tightened when he had seen their suspect throw her across the room like a rag-doll, or the way the sickening crack of her head had made him almost fumble his weapon.
After she had acquiesced and taken the pills, they argued over what to watch as Tony picked through what he called her ‘pitiful’ collection of dvds; mostly foreign language, he made her explain all the plots to him as he carefully considered their choices. He wouldn’t admit it was a way of checking her memory - even though she suspected - and they became so sidetracked by a rambling narrative about Tony’s first time watching ‘Stand By Me’, they hadn’t even picked anything by the time the pizza arrived.
Tony almost laughed at the pizza boy’s stunned expression - for Ziva has answered the door in a sweatshirt that barely skimmed her thighs - but used his best ‘Gibbs-glare’ just to see the boy’s eyes flare in panic, and hear him stammer as he asked for the money. Though Ziva rolled her eyes, Tony placed a mock-possessive arm around her waist and waited for the kid to scurry back to his moped before he broke into a grin.
Across the street, there was a brief flash. Tony puzzled over it for a second, and then, assuming it was the neighbours’ tv through the not-quite-drawn curtains, went back inside, closing the door tight behind him.
**
Haven
Since getting out of MTAC almost fifteen minutes previously, Tony had been searching for Abby. She was not in her lab, not in Autopsy with Ducky and Palmer, not even at the Caw-Pow machine or in the ladies’ room (he had bumped into Claire from Accounting outside and asked her to check). Odd thing was, she hadn’t called up to tell him she was going home, as had become her habit in the last couple of months. Entering the Squad Room, Tony could feel the frown on his face, and knew his consternation was apparent when McGee looked up from the only occupied desk in the room.
“ Something wrong Tony?”
“ You seen Abby? She was meant to be walking me through ballistics from the Crane case and she’s done a Houdini on me.” Sitting down at the desk-which-wasn’t-quite-his-desk, he tapped at his computer, pulling up the files that he had already read over so many times that the words blurred together, and the pictures were burned in his memory.
His attention was diverted from the screen when McGee spoke. “ She was waiting for you when she got a call, said she had to go. She left her coat here though, so I’m sure she’s coming back.” His voice was calm, without even a hint of the irksome puzzlement that Tony was feeling.
Sighing, Tony picked up his coffee and took a long sip. He still thought it tasted like dirt, but the cream and sugar went some way to masking that, and at least it kept him awake. His earlier conversation with the Director raced around his head, and he shook it to try and make it go away. He really didn’t need the distraction right now. Lifting the receiver, he punched a familiar number into the phone.
The line rang twice before it was picked up, and he was almost deafened by the sound of Death Metal blaring through the speaker. Pulling the phone away from his ear, he just about heard her yell, “ Tony? Hang on!” before the music was turned down, and she spoke again. “ Hey! Sorry, was having an Android Lust moment. I mean, you can listen to ‘em quiet, but it isn’t really the same. It’s like this time, I was at this gig and I stood too close to the speakers - ”
“ Abs!” he cut her off. From her tone, he could tell that the number of Caw-Pows she had ingested that day had seriously outstripped the recommended allowance, and if he didn’t stop her now he’d never be able to break into her flow. “ Where are you? I thought we were going over the case?”
“ We were! We are!” Her tone was apologetic, and he could hear the engine in her hearse straining as it rattled along. “ It’s just, Ziva called and she needed picking up, and then I got stuck on Capital again and there’s a protest on Pennsylvania so I had to go the long way round. Did you know we’re not paying our teachers enough?”
“ Abby…” Tony couldn’t help but keep the fatigue out of his voice. It had been a long couple of days filled with far more clandestine meetings with the Director than he would have liked, which meant he really wanted to get out of there, and this really wasn’t helping.
“ Sorry. Right. I’m just pulling into the Yard now. Meet me in my lab.”
He hung up the phone without even saying goodbye, setting it in the cradle with slightly more force then he really needed. Pushing himself up from the desk, he grabbed his coffee cup and would have stalked to the elevator without another word, save McGee’s curious expression.
“ Apparently our Mistress of the Dark is an errand girl now” - then, off McGee’s questioning look, added - “ She had to do some favour for Ziva.” Pressing the button of the elevator, he called back over his shoulder. “ Go home Probie. Nothing going on that can’t wait until tomorrow.”
McGee coughed slightly before answering, gesturing towards his computer with a shrug. “ I’ll just, uh, finish up some stuff. See if Abby needs any help defragging the Ensign’s hard drive after you’ve talked to her.”
Tony raised his eyebrow, but for once, said nothing, and let the elevator doors slide shut behind him.
He had been down in the lab for just over a minute - trying to ignore the multiple eyes of his ex-Boss watching him from the numerous computer screens - when Abby ran in, pigtails bobbing behind her and car keys jingling in her hand. “ I’m here! I’m here!” Throwing her keys down on the side, she fired up her computer, whizzing around to pull a sheaf of paper out of one of the printers. Her computer flicked through image matches at a speed that made him almost dizzy. “ Sorry Tony!” she continued, picking up an earlier-abandoned Caf-Pow and sucking on the straw. “ Ziva got thrown off of her bus so I had to go pick her up. And her house isn’t that far away but you know my hearse doesn’t like to go more than sixty and if I have the stereo on then the lights are kind of hinky.”
Part of her babbled speech, at least, sunk into his brain, and pulled his attention away from the flicking screen. “ Ziva got thrown off her bus?”
Nodding, Abby tapped at her computer as it beeped at her, scanning through results with a look of concentration. “ Apparently these two guys got in a fight, and then she tried to break it up and she ended up punching one of them and so the bus driver man made her get off in the middle of nowhere. Okay, the middle of nowhere is probably a stretch ‘cause this is DC and all, but you know, she was way up on Franklin…” She trailed off with a shrug, taking a hearty sip of her drink. “ So I picked her up and took her home.”
Rubbing his hand over his weary, stubble-rough face, Tony sighed. “ I’m gonna kill her.”
In an instant, Abby was bouncing on the balls of her feet and waving her hands around. She gulped her mouthful of liquid down with a wince. “ Ouch! Brain-freeze!” she exclaimed before grabbing his shoulders. “ You can’t be mad Tony. It’s Ziva, you know, she was trying to do the right thing.”
“ By punching him?”
Abby responded with only a guilty looking shrug.
“ Whatever. Alright Abs, let’s get this done. Don’t know about you, but after this week, my bed is really calling me.”
*
Climbing into bed was still on his mind as he drove through the city, hastily parked his Mustang, and ran up onto the sidewalk. Knocking on the solid wood, he leaned for a moment against the doorframe, reaching up and brushing aside the trailing leaves with his fingers. Hearing careful footsteps inside, he waited for only a moment before the door was pulled open.
“ I think you and I need to have a conversation about good spanking and bad spanking,” he teased with a tired grin, watching as she took in his appearance and rolled her eyes.
“ The man was a ben elef,” she shrugged, knowing that he would have already heard the whole story from Abby on her return to the Navy Yard - unless told specifically, Abby was terrible at keeping other people’s secrets. “ I showed restraint by not shooting him.”
Noting how she flexed the knuckles of her right hand, he dropped his head to his chin and looked up at her, his expression almost one of disappointment. “ Why didn’t you call me?” His tone wavered somewhere between hurt and accusation, and was accompanied by a deep, cavernous sigh.
The look she gave him was almost unreadable; he understood shades and glimpses, but not the whole picture. Moonlight glinted off her olive-skinned shoulders, left bare by the plain white halter she had changed into since getting home. “ Because I called Abby. You were in with the Director.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, but she studied him carefully. The tension in his stance worsened at the mention of Jenny’s name. “ What’s wrong?”
His fixed smile did nothing to hide the conflict she could see in him. “ Why would you think something’s wrong Ziva?” he asked, drawing out the first syllable of her name in a poor imitation of his teasing normalcy that fell completely flat.
“ Tony?”
“ Just - ” he ran a hand over his face, and she could almost feel the weariness radiating off of him. “ Can we not talk about it tonight?”
She paused. “ Of course.”
Then turning around, she held a hand out backwards to him, and watched him sigh, relieved, as he followed her in.
***