tiva, follow-up to day 19, though I guess it can be read without context
Prompt: Shared sunsets
Her whole body felt itchy and freezing. She fought against the heaviness of sleep, and managed to slowly open her eyes. After a few blinks her eyes focused on Tony, who was standing at the window, his face illuminated by the soft warm glow of the setting sun.
She tried to speak, but the only sound leaving her dry mouth and sore throat was a croaky mumble.
He turned on his heels in an instant, a soft smile on his lips as he looked at her with weary eyes. "Welcome back, sleeping beauty, you slept through a beautiful day."
Ziva blinked slowly, as he approached her, a vague memory of a conversation at sunrise fighting to resurface. His face looked drawn and haggard, and Ziva wasn't entirely sure whether the redness in his eyes was merely a reflection from the setting sun outside, or the result of a rough day.
"Was it," she said hoarsely, "beautiful?"
He opened his mouth, then shook his head minutely, and quietly said. "I don't know."
Memories of the shooting drifted through the fog in her mind. They were going to have lunch. "How was lunch?" Her voice was feeling a bit stronger.
He frowned, and blinked a few times. "I didn't have lunch."
"Oh," she said as her eyelids began to droop. A shiver ran through her, and before she could mention she felt cold, a warm blanket was covering her, tucking her in comfortably. She smiled and forced her eyes open, finding Tony's eyes full of worry staring back at her.
"Better?" he asked, as he gently stroked her hair.
She blinked slowly, feeling safely cocooned in the warm blanket and his close presence. "You smell better than the hospital," she mumbled.
His eyes finally lit up, and he let out a chuckle. "That's not hard to do."
She frowned, felt frustration build, that was not what she meant, but at least he seemed more like himself. Tony doesn't skip lunch if he can help it, though. She licked her dry lips, and asked, "No lunch?"
Tony's brow furrowed, and the haunted look appeared in his eyes again. "No, I was preoccupied."
Ziva nodded, barely. "The case."
When he sighed and plopped down into the chair next to the bed, he seemed to take all the warmth and comfort with him. She wondered why the sunlight now bathing the whole bed in a warm glow didn't feel warmer.
He rubbed his face. "I don't know how the case is going, Gibbs said he'd call if he needed me."
Part of her wanted to touch him, hold his hand, comfort him, the other part felt as exhausted as he looked. She asked if he had been there all day, but it came out all slurred.
He chuckled again, making her heart feel a little lighter, and her mind brighter.
"English, Ziva, I may be able to memorize a few lines of Hebrew, that doesn't mean I understood a word of what you just mumbled."
His hand had gone back to caressing her hair, and combined with the loving gaze illuminated by the setting sun, she both wanted to drift off to a pleasant sleep, and stay awake so she would not miss a thing.
"Sleepy," she mumbled.
"You've been very sleepy, in fact, the nurse suggested that if you didn't wake up soon, I should try kissing you awake."
"Did you?" Ziva asked, trying to figure out how he could have kissed her from across the room.
"No," he said, as sadness swirled in his eyes.
"Why not?" Ziva asked frustrated, fighting against the fog in her mind.
At a loss for words, he pulled his hand back and shrugged. "Life isn't a fairy tale, or a movie."
Hearing him say those words crushed her heart. While she hadn't believed in fairy tales and happy endings since she was a little kid, he had always seemed to have kept some of that hopeful, childlike wonder. Sadness and fatigue took over, and she let her eyelids drift close.
A moment that felt like eternity later, she felt his thumb caress her cheek, wiping away a tear she hadn't realized she had shed, before feeling his lips touch hers ever so softly.
She opened her eyes to find him hovering over her once more, his tongue briefly licking his lips, before smiling widely.
"I guess I was wrong, kissing you awake does work."
Ziva huffed, and struggled to free her arm from underneath the blanket, with the intent to jokingly slap him. Foolishly he helped her by lifting the blanket, fortunately, the loving look in his eyes, and brain fog, made her say that kissing her asleep works too.
He grinned, and tapped a finger on the back of her hand. "How much of this is the anesthetic talking?"
She thought for a moment, digging for clarity. "Not enough," she said with a giggle.
Like the flick of a light switch, the lightheartedness left his eyes. "You scared the living daylights out of me."
Ziva frowned at the sudden change of mood and topic. "That is a movie, yes?"
Tony chuckled, and in his best Sean Connery impression, said, "Bond, James Bond."
Ziva tried to smile, despite her confusion.
"That was a Timothy Dalton one, actually, but I can't do his voice."
Ziva weakly lifted her hand and patted his cheek. "Can't do Connery either."
Tony chuckled. "You'll pay for that when you least expect it. Could be tomorrow, or next week, perhaps twenty years from now."
Ziva raised her eyebrows. "Twenty years is a long time."
His face fell, the haunted look taking over his eyes once more. "The past ten hours felt like twenty years."
"I…am sorry I was," she licked her dry lips, "too slow." If she had pulled her gun just a second earlier, this all could have been avoided.
Tony shook his head in disbelief. "I should've…" He rubbed his face with both hands, then inhaled deeply.
Ziva took his hand in hers, and saw a calm determination settle on his face.
"All that matters, is that we get to share many more sunrises and sunsets together."
She struggled to keep the sleep at bay, eyes drifting close at the mere thought. As he gently caressed her cheek, she made one last effort to meet his gaze.
"We will ride off into the sunset together," she said with a wink, before finally drifting off.