Summary: What really happened undercover, after Somalia and during Christmas. Two people who just weren't supposed to happen.
A/N: I own nothing. Please review, if you'd like.
Clandestine
The first time; it's undercover.
Ziva pulls her dress off and he sneaks his thumbs under her jaw and kisses her. Tony barely knows this woman who works his fly down and runs her hands over the front of his pants. She has wild hair like a child's and bows in her body starting between her ribcage and waist and he lets his fingers move in waves over the dent in her hipbone.
She pushes him backwards and down on the bed. Unhooks her bra, not waiting for him. Not that he minds much; but he trails kisses over the dimples her bra leaves behind. Just because he can.
They pretend for a while, because that's what they are paid to do. He can't help it, though, being pressed up against her, feeling her warmth everywhere makes him, well, hard. She smirks and comments on it; then flips them over. He grabs her hair in his fists; never-ending hair; losing his hands somewhere in there.
She kisses him all the way from his forehead down and down and down. Then she slides on him and he doesn't know how to react; but his body does. The noises aren't fake and it feels good, impossibly, exceedingly good to have her on top of him. She is tight and soft and slow, not the way he would have imagined her, really. She just feels right and with the lights on he can see everything, from the crooked scar stitched white into her skin on her knee, and her barely-open mouth and the pink flesh of the gums. Oh.
He comes inside her; can't help it, really.
Fuck, she says afterward and sighs a bit. That wasn't supposed to happen.
You jumped me, remember?
She curls her hand around the sweaty hair at his chest, tracing patterns among them. Smiles.
Like you didn't want it.
He doesn't answer and she gives him a massage; pinches him hard.
Of course I did.
Then they let McGee believe whatever it is that his pervy mind wants to believe and don't mention it again.
The second time, it's after Somalia.
The night they get home, he goes to see her. Just, because. To make sure she is real and not some sand-made dream his mind gave him. He knocks once and almost turns back twice.
She opens the door. It's a hotel room, not big at all. Naked. Chocolate in plastic wrappers sits on the pillows.
She hasn't showered. He can tell. Her coal curls are still full with sand, like she has spent the day at the beach eating candy-coloured ice cream that melts over your hands. Only she hasn't.
He feels helpless, at loss for words. He wants to tell her so much; that his grandma always says a shower makes everything feel better, that he's sorry for everything last spring, that he wants everything to go back to the way it used to be.
He wants to tell her this and much more; but she shakes her head like she knows and takes him by the hand, pulls him in further.
Don't, she says.
Her eyes aren't wet with tears; only vacant like she has imploded and left a body of flesh and blood and bone behind. She doesn't even kiss him; just works the buttons of his shirt down and pushes it off his shoulders. It's hard not to react; even if his mind doesn't follow his body does and he kisses her everywhere but her mouth; over the edges of her not-healed wounds and the soft parts of her protruding ribs and curves his palm around her wingbones that are sharp instead of dull.
He pushes inside with her pants still at her ankles and she snakes her hips around his, lifting to meet him. He moves more than she does and afterward she just lies next to him and stares up at the nude ceiling. He has trouble finding a comfortable position on the bed and doesn't know what to say.
That wasn't supposed to happen, she says quietly.
Then she gets up and walks to the bathroom. He can count her ribs on her back from the moonlight that leaks from the window, spilling over her. She hunches as she walks, so different from the woman he knew once.
She is gone for a long time and he takes the hint. Pulls his pants on and then his shirt and then his shoes, taking his time tying the laces. She still hasn't come out. He makes the bed, because that seems like the appropriate thing to do. Tosses the condom away. Says bye to the closed door and walks home.
Sorryshe says at work the other day in the bathroom and kisses his cheek right on the stubble she felt last night, too, and he wonders if she's sorry they ever did it, or sorry about everything else there is to be sorry about.
They don't mention it again and grow back together to what used to be.
The last time, it is the night before Christmas.
Snow coats the streets; plump, freezing stars that melt in streams. He invites them all over for dinner. Gibbs, McGee, Ziva, Abby.
It's nice. Food and company. Easy. Familiar.
She is the last one to leave. Hovers at the edge of the kitchen. Her shoes are dangling in her hand. Smiles. Roses on her cheeks. Oh. He's not supposed to feel like this when he sees her. Like his insides twist and turn. He is taken and she is taken and they didn't take each other.
Just wanted to say goodbye, she says and reaches over to hug him and he lets her, pulling her close for a second, feeling her against him, before pulling back
Merry Christmas, Tony.
Merry Christmas.
And the food wasn't terrible.
He laughs. Thanks.
She smiles and weaves her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck; the tiny soft straws that end in feathers. Traces the birdflesh without even thinking about it. His hands at her waist; fitting his fingers through the gaps between her ribs. Her sweater is warm from her skin.
A beat. Too long, they stand like this.
Tony …
Just a breath, a light exhale he can't even feel. A sigh.
Should we …
She takes one step closer, just barely; pressing her belly light light light against his hips. He feels pounding and hot and alive and hard. He knows she can feel that, too (even though he tries to fight it), in the way she drives her nails into the uneven skin at his neck and the way her eyes sneak down just quickly and back up again. He feels his cheeks growing hotter. Shifts closer. Almost groans.
Wrong. So. Right. No, wrong. Her boyfriend and his girlfriend, nothing but blurry faces he can't make out. They don't matter. Not now, not in this. Not in finally.
She lets her hands hike from the dip of his neck to his jaw. Maps out the hard bump in his cheek from where he's yielding his teeth together, trying to make the uncomfortable tightness in his groin go away. All the time he looks into her eyes. Oh. There. Yes.
He leans forward a little bit because she's tiny and barefoot and he is tall and not barefoot. He worries about stepping on her toes but right then she presses even closer; so he can feel her skin through both his and her shirts. Closes his eyes. Brushes his lips over the sensitive skin under her right eye.
He can feel her turning toward him, pressing her fingers into his chest. His lips find her mouth then and he inhales against it; despite himself. She tastes like the ocean; stretching different places he's never been. Not really, really.
Then she is kissing him back. Opening her mouth under his and really moving, really alive, really Ziva there and there and there under him. He keeps his eyes closes and he traces and tastes her. Feels her tongue in his mouth, slow and soft.
And then it's not fast and fake, or slow and hollow; just … good.
After, she folds her arms under her naked chest and looks at him. He runs his hand over her back and hair and she has fifteen fading freckles arching like the milk road on her back, something he missed before. She scoots closer, fits into his body with hers; lets his sweat dry on her skin. She takes his hand and places it against her lips. He feels sleepy-heavy in his entire body and closes his eyes.
That wasn't supposed to happen, she whispers against his palm.
Yes it was, he answers.
Then, he doesn't get to see her for three weeks because she goes on vacation and he breaks up with his girlfriend because it isn't fair not to.
Tony thinks he loves Ziva. In the sort of way that makes his stomach flip when she enters the room. He wants to protect her and guard her against dangers and keep her close like on Christmas. He can't. She is fully capable of doing this on her own. She is hardheaded and annoying and just crawls under his flesh. In reality, she doesn't need him.
He wants to tell her all of this. That he has thought of it for a while. Since Somalia, maybe. Perhaps even before. Around Jeanne. There -when that wound healed up and left a scar- there and then he knew.
How he wants to marry her –maybe- someday. Buy a home together, to fill with their belongings and memories. On move-in day they'd make love on every piece of furniture and eat pizza on the floor, sucking the grease off of each other's fingers. How it wouldn't matter if they'd eat frozen TV dinners for the rest of their lives, because at least he wouldn't be doing it on his own. Then there would be swollen bellies and unborn, water-weaved babies and she would make an impatient mom but she'd learn. He will, too.
All of these things he would never have imagined himself wanting, he wants. Stupid.
Then when she comes back after three weeks, none of it matters.
I'm getting married. She says it quickly, at work, with all of them there, in that breathless way he has come to love/miss/yearn for. To Ray, she adds, as if there is someone else she could possibly marry.
He thinks of all the things he wants to say to her; to do -to caress the curve of her knee with the scar stitched into the skin, to move inside her- but he doesn't. He just hugs her close after McGee and feels her breath right there and that smell of lush woods in the dip of her neck because stolen moments is all he's going to get now and says:
Congratulations.
He almost believes it himself.
She comes to him late that night. Hugs him close, from behind. Tiny palms spread over his stomach. He covers her hands with his own.
Sorry, she whispers against his back, her mouth warm. His entire body murmurs.
That wasn't supposed to happen.
But it did. He let it happen. She let it happen.
Then she lets go and walks away and that's that.
Tony tells her of all the women he sees (in his mind). He makes her roll her eyes. She invades his personal space, as always, and he snoops around her desk. Sometimes he finds himself wanting to touch her; just squeeze the soft skin below her elbow. He never does. But he has her back, and she has his. Like always.
It's just never like before.
They weren't supposed to happen. And he wishes -so badly- that they were.