I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite a new thing. – e.e cummings
i. Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
It's a rather awkward moment when Abby walks in on Ziva at the bathroom sink.
"Oh! I, um, you..."
Ziva's obviously been at NCIS long enough to be able to recognize when Abby is about to start babbling, because she wastes no time cutting her off with a raised hand.
Abby winces and brings balled fists up under her chin. "I didn't mean to make you cry."
"I am not crying," Ziva says, and Abby thinks it might be true – there's water on her face, like she splashed it from the sink, and who can tell the difference between tap water and tears? "And if I were, it would not be merely because you slapped me. "
Abby wants ask why she would be, hypothetically, crying, but she already feels like she's violated the unwritten laws that guard Ziva's privacy enough just by walking in here. What occupies her attention instead is the water on Ziva's face, and how runs into lines and creases, closer than most are allowed. She stares quietly and leaves it to Ziva to navigate them out of this conversation.
"I am done here. You may have the bathroom to yourself," is how she does it, and she moves swiftly past Abby and out the door.
Slightly phased by what just transpired, Abby goes to the sink and runs her hands under cold water. She thinks first about the water on Ziva's skin and then about her own hands - about the care and precision she's had to use them with as a scientist - and thinks maybe she's capable of the kind of water-like gentleness needed to negotiate with Ziva's defences.
But when Tony stages their reconciliation, she looks at the place where her fingers struck Ziva's face at the same time she feels the way her hand engulfs the other woman's when she shakes it, and she doesn't feel like she's capable of being careful at all.
ii. What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten
Two days later, a post-it note on Ziva's computer invites her to bowl on Abby's team. The note explains that the opposing team recently gained a pirate ("Honestly Ziva, a real, rum-drinking, swashbuckling pirate. His name's Alfred, but you don't need to worry about that because I've already decided to re-name him Bluebeard. So call him that") and argues that this means Abby's team is in desperate need of a ninja, providing a website ("") for Ziva's reference. When she's finished wondering why everyone calls her a ninja when she's clearly a spy, Ziva emails Abby and accepts the offer.
It's obvious as early as ten minutes into the game that they both bowl the same way they do a lot of things: Abby with enthusiasm disproportionate to the task; Ziva to win.
"Not big on mercy, is she?" asks Bluebeard, who isn't really a pirate, but who comes close enough for no one to worry about calling him on it.
"Not big on losing," Abby grins, and throws her arms around Ziva's shoulders from the side. It's the fourth overt display of affection that night, and Ziva has the familiar feeling of not knowing at all
what to do with it. A reciprocating arm against Abby's back seems to suffice, but the gesture is awkward and she knows Abby notices.
"You are very friendly, Abby," Ziva says as they watch the other team throw a gutter ball.
"I try," she replies, close to her ear, and Ziva is immediately aware that the woman who slapped her less than 78 hours ago is now flirting with her. She doesn't think she'll ever quite grasp how interaction between Abby and herself is supposed to work. She'll be grateful for the moment, though, because a direct come-on is something she is far more adept at handling than an earnest display of friendship, and it's hardly an effort for her to respond in kind until the fourth stall in the women's bathroom is locked behind them and they're both fighting to push the other up against the wall.
Ziva wins, of course, but even with all her weight pressing up and into Abby she still has a sense of being the one taken for a ride; that even her determination and skill are no match for Abby's experience. It's now that she remembers hearing Abby say once that she "couldn't possibly remember the names of all the people she'd hooked up with". She wonders which is better: Abby's numerous and sincere, but insignificant, experiences, or her own, pressed permanently into her memory, but always feeling like part of a game she has to keep ahead in figuratively, to keep her from vulnerability, or literally, as part of a mission. She pushes a hand under Abby's shirt and kisses her harder.
They return to the lanes as if they never left, and they each resume their former approach to the game. Ziva waits to see whose will come out on top.
iii. Oh, my tongue's the only muscle in my body that works harder than my heart
It's the absence of Gibbs, the end of a long case and a moment of impulsivity that has Abby coaxing Ziva to dance in the bullpen at 11:30pm. Tony and McGee, expecting to see a rather aggressive refusal, are surprised when Ziva allows Abby to lead her around the room in an exaggerated waltz. There's laughing from Abby and a sort of repressed grinning from Ziva, and then Abby stops rather abruptly.
"Stand on my feet."
Ziva looks worried. "What?"
"Put your feet on top of my feet, and I'll dance us around the room."
A frown. "Am I dancing badly?"
Abby laughs and pulls on a strand of Ziva's hair until it's straight. "No, it's just more fun this way. Come on."
Ziva is clearly dubious but complies; Abby wraps an arm around the waist of her new passenger and offers her other hand to hold. The position is unfamiliar for Ziva, and instead of taking the proffered hand, grabs it awkwardly at the wrist. The move lets her feel her companion's pulse, fast from too much caffeine.
Later, Abby will tell her that she thinks this is the reason she's so affectionate with everyone – that the caffeine doesn't just increase her energy, but that when it speeds up her heart, it also speeds up her capacity to love. Ziva will scoff and say that that's the most ridiculous thing she's ever heard. Abby will accuse her of lack of imagination and cold-heartedness, and it'll be then that her other super-skill – her ability to talk – will take over. It won't take long for there to be far more arguing than the original topic of conversation should have called for.
Currently, though, while they dance, the difference in the rhythms of their muscles just makes for a good beat to move to.
iv. This is the story of your red right ankle, and how it came to meet your leg, and how the muscles, bone and sinew tangled, and how the skin was softly shed. And how it whispered: "Oh, adhere to me, for we are bound by symmetry. Whatever differences our lives have been, we together make a limb."
Ziva sprains her ankle and walks into autopsy leaning on McGee's shoulder. Abby and Ducky move to prop her up onto an empty table, but they don't get far before they're shaken off and glared at as Ziva lifts herself onto the surface.
Abby puts her hands on her hips. "You're only mad because you're embarrassed that your super spy self got such an ordinary injury," she says, but the teasing stops when Ducky takes off Ziva's boot to reveal an ankle swollen to twice its normal size.
Abby sits on the table near her feet, and holds the injured limb while Ducky ices and bandages it.
"You know, the first thing my anatomy lecturer ever taught us was to forget about the concept of a foot," she says. Ziva raises an eyebrow and McGee looks as if he's contemplating the necessity if his presence here. "And, I mean, she didn't just mean feet, she meant any sort of body part like arm, leg, neck. She wanted us to see them as their component parts and said that in terms of anatomy the wholes didn't really exist." By now the other occupants of the room have realized that this is how Abby is channeling her concern, and the strangeness of Abby not knowing how to express an emotion is not lost on anyone. Then again, she has always acted differently concerning Ziva.
"Which makes you wonder, don't you think? I mean, if the concept of a whole is so relative, it puts even the concept of self in question. There was a scientist, actually, with this theory that all of the living and non-living things in the earth are actually components of a larger, single organism - that the Earth is alive, and he actually has some pretty nifty evidence to back it up, like feedback systems between living and nonliving things like the ones between components of our bodies. And really, our cells are living things in themselves that interact with their environment to achieve things for the larger organism without, on their level of awareness, knowing that they're doing it, so couldn't it be possible that we're like the Earth's cells?"
Abby finishes abruptly and breathes. Ziva, McGee and Ducky seem to be tentative to talk, unsure if the torrent will begin again.
"Well," Ducky starts after a couple of seconds of silence,"keep that taped up and elevated and it will heal perfectly well, my dear."
Ziva nods appreciatively and attempts to rub away an approaching headache. Despite her objections, Abby slips an arm around her waist as she slides off the table and asks if there's anything she needs.
Ziva sighs with obvious exhaustion. "To be by myself, for the moment," she says, limping forward. She looks at Abby and places her own arm around the scientist's shoulders. "But you may come too."
Section headings are from:
i. Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond (e.e cummings)
ii. What lips my lips have kissed (Edna St. Vincent Millay)
ii. Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don't (Brand New)
iv. Red Right Ankle (The Decemberists)