Summary: Tony asks Ziva to teach him to play the piano, but gets distracted with staring at her.
Disclaimer: I wanted to sell a fic to buy some NCIS merchandise, but CBS said, "Haha! How cheap do you think our stuff is?" :( I own not.
Spoilers: TOW Ziva offered to teach Tony to play the piano. Seriously, I don't remember which one it is.
Dedication: Nikki Jie! This is what you get for all your sweet, Tiva-inspiring stories. Haha.
Yea, I know, this is a story that begins nowhere, ends nowhere, and is about nothing in the middle. Haha. Just Tiva fluff!
For the unacquainted, a Major scale is what the Do-Re-Mi song in the Sound of Music sounds like. The C Major Scale goes C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C; and is played entirely on the white keys of the piano. Sharps and flats in relation to the C Major Scale are the black keys. :)
So, please enjoy and review!
-Soph
Étude
"Hey, remember your offer to teach me to play the piano?" He nudged her with one foot as he turned his eyes away from the TV, and she shifted out of his reach. Her eyes met his warily over the top of the magazine in her hands.
"I remember…"
"Well, is it still open?"
He watched as her eyes thought about it. Then she laid the magazine down on the coffee table and stared at him. "I suppose so."
"Could you put a little more enthusiasm into your voice?"
She closed her eyes and shook her head, grinning. "Why do you want to learn it all of a sudden?"
"Ah, you know, I'm gettin' kinda bored sitting alone at home with that same old can of beer and the TV. Thought I might learn some new skills."
"Piano-playing?" Ziva raised her eyebrows.
"Well, you were offering."
"Tony, that offer was years ago."
"You said it was still open," he replied grumpily.
She laughed. "You are hopeless. Come on." She stood up and caught hold of his wrist in a surprisingly gentle manner, leading him to the piano.
Lifting the polished lid of the instrument, she sat down in front of it and patted the space beside her. He sat, revelling in the warmth of her figure beside him.
"No funny moves, DiNozzo," she warned him. "How much do you know?"
He peered at the black and white keys in front of him, frowning. As it turned out, it was not so easy dredging things up from the dusty corners of his memory. "This C?" he asked hesitantly, running his finger along a thin width of ivory.
"Yes." Her smile was radiant. "Do you remember your scales?"
"I don't even remember what they are."
"That is okay. We will start with C Major, yes?"
He shrugged. "You're the teacher."
Her eyes narrowed. "You were the one who asked to learn," she pointed out.
"Right." He beamed like a kid on Christmas Day. "We'll start with C Major!"
She chuckled in spite of herself. "You never stop being the class clown, do you? Alright, C Major is easy. There are no sharps, and no flats."
xoxo
He didn't realize that he'd gone from staring at the keys to staring at her fingers as she pressed down upon them to staring at her face. He'd never realized just how beautiful she was; she seemed to glow with an inner grace that mesmerized him. He could hear her telling him about the C Major Scale somewhere in the back of his mind, but it was really she who captivated him. She seemed somehow softer; gentler and more carefree as her fingers ran lightly across the keyboard. The longing to put his arms around her, as if she were his, tugged at his heart.
"Tony, you are not paying attention." She finally turned around and furrowed her brows at him, a puzzled smile playing at the corners of her lips.
He cleared his throat. "Yeah, I was. I was listening. With my…good ear."
"You have a good ear?" she asked sceptically.
He pretended to look injured. "They're not both bad."
She rolled her eyes. "Since you were listening, could you play the C Major Scale for me?"
He tried not to look too much like a deer caught in the headlights. "Um…yeah. Hang on." He gave her his most dazzling smile. "Gotta retrieve it from memory first."
Her lips twitched.
He turned back to the keyboard and frowned at it once again, trying to remember what she'd told him before he'd gotten distracted. There are no sharps, and no flats. That was easy; all he had to do was avoid the black keys. He pressed down, running the fingers of his right hand along the keyboard – until he found that he was unable to play the last three keys of the octave.
"Ziva? How does it go again?" He looked penitently at her.
She laughed and took up his hand. "You were supposed to have turned your wrist after E, like this." Her fingers guided his.
"Oh. That's not so hard." He tried to ignore the way his skin tingled.
"It is not," she agreed. "So you were staring at me, then?"
"Um, yeah. Kinda," he admitted guiltily.
She studied him, an odd expression on her face. And then abruptly, she turned back to the piano. "Do you want to learn A Minor too? It is like C Major, except that it starts on a different key."
"You teach well," he told her quietly, ignoring her question.
"Thank you, Tony." She smiled at him.
"You know you get all kinda…glowy…when you play the piano?"
"Glowy?" He could hear laughter in her voice.
"Yeah…never mind. Forget it."
"No." She patted his arm apologetically. "I would thank you, but I am not sure if that is a compliment."
"I wasn't talking about aliens, if that's what you're wondering about."
"It does reassure me a little bit."
"Yeah, I suppose the one eye and funky ears would've been a bit of an unfair comparison."
"Yes."
He gazed at her until confusion started to show on her face again, and then looked at the piano. "So how's A Minor played?"
She blinked disconcertedly and played him the scale. "See, it is no different from C Major."
xoxo
"Tony, stop." She sounded irritated now, and he couldn't blame her; he had managed to go from listening to her instructions to watching her unwaveringly yet again. She turned exasperatedly to him. "Why do you keep staring at me?"
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "You just look very glowy."
"It is just a scale! And what does that even mean?" she asked in frustration.
"Just that…" He cleared his throat. "You kinda look very radiant when you're teaching the piano. Happy."
"I like teaching it to you…" she answered doubtfully.
"Well, it makes you look…um…kinda… beautiful."
He could've sworn her mouth almost dropped open. She recovered her countenance, however, with only a faint blush on her cheeks to betray her. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." He dithered and then slung an arm over her shoulders, pulling her closer to him. It took a ridiculous amount of self-control not to bury his nose into her hair and inhale her scent.
"DiNozzo! I thought I told you no funny moves." She made a half-hearted attempt at nudging him away.
"What's the G Major Scale like?" he asked, more to keep his brain occupied than anything else.
"You probably need to give my hands some space to move."
He loosened his grip on her the slightest bit, and as she began to play the scale, they pretended she didn't lean that fraction of an inch closer to him anyway.