A/N: Thanks all for your reviews and alerts.

Thursday, 0855

The landing in Miami was one of the ugliest Tony had ever experienced. As the plane descended towards the runway the storm had closed in and they'd found themselves thrown around the cabin like socks in a washing machine. Kids started crying, adults started panicking, and Tony kept his eye on the flight attendants in the jump seats to determine how worried he should be about it. When they'd done little more than smile reassuringly at passengers and roll their eyes knowingly at each other he figured he had nothing (much) to worry about. That was until the pilot aborted their first attempt at landing, pulled the nose up and the sudden g-forces made three people near Tony and Ziva immediately throw up.

Tony gripped the armrests and looked at Ziva as the plane started to shudder and climb again. Bless her iron disposition; she looked only mildly interested in the event. She looked up at him and briefly lifted her eyebrows.

"The storm must be quite large."

Despite the situation, or perhaps because of it, Tony found himself laughing at her assessment. She and Gibbs had to be the only people Tony had ever known who would be so blasé about a near plane crash.

Their second attempt at landing came 20 minutes later and was twice as bad. Had he not been belted into his seat, Tony felt he might have been thrown out of it. He glanced over at Ziva again and found her inspecting her cuticles.

"Hey," he said, and then paused as the plane pitched right and then straightened again. "If they yell out 'brace', we are going to spend the weekend here. And we're going to be drunk for a lot of it."

Ziva smiled as if it were a nice idea that she knew they wouldn't put into action. "Deal."

He nodded and held up both hands in front of him and crossed his fingers. "Brace," he whispered with faux hope. "Brace, brace."

Sadly (or perhaps thankfully) they did not end up with their arms crossed against the seat in front of them and their foreheads on their arms. The plane lurched up and down, left and right and tilted sickeningly, but it eventually hit the runway with a bone-jarring bounce and skidded along the tarmac before the pilot regained complete control and they taxied towards the terminal. Applause erupted through the cabin as the pilot came over the intercom to welcome them to Miami, but Tony looked at Ziva with exaggerated regret.

"Damn it," he said to her. "I was really looking forward to doing body shots with you."

Ziva sent him her familiar frown of confusion. "You want to shoot me? What if I found you a nice little hatchback to target instead?"

He pursed his lips and looked away from her in frustration, but didn't address her dig at him. "Body shots is a drinking game," he told her. "Google the rest."

It took longer than usual for them to disembark, and by the time they navigated through the sea of damp humanity in the terminal to the car rental counters the lines were ten deep. All flights out for the entire morning and into the afternoon had either been delayed or cancelled, and stranded passengers were looking for other means of transport. Tony and Ziva argued about the appropriateness of using their badges to cut in line, and it only ended when Ziva threw up her hands in defeat and wandered away before she 'body shot' him. Fifteen minutes later they'd dived out of the rain and into a sedan (no convertible on this trip—Tony had some sense at least) and headed off towards the city.

They hadn't gotten very far.

All roads around the airport were choked with cars, and they found themselves in a traffic jam that would have made Los Angeles proud. They were stuck going at a crawl on the Airport Expressway as a torrent of rain fell from huge black clouds and pelted the car. Palm trees bent in the fierce wind, lightning forked through the sky in the distance, and thunder cracked over the sound of the rain on the roof, the wipers going at full speed, the air conditioner running and the weather warning on the radio. The weather station Ziva had found was warning of a storm surge and advising people to get off the beach and seek shelter indoors throughout the storm that was expected to last all day and into the night.

Ziva sighed as she lifted her hair off the back of her neck and secured it in a high, loose bun. "Perhaps we will be spending the weekend here after all," she said to Tony.

Tony swiped his forearm against the driver's side window to clear the fog that had gathered on the glass. "It's no fun if we can't go to the beach," he replied flatly.

"I thought you wanted to get drunk."

"Yeah, on the beach," he said obviously.

"Sun and alcohol," she said, turning that over in her head. "Dehydration and sunstroke."

She heard Tony 'tsk' at her. "You don't have to be Little Miss Practical all the time, you know. Just enjoy the idea of it."

Ziva pursed her lips at the gentle rebuke. Tony's mood had been heading south ever since they got into the car and started fighting traffic in what could turn into a hurricane. It was annoying, but she couldn't exactly blame him. It would be a long time before they made it to the motel where their witness was staying, and being stuck in a humid car (the air-con was close to useless) going at three miles an hour while they could barely make out the car in front of them wasn't something to smile about. But if there was one thing she found more annoying that Deliberately Irritating Tony, it was Cranky Tony. The power to keep him in a good mood was in her hands, and so she did what she always did when she needed to distract him. She offered up a piece of her history without being prompted to.

"To steal a catchphrase from Ducky," she began, "this reminds me of the time I was caught in a hurricane. Actually, I was in Taiwan at the time, so I suppose it was a typhoon."

Tony turned his head to look at her, and she could tell that his crankiness was already being replaced with interest. While he was the sort of person who would gladly share so many little details about himself with anyone he came into contact with, she was not inclined to share anything. They each had their reasons. Tony had found that his method made people more likely to share information with him in return, and he'd probably managed to solve dozens of cases with it. Ziva's method, however, ensured that people could not use the information against her in the future. Not that she thought Tony would ever be so evil. And it did make him happy to hear something about her, so she shared this story freely. She was trying to share more of them lately.

"It was right after I finished my service in the IDF," she went on. "Tali and I met our cousin Roah in Taipei for a week. We had one day of good weather before an enormous typhoon came through, and we spent the next three days trapped in the hotel without electricity. On the first day we had to hide in the interior corridors to avoid shattering glass, and on the other two we were just waiting out the torrential rain and rising floodwater." She shot him a smile as she recalled the event with fondness. "It was not so bad. We drank a lot of liquor from the mini bars."

Tony smiled as he did some math in his head. "So, Tali would've been about 15 when you left the IDF?"

Ziva pointed a defensive finger at him. "She was not drinking," she assured him, and then thought about it a little more. "Well, not much. She met a boy from the hotel and she spent a lot of time with him." She paused as she thought back and smiled with mild amusement. "I think she slept with him. She had a certain look in her eye when we were finally able to leave."

"When she was only 15?" Tony asked, sounding mildly shocked.

Ziva frowned deeply at his conservatism. "And how old were you when you met your Rockette?" she asked pointedly.

"Yeah, okay," he said, conceding her point. He had only been 15 as well, and he knew Ziva knew it. "But that's different, because I'm a boy."

Ziva grunted with disgust at the double standard, and Tony held up his hand to stall her argument.

"I'm not saying it's fair," he said. "I'm just saying that's the way it is."

Ziva rolled her eyes, but elected not to take him personally to task over another failing of gender equity in society. "What was your Rockette's name?" she asked, steering the conversation back to a less contentious place.

"Mindy Roberts," he replied with a slight smile.

Ziva snorted over her laugh, and then quickly covered her hand with her mouth.

"What?" he asked, throwing her a side-eye.

"Nothing," she replied, shaking her head even while she kept smiling. "It is just a very American-sounding name."

Tony's mild offence faded away as he gazed out the foggy window. "She tasted like cherry lip gloss," he sighed.

Ziva smiled fondly at the side of his face as Tony reminisced. "She was older than you," she guessed.

Tony's smile turned proud and he happily shared the information. "She was 18. I told her I was too." Off Ziva's look of disbelief, he added, "I've been 6'2 since I was 14 and I was pretty bulky from sports."

Ziva's eyes flicked over him as she tried to imagine what an overly confident 15-year-old Tony would have looked like. "Where did you meet her?"

"She was the daughter of one of Dad's business contacts. We had some party during the summer that she was dragged to." He paused and looked off into the distance again as he went back to 1986 in his head. "We went up to my bedroom. Simple Minds was playing on the radio. It was awesome."

Ziva bit her thumbnail as she smiled wider. "Did it last long?"

The question brought Tony hurtling back to the present, and he shot her a deep, defensive frown. "The act or the relationship?"

Ziva snorted again. "Either. But I was referring to the relationship."

"No," he answered simply, refusing to be clear on which he was referring to.

"It sounds like the perfect American teenage love story," Ziva said. "Although it lacks vampires.'

"It was more like a John Hughes movie," he told her. "What about you? How old was the young Ziva when she become a woman?"

"I will let you know when it happens."

Tony laughed a little too hard at her suggestion that she was still a virgin, and although getting him to laugh had been her aim, she still leaned over and dropped her fist into his thigh.

"Ow!" he cried, and made to punch her back. Then he thought better of it, and just looked at her expectantly.

"I was 16, and it was in an aircraft carrier," she admitted.

Tony rolled his eyes. "Of course it was," he muttered. "Did you break his nose too?"

Ziva smiled at him remembering that she broke the nose of the first boy to kiss her. "No. I liked him. And I was relieved to get it out of the way."

"What was his name?"

"Benjamin…something." She frowned as she tried to recall his surname, but shook her head and gave up.

"Did it last long?" he threw back at her.

"Thankfully, it did not," she replied. "It hurt like hell."

"The act or the relationship?" Tony asked cautiously.

Ziva lifted her eyebrows. "Both."

He looked at her with an expression that was half wince, half curious. "I guess it generally hurts girls more to begin with."

She shrugged and watched a palm frond get carried across the expressway on the wind. "Well, I have never had a penis so I cannot say this with 100 per cent confidence, but yes. Absolutely."

Tony made a vaguely apologetic face, as if he alone was responsible for the fact, before chuckling. "That's good information to have."

Ziva smirked. "That I have never had a penis?"

His smile grew. "Yeah. I'm just adding it to my mental index of your medical history. Makes filling out those admission forms when you're in hospital that much easier." He started making crosses in the air with his finger. "Diabetes? No. Heart condition? No. Allergies? No. Transsexual or hermaphrodite? No."

She scrunched her nose, but chuckled. "I am glad I have managed to clear up any confusion you may have had."

Tony nodded along. "Yeah, me too. It was going to be awkward to have to ask Schmeil if you were born a man."

Ziva chuckled. "I am not sure how I feel about you two getting so chummy lately."

Tony, for one, enjoyed it. When they first met, he wasn't sure what to make of the tiny philosopher. But he'd quickly worked out why Ziva liked him so much. It worked in Schmeil's favor that he wasn't competition for Ziva's romantic affections, too.

"You know, I was caught out in a huge storm like this once as well," he told her. "It only lasted a couple of hours but it knocked out the power for four days."

"A hurricane?"

Tony shook his head. "No. But intense rain, hail, thunder and lightning. Brought down a lot of trees, and I think it caused a big fire in one of the substations or something." He shook his head as he failed to recall the exact details. "I just remember being very cold, hungry and kind of stinky for a few days."

"What on earth did you do to pass all that time without your movies?" she asked.

Tony grinned wolfishly. "Well, I was in college. I went into hibernation in my dorm room with a girl I was seeing at the time."

Ziva didn't know why she hadn't guessed something like that in the first place. "You had a four-day sex marathon?"

"More like two and a half," he admitted. "But it seemed like the perfect time for it."

"Every cloud has a silver lining," she commented, just as a bright flash of lightning lit up the sky.

"Geez," Tony muttered. "Hey, if it really is the end of the world—"

"It is not."

"Then there's something I have to ask you," he continued.

Ziva looked over at him warily. This had the potential to get to a scary and emotional place, but surely he wouldn't do that to her—to them—while they were stuck in a car with no escape from each other. Right?

"What?" she dared to ask.

"You remember that first night we met? We were standing outside your hotel and it was raining kind of like this."

"It was not raining anywhere near as heavily as this," she argued.

He ignored her. "And I asked you who had recruited you into Mossad, and you implied that it could have been a lesbian lover?" He didn't take the question further, but his smirk and raised eyebrows spoke volumes.

Ziva looked back at him, incredulous. "That is the one thing you must know before you die? Whether I ever slept with a woman?"

Tony pursed his lips as he thought it over. "It's definitely in the top five."

Of course it was. Ziva shook her head and looked out the window. "If we get to Saturday and it really does look as if the world if going to end, I promise to tell you."

Another palm frond blew across the road and bounced off the roof of an 18-wheeler before crashing into a light pole.

"I'll take those odds," Tony said.

Thursday, 1112

Luis Zapata packed a lot of sleaze into his diminutive frame. He was 5'5 in his Cuban heels, probably didn't weigh much more than Ziva, and despite the fact that he had spent the whole day in his motel room he was still dressed in a three-piece polyester suit that hugged him a little too tightly around his, well, everything. He wore his dark hair a little too long at the back, let the stubble on his cheeks grow a little too much, and wore about half a can too much Brut 33. When he opened his motel room door for Tony and Ziva, his eyes settled on Ziva's damp t-shirt over her chest as he spoke.

"So, you're the crack team the Navy sent to get me?" he asked. His eyes flicked to Ziva's face before returning to her chest. "Niña, hola. ¿Cómo estás? Tu si eres linda."

"We are the crack team who has been traveling for five hours and were already pissed off about having to come down and get you," Ziva told him in her scariest voice. "So behave."

Zapata's eyes widened and he took a step back from them. "Yeah, okay," he said, the sleaze giving way to a meeker attitude as his advances were shot down in flames. "Pretty wet out there, huh?"

Tony led Ziva into the room and looked around. "Yeah, but it better be dry in here. You haven't been drinking this morning, have you?"

"No way," Zapata said, almost convincingly. "I had a couple to settle the nerves last night, but nothing since I woke up."

Ziva tried not to let her nose wrinkle at the mess of dirty clothes and take out containers strewn around the floor. "Why were you nervous?"

"I don't like flying," he told her. "Especially not in this weather. It was hard not to have a bloody Mary with my bagel this morning, but I resisted." He gave her chest another eye bath. "You should be proud of me."

She supposed she could have been if she was not completely overcome with pity and revulsion. She shot a look at Tony and he barely nodded in reply. Their crappy day was about to get a whole lot crappier.

"I was watching the news," Zapata said, and gestured at the flat screen against the wall with the sound muted. "They said most of the flights out of Miami are delayed or cancelled. Think we'll miss ours?"

It was beginning to look like a distinct possibility, but neither agent wanted to give him an excuse to have a drink. Tony cocked his head towards the door as he looked at Ziva.

"I'm gonna talk to reception about his check out time."

Ziva nodded and watched him go with envy. What she wouldn't give to talk to surly motel staff instead of being stuck with a barely sober sleaze.

"Hey," Zapata said when Tony left the room. "You didn't tell me your name. Or show me your ID."

Ziva sighed and took her badge from her pocket to show him. "Special Agent David," she said. "My partner is Special Agent DiNozzo."

Zapata peered at her badge, but repeated Tony's name. "DiNozzo. Is that Italian?"

"Is that important?" she threw back.

"Guess not," he shrugged. "You got a nice accent. Where are you from? Cuba?"

She fought the urge to roll her eyes. "Israel. Is that important?" she asked again with more of an edge to her voice.

"Guess not," he repeated. "DiNozzo your boyfriend?"

Ziva glared instead of answering.

"Because if he's not, and you like a little Dominican…I'm big where it counts."

"Oh my God," Ziva groaned in disgust. The rest of the day was going to be torture.

…

Tony stepped into reception at the motel and shook his head like a dog trying to shake himself dry. The rain outside was getting heavier instead of easing off and the wind was still picking up, but at least the motel wasn't by any beaches or canals. He doubted that they'd be affected by a storm surge if it really did hit.

"Can I help you, hon?"

Tony looked up at the woman behind the reception desk with the voice of a three-pack-a-day smoker. She was tanned to a crisp with sunspots all over her chest and arms, and she wore her bleached hair in a high bouffant. He couldn't even begin to guess how old she was.

"Hi," he said with a friendly smile, and pulled out his badge. "I'm Special Agent DiNozzo with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service."

The woman looked at his badge and then gave him a polite smile tinged with amusement. "Hi. I'm Betty Sanchez from the Ocean Breeze Motel and Grill."

He took her mocking with good humor. "Nice to meet you. The guy in room 23, Luis Zapata?"

"Four feet tall?" Betty checked.

"Yeah. My partner and me have come down to pick him up and take him back to D.C., but our flight will probably be delayed. Can you extend his check out time for a couple of hours?"

Betty looked at him as if she found his naiveté endearing. "Oh, hon. If you're supposed to be flying out of here today, I got news for you: you're not."

Tony's smile fell a little as she gave voice to his fears. "No?"

"I've been listening to the wireless," she said, and Tony assumed she was talking about her radio. "All flights have been grounded. There's a huge storm coming."

Tony jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the car park. "This isn't a huge storm?"

Betty eyed him. "You're definitely not from around here, are you?"

"No."

"This is just the prelude to the storm," she told him. "It'll get worse before it gets better. What time is your flight, hon?"

"Not until 4.30."

She chuckled. "I reckon you won't make it. You probably won't get out of here until morning, I'd say." She looked out the window to her right as a cardboard box flew by the window. "Real big one coming."

Tony rubbed his forehead in an effort to stall the headache he felt coming on at just the suggestion of being delayed with Luis Zapata.

"If I were you," Betty went on, "I'd be paying for another night in that room. You're going to need it."

Tony weighed it up. In his heart, he knew she was right. They wouldn't be leaving today. He just really, really wanted her to be wrong. But maybe it was smarter to err on the side of caution. Waiting the storm out in a motel room had to be preferable to waiting it out in an overcrowded departure lounge, hadn't it?

He reached into his pocket for his wallet. "Okay. We'll do that. Have you got a couple of other rooms I can take for me and my partner?"

Betty shook her head, but hit a few keys on her computer keyboard. "Just one, I think. We were gonna have three or four but folks don't want to leave in this weather." She moved from her keyboard to her mouse, and then ducked under the counter for a few seconds. When she reappeared she held one room key. "Just one," she confirmed. "You want it?"

Tony flipped open his wallet, slid his agency credit card out of its sleeve and slapped it down on the counter. "Sold."

…

"I've got good news and I've got bad news," Tony told Ziva when she opened the door to Zapata's room for him.

"Okay."

He swept his gaze around the room but didn't see Zapata anywhere. He looked at Ziva with a frown. "You kill him already?" he asked softly.

Ziva gestured towards the closed door by the bed. "Bathroom."

"Oh." He closed and locked the motel room door. "The bad news is that the motel owner says that what we've seen so far is only a prelude—she actually used that word—to the storm, and she's confident we won't be flying out of here today."

Ziva nodded and led him towards the TV. "Yes. It was just on the news that they have closed the airport."

Tony's heart fell and a pout formed on his lips. "Crap."

"I was about to call the airline."

Tony shook his head and pulled out his cell phone. "We can get McGee to handle that. It's not like he'll be doing anything without us there."

Ziva looked dubious but said nothing as she sat on the edge of an armchair and returned her attention to the news. "They say it is not a hurricane."

"Small blessings," he said as he dialed McGee.

Ziva looked over her shoulder at him. "What was the good news?"

Tony dug his hand into his pocket for the room key and tossed it to her. "I got the last room for us. And they do five dollar t-bones at the grill next door."

"Surely they'll be closed," Ziva said, but Tony shook his head.

"Betty said they'll stay open until the power goes out."

"Who is Betty?" she asked Tony, but McGee answered then and he turned his attention to their travel agent for the day.

"McGee."

"Morning, probie," Tony said jovially. "How are you filling the hours while me and Ziva are down south?"

"Watching the news reports of the massive storm sitting over your heads," McGee replied, sounding way too pleased about it. "It's a shame to get all the way to Miami and then get a hurricane instead of sunshine."

Tony didn't believe his sympathy for a second. "I've been assured it's not a hurricane," Tony told him. "But the weenies at the airport don't want to fly, so we'll probably be grounded until the morning."

"Oh, that's a shame," McGee said.

Tony rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Got a job for you."

"Actually, I'm kind of busy with—"

Tony cut him off before he could plead his case. "You gotta get me, Ziva and our witness on the first available flight tomorrow," he said. "And I mean first available, probie. Not the first available that you feel like getting us on. Vance wants this witness in D.C. pronto."

McGee sighed, but Tony heard the clacking of his keyboard over the line. "What's the witness' name?"

"Luis Zapata. His file's in my bottom drawer."

"Okay."

"Good probie," Tony encouraged. "I'll bring you back a souvenir."

"Thanks, but I don't need an I love Miami t-shirt."

"You'll get what you're given, and you'll like it."

McGee muttered something that Tony didn't quite catch, but Tony smirked at the obvious sentiment.

"Call me back when you've got something," he said to McGee. "Any time is good. My schedule's not looking too busy today."

"You gonna call Gibbs and tell him?" McGee asked. "Because I don't want to do that for you."

Tony made a face. He hadn't thought about updating the boss yet, but now that it was on his to do list, he wasn't looking forward to it. "Uh, yeah. It's fine. Ziva'll do it."

McGee lowered his voice, as if the woman in question would be able to hear him over the line. "Hey, speaking of Ziva, Gibbs mentioned the anniversary thing."

As it had done yesterday, the mention of the forgotten celebration sent a stab of guilt through Tony's chest. "Yeah."

"Is she upset?"

"No." He wanted to elaborate, but not with Ziva within earshot of him.

"Is she sitting right there?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Well, I just wanted to let you know that me and Abby are on it."

Tony nodded as he eyed Ziva's back. "Thanks, McGee," he said sincerely.

"Yeah."

"And thanks for the flights," he felt the need to add.

"No problem," McGee said. "I'll call you later."

Tony hung up and walked over to stand behind Ziva and watch the news report. "McGee's gonna sort it out."

Ziva nodded and looked up at him as if she was about to ask a question, but the door to the bathroom opened and Zapata wandered out.

"Hey there, Special Agent DiNozzo," he said. "What's the word?"

"The word is that we're probably not flying out until tomorrow. But if you even look at a drink between now and then you'll be making the trip in the cargo hold. Got it?"

Zapata held up his hands in surrender. "Hey, no problem. I'm quitting anyway. Nothing good ever came out of a bottle of tequila." He paused and reconsidered. "Except tequila." He smiled and started walking around the bed towards them, but stopped dead when Ziva sliced her arm through the air to point sternly at him.

"Hey!" she warned. "What did I say? Ten feet away at all times."

Zapata took two steps back and looked between his feet and hers as if making a guess at the distance. "I just wanted to watch the news."

Ziva hit the volume button on the remote and turned it up before tossing it back on the desk beside her. Tony looked between them and wondered what had happened in the ten minutes he'd been out of the room. Zapata had been ogling her without shame when they'd arrived, and he could only assume that the cretin had made a pass at her. A feeling of protectiveness filled him as he aimed a filthy look at Zapata, but he held his tongue. Ziva was no vulnerable, helpless girl who needed him to take the guy out into the hallway and beat him up. She was more than capable of handling the douchebag's advances on her own. Trying to do it for her would only get Zapata and Tony beaten up.

Even still, he couldn't resist putting a possessive hand on Ziva's shoulder to get her attention. "I'm going to try to dry off," he told her.

Ziva glanced at the hand, but just nodded and didn't mention it. "Good," she said. "Because you smell like wet dog."

As he walked away, Tony smiled to himself with affection. Ladies and gentleman, your queen of tact: Ms Ziva David.

I hope that went some way towards dulling some of the ouchies from Double Blind.