I'm on leave from university for a week due to pneumonia, and angel-death-dealer is a very bossy lady. But this is for her, as promised, and as a thank you for being my friend and for bullying me back home this week.
Our Truest Selves
The smell that wafted down the corridor made DiNozzo's stomach rumble, and he almost turned on his heel and went back out to the store. Instead he continued down to his apartment, trying to stop the salivating he was doing as he shuffled the bags around to one hand so that he could open the door.
The smell of baked goods rose even stringer once the door was open, and it took all he could do not to moan in delight. He didn't shout out that he normally when he walked through the door – when she was waiting there for him because of a day off or when she was beside him, there to roll her eyes and punch his arm as she smirked at her – instead he carefully pushed the door closed, listened to the almost imperceptible click as the latch caught, moving across the apartment in silence with his hands filled with shopping bags was harder, but as he got closer to the kitchen he realised that she was unlikely to hear him. The volume of the music coming in from under the closed door was loud enough for him to recognise it as a Bond song, the closer he got the more he was able to recognise her singing along to Live and Let Die.
He would never let her live this down....
He pushed the door open a crack, and when the music continued and her voice never faltered he pushed it further open.
She was stood in the middle of the kitchen with her back to the door, wearing what Tony recognised as one of his shirts and apparently not a lot else, for a moment Tony just chose to stare at her legs and the way they moved as she shifted her stance every few seconds. The smell of baked goods was even stronger here, the oven was on, several cooling racks that he was not aware he owned were on the counters and covered with what looked like chocolate chipped cookies, and a slow grin wandered across his face.
She jumped at the wild laugh that broke from his mouth, so that only Paul McCartney was crooning the song now, and she whirled around to face him, a startled expression on her face and a mixing bowl cradled in the crook of one arm. The homely image made him laugh more, and he dropped the bags on the floor, the distinctive crack of eggs rising as one hit the linoleum, and her eyes went from him to the bags and back up again.
"Shut up," she told him, turning her back on him again, shirt tails flying around her, her stance showing that she was studiously trying to ignore him, the tension in her shoulders proving that it wasn't working.
"Tony," she said warningly, not turning around still, though she all but slammed the mixing bowl onto the counter. He stopped laughing as Live and Let Die turned to Man with the Golden Gun, stepped over the bags that were strewn across the floor, and then stepped up beside her, wrapping one arm around her waist and leaning his head on her shoulder.
"I didn't know you baked, Zi-vah," he said into her shoulder, reaching past her with his free hand to try and filch a cookie from the cooling rack.
He yelped as she rapped his hand with the spoon still held in her hand, and he withdrew halfway across the room, grumbling as he nursed the smarting appendage, and then settled for licking the batter left on his skin from its encounter with the wooden weapon. His eyes went up as the music stopped, and Ziva was stood before him, hands on her hips, spoon still in hand, and he was hard pressed to look at her face. He'd seen that glare before, in fact he'd seen it on numerous occasions. The only difference was that he normally saw it on the plucky Goth girl that happened to be Ziva's best friend. Perhaps the two were spending too much time together.
"I can bake Tony," she told him, her voice brooking no argument "I have other skills than shooting guns and throwing knives. I just choose not to show them."
"Well you should show them more often," he told her, eyeing the woman for a moment before easing up to the closest counter. He kept a wary eye on her as he snagged a cookie, and his eyes lit up with surprise as he bit into it.
"These are pretty good!" he exclaimed
"Of course they are Tony," Ziva responded, turning away from the man and pouring the batter in the bowl into cake tins "I am able to do more than knife tricks decently."
"But these are really good!" Tony was moving onto his third, taking the time that Ziva was distracted to eat as much as possible "I mean... they're not poisoned are they?" he stopped for a moment, glancing at the woman opposite him
"They are just chocolate, Tony," she promised, amusement clear in her voice "Although if you eat another one you will regret it."
"I'll not want dinner?" Tony asked, placing his latest cookie back onto the rack
"That too," Ziva agreed, "But if Abby finds out you've eaten the cookies I've made for her birthday she will kill you. Slowly."
Tony chose that moment to back away from the counter. The bags were still strewn across the floor, the plastic probably sticking to the linoleum due to the broken eggs, and Ziva and Abby were definitely spending too much time together.