Timing in Everything: Chapter 3
A/N: Okay, here's the Tiva chapter I promised :) I hope you enjoy!
NCIS Special Agent Tony DiNozzo had no idea how two adults who had lived their entire adult lives in one-bedroom apartments had so much stuff. Or why both apartments worth of stuff had to come into Bahrain from DC on the same day.
"Where do you want the couch?" He blinked himself out of his reverie and took a drink from his coffee cup while he considered the question. There were really only two options—the living room and the den—and while he knew the proper answer, a large part of him was really tempted to give the other.
"That one goes in the den." The words had appeared out of nowhere before he had the opportunity to speak, and he frowned as he turned and considered the source of them: a strikingly beautiful and deadly Mossad case officer dressed in jeans and an Ohio State tee-shirt much too large for her slender frame. His wife of about two weeks, and if this whole moving experience was any indication, soon to be his widow. Because if she wasn't the one who physically killed him, she was going to drive him to an early death.
"Why does all of my stuff end up in the den?" he complained. Ziva David gave him one of her trademark 'did you really just ask me such a stupid question?' looks.
"Because my furniture looks better in the living room," she said simply.
"Says who?" When he got another one of those looks, he pressed on. "I like my furniture."
"Which is why it is going in the den, with your entertainment system. I figured you would be spending more of your free time there than in the living room."
Damn it. He hated when she made sense like that. "Well, my bed goes in the master bedroom." He had a king; hers was barely a queen with a mattress that was slightly harder than their new granite countertops.
"Of course," she replied, in a tone that told him that that was her plan all along and she wasn't being conciliatory.
He was pretty sure this was what marriage was all about: the wife got everything she wanted. The husband got someone to make all his decisions for him, whether he wanted her to or not. He was starting to see why Gibbs had warned him against married. And why his former supervisory field agent had so many divorces in his track record.
"I do not think either of our tables will work in the dining room," Ziva mused aloud, staring at the two small dining tables on their driveway. "Mine is far too small. And yours would look better in a college student's apartment."
"Hey! There's nothing wrong with that table!" She looked up at him and rolled her eyes.
"We will have to go shopping for a new dining set," she declared, her eyes back on the old tables, a thoughtful expression on her face. He sighed but didn't say anything; there was no point in wasting the effort. Once Ziva declared she was going to do something, she was going to do it, whether that was buying a new dining room set, or leaving NCIS to take her old job as a Mossad control officer in order to move to Bahrain, or renting a house.
She looked back up at him and frowned. "What is the protocol for ridding oneself of old furniture near a Navy base? If this were a college campus, you could leave it on the side of the road, but I do not think the kingdom of Bahrain would appreciate the litter much."
"Is there a Craig's List for Manama?" he asked, only slightly joking. Ziva's frown deepened.
"I do not know what that means."
"Haven't you ever tried to get rid of stuff?" he asked in exasperation. "Wait a second… How'd you get rid of your stuff when you moved back to Israel a few years ago?"
"It was not my furniture to get rid of. I rented my first apartment furnished."
"You rented a furnished apartment?" he scoffed. "What were you thinking?"
"I was thinking that I did not know how long I would be staying," she shot back, which officially ended their back-and-forth, leaving Tony alone to think about how far they had come. She had joined the team as a need to temporarily get away from her family, and ended up staying six years. They had started by not trusting each other at all, gradually warmed to each other, learned how to argue without physically lashing out on the other—no matter how tempting that may have been—learned how to become friends, become lovers, and somehow now wore matching wedding bands.
Didn't mean the fighting had decreased any, though.
Ziva had wandered off to direct the flow of boxes from the moving truck toward various rooms of the house, leaving Tony standing out in the yard with his coffee, trying to stay out of the way and thus stay out of trouble.
He hadn't been out of the way—or out of trouble—long when the phone in his pocket buzzed, and he was torn between grumbling at the interruption and directing thanks toward the heavens for the same. He pulled the phone from his pocket and frowned at the display: Freiler.
Great. It was either a case or an invitation to junior agent's house for a barbeque, neither of which he was terribly excited about.
He had been splitting weekend calls with Special Agent Todd Freiler since he took over as the special agent in charge of NCIS-Bahrain two months before, and for the most part, it was working out well. The majority of their cases were either no-brainers or could wait until the following Monday. Freiler still called about almost all of the cases switchboard called into him, but he was developing a fairly good instincts about what needed their immediate attention and what could wait.
"Let me guess," he said as he answered the phone. "Bar fight on a Friday evening? Teenage dependent stealing bottles of liquor at the NEX?"
"Uh," Freiler stammered. "Neither of those. Not this time." He paused, seeming to collect his words. "I think you should come in. And I think you should bring Officer David—Ziva." If it weren't for the serious tone in Freiler's voice, Tony would have teased his junior agent for his continued formality and inability to refer to anybody by their first names.
"It's Ziva's Sabbath," DiNozzo replied. He knew he shouldn't be difficult, but it was just so easy.
There was a momentary pause at the other end as Freiler tried to figure out how to respond to that statement without sounding offensive. "I wasn't aware Ziva celebrated the Sabbath," he finally replied.
"We're celebrating by arguing about where we're unpacking boxes and furniture," Tony explained.
"Oh. Well, I think this is a little bit more important than that. Not that settling into your house isn't important, but—"
"So we have a case," DiNozzo interrupted, fully aware that Freiler would keep rambling uncomfortably until he was stopped. "But what does that have to do with Ziva?" The Mossad officer in question had just stepped out of the front door when her name was mentioned and was now stopped five feet away from where her husband was standing, staring at him with a frown on her face.
There was another long pause on the phone as Freiler tried to figure out exactly what he needed to say. "The Truman was attacked," he finally said, instantly making Tony feel bad for being difficult. "There's not a lot of info yet, just that they don't know who was responsible for it."
"Casualties?" DiNozzo managed, already heading into the house to grab the keys to the NCIS Charger he was using until his Mustang came in.
"Don't have an exact number yet," Freiler replied, "but it's quite a few. And it includes Special Agent Ryan McCaw, the agent afloat. He's dead. But it gets worse."
"We've got a dead NCIS agent and probably a number of dead sailors. How does it get worse than that?" DiNozzo snapped. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ziva's eyes widen.
"It's a family weekend," Freiler explained. "And there's a group of five officers and forty midshipmen from the Israeli Navy on a joint training exercise."
Great. Freiler was right; it was going from bad to worse. "Let me get this straight," he said slowly. "We have an aircraft carrier that was attacked. It was filled with sailors, dependents, and Israelis. The NCIS agent is dead. Others are, too. And we don't know what happened."
"That about sums it up," Freiler agreed. "The ship's anchored within fastboat distance, but they have helicopters on standby to take us in. There's a dive team in the water performing search and rescue. I don't think they know exactly how many people are missing, but there are some."
DiNozzo didn't know if the helicopters were offered by base command in efforts of prompting NCIS to go or if Freiler had taken the initiative and called and ordered them up. He'd give Freiler the benefit of the doubt. "Good," he said crisply. "I'll grab Ziva and we'll be on our way. Give Gabi a call and tell her to meet us at the office." Talk about timing; his new senior field agent had just arrived in the office a few days before. "And I need you to do us a favor."
"Uh, okay?"
"Call Bryn and tell her to come to our place. The movers are unloading now, and we need someone to supervise."
"I'm not sure how much she'll be able to help with the unpacking. Or even supervising," Freiler replied. His wife was currently eight and a half months pregnant with their fourth kid.
"You're right. Scratch that. We'll get Cohen or Dardik to come over." After all, there was no point in having a Mossad case officer as a wife if you couldn't use that relationship to get Mossad operatives to do your chores for you. "See you in a few." He hung up the phone to see Ziva waiting with an expectant expression on her face. "Grab your gear," he told her. "Looks like NCIS and Mossad are working together again."