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The faux-wood grain was smooth beneath her knuckles. Too smooth. She passed the bruises over it and there was no burn.
“Ziva.”
She startled. She’d always startled. It had been a flaw - a jumpy child shattered plates and bowls and her mother’s precious china - until her father had taken a rod and a fist to her and beaten that flaw into a strength like a goldsmith beating metal into shape. It was slow and it was methodical and it was agonizing, but she’d learned that if she bit her fist hard enough the sobs would come silent and that the slightest sound should have one hand on her weapon and one hand clenched into the same fist into which she muffled her tears.
“Tony.” She gave him a stiff nod. When wasn’t it Tony? He was the only one left at NCIS at this hour - Gibbs was gone, jetting off back to Mexico either not knowing or not caring what he was leaving behind, and Abby had split an hour ago to go sleep in her coffin like it was a joke instead of the same case that Ziva had put half her friends into, and even McGee had slipped out about fifteen minutes ago after mumbling something she didn’t catch and didn’t bother to decipher.
“Hey.” He grabbed the back of his high-backed office chair and swung it clumsily over behind her desk, muffling a curse as it nearly assaulted her filing cabinet. “Still here?”
“No, Tony, I am in my car.” She said it flatly, but it still sounded sharper than she meant for it to. Even Tony jerked his head a little, a mopey, kicked-puppy look flashing over his face.
“Touchy, touchy.” He retaliated by snatching the base of her desk lamp and giving it a spin so that it flung her into the light; she squinted, throwing her arms up to shield herself.
“Tony!”
“Ziva.” He turned the lamp, just a little, so that she was illuminated, but not blinded. “You didn’t let them clean you up.”
She forced a shrug; even that drew a scream out of her aching muscles. The Iranian woman had taken more out of her than she’d let on; Ziva had risen to beat her, but narrowly. Far too narrowly for comfort. The wounds she bore, the pain that had brought her to her knees, were real. “I have had much worse.”
“Like hell.” Tony shook his head, opening her desk drawer sharply. One hand rifled through it; finally, he snagged her white plastic standard-issue Red Cross first aid kit. She’d brought it in after McGee’s tenth papercut, injuries that he treated as grievous gunshot wounds. She’d tired of his whining. “She beat the shit out of you.”
“I gave as good as I bought.”
“Got, Ziva.” Tony shook his head, fumbling clumsily with the foil wrapping of an alcohol swab. “You gave as good as you got.”
“Does it matter?”
“Always does.” The foil surrendered with a tiny ripping noise and Tony raised the swab to her face. Ziva allowed herself a tiny intake of breath, shifting back a little in her seat to widen the gap between herself and him.
“Hey.” Tony brought up his other hand, gentle, and just barely skimmed it over her cheek. The tip of his finger trailed slowly over her skin, weaving just a little to dodge the bruises and tiny clots of drying blood. “May I?”
He indicated the swab. After a moment, Ziva forced another stiff nod.
The alcohol stung sharply, but Tony’s touch was shockingly gentle. He smoothed it over her temple, carefully collecting the bloody smear from her skin. She let just the tiniest bit of tension out of her muscles, but she couldn’t bring herself to relax. The hair on her arms was standing on end.
“You know,” Tony said, after a few stiff moments, “for someone whose whole job it is to get beat up, you’re a pretty terrible patient.”
It shouldn’t have, but the words stung more than the alcohol. Ziva’s hand flew up and smacked his wrist away, not bothering to go light on the blow like she usually would. “I am sitting still for you, am I not?”
“Ow.” Tony winced, rubbing his wrist. “Yeah, but you’re wound up tighter than a spring. You got a medical phobia or something?”
“No, Tony.” She forced herself to take a deep breath - in through your nose, out through your mouth. That was what her father had whispered in her ear the first time she’d shot a sniper’s rifle, one hand on the small of her back, grinding her thirteen-year-old body into the sand, one hand planted into the earth, his stinking breath hot on the soft skin of her neck. She’d spent a long, long time after that day biting her fist. “I do not have a medical phobia or something. ”
“Then what’s up?” He leaned back in his chair, legs wide, arms crossed, head tipped back. Sprawling. Unafraid of taking up space.
She tore her gaze off him and stared straight ahead, into the shadows too distant for her desk lamp to beat back. It was easier to speak when she didn’t have to look into his face. It was easier to sleep with him that way, too. “You feel very entitled to the truth.”
“Well…I mean, yeah.” He shuffled; out of the corner of her eye, she watched him lean forward, elbows on his knees, hands folded. “Ziva, we-”
“You are not my boyfriend.” She cut him off as sharp as the knife at her hip.
“Yeah, I’m not.” His voice was tightening with a bobbin of frustration. “But I’ve gotta mean something to you, at this point. I’m at least your friend. So if you could stop treating me like some kind of stranger-”
“You are a stranger!” She brought a flat hand down on the desk with a slam that echoed through the building. “Why do you not understand this, Tony? You have known me for a year and you have been in my bed and you believe that is enough to make us friends? Your naivety is not my fault! And it most certainly does not entitle you to the truths about me!”
Silence settled awkwardly over them like a blanket, suffocatingly heavy. Ziva glared down at the grain of her desk. Her wounds were hurting more, now. Her ribs burned where she’d kicked her, and her head was pounding with the first tendrils of a migraine. “You wouldn’t want to be my friend, anyway,” she whispered. Her voice thickened against her will with a hard lump in the back of her throat like a golf ball.
The words disappeared into the maw of the gaping silence. She refused to look at Tony - if she did, she thought she might shatter like one of her mother’s precious china plates - but nothing seemed forthcoming from him, anyway.
She drummed her fingers on the surface of her desk, hard, ignoring the pain in her bruised knuckles. That was one flaw no one had ever managed to beat out of her. She didn’t sit well in silence.
Finally, she snapped. “Well?! Does a pig have your tongue, Tony?”
“Cat,” Tony murmured.
She spun in her chair to face him, so hard that she nearly slammed into the desk. “What did you say?!”
“Cat,” Tony repeated. He was closer than she’d realized; maybe a foot away. His knees were nearly brushing hers. “It’s cat got your tongue, Ziva. Not pig.”
She shivered, slightly, something that had nothing to do with the air conditioning that blasted through the office all day, every day. Nevertheless, she didn’t let herself pull away. “Does it matter?” she whispered.
“Always does,” Tony said again. His voice was low, husky - she’d never heard him talk like that. At least, not when he wasn’t pressed up against her, shirtless and sweaty, breath coming in ragged gasps, firm muscles flexing against her, holding her down into soft, soft sheets, steady fingers unclasping her bra with a careful consideration so as not to tear the stitching-
And then he was kissing her. She’d known he would. She’d posed as a mistress to enough men to know when one of them was going to kiss her. This was different, though. Even for Tony, it was different. One of his big, warm hands cupped her cheek, careful not to brush against her blackened, swollen eye, and he leaned in slow, so slow, slow enough she could shove him away and grind him into the carpet if she wanted to. She didn’t. She let him come into her space and take her this time, breathed out a soft sigh against his lips as they met hers. They were soft, too, and ghosted over hers like the kiss of a butterfly’s wings, just the slightest touch.
Tony was the only person in the world who had ever handled her like she might possibly be fragile.
She let her hands reach out and touch, the briefest thought that he might smack her away flashing through her head, but she shoved it aside and let her fingers trail down his shirt over his chest. He shuddered softly, exhaling into her mouth as her hands settled over his pectorals, his well-muscled chest tensing under her palms.
She kissed in deeper, and he let her, his lips moving against hers. He let her set their pace, let her lean in and come to him, putting the reins in her hands. The tension drained out of her slowly and she relaxed into it. Relaxed into Tony.
She could have kissed him all night, and she might have, if she hadn’t leaned a bit too far and her bruised ribs shrieked in agony. She fell back into her chair and that only made it flare up again, sharp and burning and painful. Tony was on his feet in an instant - she could see that much through her blurring vision. “Ziva,” he said, soft. “Where does it hurt?’
“Ribs,” she managed through gritted teeth. “My ribs.”
“Where she kicked you.” Tony nodded and sank down, down so that he knelt before her, knees on the dirty government issue carpet, his hands tugging at the hem of her shirt. “Let me see?”
She managed a nod and he gently rolled the fabric up. Her ribs would be black-and-blue - it wasn’t the first time she’d been kicked while she was down and it wouldn’t be the last. That didn’t stop the wall of pain that screamed through her like wildfire when the fabric dragged over the bruises and she stuffed her fist into her mouth on instinct, biting down hard as the tears welled stinging in her eyes.
“Hey!” Tony exclaimed softly, his eyes following the trajectory of her hand. “Hey, hey, Ziva, Ziva…” He brought his hands up to hers, one closing softly around her wrist and the other cradling her cheek. A tear she couldn’t blink back rained down onto the curve of his thumb and mortification bit into her like a rabid dog.
“Ziva,” Tony said again, sternly, not in his dopey field agent voice but in his I’m the boss now voice. His hand tightened - not too tight, not enough to hurt, but tight enough that he meant business. “Don’t do that.”
He wrested her fist from her mouth and he might as well have ripped the floor out from beneath her feet. The sob welled up in her throat and she didn’t have anything to fight it back. It tore from her roughly, ripping her throat jaggedly as the ugly sound split the air. Tony winced a little. He passed the pad of his warm, calloused thumb over her knuckles. Even with the tears swimming in her eyes, she could see the bite marks denting her skin. “It’s okay,” he said, and his voice had softened into dopey Tony, dumb Tony, made her burnt eggs for breakfast when he spent the night and stroked her hair when he thought she was asleep Tony. “Ziva, it’s okay. You can cry if it hurts. You can cry. You can just cry.”
No, she couldn’t. But the next ugly sob was already on its way, raking through her throat, and it tore out of her before she could stop herself. It hurt and that only sent more hot tears spilling over, and then she was crying, loud and ugly and weak, big, awful sobs that echoed through the whole first floor. Tony put one warm hand on her knee and the other forced open her fist and held her hand.
The crying hurt her ribs and the pain only made her cry harder. Her nose clogged up in minutes and that made it hard to breathe. Tony heard her gasping and shuffled to the side and brought his hand from her knee up to rub her back in slow, soothing circles. It helped, a little.
Somehow she turned and hid her face in his chest. The musky smell of sweat and formaldehyde clung to his jacket, from what little she could smell through her blocked-up nose. He must have been down with Ducky, checking on the autopsies.
Even when the crying stopped, she couldn’t bring herself to lift her head. Whether that was because of how good it was, his hand on her back and tangled in the ends of her hair, or how she wasn’t sure she could ever look him in the eyes again after this, she couldn’t tell.
Tony decided for her. He cupped her cheek and forced her to tilt her head up at him, and she looked him in the eyes. They were warm, and kind, and unusually soft for DiNozzo. “Don’t do that anymore,” he said simply, holding up her loosened fist. “Promise.”
Ziva nodded, a little less stiffly. “Promise.” She was half-surprised that her voice worked.
“Okay. Good.” Tony patted her hand, softly. “Hey, Ziva?”
She hummed acknowledgement, studying his jacket to contemplate if he would let her smash her face into it again.
“Can we be friends now?” It was innocent, childlike; when she glanced back up, he bore a boyish, hopeful grin. He could be such a kid sometimes.
She sighed; scooted back just a bit. “Tony. My friends very often end up in caskets.”
“And mine don’t?” Tony reached out and took her hands, kept her from pulling any further away. “NCIS might not be Mossad, but it’s dangerous. I mean, just last year, Kate-” He stopped there. His throat bobbed dangerously.
“All right.” Maybe the Iranian had been right. The U.S. was making her soft. Regardless, she couldn’t let that sad look stay on his face. “All right, Tony. We can be friends.”
The smile came back over his face, although it had dimmed slightly. “Yeah. Okay. We’re friends, Ziva.”
She nodded. “With bona fides.”
Tony sighed. “Benefits.”
“Whatever.”
He reached into the open first aid kit and removed something. Before she could react, he opened it up and plastered a Band-Aid directly over the bridge of her nose where the Iranian had punched her. “You should go home, Ziva. Get some rest. Take tomorrow off. You could use it.”
Her hackles rose at that. “I do not need-”
“You got the hell beaten out of you by an Iranian spy,” Tony argued. “I don’t need my agents out in the field when they’re moving like geriatric old ladies.” She glowered at him for that, but he ignored it. “So, Betty White, you’re going home, and you’re staying there. At the very least, don’t come in until 1000 hours.”
She blew out a reluctant sigh. Her ribs did hurt very badly. “I can live with that.”
“All right.” He took her hand; helped her to her feet. “Good work today, Ziva.”
She barely hid her snort of disbelief. “I made the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted List.”
“Yeah, exactly, you pissed off the FBI.” He clapped her back, gentle. “Go home.”
A half-smile crept across her face of its own accord. “Come with me, Tony?”
He nearly choked on air. “You mean-”
She shrugged, just barely. “As a friend.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Yeah, okay. On one condition.”
She hummed again in acknowledgement, leaning against his arm as they moved together towards the doors.
Tony paused at the threshold. “I’m driving.”