Authors note: Thank you for the reviews! They are extremely appreciated.

Just to MissingPairings thank you so much for you comment. I just wanted to try and explain the reasoning behind the shower excuse and why Tony was distracted so easily.

Ziva was thrown for a loop completely; she scrambled for something to say and used the first thing that came to mind. Yes, she's been back for a while and nobody had said a thing so she assumed that either nobody had notice or that they had just let it go. She thought she could swing it by using the 'took it off this morning' line and that he'd buy it because it took him that long to say anything and even realize that she wasn't wearing it anyway.

And Ziva sucks at lying, especially when it's to the people who are closest to her, and I agree, Tony wouldn't be that distracted but he's letting her get away with it. It's all still very on the surface between them, anything too deep and it starts to get too hard, too complicated. It's not so much about him being distracted as him trying to figure out what's going on with her in his head first and like I wrote, it was their first time flirting with one another in awhile, his minds bound to be a little all over the place.

Thank you again for the comment.

Ignorance is bliss

"Boss says we're not done yet with the evidence."

Tony dumps his bag down beside his desk and groans as loudly as he can because it's not even nine yet and already his Friday has been ruined. He hears Ziva laugh and turns to glare at her, "Something funny, Da'vid?"

"Not we." She counters, as she points a finger towards him, shooting him with her fake gun. The grin he likes to think as one she will only ever give to him, manages to flatten out his irritation and he can only scoff as he slumps into his desk chair. She can still do it, even after four years.

"Well I guess it figures," He says after a moment and shoves his gun into his desk draw just as she pops up, her chair wheeling out from under her, "Gibbs would only trust me as Senior Field Agent to handle such imperative tasks."

Like he didn't even blink, she's standing like she used to, her hands pressed against his desk, her face way too low, "Imperative?" She whispers as he slowly leans in and neither of them realize that their thumbs are now somehow touching, that McGee got up 5 seconds ago, that there is still life throbbing all around them.

"You heard me, Agent Da'vid." He smirks and lets his eyes wonder. They flick down to her pink cheeks, across her lips, her lips past her chin, over her neck and down towards her-

"The standards of a Senior Field Agent must be getting pretty low then, yes?" She asks softly, and his eyes jump back to hers, his heart starting to thump too heavily against his chest, again, it's missing again.

He had let it go; her stumbled excuse, the way she had looked, that he had known the second she had opened her mouth that something wasn't quite right. Only because it was easier between the shy flirting, the new case leads and the heavy, heavy staring to just let it slip to the back of his mind. But now that he's aware of it, reminded again of the empty space that seems so obvious he wonders how he hadn't possibly noticed it before.

He's going to have to be careful, that much he knows, because their relationship is anything but secure (was it ever?) and it means letting her figure out what her next move was going to be before he could.

So he puts on a small smile, looking up into her eyes that seem to be deeper, "Well, that depends on how high your standards are, Agent Da'vid."

She just snorts then throws a hip in his direction as she turns, walking back to her desk. And he waits until her back is safely turned before he asks, again.

"You take another hot shower this morning?"

She almost falls off her chair, her butt just finding the edge, "What?"

He can't help but laugh a little because it sounds just as bad out loud as it did in his head, "Where's your necklace?"

She moves in a way he expected her too, her mouth falling opening a little like she's offended but he knows she's really more surprised; that he's keeping up with her, that he's not letting it go.

"Tony," She starts, as she looks around her desk for something, "Are you even aware of what necklace you are referring too?"

It deters him completely and he can't help but feel affronted even though he knows it's exactly what her intention was, "Yes I'm aware," He sits up watching bewilderedly as she stops to look for whatever the imaginary object was, a smug grin now spread along her face, "It's the long silvery, golden dangly one with the tiny chain links that lead down to your star-"

Always on cue, Gibbs suddenly appears and he strides towards his desk and drops his cup down before giving Ziva a look that Tony, who is still startled by the last 2 minutes of his life, doesn't miss.

"Why the sudden interest in jewelry, DiNozzo?"

Tony helplessly begins to splutter out an explanation while McGee, who had slipped in between the hot shower and the necklace description, and Ziva look on in utter glee. Gibbs lets him stumble for a moment longer, a faint grin on his face as well, then stands and gives him his own look.

"We gotta go back and recheck the house ladies, grab your gear."

McGee and Ziva are still smiling as they scramble for their jackets and backpacks and Tony waits until she's passing him through the gate of their desks to glare at her in a way that says, it's all your fault.

She merely giggles, brushing past his elbow to skip on ahead.

Purely because once she started, he couldn't stop and above all else, it's just easier to mess with one another they spend the rest of the day, the week, the case trying to one each other against Gibbs. Who carries it for awhile until he gets so fed up by the constant noises of "Hah!" that he stops it instantly by slapping them both on the back of the head.

It's not until Sunday night, after they've solved the case, found the killer and he's too tired to even break open a beer and watch a movie when he starts to think about her again. He's going through moments in his head. Images. Her history, their history. He's pretty airy when it comes to noticing what she wears on a daily basis but he pays attention enough to both know and remember that he can't think of a time when she hasn't worn that necklace.

He tries to think of the last time he saw it and he's staring right up at the ceiling when it hits him.

"I guess you read my report."

"I memorized it!"

"You loved him."

"I guess I'll never know."

The days after leaving her (abandoning, he wants to spit) in Tel Aviv, he would have a recurring dream, night mare really of himself walking into the squad room and finding her sitting at her desk, a bullet hole right through her heart and just as he would rush over, lifting her up and off her chair she would open her mouth, blood clotting the sides and say to him, "You should have shot me, Tony."

It stopped after a while, a month or two of her gone but he had forced himself to block out that last conversation they had together because of it.

He can see and hear it now as though it were one of his movies stuck in his DVR. He gets up out of bed and stands in the middle of his living room, his neck covered in sweat and his stomach nauseous. He goes over it again and then again and then again until he can't stand anymore he's so dizzy.

She wouldn't have given it up willingly, nor taken it off willingly for it to be stolen.

…Africa. Africa meant she was dead, Africa meant Vengeance, Africa meant terrorists had taken her prisoner, had tortured her, hadn't stopped until they could peel away every last shred of anything that was her.

He pushes himself off of the couch to shut off his morning alarm, feeling like he might vomit or that he should. She was going to keep hiding it, whatever it was, suppress it so far underneath until it felt like, even to her, that her necklace had just gone missing.

And he knows that in order to get the truth, in order for her to acknowledge it, it might mean that he won't just lose her and she'll be hundreds and miles away from him, he'll lose her and she'll still be standing right there.

He's so exhausted that he keeps the pants that he just spent the night in on, misses four buttons on his shirt and starts to shove on his sneakers rather than his boots but he's not going to stay away. He's going to find out, he's going to push her, push them. It's going to be him.

It's going to be him.