A/N: Updated on 17/05/2015. Years after first posting this (and having actually watched NCIS now) I have gone over this, made spelling and grammar fixes, and switched Ducky out for McGee. McGee makes so much more sense.

A Day at the Office

Ziva Davis decided that coffee was some divine creation of the heavens. It was hard not to with the day she was having. Having been dragged out to a club where she had ended up piss drunk the night before, she had been rudely awoken by her phone blaring shrilly into her pounding skull. She wouldn't have minded if the call had been an emergency (okay she would have but that wasn't the point) but having her boss phone her to tell her to drag her ass down to the latest crime scene was not on her list of things to do.

So she had managed to drag herself out of bed, get dressed, and into the car, all without any breakfast, a coffee, or a hairbrush, and then, when she was halfway across the city, she gets the call that the crime scene is gone. As in not there any longer. As in the building, along with all their evidence, went up in a ball of flame. Fortunately some workman had turned up and warned them about the gas leak in time for them to get everyone out of the place in time. Just.

After that disaster she had to turn her car around and drive back through the city in rush hour traffic, looking like something the cat dragged in - backwards - due to her hangover and rushing to get ready for something that turned out to be completely pointless. Not to mention that when she finally turned up at work (in which pointless driving time could have saved her at least another forty minutes) things were so hectic that she didn't get a chance at a morning coffee. And to top it all off she was the one who had to watch the office that day whilst all the others were getting lunch.

So it was for all those reasons that the fumes of the cheap, bland coffee from the machine down the hallway were enough to prove that some merciful higher power existed. How else could something be so marvellous that her hangover retreated at even the smell.

She took the glorious first sip, savouring the coffee-goodness, before returning to the office. She winced slightly at the squeaky door hinge. Somebody needed to call the maintenance guy about that one day. Hopefully before her next night out.

"Nice place you've got here."

She froze, the coffee slopping against the side of the plastic cup and onto her hand, and looked up at the intruder. He sat lounging like a lazy cat on her chair, spinning it slightly side to side by pushing with his foot. He wore a blue, oil stained jumpsuit, like the ones some engineers had. A NYC football club cap covered blonde hair and shadowed brown eyes that looked too old to be on the face of a nineteen-year-old. What was probably most unnerving was the gun he was fiddling with on his lap.

She would have asked how anyone let him into the bullpen like that, let alone unattended. However she knew him and knew he could talk his way out of or into (almost) anything.

"Alex." The word came out in surprise. She hadn't seen the boy in years. She's spoken to him occasionally by phone but they had, like the good little spies they were, made sure that nothing was revealed about their location in their talks. The last time she spoke with him was shortly after she found out that a certain someone she was attracted to found her habits, such a sleeping with her guns, unnerving. She needed to speak with someone who understood her way of life and it was Alex she was closest to, even coming from different organisations.

The second the surprise wore off, the process sped up by the appearance of a smug grin at her stupor, she shouted, "How the hell did you find me?"

Alex shrugged. "I stopped by your house."

"I'm ex-directory."

The blonde grinned. "And when has something like that ever stopped me?"

Ziva paused. "I guess."

"What's with the gun?"

The grin widened. "It's a tranquilliser." He offered no more information and Ziva knew better to ask.

"Why are you here?" That question at least would offer at least a vague answer, even if he couldn't reveal much."

"My job. Things got a little sticky."

"What kind of sticky?" Ziva asked suspiciously. "The 'I can just sit and chat for half an hour' kind or the 'I'll get my friend's workplace blown up again' kind?" She took a sip of the much needed coffee. Alex was a good friend but he did her head in even at the best of times.

"That was one time. Okay twice now. But a crime scene isn't really a workplace."

The woman choked on her coffee, before spluttering, "You did that!"

"Not exactly. More like your murderer. He's part of a really nasty crime syndicate that had stolen some classified information. Your victim accidentally stumbled across the truth. These guys didn't want to risk the fact he had left anything about him lying around. So boom goes his house," he explained with a dismissive hand wave to emphasise the 'boom'. He paused and, adding as an afterthought, "I still can't believe that everyone started going on about how they could smell gas."

It only then clicked that Alex was the maintenance worker that got her colleagues out in time. Not all spies would have done the same if risked breaking cover. "Thank you, for saving them."

Alex grinned and opened his mouth to reply when two her co-workers chose that moment to return from lunch. "Hey Ziva, I got you chicken if that's okay," McGee said, entering with a plastic supermarket bag on his arm, "We could always swap if you …" he trailed off, spotting Alex for the first time.

"You," he remarked, recognising him instantly.

"Timothy McGee," Alex said with a nod of his head. "Nice to meet you."

McGee was visibly unnerved at how the young man was able to recognise him instantly without ever meeting him before. He paled even more seeing the gun and the boy's casual manner. In an instant he jumped to several conclusions and in a calm voice instructed, "Put the gun down. Nobody needs to get hurt."

Gibbs (who had appeared behind McGee, taken in the gun and jumped to the same conclusion) was currently reaching for his own gun.

It was too much for Ziva. She burst out laughing. "He's fine Sir, McGee. This is Alex Rider."

"The slut of the espionage world," Alex added, sort of unhelpfully.

"What the hell is going on?" Gibbs demanded.

"Ziva's letting me hang out here for about half an hour," Alex said with a grin.

"When did I agree to that?" she argued.

"Paraguay."

Ziva flushed red in both embarrassment and anger. "My crime scene!"

"I think Paraguay constitutes for more than one little crime scene that MI6 would have taken over anyway."

Ziva quickly thought it over. "Half an hour," she agreed.

"I haven't agreed to any of this," interrupted Gibbs. "And put that damned gun away."

Alex shrugged, replacing it in a holster on his ankle. "I would show you some official ID that would mean you'd have to agree to let me stay but considering I'm currently undercover, as a one James Brooks, any ID with my real name and association to MI6 isn't exactly going to be on me. So I could just wait here whilst you go through the infuriating process of talking to MI6 and trying to get a scrap of information out of them about me or you can take Ziva's word that I am who I am and really mean no harm."

Gibbs looked at him angrily but nodded in agreement, retreating to his office about 'those damn spy types'. As soon as the door shut Alex turned to Ziva. "Another point for me."

"Huh?" McGee voiced his confusion.

"Alex likes to keep track of who pisses off the most bosses. I'm at five. Alex is at …?"

"Thirty-one."

"Not exactly a good thing. And I've done more missions for the Mossad than you have."

"That's because I'm not a Mossad agent. Most the time."

"I still beat you there though."

"Who is it that has saved the world most?"

"It's not my fault you get all the good missions. Besides I got the biggest gun."

"If you want to play it that way then I got 'the best place that my work took me'."

Ziva shook her head. "We agreed that didn't count. Nothing can top that."

"No you said it didn't count and wouldn't listen when I said otherwise. Besides the reason it wins is because nothing can top it."

"Most air miles," countered Ziva.

"Hello, I went to space. I think I've got the most air miles."

"In a plane," she deadpanned.

"Well then," Alex countered, "I destroyed the most expensive object."

"A space station doesn't count as an object. It's a building. Besides it would have been destroyed anyway you just helped it along. I win that one because of the Ming vase."

"I saved your behind most. Paraguay," he sang, earning a dirty look.

"By letting you stay here it means Paraguay is not to be mentioned."

"What happened in Paraguay?" They turned to McGee, having half-forgotten he was there.

"Nothing," Ziva said. "Nothing happened in Paraguay."

"Sure," Alex agreed easily, before grinning widely and laughing.

"Alex," she warned.

"Fine. Fine."

"So how exactly did you meet?" Ducky ventured.

"We wer-" Alex was cut off by the sound of an explosion and gunfire coming from outside. McGee and Ziva had jumped to their feet and pulled out their guns, while Alex calmly removed his from his ankle. "Well that's my signal to go. Bye Ziva, McGee. Oh and sorry about the window?"

"What about the window?" McGee asked only a split second before Alex went smashing though it and into the street outside.

There was a pause, before he turned to Ziva. "You have strange friends."

Ziva shrugged. "Pretty much." She took a sip of her coffee. It was cold.

'Damn you, Alex Rider," she thought.