Nothing to say except: let me know what you think, and I hope you enjoy.

1. Kate

At first he calls her Kate. Only at first and never on purpose, but every so often he'll catch her looking at him with understanding brown eyes and he'll realise what he's just said. She never calls him out on it which surprises him; Ziva's not exactly the type to keep her thoughts to herself. And being called by the name of your predecessor, your dead predecessor, the one that your own brother killed… well, it's bound to stir up a lotta thoughts.

In his defence, everyone else has done it at least once too, he isn't the only one clearly wishing she was someone else. (McGee falling over himself apologising looking so terrified you'd think she was about to shoot him, Abby raising a challenging eyebrow as if to say 'what are you gonna do about it?', Ducky with an, 'I am so sorry, dear, old age is catching up to me fast it seems,' and if Tony squinted he could pretend that Ziva looked like she believed the apologetic doctor, even Gibbs does it, well after the rest of them have stopped, that one time post-Mexican summer break and that time there was no pretending that the slip of the tongue hadn't completely slapped her across the face.)

Don't get him wrong, he likes her, he does. She's fun and flirty and she takes everything he says and amps the pressure up about ten levels(not to mention that she's a hot twenty three year old who speaks multiple languages and carries a gun, that doesn't hurt either). She seems to take pride in being one of the guys - stealing bites of his burrito, out-drinking them at any opportunity, driving like an absolute maniac, and bragging about hooking a guy's privates up to an electric current to make him squeal (both he and McGee had winced and moved slightly further away from her as she eyed them both with a predator's gaze) - whereas Kate had preferred promoting girl power, spending as much time as possible down in Abby's lab or routinely wiping the floor with them at the NCIS gym.

He likes a challenge, especially when it comes to women. In that aspect he supposes the two of them are similar, albeit in different ways. If Kate had been an elegant waltz or a flowing foxtrot then Ziva's a tango or a samba or a paso doble. She's loud music filled with blaring horns and brash drums, she's all quicksteps and sensual sexuality, swinging, swaying hips and foreign sizzle and if you're a beginner (which Tony definitely isn't, thank you very much), she's almost impossible to keep up with. With Ziva it would be so easy to trip over your own feet in an attempt to adjust and end up flat on your face; her first words to him had completely knocked him on his ass and he's not sure he's fully managed to recover from it (incidentally, whose first words to an absolute stranger are 'having phone sex?', like, who the hell does that?).

But he and Kate had had an unspoken agreement, a routine that he'd gotten used to. Most people would've looked at them and seen two people who couldn't stand each other, and he can see why they would've gotten that impression, really, he can. Before the plague incident he doesn't think they'd ever said a kind word to each other; tension had been diffused with (mostly) jokey snipes and barbs and a moderate amount of actual hissing. The way he saw it at the time, if they were being nice then something was very wrong. With her there'd always been a sense of we're either gonna go for each other in a scene straight outta Kill Bill Volume 1 or we're gonna end up in bed together. She'd had a bite to her that Viv didn't, she knew how to handle herself in a male dominated environment and she was more than used to shooting down men who tried to hit on her. Tony had never stood a chance with her.

With Ziva… the line's distinctly more blurred. She thinks nothing of making comments that would even make Gibbs blush, getting all up in his personal space, filling his head with the swirling smells of sandalwood and cinnamon, her words whispered directly into his ear in that low, husky voice that has him gripping the edge of his desk and begging his mind to focus on… other things. McGee, Nonna DiNozzo, Ducky, Ducky naked… ew, no, abort, abort, he'd rather Ziva see the results of her teasing than picture that.

The slip ups stop sometime around married couple in a hotel room and dismembered legs and freezing cold storage containers. Maybe it's something to do with the fact that he got to see her naked (Kate would never have suggested that they have sex – fake or not – just on the off chance that they were being watched, and having seen every inch of Ziva's toned body, including the intricately inked tattoo on the inside of her thigh that would no doubt have succeeded in finally winning Abby around… he's under no illusions as to who she is). Maybe it's the way she actually seems mildly concerned about him after he takes seven whacks to the face (he may not have been counting but of course, she had been) and even offers to drive him home (though thankfully for his aching head and his bruised body, Probie-Wan Kenobi does it instead; though he has to admit that the Mossad Liaison Officer both smells and looks nicer than McRoomService).

Maybe it's the game of rate my ass she treats them to in the squad room (apparently his would be a solid five out of five if it wasn't for the quote-unquote excessive hair that she'd seen during their undercover performance the week before and he's not gonna lie, the minute she said that he'd been seriously tempted to do something about it). Maybe it's the way she tries to help him when he's in jail on suspicion of murder (he enjoys being regaled with tales of her slamming a man up against a wall and rubbing their federal warrant in his face with the kind of glee usually only shown by little kids on Christmas), the first sign that she might actually care about him beyond casual flirtation and sexual tension.

Maybe it's the semi-serious, semi-irritated conversation they muddle through, stuck in the cold, dark storage container with only each other, millions of dollars in false bills, and who knows how many copies of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai for company. Maybe it's the meal she cooks for him afterwards, more than making up for him not being invited to her dinner party the night before (given the choice between visiting the apartment of his hot new co-worker with the rest of his team and visiting it alone, he knows which scenario he prefers… even if he is curious as to just how she ended up with friction burns on her knees).

It doesn't matter; she stops being Kate's replacement and starts being Ziva David - crazy Israeli chick with a worrying obsession with knives and who drove like there was no one else around (there was, and the cacophony of horns following them everywhere was proof of that). He stops seeing an equally dark-haired woman, one with paler skin, a cross around her neck, and a general don't talk to me, Tony attitude sitting at that desk. It's still not Ziva's desk but it's close, and most days he can look at it and see her sitting there without feeling a gnawing in his chest and warm blood splattered across his face.

It's not until years later that he makes the same mistake again, after a nasty blow to the head leaves him slumped on the sidewalk while everyone else rushes off to make the arrest. He watches his former Mossad partner and Gibbs drag the beaten, handcuffed murderer towards the charger and he knows he's missed out on one hell of a beat down.

He smiles woozily as the world spins and blurs around him, "Tell me Kate kicked his ass, boss." The guy was, from what Tony had heard about him, a woman-beating, woman-murdering, piece of shit, it'd only be fitting if the sole female member of the team had been the one to thoroughly kick his ass.

It's been years of knowing her, flirting with her, and generally being with her; undoubtedly getting closer to her than he ever managed to do with Kate. That probably makes it worse. It's doubly worse that he only knows he's done something wrong when her face falls and Gibbs threatens to hit him even harder. To make it triply worse, he doesn't even figure out what it is until McGee calls Ziva's name, asking her to come and check something out and she goes with a doe-eyed glance backwards and a robotic stride.

"I screw up, boss?" He manages to ask through a thick tongue and a lump in his throat.

"Ya think, DiNozzo?" Gibbs says, until Tony looks at him, wide eyed and freaked out and then he lowers his voice and adds, "Go see Ducky 'bout your head, we got things here, you can make it up to her later."

It seems like permission to do something the rules would usually forbid him from doing but that could just be concussion.

"Sure thing, bossman."

Like a good little agent, he does as he's told, shuffling off and trying to get the hurt expression on Ziva's face out of his cloudy mind.

He feels like he deserves the pain he feels as Ducky pokes and prods at his bleeding head even as the doctor mutters apologies and asks him to stop squirming.

When he shows up on her doorstep that evening with an apology bottle of wine (that he shouldn't even really be drinking at all), a large pepperoni pizza from Papa Don's (her favourite), and a sincere, "I'm really sorry, Ziva," her smile as she lets him in makes it worth it.

Later, as he dozes off, with his head in her lap and her fingers weaving expertly through his hair, he decides he might just let himself get smacked in the head more often (provided he never, ever, forgets her name again, no matter how temporarily). The status quo seems to be different whenever one of them's hurt or sick, he's noticed, they're more willing to push things, to act more touchy-feely. A touchy-feely Ziva is a Ziva he likes very much, especially if it's him she's touching.

There was that time Ziva had the flu the year before and he'd decided to drop in on her after work. She'd called in sick at nine that morning (and by called in sick he means that she'd sent a rambling, incoherent, not completely lucid text to McGee which vaguely translated to 'got the flu, won't be coming in') and something he'd learned about Ziva was that she didn't call in sick. He was curious to observe the rarest of specimen - the lesser spotted, red-nosed, sniffling, fever flushed, Ziva David.

He'd turned up with his collection of James Bond movies, out of date cold and flu medicine he'd had in his apartment, and a smile on his face. She'd let him in with a reproachful glare and a barrage of coughs. He knew immediately he'd made the right choice when she first referred to him as 'Gibbs' then 'McGee' before finally settling on 'Tony' (said through a blocked nose and a scratchy throat, it sounded more like 'Dony', but he knew what she meant) and apologising in Hebrew.

He's still not sure how but he'd ended the day sprawled on her couch, James Bond marathon on the TV and Ziva's head on his chest - the heat from her cheek burning him through his t-shirt as she shivered even under two hoodies (one of which had gone missing from his go bag four months ago, at the time he thought he'd left it at the crappy little motel they'd been forced to spend the night at after bad weather delayed their trip home) and a blanket, each breath a soft rattle in her chest. It had almost been worth ending up getting sick himself (especially when a still-pale but otherwise recovered Ziva showed up on his doorstep with home cooking and proper medication).

There was the time six months ago when Tony ended up in a minor car accident (between the two of them Tony never would've guessed that he'd be the first one to end up in hospital with car-related injuries). He'd woken up with his left arm in plaster, a sharp pain in his torso, and, most surprisingly, Ziva holding his good hand, her thumb running across his knuckles. He was struck by how small and delicate and remarkably un-assassin-like her hand seemed.

Even after a particularly hard Gibbs-slap, he'd sometimes feel her hand rubbing gently over the stinging spot and he would tell her to stop in case they both got slapped again for playing grabass in the squad room but he decided pretty quickly it'd be worth it.

And who could possibly forget the time in the men's bathroom post Somalia when it seemed as though even the emotional barriers between them couldn't quite stop them from touching each other. Her hand on his face as she raised herself to her tip-toes so she could press her lips to his slightly stubbly cheek (how had he not noticed the height difference before? Had she always been that short?). His hands leaping first to grasp her shoulders and then his right hand against her cheek before he took off, part of his brain asking him why he'd just done that. Neither of their actions had felt entirely platonic.

After Mike Franks died as he cupped her face and she rested her head against his shoulder all barriers - emotional and physical - finally crumbled. It said a lot that the moment hadn't even been spoiled by the appearance of Abby and McGee, if anything it made it more poignant, it was a family coming together to mourn the loss of one of their own.

"You know I know who you are, right?" He mumbles as the movements of her fingers slow, as if she too is on the verge of sleep.

"Yes, Tony, I know you know who I am," she sounds amused, her voice warm from the wine and the food and, he likes to think, his scintillating, concussed company.

Her answer satisfies him, "Good." He pauses to try and arrange some semblance of a thought, "Can I stay here tonight?" He twists his neck to look up at her and it may just be the lighting but her face framed above him looks almost angelic as she bites her lip, pretending to contemplate her answer. "Ducky said I shouldn't be alone tonight," he clumsily taps his temple, deliberately playing up the pain, "you know, cause I could die."

"Well, in that case, I suppose you'd better. I wouldn't want your death on my conscience." She uses about two long words too many but he gets the gist anyway and, knowing that she isn't about to kick him out, settles for closing his eyes, a soft sigh escaping his mouth as her ministrations resume.

Yeah, he knows who she is alright. And sometimes he thinks he might just love her.