Chapter Text
“Jesus Christ.”
Tony’s jaw hit the floor so hard, the entire building must have shook on impact. His mouth was agape in a single second and there was no chance he was going to stop the very visceral, very obvious reaction.
“Anthony,” Ziva scolded.
Her hands fiddled with the earring in her hand as she slipped the back on the rather large diamond stud. It was not the usual choice that she would make in accessories. Ziva was a small hoop or little dangle kind of woman, understated and the opposite of ostentatious. Except the evening called for something much flashier, so with no discussion, a little velvet box had appeared on her bedside table that morning. Tony had left for work already, but managed to sneak the jewelry into their bedroom without so much as a peep before making his way to his Beamer parked in its usual spot in front of the building. Ziva had chuckled to herself when she flicked open the box with just her thumb, entertained both by Tony’s delivery of the goods and the earrings themselves, not cheap for something she’d likely wear only one night. Their own little scene from an action movie they happened to be starring in.
When Tony finally mustered the strength to shut his mouth, he let out a deep exhale as a sign that closing his bottom lip hadn’t stopped the overwhelming feeling tingling through his limbs.
He loved Ziva David for a lot of reasons. Her strength. Her resilience. Her unwavering love of their daughter. Her ability to kill a man with a paper clip if she so chose, and very nearly Tony had almost been the victim of that a few too many times.
But there was no denying the physical attraction. The way no other woman had ever made his pulse race and his palms sweat in a nervous haste that had him wanting to grab her with both hands while also wanting a quick exit before she realized he’d never been good enough for her. The only person to ever stun him into silence with a single entrance into a doorway was Ziva and she was the only one who ever would.
“Nothing else to say?”
He shook his head.
“You told me to look the part. Is this not the part?” Ziva shifted to give Tony a straight on view of her entire look for the evening.
“I mean… Well…” He sputtered. “Yes, but…”
“But what?”
“But I didn’t,” Tony waved a hand up and down in reference to her attire from head to toe. “I didn’t expect this.”
“You thought you would ask me to do this and I would what? Half ass it?”
“No, I just…”
“You just thought I would half ass it.”
“Now Ziva, you’re putting words in my mouth.”
Her eyes narrowed his direction. The pressure of her glare made Tony reach for the bow tie he had so delicately tied around his neck. His office suddenly felt much smaller and much hotter than it had before. Hotter for sure. The heat was glaring at him.
“I never thought you wouldn’t do what was necessary,” Tony choked out. “This is just even more than I thought necessary.”
Ziva watched his eyes fall from her face and float down her body, stopping a few places that were very reminiscent of a move Anthony DiNozzo Sr. would make if given the chance to see Ziva in that moment. The apple sometimes fell far from the tree and sometimes it never fell at all. But she allowed him the chance. A taunt.
“I suppose I still have time to go home and change. Maybe something, I do not know, more appropriate. More like the mother of your child.”
“Absolutely not!”
Ziva burst into a fit of laughter at the staunch protest from Tony. The sound filled his office and for a moment it felt like an older version of them. Well a younger version, actually.
That time undercover in Berlin when Ziva’s world was trying its best to fall apart and for even just a little while Tony felt like her rock, like the one person she could really count on when the list of people who’d disappointed her continued to grow. She’d chuckled at his joke about being the type of woman who hung up her man’s clothes. She’d carefully laid herself down next to him in the bed there was only one of… and they’d never really talked about the way they’d woken up from that nap easily tangled in each other’s arms. He’d stood, unhiding, at the edge of the bathroom and watched her ready herself for a night on the town that was anything but. She never stopped him, but shared a few soft glances in the mirror’s reflection as he admired. It had been just as much a time for Ziva as Tony that on the tips of their tongues they could taste the domesticity of life if they’d admitted their feelings for each other. Like children playing pretend. They had been playing pretend, just not the right kind.
“You remember that time in Berlin?” Tony casually tossed the question out.
“I am expecting there to be fewer diamonds this time.”
“The ones I got you weren’t enough?”
“They were plenty,” Ziva’s response was softer than the conversation had been. She felt a blush creeping up her cheeks, seeing now that Tony had used the evening as an excuse for the purchase, but they were very much a gift for her more than an addition to the costume.
The conversation stalled momentarily. Ziva’s eyes flitted around the room and landed on the large prints covering the top of Tony’s desk.
“Are those the blueprints for the venue?” She asked, almost surprised by the detailed action of printing such things. Except it was not shocking. It was the correct move. Know the ins and outs of somewhere unfamiliar and never go into a mission begging to be blindsided. It had just been so long. So long since it was purposeful, not sprung onto them by a sociopath.
“Sure are,” Tony looked at them. “I was expecting it to be slightly more complex given the age of the venue, but Sophie and I think it’s pretty straightforward.”
“Hmm,” Ziva sauntered closer. She focused on the plans, very seriously taking in what she was seeing. It certainly was not her first rodeo.
“Four proper exits. A couple of windows that could be configured for someone who was desperate.”
The tingling started. The anticipation of an assignment that felt like the good old days. It felt like they were back in the obscene orange bull pen awaiting orders from a gray haired man who called the shots. There was much not to miss about that time, but right now Ziva recalled it fondly. It was invigorating and it was certainly not the running of classrooms and schedules that she’d grown accustomed to in her second career.
“How many guests?”
“About two hundred.”
“Not a small crowd,” She commented.
Any other commentary lingering on her lips was stopped in its tracks when the brushing of Tony’s fingertips dusted the back of her neck. Strands of hair being forced over her right shoulder where they had not been previously. It only added to the anticipatory excitement Ziva was already feeling, mingled easily just like Tony knew it would.
“DiNozzo,” But the name was a whisper as his hand found itself running down the side of her torso to land on her waist. A shiver snaked right down Ziva’s back.
“You make it really hard to help myself.”
“You could try.”
“Or there’s really no reason to.”
His lips met her neck. They were more supple than she had been expecting and in an instant, the blueprints blurred in front of her; there was no seeing the marked entrances or any details of a space they were only about an hour away from infiltrating. What was once an important image of study, no longer really mattered all that much if Tony was going to keep his contact with her.
This man drove her absolutely nuts.
He knew his power to stop her dead in her tracks at a moment’s notice. It did not ever matter the circumstances, Anthony DiNozzo could melt one former Mossad assassin in a single, quick and easy step. So he did.
Well now he did.
Ziva sometimes wondered what he did while they were separated. He’d not been dating for a few years; she knew because Sophie kept her up to date on such things. Tony had been focusing on just parenting and staying above water in the same way Ziva had, but there was some time that he was not nearly as lonely as she had been. She could speculate about the relationship Tony and Nicole had, but little good it would do for anyone. They had been together. Ziva and Tony weren’t. He didn’t do anything wrong. Except date a married woman, though that was far less his fault when it came down to the nitty gritty. No good came from a game of comparison.
Although, Ziva would wager quite the sum that they never had what she and Tony did.
Where Tony’s lips had meandered lazily onto her neck, they now snaked to their intended target: her pulse spot. She knew he must have felt her racing heart under his suction. It was probably the real reason he rested there, to taunt her with the knowing way he could feel the very visceral reaction she had because of him.
God, he knew her so well.
And she wanted to not want it. Ziva wanted to focus on the task at hand. There was a mission sitting in front of them, quite literally on the desk, but also as the time they had to waste ticked by. Her training berated her for getting distracted. The rest of her fell into Tony’s line.
A manicured left hand reached behind him. It landed purposefully on Tony’s ass, giving Ziva the leverage to press their bodies closer than they already were. Astonishingly, there was little room to be any closer than they already were. They were like magnets, pulled together by a force they had little control over and it had been that way since a certain accusation of phone sex left Ziva’s lips.
“David.”
“No reason to help myself right?” He could hear the smirk she wore on her face even if he couldn't see it.
They would always get themselves in trouble like this. Eventually, perhaps, they should have grown out of it. The physical allure that held the place of easiest distraction. Though part of the appeal of it, might be that it never changed. It transported them back to a time when there was not dinner to make, games to attend and practices to keep track of, businesses to run efficiently. It had been the constant for them for so many years that even in the swanky office Tony had earned through years of building a reputation, they could pretend for a moment that they were twenty three and thirty three again, hiding out in her apartment. If she closed her eyes, Ziva could almost feel the sticky sweet air of a DC summer that seeped through open windows. Or of an occasion where one bedroom in a Paris hotel room had played a role in healing some of the remaining broken pieces shattered in the desert of Africa.
Like playing pretend before they got paid to do that very thing.
“So then what’s stopping me from…?”
Tony didn’t finish his sentence and did not need to because he worked quickly. Hands gripped Ziva’s waist, fingertips digging into the skin above her hip bones. A swift maneuver had her spun around to be face to face with him. The combination of being tossed around and Tony’s cologne that just permeated Ziva’s consciousness made her dizzy.
Was it that? Or was it anticipating what could come next?
Like a well choreographed dance, Ziva stumbled a mere step backward, so her lower back rested on the edge of Tony’s mahogany desk. He side stepped gracefully, to place his leg between hers, not a question asked as they opened to accommodate. Tony’s hands landed on either side of Ziva’s torso on the desk and she snaked her toned arms around his neck. Years of rehearsal made it utterly seamless. No time wasted on situating when something better could be happening.
There would be moody dark mauve lipstick on his own face after the way Tony kissed her. No warning, but easily reciprocated.
“Tony,” She mumbled into his mouth.
He ignored her and she didn’t try again.
Her breath hitched so hard in her throat, Ziva almost choked when Tony’s fingertips slipped between the slit in her dress and the bare skin of her thigh. He had been planning that. Tracing his way higher and higher until she snatched his wrist in her grip. She worried they were going too far. Tony was worried they wouldn’t get far enough.
“We do not have…”
“We do if you would let me work,” Tony’s husky whisper made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “Actually, you do.”
There was no holding his hand back. Soon enough he’d found what was lacking under her dress and the gruff chuckle he’d let out made Ziva want to rip the bowtie off of his shirt, along with everything else he was wearing.
Damn him.
It certainly never crossed Tony’s mind not to do exactly what he was thinking of doing. He had the play book. In fact, he had written the play book on Ziva. What she liked, what she didn’t like, what worked quickly and efficiently and what drew it out for as long as either of them could last. All Tony had to do was flip through a few pages and decide because as he saw it the way Ziva’s head had melted onto his shoulder with a hearty sigh, he had her in the palm of his hand. Literally and figuratively.
“What was that about not having time?” He taunted.
“Shut up,” She breathed.
Tony felt her fingertips curl around her neck, not so nonchalantly slung around him as they had been a few moments earlier. Tony’s own hand slipped a little further and he knew by the way Ziva shifted her hips, that any question about permission had dissipated.
“Shit.”
Both so wrapped up in their own activities, the rest of the world blurring into the background, there was no chance either of them were going to hear the hushed click of the door knob opening and the office door revealing them.
“Oh my god!”
Tony and Ziva scattered. Legs and arms going every direction. Ziva tripped over her own heels catching herself on the chair in front of Tony’s desk before she fell over. Tony jumped backwards so far, it was astonishing he stayed upright. The racket could have alerted the entire city as to what they’d been doing.
“What the hell?” Claudette’s voice was filled with disdain for what she’d just witnessed. “What were you guys even… no. No. I know what you were doing and actually the last thing I need is an explanation.”
“We were just…” Tony choked on the words. “Prepping.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t even try.”
“Claudette,” Ziva took a deep breath to try and slow her racing heart; it did nothing. “Did you need something?”
She looked between her boss and the woman that was as close to wife as her boss would ever get and found it difficult to wipe the antipathy off her face. By all means there was no denying that they were adults, but Claudette wished they would have been adults somewhere that she could not find them acting as such. The images were seared into her brain.
Ziva felt her cheeks redden the longer she was stared at. “Claudette?”
“Sorry, still in disbelief,” Claudette retorted. “I just came to say the cars were here.”
“We will be down shortly,” Ziva turned her attention to Tony, allowing Claudette to gracefully exit and shut the door behind her. “That was…”
“Embarrassing as hell,” Tony ran a hand down his face. Some years ago, a version of him that played the playboy so well, would have loved the idea of him getting caught with a woman in his big expensive office, fooling around. That actually may have even been a secret fantasy of his. As an adult, a real adult, not a boy with a gun and a badge, Tony was mortified. That could have been anyone. Sophie, Borris, some very poor unsuspecting employee, their daughter if it weren’t for the luck of location.
“You started it.”
“David, don’t even. There was no protesting when you were grinding your hips on me.”
“I did no such thing!”
“Yeah. Right.”
“Anthony, we are both guilty and we will never live this down. You know she is out there telling Sophie right now, don’t you?”
“God. She is, isn't she?”
“Mhmm,” Ziva nodded.
“And now we have to get through the rest of the night like all of this never happened.”
“I cannot wait to see you try.”
“Look here Miss David,” Tony over-enunciated the moniker. “I am a professional. A true blue, trained pro and I don’t need your doubt.”
“You are a pain in the ass.”
“You keep coming back.”
She did. She always came back to him. In so many lifetimes and they’d lived so many of them. After Somalia. After her father’s funeral, even if she’d done something with someone she shouldn’t have. In Cairo for even just a moment when her large walls topped with barbed wire could be let down in honor of the man who’d searched the desert to find her. After Sahar’s reign of terror when safety felt so unfamiliar. After their world got flipped on its access to remind them that it was always them. Tony’s comment had not been made with deep intentions, but it struck Ziva in its truthfulness.
“Someday maybe I won’t.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
He’d never see it. Tony knew that. Ziva knew that. A very empty threat, but one she would make anyway just to spite him and his knowledge of the tether that kept them bound to each other.
“How do I look?”
Tony cocked his head at her, taking a step closer now that it felt safe to be within arm's reach of each other again. “The same that you did when I about fell over earlier?” Answering a question with a question because he didn’t understand hers.
“I mean do I look like I almost got caught having sex in the office of my…”
“Lover?”
“I hate you.”
“You don’t. You look like the same someone I know that probably has a knife hidden somewhere right now that I could never even guess.”
“That would be correct."
“I really better watch it then.”
Ziva took a deep breath, adjusted her curled locks to hang down her back once more and pulled her shoulder blades together as if she needed to fake confidence in front of a man who trusted her with his life, and quite honestly, had done so too many times. “Shall we?”
“You ready?”
A warmth tingled somewhere in Tony and it was not the same one that had prompted him to grab Ziva earlier. It was one that was filled with adrenaline. The kind of thing that he would have gotten off of in his younger days and as it turned out, he still might in his not so younger days. Tony wasn’t worried. He didn’t wonder what was going to happen or how many headslaps he’d earn for god knew what stupid thing he might pull, now he was in charge, calling the shots. He knew the plan; he’d created it. Just enough on the edge to make that thrill pulse in his veins and turn the evening into his very own Bond film. Perhaps there would be fewer guns drawn and stunts done, but Tony could dream.
“Always,” Ziva smirked. Though Tony knew that was actually true.
“I am not riding in a car with Claudette or Sophie.”
“Good thing they have their own then. We can hear about this later.”
Tony put a hand out, palm up, for Ziva to grab. She entertained his gesture, knowing damn well he was stepping into his character for the evening. He was no longer dad or boss or partner, he was Tony DiNozzo, some kind of ridiculously suave spy escorting his gorgeous date. She desperately wanted to roll her eyes at the whole thing, but Ziva refrained. Let him have his fun.
He kissed the back of her hand.
“Must you Tony?”
“The name is DiNozzo, Anthony DiNozzo.”
“I suppose you must then.”
Ziva was almost absolutely certain that had anyone else heard him say that, it would have been more embarrassing than being caught fooling around. If his child had heard him, he would have been obliterated. But nobody else heard and had been the case for so many years, Ziva put up with the nonsense like nobody else would.
“It is so nice of you two to join us,” The smugness in Sophie’s voice when Tony and Ziva emerged from the building and onto the street, told them both that Ziva’s supposition had been correct: Claudette wasted no time ratting them out to her girlfriend.
The same blush crept up Ziva’s cheeks and Tony dropped her hand that he’d been holding instantly like it would erase what they’d already done. Hand holding was G-rated in comparison to anything else witnessed.
“No use in pretending now,” Sohpie snickered.
“You know we could fire you right?” Tony retorted.
“You would never.”
“The drivers know the plan?” Ziva ignored the kerfuffle and tried to refocus the group on what mattered more than their escapades.
Tony noticed that in her question her accent grew thicker. That was her way of revealing the excitement she had. Reverting to the way she sounded when she was trained for these kinds of operations. It was so subtle nobody else would have picked up on it, but it didn’t go unnoticed by Tony.
“They are all good. I checked myself,” Sophie and Ziva were on a different level than their partners. A stunt like this was basically in their DNA.
“So we go?” Tony asked.
“We go.”
Claudette and Sophie climbed into their own unassuming black SUV. Tony reached for the door handle of the second one and opened it for Ziva. She gracefully climbed into the back seat, offering Tony a little smirk before shutting the door. The third vehicle remained for Tony, each car meant to arrive at different times for very exact reasons. With a quick glance around the sidewalk, starting just to dim in the sunset, Tony slammed the door shut and buckled his seatbelt as the car pulled away from the curb.