Fic: The Last Unspoken Summer 3/4
Fic: The Last Unspoken Summer 3/4
Warnings: As before. Oh, and this part is quite random in places.
Spoilers: As before.
A/N: As always thanks to G, thanks to everyone who reviewed, and also thanks to Cote de Pablo, for really rocking the New Mini in Shalom.
Enjoy!
***
Habit
He opened the door with a key, smart enough to announce his arrival as he stepped inside. He had learned that the hard way; coming home to be greeted by the barrel of a P228, when he had apparently approached too quietly, was not the way he liked his days to end. This time, however, there was no onslaught as he shook off his jacket and kicked off his shoes. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything at all. This piqued his curiosity; on Friday nights they always came to her apartment, so she could do her Shabbat thing, much as she did. In fact, seeing that the two candles on her coffee table were already lit, he figured that she must have been somewhere in the apartment.
“ Ziva?” His voice rang around the living room, and for a moment he was met with silence.
Kicking off his shoes, he walked sock-footed through the apartment, listening for sounds of movement. His hand hovered on his weapon briefly before he finally heard her voice. “ In here Tony.”
Wandering through the bedroom, he found her standing at her window with a sceptical look on her face. The curtains were twitched back, clutched in one hand, and early evening starlight poured in through the gap. “ What are you doing?” he asked, coming up behind her and brushing the back of her neck with a fleeting touch. He loved when she wore her hair up like this; not severely, like she did when they were at work, but casually pulled back from her face, emphasising the graceful curve of her neck. He would never tell her that though: she would only laugh.
“ I’m watching the zikukim,” she explained with a half glance over her shoulder, leaning back into his touch. Seeing his confused expression, she frowned, waving her hand as though filtering through all the languages in her brain, looking for the right one. “ Zikukim…havaifisekler…feux d’artifice…artifizio,” she eventually hit on the Italian word, pointing outside with a jab of her finger.
“ Fireworks,” he translated on her behalf, watching as one flew up and set the sky alight with a shower of red and gold. He noticed how she flinched as the sound of the explosion caught up with the dispersing colours. He didn’t need to ask what was bothering her; though he knew little of her past, he could piece together enough to guess why the sound of unexpected explosions would set her on edge. “ It’s the 4th. They’ll probably be going off all night.” Rubbing her upper arms, he pulled her gently away from the window. “ C’mon.”
Back through the apartment and in the kitchen, Tony lifted the lid off of the simmering saucepan on the stove and sniffed. Hopping up on the counter next to him, she watched as he dipped a wooden spoon into the pot and tasted it, his eyes lighting up at the flavour. “ Abby did not convince you to go to this uh…party with her tonight then?” she asked him, one eyebrow raised. After hearing Abby’s plans, she had expected to spend the evening alone.
“ The foam thing?” He shook his head as he pulled a carton of juice out of the fridge, ignoring her disapproving look and drinking directly from it. “ Nope. As much as I love Abby, her friends scare the bejesus out of me.” Wiping a trickle of orange juice from his chin, he grinned deviously. “ I said I’d buy her lunch for the rest of the week if she gets McGee to go though.”
Ziva couldn’t help but laugh at the image - of the reserved, sweet McGee in a throng of undulating Goths, foam rising and lasers firing across the murky, sweaty floor - and the chuckle that emanated from her throat was low and deep. “ I hope you told her to bring back evidence.”
At that moment another bang of fireworks echoed through the apartment, and Ziva flinched again, her body tensing and her head automatically turning away from the noise. As the sound dissipated she looked more annoyed with herself than frightened, and so Tony didn’t mention her reaction. “ How long will the cholent take?” he asked, stumbling just slightly over the unfamiliar word, enough to make a smile ghost over her lips.
“ We have an hour or so before it will be ready to eat.” She watched as he wandered over to the front door, and began rifling through his earlier abandoned backpack. Jumping down from the counter she followed him, leaning one hip against the back of the couch. “ What exactly did you have in mind?”
Shrugging, he continued his search, but looked up at her with a smirk. “ Maybe our own little foam party?” he suggested, flirtatiously, barely ducking out of the way when a pillow soared towards his head. “ What?!” he exclaimed, not even bothering to sound apologetic as the pillow skidded across the hardwood floor. “ You have a six-foot bathtub in there, what did you - ”
“ Tony!” Her voice was amused, exasperated, and she studied him with raised eyebrows, tapping one bare foot on the floor.
Sighing dramatically, he reached into his bag one last time. “ Or maybe we could watch some… Eskimo Limon!” He pulled the dvd out with a flourish, unable to stop grinning as a wide, bright smile lit up her face.
“ Where did you find this?” she asked, taking the dvd case from his hands as he stood up. She was surprised, both that he had remembered her mentioning the movie only in passing, and the fact she could not find a trace of it in the US, and also at the fact that he had been able to get a copy.
He shrugged, unable to stop looking pleased at himself. “ Ebay. But it’s probably not technically legal, so…” he trailed off with a grin. “ You want to watch?”
Two hours later found them settled on the couch, his arm draped around her shoulders, empty bowls on the coffee table in front of them and the credits rolling on screen. He had enjoyed the movie, but had paid more attention to the way Ziva had stifled her laughter in the back of her wrist, her head leaning lightly against his chest. She seemed to have forgotten all about the fireworks that still exploded periodically outside of the window. Leaning over, she pressed a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. “ Toda, Tony,” she murmured against his lips as he turned into the kiss.
“ Prego,” he murmured back, reaching up to briefly cup her cheek before pulling away. Untangling from their movie-watching embrace, he picked up their abandoned bowls, taking them into the kitchen and placing them in the sink. Off of her raised-eyebrow-look, he shrugged, “ I’ll do them in the morning.” She knew that meant she would end up doing them the next night, as he would conveniently ‘forget’ about them before rushing off to work, but she nodded her head in acquiescence anyway.
Recognising her assent, he grinned, and began towards her when something resting on the end of the counter caught his eye. Stopping in his tracks, he picked up the magazine - badly hidden under his own copy of GSM - and held it out with a slightly disturbed look on his face. “ You’re kidding me, right?”
Her expression became one of false-innocence almost straight away, and she opened her mouth as though trying to decide what to say. “ I am just considering my options,” she half-lied, trying to snatch the magazine away from him, but he held it above his head, out of her reach. He knew she could take him down in an instant, but held his ground none-the-less.
“ For someone just ‘considering her options’, these pages are pretty thumbed through,” he accused lightly, a frown on his face. Then, looking through it more closely, he gave her a mock-glare. “ You’ve folded the corners down.”
Giving up, she crossed her arms over her chest. “Abby thinks it’s cute.”
“ Abby drives a hearse!” Exasperation laced Tony’s words, but he couldn’t keep the smile from itching the corner of his lips.
“ McGee says it’s very safe. Besides, I think maybe I would do better with something more compact. Your American cars are all so large.”
“ But it’s such a chick car.”
“ I am a chick!”
Her last words were punctuated with a last grab for the magazine, and ended up toppling them both into her refrigerator, scattering magnets across the floor. They landed, slumped, on the terracotta tiles, Ziva sprawled on top of Tony, who still had the magazine clutched in his fist. Looping her arms around his neck, Ziva pressed a long kiss to his mouth. “ I like the red one.”
Only an hour later, through Ziva’s well-honed powers of persuasion, Tony had been convinced to go with her the next weekend to the Mini dealership. They hadn’t even made it off the kitchen floor.
***
Shadows
When Tony finally got home from his ‘errand’ for the Director, his apartment was pitch black. Shutting the door closed behind him, he leaned his head against it, letting out a deep sigh. He didn’t move until his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, and then found himself buoyed slightly by the sight of an abandoned pair of heels in the middle of the floor. The last text message he had received from her before heading out on the Director’s orders had read: Tired. Going to bed. He was surprisingly thankful to find that she had meant his bed. He could really do with seeing her face tonight; get rid of the uneasy feeling that was lurking in the back of his head.
Unbuttoning his shirt as he walked through the apartment, he let it drop to the floor as he entered the bedroom, material floating down like a very expensive leaf in the breeze. He smiled to see her sprawled in the centre of his bed, hair falling over one side of her face. Whispering her name, he waited until she had half-roused before reaching out and brushing her hair back from her cheek. “ I’m home,” he told her needlessly.
Blinking and pushing herself half-upright, Ziva squinted at the display on his alarm clock. “ It’s late,” she mumbled as he undid his jeans and kicked them off of his legs. Toeing off his socks, he slid under the covers, wrapping his arms around her and breathing in the lingering scent of jasmine.
“ I had to do some stuff for Jenny,” he said, his voice low as he nuzzled into her neck. His hands on her slumber-warm skin were cold, but she only grumbled for a moment before settling, her back pressed against his chest. He pressed a kiss to her shoulder, left bare by the thin straps of her tank top. “ Go back to sleep,” he prompted, but her eyes were already closed and her breathing slow.
With only a few hours to go before dawn, Tony closed his eyes, and let himself drift into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
It felt as though he had barely closed his eyes when he became aware of Ziva sitting bolt upright next to him. Knowing her reflexes, he pushed the covers off of himself as quickly as his sleep-fuddled co-ordination would allow, and reached for the gun on his nightstand. “ What’s wrong?” Noting that she did not move from her position on the bed, but simply stared ahead out of the open window, he moved his hand away from the gun, and brought it instead to touch her arm. He found her tense and trembling. “ Are you okay?”
“ I’m fine Tony,” she said, shrugging off his touch, her voice quiet but tight.
“ Hey, no you’re not.” Not touching with his hands, he scooted along the bed until their bodies were touching, shoulder to hip. She did not move away from him, so he tried again. “ What’s wrong?” Recognising her demeanour, he asked gently, “ Bad dream?”
“ Occupational hazard,” was her taciturn response, but she didn’t pull away as he rested a hand on her cotton-covered back, rubbing lazy circles in an attempt to quell her shudders. “ I would rather not talk about it.” Turning slighting, so her face was half towards him, she spoke without meeting his eyes. “ I did not mean to wake you.”
“ Don’t worry about it.” He knew she hated this: the weakness, the vulnerability, the fragile humanity all shining through, as glaringly obvious as neon. He could feel her frustration at her own flaws radiating off her in waves.
He could tell she didn’t buy his off-hand attitude when she shot him a glare. “ Honestly Tony, you need more then an hour of sleep without me interrupting. You are team leader now. I should just go home.” She was pushing herself up off of the bed before he had even registered her words, and by the time he had, she was already across the room, pulling her jeans on over the pair of his boxers she was wearing, her hair falling in front of her face.
“ Hey!” he reached out and grabbed her arm to still it, but she pulled it from his grip. “ Hey, crazy chick, would you slow down for a second? I don’t want you to go.” His mind was still trying to wake up, and he wasn’t quite sure if he had done something to provoke this volatile response. As she went to walk past him, he caught hold of her hand, stilling her for a moment. “ Would you just talk to me?”
In the silence, she agreed with the faintest nod of her head, but she did not speak.
He sighed, realising he was going to have to do the work in this conversation. “ You want to tell me about your dream? Maybe talking about it would help…”
He had considered this to be a sensible suggestion - one he had heard many times, and it seemed to be the kind of thing therapists and shrinks always said in the movies. It did not, however, have the desired effect on Ziva; instead of placating her, it seemed to rile her even more. “ I have lost people who I have loved, and I have killed people who others have mourned. I am not a victim for you to save. The world is not a perfect place, Tony.”
Momentarily stunned, he watched as she removed her wrist from his grip, picking up her backpack and heading out of the bedroom. Following her, he watched as she slipped her feet into her shoes before replying, “ I almost died of plague and watched one of my best friends get shot in the head in the space of a month. I know the world isn’t perfect, Ziva.”
His words stilled her, and as they sunk in, he could see her shoulders sag, and her defensive walls start to weaken. Turning to face him, she sighed. “ I’m sorry.”
“ Don’t say you’re sorry,” he recited, scuffing his bare toes against the carpet. “ It’s a - ”
“ Sign of weakness,” they finished together. The silence that followed seemed thick and uneasy, and made both of them instantly weary.
Tony was the first to break it, leaning against the doorframe of his room. “ Would you come back to bed, please? We both have to be up in a couple hours anyway, and I hear the boss is a real jackhole when people are late.” It was a pedestrian attempt at levity, but there was an ineffable quality in his voice when he called her name: “ Ziva.”
She was still for a moment, and then nodded, dropping her backpack on the floor and stepping out of her shoes. Following him into the bedroom, she allowed him to gently unbutton her jeans, brush her hair back from her face, and whisper soothing nonsense words into her ear as they climbed back into bed. He wrapped his arms around her, and even though her body was tense, she sought out his hand, and intertwined her fingers with his.
In the hour before the alarm went off, neither one slept.
***
Warnings: As before. Oh, and this part is quite random in places.
Spoilers: As before.
A/N: As always thanks to G, thanks to everyone who reviewed, and also thanks to Cote de Pablo, for really rocking the New Mini in Shalom.
Enjoy!
***
Habit
He opened the door with a key, smart enough to announce his arrival as he stepped inside. He had learned that the hard way; coming home to be greeted by the barrel of a P228, when he had apparently approached too quietly, was not the way he liked his days to end. This time, however, there was no onslaught as he shook off his jacket and kicked off his shoes. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything at all. This piqued his curiosity; on Friday nights they always came to her apartment, so she could do her Shabbat thing, much as she did. In fact, seeing that the two candles on her coffee table were already lit, he figured that she must have been somewhere in the apartment.
“ Ziva?” His voice rang around the living room, and for a moment he was met with silence.
Kicking off his shoes, he walked sock-footed through the apartment, listening for sounds of movement. His hand hovered on his weapon briefly before he finally heard her voice. “ In here Tony.”
Wandering through the bedroom, he found her standing at her window with a sceptical look on her face. The curtains were twitched back, clutched in one hand, and early evening starlight poured in through the gap. “ What are you doing?” he asked, coming up behind her and brushing the back of her neck with a fleeting touch. He loved when she wore her hair up like this; not severely, like she did when they were at work, but casually pulled back from her face, emphasising the graceful curve of her neck. He would never tell her that though: she would only laugh.
“ I’m watching the zikukim,” she explained with a half glance over her shoulder, leaning back into his touch. Seeing his confused expression, she frowned, waving her hand as though filtering through all the languages in her brain, looking for the right one. “ Zikukim…havaifisekler…feux d’artifice…artifizio,” she eventually hit on the Italian word, pointing outside with a jab of her finger.
“ Fireworks,” he translated on her behalf, watching as one flew up and set the sky alight with a shower of red and gold. He noticed how she flinched as the sound of the explosion caught up with the dispersing colours. He didn’t need to ask what was bothering her; though he knew little of her past, he could piece together enough to guess why the sound of unexpected explosions would set her on edge. “ It’s the 4th. They’ll probably be going off all night.” Rubbing her upper arms, he pulled her gently away from the window. “ C’mon.”
Back through the apartment and in the kitchen, Tony lifted the lid off of the simmering saucepan on the stove and sniffed. Hopping up on the counter next to him, she watched as he dipped a wooden spoon into the pot and tasted it, his eyes lighting up at the flavour. “ Abby did not convince you to go to this uh…party with her tonight then?” she asked him, one eyebrow raised. After hearing Abby’s plans, she had expected to spend the evening alone.
“ The foam thing?” He shook his head as he pulled a carton of juice out of the fridge, ignoring her disapproving look and drinking directly from it. “ Nope. As much as I love Abby, her friends scare the bejesus out of me.” Wiping a trickle of orange juice from his chin, he grinned deviously. “ I said I’d buy her lunch for the rest of the week if she gets McGee to go though.”
Ziva couldn’t help but laugh at the image - of the reserved, sweet McGee in a throng of undulating Goths, foam rising and lasers firing across the murky, sweaty floor - and the chuckle that emanated from her throat was low and deep. “ I hope you told her to bring back evidence.”
At that moment another bang of fireworks echoed through the apartment, and Ziva flinched again, her body tensing and her head automatically turning away from the noise. As the sound dissipated she looked more annoyed with herself than frightened, and so Tony didn’t mention her reaction. “ How long will the cholent take?” he asked, stumbling just slightly over the unfamiliar word, enough to make a smile ghost over her lips.
“ We have an hour or so before it will be ready to eat.” She watched as he wandered over to the front door, and began rifling through his earlier abandoned backpack. Jumping down from the counter she followed him, leaning one hip against the back of the couch. “ What exactly did you have in mind?”
Shrugging, he continued his search, but looked up at her with a smirk. “ Maybe our own little foam party?” he suggested, flirtatiously, barely ducking out of the way when a pillow soared towards his head. “ What?!” he exclaimed, not even bothering to sound apologetic as the pillow skidded across the hardwood floor. “ You have a six-foot bathtub in there, what did you - ”
“ Tony!” Her voice was amused, exasperated, and she studied him with raised eyebrows, tapping one bare foot on the floor.
Sighing dramatically, he reached into his bag one last time. “ Or maybe we could watch some… Eskimo Limon!” He pulled the dvd out with a flourish, unable to stop grinning as a wide, bright smile lit up her face.
“ Where did you find this?” she asked, taking the dvd case from his hands as he stood up. She was surprised, both that he had remembered her mentioning the movie only in passing, and the fact she could not find a trace of it in the US, and also at the fact that he had been able to get a copy.
He shrugged, unable to stop looking pleased at himself. “ Ebay. But it’s probably not technically legal, so…” he trailed off with a grin. “ You want to watch?”
Two hours later found them settled on the couch, his arm draped around her shoulders, empty bowls on the coffee table in front of them and the credits rolling on screen. He had enjoyed the movie, but had paid more attention to the way Ziva had stifled her laughter in the back of her wrist, her head leaning lightly against his chest. She seemed to have forgotten all about the fireworks that still exploded periodically outside of the window. Leaning over, she pressed a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. “ Toda, Tony,” she murmured against his lips as he turned into the kiss.
“ Prego,” he murmured back, reaching up to briefly cup her cheek before pulling away. Untangling from their movie-watching embrace, he picked up their abandoned bowls, taking them into the kitchen and placing them in the sink. Off of her raised-eyebrow-look, he shrugged, “ I’ll do them in the morning.” She knew that meant she would end up doing them the next night, as he would conveniently ‘forget’ about them before rushing off to work, but she nodded her head in acquiescence anyway.
Recognising her assent, he grinned, and began towards her when something resting on the end of the counter caught his eye. Stopping in his tracks, he picked up the magazine - badly hidden under his own copy of GSM - and held it out with a slightly disturbed look on his face. “ You’re kidding me, right?”
Her expression became one of false-innocence almost straight away, and she opened her mouth as though trying to decide what to say. “ I am just considering my options,” she half-lied, trying to snatch the magazine away from him, but he held it above his head, out of her reach. He knew she could take him down in an instant, but held his ground none-the-less.
“ For someone just ‘considering her options’, these pages are pretty thumbed through,” he accused lightly, a frown on his face. Then, looking through it more closely, he gave her a mock-glare. “ You’ve folded the corners down.”
Giving up, she crossed her arms over her chest. “Abby thinks it’s cute.”
“ Abby drives a hearse!” Exasperation laced Tony’s words, but he couldn’t keep the smile from itching the corner of his lips.
“ McGee says it’s very safe. Besides, I think maybe I would do better with something more compact. Your American cars are all so large.”
“ But it’s such a chick car.”
“ I am a chick!”
Her last words were punctuated with a last grab for the magazine, and ended up toppling them both into her refrigerator, scattering magnets across the floor. They landed, slumped, on the terracotta tiles, Ziva sprawled on top of Tony, who still had the magazine clutched in his fist. Looping her arms around his neck, Ziva pressed a long kiss to his mouth. “ I like the red one.”
Only an hour later, through Ziva’s well-honed powers of persuasion, Tony had been convinced to go with her the next weekend to the Mini dealership. They hadn’t even made it off the kitchen floor.
***
Shadows
When Tony finally got home from his ‘errand’ for the Director, his apartment was pitch black. Shutting the door closed behind him, he leaned his head against it, letting out a deep sigh. He didn’t move until his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, and then found himself buoyed slightly by the sight of an abandoned pair of heels in the middle of the floor. The last text message he had received from her before heading out on the Director’s orders had read: Tired. Going to bed. He was surprisingly thankful to find that she had meant his bed. He could really do with seeing her face tonight; get rid of the uneasy feeling that was lurking in the back of his head.
Unbuttoning his shirt as he walked through the apartment, he let it drop to the floor as he entered the bedroom, material floating down like a very expensive leaf in the breeze. He smiled to see her sprawled in the centre of his bed, hair falling over one side of her face. Whispering her name, he waited until she had half-roused before reaching out and brushing her hair back from her cheek. “ I’m home,” he told her needlessly.
Blinking and pushing herself half-upright, Ziva squinted at the display on his alarm clock. “ It’s late,” she mumbled as he undid his jeans and kicked them off of his legs. Toeing off his socks, he slid under the covers, wrapping his arms around her and breathing in the lingering scent of jasmine.
“ I had to do some stuff for Jenny,” he said, his voice low as he nuzzled into her neck. His hands on her slumber-warm skin were cold, but she only grumbled for a moment before settling, her back pressed against his chest. He pressed a kiss to her shoulder, left bare by the thin straps of her tank top. “ Go back to sleep,” he prompted, but her eyes were already closed and her breathing slow.
With only a few hours to go before dawn, Tony closed his eyes, and let himself drift into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
It felt as though he had barely closed his eyes when he became aware of Ziva sitting bolt upright next to him. Knowing her reflexes, he pushed the covers off of himself as quickly as his sleep-fuddled co-ordination would allow, and reached for the gun on his nightstand. “ What’s wrong?” Noting that she did not move from her position on the bed, but simply stared ahead out of the open window, he moved his hand away from the gun, and brought it instead to touch her arm. He found her tense and trembling. “ Are you okay?”
“ I’m fine Tony,” she said, shrugging off his touch, her voice quiet but tight.
“ Hey, no you’re not.” Not touching with his hands, he scooted along the bed until their bodies were touching, shoulder to hip. She did not move away from him, so he tried again. “ What’s wrong?” Recognising her demeanour, he asked gently, “ Bad dream?”
“ Occupational hazard,” was her taciturn response, but she didn’t pull away as he rested a hand on her cotton-covered back, rubbing lazy circles in an attempt to quell her shudders. “ I would rather not talk about it.” Turning slighting, so her face was half towards him, she spoke without meeting his eyes. “ I did not mean to wake you.”
“ Don’t worry about it.” He knew she hated this: the weakness, the vulnerability, the fragile humanity all shining through, as glaringly obvious as neon. He could feel her frustration at her own flaws radiating off her in waves.
He could tell she didn’t buy his off-hand attitude when she shot him a glare. “ Honestly Tony, you need more then an hour of sleep without me interrupting. You are team leader now. I should just go home.” She was pushing herself up off of the bed before he had even registered her words, and by the time he had, she was already across the room, pulling her jeans on over the pair of his boxers she was wearing, her hair falling in front of her face.
“ Hey!” he reached out and grabbed her arm to still it, but she pulled it from his grip. “ Hey, crazy chick, would you slow down for a second? I don’t want you to go.” His mind was still trying to wake up, and he wasn’t quite sure if he had done something to provoke this volatile response. As she went to walk past him, he caught hold of her hand, stilling her for a moment. “ Would you just talk to me?”
In the silence, she agreed with the faintest nod of her head, but she did not speak.
He sighed, realising he was going to have to do the work in this conversation. “ You want to tell me about your dream? Maybe talking about it would help…”
He had considered this to be a sensible suggestion - one he had heard many times, and it seemed to be the kind of thing therapists and shrinks always said in the movies. It did not, however, have the desired effect on Ziva; instead of placating her, it seemed to rile her even more. “ I have lost people who I have loved, and I have killed people who others have mourned. I am not a victim for you to save. The world is not a perfect place, Tony.”
Momentarily stunned, he watched as she removed her wrist from his grip, picking up her backpack and heading out of the bedroom. Following her, he watched as she slipped her feet into her shoes before replying, “ I almost died of plague and watched one of my best friends get shot in the head in the space of a month. I know the world isn’t perfect, Ziva.”
His words stilled her, and as they sunk in, he could see her shoulders sag, and her defensive walls start to weaken. Turning to face him, she sighed. “ I’m sorry.”
“ Don’t say you’re sorry,” he recited, scuffing his bare toes against the carpet. “ It’s a - ”
“ Sign of weakness,” they finished together. The silence that followed seemed thick and uneasy, and made both of them instantly weary.
Tony was the first to break it, leaning against the doorframe of his room. “ Would you come back to bed, please? We both have to be up in a couple hours anyway, and I hear the boss is a real jackhole when people are late.” It was a pedestrian attempt at levity, but there was an ineffable quality in his voice when he called her name: “ Ziva.”
She was still for a moment, and then nodded, dropping her backpack on the floor and stepping out of her shoes. Following him into the bedroom, she allowed him to gently unbutton her jeans, brush her hair back from her face, and whisper soothing nonsense words into her ear as they climbed back into bed. He wrapped his arms around her, and even though her body was tense, she sought out his hand, and intertwined her fingers with his.
In the hour before the alarm went off, neither one slept.
***