I was having a funny conversation about the state of NCIS fandom with my good friend abstractartist, when I thought of a really amusing idea. "Tiva fans get so carried away. Wouldn't it be great if I like, told everyone on tumblr [cafpow dot tumblr dot com] that I was writing a Tiva fic, and then just have them fuck? No romance, no emotion, no... anything." The idea was simply me being a cynical dick, and regardless, abstractartist told me to be nice. I went ahead with my idea and posted a quick "should I do this?" post on tumblr. I got a few yesses immediately, most people replying with a very simple "you hate Tiva. of course I want to see you do this."

Yes, it's true. I am anti-Tiva. Stop gasping. It's really totally okay. I promise. Let me explain...

Ziva and Tony strip each other with their eyes in nearly every episode. It's clear they want each other. Tony has very interesting relationships with all the women who've ever been on the show. He and Kate bickered like siblings, but never flirted beyond Tony's meaningless advances and Kate's insistance that she would never date him. With Abby, Tony looks out for her purely as a sister. With Director Shepard, the relationship reminded me much of a Mother/Son. During Season 3, he did what he was told, including with La Grenouille. During Gibbs' stay in Mexico (when most of House of Cards [HoC] takes place) the two clearly worked more closely as he led the team and the two worked more closely together with the La Grenouille mission.

And then there was Jeanne. I know most everyone who saw her on the show disliked her (which I don't think would be the case if Ziva had never entered the team, but more on that some other day or in private) but I thought she was the one for him, if there was only one. He said he felt like he never had before. He was scared to say I love you not only due to his mission, but also because he was so unsure of what he was feeling because no one had ever made him feel that way before; I would argue, not even Ziva.

The hurt Tony went through when coping with the loss of the best relationship he'd ever had has been unrivaled by anything else on the show: Kate's death lingers. Agent Cassidy's death will always creep up on him every few months. I'm sure he thinks of Director Sheppard daily. And for the sake of the show, he had to go back to being his usual, flirtatious, manwhoring self at some point... But I still, in my heart of heart, don't think he's over Jeanne. When I see the two of them look at each other, I feel the same way all of you when you see Tony and Ziva look at each other. When he brings out the table and chairs outside the hospital to accommodate her break, I realize just how much he felt for her.

There are valid points to the contrary: Tony risked his job for Ziva by killing Rivkin. He risked his life for Ziva when he went to Somalia with McGee and Gibbs to avenge her death. I understand those points, and don't look the other way, but rather than reply, let's get back on topic, shall we?

Originally, my post was meant to be enjoyed, but unexpected. I don't read Tiva fics (why? see above!) but I imagine very few of them play out like this, and that's what I wanted.

I see Tony and Ziva as playful and flirtatious and tried to bring that out here. Some wrestling in the living room and the bedroom. Tony gets to make a lot of wiseass comments. All of this was fun for me and helped me to bring a lot of familiarity into an otherwise unfamiliar situation. Truth be told, we've only seen Ziva and Tony in the bedroom (with other partners: Jeanne for Tony, Rivkin and a suspect in 5.16 Recoil, and sort of with each other in 3.8 Under Covers) a couple of times, and have no idea how they'd act if they were there together. The most important things for me is believable characters and believable dialogue. I felt the need to make sure the two of them kept things playful the entire time.

And one of my biggest problems with "Tiva" is that it would be terrible at the work place. If they were ever to do this they'd need to be very sure that no one would be around. I felt the alibis at the beginning of the story were important; I could see Tony being that paranoid, and Ziva going along with it the way she did.

In terms of the story itself, a few other situations stick out. First off, at the very very end, Tony wakes up in his bed sometime after 7.01 Truth or Consequences and Ziva is with him. I thought of this as being a fun way to end the story before I'd written much at all. Has this happened hundreds of times? Has this happened just a few times? When my beta read this for the first time, she said "So Tony and Ziva have been sleeping together for a few years, starting sometime between Hiatus and Shalom?" I explained that the writers of NCIS leave a ton of ambiguities for us to mull over and play with, and that I would too.

Of course, this was all good and well, until I realized the events which transpired in Tony's dream took place in the summer of 2006, two years before the release of Christoher Nolan's The Dark Knight. I mulled over this a lot before realizing two things: a) I doubt anyone else was going to pick up on this, and b) I liked the passage too much to remove it. At this point, I kind of justified my writing by deciding that Tony either imagined an event from his more recent experiences with Ziva into the dream, or he's been sleeping with her for years and was dreaming of various events from different times. You can pick whichever version suits you better.

At some point after I started, before I left the "foreplay" stage of the story (right about the time when I realized that I couldn't use the word "tits" in a serious piece of fiction) I came to a startling realization: I need to write about two people having sex. I wanted to write about two people having sex, but that was before I'd thought about it. It's difficult to create good terminology in situations I've watched on TV for 162 episodes, and difficult creating terminology between characters who've never interacted before on the show (as I tried with Fornell and M. Allison Hart in another of my fics - look it up, it's better than this one ;)) but this was even harder.

Not only did I need to create dialog, but I needed to speak about sexual experiences, and since I don't read fiction in my own life, and I don't read relationship fics, all I had to go by was, well, some of my own experiences. Hope I didn't just turn anyone away from my story by mentioning this.

The title came from Radiohead's excellent "House of Cards" off In Rainbows (2007). The song starts "I don't wanna be your friend / I just wanna be your lover / No matter how it ends / No matter how it starts" and it reminded me of the way Tony and Ziva can be sometimes.

The single most important word of this entire fic was gyrate. My beta and I went back and forth about it every read through we did, arguing about whether or not it was the right word. I was going for that kind of really deep, griding of the hips (and thinking about Shakira, to be honest) but I don't know if that was expressed all that well. The suggestion for the word to use in its place was rotate. I'm still happy with my decision, but I'd be willing to say that 10% of the time spent scrutinizing this entire piece was spent on this single, infuriating word.

I wrote the piece in Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac OS before uploading the document to Google Docs. From there, I shared the doc with my beta, who highlighted issues she had and we worked through them together, either using the in-doc chat or Voice Chats through GTalk-this was when she would decide to read lines about "straddling thighs" or "sliding fingers under her black lace..." and I would get to blushing. Go figure. I strongly recommend Google Docs for reading betas: not only can you export in ODF (so it looks just how you want it to) but, perhaps more importantly, the collaboration was great, natural, and easy.

I gave my beta a lot of liberty with my document, but refused to lose myself in the process and I think it helped a lot. She really pushed me to think about what I was saying and ensure that my mental image would translate well to the readers' mind. This was an entirely different piece before she took a look and I'm sharing with her your reviews, ensuring that she knows that they're as much a praise of her polish and resculpting than my raw material. She did an incredible job, and I really don't think this fic would have come out anywhere near as well without her. She also exhibited great patience, maturity and tolerance of my stubbornness. Thanks again.

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