Chapter 2: A few weeks later.

Author's note: Slight Season 7 Spoiler in that Jimmy has finished his studies, and Ducky offered him a job. Grownup Jimmy!

And I didn't mention this before- but obviously I own no characters from NCIS.

In the park...

Another warm and breezy day, carrying flutters of pink petals through the air. Ziva found herself running along a familiar route towards the park. Inwardly, her Mossad training rebelled. Taking the same route makes you dangerously predictable, vulnerable to being attacked.

As she warmed up and her strides lengthened, she shook off that inner voice. That part of her life was over. Americans didn't think such things, going out for a jog on a fine sunny day. She ran through the park, pushing herself, loving the faint promise of summer in the air.

She took the path where it split off, to push for a longer run before she came to the sunny expanse of green where she'd found Jimmy that afternoon. Only a little breathless, she quirked a smile at her thoughts.She wasn't even sure he had this weekend off! Or what his cell phone number was!

Meanwhile, on the lawn...

Jimmy had bought two lemonades, in which the ice was melting, though he tried to keep them in the shade. He tried not to feel like an absolute dork. He'd come to the park with two sandwiches in a silly orange cooler bag because he didn't want the nice sandwiches from the Kosher deli to get weird in the heat. He'd gone back to the same deli Ziva had shown him. Though it took a little creative GPS and Googling because he'd sworn it was further up on H street. He'd come back to the same part of the park (he thought! Hard to tell with trees, and a lousy sense of direction.)

He had to laugh at himself, doing all this, without doing something rational, and sensible, like checking in with Ziva, seeing if she wanted to meet up. In another 10 minutes, he was going to eat one of the sandwiches. This- lying in wait, was just weird. And definitely a risk, since Ziva probably knew more ways to kill him without leaving a mark than Abby claimed to. Actually calling Ziva, though, to check her plans?- kind of more terrifying than an angry Gibbs.

A shadow fell across the journal he'd been pretending to read.

He slid over to make room for Ziva on his picnic blanket.

"You got a lemonade just for me?" she marveled. "You did not even know I'd be here."

"If you didn't show up, I figured, more for me," he ventured.

She laughed mid-swallow and almost choked. "You sound like DiNozzo."

Jimmy took that to mean "smoother than he felt," and was pleased. "And!" he added eagerly "I got sandwiches!"