A/N: We'll deal more about Ziva's stabbing soon, but for the moment, I think this will do.

Flashforward to the next morning...

When Ziva woke up the next day, she had no idea where she was.

With a groan, she rolled over to her other side, turning away from the bright sunlight drilling into her eyes—and perhaps what remains of her brain. As the remnants of slumber slowly ebbed away from her body, exiting through her pores like some vaporized poison, she managed to pry her eyes open...

However, before she could fully re-acclimate herself with the world of the conscious, a familiar voice so forcibly yanked her out of her stupor. And he looked very much pleased with himself as he intently stared at her still drowsy form. It was Tony.

He asked rather smugly, "You slept well, I take it?" He was lying right beside her.

It took all of her self-restraint not to jump nor pull her entire artillery at the sound of that voice. The headboard almost hit her head, though. Or is it the other way around? She was too surprised to reflect on it, and it hardly mattered at the time.

"Where am I?" She furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. It made her head throb more, so she simply took a pillow somewhere within the vicinity of her hand and covered her face with it. It muffled her voice. "Why do I feel hung over?"

He smirked. Of course she would pick the dumb card. "So you don't remember last night?"

Last night? Last night?

Those words made Ziva push herself into a sitting position with a jolt. The sudden movement made her dizzy to the point of almost passing out. She shut her eyes again while few carefully chosen Hebrew curse words escaped from her lips.

She was lucky Tony's reflexes are good enough to catch his distressed partner as she almost fell off the bed. And that is with one arm temporarily on a cast. Who needs an arm anyway? They're overrated. "Geez, excited much?"

"Was I in a fight last night?" Her head's too painful; she wouldn't be too surprised if there's indeed a gaping hole through her skull, or maybe a couple of ice picks sticking out.

"Nope." Tony replied with a smack of his lips, rubbing slow circles on her back with his good limb. "I would not exactly call it a fight… yes, there's a couple of tumbles and maybe a little scuffle. But if you mean fight, as in the Ziva fight fight, then I would have to say no."

She rubbed her eyes; his deft movements against her back were proving to be very soothing. Tension was slowly leaving her shoulders as she sought further clarification. "What do you mean?"

"Should I be offended that you remember nothing of the happenings that was last night?"

She eyed him blankly. Literally and figuratively. The sudden onslaught of words coming from his end was wreaking havoc inside her still buffering brain. It did not take long before her vision started to blur once more. She tried squinting, but it only made her eyes worse—probably the only reason why she completely missed the playful grin that had escaped from her partner's lips.

"By the way, you owe me a pair of underpants."

"Wha—what?" He heard her mumble groggily. He held back a chuckle as he waited it out.

Bufferring… buffering…

After a few beats of early morning introspection, and perhaps heaps and heaps of panic-induced adrenaline, Ziva's voice abruptly came back with a vengeance. Her unseeing eyes went wider, it was almost comical. "WHAT?"

Instead of opting to extinguishing the roaring blaze that was a panicky Ziva David, Tony decided to add more fuel to the fire, just for the fun of it. He is very much aware that his sixteen hours of Ziva-immunity had already ended hours ago, but Tony DiNozzo did not survive years inside a frathouse for nothing. He'd milk this little thing down to the very last drop, and nothing… absolutely nothing can stop him. Not even the fear of immediate physical harm. "I knew you were good, but I never imagined you being that good." He mused, looking at the window dreamily. "You really wore me out last night, Dah-veed. I almost forgot one of my arm's broken."

Utterly mortified by his words, Ziva sank back on the bed, facedown, and groaned at the sheets. She dove underneath the soft covers, before crushing her throbbing head with a pillow. For a moment there, while she was burying her way further into sheets, she feared that she would actually dig her way through them, all the way to the floor. "What happened last night?"

"You really are a master in tearing up a man's ego, are you?" He faked an offended tone as he attempted to pry the ginormous pillow off her face and roll her over so that she could face him. It took him multiple tries, and an awful amount of force to do so, but eventually, he succeeded. "Not to mention his underpants."

The sudden absence of her makeshift sun shield caused sunlight to burn through Ziva's retinas, making her groan even more. She blindly searched for cover, but Tony already threw all of them out of her reach.

Tony mustered a thoughtful look, "well, that's the part of your skill set that I did not anticipate. But, in hindsight, I guess it's actually pretty handy."

The pun did not go totally amiss, and Ziva's groan turned into a strangled noise. She could not think straight, and Tony's endless tirade surely was not helping her case. Checking her body for the presence of clothes would be the best thing to do by then, but somehow her thoughts were still too jumbled to process—let alone perform—that kind of complex task. She tried to feel for them—the clothes—but she can't. Her senses are, let say, kind of fritzy.

"I was concussed, my arm's broken in two places, yet you were able to make me forget the pain." He told her proudly. "You are that good."

A couple of heartbeats were all it took before realization finally dawned on her. Now she knew why he is acting all kinds of weird. "You are still high!"

"High?" He repeated, pretending not to know what it meant. He's not high, of course. Not anymore. Those drugs were long gone from his system way before his partner's eyelids even started fluttering, and he will eternally refuse to take more, but he would not tell her that.

"You are!" She exclaimed, but she barely had the time to rejoice over that realization when the white sheet covering Tony's torso inadvertently slips, revealing his partner's very naked chest.

Why the fuck is she on a bed with a naked partner right beside her?

There has got to be an explanation. There has got to be.

Tony provided just that, but not in a way Ziva hoped. "I can explain…" he began.

Ziva's panic skyrocketed as her heart sank all the way down to her gut. Those are not the words you say when you are about to tell something good. In fact, they are like, bracing you for exactly the opposite. She shook her head. "This is not happening."

He smiled. "Well, it happened."

Ziva did a double take at her partner's face. "Wait, why are you smiling? This is no smiling matter!"

His smile just turned wider. "Maybe not for you, but you have no idea how long I've dreamt about this."

"A dream." That is it. Perhaps she was merely dreaming. And every fucked up thing that is happening around her are just figments of her imagination as her brain dealt with all the sedatives in her system. Maybe Abby missed a hallucinogen in there or something.

"Oh, you are certainly not dreaming, sweatheart." Tony told her in a singsong voice. "Do you remember how—"

Her face fell. She stopped his lips with her hand. "Please do not tell me yet." She begged, trying to prolong the inevitable.

But Tony was having none of it. "We have done something we shouldn't."

She still has no clue as to what exactly happened last night, but if the shivers travelling down her spine was any indication; it is something work partners under Gibbs' team should not do. Should never do.

"What did you do?"

Tony pondered that for a moment's pause, and tilted his head. "What did we do, you mean?"

He was baiting her, and she knew it. The bad thing was, she had no other choice but to bite. "Please don't tell me we had sex."

Her bluntness did not surprise him. He chuckled. "Okay. I won't tell you."

"You are not helping." She groaned once more. She never thought she's actually capable of palpitating, but here she was, doing just that. "You are an insufferable idiot!"

"And you love me for it." He grinned.

"Be serious here!" She admonished, completely ignoring the way he just phrased his words. "This is something we can simply joke about! We… we…"

Tony's face indeed turned serious. Too bad his brain wasn't sharing the sentiment. "Worse case scenario, we'll have a little DiNozzo running around in nine months time, there's nothing to lose, sweetcheeks!"

Ziva's heart literally halted all of its movements inside her chest.

Little…

DiNozzo?

"Oh, come on!" Tony cried. "Don't tell me you haven't even thought about it."

She met him with a glare so fiery it could burn a house down. Too bad he wasn't a house. Tony DiNozzo is a fucking palace.

"Having a child with my DNA is the best gift I could ever give to all womankind, Zee-vah." Tony told her. "Imagine, my super special aristocratic features, along with my ever gorgeous face that has always been making heads turn, reproduced for the entire world to see. My very own munchkin."

Ziva closed her eyes as she sought deep within herself some semblance of control. They were both drugged out of their minds, and she's on birth control.

Right?

Taking a deep breath, she pleaded her nerves to calm down. This is not the right time to panic. There will be plenty of time for that later. She aimed for a little jab, to just ease the tension. "Have you ever considered that maybe those heads are turning away from you, Tony?"

"Huh?" Tony considered that for a second, but he brushes it off as quickly as it came. "The look on your face last night said otherwise as I recall."

She stiffened. No, now is definitely the time to panic.

"I remember all those lovely sounds…"

"Stop it." Ziva pleaded, her sanity barely hanging on.

"Those whimpers as I…"

She swiftly snagged the pillow from underneath his head, reburying her head into its soft depths. She would rather not hear any more. Her voice, though muffled by a considerable amount of down feathers, did not lose even an ounce of its scariness, "If you do not stop talking right this second, I will pull your tongue out, cut it with a nail file, and feed it to your goldfish!"

Tony tried to lift the pillow which she securely held down against the back of her head, but his effort met so much resistance, making his attempt futile. To compensate for his failure, he moved his lips closer to her ear instead and whispered seductively, "Believe me, the moment you start remembering last night, you would regret threatening to inflict that kind of harm against my tongue."

"Oh, just zip it!" She snapped, still underneath everything she could possibly hide herself into. Her voice may be muffled, but her annoyance surely was not.

He traced his index finger along her arm, leaving a trail of goose bumps in its wake. "Uncle Sam's Colloquialism from the lips our very own American ninja." He sounded genuinely surprised. "And it actually did not hurt my ears."

She struggled to get off the bed, almost falling flat on her face in the process. She made it vertical nonetheless. "How many tablets have you taken when I fell asleep?"

Tony held out a finger. Then another. And another. "I'm not sure," he lied. He looked up, "um, Ziva?"

"What?" She asked, fury rising inside her body in waves. What can he possibly want to say now?

He pursed his lip and tried to look at her face, and only her face. She is, undoubtedly, the best adversary his self control has ever met.

Ziva's lips coalesced into a very thin line. Then, as if on cue, draft came in from the window near the end of the room. Under normal circumstances, a little cold would not face her, but some weird reason this one bothered her. She looked down. It was then, and only then when she realized what she's wearing.

Or perhaps, what she's not wearing.

She swore, and pulls a sheet from the bed to better cover herself. But it did more harm than good when the movement revealed what lies underneath those perfectly white sheets.

It's Tony.

No, it was the other Tony.

With a gasp, Ziva turned around quickly. "Did we… really?"

"We did." He nodded. "Really."

"Gibbs will kill us."

"He may have to get a number." Tony paused for dramatic effect, and it worked, if terrified Ziva's face was any indication. "After all, we are on McGee's apartment. Not to mention… we are on his bed."

A flash of horror swept Ziva's face upon hearing that additional snippet. "If you tell me you have it on film too I would shoot myself in the face."

"Oh, no need to get that extreme." Tony said, lying through his teeth and enjoying every minute of it. "No one else would watch it but us."

Things could not get any worse than that, could they? Ziva told herself, as she sat back down with a sheet wrapped securely around her. She would not dare check if Tony even tried to cover himself behind her for fear of seeing again what must not be seen.

"Sorry 'bout that by the way." Tony said, not sounding even a bit shy about it.

Though she looked like she's about to get executed any minute, she was able to maintain a reasonable amount of coolness in her voice as she spoke. "Okay, I am ready," she told him. Then, she took a deep breath, and braced herself for the worse. "Did something really happen between us?"

"Oh, something happened." He grinned. A dangerous glint shined from his eyes as he went out of his way in making his every word sound like a double entendre. "And it was good. Real good."

What exactly happened that night? And more importantly, where are their clothes? Find out next time!

Thank you for reading!