It's quarter past midnight on a Saturday and he's standing outside her door. Shifting foot from foot, whistling a merry tune, his eyebrows raised like an innocent child hoping the toy store will welcome in its most devoted customer after-hours.
No, he hasn't knocked. Knocking at his partner's door at this hour, well, that appears just a little too desperate. Nudging his foot at a sliver of torn carpet he has noticed on the floor, he whistles louder.
The door flings open abruptly and he jerks in surprise, straightening to attention, holding the pizza box aloft, as he offers an enticing grin.
"Late night delivery?" he quips.
"Tony," she starts and his practiced eyes can detect the quiver of a smile. "What are you doing here?"
"Oh," he stiffens his posture, the pizza box drooping in his grip a little. His voice dips to a low and serious tone. "You know, I was just in the neighborhood, checking out that new pizza place, the cute little one that just opened down on Connecticut, called La Bella Nova, or something like that, and I realized that it's only a few blocks away from your apartment. So I skipped on over here," he smiles. "We Italians just can't resist sharing good food."
Blocking his path in with her hand resting on the doorframe, she raises her brows at this story and looks amused.
"La Bella Nova?" she asks and tips her head closer to confide in him, "You know, I just tried that restaurant last week and it was, at best, mediocre." She seems satisfied at the comical look of dejection that sweeps over his face and then, with a swift wave of her hand, welcomes him inside.
"I really like what you've done with the place," he says as she slips off into the kitchen. He hears a snort as the refrigerator flaps open and closed.
The clinks and clanks of glass bottles in her hand announce her return. She's always reminded him of a cat. She moves in silence and lands on her feet no matter what. Plus the nine lives. Yeah, he thinks, she's definitely got the nine lives.
"Which is about nothing since you were last here," she replies. "Abby added those two pictures to the wall over there," and she motions with two fingers to the left where two vividly colored pieces similar to the artworks Abby cherishes on the walls of her lab hang above a shelf of photos and books. "Now would you like a crisp bottle of Chardonnay or a few leftover cans of stale root beer?"
She holds the two choices up in each arm and returns his smile when he without hesitation selects the stale root beer. With an angry popping noise in his lower back, Tony sinks down to the floor, grimacing as he gingerly props himself up against the couch, stretching his stiff legs out under the coffee table. Getting old is not a pain in the ass, but a pain six inches above the ass, he decides. With effort, he reaches out and flips open the box, revealing a large cheese pizza gleaming with excessive grease. She characteristically dives in to snatch up the first slice, whereas he proceeds more slowly, giving the pizza an investigative sniff before flipping a piece onto his plate.
"Bleh," she makes a disgusted little noise after a swig of the root beer. She has descended to an Indian style position beside him. "I think this has maybe been sitting in my fridge since your last visit a couple months ago."
Yeah, yeah… his last visit here in June, when he had come prepared to grovel at her feet, bearing Thai food, her favorite cuisine, as a reconciliatory offering. That was when he missed her swearing-in ceremony, when he was off in Mexico on Vance's orders trying to save the Boss from impending legal doom. Fun times.
"How does soda go untouched in your fridge for a month?" he deflects his thoughts away. "I go through, like, two six-packs a week!"
"And you wonder why you are out of shape."
Her hand darts out and pinches a flab of skin above his belt. He almost spills soda all over himself. She snickers.
"Yeah," he glares at her and says after a moment, taking another pensive sip. "Ducky just gave me a lecture the other day in autopsy about how excessive amounts of sugar lead to kidney stones… And my stomach has been feeling a little off lately," he adds, eyebrows knitting worriedly.
She laughs at him.
"If I were you, I would be more concerned about your back, Tony," she says. And then she pauses and when she begins again the teasing ring to her voice has been washed over by gentleness. "It has not been bothering you too badly as of late, no?"
The tone of her voice, very un-ninja-like, as she trails off makes him look at her. He goggles at her for a moment, and a piece of mozzarella slides off the slice of pizza halfway lifted towards his open mouth and takes a nosedive back towards the plate. Her eyes are directed downwards, staring off at some spot on the carpet. He perceives a slight flush on her cheeks, a dusting of pink against her olive skin, and smiles.
"No," he finally answers. "It's been okay lately."
"Good," she replies faintly. She seems distracted now, he notices, furtively watching her out of the corner of his eye. She scoops up her slice of pizza with her hand, holds it for a moment in the air then sets it back down on the plate. Sucking an almost inaudible gasp of air into her mouth, she pinches her eyes shut and says, as if dreading the reply, "Tony, why are you here?"
He's not completely flustered by the question. Honestly, he's been expecting it. He tips his chin up and takes a deep swig of the flat root beer. Then, he sets the bottle down on the coffee table, his eyes flickering downwards to stare at his shoes.
After a moment he simply says, "It's been a year, Ziva."
She doesn't do a thing; she just stares at his slumped form with a heavy, brown gaze. Both are lost, for the moment adrift in a roiling, black sea of memories. He feels the desert wind gust and bite his cheek, the gritty sting of the sand against his skin. The emotions simmer and fade one by one. Dark, blood-swollen rage. Smoldering hope. Sweeping, anguished relief.
He turns to look into her eyes, his green gaze burning from the inside out. He knows, oh, he knows the struggle reflected in her brown irises. The strength it must take her to crawl from the lonely, hollow abyss and wrench free from the grasp of such memories. He has not gone through what she has, and still, he battles with it.
"And so it has," she replies, her voice choked but strong. And she gives a watery laugh. "And here we are eating take-out pizza."
"And here we are eating take-out pizza," he repeats and laughs as well, clasping her hand in his, neither caring that their fingers are greasy and caked in soot from burnt pizza crust.
They are old friends promised to each other.
(phoof)