Making Up for Lost Time Chapter 6: Spying 101 for Tony, a ncis fanfic

Of course I don't own any of the original characters, stories, concepts etc. of NCIS or otherwise, they belong to their respective owners. However, any characters and/or storylines that I created for this story are mine.

Dank an LorelaiGilmore82 für's lektorieren!

Cable Addict: SCNR

Making Up for Lost Time

Chapter 6: Spying 101 for Tony

Two days ago we had arrived at our preliminary destination. Ziva hadn't promised too much when she had stated that it was in the middle of nowhere, but that wasn't the only reason she had chosen it.

After our arrival, we had collapsed onto the dingy bed, too exhausted to care. The next morning had been filled with all sorts of hectic activity. Ziva had located the car that came with the cabin, I guess spies like package deals, too. Although that little, piece of shit car had absolutely nothing in common with the spy cars I had seen in any movie. An old, beat up Volkswagen Golf, probably around twenty years old, emanating all sorts of strange noises when we took it for a test drive. But, it ran, which was all we cared about at the time.

But soon I realized Ziva wasn't just checking out the car, she also was familiarizing herself with our new surroundings. I followed her gazes, trying to evaluate the territory as she was. Soon, I realized that I seemingly wasn't doing a very good job at it, I became a little frustrated.

"Ziva, if you'd tell me what you are looking for, maybe I could help you with it," I stated, a little unnerved.

She looked at me, stating, "Tony, I think you are a much better observer than you give yourself credit for. Let's finish this first round, find a place to get something to eat and sit down and compare our observations. I think you will probably have noticed around 90 of what I am looking for, ok?"

I nodded in agreement and resumed looking out the car's windows again. Half an hour later we came back to the area of our hideout.

"I think, I know where you're going, when we made our first turn leaving from our shelter, there was a small restaurant."

"See, I told you!"

"Told me what?"

"That you are a good observer!" She smiled at me.

I returned her smile and when the car stopped in front of the restaurant, I leaned over to kiss her. When our lips met, I realized that this was the first time we kissed after we had arrived in Germany, the strain of being on the run had forced us to focus on other things, but now it was hard to keep our passion under control.

"Let's eat something and then head back for some desert," I suggested, hardly managing to pull back, breaking our kiss.

"Sounds like a plan"

As we had hoped, the restaurant was almost empty. Ziva walked in and I followed her to a table close to the rear exit, acknowledging the waiter on our way.

"Won't we attract attention by just bursting in here, without waiting to be seated?"

"I'm sorry Tony, but the whole being assigned to a table by a hostess is something very American. In Europe only extremely upscale restaurants do that. Usually you just walk in, sit down at a table you like and make sure they noticed you."

I shook my head and asked, "I assume you didn't just randomly pick this table? Could it have to do with the fact that it is so close to the rear exit?"

"And also, with both of us being able to see both other exits," she added.

A moment later, the waiter approached our table, offered us the menus and asked for our drink order. Ziva handled that, because even though they probably would have understood me if I had ordered in English, but for now we didn't want anybody to notice that we weren't from around here.

After we had ordered our food, I told Ziva, "You know, this feels a little like I am taking 'Spying 101' at 'Secret Agent University'."

"That is, because you sort of are doing just that," was her calm reply. "Are you ready for another lesson?"

"Sure"

"When we get our food, watch how I eat and try to emulate it, ok?"

"Ziva, I have seen you eat!"

"Just wait and see", she stated, smiling.

After a while, our food was brought to the table and I started working on the huge steak I had ordered. All the time I kept glancing back and forth between mine and Ziva's plate. Damn, I had thought she had been kidding, but there obviously were more ways than one to use a fork and knife on a piece of meat (see Note at bottom).

After our meal, we were so concentrated on talking about the results of our morning scouting expedition that all thoughts about the promised desert were pushed to the back of our minds, at least for a little while.

I was surprised how much information the trip had yielded. We now knew about two major highways which would provide for a quick getaway, should it ever become necessary. Also, we had located a couple of stores where we would be able to get anything we needed during the next few days.

Finally Ziva stated, "But we should use the afternoon to do some more scouting, ok?"

I nodded.

"But not before desert!", Ziva mischievously smiled at me.

Note: In Europe (and everywhere else I went so far) people usually hold the fork in their left hand and the knife in their right hand while eating, they may put one or both down at some point during a meal, but that's about it, the fork stays in the left hand, the knife stays in the right hand. As far as I have observed, Americans do the same only while cutting the food, but then take the fork into the right hand to eat, sometimes switching back and forth for every bite. That ensuing back and forth of laying down the knife and then switching the fork to the other hand has always baffled me, but for the sake of this story (and probably also in general!) let's assume that it looks just as weird for an American (here: Tony) when this constant change is missing.