Author's Introduction:
Why I wrote this:
1. I am in love with him.
2. It's not that I don't love seasons 3-present, but the first two are always going to hold a special place in my heart.
3. I ought to earn my jock strap.
4. I have no desire to finish the ramen I was eating, which isn't like me.
5. It's my third Caf-Pow today.
6. I'm sad. I need to cheer up.
It'll be okay……..
**
Post-It
The first NCIS fic ever written by Firestar9mm
**
You're not seventeen
To be missing him like you do
Knowing him like you do
He said How can I still be missing you?
I'll be missing you till you're missing me
I'm not seventeen and I know you're not to blame
And if I could reason I'd settle this thing
This is how I'll be missing you
Not Seventeen, Mandalay
**
It had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. Something to feel strongly about for thirty seconds and then forget.
Or try to.
The normal checks and balances rose in his brain automatically—the first being that it was not polite to mess with other people's desks, and Kate especially hated it when he touched any of her things. Which was why he did it, really. Not just because it was funny to annoy her, but because it was a surefire way to get her attention. And to a man who'd rather have rocks thrown at him than not be noticed, even a sharp word from a beautiful woman was welcome.
Tony was good at getting attention.
But nobody ignored you like the dead.
It wasn't the day she died that he did it. It wasn't even the day they installed her picture on the memory wall, although that was a rough day for everyone. Sorrow shared was sorrow halved, and the rough days for everyone were so much less rough for Tony, because Tony shone when everyone else was falling apart. It was what he was good at. It was easier to keep a poker face, to smile that self-assured smile and crack a joke that she herself would have appreciated in secret with that rueful twist of her lips.
No, it wasn't one of the rough days.
In fact, he remembered nothing else about the day at all except that it had been Tuesday. There was nothing remarkable about the day itself that would have evoked such emotion in him, such a fierce thirty-second desire to prove to the world that he was still burning after all this time, that he was the one who still had to walk around on his own and dealing with everything on his own. It wasn't a Friday where they might have gone for dinner or drinks after work just because. It wasn't that he'd been shot at, or anything else traumatic had happened to remind him of the rougher days.
It was just Tuesday.
And it was on that not so very special day that he wrote the note, quickly, and slipped it under the mouse pad that wasn't hers anymore. All of the office supplies had pretty much stayed put despite the changing of the guard at that desk.
Tony had refused to oversee the cannibalizing of Kate's desk. While everyone else in the office had considered him the logical choice, Gibbs had been able to tell with one look that Tony would rather have gone back to the Mallard residence and moved all of Ducky's mother's furniture before he touched a single ballpoint on Kate's empty desk.
The division of property had gone smoothly, due in large part to Abby, who had come up to rescue the plush nittany lion that had always crouched near Kate's pencil cup. Now, every time Tony walked into Abby's lab, he purposely didn't look for the lion, now keeping Bert company on a shelf by the stereo system. Abby had always been able to read Tony better than anyone else but Gibbs, and she had quickly taken charge of the dismantling of the desk. The heart of gold beneath the lab tech's leather and spikes had assured that all the personal effects were returned to family or placed somewhere else in the bullpen where they would be taken care of.
Tony purposely hadn't kept anything that had belonged to Kate, and Abby hadn't asked him about it.
McGee had taken the bag of peppermints that Kate had always stashed in her drawer, but he didn't eat them. Tony had only discovered this much later, on a day he'd planned to mess with the probie's desk a bit and move all his supplies around just enough to be irritating. He'd opened the drawer to hide McGee's stapler and there they were, the open bag of peppermints, each still individually wrapped, striped bright and cheerful. Tony had closed the drawer without even hiding the stapler, which had taken McGee a week to find; in his surprise at discovering the candy, Tony had carelessly left the stapler on the windowsill and forgotten about it.
Tony didn't eat peppermints either, but sometimes he could taste them in his mouth when he thought about bantering with Kate, and he liked the idea of the cheerful candy safe in the probie's drawer, a silent comfort. He had vowed to be nice to McGee for a week and had actually kept it up for four days.
Most of Kate's picture frames had gone to her family, since all of the pictures had been of them. All but one—one had been of her other family, the family that had been trying to hold itself together without her for so long now. No one had seen that picture in months—one day it had been on the desk, and the next it had disappeared, frame and all, and no one knew what had happened to it.
Tony suspected Gibbs. There was always a faraway look in the boss's eyes when the subject of Kate was broached; the senior field agent had a strong feeling that he wasn't the only one who blamed himself for what had happened to her.
Peppermints, picture frames. Secretly, Tony liked the invisible presence of the peppermints in McGee's drawer, the pronounced absence of the picture frame from Kate's desk. It made him feel like she was still around somehow. Soon, Tony had begun keeping peppermints in his own desk, sucking on them when he felt isolated, enjoying the sting of them on his tongue and the scent that curled beneath his nose. But he never touched the ones in McGee's drawer, just as McGee never touched them. They belonged to Kate; they were hers.
But that Tuesday, peppermints hadn't helped. There was a hole in the world where the picture frame had sat on her desk.
Kate was ignoring him.
It felt lonely—even lonelier than usual. Suddenly, the feeling that he would never again be able to say something stupid and get Kate to look up and smile at him was heavier and more permanent than ever before.
He had to stop it somehow.
So his fingers twitched towards his Post-It notes—he had taken classic yellow, making sure to stick McGee with the pink ones. Ziva's were blue—and he'd scrawled the note, quickly, before tearing it from the pad, sticking it under the mouse pad before Tuesday came to a close.
A few times over the course of the drive home, of the beers consumed before and after the seventh-inning stretch, and the slow fall into a restless sleep he was becoming more and more used to, he noticed absently that the pain in his chest had eased slightly. He didn't make the connection to the note he'd written that night, or the night after, or the night after that. In fact, the note had already slipped his mind entirely at that point.
He forgot about the Post-It for weeks. He solved cases, chased skirts, sucked peppermints and basked in the feeling of having Kate's attention on him once more, imagining all the scathing things she'd have said as he tortured McGee, annoyed Gibbs and charmed random witnesses right out of their panties. It wasn't the same as bantering with her for real—she had been much more clever than he, although he'd never have admitted it aloud; her one-liners had knocked spots off his, but he tried his best to anticipate her responses to his antics, conjuring the memory of her voice inside his mind.
Still…it wasn't the same. Eventually, he'd come to the realization that his playmate was decidedly absent. See-saws didn't work with only one rider.
He'd lost count of the Fridays past by the time Ziva cleaned Kate's desk. (Tony often thought of it as "Kate's desk", and couldn't seem to correct himself despite repeated efforts.)
"You don't have a date tonight, Tony? Shall I call A Current Affair?" Ziva arched a dark brow over her paperwork.
Tony bit down on a smile. He had to give Ziva an A for effort. Her tongue was not as silver as Kate's, but she was working with a language handicap and her brave forays into the jungle of idioms and pop culture was nothing short of heroic. To reward her for her attempt, Tony treated Ziva to a withering look that would have made Kate proud. "How far behind is the TV in Israel? When was the last time you heard anybody talk about A Current Affair?"
The dark woman's eyes twinkled. "Last week, when you were still having one with that stewardess."
Tony snorted. "I'm done with her. Gravity does awful things for her look." He turned in his chair. "You know, they prefer to be called flight attendants now."
"Is that why you're here so late?"
Kate might have been proud of Ziva tonight, too—the woman would pursue her point to the crack of doom. "What are you doing here so late?" Tony asked, trying to turn the tables. "Why don't you ever have a date?"
"I'm saving myself for you, DiNozzo," Ziva remarked in a bored tone, reaching for a soft cloth and a bottle of disinfecting spray. Even her cleaning motions were circular and precise, as rigid as the severe way her dark, unruly hair was pulled back from her face.
"Save all you like, baby, you can't afford me," Tony shot back grandly. See her top that.
Ziva didn't answer, having stopped her cleaning abruptly to stare down at the desk.
Tony's lip dropped into a brief pout at her apparent lack of appreciation for his jest. "Did you hear me, Officer David? I said you can't aff—"
"I hear you, Tony," Ziva said, raising her eyes from the desk. Her gaze was intense as ever, but her tone was soft, a rarity for her, especially when speaking to him. "I am paying attention to you."
Tony's eyes narrowed. I am paying attention to you—it was an odd choice of words. Too odd, too specific—Kate had been a profiler and quite the telepath when it came to him, but Ziva was no slouch in reading his mind, either. Instead, he racked his brain for another witty barb, but it was too late. She'd shaken him too badly. Time to bluff. "Look, that's all I got, okay? Unless you want to make a war bond joke—"
Ziva just watched him. "I don't know any war bond jokes," she said, in that same gentle tone.
Tony sneered bravely, still hoping she may yet back down. "You don't know any jokes period."
Ziva's lips twitched into a smile. "I learn from you."
"If you learned from me, you'd have better jokes," Tony accused, trying to fight the panic that was rising in him at that delicate look on her face. "Even McGee can turn a phrase better than you, and if I had to lose to the probie, I'd—"
Ziva interrupted him, impossibly gently. "Stop. It's all right."
"What is?" Tony asked exasperatedly, and then his gaze bounced to the yellow square of paper stuck to Ziva's forefinger.
Oh. That.
A long-ago Tuesday swam through the dark water in his brain to surface. Given Ziva's strict attention to detail and military neatness, Tony was actually surprised she hadn't found it sooner. He had all but forgotten about it—until now.
As he saw it, he had two options. He could demand she hand it over, or he could deny it.
"What's that?"
Ziva's face showed her disapproval of his choice.
"Tony, I have spent too many hours trying to decipher your scrawl to fall for that." She held her hand out, the Post-It burning bright yellow at the end of her fingertip, offering it. "Can you not say it aloud? Even now?"
Tony spun in his chair, turning his back on Ziva, turning his back on the note, turning his back on the desk.
Turning his back on the hole in the world where Kate used to be.
Ziva was eerily quiet. It wasn't like her to run off at the mouth, but Tony had a sneaking suspicion that he'd turn around and there she'd still be, with the Post-It blooming on her fingertip like a frightening yellow flower.
Her patience was heavy in the air like perfume. If she'd left the room he'd never have heard it—it was her way to be as silent as a ninja—but he knew she was still there, sitting perfectly still. Waiting. Waiting for him.
Tony's nose wrinkled in a fierce scowl that he didn't let Ziva see. "Ever see The Lake House?"
Ziva earned herself another A for effort; keeping up with Tony's endless movie references was all but impossible for her, but she gave it her best shot. "Is that the one with the scary man who drowns girls in the lake in order to more accurately write a screenplay?"
Tony let his head dangle over the back of his chair in exasperation. "That's Cabin By The Lake. Good try, though."
Ziva sighed, equally exasperated, as if she'd been sure she had it right that time. "Then no, I have not seen any other films about a lake house."
"It's the one with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock—"
"Ah, yes. The bus that couldn't slow down."
Whirling in his chair, Tony glared at her. "Haven't I taught you anything? That's Speed, Ziva—"
Halting midsentence, Tony saw that gentle smile again and knew she knew exactly what she was talking about. But now she'd gotten him to look at her again.
"You ass."
The smile never wavered. "The Lake House. Keanu Reeves rents the same house as Sandra Bullock, two years apart in time, and they correspond." Her lashes lowered, her gaze flickering to the Post-It still balanced on her fingertip.
"Yeah." Tony's voice was flat with self-disgust. "It's a stupid movie. I like movies about guns. And cars. Not love stories."
"I don't think it's stupid," Ziva said, almost too softly to hear. "I think it's…sweet."
He knew she wasn't talking about the movie.
They were silent for another minute. The Post-It note flared in Tony's peripheral vision.
"Do you want me to put this back where you left it?"
Tony's scowl deepened. "What does it matter? No one will come for it."
"It's already been received," Ziva said, that maddening calm settling over her like a cloak.
Tony slammed the rolling shelf that held his keyboard back in place and got up. "I'm going home. Do whatever you want with it."
"All right." Ziva circled Kate's desk, meeting him between it and his own. Her lips twitched into that little smile again as she tucked the Post-It into his breast pocket. Tony closed his eyes, the memory of his own words in fresh ink vivid on the backs of his eyelids.
I miss you.
Gently, Ziva smoothed his shirt, patting the pocket as if to secure the note, just over his heart, and Tony knew he wasn't as coolheaded as he'd thought. Ziva was nothing if not perceptive; she caught the smallest details and she very clearly saw the game he'd been playing with the desk across from his own. She proved it as she smiled once more, making him a promise he'd been waiting ages to hear.
"Caitlin sees you."
Without waiting for his response, she returned to her paperwork, gathering it up as though she were about to leave.
Unbelievably, Tony felt a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. The place the note rested against his chest felt warm.
"I'm going out again," he told Ziva pointedly, walking slowly away from his desk. "Maybe I'll catch an 8-footer."
"Ride it in her honor, Tony," Ziva answered, eyes twinkling above the gentle smile.
Smirking as he made his way out, Tony nodded. "Sayonara."
Oh yes. She got an A.
"Remember her…" Placidly, Ziva moved her paperwork to his empty desk and settled herself, continuing her report.
Gibbs was always the last one out of the bullpen—it never failed. She didn't have to hear him approaching Tony's desk; Ziva felt the heavy disapproving glare on her before she looked up.
But today, the expression said more than just "go home". Instead of both brows meeting over her boss's unreadable eyes, one was cocked in curiosity.
"Something wrong with the other desk, Officer David?"
Ziva treated Gibbs to the same smile Tony had enjoyed all evening. "Someone is sitting there," she explained.
Gibbs glanced over to Kate's empty desk. For a moment, his winter-cool eyes softened, then he nodded, leaving before Ziva for the first time that she could remember.
The report could probably wait till tomorrow, Ziva reasoned, feeling suddenly tired. It had been a long day, a long week, and suddenly the Slaughterhouse-Five feeling of all realities existing at the same time was heavy on her shoulders.
Rising from Tony's borrowed chair, Ziva gave Kate's desk a precise military bow before hiding her smile on her way out the door.
**
Author's Notes:
"Is that the one with the scary man who drowns girls in the lake…?": This is my favorite part of the fic. When Tony and Ziva are discussing movies, she incorrectly confuses The Lake House (terrible movie) with Cabin By The Lake (fantastically amusing movie). Every NCIS fan should be legally bound to watch Cabin By The Lake. If they do, they'll see a striking resemblance between the heroic Deputy Boone Preston and a handsome, witty senior field agent we all know and love. *^_^*
It's all about the car: To make up for crappy romantic comedies, Tony and Ziva go hardcore before Tony leaves the bullpen, quoting the awesomely outrageous 1971 cult classic Vanishing Point, starring the equally awesomely outrageous Dodge Challenger. (Death Proof fans should know this one, and gearheads ought to know it anyway.) Actually, Tony is quoting Vera, not Kowalski, and Ziva paraphrases the next part of the line. The original line should be, "I'm going out again. Maybe I'll catch an 8-footer. I'll ride it in your honor. Sayonara. Remember me."
The obligatory threat: I always have a threat ready when I post a romantic fic, and please take this one seriously or you shall be sorry. While I have fallen away from watching NCIS after season four, I do own two television sets and a radio and am capable of reading, so I know all about the alleged "love triangle" currently going on. This series, which I adore, comes with the same warning as every other series I write for: do not bother me about pairings. Please. Because while I love Ziva as a character and think she is awesome, I honestly think a romantic relationship between her and Tony would be disastrous and completely kill the chemistry (not to mention breaking rule number 12…). Their dynamic is great but it should remain that of partners—and I'm not just saying that because, as a devoted NCIS fan since "Yankee White", my heart will always be with Tony/Kate. *^_^* (I'd love to eventually write more NCIS fics that take place while Kate is still alive. This one was just to get my feet wet. Oh, and also because I can't afford my lithium this month. *^_~*) So please feel free to discuss but be polite and nice or else I will stick pins in my voodoo dolls just for you. And do not think I will not do it. In fact, I am already thinking of doing it. I am going to do it right now. (That has nothing to do with the lack of lithium, that's just because I feel like it.)
Back to the fun stuff: There is a reference to one of my favorite episodes, "The Meat Puzzle" in this fic. I never get tired of watching Ducky's mother bossing Tony around.
The nittany lion is creative license on my part. I got custody of a friend's Penn State nittany lion when she vacated her desk in the bullpen, and it always felt sad for me. Abby and I have a lot in common (not limited to clothes and awesomeness), and I imagine she might want her friend's lion too. Abby has also demonstrated a ferocious love for her big brother figure, Tony, and I do believe she'd throw herself into oncoming traffic if it would save him pain. Sparing Tony the ordeal of settling unfinished business in the aftermath of his partner's death would be second nature to her. Kate's picture frames are also creative license on my part, but Gibbs's fierce care for his team is certainly not. That's as canon as anything. It's very obvious since "Yankee White" that he and Kate have a rapport, and I imagine he'd feel the hole in the world where she used to be almost as acutely as Tony. Lastly, the peppermints are also creative license, but I imagine someone who doesn't travel well, like Kate, would keep something on hand to settle her stomach. As for McGee, he strikes me as peppermint—sweet, fresh and completely comforting. *^_^* I'd love to do some McGee fic eventually, too.
Be nice to me….I love the NCIS bullpen, I want to cuddle with Tony and watch movies, I miss Kate, I wish Gibbs was my dad, and this is my first fic. I'm sad……someone cheer me up. *sips her Caf-Pow*. And I'm not lying about the Caf-Pow, either—read the mug! *holds up one-liter mug that says "Caf-Pow". Oh, yes, it does.*