Thank you for this! I swear I have not abandoned the story. The holidays are just really busy. Today is my last day of work and then I am on leave so just wrapping up here and then buckling down to finish. But it's really nice to know someone is eager to read, so thank you!
If you haven't yet heard, we've made it to round 1 of the Tell Tale TV Awards best cable/streaming TV show of 2025! So go and vote for NCIS: Tony & Ziva and lets get our show to round 2!!!!!
You can vote once every 24 hours here:
https://telltaletv.com/2025/11/vote-for-your-favorite-tv-shows-of-2025-round-1/
Voting closes: Sunday November 30th 2025.
“Open the door, Ziva. I know you’re there.” The pounding is a continuous cacophony, a flurry of fists and feet banging and kicking intermittently. For a moment, it quiets, and then light grazes, presumably fingertips scratching the surface of the wood panel that separates them. His voice returns, muffled, like he’s leaning his head against the door. “If you think that after five months, I’m leaving without us having a conversation, you are sorely--”
She swings the door open and he tumbles inside, catching himself before falling. Tony straightens, rolling his shoulders and neck before leaning on the doorway, arms folded over chest. “You are not an easy person to find,” he says, pursing his lips and rubbing his hand against the beard he now sports.
She didn’t think he could get any sexier, and of course, he had to prove her wrong.
It takes crossing her own arms to keep from hugging him. “How did you find me?” she asks in a clipped tone.
“I’ve missed you, too,” he says, his tone holding that hint of amusement that is the crescendo to their theme song. The five o’clock shadow, darker and thicker than she has ever seen it, looks good on him. But she knows him and his grooming rituals, and she understands this is not a look he likes on himself. His skin is tanned from hours spent under the sun, and she feels a twinge of guilt knowing how much he hates the heat. A smile is tucked into the corner of his lips, peeking through when he asks, “So, are you glad to see me?”
“How did you find me?” she asks again. It was intended with anger, but when she hears her own voice, she is surprised at how small she sounds.
He starts moving towards her, purposeful strides narrowing the distance between them. “I’ve gotten pretty good at it.” A real grin emerges, the one that bares his teeth and brings out the creases around his eyes. The one that melts her resolve and reminds her she is more girl than soldier. “Took me longer than I hoped, but--” he cocks his head to the side and holds his arms out, palms up. “I’m here.”
“You should have left me alone.”
He snaps his fingers. A curled index finger comes up to rest on his lip, thumb pressed to the bottom of his chin. “I’m having deja vu, are youhaving deja vu?” he asks, pointing at her. “I could’ve sworn we’ve had this conversation before.”
The magnetic pull that she’s spent years ignoring grows stronger as he approaches. “I have missed you,” he repeats, like a chorus, an emphasis on every word. She starts to shake her head, but then he reaches out, his palm flat on her cheek. His tone is softer. “Don’t,” he begs. The exhaustion is clear in his plea, and her guilt and shame are cresting waves, clearing plans she thought she’d etched in concrete, apparently scribbled on sand.
“Don’t talk yourself out of saying what you're actually thinking.”
I’ve missed you, too, she wants to say. But the words are stuck in her throat; no, they are buried deeper than that, lodged in her heart, locked behind the weight of her sins. There is penance to do and a lifetime of repentance that stretches out in front of her.
But Tony is here, beating the odds stacked against him. Again. The odds she herself has stacked against him. Again. He’d chosen her. Again. And somehow she knows he will keep doing so, no matter what.
It is instinct, the way her head finds the slope of his chest, the involuntary release of tension as he pulls her against him, a response as natural as breathing. The sigh of relief he exhales echoes in the quiet, and he rests his chin on her head. “I know I’m really good at it,” he mumbles, “but I can’t say I’m a fan of looking for you.”
He smells like sun and sweat, but as much as she’s teased him in the past, she prefers this version of him. When cologne has long faded from his skin, and another layer that exists for everyone else has been peeled off, revealed only to her.
“You were supposed to give up and move on.” She only registers she has said it aloud when his grip around her tightens. “You are supposed to be back in D.C. by now.”
Another sigh marking exasperation. “It’s like you don’t know me at all.” Pulling back to look at her, her head now cradled between his hands, he pauses to make sure he has her full attention. “I don’t give up, not when it comes to you.”
“Deep down, he knows this has to end and that in a few days he’ll be getting on a plane back home and she won’t be sitting next to him.”
The unseen moments from 11x02.
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