Disclaimer: Unless NCIS is willing to accept a large pile of my flip-flops as payment, I will not be owning it at any time in the near future.
Summary: Tony and Ziva attend to the details of their daily life with much Tiva aplomb. Among other things, Tony and Ziva are engaged, moving to a new apartment, buying a new car (after the truly tragic demise of Ziva's Mini in AYN) and actively avoiding making any wedding plans. Of course, most of these things are not just coming out of the blue, but are predicated on…
Spoilers: This story occurs immediately after the last in this growing-exponentially-beyond-my-control series, which begins with Locked and ends with All You Need. Details available in that magical profile page that saves me from typing this all out in my summary/spoiler sections, though I totally do it anyway. Anyhow, once again the 'canon' is basically personal stuff I've made up in Locked, Taking it for Granted, No Good Deed, Black and White, and All You Need. Of course, there may be spoilers for some random details that we learn throughout NCIS, but…yeah, I have no idea why this section is here anymore, because the continuity diverges at some point in early S4 into Locked and never looks back. Alas. This picks up about a week or two after AYN left off. On to the Tiva fluff!
Tony experienced a moment of weightlessness as Ziva collided with him, knocking him to the ground as the sound of gunfire erupted from a whole new direction. Her momentum carried her off him and he craned his neck just in time to see her tumbling disappearance into an open cargo container. He scrambled after her, tugging the door closed behind him just in time to save them from a hail of pinging bullets.
Ziva lay on the floor, panting heavily. He sank down the wall of the container beside her, noting that it was empty and they would be easy targets for anyone shooting through the door. "I think we may be in trouble here."
"No, really?" she replied caustically, scowling at him from her supine position.
"Well, at the very least, we're going to be trapped in here until they stop shooting." When she didn't reply, he continued, "I'm sure Tibbs is on his way. We've just got to wait them out and hope they didn't bring too many extra clips."
She grunted, struggling to sit up. "Maybe we should just get out of here."
"Are you all right?"
"Fine." Her wet cough contradicted the assertion.
"No, you look pale and…" He squinted at her carefully in the dark compartment. He knew she'd come running to his assistance from the opposite side of the large lot, but that didn't explain her continued breathlessness. The 100-meter dash didn't frighten Ziva. A sudden loud clang and a shift prevented him from making any other observations. They were both thrown around the container as it picked up speed. "I think someone…ow!…hit us with the dump truck to…damn it!…push us down the hill!"
He was unable to speak again until the container made a horrible noise – a loud splash – as it hit the water at the bottom of the hill. From his new position at the slanted bottom of the metal box, Tony stood awkwardly in the water that was already halfway to his knees. It was now almost completely dark in the sinking prison cell. He swept his hands in front of him. "Ziva?"
"Hey!"
He withdrew his hands quickly. "Sorry, but it's pitch black in here."
"That's the worst excuse you've ever had for copping a…" Her words dissolved into a coughing fit.
Realizing that whatever had been wrong before their violent descent into the water was worse now, he felt his pockets, finding the only possible source of light – his cell phone. "I doubt I'll be able to get a signal, but…" he trailed off as the light shone on his partner. Blood glistened on her wet clothing. He reached toward her and he could just make out the small rips in her sweater where at least three bullets had entered her torso. "Ziva, you…you're…"
"I noticed." She looked even paler in the faint blue light emitted by his phone. "But at least you'll be able to carry me out of here, right?"
The meaning of her sprint across the open space and headlong collision into him abruptly made sense – she had taken rounds meant for him. He was torn between shock, gratitude and utter outrage. "Why did you do that? I'm not worth it!"
The ghost of a smile crossed her face. "You are…to me."
He collected her in his arms as the water in the container deepened, saying a silent prayer that Tibbs would find them in time to give him a chance to tell her the truth about his feelings.
"Oh, that is not right," Tony muttered, allowing the unfinished manuscript to fall into his lap with a soft slapping of pages. Dropping his pen, he randomly grasped the lump of covers beside him in the bed and shook. "Hey."
"Huh?"
"Wake up."
"Unghh…"
He leaned over and whispered, "McGee just killed you off!"
Ziva rolled over, rubbing her eyes. "McGee's not fast enough to kill me. And I feel fine, all things considered." She rubbed her stomach where she'd had her stitches removed the previous day.
Tony took advantage of her sleepiness to steal a few kisses. "You should consider some mouthwash."
"Maybe when I get up in the damn morning," she replied, pushing him away. "I suggest you just grab a magazine from the hidden compartment in your third bureau drawer and head for the bathroom, because I just changed the sheets yesterday."
"You say that like you think I'd never wake you just to hear your melodious voice." Before she could roll over and go back to sleep, he called her attention back to his reason for waking her. "McGee hasn't really killed you. Not yet. But I'm sure you won't be pleased to find out that Moussad Officer Lisa is bleeding to death in Agent Tommy's arms as they slowly sink to the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay, trapped in a flooding shipping container." He prodded the manuscript with his pen as he recited each detail.
"We were never trapped in a sinking shipping container." She reached for her own bedside lamp, clicking the switch and squinting in the doubled light. "So she's not actually dead yet?"
Her blasé attitude told him she had yet to recognize the magnitude of the situation. "Well, no, but unless Tibbs finds us soon…"
"Them, Tony. Not us. Them." She yawned, cracking her neck with a quick movement to the side that made him flinch. "Wait a minute…don't tell me you've been up all night reading McGee's new novel."
"Uh, well…" He glanced at the clock as his eyes flitted around the room, looking for excuses. "Okay, it's only three, so I haven't been up all night, and I wasn't reading the whole thing, just the parts I don't actually remember happening. This thing is packed with exposition that would be completely classified but for the subtle change that it's Moussad Officer Lisa who, sometime prior to this case, had an affair with Ukrainian arms dealer Viktor Tushkov, much to the dismay of her devoted beau, Agent Tommy. He actually uses the words 'devoted beau,' if you can believe that. And it's not exactly the same because apparently she was just dating Viktor and didn't realize he was an arms dealer because they met on some beach on the French Riviera – some topless beach that's described in surprisingly lifelike detail. Officer Lisa even has a mole right. …" he reached under the covers, his hand slipping just inside her black camisole as he pressed his index finger to a small spot between her breasts that he could find without looking, "…there."
"You can see that when I lean over if I'm wearing a shirt with a loose enough neck." She stretched her arms over her head and yawned again, looking extremely unimpressed. "Where does it pick up?"
He licked his lips. "What do you mean?"
"The novel versus our lives…where does it start?"
"Oh, with you, I mean Lisa, disappearing one morning with no explanation. So…right before you left one morning, leaving me with a note and a necklace."
She touched her omnipresent Star of David, just visible above her top – her lacy black top that revealed some bare skin on her stomach between the hem and a matching pair of panties. Tony missed whatever she said, distracted by his sudden hunger for her. She'd been out of the hospital for only a week, so he knew it was far too soon to suggest sex, but still…it was really only her leg that still seemed to be bothering her, and they could find a way around that. Based on the dates her doctor had given her, they could get back to physical matters the day after he had his cast removed. In three weeks. Seventeen days, really. Seventeen days wasn't that long.
He gulped as she ran her hands through her sleep-tousled hair. Like hell three weeks wasn't forever. Watching her change into her pajamas was enough to get him hot these days. Of course, with pajamas like the ones he knew she was wearing now, mainly as a result of his hiding of all her more modest nightclothes… A moment later, he became aware that she was trying to take the manuscript from his lap. He clutched it tightly. "You don't want to read this."
"Give me the manuscript," she stated in a tone that left no room for contradiction. He handed it to her grudgingly and her eyes scanned rapidly through the first page. "Don't tell me you made notes like this through the whole thing."
He reflexively clicked his pen. "I may have added a few little nuggets here and there…"
Her eyebrow went up. "Like these lines you added about phone sex?"
"It's, uh, true to life."
He said nothing further as she flipped through the pages, rolling her eyes and snorting with periodic disgust. "You're concerned that McGee has written another novel based on us and you think adding more personal details is the proper course of action?"
"Well, I…"
"You even crossed out the characters' names and replaced them with ours!"
"Not all the characters!" he protested. "Just Lisa and Tommy."
"Yes, very reassuring."
"Well, at least you can be sure I'm never answering any question he asks me that isn't case related from now on. Like, he asked me about the flower shop where I got that bouquet when you were in the hospital the first time?"
She smiled. "The big one you didn't bring yourself?"
"Yeah." He wasn't sure whether to feel uncomfortable under her gaze. "Uh, yeah. Everything I told him about that's in here, including the nice lady who arranged it. I thought he was just impressed with the bouquet and wanted to know where to pick one up! Oh, and the knife your dad sent me when you came home from Israel? That's in here too, including the note that came with it."
"How did he know what my father wrote you?"
"The note was still in box with the knife. And the…"
He stopped talking as the light on the opposite side of the bed clicked off just as the manuscript landed with a thud on the floor. "Go to sleep, Tony. We've got a busy day tomorrow."
He turned off his own lamp with a sigh. After a few minutes staring at the shadow patterns on the ceiling, he scooted across the bed and slipped his arm around Ziva. She didn't push him away, instead saying, "McGee writes what he knows, not visions of the future."
"Huh?"
"You woke me up because you read about Lisa getting shot and you got scared."
"Did not." Tony still held her tighter, inclining his face so his lips rested on her bare shoulder. "I, uh, just thought you'd want to hear about what was happening, y'know, in the McNovel."
"I love you, too," she whispered, so softly that he could barely hear her. Raising her voice, she continued, "You really need to get back on your side of the bed if you don't want any serious injuries in the next few hours."
"I know, stealth sleep ninja-ing. Maybe they've got a pill for that. If you don't mind dreaming about Lincoln and talking beavers, of course."
"Whatever." She yawned. "Goodnight, Tony."
"'Night," he murmured, rolling away and taking a good portion of the sheet with him; she'd have it all back by morning anyway.