Thank you for all the reviews, follows and favorites. Seeing that you like the story reeealy makes me happy...

Oh and by the way- I still don't own NCIS. Or the characters in the matter of fact...

Chapter 3

Tony didn't wake up until loud voices and knocking on the door outside his apartment. He sighed deeply, thinking it must have been McGee again with one of his multiple love problems again, probably just wanting to talk to him when Tony didn't answer his cell phone. It certainly wouldn't be the first visit from him in the middle of the night.

He checked his wrist watch and sighed even louder this time. 02.34. What the hell did McGee want this time?

He slowly dragged himself from the bed, through the living room to the front door. He opened the door to a very unexpected sight and cursed quietly to himself : "Oh, shit!" There was no McGee outside, only Ziva lying on the floor, babbling some nonsenses about a real estate company and how somebody named Abir told her not to come but she did it anyway and so on and so on...there were even sentences that were in Hebrew and something he thought was Russian...languages were more 'Ziva's thing' than his anyway.

He started picking her up immediately, so he could carry her inside, but she resisted for a while at first. He could smell the alcohol on her and could only imagine how much she had had to drink because he knew she could easily take him and he wasn't exactly what you would call a bad drinker, either.

She quietly insisted on getting up by herself and somehow managed to do so. And he said, more to himself than to her: "How can you be so freaking stubborn?" And he didn't just mean about tonight, but he didn't care much about what she heard, because he was pretty sure she wasn't going to remember all of this tomorrow.

Suddenly she turned around to face him and kissed him strong. He quickly held her to support her and prevent her from falling and thought to himself As much as I'd love doing this with you, my dear ninja I don't think this is the best idea… It really wouldn't be the smartest thing to kiss now, when probably only one of them would still remember it in the morning. Plus he knew she wasn't thinking clearly in this condition and he would never take advantage of her. Then she started to talk again, her voice now almost squeaky as Abby would say, but he practically didn't understand anything. Between the sobs and the tears he got a few words like sorry and shouldn't and then there was something with love, which he would like to understand better but it was safe to say that alcohol didn't exactly do magic to her coherency with speaking.

He then completely freaked out about what to do. The first thing that crossed his mind was to call Gibbs, he was sure that boss would know what to do, but Tony quickly changed his mind since Gibbs probably didn't know, that Ziva was in town and there probably was a reason why. So he laid her softly on his couch and gently spoke to her: " Ziva? Ziva, I'm gonna have to change your clothes now, because you are all sweaty and smelly and…you know…Is that okay?" She didn't reply, she just nodded her head a little, now feeling a calmer. She was asleep almost immediately and didn't wake up even while he was taking of her clothes and put some his old ones on her. He then carefully carried her to the bedroom bridal-style, put her on the bed and covered her with a blanket.

He then brought a large bowl and put it on the floor near the bed if she would have to throw up any time and went to get a box of aspirins and a glass of water and put them on the night stand, in case if she woke up with a severe head ache, for which he was pretty sure she would.

He turned around towards her and watched her for a moment. Then he kissed her softly on the cheek and whispered in her ears "Goodnight, my ninja. Sleep tight..." and quietly left the room trying not to wake her up.

He went back in the living room to pick up Ziva's clothes which he had left lying on the carpet before and put them in the washing machine. He suddenly heard the nearby tower clock strike 4 times. It was 4 o'clock in the morning and it just occurred to him now that he would have to get up for work in less than two hours. He finally laid on the couch himself and thought that he has to go to Gibbs' house first thing in the morning to tell him that he wouldn't be able to come to work, since he couldn't just call him over the telephone because it was still lying broken on the kitchen floor. He really needed to talk to Ziva because there had to be a reason for her to visit twice in the last 9 hours since she didn't reach out to him for more than a year. He didn't know what he was gonna list as the reason for his absence, but right now be didn't even care. All that mattered was that the love of his life, his partner and his crazy Mossad assassin was sleeping peacefully in the next room and this was the first time he slept perfectly relaxed in a year and a half, knowing that she was safe...


Tony woke up to the sound of analogue alarm clock that just wouldn't stop ringing. He left a deep groan from his mouth and got up to turn off the clock quickly, that it wouldn't wake Ziva up. He just remembered that she was still in his bedroom, so he went to check up on her. She was still sleeping peacefully, snoring just a little with her mouth fully open, which made him smile a little for a moment, then he frowned at himself, thinking that it was kind of creepy watching her sleep since she probably didn't even know that she was in his apartment. So he left a note under the glass and quietly left the bedroom. He was going to Gibbs' house. He didn't know yet what to say to him but he was sure he would remember something on the way.

He sat in his car, that was parked outside the building and was just about to start driving when he noticed a royal blue women's jacket. "Oh, shit! Zoe!", he panicked, still not sure what to do. He made it clear to himself that he would think about it later. Right now he had to visit Gibbs and prevent his boss from killing him for not coming to work. What a great way to start your day he thought sarcastically...

Twenty minutes later he slowly drove on his boss' drive way and exited the vehicle. Tony didn't even bother with knocking knowing that Gibbs would probably be in the basement building the hundredth boat this year. Did the guy sleep at all? He started walking down the stairs and heard his boss sigh loudly and speak wearily before he could even see his Senior Field Agent: "What is it again, DiNozzo?"

"Um hi, boss, how did you know that was me?" DiNozzo waited a few moments for Gibbs to answer and quickly proceeded when he noticed the glare of silver haired man. "Right, not important..." A few more seconds have passed without a word until Gibbs got even more angry and barked:" Well spit it out!" Tony swallowed visibly and slowly said:" Boss I sort off need a day off but I can't tell you yet why. It's really important and I promise to stop by tomorrow and explain ..."

Soon DiNozzo started to get anxious to get his answer so he asked carefully: "Boss?" Gibbs sighed loudly one more time and almost yelled "See ya tomorrow. Now get the hell out of my basement!"

"Thank you boss, I owe you one..." said DiNozzo and almost ran to the front door..


I don't know, what I'm doing wrong if you don't tell me, so any kind of constructive criticism in a form of reviews is very welcome...