Title: A House Is Not a Home
Rating: K
Summary: Tony has moved and things have changed. Tiva.
Disclaimer: I do not own any part of NCIS. But if you want to, I would like some for Christmas.
Spoilers: Anything from season 7 so far (up to "Endgame")
Chapter 3: Almost
The next time she finds herself at his house it is the middle of January and he has one arm slung around her shoulders. There is a metal crutch under his opposite arm and a plaster cast on his left leg. They had been investigating the murder of a Petty officer and their suspect had charged after Tony, tackling him like a football player, knocking his legs out from under him. In the end, after breaking Tony's leg and fracturing his jaw bone, McGee had shot their suspect and he'd died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
She had spent the afternoon at the hospital with Tony on Gibbs' orders. When he'd been cleared by the staff at the emergency room, and given a prescription for a low dose of vicodin, she had been allowed to take him home. Now, they are struggling to make it up the snow covered stairs together.
"Do you have your keys?" she asks, patting down his pockets.
He has been disoriented ever since the first shot of morphine and she was worried that he would pass out in her car and she would have to carry him into his house on her own.
"Can't remember," Tony mutters, not assisting her in the search.
She finds the keys in his inner coat pocket and struggles to unlock the door with her free hand. He is leaning heavily into her side as she pushes the door open and maneuvers them into his house. She leads them to the couch and allows him to sit there as she makes her way into the kitchen. She finds a glass, fills in with water, and swallows it quickly, before refilling the glass and carrying it out to Tony.
He is stretched out on the couch, his head back and eyes closed, and she watches him for a long moment. The incident with their suspect could have been much worse, she thinks, taking in the bruising and swelling on the right side of his face. He is lucky it was merely broken bones. He could just as easily be dead. She shudders at that thought and pushes it from her mind.
"Tony," she says, standing in front of him, "You need to sit up and drink this. The doctor said it was important that you drink water with your medication."
She waits for him to move but when he does not, she sighs. He is breathing heavily and she is well aware that he is not asleep. She leans over him then, getting as close to his face as she can.
"Tony," she says sternly, "You are not sleeping down here. It will not be good for your back or your leg to sleep on this couch and I am not carrying you up those stairs by myself so if you want to live through the night, you will open your eyes."
He opens one eye and smirks at her. She smiles at him, rolling her eyes, and steps back. She gives him some room as he shifts his leg around and uses the arm of the couch to stand. She steps closer, sliding her arm around his waist and feeling his arm weigh heavily around her shoulders again. She sets the glass of water on the small table beside the door, knowing that she will need both of her hands in order to get him up the stairs.
"Are you ready?" she asks, knowing the question is pointless.
Tony nods weakly and walks slowly beside her, keeping the pressure off of his leg as much as he can.
It takes them over twenty minutes to climb the stairs and when they reach the top, Tony sways heavily against her. She tightens her grip on him and leads him to his bedroom. They are both silent as she sits him at the end of the bed and shuffles around the room, turning on lights and pulling back his bedding. When she stops in front of him, he looks up at her with wide eyes, pupils dilated, and she has to remind herself that it is the drugs that make him look at her like that.
The nurses in the emergency room had had to cut his jeans off at the knee on his broken leg in order to check the injury and put the cast on and she now wonders how she is going to get what remained of his pants over the thick cast.
"Can you –" she asks, gesturing to his pants.
Tony nods, his fingers fumbling with his zipper, before lifting his hips and sliding them out from under him. He sways again and Ziva watches him fall back on the bed. He does not handle pain medication well, she reminds herself. She finishes removing his pants, forcing the material over the heavy cast on his one leg, and tosses them to the side. They will have to be thrown away.
She stands from her crouched position and stares at him. He is lying in the middle of his bed, sans pants, in a green button down shirt that is stained with blood. His eyes are closed and she knows that removing his shirt will be easier if he is sitting up.
"Tony, I am going to take your shirt off," she tells him and begins the process, one knee on the bed by his hip.
She makes quick work of the buttons, afraid of what she will feel if she lingers too long. When she is finished and his chest is bare, she pull him up so that he is half sitting and pulls his arms free of the shirt. He sighs as she drops him back on the bed.
She steps into the en suite bathroom that she had not noticed before and tries to rinse the blood from his shirt. It does not come clean and she throws it at the wall, dropping her head as she does. He could just as easily be dead, she reminds herself.
She returns to his room to find that he has already rearranged himself in bed so that he is lying under the covers. She watches him for a long moment, his soft snores confirming that he is finally asleep, and she gathers his ruined clothing and turns out the lights.
She finds herself sitting in his living room, staring at the empty fireplace. Her mind is racing and she cannot stop thinking back to that morning, watching as their suspect attacked Tony. She had been afraid, afraid for his life and afraid, in that moment, for hers as well. Tony had suddenly become a part of her, she was not sure when that had happened, but it was true. After years of training, of being told that her emotions were something she should be able to turn off, she had so simply fallen in love. And she had nearly lost that in a matter of seconds.
Now, as she sits alone in his house, she allows herself to see them here together. She allows herself to image their children, running in from the backyard. She imagines Tony making dinner for them. She imagines herself pregnant and happy and loved and before she can stop herself, she is sobbing on his couch.
She buries her head in her hands and let's herself feel what she had been denying all day. She could have lost Tony today, she could have lost a life she did not yet have, and she wanted that life so badly.
When she has stopped sobbing, when she has her breathing back under control, she takes her phone from her pocket and dials a familiar number.
Gibbs answers on the second ring.
"Yeah?" he says.
Ziva sighs, "Gibbs, it is Ziva."
"Yeah," he says again.
This is typical of Gibbs so she continues.
"I need you to tell me that Tony is okay," she says, her voice thick with tears. She knows that he can hear them.
"Ziva," he says slowly, "Tony is fine. The doctor told you that he would be all right."
She shakes her head even though he cannot see her, "That is not what I mean. I don't-"
But she does not know how to explain what it is that she wants him to tell her and she begins to cry again softly. This is not who she is, she is not weak, she is not emotional, she does not cry.
"Ziva, Tony will be fine," Gibbs tells her, "And you will be fine. And you will be okay together."
His words, she knows, are the closest thing to permission that she will ever hear, and she does not argue. He does not say goodbye before the line goes dead and she closes her eyes again. She is still thinking of Tony and the life that they will have as she drifts off to sleep.