Fic: Coffee Cups and Caffeine Drops Part Four
Kate’s death had left a huge, gaping hole in their lives, in their team. It left them staggering to adjust, regroup and find a way to function with as a three men unit. And every day after, every time Tony entered the office with a quip at the tip of his tongue, he tried not the let the grief choke him when he spotted that empty chair and desk.
McGee became a ball of uncertainty when dealing with either him or Gibbs. And Gibbs was nice and gentle and called them by their first names and all the things Gibbs was not. He wasn’t driven to find the bastard, Ari. He wasn’t anything even remotely recognizable. Kate might have been the one with the bullet to the forehead, but it was Gibbs that became the ghost.
Tony held it together, focused on leads and calling in every favor owed to him while at the same time pushing McGee to do his thing and Gibbs to wake up and Abby to keep going and all the while he wanted nothing more than to set out and find the murdering son-of-a-bitch and just end him.
It didn’t stop there. Morrow retired and in came a hot new director with past with Gibbs and a chip on her shoulder. Then the bastard’s sister showed up and Tony couldn’t hate her because he understood all about having unsavory family ties.
Everything happened so fast afterwards that Tony’s head still spun even months afterwards. Ari shot up Abby’s lab, Ducky was kidnapped then returned without a hair out of place and then Ari was dead, supposedly by Ziva and rogue Mossad’s little sister became Kate’s replacement.
Gibbs hadn’t put up much of a fight and that had spelled all sorts of wrong with Tony. Still he was friendly, charming and everything expected of him to her. He didn’t welcome her with open arms, she was Mossad and even if she was technically on their side, Tony knew too much of split loyalties to trust anything about her. When he came to the office, he smiled and quipped even as inside he couldn’t help but look for the pencils in her penholder. Or cringe whenever he made a reference and was met with confused dark eyes instead of exasperated. Ziva wasn’t Kate the same way Kate hadn’t been Viv, but strangely he felt he understood her more.
It was different, it was change and Tony hated change. Every time Gibbs came in with his cyanine in a cup, he could feel McGee’s stare boring into him. Two weeks of that and Tony had snapped an impatient “What?” Which had McGee looking pointedly at the cup then at Ziva and Tony had never wanted to hurt anyone more.
Months passed, they all created a new equilibrium and McGee stopped pushing about initiating Ziva. It helped that unlike McGee and Kate, Abby hadn’t warmed up to Ziva in the least. They formed a united front against McGee’s attempts to keep a tradition going that, while it had been started with Abby and Tony, had become part of team Gibbs.
The problem was that it wasn’t just McGee that was waiting for what he thought was inevitable, but Ducky had started asking about it, in his own roundabout way. Gibbs hadn’t verbalized anything, but the increasing tension in his shoulders was enough of a hint that something was going to give, and soon.
It did, or rather, Tony did. It wasn’t planned, it wasn’t even well thought out, but the morning after Ziva had made him dinner, after she had already invited everyone and their mother over to cook for them, Tony walked by Gibbs’s regular coffee shop and just froze at the window.
Before he knew what he was doing, Tony was already inside and ordering a Gibbs’s special. Cup in hand, he took his usual route, got a peculiar smile from Henry, a cross between somberly sympathetic and tentatively hopeful. At the elevator, Tony stared at the number for nearly five minutes before his shaking finger was able to push for his floor.
He wasn’t jubilant, or angry. There wasn’t a smirk of his face or the cool feeling before pulling something over someone. Tony didn’t consider calling Abby to let her in on the show - even though he knew how much she would enjoy it. This wasn’t a prank, or a way to get even. It felt sacred, sacrosanct, like not being able to raise your voice over a whisper at a church. Or watching the red sox win the World Series for the first time in over eighty years.
McGee wasn’t at his desk, neither was Gibbs. Ziva was at hers, but instead of working, she was leaned back on her chair listening to music. She wasn’t anything like Kate. With that thought in mind, he walked over to Kate’s, now her desk, and placed the cup down almost reverently.
Ziva straightened almost before the cup had touched the wooden surface, popping out both ear plug and turning off her ipod. She didn’t eye the cup like a rabbit a snake, or look at Tony suspiciously, or became uncertain and wary. She took the cup, smelled it and took a tentative sip. When that didn’t kill her, she started drinking it with a weird intensity Tony didn’t understand right away.
Fifteen minutes later she was sprawled over the desk, looking like she’d drank twenty sailors under the table. And Tony stood over her, not so much as staring, but his feet keeping him rooted in place.
Then he felt another presence to his left, then another to his right, turning, he saw McGee and Gibbs taking in the sight of the most composed woman they probably had ever known with a hangover. The following burp just added to the peculiar sight.
Neither said anything, McGee just went over to his computer and got to work and Gibbs drained the leftover coffee from Ziva’s cup before going over to do paperwork. There wasn’t much to do, even when Tony would throw puzzled glances at Ziva and she would groan and shift away from any light.
The next day she was back to her prestige self; hair immaculate and clothing that hugged nicely her curves. Tony couldn’t even enjoy the view when she leaned down to pick something up. It was bothering him, it had been bothering him since Ziva had carelessly drank the offered coffee without question or hesitation.
When McGee went down to the lad and Gibbs to autopsy, he leaned forward and asked what had been plaguing him since yesterday, “Is it common practice thing for spies to drink anything given to them? Because if it is, it’s no wonder no one ever hears about a retired one.”
Ziva didn’t even glance up the file she was reading, “I cannot speak for any other agency, but for Mossad it is not common practice, as you say, to eat or drink just anything offered. And most certainty just by anyone.”
Not the answer Tony wanted, but it was the expected one. “Okay, then why did you drink the coffee I gave you yesterday? It’s not like you know me that well. I could just as easily poisoned you.”
“But you did not.”
“I could’ve have. So why don’t you just answer the question.”
With a sigh, Ziva dropped the file and looked Tony straight in the eye. “Because it seemed important, okay. You were pale, and your hands shook. Normally I would have thought this a sigh of some ill intentions, but I have ears as well. I have heard McGee speaking to you about some sort of ‘initiation’.” Well, he was definitely going to have a talk with McGee about his discretionary skills. “But every time you would mention Kate’s name and flatly refuse. I know how hard it is to lose a comrade, especially one that was so close to you, so I said nothing.”
He was going to kill McGee and have Abby get rid of all the forensic evidence.
“That coffee, was your initiation, no?” Tony shrugged rather helplessly, there wasn’t a point denying it. “So now that I drank that vile stuff you’re going to stop staring at me as though I killed your baby.”
“Killed my puppy.”
“Whatever. Now if you’re done disturbing me, I have much to catch up on.”
She returned to her reading and to ignoring Tony’s staring. And Tony stopped pretending to do his and staring going through the piles of forms he had been suckered into doing. And when Tony looked across from him, dark eyes met his in question and an unknown weight lifted from Tony’s chest.
Part Five