"I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other." - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
🩵 inspired by this gorgeous gifset by @indestinatus
No sense of hesitancy, and someone who didn’t know him like she did wouldn’t pick up the dash of self-directed shame that mixed in to the simple statement.
The bartender made quick work- not that it was hard, the bottle of scotch hadn’t gone far. The contents had, they’d travelled down the scruff-laded neck with a quick pitstop in the shot glass first. Each gulp smoother yet simultaneously less coordinated, if that was possible.
“You wanna call it, bud?” the older man behind the mahogany bar asked. And she could tell it was familiar. Not pitying, not fearful, not even largely concerned. Just…familiar.
He’d done this before. He had this conversation frequently. More than just the few nights she’d tagged along for in the last week.
Oh, Nick.
He’d been sober when she’d walked away that brisk early summer afternoon. Sober for a few months even. He’d stuck to club soda for a while, she thought, remembering his little joke from a month into it. Poking fun at their earlier selves, when their world was about to upend with news of Ziva’s reappearance, but worrying about who was worrying about who seemed important.
A calloused fingertip caught a stray drop of ice cold condensation before it could reach the bar top, dragging it back up the path it came from- back to the top of the highball glass filled with none other than- club soda.
And if that wasn’t the metaphor of her life these past two years. A year under, two to get out. Trapped, desperate to retrace her steps, reverse the path that took her here. Three years later and back in her rightful place, or was she?
She peered at the damage her fingertip had done—a small drop of condensation that skated around the other tiny beads, slipping away from them, out of sight- out of mind. Except now, trying to forcibly put the drop back in its place, she’d left a wake of destruction. Thousands of tiny beads smeared across the glass surface, a bulldozed path five times as wide as the first, innocent one.
She may have slipped out of his life, but would coming back destroy more than it would fix? Was it a fool’s journey to try and put something back that probably didn’t belong in the first place?
“…f-fuck, man!” Nick’s slurred but firm timbre was clear as day, even in her seat at the far, catty-corner end of the bar.
Her vision moved from the messy highball and up to the mirrored bar backsplash, angled perfectly for her to take in Nick’s flared nostrils and the bartender’s relaxed stance. Clearly he wasn’t put off or even remotely surprised by the outburst. Hell, no one in the bar even twitched.
Quieter, more solemn, he continued, “I fucking loved her,” his head sagged and shoulders dropped- like the life had been sucked out of him with those four simple words. The air around her stilled, vanished even. Nothing passed over her slack lips.
She could make out the bartender’s slight tilt of his head, silently urging Nick to continue even as Nick’s eyes never left the empty shot glass in front of him.
“Ellie,” it came out as a whisper and every muscle fiber in her body froze. But his eyes hadn’t lifted to her spot at the bar, they’d glazed over, unfocused on the present, rather likely focused on the millions of small memories her mind was now flipping through. Each time her name crossed his lips, in joy, in fear, in love, she melancholically surmised.
“I loved Ellie,” Nick amended his earlier statement.
And the bartender shifted his weight back, nothing else had surprised the man, but this statement apparently had. It hadn’t been the declaration of love, had it? It had to have been her name. Nick had never put a name to the claim. Never wanted to make it real, she bet.
What had changed? Why now? She’d probably never get her answers. He loved her, past tense. Three years past.
Another flicker of movement caught her drifting attention- his fingertip, chasing its own path, circling the top of the shot glass. Round and round it went, never easing up, almost like it couldn’t, like it refused to falter or move on. Circling and retracing, wondering where it all went wrong? she guessed pessimistically.
Until it paused.
And his chin lifted.
Eyes steeled as best the welled up tears would allow.
“I love her.”
Fuck.
She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t move, she couldn’t think.
“I still love Ellie...” Nick clarified to the riveted bartender.
Her existence here, in DC at this bar in the periphery of Nick’s life, hung on his next words that came out as a deflated sigh.
Yeah, so Sofia, I am so sorry about this. I haven't written in almost a week so I think this it the result of not using that outlet. And as usual the gift of brevity mercilessly escaped me. These both turned out to be little ficlets I didn't anticipate the length of. (Second one is rated M for anyone not interested in That)
...casually
Ellie didn’t think she could be happier than she was in that moment, sitting on the edge of her desk with her entire work family there. It had been far too long since Tony and Ziva had come to visit, and they’d even brought Tali with them that morning. Her little niece was sprouting up faster than she could keep up with, closer to her shoulders than the little ankle biter she was when she had first met her. Their piles of paperwork were so high she would swear hers was leaning, but she couldn’t have cared less as she watched Tim talk with Ziva and Nick, the old friends showing off pictures of their growing children. She was almost surprised Nick hadn’t become bored yet and wondered back over to her and Tony where they sat shoulder to shoulder.
“So, finally learned from our mistakes? Who gave the ultimatum?” Tony asked, bumping Ellie’s shoulder making her give a feigned annoyed huff.
“Who says an ultimatum was involved?” Ellie asked, pulling her eyes away from her partner to look at her friend just in time to catch an eye roll of his own.
“You and Torres over there have been driving my wife insane for months so I know you’re both too stubborn to have gotten together any other way than one of you finally having enough.” Tony explained. She tried to look affronted only for the older man to raise a challenging eyebrow and she caved, hands raised in surrender.
“Okay, alright, it was me, not that it took much convincing. I tend to get my way pretty easily.” She smirked, looking back over to Nick and meeting his eyes as if her gaze was drawn by the weight of his own on her. Her smirk shifted into a genuine smile and Tony fake gagged beside her.
“Yeah, I bet. From what I hear, Special Agent Beach Bod over there has been tripping over himself for you for years.” He laughed. Ellie tore her eyes from Nick to shoot Tony a halfhearted glare for the nickname and the teasing but that did nothing to quell his outright amusement with the blonde. He reached up and gave her ponytail a teasing tug, only deepening her frown as she batted his hand away. “I’m proud of you, Bishop, for going after what you wanted. You deserve to be happy.”
Ellie’s face softened immediately. She had missed this, missed him so badly since he moved. Phone calls and letters weren’t the same. She had her actual brothers, and she had Tim, but Tony had always been a friend to her in the realest of ways. She held so much admiration for him as an agent and as a person. He always knew how to cheer her up and kept her laughing when things got hard. He was a brother to her in much the same way as George was, looking out for her and pushing her to grow into the person he knew she could be. She swallowed hard against the sting of tears and willed them away before she murmured, “Thanks, Tony.”
“Enough of that.” Tony bumped her arm with his before checking his watch and sliding to his feet. “Torres, let’s go. We’ll pick up lunch.”
Nick didn’t seem to have any qualms with that, grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair and crossing the few feet between desks to stand in front of Ellie trading places with Tony as he went to his own partner. Nick leaned down, dropping a quick kiss to Ellie’s lips as he always did before he left. She straightened up, following him just a little when he pulled away just to kiss him a few beats longer. Her cheeks flushed when a whistle sounded behind her boyfriend knowing full well who the culprit was. She dropped her forehead to his chest with a groan before looking up with a frown. All that did was make him peck her lips breaking their set workplace PDA rules once again, smirking as though he was more than a little happy with himself and that little indulgence as he followed the retired agent to the elevator.
She knew that wouldn’t last long. Tony was, after all, a brother to her. If the grin he shot her as he stepped into the elevator was anything to go by, an obligatory intentions discussion was in Nick’s future. His third, by her count. Ellie couldn’t find it in her to feel bad for him.
...to wake up/ good morning (rated M)
Their weeks were full of chaos, of constant work and cases, running interrogations and chasing down criminals. They were so busy that despite working together and living together, time alone for themselves to invest in their relationship and each other was only found if they were intentional about it. They were meant to have weekends off, and most of the time they managed it. Those weekends they had put a schedule in place. Ellie and Nick spent their Saturdays crossing off the things that built up on their To Do lists over the week. Those days started with an early morning run which Ellie always had to peel herself out of bed for. They cleaned their apartment, did the shopping they needed to do, had lunches or dinners with close friends. But Sundays? Those were their days, and those started with a kiss.
Nick had never been one to sleep in before he and Ellie moved in together. He had always been up with the sun, or even before it. He wasn’t one to lay around idly in bed when there were things he could be doing, even if those things mostly only consisted of a trip to the gym or a run around his neighborhood. With Ellie though, he had learned to if only for that one day a week. They slept in, a tangle of limbs stirred only by the warmth of the sun streaming in through their bedroom window to where they were tucked together in their bed.
He was almost always awake first on those slow, sleepy mornings. Where before that meant getting up, now it was different. It meant lingering in bed, looking down at Ellie where she laid half on top of him, studying the way her arm was slung across his stomach, fingers resting over his heart, blonde hair across his chest. He would run his fingers up and down her back, a motion he did often just because he could. Sometimes he would be lulled back to sleep by that simple motion and her warmth and the gentle, deep rise and fall of her chest. Other times his touch would pull her into wakefulness with him.
Nick loved to watch her wake up. First she would hum, just a little whining whimper as her lips pressed together, face scrunched up against the light, and she would snuggle closer to him, tension seeping from her muscles once again. Soon the strokes of his hand along her back would pull a content sigh from her lips, every time without fail.
Ellie always had a flush to her cheeks when she woke up, a pretty pink background to that smattering of freckles across her cheekbones from the warmth of his body and that cocoon of blankets she insisted on burying herself under. Her eyes were darker in the mornings and blurry with sleep and when she blinked them open, a slow, sleepy smile would curve across her lips as she finally met his eyes.
Any other day they would have gotten out of bed and started their routine, but not those days. Not their Sundays. They lingered. Ellie would shift, finding her limbs slowly losing the heaviness of sleep and pushing up to meet him in a slow, barely awake kiss that usually landed first on his jaw or cheek because she was too tired to give him a proper one just yet. Soon enough she would find his mouth, his lips, and kiss him lazily. It wouldn’t be long until they lost themselves in each other. Nick would roll her over, covering her body with his own and kiss her until she wrapped herself around him. Her hands would span across his back, thighs pressed tight against his hips. She would urge him closer, her heels pressing into his back just over his ass and that was an invitation he never turned down.
Other times she would stay on top. Ellie would straddle him, thighs spread wide to accommodate his hips, pressing her body against his as she kissed him. His hands would run along the curves of her body over the dips of her waist and up over the swells of her breasts that he loved to hold in his hands.
It ended the same way, him or her on top. He would be deep in her, thrusting into her hot and wet, bringing them as close together as they could be. With the warmth of the sun shining on them, and the room filled up with the sounds of their gasps and moans, they would come together. Ellie would pulse around him, him throbbing and coming within her and both of their names falling from parted lips in gasps or growls before they collapsed once again in a tangle of limbs.
Usually at the insistence of her stomach, they would climb from their bed and dress for the day, never much more than one of his button downs with just a few looped buttons and him in a pair of boxers and nothing else. They’d make breakfast together in their kitchen as close together as they had been in their bedsheets. Nick would keep Elie close with his arms around her waist and the scruff on his face making up the skin of her neck between kisses. They would eat and then curl up again together on their couch with her back to his chest and arms around her waist as they watched a show or a movie.
Sundays were the days that they took their time for themselves and for each other. Those days were lazy and relaxed and full of touches and kisses and bodies wrapped up in one another. But they always started like that, with the taste of Ellie’s lips on his tongue and the warmth of her body against his own.
I sincerely hope Tony wasn't too ooc writing him is always scary to me. And I could have cut off the second one after the kiss but what a waste that would've been, y'know?
random picture of them to send you spiraling ✨ have a very nice day
THANK YOU VERY MUCH DEAR FRIEND. i shall now go and think about all the things we were denied and slowly make a start with today’s collective meltdown.
