Title: Tequila
Rating: PG-13 for now, but there'll probably be some later scenes that will lower the tone, I mean, raise the rating.
Spoilers: Hiatus
Summary: "There's a girl at the cantina lookin' for you."
Author's Note: Set two months after the events of Hiatus, meaning midway between Gibbs quitting and what happens in Shalom. Please let me know what you think - good or bad!
I'm just about to pop open my second beer when Mike arrives back at the house, dragging assorted odds and ends from the hardware store behind him. I grab another can from the refrigerator and hand it to him.
"Thanks, Probie." He takes a long drink, but his eyes never leave me – it's obvious he has something to say, but alcohol takes precedence. It usually does, with Mike.
He finally speaks. "There's a girl at the cantina lookin' for you. Pretty young thing, too. She's quite the catch."
For a second, I can't process the thought – a girl? Looking for me, here? Anticipation and apprehension mingling in my mind, I try to work it out. "Hair colour."
Mike smirks at me knowingly. "They can't all be redheads, Probie. I know how you love 'em, but this broad's got dark hair."
Abby. My gut's almost never wrong, and somehow I know it's her. The way we parted was just too up in the air for her to accept. In the back of my mind, I knew that eventually she'd track me down. "Is she Goth?"
Shaking his head, Mike chuckles. "Damn, your tastes have really changed in the last fifteen years. Nah, she was dressed normal, blue jeans, red shirt."
Ziva, then. Ignoring the disappointment that rises as I'm proved wrong, I remember her parting words to me. I'll collect, Jethro. I had no doubt about it – I just didn't expect it to be this soon.
Grabbing the keys to Mike's clapped-out pickup truck from the table, I hand him my beer and head for the door. "I'll be back in a while."
His hoarse laughter follows me outside. "I'll make myself scarce, then. I wouldn't worry about getting her to come back here – she was knocking 'em back like a pro. I'll be surprised if she can still talk by the time you get to her."
Ziva, drunk? It seems uncharacteristic. I wonder what's happened to get her into that state; things must be real bad back in DC.
As I drive the miles to Carlos' Cantina, my brain flicks through every possible scenario, not settling on any of them. Once I get over the initial shock of my past turning up to haunt me, it's replaced by frustration and anger. The last thing I want is to be reminded of the ineffectual government who could have acted to save innocent lives. Or the people who died because I was in a coma for too damn long. Or of the people I left behind: colleagues, friends.
Of the graves of my first wife and only child, buried in the city I chose to escape from.
As I draw closer to civilisation, through the growing dusk, I smack a hand down on the wheel of the pickup, sending a jolt of pain through it. The sensation grounds me, bringing my awareness back to the present, where it belongs.
The cantina is a dive, but Mike refuses to drink at any other place in town, so I've gotten used to it. I pause just inside the door and survey the room. A few regulars are sequestered away in booths, but otherwise the bar is pretty much empty.
"More tequila."
Just as I'm about to walk over to the only woman in the place, I recognise the throaty voice of the one person I can't forget, no matter how much I drink. She slouches on a stool at one end of the bar, hair loose and obscuring her face, her head practically in her hands. As Mike described, she's dressed casually in a red shirt and blue jeans, but despite the change of appearance it's unmistakably Abby. The bartender pushes the glass back towards her, and she looks up at him. I get a fresh shock: her face, creased into a frown, is devoid of makeup.
"Doesn't this bother you?" she asks the bartender accusingly.
I don't recognise him; he must have been hired since my last visit. He looks around, confused. "Doesn't what bother me?"
She waves her hand at the general surroundings. "This music. It's the most… stereotypical… Mexican music you can get. When people think of Mexico, they think of sombreros and cantinas full of people drinking tequila and listening to crap like this. Is this really the way you want to market your country to the rest of the world?"
She's slurring slightly, but her hand is steady as she picks up the glass and downs the tequila. The bartender stares at her, unsure what to say. I stifle a smile along with the urge to interrupt her tirade – she may look different, but she's still the Abby I know and love.
"Ah, well," Abby sighs. "Whatever works. Speaking of stereotypes, aren't you supposed to light my cigarette and ask me how my day was?"
The guy begins to edge further down the bar. "Do you even have a cigarette?"
"No." She nudges her glass forward once again, and he takes the hint, filling it to the brim.
"Then… how can I light it?"
Abby shrugs, knocking back the tequila without hesitation. "I dunno. But you could at least ask me how my day's been."
The bartender glances around for other customers, but there are no takers. Reluctantly, he asks, "So, how was your day?"
"Terrible," Abby grumbles. "I've been here two days searching for my boss. I know he's around here somewhere, but so far, no luck."
Guess my gut was right after all.
"You can't wait until he gets back to work?"
Abby is silent for a moment. When she finally answers, her voice is flat. "He took early retirement. Wouldn't even let me talk him out of leaving. I never got to tell him that I…" She swallows, shakes her head, changes tack before I can mentally finish that sentence. "I want to find him, make sure he's okay. I just need to…" Words fail her again. "Oh, hell. Fill her up."
As the bemused bartender reaches for the glass, I break my paralysis and cross the room, laying a hand on her shoulder. Our eyes meet, and for a second she doesn't seem to realise who I am. Then recognition flickers across her features and she gasps, launching herself off the bar stool into my arms. I catch her, rocking backward with the force of the hug, and remember the last time I held her this way. By the steps to MTAC, dressed in hospital scrubs, surrounded by friends.
When she finally prises herself out of the embrace, her eyes are wide and tearful. "Is it really you?"
"It's me," I reply. The first words I've said to her in over two months, and they're woefully mundane. "What's with the normal clothes, Abbs?"
"Have you ever been on a road trip by yourself, dressed in the kinda stuff I wear?" She smiles forlornly. "Stupid question. Of course you haven't. Or if you have, you really gotta tell me about it later. But trust me, it gets you a lot of unwanted attention. So I came incognito." She sways a little, grabbing my arm for support. "I can't believe I found you. I… think I need another drink."
Before the bartender can pour her another tequila, I stop him with a sharp shake of my head, irrationally pissed off at him for letting Abby get to this state. He backs off as I tell her, "You've had enough. Come on, I'm taking you home. Where are you staying?"
As I coax her into taking a couple of steps toward the door, she rolls her eyes. "Sleeping in the rental car. This is the back of nowhere and the motels look really, really trashy. Do you know how many different DNA specimens I can pull off one motel bed? A lot. Though, wait, I guess rental cars are disgusting too, but usually they're not covered in seminal fluid–"
I cut her off mid-tirade. "Then you're coming back with me."
She shakes her head as we step out into the evening air. "Won't Franks be angry? I don't wanna be any trouble…" She stumbles and braces herself against my chest, and for one long second I'm convinced that she can feel my heart pounding through my shirt. She looks up at me, as if to check I'm still there, and I resist the crazy impulse to close the distance between us and kiss her.
"Mike's staying at some woman's place tonight. Don't worry about it." My words break the spell, and we begin to walk again. "How'd you find me?"
"Last week, you switched your cell on. I dunno why you did, but you did, and I tracked the GPS to this general area, but then I lost you. I couldn't take the chance that it'd be another two months before you checked it again, so I drove down here. The hearse got a flat in Richmond, which totally sucks, because there's so much room to sleep in a hearse that you just don't get from a regular car. But I had no choice, so I took a rental the rest of the way."
I can't help but laugh at her determination. "That's my girl," I mutter under my breath.
I do plan to continue this. I just have to get around to it! Thanks to everybody who's been reviewing my various one-shots lately - the feedback is very much appreciated. :)