So this came to me the other day. Randomly. It has no point, really. But it was a scene that started playing in my head and I had to type it out or it would have been stuck there driving me crazy...

So yeah. This is just me being randomly speculative towards Tony and Ziva's attitudes towards each other.

Hypothetically

It was about nine o clock, and everyone had left hours ago. Tony DiNozzo sat at his computer, typing slowly at his report. He really needed to learn to manage his paperwork better. No matter what he tried to do, no matter what he set aside, he always ended up doing his backlog of reports on Friday. As everyone else left early, he stayed late. Friday night was the night you were supposed to have fun, right? That's what the weekend was for; he'd always called it his 'hangover recovery period'.

He'd watched dejectedly as first McGee, then Ziva, and finally Gibbs got up from their desks and left the bullpen, leaving Tony by himself with words like, "See you on Monday, Tony," and "Why do you always leave it to the last minute?" Most of the time, he would just get a head-slap from Gibbs.

Then they would exit via the elevator without so much as a backward glance.

Now, he could care less whether McGee looked back, but Ziva, on the other hand, was another story all together. On the rare occasions that he would leave the office before her, he always turned and looked back, catching that last glimpse of the back of her head before the elevator door closed. Oftentimes he would catch himself staring at her during the day, admiring silently the way her hair cascaded down in front of her face when she was on the phone, the intent glow on her face as she studied files on the computer. Sometimes she would catch him and stare back, and he would hold her gaze for a moment, locking his eyes into her deep brown ones for a moment before he chickened out and turned away, facing back to his computer screen.

He shook his head forcefully, getting rid of the daydream and clearing his head. He turned in his chair and turned the dial up on his radio that sat on the file cabinet by his desk. He was alone in the office now; there was no one to yell at him to turn the volume down.

Ah…the Beatles, he thought, listening to John Lennon croon through the tiny speakers. Nothing like the classics to keep you busy.

...

His life had definitely changed since Ziva had crashed into it, full throttle and in extreme assassin mode. She had intimidated him; the only woman who had ever caused him to fear for his life before had been Kate.

But he never felt this way about his previous female partner. Of course, he'd had dreams concerning him and her and the mysterious absence of clothing, but it had been only that…a dream. With Ziva it was different. With Ziva came the tension and the anger and the passion and the fact that her inhibitions were held at a standard much lower that Kate would ever dare to bring hers. Ziva had suggested stripping down and having fake sex, all for the sake of an undercover assignment! Kate would never have done that. She probably would have kissed him, for the sake of the fact that they were pretending to be married, but she would never have done it with the passion and the fury that Ziva had.

He looked at the clock. It was almost eight. He should be out getting trashed at a bar somewhere by now.

But no…he had these stupid reports to finish.

Then the elevator dinged, sounding obnoxiously loud in the nearly silent office. Tony looked up in time to see the doors pull back with a groaning slide, and an immaculately dressed Ziva stepped out.

She was gorgeous. Her hair was down, falling free in its natural wavy curls, framing her face delicately. The red of her dress moved like liquid fire as she began to walk towards her desk, hugging her curves in all the right places. She could have easily fit in with the sexy cabaret dancers and vaudevillians of 1920's nightclubs. He fully expected to start hearing All That Jazz playing somewhere in the background and for Catherine Zeta-Jones to jump out from behind his file cabinet in all her sexy, lingerie glory.

"Hello, Tony," came Ziva's quiet voice, jerking him abruptly out of his movie fantasy. "What are you still doing here?"

He pointed, not trusting himself to say anything just yet, to the stack of unfinished reports that dominated a whole corner of his desk.

"And you?" he managed to choke out. "What are you doing back?"

"I forgot my purse," she said, lifting the item up and out from behind her desk.

He felt the need to say something as the silence stretched on. This was so unlike him to have nothing to say. It felt strange. "Um…you look…nice," Tony said lamely. "Where are you off to?"

"Some…er…friends in my apartment building invited me out to go dancing," she replied, looking down at her glossy red shoes. "And I did not have a good enough reason to say no."

Tony got up from behind his desk. "Do you not like dancing?" he asked, clearing a space off on the front of his desk so he could sit down.

"It's not that I do not like it, it's just…I don't know. I guess it feels strange. They've invited a friend to come with us, like a blind date, I think you call it. They seem to think that I do not get out much."

It took all of Tony's self-control…and a great deal of his self-preservation instinct…not to laugh. "I'm getting the feeling that's not the thing that's bothering you, though," he said thoughtfully, giving her a critical look. "Something is bugging you, I can tell."

"It is nothing. I'm fine."

"No no, come on. Tell me."

"You are just going to laugh," she said, and she turned towards the elevator.

"I promise I won't. Anyway, I think that this is something I can help you with." He reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling her back towards him. "Tell me."

After struggling internally with herself for a few moments, Ziva finally gave in. "Fine," she said. "The truth is…"

"You really would rather stay home by yourself than go out with friends," Tony finished for her.

"Yes. How could you tell?"

"In case you've forgotten, it's my job to watch and observe these things."

"Oh. Right."

"Why didn't you just say no?"

"Um, they've been wanting to do this for a while…and I have a sneaking suspicion that they got me a little drunk before they asked me to come."

"Ah. Yes, that's happened to me a couple of times."

There were several moments of awkward silence in which, Ziva stood across from him and fiddled with her car keys. The radio hummed on, and switched tunes.

"Oh, my love, my darling, I've hungered for your touch a long, lonely time…"

"I love this song," Ziva murmured.

Tony then had a spur of the moment idea. "Ziva…may I have this dance?"

She looked up quickly. "What? Now?"

"Yes. Right here." Tony took a step forward, bridging his half of the gap between them and holding it out his hand. Then, very slowly, she set her purse back down on her desk and reached out to him.

"You need to come closer, Ziva," he whispered.

Hesitantly, she took a small step forward. He wrapped his other arm about her waist, her hand still firmly clasped in his. They began to sway in time to the song.

Ziva pulled herself closer and rested her head against his cheek so he couldn't see the tears. If only she had the words to say how she felt, if only he could understand what she was feeling. But then again, she was glad he didn't. There was no knowing what he would do, what he would say. Tony was the poster boy for single life. It suited him perfectly. He was not one to hang on to a steady woman…the only time he had, it had all been for a job. Undercover. Of course, it had all turned out to be real feelings from him, but he hadn't started the relationship. It had all been masterminded.

But the pain wasn't, Ziva could see. Tony's suffering was evident, even behind his laughter and his jokes. There was a sadness in his eyes, hiding behind the normal Tony sparkle. She had the irrational need to make the sadness disappear; it caused her pain to see him in pain.

"Why don't you come with us, Tony?" Ziva whispered. "It would be fun."

They stopped dancing, and he looked down into her eyes. "I'd love to, Ziva," he sighed. "But Gibbs will kill me if I don't get these reports finished."

"I will help you," Ziva offered quickly, not even pausing to think about it.

"Gosh, Ziva…I appreciate it, but I couldn't ask you to do that."

"Then don't. But I will help you anyway. Besides, it will give me an excuse not to go out tonight."

"You are the strangest chick I have ever met―willing to ditch a night on the town for a stuffy office and a mile high stack of paperwork."

"Call it my over developed sense of work-ethic," Ziva quipped, pulling her desk chair around so that it sat across from Tony. "Where do you want me to start?"

"I thought we established that I wasn't going to make you do anything."

"Then let me rephrase: if you had an assistant, where would you have her start?"

"Hypothetically?"

"Yes. Hypothetically."

Tony grabbed the top half of his unfinished pile and set it on the other side of his desk, dividing the stack in two. "If I was a slave-driving boss and was awesome enough to have an assistant, then I would tell her…or him…to tackle that half," he said, pointing.

"Very well then," Ziva smiled, pulling the stack of papers towards her.

They worked in silence then, until Tony put away the last file. Ziva got up from her chair and pushed it back to its original position, her red dress rustling softly in the still quiet of the deserted workplace. She turned around, grabbing her purse off her desk where it had lain forgotten, and suddenly was face to face with Tony again.

"If the slave-driving, horrible boss were to ask his assistant to accompany him for Chinese food and cheap beer around the corner, what would she say?" he asked quietly.

Ziva looked back at him, able to see through his pretenses for his real intentions. "Hypothetically?" she responded, playing along.

"Yeah."

"I'm sure that she…or he…" she added with a sparkle of mischief in her eye, "Would like nothing better."

Tony wordlessly held out his arm to her then, and they walked arm in arm to the elevator.