"I am not building a sandcastle, Tony."
That was his big idea. His plan. Why he drove out here. To build sandcastles. On the beach. In the middle of the work day. He had even oroduced this plastoc spade and a bucket. Where he got those, sbe wasnt sure. But he had them. And now he was csrrying them down to the beach. Why did he even want to build a sandcastle? It did not make any sense. It was not summer and they hadn't even talked about their childhood beach photos since that day at work with the extremely boring seminar. Even then they hadn't really talked about what had been happening in them, they'd done that even earlier. Nothing in this case had anything to do with sandcastles either. This was all just a lot of nonsense, as Ducky would say.
She stood on the path leading into the beach and crossed her arms. She was not even going to step foot on it, there was no way she was going to risk sand in her shoes for nothing. Because that was what she was going to do. Nothing.
Tony could do whatever he wanted, which was apparently building a sandcastle, but she was going to do nothing of the sort and she told him so. Repeatedly. For some reason, Tony looked extremely put out by this. She did not know why, he was the one that wanted to build a sandcastle, not her.
"I am not stopping you from building one," she told him.
As strange as she thought it was, Tony had definitely done weirder things so she wasn't about to stop him. She doubted he would even if she asked anyway. He gave her a hopeful look.
"I am just not building one," she added, making his face fall.
Why did it matter to him that she made one? If he wanted to go and do it then he should just do it. There was no need for her to do anything. She didn't even need to be here.
"Oh, come on! When was the last time you made one?"
"When I was a child. Because it is for children."
"I'm pretty sure that anyone can build a sandcastle."
"And I am not."
"Aw, come on, Ziva."
"No."
"We're already here," he said, gesturing around them. "We may as well."
"No, we may as well get back into the car and get back to work before Gibbs realises that we are taking long to get back."
"We can just blame it on traffic," Tony dismissed.
"He will know that it is not."
Gibbs always knew. Always. Tony may be comfortable risking his wrath but she was not. Not over something like this anyway. That was just ridiculous. Just as ridicuous as trying to build a sandcastle when it was freezing cold.
"Well, I'm going to build a sandcastle," he said and carefully looked around before sitting himself carefully on the sand.
Ziva raised an eyebrow disbelievingly. She could not believe that he had just done that.
"You are going to get sand everywhere in your clothes," she warned him, feeling like she ought to.
Tony frowned for a moment and looked down at himself lile he hadnt considered that. Which, knowing him and his sometimes impulsive decisions, he probably hadn't.
"Too late now," he shrugged.
She rolled her eyes at him, she had been doing a lot of that recently, she found. More so than usual.
"Can you not do this outside of work?" She asked as he started pulling a pile of sand towards him.
That way he could do whatever he wanted without annoying anyone. Namely, her and Gibbs. But mainly her right now.
"Nope."
He didn't even bother looking at her as he starting putting his sand into the stupid plastic bucket he had brought, making his sleeves damp as he did so. Now he was going to be damp and sandy and he was going to complain to her about it all day.
But still he continued, even taking a quick trip down to the water to scoop some of it up in an effort to get his sand to the right consistency. Which didn't even work but that wasn't the point. He even made a bg fuss on where he was going to put it and hefting the bucket up and down, appaently trying to figure out how to upturn it "the best way". Evetually, he had a sandcastle in front of him
And, she could not take it anymore.
"You're doing it wrong," she said in exasperation, sitting down next to him.
She was probably going to be finding sand everywhere for the next couple of weeks but she did not care because the more pressing matter at hand here was that Tony obviously had no clue how to build a sandcastle. At all. Because what he was attempting was definitlet not one. In fact, it was an insult to sandcastles. She definitely had to correct this. Right now.
Laying claim to the bucket, she did just that. She was much quicker than him too, having a sandcastle standing proudly in mere seconds without all the fuss that Tony made over positioning his.
She decided to ignore the incredibly smug look on her partner's face. She was the one who had won here - her sandcastle was definitely superior. Far more superior. It hadn't collapsed on one side, lile his had because she knew how much water she had needed. Hers also had little windows because of course sandcastles had to have windows.
"Come on, just say it," he said coaxingly.
"Say what?"
She had an idea what he wanted her to say but she wanted to make sure. And if it was what she thought it was, she did not want to say it.
"Building a sandcastle was fun, wasn't it?" He said knowingly.
Her eyes narrowed and she pointed the plastic spade at him threateningly.
"Do not push it."
He gulped as she made it hover close to his neck.
"Not pushing it."
