A/N: I have a stack of one shots on my hard drive. I have been living in hope that they'll magically turn themselves into full length stories while I'm not looking, but they haven't. I'd still like to share them though (and get them off my hard drive), so I'm brining them together here.
So that they're not completely random I'm adding a common thread to them all: coffee. Have fun with them.
Warnings for the occasional swear word.
Disclaimer: Disclaimed.

Daybreak

They're good at silence. Well, she always has been. He is generally only good at it while in the company of the handful of people he is completely comfortable with. Ziva happens to be one of those people.

At 0600, though, she could probably be anyone and he still wouldn't talk to her. He's been awake for 23 hours now, and so his ability to form sentences is essentially limited to "Real big cappu-thingy with three, um…" (this is where he pauses to mime pouring sugar out of a sachet) "…please?"

Fortunately he has just enough presence of mind to aim this at the girl at the register at the coffee shop rather than his partner. Not that Ziva would have been offended, but he doubts she would have done anything with his request. She's doing her own impersonation of a zombie after placing an order for a "Very long black", and he's sure that used up the last of her strength.

He counts…well, not an exact number because that would require effort he can't spare, but a ballpark figure of a lot of people waiting for their orders ahead of them, and so he grunts at his partner. She slowly blinks up at him as he cocks his head towards an empty bench, and then silently follows him over. His descent to the seat is more of a collapse, but the wall directly behind him prevents him from falling backwards to the floor. A moment later his left shoulder assists the wall to keep Ziva upright. She lands with a soft 'oof!', crosses her legs and arms, and then rests her cheek against his shoulder. Her slight weight pushes him to the right until his other shoulder finds another wall. Their combined dead weight settles, and then they just sit. No talking. No playing with smart phones. No moving. Just sitting.

The urge to close his eyes and catch a few minutes' sleep is strong, but at this point he knows there will be no such thing as just a few minutes. If he closes his eyes now he will fall into a coma from which he will not rouse for eight hours. And so he drags his eyes around the room in an effort to keep his last few functioning brain cells sparking.

There are plenty of agents and other agency staff in the coffee shop. By the look of their bright eyes and neatly pressed clothes, none of them have pulled an all-nighter like him and Ziva. For a few long minutes, he envies them. It's not that other teams don't work hard, or put in long hours. But they certainly don't seem to do it as much as Team Gibbs. People on other teams are almost guaranteed to see their own beds every night. And their kids and spouses and dogs…Hell, they probably even have time to walk their dogs with their kids and spouses in tow. And they probably have their meals at regular times and get to see the sunshine in summer independent of a dead body lying under it and ohmyGod, he is so exhausted right now.

He attempts to swallow moisture back into his mouth, but his voice still cracks when he uses it. "I'm gonna quit," he mumbles to Ziva. "FYI."

After a few still and silent seconds where he wonders if she fell asleep against his arm, the toe of her boot barely taps his ankle. He thinks if she were even five per cent more awake that probably would have been a kick.

"No, you won't," she mumbles back.

He heaves an epic sigh, and even if he had been thinking seriously about it before, her half asleep grip on him is enough to change his mind. He grunts his acceptance of the facts. This is a good place for him to be. He just wishes he got to see his bed a little more.

"Very long black for Ziva?" one of the baristas calls out. "Really big cappu-thingy with three for Tony?"

He smirks. That barista, Poh, has been taking their orders for about a year and a half. She's a college student, pretty, bubbly, and harmlessly flirts with him most mornings. She catches his eye from across the room and lifts both cups at him in case he didn't hear her. Tony can only nod in return. He'll get there eventually. He just needs to coax his core muscles into lifting his torso upright before balancing Ziva against the wall, getting to his feet, pulling Ziva up and walking across the room to pick up the cups.

God, that sounds like way too much effort for right now. Maybe a five-minute nap really will help. Ziva isn't making a move either, and he thinks it's possible that she's already asleep. Maybe if he just took a long blink…

"Hey."

His eyes snap open and he focuses on Poh now standing in front of them. She's holding both cups, and the smell is enough to get him to lift his head. She smirks at him with a mix of amusement and sympathy.

"Hi," he croaks.

Poh holds out both cups to him. "You guys work all night?" she asks.

Tony nods and reaches out for the coffee. He'd make a pithy remark about her detective skills but that would require higher brain function than he currently possesses.

"Well, at least you're suffering together," Poh says with a shrug, and then turns and heads back to the counter.

Tony stares at her butt for a few too many seconds before rediscovering discretion. Ziva is still a dead weight against his arm as he brings his coffee to his nose and inhales deeply. He feels a buzz in the back of his head—the imminent release of endorphins that will reward his surrender to another hit of his drug of choice. He wishes that someone would invent a safe way of injecting caffeine directly into the eyeball for an immediate pick-me-up, but alas, he must accept the slower method of absorption through the stomach. It's better than nothing.

As Ziva lets out a faint snore Tony closes his eyes and tips a mouthful of liquid smack into his mouth. Fuck, yeah, that's the stuff! It roasts his mouth and throat, and since he hasn't eaten anything for about ten hours he can feel it travel all the way down to the pit of his belly. He can't work out whether the feeling is pleasant or disturbing, but as long as it wakes him up it doesn't matter.

After another two gulps he regains the ability to turn his head and look down at the messy mass of Ziva's curls. He smiles, and thinks of another blessing (after coffee) to count today: a tired Ziva often means a disheveled Ziva, and these days a disheveled Ziva equals curls. The day is looking up.

He shifts a little on the bench so that he doesn't break his arm when he waves her coffee under her nose. "Hey," he says to her, and because he's out of hands he stretches his neck so that he can nudge the top of her head with his chin.

Ziva takes a deep breath, and a moment later she's reaching for her coffee with both hands and a very un-Ziva-like whimper. She drinks from the cup like she's been dying of thirst, and soon she manages to sit upright on her own. For a few minutes they sit and sip in comfortable silence, and he begins to feel merely tired instead of exhausted. Ziva places her cup on the bench beside her before arching her back and lifting her arms to the ceiling in a graceful stretch, and he slumps back against the wall again as the full force of appreciation hits him in the chest. Curls and stretching? The day is definitely looking up.

She picks up her cup again and turns a tired but warm smile on him. "Let's go."

He nods, and is only mildly irritated when she gets to her feet without even the slightest hint of age weighing her down. She hooks her hand into the crook of his elbow and pulls him up, and even when he's barely awake he still likes it when she manhandles him. Poh catches his eye as they follow a slow path towards the door, and she looks between the two of them with a smile he's still too tired to analyze.

"See you both again in a few hours?" she calls out.

Tony throws her a thumbs up before reaching around Ziva's shoulder to push the door open for her. Although the sun now shines, the birds sing, his partner's hair is curly and his outlook is generally much better than it was 15 minutes ago, today is still going to be difficult to get through without liquid stimulants.

But maybe at the end of it, he'll get to see his bed again.