Title: The Morning After
Rating: T+
Pairing: Tony/Ziva
Spoilers: Blanket spoiler warning for Shabbat Shalom and Shiva.
Summary: After Tony wakes her up from a nightmare, Ziva wants his help in proving that she's still the same person she was before Somalia, Ray, and her father's death.
Warnings: Sexual scenes, dialogue, and references. Nothing you wouldn't see on network television at 8 o'clock, but the warning is here regardless in case anyone might be triggered.
"Show me I am not broken."
Ziva's eyes don't ever shut up.
In the summer, this means he watches shards of color and brightness, happy scenes of beaches and late nights spent stretched out watching the stars cycle through in a kaleidoscope, which is shaken just soon enough so he never figures out if those are her dreams, or faraway memories.
Now, the city is edging ever so slowly into the spring, and she is as muddled as the weather, and he is watching everything shatter inside her for a third time. It's been barely three years, and it's occurred to him how unfair all of this is.
After tragic, it just isn't fair anymore.
Jackie.
Eli. Her bastard of a father.
Her world has been shaken, too hard this time, and he figures out exactly what her eyes are saying when a shudder rocks through his hands, clasped around hers as silent sobs wrack through her body.
"I'll try.", he whispers.
Her eyes flick up, swimming in salty tears that shred rivers into her cheeks, and drop from her chin to spatter across his sheets. She doesn't care that her mind is reeling, and a dull ache blossoms from the middle of her back, or that she sees her hand, the one still entwined in both of his, still shaking.
"Try?"
She wants to scream, lunge forward and beat against his chest until blood surges from his mouth and nose, and when he tries to beg, tries to tame her as all men have, she wants to pump four bullets into his side and watch his jaw go slack and his eyes go glassy, as he falls to the ground beside her.
Years ago, lifetimes ago, this is how their night would end. She would put him behind her, stupid Tony, and get on a plane. Another pair of arms would welcome her, envelope her in an embrace and whisper Good Job, soldier.
In another lifetime, this would have made her proud.
But in this one, it is Good Night, kid, and Ziver.
Never soldier.
Whether she wants to admit it or not, she has crumbled like Jericho. There is nothing left of her and even stupid Tony does not have to try to see that.
" You're having a really rough night, huh?"
Sympathy. A gateway to pity that she neither wants nor needs.
"They are all rough nights."
Back-handed shame. A tactic to push him away that he will not bend to.
"I…I'm sorry. I can go get Shmiel if you want someone to talk to."
"I do not want Shmiel."
His fingers trace the backs of her hand, unconsciously mapping the veins that form pathways to her heart, where a pounding pulse sends a rush of blood to her head.
"Ziva, please."
Pleading. Desperation for his own control in a situation where they are both freefalling into the darkness.
"I am fine, Tony. Sorry."
Retreat. A realization that she has made another mistake, dovetailing onto a runaway train she wants no place on.
His eyes harden for just a moment, and she almost welcomes the challenge. Perhaps he sees, that she is not quite fragile yet, and if Tony can know that, she can force herself to bridge the gaps. The train stops, changes course.
"You're not fine. You're hurting. Ziva, please, just this once, let us help you."
She desperately wants to tell him he has already helped enough, when he had his arms wrapped around her while she sobbed into the plastic bars besieging her bed at Bethesda, her broken body curled into a protective ball, wailing at empty walls and realizing things would never be the same again.
More help, and what would happen to her then?
She would never claw her way back to surface, and remain, languishing in the half-light at the bottom of the pit where she has so conveniently allowed them to bury her.
So she says, "Fine. Then stay.", and the shock in his eyes registers with her so fully she almost relents and shoves him away instead.
"A-are you sure, Ziva?"
"Yes."
Confidence. Almost. There is something she needs to prove.
He lets her hand drop to her lap, and swallows. His eyes tell her this is duty, to sit beside your shell of a partner in a bed two small for you both.
She hopes she reads him right.
Her fingers feel cold all of a sudden, and she draws her hand back quickly, as if lingering in the folds of his bedsheets burns.
The mattress creaks as he shifts sides, jostling her so the room swims behind her gaze for a portion of a second.
She wonders what women must think when he walks them in, with promises and sweet talk and his devilish little smirk.
He wonders about her. But he does that every night.
"Oh, Ziva.", he sighs.
He loses count of the seconds that have ticked by on his imaginary clock, and she is at a loss to explain how long she stays, perfectly still even as the muscles in her back and shoulder tighten and begin to hurt.
He gives her shoulder a light squeeze.
Ziva's fingers snake down his arm, following a crooked line from the crook of her neck down to his knuckles. Concern, or obligation- she reminds herself, radiates from him interspersed with the scent of expensive cologne and discount-store aftershave.
"Ziva?"
"Yes, Tony?"
Their eyes meet across inches of dead air that separate their faces.
Show me I am not broken.
I'll try.
Ziva's eyes don't ever shut up.
In the winter, he watches them flicker, alternating between sparkle and a subdued sheen of tears as the holidays grow closer, and she lights each candle atop the craft-store Menorah in her apartment window. He pretends not to notice the quiet reflections upon love and loss that seem to float before him, like murky mirrors whenever they make eye contact.
Now, they are closed, only slight twinges of movement behind her eyelids dusted with light shadow she hadn't yet washed off. Her hands play like solid shadows across his chest, her fingers reaching hungrily at buttons. She pops the top three open, before his hand closes around her wrist and a sharp cry of protest catches in her throat.
"Ziva, what the hell are you doing?", he sputters, holding fast to her as she pulls away.
"Tony, we are both having a rough night, yes? Maybe it will take the edge off is we try something different.", she tells him, as matter-of-fact as she can manage.
Her voice is still shaky. If she could, she would rip her own throat out for much it simply demands that Tony must know how weak she really is.
His face falls, then- twisting into a mask of confusion and complete, utter, disgust. She sees the disgust before anything, and it feels like a whip across her back.
"Ziva." His voice is low. "I'm going to get up, and I'm going to leave now. I'm not letting you do anything stupid."
Stupid Tony.
"Am I not good enough for you, too?"
The words have tumbled from her mouth, and hit him like the proverbial stack of bricks in an expression she only now truly understands. She almost takes pleasure in his pain, the she can feel roll off him in waves like the scent of his cologne and aftershave and sweat.
She has done this before, plenty of times. As a teenager, there were plenty of strapping young men in the IDF, and after that, control officers of hers, or friends of her brother, who were always eager to dull the pain of ending another man's life, careful to please her without ripping stitches or pressing against bruises from her failures.
But aside from Ray, she had not tried since that summer, when control over anything seemed like a distant fantasy.
Ray was gentle with her. Tony is inexplicably blunt.
"Ziva, come on. Don't try that crap on me. What do you think Gibbs would say?", he protests, throwing his hands up.
"He is busy with more important things.", she points out, reaching up run her hand against the coarse stubble at the sides of his jaw. "Tony, do not tell me you never wanted this. The entire office has bet on us…"
"I don't want it now. Not…like this."
"It will never get better, if that is what you think.", she whispers, like the fact is a playground secret.
When she was with Ray, they tried it once, the normal way, and she spent the hour afterwards crying in the bathroom after he left her apartment. She didn't tell him, but he still found out. That was why he put his own enjoyment aside, treating her like glass that would splinter at the slightest touch.
There are rules against it, but what she needs now is her upper hand back.
Tony seems stunned into silence, and she takes this as her chance, burrowing into his chest, timing her breaths subconsciously with the steady thudding of his heart. His mouth stays shut while she undoes the rest of his buttons, and his hand only shoots forward when she reaches his belt, running her fingers over braided leather, stopping just before a brass buckle that glitters in the lamplight.
"Think about what you're doing for a second, would you?", he snaps. But his voice lacks the conviction it usually has, and she thinks that this is some kind of progress.
Their twisted, twisted, love. When this is over, she briefly wonders if he will do all of what Ray did, and promise her the world.
"I am tired of thinking."
He takes her by the wrist and places her hand on his chest, warm, and open.
"Okay, fine. I've thought about it. Hell, I've dreamt it a couple of times. But I'm not gonna let you do this to yourself, especially right after your father died."
"He meant nothing to me. "
"You sure about that?"
"Tony."
She wheels around to face, him, his face still so utterly placid, a smirk just buried below his lips. It's almost as though he enjoys seeing her like this, violently sick. Like he enjoys knowing his ninja has never gotten it back together.
His breath is hot and she no longer cares what it smells like. She only wants to bridge the gap.
When they finally kiss, their lips meet like the proverbial trainwreck.
His mouth tries to close, and his teeth touch the top of her tongue. Her lips scrape over unshaven skin, and she pushes forward, shoving him back down in the bed, battling him for a kind of sick validation.
It feels like they are both fifteen again, and it is something they have never done. She knows that the office probably had something different in mind.
His shirt is splayed open, barely hanging on to his shoulders, the collar peppered with sweat. Liquid droplets trail from the top of his collarbone, and she realizes with barely masked horror they are her tears, not his sweat.
She has been crying this entire time.
They struggle for spare breaths and she uses the few seconds before he recovers enough to speak to her advantage. His shirt flies in the direction of the window, open into a scene of tiny lights and black silence.
"Ziva- stop-"
"No."
Her eyes have clouded over, with a blind sort of blackness that he only remembers from several summers ago.
Fear rises from his stomach, and he feels his lower half go almost numb. She is unbuckling his belt now, working quickly. One hand is at his waist, the other is- Oh.
Immobilization points.
A sick part of him missed her.
They thought she had died in the desert, but here she is, fingers tight around his arms, guiding his hands to her hips. She sinks into him, a ripple of wetness and warmth in the center of his chest. He realizes with a start that she has left his boxers on, and miraculously, his body is staying, stoic, on his side.
"Your turn.", she orders, losing her voice in heavy, shuddering, breaths.
"Come on, we don't-"
"Tony."
She forces his hands to the waistband of her shorts, pushing down on his wrists with a kind of strength he nearly forgets is hers.
In college, he and his frat buddies had a list- girls they had slept with ordered by the color of their panties. Hers are pale green lace. He always wondered.
"Ziva-" he struggles, taking hold of her thighs as she raises her arms to pull off her top.
"Shut up, Tony."
Her chest is a map of zippers and nicks, lines where staples have been ripped out too early, thin and white against her olive skin. He reaches to trace a knitted pattern that trails from under her ribs, only to find she bats his hand away, and guides him instead to her back, brushing his fingers over three familiar clasps at its center.
Her fingers trail back down to his waist, lacing between his skin and the thin fabric band layered over a point just above his hips.
Time seems to silence, with his hand at her back, fingertips registering her breath, and her hand pulsing, closer and closer to-
Nothing.
He feels cold.
She feels like dying.
It's a while before either of them speak again, but for what it's worth, Ziva collapses into him, half-undressed, and he stays, nearly-naked, rubbing slow circles into her back as aftershocks cycle through her, earthquake after tiny earthquake in his bedroom.
The morning sun is entirely too bright, and pierces through his half-shuttered windows at angles that bounce across her bare back and legs, tracing the paths rifles and knives have left there. He blinks, spots of red and orange exploding behind his eyes. She whimpers, not quite yet asleep.
"Ziva?" He lets the question hang between them, twisting tendrils of her hair between his fingers. They are both at some kind of fault here.
Her, for the night's ridiculous display.
Him, for taking her heart and grinding it to sand.
She barely murmurs a reply, her voice torn to shreds.
"We should talk."
He cups her face, gently as he can manage, and brings her eyes up to meet his. He can tell she says Okay.
"I think you're beautiful, you know that, right?"
"Then…why-"
"I dunno. I went to Catholic school for a while and maybe there's like some built in mourning period for my…um, you know."
"Tony!"
"I'm sorry, I just didn't…I don't know, Ziva. It just wasn't the right time, I guess."
"Did…I scare you? When I took off my top?"
"No."
"Be honest, Tony."
"I think you're the most beautiful girl I've ever met."
"But you did not want to sleep with me. You could not even-"
"Ziva. I want to sleep with you, have sex with you, do the whole damn shebang. But not now, and not anytime soon. I want us to be all about you and me."
"It is. It was."
"No. It was about you grieving, and in pain, looking for something that it's not my right to give you."
"I wanted to have sex with you, Tony."
"You wanted to feel better."
"I wanted you to show me I am not broken."
"You don't need me for that, Ziva."
This is how Shmiel finds them, once the old man finally shuffles from the couch through the hallway, his curiosity besting him on his way to the bathroom.
Ziva is curled into Tony's side, her head resting on his bare chest, his arm wrapped securely around her as she sleeps. She looks strangely calm for pure exhaustion.
His eyes dart around the room, tired, edgy, always on guard. Through the crack of his door, Shmiel catches the younger man's eyes and notes with something close to pleasure that they are just like his Ziva's, never quite quiet enough to let anything slip past.
"It's my job to protect her."
Shmiel nods, knowingly.
"You'll make a good husband, yet."
Notes:This came out of a little conversation I had with a friends at school way back after the Shiva promo aired, and being the enormous Tiva shipper she is, my friend was basically freaking out that Tiva sex could figuratively happen. As you can probably tell, she's only been NCIS viewer for about two years, but that's beside the point.
I felt like writing this, though, just because I hadn't seen too many other people explore the possibility that anything more than holding hands and maybe some cuddling happened while Ziva was staying at Tony's apartment.I just watched Recoil, and felt like writing that same sort of "comfort sex" situation between Ziva and Micheal there, except this time- it's a lot different, because it's Tony.
I kind of disappointed myself, too, just because I couldn't really find a plausible way to write them going all the way on that night, but if the more talented writers in the fandom want to take a crack at a sex scene in Shiva, I'd welcome it.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this, and even if you don't- let me know!