Author's note:
I don't own NCIS or any of the characters.
The title is based on a song by John Mayer. Feel free to look it up but please know that I don't own that, either.
The rating is for both smut and language.
Tag to Pyramid, Season 8 Episode 24. I didn't like the way they left things so my imagination kind of jumped in to make it all better :)
Tony violently slammed the door to the women's showers, and with a forceful flick of his wrist, the lock slid into place. He clenched his jaw and fought the urge to scream while he struggled to catch his breath. He pounded his fist against the door, hard, then turned and walked over to the sinks. The face staring back at him was one that he very nearly didn't recognize. The stress lines on his forehead were much more prominent than usual; his eyes, normally alight with laughter (and the occasional mischief) had lost their usual glint. There was a slight flush to his cheeks, not from embarrassment but from rage.
He sighed and turned on the water, letting it run frigid before he cupped his hands and splashed his face. He felt a shiver run down his spine but he repeated the gesture anyway. Finally, he turned the water off and placed his palms down on either side of the sink, bracing his weight.
He hated fighting with Ziva, because she didn't fight fair.
He hadn't intended to pick a fight, not at all. It had been a long day and Ziva seemed to be on edge- her mind was obviously elsewhere, and she was so distracted that she nearly earned herself a Gibbs-slap on several occasions. He wasn't originally going to pry, because after all, he did prefer his bones intact. But then, a ring box had fallen out of her bag when she was digging for her sneakers. She muttered a curse in Hebrew and stuffed it back into her bag. Unbeknownst to her, Tony had witnessed the entire scene, and he suspected that the little box was the cause of Ziva's irritability.
Later in the evening, when they were just doing desk work and Gibbs was in MTAC, he'd approached her and nonchalantly asked what was going on. As usual, she brushed him off and shut him out. In a low voice, Tony asked if the ring box in her bag had anything to do with the way she'd been acting. Her eyes widened, and an instant later, a stapler narrowly missed his ear as he just barely managed to duck.
She flew at him with accusations of snooping. Tony tried to explain that he'd seen the box fall out of her bag, seen her roughly shove it back in, was asking out of concern rather than curiosity, but he couldn't get a word in edgewise. Her accusations hurt him, more than he would have cared to admit. Anthony DiNozzo from six years ago (or maybe even from two years ago) would have ransacked her bag and scrutinized the exact maker of the ring, maybe even dusted for fingerprints, before thoroughly badgering her about it and making wisecracks about her love life. But somewhere between then and now, Tony had grown up, if only a little, and although teasing Ziva about her sex life had its perks, he'd been genuinely troubled about the way she'd been acting ever since C-I-Ray left for God knows where. She should know him well enough to know that.
He hadn't let the hurt show on his face though. He managed to ask, "Is it from Ray?" and her knuckles seemed to twitch, just barely, as if she'd been preparing to throw a punch
And so what if it is? she'd countered. I bet the little blond slut, who is half your age, never bought a single thing for you, aside from a couple sex toys! she spat in his face.
Tony stood for a moment, his mouth slightly agape, staring at her in disbelief and rage. He caught a glimpse of McGee's face—he looked like he'd seen a ghost. Tony weighed his options, what to say, whether or not to fight, but in the end, he turned on his heel and walked away. Rather than wait for the elevator, which would give Ziva time to scream more insults at him, he took the stairs, continuing to go down even past autopsy, to the basement where the men's and women's locker rooms were. It was more habit than anything else that caused him to yank open the door to the women's showers without a second thought. Hell, why not? He'd spent too much time in there to be bashful anymore.
Coming out of his musings, Tony became painfully aware of a pair of eyes boring a hole through his back. He looked in the mirror to see Ziva standing behind him, her arms folded. Damnit, the woman knew how to pick a lock without making a sound.
Without immediately acknowledging his partner, Tony pulled several paper towels from the dispenser and dried his face and neck. He scrunched the damp towels until they compressed into a tight wad in his clenched fist, then threw it over his shoulder into the trashcan. There was a tense moment of silence.
He whirled around to face her, his eyes ablaze. "I don't care what you think of EJ," he stated, his voice intimidatingly low. He knew she'd still hear every word. He began to take menacing steps toward her.
"You are entitled to whatever opinion you may have, and moreover, she is gone." He stopped, almost toe to toe with her. She raised her chin defiantly and glared, holding her ground.
"But, you realize, that by called her a slut, you're calling me desperate," he said, raising his voice as he lost his temper. "You're calling me cheap and incapable of having a genuine and committed relationship. And I mean, it isn't like you know much about those," he exclaimed, his voice now reaching a shout. "Your CIA boyfriend who likes to lie to you then leave the fucking continent isn't the prime example of a loving relationship!"
The distance between them decreased further as she took a step toward him, and he could tell she was seriously battling the urge to hit him. Her eyes flashed dangerously, and in them, he saw hurt and minute traces of desperation. Oh yeah, he'd hit her weak spot, alright.
"Weren't you the one convincing me how much he cared?" she hissed, her face drawing impossibly nearer. He could see the vein in her throat throbbing. With what, anger? Or...?
"I wanted what was best for you, and if that son-of-a-bitch made you happy, then I didn't want you throwing it all away over a stupid spat," he retorted furiously. He heard his own words and processed them at the same time she did, and it surprised them both, even if it was the truth. But it was not enough to throw Ziva off of her game. She backtracked to his jab at her relationship.
"Ray made me a promise, which is more than you can say for any of the relationships you have been in," she shot back. She was surprised when Tony's eyes suddenly turned to molten jade, and his gaze took on a passion she'd rarely seen.
"That's because I only make a promise to a woman, to anyone, if I absolutely mean it, one hundred percent," he said, his voice strangely hushed and coarse and uneven. Ziva swallowed hard, and forced her face to reveal nothing as she snorted, incredulous.
"You? Make a promise? Oh, please, Tony. If ever the day should come-"
And suddenly, Tony didn't want her to speak anymore. He was damn tired of fighting, tired of taking blow after blow. So, acting on six years of explosive sexual tension, and on the desire to shut her up, Tony closed the nearly non-existent space between them and crushed his lips against hers.
She made a quiet sound of surprise somewhere in the back of her throat, and he felt her eyelashes flutter against his cheek as she blinked several times and tried to analyze the situation. But she did not pull away; in fact, seconds later, she gave up trying to analyze altogether. Instead, she pressed herself against him shamelessly and stuck her tongue into his mouth. He suppressed a moan and moved his hands to the small of her back, pulling her into him, his fingers digging into the flesh he discovered between her pants and her sweater.
Much like their verbal spar, their kisses were passion filled and beyond heated, and their tongues battled for dominance. There was nothing playful or teasing about this. No, they just wanted each other, plain and simple. There was no patience to even bother with flirtatious foreplay. Without breaking their kiss, Ziva grabbed Tony's tie and backed up, yanking him with her, until she was pressed against a wall, and he was more than happy to comply. She wove one hand through his hair and pulled hard, while the other slithered down his chest and toward his belt. She unbuckled it and tugged it off, pushing his pants down until he stepped out of them. Her hands then moved to the buttons on his shirt while he attacked her belt.
It should have been alarming how quickly they were able to get each other naked, but it wasn't, not at all. When their clothes were in a heap on the floor beside them, Ziva wrapped her legs around Tony's waist and he braced her against the wall as she took him into her, inside of her, finally.
A muted voice in the back of Tony's head wondered if he was hurting her at all. He wasn't being rough with her, he would never, but the hurried intensity of their fight had carried over; besides, it couldn't possibly be comfortable to be balancing while being pressed into a wall. But if she was in any sort of pain, she didn't complain, not once, and the way her hips ground into his was enough to distract him and convince the little voice in his mind that no, she wasn't in pain.
His mouth moved to her neck and he sucked on her throat, making her gasp softly. Her head fell back and he grabbed a fistful of her hair as he left a trail of kisses down to her collarbone. His tongue made her skin burn, and her cheeks turned a delicious shade of scarlet. She muttered unintelligibly in Hebrew for the second time that day before pulling his head up and reclaiming his mouth.
He shifted his hold on her and got a better angle, and he pushed deeper into her than she even knew possible. He felt her insides flutter around him as she toppled over the edge, causing her to dig her nails into his neck and tug on his hair. The muffled noise she made against his mouth made him groan, and caused his hips to buck against her one final time before he joined her and came, hard.
His body heat spiked so high that he almost felt feverish, but he didn't mind. They clung to each other and panted, delirious from their highs. His head spun and he felt her fingertips trembling as she touched his cheek so gently, so tenderly, so terribly out of character in comparison to what had just occurred, that he opened his eyes. He found her gazing at him with an emotion in her eyes that he couldn't quite decipher. He could see the gears in her head cranking at a breakneck pace, but he didn't want to break the silence, so instead, he grabbed her hand from his cheek and, finding that it was still quivering, kissed each of her fingers and waited for her to speak.
She smiled at him fondly, but with a hint of the sadness that had flickered through her eyes before. She untangled herself from him so that she was standing upright once more, and he was still holding her hand. They stood there for a moment, inches apart from each other, completely naked, both wondering what now? And although she was unable to meet his eyes, she snaked her arm around his waist and pulled him close to her, and he exhaled, burying his face in her hair.
A few more seconds (or maybe minutes) passed before she pulled back just enough to look at his face, still held in his embrace.
"The box he gave me was empty," she finally murmured as her eyes fell to the floor, and Tony tensed, knowing precisely what she was referring to.
"Empty?" he echoed, his voice strained, and she nodded, looking so very vulnerable. It was not a look he was used to on her, and it made him hold her tighter. She pressed her face into the curve of his neck and he ran his fingers through her curls while he tried to gather his thoughts enough to form a coherent sentence. With his finger, he tapped under her chin, and she looked up at him, uncertain and almost ashamed. He hated Ray's guts for making her feel this way.
"It isn't fair of him to make an empty promise to you and then run off," he said, meeting her gaze evenly. "If he doesn't realize what a beautiful treasure he has, then it's his loss, Ziva. You deserve someone who would go to the end of the earth for you."
Ziva shuddered, because although she knew he wasn't thinking about himself in his previous statement, she had an ephemeral flashback to Somalia. When she met his gaze again, he saw resolution in her eyes, and gratitude to him, for everything. And he also recognized forgiveness, and that made his stomach flip over itself.
Many words wanted to escape from his lips, but he knew that in that moment, words weren't really necessary. So he pressed his palm to her cheek and internally marveled at this unexpected turn of events, before kissing her ever so sweetly. She smiled against his lips, and when she placed her hand on his chest, she realized that there wasn't a sensation in the world that was more soothing than the pitter-patter of his pulse beneath her palm.