Disclaimer: I OWN NOTHING OF NCIS. OBVIOUSLY.
Set sometime in season 7, post-Somalia.
The quiet is almost deafening; he starts to hyper focus on what are usually ambient noises – cars rushing past on the street outside his apartment, the low hum of the refrigerator, a tick of the clock on his living room wall. But the clearest sound is the one he isn't hearing. This time there are no tears, no broken sobs, or muffled catches of breath when he touches her.
Tony sighs deeply into the crook of her neck, his lips grazing along her skin lightly. He feels her shiver against him, and his arms tighten around her in response, waiting. She presses into him, and he runs his fingers slowly along the raised lines of her back and the scars that weren't there before the summer. She feels fragile, like a bird with hollow bones that protrude from her ribs and constrict against his chest. Tonight isn't about sex. He only wants her there with him, to hold her and know she's alive. When she kisses him he can taste copper and sand, the desert clawing the back of his throat. But then she moans into his mouth, and he is grounded into the present.
He whispers her name against her lips, and her fingernails dig into his shoulder blades. He's thankful for the twinge of pain that tells him he's alive, too. Because the summer without her was a madness he never wants to know again, and when she asked him to help her heal the scars she couldn't see, he accepted willingly. After everything, who was he to deny her? So he holds her a little tighter, willing her not to break but ready to love her through it if she does. She is his Ziva, finally home.