DiNozzo reappeared twenty minutes later, obviously aware that he was well-past the point of being back quickly enough not to be noticed. Ziva watched, waiting for him to meet her eyes, as he slunk out of the elevator and toward his desk, but he didn't look up.

"Geez," McGee took the opportunity to comment loudly as the other man attempted to make a quiet descent into his desk chair, "what'd you have to do, iron them first?"

Tony stiffened in surprise at being called out, opened his mouth to generate an excuse, and only belatedly realized that he had no idea what McGee was calling him out about. "What?"

"Your pants," McGee replied, rolling his eyes at the evasion. "Give it up, Tony. Ziva told us the whole thing."

His eyes widened. "She did?"

"Yeah, DiNozzo, she did," Gibbs said, coming up behind him.

Tony froze for a second, then quickly finished sitting down and began an attempt at damage control: "I don't know what she told you, but I was just -"

"Clumsy?" Gibbs supplied.

"No, I was going to say - wait, what?" He stole a glance at Ziva, who was still watching him with interest. "What...exactly...did Ziva tell you?"

McGee snickered, obviously relishing the opportunity to be on the winning end of the joke for once. "That you dumped your coffee all over yourself and tried to get home and back to change before anyone found out."

"I...she..." He ignored McGee's continued mocking and locked his eyes on Ziva's. "So," he managed to say slowly to McGee without looking away from Ziva, "she told you all about it, huh?"

"Yep!"

"Then I guess...I'm caught." He raised, then dropped his hands in a gesture of defeat. "Mock away, Probie."

He recovered quickly, she would give him that. It was actually rather impressive. As he continued to stare at her, obviously overflowing with questions he could not ask, she directed a bright smile in his direction, then returned her attention to her computer.

Two hours later, Ziva and Tony stepped into the elevator, glaring at each other. He had been short with her ever since his late arrival, and she was fed up with it. She had protected him; what did he have to be angry about?

She was just opening her mouth to tell him that when she realized they were not alone in the elevator. Two analysts were already inside, one leaning against each wall and both watching them avidly. She pasted on a smile for them, stepped to the back, and resolutely turned to face the doors. Beside her, Tony did the same.

They rode in silence for a few seconds.

She watched him out of the corner of her eye.

He pretended he didn't notice.

She made it more obvious.

He glanced at her, scowled, and looked forward again.

She had him, she knew. She waited.

Finally, the pressure had built up too much for him to contain and he whipped back around to face her. "What did you tell them?" he mouthed furiously.

She eyed the analysts, mentally calculating the likelihood that they would decipher her words if she spoke in a whisper, and then decided that she didn't much care, anyway. "A story, Tony," she hissed back. "What did you want me to tell them? The truth?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"I just -" He stopped, sighed, and ran a hand through his already-mussed hair. She wondered how it had gotten that way; it had been perfectly combed when he had left with Jeanne that morning. "You said you weren't going to cover for me," he finally said.

She sniffed. "I lied. So sew me."

It took him a second to mentally translate that from Ziva into English. " 'Sue,' Ziva. It's 'so sue me,' not 'so sew me'."

"Whichever."

One of the analysts made the mistake of choosing that moment to sneak a look behind her, and was treated to a glare from Ziva that had felled lesser women. The woman quickly turned back around and slapped at a random elevator button. The doors popped open and, not stopping to decide whether this was the floor they had been headed for, the woman grabbed her friend's arm and dragged her out of the elevator toward MTAC.

In their distraction, they had gotten into an elevator going up instead of down, Tony and Ziva realized at the same time, but neither was going to admit it out loud. By silent agreement, they waited quietly, looking straight ahead, for the doors to close again and then resumed their argument:

"Why the hell would you make up a story, for god's sake?" he blurted at the same time she said, "I do not understand why you are angry that I did you a favor!"

They paused, each waiting for the other to continue, then started up again in perfect sync:

"I didn't ask you to do me any favors!"

"Because I did not want to embarrass you by telling them that you were led out of the building by your -"

"Ziva!" he roared, cutting her off.

Surprised by the volume he had generated, she stopped.

"I was not led out of the building by anything, thank you very much."

She lowered her lashes suggestively and smiled. "If you say so."

"Ok, you know what?" He threw up his hands. "Fine. Think what you want. The fact that I went to have coffee with Jeanne is -"

The elevator doors slid open just as he said the word "Jeanne," leaving them face-to-face with Gibbs, who had been waiting for them on the ground floor . He raised his eyebrows at them and repeated the name in a tone that demanded explanation.

"Er..." Tony scrambled for an explanation that would sound plausible. "I was just saying that..."

"...that," Ziva picked up quickly for him, "Jean Claude van Damme was his favorite action hero. And I was about to disagree vehemently on the grounds that any man who wears a horsetail -"

"Ponytail, Ziva," Tony corrected automatically.

"- cannot be an action hero," she finished, enjoying the look of grateful surprise he was trying, again, to hide.

"I don't care if he wears pigtails, DiNozzo," Gibbs replied. "Get your butts in the car."

They did.