(A/N: Four times Tony's job screws up his dates, one time it doesn't. Adapted a collection of bad first dates. A canonical portion of Tiva.)
"She was just—such a strong woman, you know?" Tony muttered, staring blankly into his glass. He sighed deeply, taking another long slug from his drink. "So . . . different. Not like any other woman I had ever met. She refused to flirt, never let me win her over by charm. She never used charm to get her way, either. That girl, she always fought for her place in the world." He swirled his glass idly. "Never relied on her looks. She earned every honor she got."
He sighed again and took another long swig.
"I just miss her so much, you know?"
"Yeah, your ex-girlfriend sounds like a real stunner," his date said impatiently, twirling her foot in bored circles. "But can we talk about something else? You've been going on about her for a half hour." She leaned in flirtatiously, dropping her hand to his shoulder. "I'm sure I can . . . distract you."
He grabbed her hand from his shoulder and clung to it as if for comfort. "My ex-girlfriend?" he asked, confused. "I wasn't talking about a girlfriend." He downed the rest of his drink, grimaced, and waved for another. "Kate was my partner."
"Okay, she was your 'life partner,' girlfriend, whatever you want to call it—isn't there anything else we can talk about?" she snapped, flirtation abandoned, but Tony returned to staring into his new glass.
"We always bickered. I hope she knew how much I enjoyed it. I never got a chance to tell her . . ."
Letting a growl of frustration escape, his date grabbed her purse and stalked out. Tony barely noticed.
""
He was midway through a charming story about a college football game when he saw it.
Bearing down on him, their faces wreathed in identical grins of mischief, Ziva, McGee and Abby descended.
They were chattering cheerfully among themselves, not watching him outright, but definitely heading towards his table. He stuttered, brought his story to an awkward close, and hid his face in the menu on the off chance that their presence was a coincidence.
It wasn't.
Their arrival at his table was heralded by loud, fake exclamations of shock that "you're here!" and they had "no idea that you were coming," and the inevitable:
"Why don't we join you?"
Of course, then he had to explain to his date that yes, he actually knew these people, in fact, these people were his co-workers, and no, he didn't have any objection to letting them sit at his table. His words of welcome were somewhat belied by the looks of mixed terror and anger he was shooting his co-workers.
"So, did Tony tell you about the time he . . ." his three friends began in frightening synchrony, then broke off with a laugh and a smirk.
"Oh, you first," they chortled, and launched into a rendition of every humiliating, painful, or otherwise unsuitable tale of Tony's exploits they could find. Such was the practiced and thorough nature of the stories that they could only be pre-prepared.
". . . so the only way to get the smuggled drugs out of the horse was to actually reach up the horse's—"
"Alright, Abby, I think that's all my date needs to hear," said Tony sharply, kicking the Goth under the table. She squealed and kicked him back, harder—and she was wearing her chunky boots, too. "You know what? If you'll excuse us, I think my co-workers and I need to have a little talk . . . in private," gasped Tony, grimacing as he put weight on his kicked leg.
Tony demonstrated a great deal of restraint. He waited until he had towed his sniggering colleagues out of earshot of his date before he opened his mouth.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he demanded. "You're destroying my date. What did I do to you?"
They started to babble over on another. Tony held up a hand to stop them.
"Correction: what have I done recently?" he clarified.
"Well, I'm here because I finally figured out why my last boyfriend dumped me after two weeks," contributed Abby. "Apparently, your warning about what would happen if he hurt me scared him so badly he cut and ran."
"Oh, come on," protested Tony weakly, "at least I didn't sic Gibbs on him—"
"And I'm here because I found out you ran a background check on my boyfriend, trying to dig up soil on him," cut in Ziva. "Which you had no right to do."
"The expression is 'dig up dirt,' and that is not why I ran the check—" argued Tony, but McGee had already launched into his complaint.
"Tony, you sent pictures of me in an Elf Lord costume to my girlfriend," wailed McGee. "That. Is. Not. Okay."
Tony drew breath to defend this last point, then blew it out in a sigh. "Okay. The last one was on me," he admitted. "Let's just get this over with."
And with that, the four friends turned and marched back to where the unsuspecting date sat.
""
". . . so then I said, 'that's what you think,' and walked out! Isn't that hilarious?" his date cried, giggling at her story.
"Mm? Oh. Yeah, hilarious," agreed Tony politely. In the two weeks since Ziva left for Israel, he had already gone on three blind dates, each more disastrous than the last. For some reason, he was finding it hard to focus on his date.
His date's smile flagged. "And then an elephant fell through the ceiling and crushed him."
"Ah. Very nice." Tony wondered whether Ziva was meeting her new partner at this very minute.
"Then it began raining cheese, and a gigantic mouse attacked me."
"Mm-hm? Lovely." Tony wondered if Ziva's new partner would be male or female.
"And the floor turned into cotton candy, and the first sign of the Apocalypse occurred, and . . . you're really not listening, are you?"
He started guiltily, midway through imagining Ziva working with her new partner, who had begun to resemble an Israeli James Bond in his mind's eye. "What? Oh—no, I'm listening," he denied hastily.
She sighed, dabbed at her mouth with a napkin, and tossed some bills on the table. "Look, why don't we just end this here," she suggested, not unkindly, while she rose. "Clearly, I'm boring you to tears."
That got his attention for the first time that night. "Oh, you're not boring—"
"And yet, I've been talking about elephants, showers of cheese, and the Apocalypse for the past few minutes, and you didn't notice," she pointed out dryly, starting to rise. He grabbed her arm to stop her.
"It's not your fault! I was absorbed in something else, but I swear, she—it's not important. I'm over her." His date raised an eyebrow. "It. I'm over it. You have my full attention now, I swear. There was just something distracting me."
"Something, or someone?" questioned his date perceptively. "Listen, I know what you're going through."
"You do?" Tony was startled.
"Absolutely. We've all been there. Lemme guess. Awful break-up? Girlfriend of many years walks out of your life unexpectedly? You try to bury your loss by going on endless blind dates, but you just can't stop thinking about her?"
"Break-up?" Tony squawked. "No, that's not it at all—"
"Yeah, keep telling yourself that. Honey, you're still stuck on her. Trust me. You're never getting over this girl," counseled his date firmly. She pushed in her chair. "Do yourself a favor. Don't let her go," she suggested, leaving Tony staring at her retreating back in confusion.
""
"You want to reschedule?"
"I'm sorry, something just came up at work . . ."
"Correction: you want to reschedule again?"
"I can't control when my boss makes me work overtime, you know." Tony shifted his cellphone so it was wedged more comfortably between his shoulder and ear. Normally, he loathed people who talked while driving, but he found his busy work schedule made it increasingly necessary to arrange social calls around his job. And, in total honesty, the cancellation call had been something of an afterthought while he was already driving to the witness' house.
"You know, you could have just told me you didn't want to go out with me," spat his date, her voice crackling through the line.
"I do want to go out with you! Really, I do!" cried Tony, honestly. He had been delighted when the attractive woman at his coffee shop had actually used the number he had slipped her. "I told you, my job keeps me busy."
"Tony, it's seven o'clock on a Friday night. There's no way you're working,"
"Clearly, you've never met my boss," quipped Tony.
"Six."
"What?"
"Six. It's the number of times you've postponed our first date for work."
"Look, I swear, my boss really is making us major overtime . . ."
"Sure. Just like he made you miss our lunch last Saturday, or the coffee we were going to grab last Sunday." Her voice dripped sarcasm.
"As strange as it sounds, I really do work most weekends . . . and nights . . . and early mornings . . . and—"
"You know what? Just forget it. Forget you even gave me your number, alright?" she hissed, and the call dissolved into a burst of static.
Tony snapped his phone shut and tucked it into his pocket. Wow. I managed to screw up my first date before it even started, he reflected regretfully. That's a record. Even for me.
""
"Ziva, what the hell are you doing here?" hissed Tony, glaring at the former assassin at his door. "It's Friday night, the case was wrapped up hours ago, and I have a new girl over for dinner."
"That explains why you weren't answering your phone and I had to come all the way here. The girl will just have to wait," Ziva informed him unsympathetically. "McGee tracked down our suspect's bank accounts on a hunch, and it turns out he doesn't have the money or the connections to pull off this money laundering scheme. He was telling the truth, and we're back to circle one."
"Square one, Ziva," he corrected absently, "and I repeat, what the hell? The money laundering has been stopped. Does Gibbs really expect us to drop everything just to track down a handful of amateur white collar criminals who aren't going anywhere?"
"Did you really hope otherwise?" she asked, laughing madly. Tony made a face.
"Okay, I deserved that. Stupid question," he sighed, pulling on his sweatshirt. "Damn, I hate missing dinner. Should I wear my jacket?"
"With two layers on already? You'd look like a homeless man. Don't worry about food, I'm treating to Chinese food," she said coaxingly, and his expression softened slightly.
"Thanks. I'll come as soon as I can ditch my date," he told her, and turned, only to find that said date had snuck up on him unawares. "Oops! Well, I guess you heard most of that."
"Oh, I heard you, alright," she snarled, with such venom Tony recoiled. "You're just 'ditching' me so you can grab Chinese food with Ms. Date Crasher here."
"Listen, there is nothing romantic between Ziva and I," Tony clarified hastily.
"Oh, sure. A well-dressed lady, who shows up at your apartment on a Friday—"
"I swear, this is work related—"
"—knows where you live, invites you out for dinner, offers you fashion tips—"
"I know this looks bad, but she's just a co-worker, honest—"
"—is number two on your speed dial—"
"Honestly, we—hang on, how did you know what number speed dial she was on? Did you look at my phone while I was out of the room?" gasped Tony, momentarily sidetracked. She didn't even answer, just shoved past him and stalked out the door, deliberately bumping Ziva on the way out. Tony had to grab Ziva's arm to stop the female agent from shoving her back considerable harder.
It took six hours and a great deal of coffee before the whole messy case was sorted out. By midnight, they had discovered that one of the original suspect's co-workers had used the suspect's computer to run his laundering scheme, but it wasn't until two-thirty that they narrowed the broad range of possibilities down to a short list, and picking the precise perpetrator didn't occur until six in the morning. Abby and McGee, who had done the brunt of the computer work, staggered home to their respective apartments in that peculiar limbo that exists only between exhaustion and a caffeine high. The indefatigable Gibbs disappeared into Vance's office to justify the legal corners they had cut. Ducky and Jimmy had disappeared around midnight, once the body had been processed. Only Tony and Ziva were left in the bullpen.
"Wanna finish the cold Chinese food while I summon the energy to stagger home?" suggested Tony, rubbing his eyes blearily.
"That's sound utterly disgusting . . . but weirdly appealing. I claim that weird vegetable rice dish," agreed Ziva, wearily propelling her swivel chair to Tony's desk, where the congealing, cooled food was arrayed.
She expertly pinched a chunk of mystery vegetable between a pair of chopsticks, and began relating a funny story of how they surprised their perp when he showed up at work. Tony, who hadn't come along for the arrest, listened attentively while using a fork to shovel down fried rice. She mocked him for his inability to use chopsticks; he corrected her confused idioms; she flicked a gob of slimy rice at him; he deflected with a container of General Tso's and returned fire; they both fell into the borderline hysterical laughter that could only be generated by a dangerous mix of caffeine, severe sleep deprivation, and truly godawful Chinese food.
Upon reflection, Tony didn't really mind that his first date had been brought to such a catastrophic ending.
In all honesty, this was better anyway.