I think this really could have happened. I think it is entirely feasible.
I was eating Jaffa cakes when I wrote this.
Comparing Smiles
A saccharine sweet giggle pierced the air as the elevator dinged. Tony's head whipped up at the sound and a grin spread across his face. "Tony!"
"Hey, beautiful. Whatcha doin' here?"
"Well, I went for coffee and it was buy one get one free, so I got a free one for you." She giggled again and handed over the disposable cup. She tossed her long blonde hair over her shoulder and grinned at him. A cough from the desk opposite his reminded him of the presence of the rest of the team.
"Are you not going to introduce us, Tony?" Ziva said, standing up and walking over.
"What? Oh, yeah…Ziva, this is my girlfriend Destiny. Sweetheart, this is my partner and friend, Ziva."
"Hi." Destiny grinned and extended her hand. Ziva gave a false smile and shook the outstretched hand.
"And that over there is the McGeek. He tends to just sit there and type. It's what he does best." Tony pointed to McGee, who just rolled his eyes in response.
Destiny turned to Ziva and smiled sweetly. "So, what do you do here?"
"I investigate crimes, since this is Naval Criminal Investigative Service." Her voice dripped with sarcasm.
"How many crimes do you get here? It seems like such a big place."
"Quite a few." Ziva shrugged.
"And isn't it strange to be working with men so much?"
"No." She shook her head, her eyes flickering to Tony before returning to the woman in front of her. "There are many female NCIS agents."
"But are there really so many crimes involving belly buttons?" Everyone froze and stared at her. "Tony, Honey, I thought you said you investigated sailors?"
"Men and women in the navy. Yeah."
"Oh." She pouted, confused.
"Naval, as in navy. Not navel." He explained, confusing her further.
"Huh?" He sighed and walked over to her.
"Naval, with an 'a'." He mimed waves. "Navel, with an 'e'." he tapped her bare midriff, exposed by the cropped tank top and low slung skinny jeans she was wearing.
"Oh…that makes sense." She nodded and smiled, kissing him. Ziva rolled her eyes and muttered something about getting on with her work before Gibbs killed her.
"You okay, Ziva?" McGee asked, sensing the sudden tension that filled the room.
"Just peary." She snapped.
The annoying giggle rang through the squad room again. "Do you mean 'peachy'?"
"I do not know. Tony, do I mean peachy?"
"Well…I think vocabulary wise, yeah, you mean peachy, but you don't sound it."
"And how would you know if I sound peachy or not?" She grit her teeth together, slamming a fist down on her keyboard when it would not do as she wished. McGee was about to comment when a glare silenced him.
"Well, 'cause I know you, Sweetcheeks." He grinned. Destiny bristled at the nickname, and so did Ziva, catching him off guard. She had never objected before.
"If you call me that one more time I will castrate you with your own letter opener. Is. That. Understood?" She growled.
"Uh. Yeah." He gulped and nodded.
"So Ziva, how long have you and Tony known each other?"
"Almost five years now. I thought he had grown up in that time, but apparently not." Destiny let out a tittering laugh and Ziva joined in with a poor interpretation of it, sending a sarcastic look over to Tony.
"You're so funny."
"Yes. I am, do you not thing, McGee?"
"Er, definitely. Funniest one in the room right now." He wasn't going to risk making her angrier, yet somehow his comment had. She started cursing in Hebrew at her computer.
"Hey," Tony walked over to her, "what's gotten into you?"
"Nothing has 'gotten into me', Tony. Why do you not go back to your girlfriend and her smiles?" She snarled bitterly at him.
"You're not jealous are you, Ziva?" He smirked.
"No, Tony. No I am not jealous of her! I just think that the office should be a place of work. You do not see McGee and I parading whomever it may be that we are dating around here, do you? No, you do not!"
"Right, well…I guess I can take an early lunch. Give you some time to cool off." He frowned at her outburst. He picked up his bag and led Destiny out of the bullpen.
"She positively hates me!" She cried as the elevator doors closed.
"Well, at least she doesn't negatively hate you." He couldn't deny it. Ziva had made it perfectly clear that she did not like his girl friend. He gave her a sheepish smile. "Sorry, she can be a little…testy at times."
"A little?" She raised her eyebrows at him.
"Yeah, that's just the way she is. She's been surrounded by men her whole life, sometimes talking to women she gets a little…" He trailed off, unable to come up with an adequate adjective. They stood in silence as the elevator made it's way down stairs.
"So what was with the whole Sweetcheeks thing?"
"Yeah, I dunno, she normally doesn't mind…" He looked at her in realisation. "Oh, you meant, where did the nickname come from?" She nodded slowly. "Uh, well, we were undercover together and it, uh, just sort of happened. She has nicknames for me too. We use them as jokes sometimes. It usually makes her smile." He frowned again as he remembered the sudden flair of anger in her eyes.
He couldn't help but compare them, Ziva and Destiny. He'd been doing it a lot recently, comparing all the girls he went out with to her. They never compared. They were always blonde; he couldn't imagine her with blonde hair. They always had green or blue eyes, never brown like hers. They were always sugary sweet, like strawberry syrup, whilst Ziva had a tanginess to her, like a Jaffa cake. And her smile – the girls' smiles were just that, they were easy and sugary and a dime a dozen – but her smiles were worth something. They could be hard to come by and they were a struggle to elicit sometimes, but they lit up the room. She had brains, where as most of the girls he dated did not. Not to mention that he doubted any of the girls he dated would be able to take him on in a fight. And there was another thing; he called them all girls. Not women. Ziva was a woman. He remembered her telling him once, after Jeanne, that the man he was becoming needed a woman, not just a girl. He couldn't help but wonder if she was meaning herself when she had said that. No. That brought him onto his final criteria. He had managed to get all of the women he had dated. Ziva was unobtainable.
And forbidden.
Which made it all the more tempting to try.
The line of 'Why do you not go back to your girlfriend and her smiles?' has been bothering me for about five months. I am certain it comes from something, only I cannot for the life of me figure out what. If anyone knows, would you be kind enough to leave the answer to my conundrum in a review or in a PM. That would be great. It has just been sat at the back of my mind, playing over and over, and I do not know if I even got the quote right. It really is beginning to stress me out. Please help me out. It might not even be a quote, it might just be something I dreamt up, but I highly doubt my brain is that creative, because I like that line more than I like any other single line that I have written.
Update (11th September 2016): Thanks, so much, to angel-castiel-rules-the-world, for sending me a PM reminding me of the origin of the fateful quote, and reminding me that it was a rather mangled adaption of a quote from Pride and Prejudice, "You had better to return to your partner and enjoy her smiles." I knew that I could never have come up with something that I liked so much.
For my reference: 32nd NCIS fic.