Consequences of Love and War: Chapter 21
A/N: Just because I'm getting lazy, I decided to cut back on my story recaps; I feel like I'm writing the same thing every day and got tired of doing so. So I'll do my best to get you up-to-date every couple of chapters, instead of each one.
And as much as I hate begging for reviews, I'm going to do so. Let me know what you think, good or bad. I like feedback.
Ziva David leaned her head back, letting her long ponytail whip in the wind as she closed her eyes under her sunglasses, trying desperately to pretend that she was back in Israel and not driving north with the top down in Tony's convertible in March.
No such luck. The heater was on as high as it went and she was wrapped in a jacket and blanket, and still freezing. She didn't know what she was thinking when she agreed with Tony's idea that putting the top down while they drove to the Hamptons would get them in the "beach spirit", whatever that was supposed to mean. She didn't know what he was trying to avoid: the thought of going after yet another arms dealer, or the thought of seeing his father.
She wasn't sure if he even knew.
"You want to stop and get something to eat?" She opened her eyes and turned to face him, seeing him looking over at her with a curious expression on his face.
"We just ate two hours ago." He frowned.
"Your point?"
She rolled her eyes. "If you had let me drive, we would be there already and would not need to stop and get something to eat."
"I don't think even you could turn a 1965 Mustang into a fighter jet."
She smiled thinly at that. "If we had left when I suggested, we would not need a fighter jet."
"You're the one who wanted to go running this morning."
She opened her mouth in indignation. "And you are the one who tackled me to the bed after I had showered and dressed!"
"I don't remember hearing you complaining," he shot back with a grin. "So, food?"
"Is that all you think about, Tony?"
He gave her a mock pout. "Ziva, I'm hurt. You've known me long enough to know that's not true." She opened her mouth to protest, but he was faster. "I also spend a good deal of time thinking about sex."
She snorted at his wide grin. "I have been able to figure that out," she replied dryly.
"I saw a billboard for a Cracker Barrel in about twenty miles."
She frowned, mentally replaying the conversation to figure out what he was talking about. "Is that some sort of derogatory racist term?" she finally asked. He laughed.
"It's a restaurant."
"But a 'cracker' is a slur for a white person of lower socioeconomic class, yes?"
"You don't know what spam is, but you've heard the term cracker?" He grinned and shook his head in wonder. "Do you want to stop or not?"
She sighed in defeat. "If it is that important to you, Tony, we can stop." He smiled again, but she couldn't help but notice that it didn't quite reach his eyes.
An hour and a half after they stopped—she was still mentally rolling her eyes at the fact that Tony 'couldn't decide' what he wanted to eat, despite the fact that she had known from the moment she opened the menu that he would be ordering the largest breakfast they offered, with bacon—they headed back out to the freshly refueled car, ready to resume their trip. At least, Ziva was, although she suspected that they wouldn't be on the road long before Tony found another delaying tactic.
With this in mind, she stopped before they reached the Mustang and turned to face him. An almost mischievous smile on her face, she tilted her head up to kiss him, her hands resting on his hips as he let himself get distracted. A minute later, she pulled away from him triumphantly and jingled the keys she had pulled out of his pocket in front of his face. "I am driving," she declared, turning to unlock the driver's door. "No more stops. At this rate, the weekend will be over by the time we arrive."
"Hey!" he protested, but relented at the stern look she gave him. He rolled his eyes as he made his way over to the passenger side and waited for her to unlock the door for him.
They weren't far from the outskirts of the Hamptons when they had to stop again for gas. It had been a fairly quiet drive, conversation wise. Tony had initially continued the pointless rambling he had started in the restaurant, but even that had lapsed when Ziva didn't respond, not hearing anything worth responding to. Eventually, he turned on the radio, and she focused on driving—in the same manner she always drove—while staying warm as they continued toward their destination.
"I'll take over," Tony said from his position, leaning against the hood of the Mustang. She glanced at him over the top of her sunglasses, and he held his hands up defensively. "We'll go straight there, I promise. No more stops." She studied him for a minute longer before nodding her agreement, reaching for a water bottle before making her way to the passenger side of the car.
"This was the route I took while driving back for breaks from school," he commented as they resumed the trip. He glanced over to see her watching him through her sunglasses, and smiled slightly at the wary expression on her face. "I always drove," he continued. "Loved the drive in my old Mustang, but loved the fact that that was all the less time I had to spend at the estate with good 'ole Dad and step-mommy of the month even more." His jaw clenched a few times, his fingers tightening on the steering wheel before he continued. "Stopped thinking of the estate as 'home' when I was fourteen and my father's wife at the time—and don't ask which number it was, because I have no idea—decided that it would be better if I wasn't around and convinced my father that I needed to go to military school. Came back that Christmas to find that my room had been converted to a guestroom. Never really got over that." Ziva bit back a sarcastic comeback to the effect of how it was the loss of his childhood room, more than anything else, that registered with him, knowing that it wasn't really what he needed to hear. When she didn't say anything, he continued. "Dad frowned on my chosen major—and my chosen school—but didn't say too much about it. He had probably figured out by then that I wasn't going to be following in his footsteps, and figured that a professional basketball player was better than nothing." Again, his jaw clenched, and again, Ziva knew that it was better not to say anything and let him continue to vent. "All bets were off when I blew out my knee. I didn't really have a back-up plan—never thought I needed one—and when a frat brother suggested I talk to his father about a job with the Peoria PD, I figured I had nothing to lose. My father was less than thrilled. Kept trying to convince me to come work for him, even offered a brownstone in Manhattan and a pretty nice allowance to try to win me over, and I was tempted—oh, boy, was I tempted—but if there was one thing I learned from being shoved out of the house at fourteen, it was that I had to take care of myself." He gave a bitter chuckle. "I guess I hadn't realized until my dad cut me off once and for all just how hard it was to live off a new cop's pay, but as they say, I had burned my bridges long before that."
"You had not seen him since then."
He shook his head. "Nope. Not once. Two years in Peoria, eighteen months in Philly, almost two years in Baltimore, ten years with NCIS, and the only contact I have had with my father is an occasional wedding invitation and maybe a Christmas card or two from the firm." He kept his eyes fixed on the road in front of him for a long minute, not glancing over at the large houses they began driving by. "I'm still surprised that he agreed to let us come to the estate at all, much less invited us to his little party."
"Parents have a way of surprising their children sometimes," Ziva commented. He glanced over at her and removed his hand from the gearshift to squeeze hers briefly before shaking his head.
"Neither of us really won the 'great dad' lottery, but my father is nothing like yours," he said. He smiled thinly. "Except maybe for the great car collection, but for my dad, it's more about collecting status symbols than really enjoying them." He lapsed into silence again before suddenly turning on the turn signal, pulling into a long paved driveway and heading toward a wrought-iron gate. Without saying anything else to her, he leaned out the open window and gave his largest cheesy grin at the guard box just off to the left. "Tony DiNozzo, Ziva David," he said to the rent-a-cop glancing down at them. The slightly-overweight middle-aged man frowned slightly before nodding and pressing a button to open the gates. Tony waited until the impressive-looking gate had slid almost all the way open before the Mustang rolled forward again. He turned to Ziva and gave her that same large grin, the one that didn't reach his eyes, that he gave to the guard. "Welcome to La Casa DiNozzo."