"Grab your gear, dead marine outside Quantico."
"Time of death, exactly 2 days ago. Judging by the lacerations around his neck, cause of death was strangulation."
"What'do you got, Abbs?"
"Guess."
"No."
"The rope was specially used for like, camping. Pitching tents."
"I can't get past the fire wall, but maybe if i track the IP address to its original source, I can find who sent the email from the Petty Officer's phone."
"NCIS! Hands where we can see them"
"Why do they always run?"
"The rope doesn't match Gibbs."
"Petty Officer Jayne had offshore accounts."
"Crime ring."
"Black mail."
"Shot's fired!"
"Second death."
"I can't hold him off!"
Tony and Ziva sit on their couch, each at opposite ends. Ziva sits with one knee against her chest and the other leaning against the couch's arm rest. Tony sits with both feet on the edge of the couch, his legs making an acute angle with his body. Their bodies are turned three quarters in towards each other, while still facing their TV, which blankly stares back at them, off.
Each have a coffee mug in one hand, each gripping the smooth porcelain like the handle of a gun. Sipping the warm liquid occasionally, yet never uttering a single word.
It has become a sort of unspoken ritual. It just started one day. They drive home, go inside, make coffee, and sit down, all the while, saying nothing, only communicating through glances and slight brushes of hands on shoulders.
They spend the twenty to thirty minutes recounting their days, in attempt to do the impossible. To unwind themselves from the work. To let the pain melt away like a pat of butter on a griddle. They both know it can never be done, separating their work and their actual lives. But they sit in silence anyways.
The minutes end not with words, but with yet again, more silence. It ends one of two ways. Tony puts down his coffee mug onto the table, readjusts himself, opening his arms to her. Or like today, where Ziva puts down her mug, and slowly moves towards him. She leans up against him, her back against his legs.
He too puts down his coffee, placing his left hand just on her stomach and his right on her shoulder. His grip tightens, but she does not flinch, for she is at slight ease, and she is used to this. She knows he thinks of the moment almost four months ago in the olive grove, when he almost lost her.
She relaxes her neck, letting her head over in the void between his legs and his body, her cheek brushing his shirt. He does not look down, merely continues to look ahead, stonily. She does not mind. She likes looking at him from this angle. She likes looking at him from any and every angle.
She watches as the muscles in his jaw tighten and loosen, as his eyes follow unknown patterns, his ears perk at sounds long gone. Then he looks down, their eyes searching each other's for something, an unspoken something that only the two of them know, but never say.
Then, he kisses her. Their lips lock, but they freeze there for a moment, in perfect unison. One of his hands is under her head, taking the weight of her neck, and the other is grips at the clothe covered elastic in her hair. He tugs on it, pulling out her high, tight pony tail.
She then takes his face, pulling him closer, and kissing him more. He runs his hands through her hair, but only a moment, for she lets go of him completely, then using her arms to push herself upright, and practically onto his lap.
They pause for only a moment, before her arms wrap around his neck her fingers toying with his collar, moving up and down his neck and the back of his head. They kiss so gently, and so softly, that no one would hear them if someone else were to be in their apartment. His tongue only brushes her lips briefly.
She then drops both of her arms by her sides.
"Tony, I love you."
"I love you too, Ziva."