Disclaimer: iz invisible

Spoilers: Up through Agent Afloat.

Summary: Tony celebrates his return to DC with drinks and serious conversations.

Tony smiled without understanding why as he stared into the foamy head of his seventh? Eighth beer? However many it was, he was certain he hadn't drunk this much in a two-hour span while not watching a football game since college. Not counting the past four months, of course. Based on her current position, Abby, sitting on the stool to his right, had overdone it a little too. He reached toward her and tugged a pigtail. She grunted and whined, "I don't wanna go to school today."

"Don't worry about it, Abs." He drank until his glass was definitely half empty and wiped his upper lip on his sleeve. Why stop now? He leaned to his left, allowing his weight to be partially supported by something other than himself as he waved to the bartender. When the acknowledging nod came, he finished the rest of his seventh or eighth beer and waited patiently for his eighth or ninth to arrive.

The beer and a shot of tequila were soon placed on the bar in front of him. His position shifted slightly as Ziva reached for her… "How many is that for you now?"

"I can still drive," she non-answered, pushing him off her shoulder and forcing him to sit up on his barstool. Why had these stools seemed like such a great choice when they'd walked into the bar?

"You can't drive."

"SSH!" Abby suddenly hissed, her head popping off the bar where she'd been resting it on her arms. She continued in a stage whisper, "She's been really sensitive about her driving since she came back. McGee and I think she was in some kind of serious accident, y'know, before the bombing."

"Bombing?"

Ziva hmphed and swallowed her shot. "I think it is time to switch to water."

"No, you've been listening to my stories about streakers and shipboard gambling for the past few hours…"

"Not to mention the entire flight," she muttered.

He ignored the interruption, continuing, "And you couldn't even mention the exciting stuff you did while I was gone? Or was it just a day in the life of the average Moussad assassin stuff that you'd have to kill us if you told us?" It took him a few moments and a long sip of beer to find the hole in his logic. "Except Abby's still alive and she knows you bombed someone."

"I did not bomb anything. I simply had the bad luck to be in a place where a bomb went off."

"And you didn't happen to set the timer wrong or something?"

"I just said…I'm going home."

"Ziva, wait." Tony spun on his barstool and grabbed her elbow, surprised that the move didn't cause any…oh, there it was. A warm, uncomfortable burp rose through his chest as he rocked forward, prompting her to stagger as she caught him. His mouth was in her face when he opened it to release the pressure. "Thanks."

"You are disgusting." She tried to pull away, but he wrapped his arm tightly around her, not willing to release the only thing keeping him upright now that his feet were on the floor.

Abby cackled behind him. "You are so trashed, Tony!" She was suddenly hanging on his shoulder, disturbing the careful balance he was relying on Ziva to maintain. "I'm so happy you're back, but I think tomorrow we should maybe just have dinner and go to a movie."

"A mo-o-o-ovie," he warbled. "That would be heaven."

"I don't think you're in any condition to go anywhere but home," McGee said, appearing out of nowhere. Or the bathroom. Whatever. "Ziva, are you okay to drive?"

"Fine, but would you mind taking Tony home?"

"He's closer to you than to me and I have to take Abby."

Tony gagged as Abby caught him in a stranglehold. "We should all go together! Then we'll be together even longer and we can, um…"

Tony missed what appeared to be an argument between McGee and Ziva as he tried to prevent Abby from crushing his windpipe with one arm, the other still being around Ziva. Suddenly, he lurched as Ziva spun and slammed money on the bar. "Thank you. Keep the change."

Tony didn't like the smile the bartender gave her in return. "No problem. Hey, I never asked what you guys were celebrating."

"We got a Tony!" Abby pushed between Tony and Ziva, apparently trying to leap over the bar. Ziva grabbed the back of her shirt to keep her on the correct side. "And not just any old Tony, but our Tony!" He felt his lips compress into a fish-face as she squeezed his cheeks awkwardly. "Isn't he adorable?"

"Uh, you guys have a safe night, now."

McGee took over responsibility for Abby, preventing her from making personal goodbyes to everyone in the bar. As he stumbled toward the door, Tony tried to get his arm around Ziva's shoulders again. She dodged away, irritably asking, "Can't you walk on your own?"

"Maybe. But wouldn't you feel guilty if I fell and broke something because you refused to…" He trailed off as she pulled his arm over her shoulder and slipped her arm around his waist to steady him further. "That's better."

"I am only doing it because we would all have to suffer Gibbs' mood if you managed to seriously hurt yourself immediately after returning."

"Gibbs shoulda come tonight." Tony smiled and leaned more heavily against her as he remembered the handshake in the squad room. They were sure to be back to headslaps again in no time, but… He lost his train of thought as McGee came up to them.

"You sure you're okay to drive?"

"I'm fine, McGee," Ziva said. "Just get Abby home."

From the open window of his Porsche, Abby shouted, "No! Take me to the convent!"

McGee rolled his eyes and sighed. "I'll see you guys tomorrow."

Tony was about to make a joke about drunken nuns when Ziva unceremoniously dropped him against the back end of a car. "Did I drive here? Because this isn't my car."

"Your car is still in storage. You begged, so McGee let you drive his car to the bar."

"Heh. Rhyming." He looked around at the few cars around them in the lot, taking a moment to wave to Abby as McGee pulled out. Ziva continued to search through her bag. "So, uh, where's your car?"

"You are sitting on it."

"This isn't your car." He pushed himself off the bumper of the big black Cadillac to confirm the unexpected size. "What happened to your Mini?"

"I sold it."

"And bought a Caddy?"

"Officer Bashan's wife is away for a month to help their daughter with the new baby and he offered to let me borrow her car until I have a chance to get a new one of my own."

He skipped his questions about who the heck she was talking about and moved on. "Which brings us back to why did you sell your car?"

She made him jump as she pressed a button that unlocked the doors and made the lights flash. "Tony, I wasn't reassigned within NCIS; I was transferred back to Israel. I sold my car, broke my lease and had all of my things shipped overseas. I am lucky I was able to get a new apartment so quickly."

"Oh." He waited for her to say something further, but she pointed to the passenger's side door. He nodded and carefully made his way to it, keeping both hands firmly on the trunk and then the roof as he progressed. When he was safely in his seat, he said to himself, "This car smells like old lady."

"I am going car shopping over the weekend." Somehow, Ziva was not only in her seat, but wearing her seatbelt and backing up already. He looked out the window carefully to make sure that it was the car and not the world suddenly moving. The car. Definitely the car.

"I can help you pick one out, if you want."

"No, thank you."

"Aw, c'mon. Who better to help you than me?" He lurched forward as she hit the brakes approaching a stop sign. "Ughhh."

"Why did you have those pictures up in your office aboard the Seahawk?"

He shrugged. "Hot girl in a bikini? Yeah, why would any guy want to look at that?"

"It was not some girl. It was me."

"Hey, I had a picture of Abby up, too."

"Not like that."

"I don't think Abby gets out in the sun all that often."

"That is not…"

"Are you embarrassed?" He laughed. "Because I gotta tell you that you shouldn't be, and there are quite a few interrogatees aboard the Seahawk who'd agree."

"I am not embarrassed," she huffed. "I was asking a simple question that you refuse to answer."

He watched her intently for a few moments as the lights outside alternately lit and darkened her face. "I got a simple question. Why didn't you want to come back?"

She looked at him in alarm. "I never said that."

"Please. If you wanted to be here you wouldn't have said all that stuff about orders and not wanting to follow them but doing it anyway because they're orders and you have to follow orders because…did I say that already?"

"Drop it, Tony."

"Oho. So, he got a name?" He felt the slightest twinge of jealousy when he asked the question.

"I said drop it."

"Must be serious if you're being that defensive." He turned to look out his own window, not sure he wanted to see her reactions to his teasing at the moment. "So I take it in the bikini pictures you took for him you've just taken off the bikini and you're…" He was thrown forward again as the tires squealed and the car came to a stop along the curb.

He turned cautiously, but she wasn't looking at him, instead staring out at the Lincoln Memorial in the near distance. "Why do you insist on being such a…a…" She continued in a string of Hebrew that didn't sound very complimentary.

"Ziva, I'm…" He hung his head. "I'm sorry." When she didn't reply, he muttered, "I'm happy you're here, anyway."

"I'm glad you are here, too. And I know that you are drunk and saying things you would not say under other circumstances."

"I really am happy you're here. I meant that," he insisted, wanting to make sure he wasn't going to start losing his friends the same day he got them back.

"I know." Her hand covered his for a moment before she withdrew it and pulled back into the sparse flow of midnight traffic.

They rode in silence until the next red light when he could no longer contain the question that was eating him. "Did you want to come back?"

She waited, giving him enough time to regret asking by the time she softly said, "You are the first person who has asked me that, you know."

"Well…" He wasn't sure how to reply, and he was almost certain it wasn't due to any alcohol impairment. He decided to pay back her honesty with some of his own. "I had your picture up because I liked looking up from my desk and seeing you there. I liked remembering."

"You took those pictures in Los Angeles. If you were trying so hard to forget what," her breathing hitched for a second, but she recovered immediately, "what happened, why did you have a constant reminder in your office?"

"Like I needed a reminder." He stopped to consider her point for a moment. "Y'know, as I remember it, I was actually having a pretty good time out there up until…"

"Yes."

"Right, yeah." He appreciated that she wasn't forcing him to say anything more. His buzz was fading into sleepiness, so he tried to lighten the mood – end the evening on a high note. "For the record, you really do look hot in those pictures."

"Thank you." The rubber of the tires bumped against the curb as she parked in front of his building.

"Uh, Ziva, would you mind…" He didn't have to finish asking, as she was already making her way around the car to help him out. He grunted as she pulled him out of his seat. "Ugh. Well, this is nice. I guess chivalry isn't dead."

Her hair brushed against his cheek, causing him to inhale a barely noticeable wave of fragrance as she turned to look at him. "Hm?"

"You're walking me to my door."

"Only because I do not want you to have to sleep in the shrubs."

"I still may have to. I don't have my keys."

"Don't worry about it." Instead of the lock picks he expected to see, she removed a key from her pocket and opened the front door.

"Why do you have a key to my apartment building?"

"You gave it to me. You gave them to Gibbs and McGee, too, in case something happened and we needed to get in?"

He vaguely remembered Gibbs dropping the freshly cut key into his bottom desk drawer with a smirk that had made him uncomfortable, unlike Ziva, who had immediately attached it to her key ring with a smirk that made him uncomfortable. "But that was, like, two years ago!"

She punched the call button for the elevator with her elbow. "I do not like to throw away keys. You never know when one may come in army."

He blinked as they stepped into the elevator. "Handy."

"Whatever." She helped him down the hall, even though he felt like he could probably make it on his own at this point, and unlocked the door to his apartment.

He'd expected dust, staleness and a generally unlived-in vibe, but as he looked around, he was unsure that he had entered the correct apartment. "Whoa."

"What?"

Ziva flicked on a few light switches, adding to his sense that something was really amiss. "I think someone broke in and cleaned while I was gone."

"I did."

"You? Why?"

"I needed a place to stay while I looked for a new place and since I knew you would not be here and this was cheaper than a hotel," she began to talk with her hands as she continued, "I did not go through your things, unless you count the kitchen and linens and I just thought that the place needed a good cleaning, so I hope you don't…"

"Ziva. Stop." He leaned against the wall, suddenly not wanting to do anything but go straight to bed. "It's fine that you stayed here. And thank you for cleaning. I just…"

"You are tired." She took two quick steps toward him and kissed his cheek before moving toward the door just as quickly. "I will see you tomorrow, Tony. Goodnight."

"'Ni-ahhhh." He yawned just as she pulled the door closed behind her. Kicking off his shoes, he made his way to bed without undressing further. As he flopped onto the mattress, he realized she hadn't changed the sheets. He buried his face in the pillow and immediately fell asleep.