Apologies for the delay... Roy Khan left Kamelot and thus I was busy sobbing in a corner.
Subject Reflux
"You think we'll ever get it right?"
The rapid blink that follows suggests that particular horse wasn't given clearance to leave the gate. The speaker arranges what features aren't frozen by surprise into practiced disinterest. It's a question, an observation. And everything that's wrong with them lives in its unanswerable folds.
She doesn't intend to respond, not during this stakeout. Not during this lifetime. And certainly not with this level of boredom and caffeine clogging this vehicle. Unsanctioned truth waits for moments like this and she wants no part of it.
There's a wrapper on the floorboard and the crumpled state of it, proving it had yielded to a greater force, seems like a testament of some cruel sort.
On a side street saturated by every available ounce of humidity from the post-dawn sun, the unmarked car sits in what is only an inconspicuous manner if the suspect is blind. They want him to know they're waiting. Intimidation by blatancy. What is equally obvious is Tony's reason for triggering the bomb before troubling himself with the ramifications.
Namely, he's unreasonable.
All-nighters tend to devolve their conversations into the most primitive of subjects, somewhere between the yawns and raw discontent. And now, with the power of waking summer battering the windshield, Tony probably hates that he's spoken. Which doesn't stop him from anticipating an answer. There is none. Not for them.
And so her scheme is simple; make him explain and he'll abandon the topic like a clinging date.
"Define right," she poses.
"I don't think I can."
"By your inquiry, I presume you have parameters in mind."
The sun has coasted just far enough to the side that the suspect's apartment building no longer blocks the glare. Shadows shift without mercy, spilling onto the trunk and leaving the occupants to roast. Ziva glances at her partner, the look a second too long bu he doesn't notice. He's not trapped in the swelter anymore. He's somewhere else, where the definitions of right are being weighed, calculated and measured out against their reality.
"Should be easier," Tony says to the dashboard, which offers no comment. Nor will she because she can count the minutes until there are two different conversations happening. As usual. What he means and what he'll admit to meaning later.
The dashboard gauges are blocked by the glare, the digital clock coated in a sheen of yellow, the lack of numeric evidence proof that time has indeed stopped.
"You are confusing our lives with one of your cinemas."
When he grins, something important slips through the firmer grasp of his introspection, leading him back to the safety of jest. "We'd need more car chases to resemble one of my movies."
"Convince Hollister to run and you will get your wish."
Given the prior mood, Ziva chokes down the silence that will precede the lecture; they are the ones who run, they don't secure many wishes. Neither arrives and it feels almost safe to breathe. Except comfort is hardly a toy in Tony's sandbox.
"Why isn't it easier?"
Subject reflux, the rise and return of sour topics, sounds like this.
"Cooperating criminals would put us out of a job," she says in what she hopes is death to this debate.
Eyes rubbed red in the long night actually bother to betray his disappointment. Like he's trying to make a point to a toddler. But there's no room for this nonsense. In this car. In this partnership. In this thing that isn't a thing.
"You know what I meant." His tone is a presumption that says she's not hiding well.
"Rarely."
The sigh is audible annoyance. "This is going nowhere."
Oh, that meaning wears no shroud. Ziva presses hands to her jeans, strategizing how to extract her belt from its loops without announcing her intention to strangle him with it. Ultimately, verbal defense is a poor substitute for homicide but it's all she has.
"Failure does not stem from any lack of effort on my part."
"Not blaming you." Tony gestures to the apartment. "I just don't think he's going anywhere."
Two different conversations. As usual. It's not that she wants to open her heart in the stifling heat of a black sedan and let him shuffle through the scorched contents but his tendency to start without finishing...
"We don't always get it wrong, you know."
Of course he would choose now to deviate. She plans to turn in her seat and stare him into a puddle of flesh, leaving only gelatinous bones to verify his former existence. But what she actually does is plaster her cheek to the passenger window, look skyward and pray that a vindictive god will launch the suspect off the roof. Right now.
Something - acceptance, offense – sifts through Tony's voice. "You don't want to talk about this."
"Talk is unsafe in containment."
"Because your gun might go off in the vicinity of my head?"
"Because, as you deny pointing out, this is going nowhere."
"So," and damn him for warming to it, "we can label something this without actually agreeing on the context?"
The plan, the one with the turning and the staring and the puddle, now features the suggested gun to the head. That she moves so fast in the tight cabin drives the startled man deeper into his seat. She leans just so, enough to invade his space and refuse him the satisfaction of contact.
"Why the need?" she demands, face inches from his. "Has she bored you already? Did she step all over your commitment fears?"
"Only asked a question, ninja."
"No, you bring up 'something' that you will later demote to 'nothing' when it suits you. We get nothing right because we are engineered for dishonesty." Backing off, she resumes her post at the window, pleased that her voice had given away only anger.
"How do we fix that?"
Because his eyes are trained on the treeline, she detects that this time no answer is expected. Of course, he gets the last word in but she'll grant that in exchange for the quiet that follows.
Her statement is correct. Their universal truth is the tolerable lie, a paradox that encompasses their affiliation with each other and nearly everyone around them. So comfortable in the trappings that it becomes easier to simply leave them on, ignoring the occasional chafing on the theory that it's better to be blanketed by bruising of one's own making than to allow another the privilege of infliction.
Which doesn't mean they won't take a swing. But their aim is typically off, intention just left of wounding and banter just south of direct. It's why neither has fallen into partnercide.
The beaten path of a hurried sun assures that time is now functioning.
Later she'll consider opening the floor again, based solely on renewed boredom and not because his voice is enchanting in a losing fight. Except Hollister makes an appearance. And the pair slide into tandem; exiting, circling and closing ranks without verbal communication. The senses are alert, reflexes coiled as though hours hadn't been spent languishing in a mobile oven. And then there's a gun in the wrong hand, aimed at her partner and though the poor shot impacts the pavement three feet away, hers will not miss. A decimated knee cap is the least of Hollister's issues.
He will always remember her when it rains.
Ziva holsters her sidearm and climbs almost gratefully into the sweltering vehicle. Tony steers them into a day that holds a shower, a danish and the prospect of sleep that Gibbs will surely interrupt. Still, it's more of a conclusion than their debate received.
"Sometimes," she tells Tony between yawns, "we get things right."
