Kofgopfgmopfdghopsjgiosjfkdbgjkvldf YESSSSS! Connection is back, at least for today, and life is beautifullllll, as are all of you. Without further ado, chapter seize.

The day is golden and smiling as they wake, suspended in a honey-coloured glow. A sweet clear light drips over the windowpane and melts the chill out of her skin. He has brought her breakfast in bed.

"I wasn't exactly sure what you liked, so I made ... well, everything." He smiles, curly and warm, and runs a shy hand through his sleepy hair. She sits for a while and accustoms herself to waking to a man who wants more than the night, who actively doesn't want the night, who makes her breakfast and makes her smile and makes her feel bare and burning. There is toast, croissants, a bowl of fresh fruit, and a cereal that she does not recognise. There is coffee, water, Berry Mango Madness. And she realises that she is starving.

She sips the coffee and slowly peels an orange, pulls the waxy strips away from the sweet and velvet flesh. He watches her, unsure of where to sit, stand, whether to leave. She shifts on the bed and he perches, wary, on a warm and crumpled edge.

"Tony, don't be...how do you say it? Frigid, yes? No, um, what is it, I don't know, how do you say-" But he settles himself, grinning broadly, into the blankets and pillows as she falters.

"Doesn't matter," she smiles, and hands him an apple. He cringes and looks disgusted and she laughs, presses it closer to his mouth until he sighs melodramatically and takes a bite. The crack of the glossy scarlet skin fills the room, and their eyes meet. Sweet, white, bitten flesh rests in her palm and the smile trickles away. And then he does purposeful bedroom eyes and the tension is broken like a stick over a knee.

He says, in between bites of apple and sips of milky coffee, that if she needs to talk – ever, never – he is there for her, and so is everyone else. For a second, she thinks of her father, and it surprises her to realise that all she feels is pity.

As they finish breakfasting like lovers, Tony gently tells her that Gibbs has explicitly banned her from NCIS. As she starts to protest, he raises a hand and his prior kindness stills her tongue.

"Come on, Ziva. This is not unreasonable. You need to get better. There's a lot of things that still aren't right. That aren't...OK. Understand? I've been told to look after you." As her face lights up wildly in indignation, he turns to humour. "Yeah, I know, I was pissed when he told me too. But I think maybe if we stick to naked showers five times a day we should just about get through it."

"Tony. Please. I'm fine. Obviously I won't run as fast, duck as quickly, you know, for a while, but I need to be back. Come on. Please. What am I going to do at home all day, huh? Sit and think about it?"

"No. We are going to," and he spaced out the words, pursing his lips with each sound, "watch a lot of movies and eat a lot of takeout. And, um, not go running. Sorry. Boss' rules."

"Gibbs would not do that to me."

"You're right, that's, uh, my rule." And he smiles with a boyish and triumphant charm and walks out of the room, calling back over his shoulder, "I got a great big list of films you need to see, by the way. Compiling it ever since you joined."

She surveys the bed, rumpled and drowsy with sleep and littered with breakfast. "That's, uh, quite a long time, Tony."

"Yeah, it's been...Jesus, four years now." There is a soft, companionable silence, and then his jaunty tone saunters back towards her. "Well, I should probably mention that it's a very long list, so we better get started."

She wants to throw a pillow at him, but it is a sweet spring morning and he is in the next room, so she smiles instead. Goes to the bathroom to wash her face and oh.

"You filthy zonah. What are you telling me?" A disembodied voice floats out of the sour darkness and slaps her in the face. Wrenched from her chair and slammed to the floor, and oh, she's found his breaking point and oh, she wishes she hadn't. But it's far too late to take it back.

"I'm telling you that what I told you that July, it was a lie."

"A lie? What exactly does that mean, sharlila?"

She is pinioned underneath his foot, his blade to her throat and no mercy in his eyes. The moon shines down on them, blinds her .She is proud and aching and unafraid. And she opens her mouth and spits poison.

"Shakli b'tahat."

He looks startled, almost. Almost drops the knife and kisses her. Almost. "Kiss your what?"

"You heard me. I told you I was a virgin when I wasn't. It was a test, devised by my father, my father, to see whether I was really good enough for espionage. And guess what? You fell for it, and I passed."

She will pay for it, and she knows it. But it feels good to hurt in retaliation, even just a tiny and disproportionate amount.

It always has done.

As he spits on her and slaps her till she bleeds.

"Tony! Tony! Tony Tony TonyTonyTony!" She screams at her face in the mirror, eyes fleeting and fleeing and black. Her small chest heaves; she gags, and is violently sick. Sick, and terrified, and he comes flying in, his face drenched in panic and confusion, and rips her away from her reflection, feels the frailty of her bones and the heaviness of her limbs, and oh, how she screams, piercing, unwavering. Hits out. Sobs.

And he does not know what to do. And it kills him.

Well, everything was seeming just a bit too happy and sunny and smiley and la-di-dah, wasn't it? Please keep reviewing, especially now I have back THE POWER OF THE INTERNET *dramatic music please*. As always, shall reply to every review I get :)

And, um, the title of the chapter translates as 'Coffee and whores' which is, um, an interesting concept...