Disclaimer: We all live in a yellow submarine.

Spoilers: Minor, non-plot-related for Spider and the Fly.

Summary: Miami, no tan lines and a mysterious emailer? Sounds like there may have been a sexy party! Ziva/Damon. Do they have a mush name yet? How about Zimon. Like Zima, only good.

Day One

Bottles clinked as the refrigerator door opened. "Are you expensing this to NCIS?"

Ziva didn't stop at the minibar, but proceeded directly to the window. "It is the only hotel with a view of the club where the Reynosa cartel supposedly does business." She looked across the street at the place they had come to stake-out. It didn't look like much, which could be either a very good or very bad thing. She tensed, hand moving automatically to her weapon as the door beneath the club's garish sign opened. At this distance a shot from her SIG would be unreliable, not to mention problematic if she hit a member of the uniformed cleaning crew now exiting the building. Had she really expected Paloma Reynosa to parade around in broad daylight? Not really, no. Her hand remained where it was until the three people had gotten into a van and driven off.

A sudden presence behind her ended her staring contest with the front door of the club. "Mojito Loco? Are they serious?"

She shrugged Damon's chin off her shoulder and moved to put her bags away. "Why is the name important if it is a front?"

"The whole point of having a front is that it looks like a legitimate business." He trailed her around the room. "What kind of crowd goes to a place called Mojito Loco? Cougars, probably."

"I suppose you will find out when you begin bartending there tonight, though Juan Carlos did not mention that there would be any wild animals."

He smiled and shook his head as he flopped onto the bed; she was really beginning to enjoy the lack of constant correction. "Can't believe your friend got me a job there on such short notice."

"He is well connected. I did mention that we would share any relevant information we gather with MDPD and the DEA, yes?"

"Uh huh. We're freelancing on this one. Makes you wonder why they haven't bothered with this place before, though." He slipped the holster from his belt and placed his weapon on the nightstand. "Not like the drug trade is new in Miami."

"Which means that they are always busy. They are using us, we are using them. Hopefully, we will find Paloma Reynosa."

"And if not?"

She tried not to think about Jackson, or the pictures she'd seen of the store in Stillwater. "If not…" She opted for a selfish best case scenario. "Perhaps we will be able to spend a day at the beach." She adjusted the air conditioning to a less frigid level. "We have the afternoon to familiarize ourselves with the neighborhood and we are meeting with my contact in the bar downstairs at seven."

"So how do you know this Juan Carlos?" Damon's tone was mock-casual; she recognized it as the same one he used when he asked about Tony. "Moussad connection? Or are you just buddies with Spanish royalty?"

She grinned. He still found ways to surprise and impress her. "Something like that."

"Which one?"

She ignored the question, stretching out beside him on the bed. "I really appreciate you doing this, Damon."

"Hey, not like I had to quit my job or something to get here and the hotel is on NCIS. I figured it was the closest to a vacation together we were gonna get. Summer's almost over."

"Well, it is the middle of September, so summer has not even started yet in Rio." She rolled onto her side, allowing her hand to settle on his stomach. "Although I believe this is the first I am hearing about our taking a vacation."

"Huh? Oh, it was just something I was thinking about. Must've forgotten to actually mention it." His arm slipped around her shoulders. "I gotta find a job in DC so I'm not traveling so much."

"You will. Have you thought any more about going back to school?" He made a noise that she felt more than heard. "Right. We could find somewhere to have lunch."

"I just don't know if college is…"

"We do not have to talk about it if you do not want to. Aren't you hungry?"

He watched her silently for so long that she began to wonder if she should worry that she'd gone too far, but he leaned forward and pecked her lips before standing. "What do you think? Empanadas?"

"Sounds good." She accepted his hand and he pulled her to her feet. "We can do some reconnaissance and be back here for five o'clock."

"I thought you said we were meeting his majesty at seven?"

"Yes," she purred, stepping into him as she wrapped her arms around his neck, "but you start work tonight."

"I knew you asked me here just to seduce me."

"Not true. We have other things to do as well."

He laughed as he nuzzled her neck. "I've been thoroughly seduced for the past six months anyway."

She realized they weren't going to get much reconnaissance done outside the hotel room before they met with Juan Carlos.

Day Two

Ziva pulled her legs further into the shade of the umbrella over her cart. Frozen lemonade was apparently a popular choice for sunburned tourists in Bermuda shorts and Hawaiian shirts shopping along the busy street. This was the same crowd Damon had reported seeing for much of the night while working at Mojito Loco. He had already decided he had no future in bartending. The only good that had come of the night's work was the discovery that the VIP room in the rear of the club was populated by a far different clientele. Juan Carlos was working on getting Damon some discreet photo gear so they could work on IDs.

The daytime shift was definitely less exciting. The cleaning crew she'd seen leaving the previous day arrived around noon. Other than that, it was, "Gimme three large lemonades, por favor!" and, "An extra-large lemonade, señorita!" All she had discovered thus far was that no one ordered the small and everyone assumed she was Latina, therefore using various forms of Spanglish and unnecessarily loud English to communicate. At least her uniform consisted of shorts and a tank top and she had a lawn chair. Still, the street didn't seem to have a shady side. She stood to readjust her umbrella again, reminding herself that it was better here than Canada like McGee.

"Whew, I'd like a large lemonade and tall glass of you, sexy mama."

She gave the customer an evil eye concealed by her dark sunglasses and wondered if Canada would not, in fact, be a better option. More polite option, at the very least. She served the leering tourist the beverage only, managing a tight smile. He didn't seem inclined to leave after he'd paid. "So, is it a law in Miami that every woman has to be smoking hot to live here?" He moved to the side of the cart. "Or am I just having one of those days?"

"I wouldn't know." Her knife was safely tucked under a cleaning cloth, not that she thought she would need it. Still, nice to have it.

"Well, maybe we could go out later and do some looking for ourselves, huh?"

Just when the man was about to enter a world of pain and suffering by entering her personal space, he got lucky. "Small, please?"

"Hey, I'm talking to…" the creepy man trailed off as he eyed Damon. He muttered a thank you for the lemonade as he skulked off down the street.

She reached for the first small cup of the day as she smiled at Damon. "You have excellent timing." She decided not to mention his excellent fitted t-shirt. "I thought you would sleep later."

"It's past two."

"You didn't get back to the hotel until after six and we were on that conference call with Juan Carlos until seven-thirty."

"I slept enough." He dropped a dollar into her tip jar, the first person all day to offer more than loose change. "Want some company for a little while?"

"Please. It is hot and boring out here."

He sat on a concrete ledge a few feet from her cart. "So nothing but tourists?"

"Tourists and the cleaners. Tell me, do you think it is strange that Mojito Loco is not open during the day, despite being in a prime shopping area?"

"No, but then, I already know it's a front."

"True, but you also said they would not want to be obvious about it."

"Yeah, but they're not gonna fully staff a place if they don't…"

An older woman in a loud printed dress cleared her throat as she approached the cart with a group of shoving children. Raising her voice above their sudden demands for soda and ice cream, she sneered, "If you're not too busy chitchatting with your boyfriend, I'd like some lemonade."

"Yes." Ziva tried her best fake smile. "How many?"

"Four, of course. There are four of us, aren't there?"

"Four, yes. What size?"

"Large!" She grabbed an extra-large cup from the stack. "This one!"

"So four extra-large lemonades." Ziva bit her lip and tried to glance over the woman's shoulder. The cleaning crew was leaving Mojito Loco with a package they hadn't brought in earlier or left with the previous day. She missed what the woman said next and had to ask her to repeat herself.

"Honestly! Large, large! The four dollar one, not the four-fifty!"

"I apologize, but I thought you pointed to the extra-large cup."

"No, large! They really should have English-speaking people working here." She turned one of the children bodily to face the cart. "Joey, didn't you take Spanish? Try and make this girl understand what we want."

Five minutes, lots of insults and no tip later, Ziva pulled her chair closer to where Damon was still sitting and sank into it. "I really do not like this job. And I missed the cleaning crew leaving. Did you see the package they were carrying?"

"Yup." He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and clicked through some photos of the crew and the van. "You think you should send these to El Rey?"

She pecked his lips and tossed her phone to him as she stood to serve another customer. "He's in my address book."

A short line formed and she was busy for the next few minutes while Damon spoke quietly on the phone. He slipped it into her back pocket during a lull. "Juan Carlos is on the van."

"Good thing you stopped by."

"Glad I could help. Now I'm gonna go back where there's A/C. I don't know how I handled it in the desert.

"There it is a dry heat."

"Hm. See you a little after five?"

"Enjoy the air conditioning." Ziva looked up at the sun in the cloudless sky and once again wondered if Canada would not have been a better assignment. Watching Damon walk away in his t-shirt and shorts, she decided no. Definitely no.