and then worst of all you never call (Tony & Ziva gen, pg, 544 words)
title: and then worst of all you never call
fandom: NCIS
category: gen/friendship
rating: pg
word count: 544
summary: The bartenders and regular patrons of The Fox & Chance started calling them The Godparents sometime last year.
The bartenders and regular patrons of The Fox & Chance started calling them The Godparents sometime last year. Tony got a kick out of it; like most things, Ziva managed to tolerate it most days.
“The mojitos are better at Tully’s,” Ziva pointed out.
“Yes,” Tony sighed. “But people here fear us.”
Ziva had a terrible habit of being delighted by the pain of others. Tony could never quite decide if it was sadism or schadenfreude. Whatever it was, she had it in spades.
“I would never stab you in the back,” Ziva told him, wide-eyed and solemn.
Tony snorted. “Nah, you’d just shoot me in the shoulder.”
Ziva nodded.
“Exactly.”
“Are you serious? Ziva, that is in no way better.”
“Yes it is,” she frowned. “I would gaze into your eyes as I did it. That is far superior to simply killing you while your back is turned. You would know that I really meant it.”
“There is something wrong with you. You know that, right?”
“Gaze...”
“Stop that.”
They were supposed to go to some ridiculous, avant-garde art exhibit together to mock both the art and its admirers. Then Tony met this recently divorced flight attendant who was desperate to prove to herself that she was still a sexual being capable of inspiring lust in a man. There was really no contest.
“You could have called,” growled Ziva the next morning when she cornered him in the men’s room. “Or sent a text message. I was there, alone, for an entire hour. People kept trying to talk to me about ‘automatism’ and ‘assemblage’ and I do not even know what.”
Tony laughed and washed the woman’s name and number off his hand.
“Sucks to be you.”
Ziva grinned wickedly at Tony whenever she caught him ogling Gibbs’ ass. Over drinks at The Fox & Chance she puckered her lips and fluttered her eyelashes at him.
“Have you considered wearing a low cut blouse?” she asked, drawing out the ‘s’ in an exaggeration of her accent.
Tony grimaced at her.
“Everyone knows you make your accent thicker on purpose. The idioms thing, too.”
“So you have considered it?”
“How long have you two been together?”
They were, of course, expecting the question. Almost anyone who spent semi-extended periods of time in their presence asked it.
“We’ve been on the same team off-and-on for years now,” said Tony.
“Oh,” said the witness. “I meant, together together.”
“We’re not,” said Ziva.
“But you two seem so...compatible.”
Tony and Ziva laughed at that.
“Yeah, right,” Tony said. “God, could you imagine, Ziva? What if we reproduced? With our genetic combination that child would probably turn out to be a serial killer, or an American Idol contestant, or something else truly evil.”
“Ugh,” Ziva shuddered.
Because of cosmic law, anyone Ziva dated always somehow ended up being secretly evil.
Tony, for one, thought that was likely a reflection on Ziva. Instead of voicing that opinion, he wisely went with the only slightly safer: “You sure know how to pick ‘em, Z.”
“It’s not like you do much better.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
“Do you think I’m a bad person?” Ziva asked him only once.
“Yeah,” Tony smiled at her. “You definitely are. It’s why I like you.”