Chapter Text
Nothing goes as planned
Everything will break
People say goodbye
In their own special way.
All that you rely on
And all that you can fake
Will leave you in the morning
But find you in the day.
Oh, you're in my veins
And I cannot get you out
Oh, you're all I taste
At night inside of my mouth
–Andrew Belle, “In My Veins”
Tony was unfortunately now quite familiar with the glow of the sunrise streaming across the orange walls, filling the squad room with cracks of light that slowly migrated from cubicle to cubicle. Once it made its way to him, burning heat across the side of his face and making it hard to see his computer beneath the glare, he looked up, considering temporarily relocating. The obvious choice was the bare and empty desk across from him, but his eyes flickered across it, acknowledging but refusing to fully take it in.
In the five weeks that had passed since he’d returned from Israel, there had been nothing but radio silence from Ziva. Leaving her on the tarmac had been the most painful thing he’d ever had to do, and it had only gotten worse as reality settled in. The flight alone had been bad enough, but now that he was back in DC, working cases without her and staring at a hauntingly empty desk right across from him, it was like there was a gaping wound aching and festering in his chest.
He was spiraling between too little sleep and too much, sometimes managing a few hours before he gave up in the early morning hours, other times passing out to avoid reality only to narrowly wake to his alarm in time to make it to the squad room. It was all heavily linked to drinking much more than he should – patterns he had not fallen back into for quite a long time, in part because of Ziva’s role in holding him together. When she was around, there was always a desire to be better for her, to keep it together and be the person she expected him to be. And when he couldn’t, she was there with a blunt but supportive pep talk to bring him back down to earth.
He needed that now more than ever. But this time, she was the cause for that need and he knew there was no chance of it happening. She had been firm, and if he knew anything about Ziva David, it was that she would stubbornly stick to her guns with gritted teeth and determined, rather gorgeous (he could not help but think about that) brown eyes. Even if maybe she was hurting, too.
“I cannot go,” she tells him softly. “I worry I will just repeat the past, and I do not feel I deserve the family I have there,” she adds, before she can hurt him again. “It is tempting – to go for you,” she lets out with a breath, eyes serious as they dance between his. “But I cannot put that on you.”
“You can,” he urges, breath melding with hers.
“I won’t.” Her eyes flutter down to his lips. “But I will say goodbye.”
She lets her hands coast over his jaw and down his neck, committing to memory the feel of his rough beard and weathered skin beneath her soft fingertips. She meets his chest next, hands trailing over the fabric of his shirt beneath his open jacket.
Tony watches her carefully, knowing exactly what she means by her words and the way she is touching him, the way she is taking him in as though it will be the last time. And it cracks something within him again, a fresh round of emotion reddening his eyes and wetting his lids.
“I can’t leave you here,” he tells her, voice betraying his emotions. “Last time-”
“Was not your fault,” Ziva insistently finishes for him. Her hands circle his hips, tucking further beneath his jacket and drawing him close. “You have always come to find me.”
She tilts her chin up, hesitating only because he seems unsure, and presses her lips to his. It takes him a moment, because he’s too shellshocked that this is happening and that this is how it’s happening: emotional and desperate, the beginning of the hardest goodbye he has had to or probably will ever have to say.
He lets it hit him, closing his eyes and letting the pull of Ziva wash over him like the tide even though he knows it will drown him whole. And then, accepting that and giving in, he comes to life against her. He cups her jaw on one side and tilts his head, capturing her lips with a better angle.
They’ve done this before – overzealous and playing it up, a sizzling outlet for the physical and mental chemistry between them years ago – but it has nothing on this. Tender, real, slow – by comparison. It is nothing like what they expected from the other, the circumstances dictating the flow.
Her bottom lip sandwiches between his as their lips glide and he tugs on it softly. She presses into him, both body and mouth, arms tightening around his waist as she opens her mouth to him. He takes the bait eagerly now, tongue brushing her bottom lip as he tests the waters. Her tongue laps back against his, teasing lightly before she changes the angle and glides her lips against his.
She takes advantage of the slight reprieve in intensity to guide her hands back around to his waist. She parts from his mouth as she finds his hands, weaving their fingers together, and begins to lightly tug him back in the direction of the house.
“Ziva…” he warns, already knowing he is powerless to stop her. Her eyes are emotional and open, parted lips already reddened. He is worried about her, about them, about how much this will hurt. He doesn’t want to introduce more layers to her already complicated life when she is working so hard to change.
And he knows, even though he cannot say it aloud, that he loves her. It is a web that is tangled and deep: built on a mixture of instant attraction and connection mixed with natural friction, along with the kind of deep partnership that comes from having your life in someone else’s hands, on top of years and years of friendship that begged to be more. He loves Ziva in ways he has never allowed himself to love anyone else – maybe because she is special, maybe because it was forbidden and so he let his guard down when he normally would not have. But now she is technically not off-limits and he still can’t have her in the ways that he wants.
“It is okay,” she tells him, stepping up to him because of his hesitancy in coming with her. “It’s okay,” she repeats as she leans in.
He closes his eyes, fighting for futile resolve as she presses her lips to his jaw, his throat. She feels it bob as he swallows hard. He knows what she is doing: giving him permission to let go, permission to give and take and then leave. She is telling him she’s okay with the aftermath.
“It would be worse to never know.”
He wishes he believed that.
Sighing, Tony picked up the case file spread across his desk and walked over to McGee’s, where he set up shop for the next 45 minutes.
The elevator had begun its occasional ding at 0730, signaling the early risers filtering into cubicles and beginning to file up and down stairs. Another 30 minutes later, the elevator ding alerted McGee’s entrance and as he crossed the squad room, brows furrowing with concern as he took in the sight of Tony at his desk.
“Hey, quit snooping through my files.”
Tony lifted his eyes to his colleague, taking in the to-go container holding three coffees that slightly piqued his interest.
“Simmer down, McGeek,” Tony let out, his usually playful tone missing its edge. “I’m not snooping. I’m just borrowing yours because my desk is trying to blind me. Who designed this place anyway?”
“People who weren’t going to be working at sunrise?” McGee supplied, brow still pinched with concern. “How long have you been here?” he then asked, taking in the empty mug at Tony’s desk and a suspiciously absent ray of sunshine.
“6:30.” Tony glanced at his desk, too, deeming it safe from blinding glare. With a tap of a few keys, he logged out of his profile on McGee’s computer, collected his case file, and returned to his desk.
McGee cautiously set the new cup of coffee on Tony’s desk, a touch of suspicion still in his eyes and his brow as he studied his colleague.
“Thank you,” Tony said, a little uneasily as he picked right back up with his work at his own desk again. McGee had been unusually nice to him over the past month – a match to his own unusual habits of early mornings burying himself in work, little banter, and a stark lack of movie references.
McGee was beginning to wonder if Tony was going to bounce back from this one. It was the longest he had been like this, and this time there was no Ziva to straighten him out with sharp but supportive words. Gibbs’ tough love approach hadn’t seemed to crack him yet, and McGee himself certainly didn’t have the words to bring him back.
McGee laid his jacket over the back of his chair and set his bag in the back corner of his cubicle, beginning to settle in. But right on cue, Gibbs entered the squad room.
“Don’t get too comfy,” he told McGee, who had just pulled out his chair to sit down. His eyes dropped to DiNozzo as he passed him, taking in the multiple cups of coffee, the work he had clearly been digging into already early this morning. There was a moment of concern in his eyes before he added, “Dead commander. Rock Creek Park.”
With that, Gibbs swept across to his desk, unlocking a drawer and holstering a firearm, McGee picked up his coat again, and Tony grabbed his backpack. McGee held the coffee out to Gibbs, who smoothly scooped it from the container as he brushed by, and with that, they were gone.
The squad room was empty and dim save for two cubicles: Tony, with his desk lamp highlighting his empty desk and computer, and Gibbs, sitting in the dim light from his lamp with his eyes on Tony. He had been aware of a handful of other times Tony had withdrawn from his usual antics: Jeanne, Ziva leaving the team for Mossad, and a few additional little incidents he knew Ziva had talked him off the edge from.
There was a common theme to most of those events, and it didn’t take an investigative background to identify who it was.
Gibbs sighed, standing and flipping the switch on his lamp. Tony’s eyes never wavered from his computer, and at this point Gibbs wasn’t sure if he was even working or simply blankly staring at it. He turned the corner around his desk, taking slow steps to Tony’s, and leaned down to press his hands onto Tony’s desk so he could be closer to him.
“Go home, DiNozzo,” he let out softly but firmly, voice gruff with emotion and recognition. “Take a shower, eat, don’t drink.”
Tony’s narrowed eyes remained on his computer for a beat before they turned to Gibbs. “Well if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black.”
Gibbs half-scoffed, half-sad smiled. “Don’t be like me. You’re too young.”
Gibbs rose and exited the row of cubicles to head toward the elevator. “Goodnight, DiNozzo.”
Thirty minutes later, Tony had at least done one of the things Gibbs had ordered him to do. A half-eaten salad – Ziva’s influence, from the corner market on Fourth Street – sat on his kitchen counter, because food had become something of a necessity he took care of in passing instead of something he sat down and enjoyed. His tie was pulled loose, gone from his chest and draped over a bar stool atop his suit jacket. The first few buttons of his white shirt had been released. A glass of scotch on the rocks sat at the ready next to his meal, not yet touched but ready to be sipped.
The soft but insistent knock at his door caused his eyes to narrow pensively. It was nearly nine, he was not expecting anyone, and it was a little late for visitors or neighbors needing help.
He crossed back through the kitchen and dining area of his apartment until he was at his foyer. Tugging the door open, he froze in place at the sight on his doorstep: Ziva, looking a bit more like her old self with relatively straightened hair, her curls attempting to spring back at the ends. Her face was fresh and natural, revealing little wear from the long travel he knew she must have just experienced – her carry-on bag sat idle just next to her.
Her eyes met his, looking just as emotional to see him as he was to see her.
“Hi,” she breathed out, eyes conflicted and overwhelmed at the sight of him.