Hi! Okay so this is my first attempt at a multi-chap fic. Just a warning, the next month is going to be extremely busy for me, so don't expect an update until the beginning of February, maybe the end of January after my midterms if I can spare the time. This is just an idea I had about how Tony and Ziva might go about building a romantic relationship on top of their partnership. I'm not sure how long it's going to be yet, but it's definitely not going to be one of those 40 chapter fics! Maybe closer to ten. We'll see. Anyways, reviews are always welcome! Thanks for reading!
Disclaimer: I own nothing but a laptop and the DVDs of seasons 3 and 4.
A glance can communicate a multitude of things when passed between good partners. It can articulate a strategy, a warning, praise. A glance between a certain pair might, in a rare case, convey affection, or something deeper. This particular glance is not of the latter, but of the first. Now is a time for strategy, for saving lives.
That way, his eyes tell her.
A short shake of her chin in another direction.
I'll go around, cut him off.
Fine.
And then he gives her one last glance before the strategy is executed, the warning.
Take care of yourself, Ziva.
She gives him a nearly imperceptible smile.
I always do.
The entire exchange takes about five seconds.
Sometimes words prove to be the more prudent medium for warnings.
"Tony!" she shouts, his name reverberating throughout the warehouse as her heart stops beating, her common sense evaporates, and her time-tested instincts gain control of her. She should have gone in with him. She should have covered him like she was supposed to. He's her partner, she's his backup,
and now Commander Barron's rifle is trained on him from across the building, but she's out of ammunition from the preceding gunfight. So Ziva does what she does best, and saves her partner's six.
When he turns around in response to her warning, the only thing between Tony and that bullet is Ziva and a Kevlar vest.
He sees the sniper. He aims. He fires. He hits his mark.
He glances down to see Ziva lying at his feet, a shallow whimper of pain escaping her lips, and an electric shock of panic, of terror, courses through his body.
"Ziva!" he cries out her name as he kneels beside her on the cold, hard ground. Tony notices how tiny, how fragile she looks when she is wounded, and he thinks that might be the most terrifying thing he's ever witnessed. Ex-Mossad assassins aren't supposed to be fragile. He reaches out feebly to touch her face, his thumb brushing across her cheekbone as his index and middle fingers check her pulse.
"I am fine, Tony," she laughs shakily, stirring and blinking her eyes open. "This is certainly not the first time I have been shot at."
He laughs too, in relief. He thinks he might feel tears of joy forming in his eyes, but he refuses to acknowledge them, to let them fall.
"You saved my life." These are perhaps the most obvious four words he could have uttered, but it's all he can manage right now. For a second, he thought he'd lost her, and losing her is not a possibility. He can't even imagine the possibility of losing her anymore without feeling that dark and heavy cloud of depression, of hopelessness, rolling in again.
"Is that a thank you?"
"It most certainly is."
A glance of praise and gratitude passes between them.
As Ziva begins to raise her sore and bruised body from the ground, he hears a noise, and his mind flashes back to another day, in a similar situation, from years ago; flashes back to Kate Todd.
"Stay down!" he shouts, pushing her back to the ground as he uses his own body to shield her from the as-of-yet-to-be-identified threat. He sees the red laser and fires. The sniper falls dead with a soft thud, a bullet in between his eyes.
Tony turns back to Ziva, whose eyes are wide with fear and whose face has gone pale. He notices her deep, shaky breaths, and in turn becomes in tuned to his own ragged breathing. She looks so…terrified, and that just won't do. He can't stand to see his ninja scared like this, because Ziva, well, Ziva doesn't get scared. And so he does something extremely out of the ordinary, and pulls her into his arms, cradling her head between his hand and shoulder. He needs to feel her heart beating, needs to feel her breath against his neck, needs to feel her arms clutching at his sides like she's never going to let him go again, because he certainly doesn't want to ever let her go.
"DiNozzo!" Gibbs' voice shouts from his ear bud. Tony's lips can't seem to form the words to answer him just yet. "DiNozzo, David, acknowledge!" he barks.
"We're fine boss," Tony breathes into the mic, "Commander Barron and the two others are dead, but Ziva and I are fine."
He can hear Ziva murmuring Hebrew words which he thinks might be a prayer. While Tony isn't a praying man, he figures it can't hurt to say one of thanks right now.
Back in the squad room that night, sitting at their respective desks, filling out incident reports, Tony can't keep his eyes off of her. She could've died today, hell, he could've died today. But they're alive, sitting across from each other, just like it's another day at the office. Although, to be fair, nearly every day at the office tends to include a near death experience. This one is just…different, too close a call for comfort.
It puzzles him how after everything they've been through, they're still, in essence, the same as they've been from the start. Tony and Ziva, partners, that's how it's always been (the summer after Jenny died and the one after he killed Rivkin excepted). For years, they'd both been completely content with their relationship, their partnership, their friendship. But somewhere along the line, something had changed. Maybe it was Somalia, maybe it was Paris, maybe it was…Ray. Or maybe it was one of the many people they'd been involved with, and the jealousy that had subsequently arisen. Or maybe it wasn't any one person or event, maybe it was just, well, them. Maybe it was all the time, because there'd been a whole lot of that. Whatever it was that caused it, he knows one thing for certain, and it's that he's done waiting around for something to happen between them, done waiting around for someone else to come between them, done waiting for a bullet to take one of them away forever. He is suddenly confronted with the realization that he has a second chance (or maybe this is the fifth), that she is right here with him, and that he wants to take it.
But the thing is, he's not sure how he's going to stop waiting and start taking action. When faced with Ziva David, Anthony DiNozzo, the notorious lady's man, is frozen with unbridled fear and hesitation. Ziva isn't just another woman, another relationship doomed from the start. Ziva David is special. What he feels when he looks at her and when he hears her voice is something he can't quite place, can't quite name, although maybe he's just kidding himself. He knows, but he's clueless as to how to make himself admit it. Fear of commitment has driven nearly every relationship decision over the past twelve years, and patterns are hard to break, especially when breaking them poses the greatest risk he's ever faced.
Tony realizes he is staring when she looks up from her file and stares back at him.
"Everything alright, Tony?" she asks softly, tiredly. He nods, looks her in the eye.
"Everything's peachy," he assures her. She furrows her brow in confusion, unable to grasp the idiomatic expression this late at night, but she's too tired to ask for a translation. Closing the file, she stands.
"Where are you going?" Tony blurts out before he can censor himself. All of a sudden he's feeling extremely possessive of her, which is odd because he's never felt that way about her before. Hell, he was willing to let her marry another man because he'd thought it would make her happy just a year ago. But things change, people change, terrorists blow up buildings and scramble a person's thoughts and feelings up so much that it's hard to stand on steady ground without feeling dizzy.
Ziva eyes him skeptically.
"I need to file my report," she replies monosyllabically.
"Oh."
"Would you like to come with me?" she offers. He glances down at his own unfinished incident report.
"I, uh, still have to finish this."
Ziva nods and walks away.
As he watches her go, watches how her dark brown hair shines as the dim light bounces off of it, Tony begins to wonder if she wasn't talking about filing reports when she asked him to go with her. He starts to wish he'd agreed.
He is bent over the paperwork when she comes back from filing her report. She stands on the staircase behind him, watching as he works.
Ziva can tell that something is bothering him. She is aware of the significance of today's events; he saved her life in a similar situation as the one in which he, Gibbs and McGee couldn't save Kate. Only in that situation, it hadn't been a random suspect firing the shot, but Ziva's own half-brother. She feels a pang of guilt over this, and is quite ashamed at the realization that if Ari hadn't killed Kate, she and Tony would never have met.
She shakes her head, trying to dislodge the thought from her mind. Not meeting Tony is something she simply can't fathom; he is far too important to her. Tony has saved her life countless times, today being the most recent. And while there have been times when he and his actions have torn her apart, made her question her loyalties, at the end of the day he has always been her shoulder to cry on, her savior. She supposes she should loathe him for making her so dependent on him, but she doesn't. All she knows is that the way she feels about him isn't how she's supposed to. And no, she isn't completely dependent on him; she can disarm and apprehend a suspect in a tenth of the time it takes him, and she's saved his life just as many times as he's saved hers. But emotionally, she knows she needs him much more than she should. It's much too dangerous, she thinks, to be so attached to a man who has a new woman every week (although, now that she thinks about it, she can't remember the last time he bragged about having a date; in fact, she thinks it's been months since she's heard him talking about a woman).
Tony looks up from his work just then, and closes the file. She stands there, waiting for him to rise from his chair, but he doesn't. Instead, he crosses his arms over his chest and stares at her empty desk.
Ziva's breath catches in her throat. Maybe she's being naïve, but she's almost positive he's thinking about her, and the longer he stares at her desk the more sure she becomes. He lets out a sigh so deep she can hear it from where she waits, watching.
"Ziva," she swears she hears him whisper in a voice so tender she can feel herself melting; the night janitor might just have to mop her up off the floor. She stands frozen in her place until he finally comes to his feet and moves to leave the bull pen, at which time she hurriedly continues her descent. They pass as she makes her way back to her desk.
"Good night," she says with a smile, hoping she isn't blushing, "and thank you."
"Any time," he reciprocates, flashing her a grin. "Good night. Sleep tight."
When she gathers her things, something forces her to direct her gaze towards the stairs, where he has momentarily paused on the landing.
Ziva and Tony lock eyes, and in that instant, they both feel something shift. Perhaps it is the catalyst they desperately need.