Author's Note: Sorry?

So I guess you could say I've been busy. It's been a weird year or so punctuated by death, parental divorce, various other happenings and non happenings. So an apology for my absence is all I can really offer. I'm not promising steady updates on all my fics, but I'll try to get back into this. Like I said, it's been a weird year.

This is only short, and the next chapter will be the last- a lengthy resolution chapter that hopefully you guys will all enjoy.

Anyways, please enjoy. Drop me a line (review) and let me know what you think :) As always, I'm open to criticism and all that so let me know.

Normally they would dance around it. They would stare at each other with heavy gazes and look away and look back and look away again. They would brush in the hallways or he'd stand behind her as they watch the plasma and they'd feel that static leap in their chests and each wonder if the other had felt it too. Normally they'd go back to work and pretend like they hadn't just had an 'almost' moment, like neither of them felt the feelings they did.

But this time Tony would have none of it. He wouldn't let her run. He wouldn't let this fall apart. Instead, he opens the door of his apartment and throws it shut with a slam behind him and before he even knows what he's doing he's running down the stairs and calling her name.

"Ziva! What the hell?"

He gets no response and he increases his pace, ignoring the tug at his shoulder. Bullet wounds sure are a bitch.

When he gets outside the building it's raining, and he can't help but wryly think how fitting, and yet how cliche and annoying it is. He looks left and right and sees a huddled form retreating.

"Ziva!" he shouts, and the figure tenses, and pauses on the sidewalk. But she won't turn around. He takes that as his cue to close the gap.

When he reaches he he says her name again, but she won't even look at him. After a beat: "Come inside?"

She raises her head and he's shocked by the utterly lost look that she wears.

"Please," he pushes. He wants to reach out and touch her, reassure her, drag her inside, but he knows her reflexes all to well and holds back.

Finally, she nods.

"Your hair is wet," he says, and closes the door behind him. It's a silly thing to say, he realises. She's been standing in the rain. Of course her hair is wet.

When she looks at him, her gaze in steely and blank, and he wonders if he imagined the vulnerable, hopeless Ziva he saw just a few minutes ago. She reaches up to touch her hair, then looks down at her soaking clothes, the rapidly pooling puddle beneath her. Then, she utters one word in the silence.

"Shit."

She's not really one for poetry.

And Tony laughs. He really laughs. And then Ziva is laughing too. Because it's just all so ridiculous and built up and fraught with tension that could apparently only be cut with a single uttered profanity.

"What the hell, Ziva?" he says again, and his words are serious, even though he's laughing so hard he could cry.

She looks at him with tears in her eyes. Laughing tears? She looks at him and says that she doesn't know.

They stop laughing.

Outside, the wind howls.

A/N: Favourite lines? Good? Bad? Awful? Let me know :) Thanks for reading.