Ziva answered the front door slowly, after checking to make sure it was him in through the peep hole, and he put on his classic DiNozzo grin when he saw that she was the one who had answered the door, "Hey you, I couldn't stay away."

She smirked up at him, happy to see him, happy that he couldn't stay away from her. "I would say that you couldn't live without me, I guess."

Their eyes meet as an unspoken something passed between them. He wished he could kiss her here, and he was tempted to do it anyhow, regardless of the consequences. Instead, he contented himself by reaching up and pushing her hair out of her face. She had let it dry naturally because she was in such a hurry to make it to the party. It was wild, like she used to wear it when she first came to NCIS. Tony missed it sometimes, and he found it very alluring.

"TONYYY!" a familiar voice bellowed from down the hall in his direction.

They both turned around as Abby strode up to Tony, practically pushing Ziva out of the way, before squeezing her arms around his neck so tightly that he could barely breathe. Abby had taken off her shoes and was wearing brightly colored mismatched socks with black leggings. She had a glass of white wine in one hand that she was slinging around dangerously, and had managed to acquire a pair a black cat ears on her head since she and Ziva had been alone.

Still squeezing his neck tightly, Abby lowered her voice, and whispered to Tony, "Hello, daddy, I'm so glad that you came."

Tony looked at Ziva from his captivity and widened his eyes until they looked like they were about to burst from his head. Ziva returned his stare with an innocent doe-eyed look and a shrug.

"Hey, Abby, I'm happy to be here." He responded after a couple of moments of shock. She still hadn't released him, "Abby, you're going to break my neck."

"Oh sorry, Tony," she said, releasing him, already striding back down the hallway to join the others, "Come on you guys. Join the party."

Tony rolled his eyes playfully at Ziva, "I can't believe you've already told her. You used to be so good at keeping secrets."

Ziva linked her arm with Tony's and pulled him down the hallway, before they got caught up in their little game of making faces at each other and witty banter all night. Ziva was intent on making them the kind of couple that actually existed outside of one another, which was hard considering that they spend so much time together. Although much of that time was spend working diligently on cases, and even when they were alone together their relationship often took a backseat to whatever they were working on at the moment.

x

McGee was completely plastered. He had probably never been this intoxicated in front of Gibbs or Ducky before and was kind of embarrassed. He certainly had been this drunk in front of Abby and Tony before, but that was okay because normally he was the one that was taking care of Tony when they drank. His head was spinning.

He felt rather alone tonight, as if everyone had been paired off except for him. Ducky and Abby weren't a part of a pair either, but somehow seeing the other three pairs made him painfully aware of how alone he was.

He looked at Abby who was spinning around in circles for some reason. God she was beautiful, and he wished that she loved him like he loved her, but he was certain that she didn't.

He scanned the room and stopped to watch Tony and Ziva. They always seemed to be together even in a crowd. It was like they were magnetically drawn to each other or something. He hoped for the sake of their workplace that they wouldn't do anything stupid, like start dating. They were practically too much to handle together already.

Jimmy and Breena seemed really good together. He envied their relationship, as they had so much in common and seemed to be completely infatuated with each other. He needed to find a girl like that.

McGee snapped back to reality, as he saw Tony approaching him, "Hey McMusical, What are you doing over here?"

"Well Tony I was showing off my musical ability to the party." McGee boasted. He was actually proud of his piano skills.

"I figured as much. Scoot over, I want to join you." Tony sat down on the bench next to his other partner. "You play and I'll sing."

"You've got to be kidding me. You're going to sing?" McGee looked at his partner dumbfounded. Singing was completely out of character for Tony, although when DiNozzo Sr. was in town he had joked to him and Ziva about how Tony used to be in a boy's choir. Apparently there was actually had a lovely singing voice inside that cocky jock exterior.

Tony grinned widely at his partner and put his arm around his shoulder squeezing him gently. He was in such a good mood tonight that his mind was practically a soundtrack of Frank Sinatra songs. He might as well vocalize it.

"Yep, I'm going to sing if you'll play something that I know."

Fill my heart with song and let me sing forevermore. You are all I long for all I worship and adore…

x

Gibbs was growing tired of the festivities. It had been a mistake to bring a date here for many reasons. Mainly he had been tied down to her all night and wasn't really able to enjoy himself like he would have been able to do if he'd come alone, but also his team had been acting completely weird about it. Apparently they had elevated him to a level where he didn't do human things like bring dates to parties and didn't know what to do when it had actually happened. Most of that was his fault, but lately he had been trying to be more relatable. Rule 51: Sometimes you're wrong.

It was nice seeing his team at ease. He knew that they were all overworked and needed a relaxing fun-filled weekend. He knew that the Jameson case had taken a lot out of them, so he had told Vance to direct any cases that they had this weekend to another team in order to give them a break. He had noticed that Ziva had taken the Jameson case especially hard. He knew that she wouldn't talk to him about her feelings, but he hoped that she would at least open up to Tony.

Maybe that was the reason why they had been coming into work looking exhausted for the past couple of weeks. However he doubted that was what was going on and had other suspicions as to where all of their energy had been going. Rule 12: Never Date a co-worker. He had no interest in confirming his suspicions. He had decided after careful consideration that he was going to ignore it until it had to be dealt with, if there was in fact something that needed to be dealt with.

Rule 10: Never get personally involved in a case. It was practically impossible to not get personally involved in the Jameson case. A nineteen-year-old navy lieutenant and his eighteen-year-old wife had been shot and murdered in a public park because they had witnessed two drug dealers kill one of their customers. The drug dealers had graciously spared the life a two-month-old female infant that the couple had been pushing in a stroller through the park. However they hid the stroller and the bodies in the back of a stolen car, which was discovered a day later. The baby was starved and had been sitting in a hot car for an entire day, and although they had rushed the infant to a hospital, the baby passed a couple days later. Ziva had gone to the hospital several times to check on her.

It was one of the most gruesome cases that he had ever encountered working at NCIS. Even some of the most horrific people, serial killers and terrorists, who he had dealt with, would not have left an infant alone to die in a car. This time putting the bastards in jail didn't seemed good enough.

x

Ziva was getting antsy. The party had been amazing and it was nice to see everyone outside of the office, but she was ready to take Tony home. She was incredibly eager to get him alone again.

Gibbs and his date had politely excused themselves a couple of minutes ago, and Ducky was on his way out the door. McGee, Abby, and Palmer were far too drunk to function properly, however Brenna still seemed rather composed. McGee had fallen asleep in a chair in the corner of the room, and although Tony had been concerned about him, Abby had assured everyone that this was typical McGee behavior.

Tony was acting like a crazy man tonight, flamboyantly all over the place. She would have sworn he was intoxicated too if she didn't know for a fact that he hadn't touched anything since he arrived at Abby's several hours ago. She had never seen him this enthusiastic before and was pleased that this was his reaction to their development.

He had started off by singing with McGee at the piano, imitating Frank Sinatra, which Ziva never thought she would actually see, even after his father had alluded to his ability as a singer. After a couple of songs, he had gotten bored with performing and had decided that he wanted to go through Abby's massive record collection. In a matter of minutes he had scooped Abby into his arms and was making her dance with him to a compilation of swing songs that he had found in her collection. Breena and Palmer had joined in almost immediately, as apparently Breena was a member of the Swing Club in college.

After one song, Tony had lost interest in dancing with Abby and passed her off to McGee, motioning for Ziva to join him. She had protested, violently shaking her head in reply, "I don't know how to swing dance."

In response to Ziva's objections to swing dancing, Tony quickly jumped onto Abby's laptop, spending ten minutes making a playlist and downloading it to her IPod.

"You can't refuse me now," he grabbed her hand and pulled her towards him in the middle of the room, as Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World began to play off of the playlist that he had made solely as a pretense to get her to slow dance with him. It was the first time they had ever slow danced together and quite possibly the last time, since Ziva didn't really enjoy slow dancing. She preferred to move to something a bit faster, sultrier, but he was so insistent she couldn't resist him. It was similar to the first time that they had made love in that regard.

McGee and Abby had slow danced beside them, but Ziva could feel Gibbs eyes burning into the back of her head. They were being too candid for a work party, and she had finally urged Tony to join her on the couches to ease her discomfort, which was where they were now.

Ziva leaned her head on Tony's shoulder yawning loudly in order to get his attention that she was ready to leave, without drawing notice to the fact that they were leaving together. She wasn't as concerned with appearances now that the "adults" had left the party.

"Are you ready to leave, wifey?" He whispered softly into her ear. She nodded furiously into his shoulder.

Tony taking the hint spoke up to their host, "Well Abs, it's been great but I think I'm going to take off. Do you think you can take care of McGee tonight?"

"Yeah, of course!" She said, as she leaped out of her seat to give Tony a goodbye hug. I'll let him sleep on the couch, and make sure he's still breathing and stuff."

"I think we're going to take off too, Abby," Breena smiled at her, while motioning to her and her boyfriend. "Thank you so much for having us over it has been amazing."

The group shuffled towards the front door, saying their goodbyes and thanks to Abby. Tony and Ziva intentionally fell behind so that they could leave together without Palmer noticing.