To be honest, this entire thing came from a photo on Tumblr (where this story will be posted for Ziva Appreciation Week 2015, btw). It's AU vaguely set sometime late in Season 4, imagining a very different outcome. It was fun to play with a slightly younger Tony and Ziva than I usually play with!
This night is spectacular.
The stars fixed deep in the sky and the electric sparkles jittering over le tour Eiffel somehow echo the champagne Ziva can still taste on her lips.
She licks them again.
It's chilly, up here on the roof. The cold wind blowing into her face as she surveys the city makes her eyes water, but that only brings things into sharper focus.
Things like the skyline, certainly. But also things like the lingering taste of the champagne, the heavy velvet shifting soft against her legs, and the beautiful shiver of anticipation tingling at the base of her spine. All shining clear and perfect tonight. Crystalline.
She's waiting for him.
Not much longer, now.
It had started with an accusation. That was all.
One whisper, from one powerful mouth, had drawn to it such fierce, whirling, widespread furor that for three months, life was nothing but interrogations and uncertainties and being watched, always, not even subtly. Three months of reputations tarnishing. Three months of grasping at straws.
And then it was over.
One executive decision, and they were out.
Just as the tower's glittering winks out, a siren below activates. Its wordless screaming perforates the night in a dozen places. Violently.
She smiles.
Five months earlier
McGee and Abby were of a consensus: it wasn't fair, the way it ended for their teammates. Thrown out like that, their months and years of excellent work counting for nothing at all. McGee found no pleasure in his promotion to Senior Field Agent.
"You should," Tony told him. And then Tony told him about the new job he had lined up, the one in private investigating. "Think Sam Spade," he said. "Philip Marlowe. I'm Robert Wagner in Hart to Hart. I'm Magnum." He put on a voice McGee didn't quite recognize. "I know what you're thinking, and you're right."
He glanced up at McGee's unhappy face. "Seriously? Nothing? You've seen Magnum, right? Please tell me you've seen Magnum."
Mcgee sighed. "Do you know what Ziva's going to do?" he asked in hushed tones, as if the Director could pop into the buffet at any moment and fire him for the treason of speaking to the shamed.
Tony tore a piece from a dinner roll and buttered it. "Probably something crazy."
McGee's voice lowered even more, and he leaned across the table to compensate. "Like...Mossad crazy, do you think?"
"Like becoming a ballerina," Tony answered sarcastically, mouth full of bread. "Come on, McGoo, you're worrying for nothing. She's fine. I'm fine. Even you'd be fine, if you let your hair grow in a little. Relax."
It only took two weeks for Tony to snap.
There was nothing noble about assisting paranoid husbands and wives to spy on one another. An uncomfortably sticky feeling coated his insides as he sat in his car with a camera, waiting for an innocent woman to leave a hotel, and when he got home, his apartment suddenly felt both too big and too small, and getting drunk to forget seemed for once like too much work.
Before he could let himself try anyway, he scrawled a note on a post-it and slapped it to his door for the landlady. Skidded down the stairs at a hazardous pace, leaving photos, music, memories, movies. Not letting himself think about that.
His go bag had never left the car, anyway.
She should have been hard to find, but she was not. If she hadn't left the city, there were only two places he would find her. And she wasn't in her apartment.
He nodded cordially at the hotel staff, swinging his duffel bag in his hand, and they did not think to stop him on his way upstairs.
There had been no invitation. Officially, that is.
"I will see you," she had said, as they stood there outside Director Shepard's office, disgraced and accompanied by an escort, and then she had brushed past him, her fingers circling his wrist for barely a blink, and she had not looked back.
It could have been one of her idiomatic slips, he supposed, but somehow he felt it was meant literally. And the door to room 356 was unlocked.
Tony trusted his gut those days. It had to be an invitation.
There is a ballroom, three stories beneath her feet.
Earlier, she'd been in it.
She'd tapped his wrist three times, and he'd taken his cue to begin schmoozing the millionaires and investors. She'd snuck out, an elegant shadow disappearing down a dark shadow.
Now she is here. And she has what she came for, hidden underneath this bench.
Now, she's just waiting for him. Waiting with a trickle of anticipation flickering down her neck.
"I wanna go with you," he said as soon as she stood aside to let him into the room.
She pushed the door closed. "Go where?"
"Hell, I don't know."
Ziva's gun gleamed on the bed beside her jacket. She had clearly been preparing to go somewhere, and now she sat down at the foot of that bed and began shoving her feet into her boots, leaving him to stand awkwardly by the entrance.
He waited for her to look at him, to address this culminating moment of their shared insanity, but it was as if he were the wrong end of a magnet. Although she glanced around the room, her gaze repeatedly slid over him to focus on the light switch over his shoulder, the rough hotel carpet under his feet, her own fingers, striped red and white from tugging her bootlaces tight. He tamped down the desire to fidget and explain himself further. Instead, he planted his feet more firmly and watched her for the slightest hint of a reaction. She wouldn't look at him? Fine.
He'd do enough looking for both of them.
His eyes were dry and burning by the time she sighed and her body language melted into something less guarded. "Hell," she mused lightly, checking the pockets of her jacket. "You would be willing to go there?"
It was very quick—barely a blink—but she smiled directly at him.
"Been thinking I could use a little heat," he said, stepping closer. She looked up at him thoughtfully, and they locked gaze.
There seemed to be plenty of heat in her eyes.
"Stealing," he had said flatly, looking over her carefully-drawn schematics for the first time, at a private museum in Florence.
"Redistributing," she had corrected. "Restoring. Returning."
She's glad he's come to share her perspective.
A year ago, they had sat side-by-side on her piano bench, her fingers flitting over the higher octaves as his bigger hands stretched for the chords that grounded the duet, because a year ago, he had been gratified by seeing actual surprise on her face when she learned he could already play the piano. A year ago, she had let him stretch out on her couch while she poured them very full glasses of wine and they made up stories about Palmer's love life. A year ago, they had talked about everything and nothing, and he had almost been her friend.
He had also been her boss.
These days, she's in charge. She doesn't have to say it, but sometimes she does anyway, just to see the type of reaction she can get.
Sometimes entire days go by without conversation, and his voice feels like it's gotten dusty by the time they speak again. But a year ago, he used to collect the stories and opinions she dropped like bread crumbs and wonder if he would ever really know her. If he could. These days, he knows for sure that she's not unknowable.
No comms. Silence is golden. No phones. Too easy to trace.
Just timing.
She has played her part perfectly. Perfectly disabled the alarms, perfectly removed the piece from its frame, perfectly wrapped it, perfectly exited to the roof.
Now it is his turn. She does not need to hear his voice in her ear to know that at this moment, he is running in his fine shoes, jamming a door closed, enabling their escape. She knows he's counting seconds under his breath as he rounds corners and hides in the shadows, panting. She's counting them herself. In just a moment, it will be time to draw the rope and hardware from the special padded pocket at her breast and fasten it in preparation for their journey to the street.
In the meantime, she will enjoy the view.
Two double beds graced their drab hotel room in London, and he claimed the one closest to the door before heading to brush his teeth. Ziva pulled the drapes together. She surveyed the room from the window.
"Do not get too comfortable here, Tony," she warned him, raising her voice enough for him to hear her over the running water. It was a warning she gave him frequently, especially after they spent more than a few days in one place. She needed him on his toes.
Maybe someday there would be time for settling.
But it was risky to think that. She had thought there was time to settle in at NCIS, and being so easily ousted had sent her through more pain and anger than she was willing to admit. Tony, she knew, kept a separate cell phone that sometimes buzzed with text messages from McGee and Abby. Ziva did not stop him, although she knew she should. But neither did she make any overtures of her own.
She had her own plans to worry about. Tony's plans. Their plans. They had schematics to draw, intel to collect, muscles to keep strong and lithe, research to do. Ziva sometimes sat up late, poring over notes in many languages, spreading pages out across her bed.
That was what she was doing tonight, in the half-light of a crooked hotel lamp. She rubbed at her eyes. The plans were materializing, but there would be more work to do in the morning. She would ask Tony to look these over while she went for a run. Sometimes his insight could be valuable.
She glanced over at her partner.
His head cratered the pillows he had piled in the center of the bed, and a long leg stretched into each bottom corner. From above, he looked like a series of small, mauve-colored snowdrifts. She knew from experience that he would kick off half the covers before the night was through.
His brow was smooth, his breathing deep; she could feel his intense warmth from where she perched on a sliver of her own bed's edge, toes curling hard into the carpet.
She wanted him more than was good for her.
The door and windows were locked and monitored. Their guns were loaded. The papers would be there in the morning. Before she could stop herself, she snapped off the light, lifted the ugly mauve bedspread, and slipped into bed.
His bed.
The overwhelming feeling was one of intense warmth. She lined her front against his side.
Was it his heart or her heart that was beating so loudly?
He shifted slightly, and yawned. "Something wrong?"
"No," she said, and cleared her throat. I'll move she almost said. Does having a girl in your bed frighten you, DiNozzo? she almost said.
She elbowed both responses back down her throat, and let her body do the talking, instead.
Her elbow pressed down into the mattress between his head and shoulder to bear most of her weight as she covered him. He surprised her by being alert enough to tug the hair tie out of her hair until the curls rolled down her shoulders and brushed his face.
"Why?" he whispered. Arrogant, she thought, to ask that question when he could see her unguarded face lit by a gap in the curtains. Either arrogant or clueless.
A cosmic force pressed pause on the moment. She found his eyes impossible to hold and instead studied the finely-shaped dip above his upper lip, the laughter lines at the corners of his mouth, the valley between his bottom lip and the raised plane of his chin.
She rolled away from him.
She did not sleep with him that night, in any sense of the word. She climbed into her own bed, instead, and she tried to ignore him so hard and so fruitlessly that she swore she could hear his heart beating in the space between their beds.
She feels the vibration of running feet.
She cocks her head.
Several pairs of running feet.
The next night went differently. She didn't mean for it to, at first. She was checking their tickets into France for the next morning and going over their non-illicit daytime itinerary, skimming a pen over the paper. Their illicit plans sat on several sheets of white paper at her elbow. Their destruction was next on her list.
"I am glad," she said suddenly, impulsively, as he paused the tune he was whistling through his teeth to take a breath. That breath left him in a long, low whistle.
"Of what?"
"Of your company."
He was surprised, she could tell, even though his face stayed level and his body language stayed perfectly even. He kept winding the rope he was holding. "Yeah?" he said eventually.
"Yeah," she said, and she was surprised at the speed at which thickness sprung up in her throat. She cleared it. "I am glad you came. Grateful. I am grateful." She cleared her throat again, and tossed her head, slightly embarrassed. "For you."
He wound the tail of the rope into a knot to bind the coil, carefully.
She busied herself with soaking their documents in the stoppered hotel room sink until they were a mass of bleary, wet pulp and the sink drain would probably never fully recover. She was pulling pulp from the basin when she heard a creak and glanced into the mirror to see him standing, looking at her back with eyes intense enough to set kindling smoking in her belly.
She dropped her eyes to the white porcelain, swirling with blue and gray, because she did not need to see him to feel him draw closer and closer. The inevitability of it all nearly suffocated her.
As his hips pressed into hers and his chest blanketed her back, his raised hands, gentle—almost fluttering—cupped her bare shoulders. The warmth in her belly began to rise, looping lazily into her chest and her face.
"But are you," he muttered into her ear, "half as glad as I am?"
Her fingers were hungry, her mouth was hungry, her skin was hungry for his, wanted it hot on hers. She kissed him back, demanding.
He tugged on her curls. "Yes?"
"Yes, yes," she breathed into his mouth. She ran her hands under his t-shirt, into the hair on his chest, and listened to him breathe in sharply. "Yes."
He bursts out onto the roof with a trio of uniformed men in hot pursuit.
The first is dispatched with a round thunk of Tony's elbow. The second trips over his falling coworker and Tony bends over him, pinching hard in a place Ziva has taught him will bring unconsciousness.
The third rushes towards Ziva. She performs a neat little trick that seems to involve only her ankle, and brings the man to his knees. Her stiletto comes down on his back. Judging by the look on Tony's face, the action nearly brings him to his own knees, although no doubt for a very different reason. His thoughts are almost embarrassingly clear on his face—he wants to feel the velvet on his fingertips, feel the texture of her thigh against his tongue. She savors the power of it for a fraction of a second. Then she nods, and he recognizes his cue.
She keeps one eye on him and one eye on the three downed security officers as he retrieves the tube from beneath the bench and wraps it in in a black garbage bag he withdraws from Ziva's handbag. He clips it to the end of the rope, and motions to her. This step must be undertaken quickly and carefully, and she's always had better aim. He stands guard over the security officers while she lowers the package into a pre-selected bush several stories below. When it has caught, she yanks, and the clasp pops, allowing her to reel in her rope before anyone in the alley below notices.
They will collect the package once they make it downstairs.
But then, commotion, rocketing up the steps and onto the roof. The officers look taken aback by the beautiful, well-dressed couple in front of them, but not surprised enough to lower their guard. One circles around behind her and pulls her wrists together.
Ziva catches Tony's eye. A wicked glint in it tells her that this is no accident. He's thrown the mission on purpose.
Just for the hell of it.
She should probably muster up some anger or distress or disappointment in her partner and the situation he's gotten them into, but her gut tingles with the excitement of a challenge.
The lights on the Eiffel Tower start sparkling once again as she feels metal clicking around her wrists and is led towards the staircase.
She feels remarkably alive.
"Are you ready?"
She didn't have to look at his face in the dim hallway light to know he was wearing an expression that somehow mixed concern, professional competence, and teenage-boy-watching-an-action-movie excitement. Once again, she was reminded of how grateful she was to have him with her. For money, for justice, for the purpose of having a mission—for these reasons, she could have managed these jobs alone. But boredom and loneliness were silent killers. His presence negated either. If they were both incurably restless, at least they complimented each other.
"Of course. You?"
"Yup." He checked his equipment one more time, straightened his suit jacket, and struck a pose.
Ziva gave him the once-over from well-coifed hair to well-shined shoes. "Perfect."
"As I suspected."
She rolled her eyes and checked her neckline to make sure her own equipment was in place. "Ready."
He offered her his arm. "Let's give 'em hell."
In a swirl of black velvet and cologne, they walked into the glittering ballroom.
The next morning, he hears yelling and such from down the hall. Something crashes. The floor seems to shake, and the officials in the room look at each other with frowns and pinched eyebrows. He tenses his own eyes and eyebrows into a facimile of concern—avec un soupcon de peur—and allows only the tiniest suggestion of the anticipatory thrill that's running through his belly to play on his mouth. The officers don't notice. They're speaking in rapid French, glancing at him and the other prisoners, squinting down the hallway.
He waits.
Someone cries out. (It's not her.) Again, the crash. Someone yells—authoritative French. Tony watches his guards' faces change as they register the slightly panicked note in what is obviously a familiar voice, and he fights to hold the thrill of it all in check. The guards run out of view.
She slips in the room, eyes burning, a key in her hand.
"One day, they might catch us for good," he points out, uncrossing his ankles and standing, stretching.
"You think so?" The lock pops, and she motions him out, locking the door behind him and tucking the key into the chest of her dress.
He considers. "Nah. That would be boring, and we can't have that."
She began planning their next move on the train out of Paris, behind a map that he unfolded to unmanageable proportions.
"Zurich, now. And our last payment just came through," she said, looking satisfied, "so we will be staying somewhere nice."
He grinned. "Room service?"
"Mm…and possibly a Jacuzzi."
"I think I'm going to like Zurich."
She tossed her head. "We will give them hell, yes?"
"Well, that's the plan. Right?"
An intriguing smile spread across her lips.
"That is always the plan."
The more hell, the better.