Chapter 8
Friday evening
After a whole day of basically doing nothing Ziva decided to finally go and see Gibbs and possibly the rest of the team. She knew that Abby wouldn't be home in Gibbs was still working. She asked herself the same question for the millionth time: Did Abby sleep at all? Ziva was often worried about her when she was still working at NCIS and now was no different. It couldn't be very healthy to drink that much caffeine in the form of famous Caf-POWS and not sleep at all. gibbs was not exactly a case of who you would call an 'easy boss', because NCIS was never an easy job.
She took a cab to her former boss' house. She didn't bother knocking on the door once she arrived there because she was sure that Gibbs would be in his basement, building what would probably be the 1000th boat. A small grin spread through her face remembering how many times she and Tony had tried to figure out how their boss got the boat out of the small basement, but the smile quickly faded away when she thought of how their relationship had changed in the last two years.
'Now is not the time,' she thought to herself and slowly entered the house. The ground floor looked like there was nobody home but she knew better than that. She quickly found her way to the basement stairs and saw weak light from downstairs. She just realized now that she had absolutely no idea what to say to Gibbs and started thinking about not going down. She walked around nervously for a few moments and then carefully started walking down the stairs.
As she expected Gibbs was working on something that looked like a boat frame. Of course he already knew that somebody was coming to see him as he heard the front door opening. He just didn't know why it took him or her so long to come down.
He slowly turned around to face whoever it was that decided to pay a visit to his house and blinked twice in surprise. He quickly took a large sip of his bourbon and said: "Hello Ziver..."
After a whole day of basically doing nothing Tony decided to finally go and see Gibbs, even if he said to his boss before that he would show up and explain himself tomorrow.
He just had to get out of the apartment. Everything reminded him of yesterday's and even today's encounter with her. He didn't even want to think of her name. And of her overall. The fact that she forgot her clothes in his bathroom this morning didn't exactly help him get her out of his mind, too.
Around half an hour later DiNozzo found himself standing on Gibbs' drive way. He was thinking about how his boss was probably going to be very angry. He flinched at a thought about how many slaps on the back of his head he was going to get because of it. Ouch!
He entered the house without bothering knocking and was just about to go down the stairs when he heard someone walking up the stairs. The steps were followed by a familiar voice that made his heart go crazy: "Bye, Gibbs."
"Oh, shit," he hissed and quickly stepped behind the door. The step sounds got closer and she was now passing his hiding spot, but didn't seem to notice Tony.
'This is ridiculous,' he thought to himself. He was wondering why he reacted that way. There would be nothing wrong if she had seen him at Gibbs'. But the truth was he felt guilty about this morning. He shouldn't have snap at her so hard. He didn't resent her leaving his apartment without any solid explanations. He was never able to be mad at her for longer time. And he didn't hold a grudge against her for staying in Israel that night that seemed so distant but was still remembered as it would have happened yesterday. It was just easier for him to pretend that he was mad at her than to suffer in pain, silently. Not that it had helped much.
He still couldn't believe what only a glimpse on her could do to his mind, his body. He only saw her for a second but he went all weak at the knees.
He decided to wait for a couple minutes before heading down the stairs to avoid the possibility of Ziva seeing him and it would probably look a little bit weird if he came down the minute that Ziva left. Gibbs probably needed to process some things as well as Tony did.
Thirty seconds of Tony leaning on the wall behind the door had passed when he heard a distant, weary voice: "You can come out now, DiNozzo!" Tony's heart skipped a beat from awkwardness and embarrassment in the same time, but soon he plucked up the courage to confront his boss.
He slowly walked down the stairs and stopped in the middle of them to ask Gibbs if it was okay for him to come down. Gibbs didn't answered, he just took another coffee cup from the shelf and poured Tony some bourbon.
Tony sat down and gratefully took the drink. They both sat in silence for what seemed to be pretty long, none of them saying anything, just drinking, both lost in individual thoughts.
"You coming to work tomorrow?" asked Gibbs. He felt sorry for his senior agent. He knew all along about how Ziva and Tony felt about each other. They were really bad at hiding it. Everyone could see it. What started as some innocent flirting now and then grew to flirting all the time. But over the years he could see how both of them had changed, how their relationship had changed. Useless eye-sex was replaced by really strong bond of friendship and trust, one he hadn't seen in years. It was the bond similar to the one he had with Shannon. He always expected them to show up at his basement one evening together, just to tell him that they were now a couple or possibly getting married or something like that. One thing he had never expected was that they could end up like they did: each of them living on their own continents, divided by seas, thousands of miles away from each other, without any contacts between them. He saw how heartbroken DiNozzo was without her and he could only imagine what the separation did to Ziva. Not that she would ever admit it, of course.
"Did we catch a new case?" asked DiNozzo. Gibbs just nodded as a confirmation and his agent added: "Then see ya tomorrow, boss." He slowly got up from what seemed to be a base of the boat that he sat on before and started walking towards the stairs. He turned to face his boss for the last time and said: "Thanks, boss. For everything." He really appreciated Gibbs not asking any questions about this morning. Tony knew that boss was now aware of Ziva being in town and that he probably connected the dots.
Gibbs barked in return: "Goodnight, DiNozzo!" But he wasn't angry at all. In fact he felt oddly proud of his agent and a little smirk flooded his face. "Those two are gonna be my death," he said to himself as he sighed loudly and took another sip of his bourbon.
