Notes: Takes place after episode 3.20, “Untouchable.”

Disclaimer: NCIS and its delightful characters belongeth not to me but to Donald P. Bellisario and various other important entities under the CBS logo. I borrow them for the amusement of myself and other fans, no profiteering intended.

Piano Lessons

“Remember when you told me you used to take piano lessons? Well, I think you should start again. I could teach you. Who knows? Maybe it could be fun.” The words were echoing in Tony’s head, and he still couldn’t come up with any reason for them. Ziva couldn’t possibly be lonely and just looking for company; he knew for a fact that she and Abby had started up some kind of regular get-togethers, or at least as regularly as was possible when Gibbs could call you in to work any time of the day or night, 7 days a week.

He considered, and dismissed, for the hundredth time that she was fishing for an excuse to spend time with him because she liked him. She’d exploited that particular weakness of his mere days ago. He had to quit falling for it.

Maybe he should just take the offer at face value and stop analyzing it. His brain didn’t work like a computer. He didn’t want it to work like a computer.

Narrowing his eyes, Tony studied her. She was focused on the screen in front of her, for once unaware of his gaze. It was really beginning to irritate him that this actually bothered him. He sighed and shook his head, trying to stop his thoughts from running rampant. Say he did go. What was the worst that could happen?

At the very least, he could probably find an excuse to poke around and dig up some dirt on her to use later. His supply of ready ammunition with which to tease her was running low, whereas Ziva could just bat her eyelashes at McGee a few times, and his tongue would start flapping like a kite in the breeze.

Thinking about that, Tony rolled his eyes. The probie was such a snitch. With that, he made up his mind.

“Hey – Ziva. You ever actually taught piano lessons before?”

She brought her head up in surprise, the question sounding very left-field before she remembered her earlier offer.

“I taught my sister,” she shrugged. “And she caught on. I’m sure you could learn as quickly as an eight-year-old, yes?”

“That’s the second time you’ve implied I have no talent, David,” he warned. “I’ll have you know that I won a regional competition with Concerto 17 in…”

There were muffled snickers from McGee’s desk, to which Tony, after surreptitiously checking for Gibbs, responded by bouncing a balled-up sheet of paper off his forehead. Nonplussed, the other man looked down at the crumpled projectile on his desk and then back at Tony. “How many times can that junior high thing possibly amuse you?” he asked.

“Amazingly, it never gets old. I mean, you would think it would…but nope! Fresh every time,” he answered cheerfully. Out of habit, he grabbed another piece and started to raise his hand again.

“Drop it.”

Tony froze, knowing all-too-well that familiar voice and its warning tone, and very carefully extended his arm just enough to release the paper harmlessly into the garbage can beside his desk. Mercifully, he got off with a mere glare as Gibbs barked out assignments. He just barely had a chance to suggest a time to meet her before they were split up for the remainder of the day.

X0X0X0X

Really, there were a lot of things Tony would rather be doing on a Saturday afternoon. Napping came to mind. So did watching the game. Or even out scouting for a last-minute date, because he was dangerously close to entering a dry spell, this being the second week in a row where he had nothing lined up for the night. Despite all that, he was here knocking on Ziva’s door. Definitely something out of whack with his ability to prioritize here; maybe there was something to be said for not living on beer and pizza –

The door swung open before he had a chance to knock again, and she flashed him a smile. “Hah! I thought you might have turkeyed out. CHICKENED out,” she corrected herself instantly, repeating the phrase to herself twice, under her breath. “Come in.”

“Nice to see you too, I’m fine, thanks,” he said rather dryly as he followed her to the wooden upright piano, clearly older but well-cared for, the dark brown wood sleek and free of dust, if not quite gleaming. Between the upholstered bench and the table runner and little knick-knacks adorning the top, it was a far cry from the formal baby grand he’d grown up playing, but it was considerably more inviting. He inspected a carved wooden bird while she hunted for the books she wanted. For some reason, the sight of her flipping through them, a look of intense concentration on her face, made him grin.

“Wow…you were actually serious about this.”

“Of course I was,” she pointed out, barely glancing up from the one now in her lap, but when he continued to look vaguely suspicious, she snapped it shut and gave him an exasperated look. “What? Is ‘piano lesson’ some American euphemism for sex you’ve neglected to tell me about?” He bit back a grin as a sudden image from “Madame Bovary”flashed before him. Not that he’d read the book, mind you. It hadn’t been a particularly fascinating movie, either, but his girlfriend at the time had chosen it. It was after her that he’d made a mental note that real-life librarians, no matter how hot they looked in heels, did not quite match the fantasies served up in certain widely-read magazines. Anyway, he’d certainly never imagined the movie would ever be of any use to him. Ought to have known better – film served him the way science served Abby.

“Well, actually, now that you mention it…”

She clamped her hands over her ears. “No. No, I don’t even want to hear whatever sordid tale you’ve got.” Ziva left them there for a minute before she sat down on the bench and invited him to join her, where a couple of lesson books with distinctly foreign-looking covers were now laid out.

“I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but I’m actually not all that fluent in French.”

Calmly replying that only the titles, not the notes, were in French, she asked if he remembered the basic hand position. “And STOP thinking that way!” she scolded, before he had a chance to comment.

“Ziva, Ziva, Ziva. You’re the one that keeps bringing it up. And yes. I’m not a completely lost cause.”

She looked as though she might want to argue that point, but managed to refrain. Once his fingers were on the keys, she added hers an octave higher.

It was just now beginning to sink in that he was actually here for…lessons. It became even more abundantly clear when she started him with scales. Lots of scales. Complete with multiple octaves and arpeggios. He’d been doing a decent job of it so far, surprising even himself with how few mistakes he’d made, but there was only so much repetition a guy could take.

“Do you think at some point, I could actually, I don’t know…play music?” he finally asked.

“You want something more challenging?” she asked. He gave her an “are you kidding?” look, and she smiled and opened a different cover. All right, that was more like it. He cracked his knuckles and looked up to read the title, only to find…

“Minor keys! Oh, come on! We’ve been through this. I remember the basics. I even remember the not-so-basics, Miss Let’s-Try-E-Major. There is a reason I stopped taking lessons in the first place. This is overkill, it’s--”

She flicked him.

Tony jumped in his seat, too startled to react for a minute, and then his voice and expression both went flat. “I told you I’d kill you if you ever did that again.” Not perturbed in the slightest, she tossed back, “You said that when I slapped you on the head. This is completely different.” He was considering some appropriate comebacks when his eyes settled on the thick mane of hair hanging halfway to her waist.

“OK. I’ll give you a pass on your life this time. But it would be a shame if someone were to…accidentally…drop gum in that hair of yours.” Instinctively, she snatched it over one shoulder.

“Just makes it easier to cut off if you hold it that way,” he said, clucking his tongue.

“Tony, do you need another reminder that I’m a highly trained, highly skilled, proven assassin?”

X0X0X0X

Several etudes and a little of what some might call whining later, Ziva had finally given in and was ready to let him try a proper full-length piece. He narrowed his eyes at the title, in no hurry to pronounce it, so she did it for him. “L’arlésienne. The Farandole.”

“That’s…a lot of black,” he said faintly, looking at the notes again.

“You said you were bored,” she answered, unconcerned. “I take it you haven’t played this before?” He threw her a dirty look, but her eyes danced with merriment. “I’ll play it through once, then, and see if you still want to try it,” she finished. Biting back a retort, he dropped his hands to let her take over.

It must have been a piece she had practiced many times before, because after half a page he noticed her eyes were closed as she lost herself in the music. It wasn’t a long piece, but the way she played made him pause and watch her as much as listen to the song, spellbound. She didn’t rock theatrically in her seat; neither did she hold perfectly still. There was just the faintest shifting in her form, attune to the ebb and flow of the music: a rise with the crescendo, an exhale when the volume faded again. It was hypnotic.

He managed to yank himself back into reality just before she reached the end, his gaze redirected to the page as she opened her eyes, the coy look returning to her face as she, too, came out of the trance.

“There. Your turn,” she said.

Oh, yes. That. All right, DiNozzo, focus. Only five notes at a time. Hands on the keys and…

Something warm and furry brushed against his leg. With a yelp, he automatically leapt backward from the piano bench. In doing so, stumbled over it and landed with a twist on his hip, the two middle fingers of his left hand crushed beneath where he’d tried to break the fall. He was also fairly sure he’d given the furry thing – which, it appeared, was a black and white cat – a glancing blow with his foot as he fell, judging by the explosive squall.

“Don’t hurt her!” Ziva protested, scooping it up and cuddling it beneath her chin. Tony thought it far more likely that it had been the other way around, not that she had noticed, still focused on the feline. She rattled off something in a foreign language, proclaiming it the animal’s name. “It’s like your, um…” she thought very carefully before remembering which one was the double entendre, and finished, “‘kitty-kitty.”

“Adorable,” he replied, his tone belying that he found it anything but. “What is it doing in your apartment? You don’t exactly strike me as the cat-lady type.”

“She was hanging around the building…she kept meowing, and she looked hungry. So I fed her,” she replied as if it were the most logical thing in the world.

“And you couldn’t just do what any normal person does, and throw a shoe out the window to scare it off?”

“Why would I throw one of my shoes?” she asked quizzically.

“Never mind.” The cat was now purring amicably, but then so had the one that had tried to shred the flesh on his fingers last week, so he decided to give it a wide berth.

Speaking of his fingers…he was suddenly aware of an acute, throbbing pain that seemed to be intensifying with every pulse. He swore, cradling the injured extremities, which finally caught Ziva’s attention. Swiftly, she set down her pet and went back to him. Supremely uninterested in the human’s antics, the cat strolled off for a drink of water.

“Oh dear,” she mused, eyes wide, upon seeing the damage.

“Oh dear?” he mocked. “I just broke three fingers and that’s the best you can come up with?”

“Are you sure they’re broken?” she asked, maintaining the coolest composure he’d ever seen.

“Well, I can’t move them, and I’m practically watching them swell, so yes, I think they’re broken,” he seethed, pain multiplying the sarcasm in his tone.

“Let me see.”

“OW!” He yanked his wrist back; whatever she’d done had caused a stabbing sensation worse than the initial fall. “What the hell was that for?”

“The third one is only jammed,” Ziva informed him. “But the others, I agree, do look bad.”

She mentioned something about a doctor then, but he’d stopped listening. At the moment, he was more interested in finding out where she kept her pain relievers. Preferably something stronger than aspirin. Like morphine tablets.

Hey, this really hurt.

As she handed him a towel packed with ice cubes, he caught sight of the furball peering around the corner, whereupon it shook its head disagreeably and trotted on its way. Yeah, you’d better run, he thought sourly. Tony was beginning to develop a serious grudge against the entire species.

X0X0X0X

“They’re really broken?” Abby asked suspiciously, remembering how overly dramatized his “bullet wound” from the boxcar had been. He shot her a scowl, which she blithely ignored.

Tony’s first day back had been a long one, and he just wanted it to be over. By way of response, he held up the splint and bandaged digits of his left hand, the visible parts of which were bruised a variety of dark colors. “What does it look like?”

Her expression softened immediately. “Oh, poor Tony,” she cooed, reaching over to inspect the site of the injury. It was the first real sympathy he’d gotten all day, and he was ready to milk the moment, but an accented voice interrupted him.

“Did he tell you he broke them in a fall after kicking my cat?” Ziva inquired sweetly. With a horrified gasp, Abby jumped away from him. She was very moody, he decided.

“Tony! An innocent little kitty?” she accused.

“Uh, it wasn’t innocent, and I didn’t kick it, the cat tripped me,” he protested feebly, but Abby was eyeing him with the type of glare which suggested that while she wasn’t actually mad at him, he should probably tread lightly for a while. “Thanks,” he muttered under his breath.

Gibbs, who had been ignoring most of the exchange so far, finally switched off his desk lamp and stood up, gathering his things. “You finish your case report yet?” he asked pointedly. McGee and Abby took this as a cue to make their exits. Even Ziva slipped off to the side, leaving him alone.

“Well…Boss, I can’t type all that well with my hand like this, so I thought maybe you could have Ziva stick around and-”

“DiNozzo, right or left handed?”

“Uh, right, but you – you really need two hands to type--”

“Then I suggest you get busy writing,” Gibbs replied, snatching a pen from his desk and tossing it as he headed out. Tony grabbed and missed; it clattered to the floor. Ziva picked it up, glanced down, and then let out an incredibly un-ladylike snort. Before he could ask why, she spun around with a smirk to show him exactly what had so amused her: the pen was decorated in a cat motif.

He shot to his feet, looking in the direction of the elevator, but the doors had already shut. “There’s…there’s no way…” he said, more to himself than anything.

“I’m sure it wasn’t intentional,” Ziva comforted.

“Gibbs seem like the kind of person who carries around pens decorated with cute little animals, Ziva?”

“Well, no, not really…although, the director has one like this. She probably set it down and forgot about it.”

Sure she did. “His sense of humor is beyond twisted,” Tony muttered.

“Oh, cheer up, Tony. I’ll keep you company while you write.”

“Alternatively, you could do as I suggested and type while I talk.” Ziva declined, citing her own half-started report, but offered to make it up to him some other way.

He laughed. “Hate to break it to you, but as far as piano lessons go, I quit. Valuable life lesson? Not to accept any invitations from you.”

“Even dinner?” she asked. “I’ll cook.”

He paused to consider that. Much as he hated to admit it, the one other time he’d been to her apartment, she had made some of the best food he’d ever tasted.

“Don’t suppose you’ve gotten rid of Kitty, have you?” he asked hopefully, and was surprised when she admitted, “I have.”

“Well, in that case…”

“Her new name is Antonia.”