DISCLAIMER: These characters belong to DPB, CBS, Paramount, et al. No copyright infringement is intended.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: As usual, abbyforever was awesome enough to beta this for me. Much appreciated.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
SPOILERS: Spoilers for 4.20 Cover Story.
See You
By Jaina
"He's stupid."
Abby leaned around the door and glanced down the hall behind Ziva. Nothing. No one. She stepped back and opened the door wider for Ziva to come in.
"Who's stupid? Gibbs? Tim? Tony?" She said the last name with a hint of amusement. Really, the options were limitless. Abby loved her boys, but really they could all be stupid at times. For trained investigators they missed an awful lot sometimes, but Abby wasn't blind to the way that Ziva had been acting around Tony. She only wondered how long it would take Tony to realize what was going on and how many little pieces he would break Ziva's heart into before that happened. It made her want to hit Tony.
She realized that she'd been silent for too long and that Ziva was looking at her from across the living room, her hands tucked into the pockets of her long coat.
"He's stupid. The man who thought you were too tall."
"What?" Abby knew she was staring at Ziva stupidly, but she couldn't seem to stop. There was no way that she could have known that. The only person that she'd told was Gibbs. "Gibbs told you..." She hissed the words, not quite believing them even as she said them. There was no way that he'd betray a confidence like that.
"I am not stupid," Ziva pointed out. "You forget, all of you, that my job before all of this," she waved a hand around Abby's apartment as if to encompass everything, "Was not only as a handler, but a profiler. I read people. It was easy enough to put together what was bothering you."
"Why didn't you say something?" Abby demanded, narrowing her eyes.
"Because you wanted to talk to Gibbs about it."
She folded her arms over her chest, and then shifted on her feet. Gibbs had been the one that she'd really wanted to talk to, whether she had admitted it to herself or not. He had a way of making her feel so safe, like nothing could touch her or hurt her. All she'd wanted was to be comforted and Gibbs had only ever let her down once, and even then he'd come back in the end.
"Yeah, I did." She dropped her arms and then walked over to the couch in the middle of the room. She sank down onto it, tucking her legs beneath her as she stared up at Ziva. She patted the couch beside her, and smiled when Ziva slipped her jacket off and draped it over the back of the chair before she sat down at the other end of the couch. "Thanks."
Ziva nodded, as if she understood what Abby was trying to say. She probably did.
"So why did you come over here? To tell me that he was stupid?" Abby teased her.
"Yes," Ziva said simply. "I did. I wanted to make certain that you were okay."
"Oh." Abby hadn't expected her to be serious. "Thanks," she smiled over at the other woman. She could feel her blood start to race and she couldn't sit still any longer. "Actually one of my friends from back home sent me something."
She bounced up from the couch and held a hand out to Ziva. With a bemused smile, Ziva took it and let Abby pull her into the bedroom. She was still smiling when Abby stopped abruptly and dropped her hand to flick on the light.
Sitting on the low dresser were three small dolls. They weren't the cute and pristine dolls that Ziva had seen in stores, however.
She looked over at Abby for an explanation. "What are they?"
Abby smirked. "Voodoo dolls. They're supposed to be used to inflict pain on the person that they were made to represent."
"Ah. It sounds like a useful breakup gift."
Ziva's pragmatic statement surprised a laugh out of Abby. "I guess so." She shrugged. "I didn't really want to hurt him though. I just wanted him to like me for me."
"He is stupid," Ziva said with a small grin, reaching around to take one of Abby's hands and pull her attention back to Ziva completely. "If he does not love you for who you are. You are smart, funny, and a very caring person." She stroked a hand down Abby's cheek. "If he could not appreciate that then he is not the one for you."
Abby's fingers were tingling where they were laced through Ziva's. She could feel every bit of the loose contact between them.
"I'm not Tony," she blurted out before she could think.
Ziva laughed. "I can see that," she said slowly.
"No, I mean-" Abby's fingers clenched around Ziva's, "I'm not stupid." She smiled quickly as she repeated Ziva's words back at her. "I'm not oblivious. I see you, so if you don't mean it, don't say it."
Ziva blinked and for a moment Abby wondered if she'd read the whole situation wrong. But she had seen the signs. They were all there, and her gut was telling her that she was right. Always trust the gut. She couldn't remember which rule that was.
"I mean it. I do not say things that I do not mean."
"Okay, then I have to do this one thing." Abby dropped Ziva's hand and scooped the voodoo dolls off of her dresser and headed for the bathroom. She took a quick, deep breath and then dropped them into toilet and flushed. It was done.
She was done with Marty. No more tears, she thought, as she washed her hands. Her hands pressed against the soft material of her sweat pants as she stepped back out into the hall where Ziva was waiting.
"You got rid of them?"
"Yeah, I'm done with him. Even with being mad at him."
"I see." Ziva said slowly. "So it would be okay if I did this, then?"
She matched actions to words by leaning in slowly, her eyes on Abby's watching for the slightest sign of rejection, until Abby's lips were brushing against hers. Abby moved against her, deepening the kiss for a moment, until her hands slipped up, threading through Ziva's hair. Cradling Ziva's head, she pulled away far enough to put a kiss on Ziva's cheekbone, and then higher, on her forehead above the slender arch of her eyebrow, and then down until she found Ziva's lips again.
Pulling away to catch her breath, Abby leaned down to press her forehead gently against Ziva's. "Definitely okay. More than okay. In fact, I think we should do that a lot more."
Ziva laughed. "Oh, we will." Her chuckle sent a shiver down Abby's spine and she grinned for an instant before pulling Ziva into a rougher kiss. Voodoo dolls were one way to get over a bad break up; this way was much more fun, she thought, as Ziva's hands slipped under her shirt.
Three Hours Later
A small noise woke Ziva. She remained perfectly still, keeping her breathing slow and steady with the rhythms of sleep as she tried to listen in the dark of the room. She could still hear the noise, but couldn't quite identify it. Slowly, she opened her eyes. Nothing loomed out at her as she adjusted to the darkness of the room. Carefully she turned her head to look at the clock. She'd only been asleep for half an hour.
The sound still annoyed her, catching at the edge of her hearing. Abby's arm slid down into her lap as Ziva sat up. She hesitated for a moment, unable to stop her hands from caressing the smooth skin so tantalizingly close, tracing the infinite pattern of a tattoo, as she looked over at Abby.
Ziva jerked back the moment her feet hit the floor.
"Abby." She shook the other woman's shoulder urgently. "Wake up."
"What?" Abby's voice was groggy. She shifted closer to Ziva until her cheek was resting on Ziva's thigh. "What's the matter," she drawled, and Ziva noticed in the back of her mind that her accent deepened in her sleep.
"There's several inches of water on your floor," Ziva stated.
"What?" Abby shot up in bed, looking around in panic. She reached across Ziva to flick the light on.
Water, as Ziva had said, covered the floor.
Abby dropped her head to Ziva's shoulder. "This was not how I wanted to spend the night," she groaned, wrapping her arms around Ziva's waist.
"It was not what I had planned either."
A thought crossed Abby's mind, and she groaned again. "Marty's voodoo dolls."
Ziva laughed. "His last revenge?"
"I guess so," Abby said, "But I don't care. I think I got the better end of the deal anyway," she added as she wrapped her arms more tightly around Ziva. "Even if I do have to call the plumber now."
The End