Fic: The Give and Take
Sep. 23rd, 2009 12:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snowdarkredAuthor:
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snowdarkred Words: 2141
Pairing: Ziva/McGee
Rating/Warning: PG-13, crossdressing, schmoop
Summery: They celebrate the winter holidays in their own special way.
Author's Note: Set in the same universe as Scaredy-Cat, though you don't need to read that one to read this. This is so fluffy, it hurts to look at. File this under, "Ho, shit, I can't believe I wrote that." For
tpeej who wanted more. Hope you like this. (ps-if you don't know what a keycap is click here.) And a thank you for weird_fin for her impromptu beta!The Give and Take
Winter holidays were a tricky thing for them, as they discovered five months into this thing they had together. Ziva celebrated Hanukkah, as did the rest of her family. Tim celebrated Christmas, as did the rest of his family. And as they did in other aspects of their strange and new relationship, they compromised, choosing to celebrate their respective holidays with their families and leaving them free to celebrate their own made up holiday together. It was Tim who came up with the idea, because he was the romantic one in the relationship. Ziva loved it, secretly, when he thought to buy her flowers or chocolate or dinner, all with that same absent air, as if it were perfectly normal to treat your girlfriend like a glass goddess. Ziva would say that it was an American thing, except with their job, she knew that that was not true. Instead, she said that it was a McGee thing, a Tim thing, and it was something she cherished on her darkest days. On the first day of December, he gave her a rose, tucked into her hair when she woke up that morning. He had already left for work, and she was late again, but she spent the whole time in the shower thinking about what she could do to him with the petals of those flowers. On the second day of December, she gave him two computer keycaps. Not the whole keyboard, just two keycaps. Just the letters “D” and “L”. He gave her a Look and slipped the two pieces of plastic into an empty wine glass on the kitchen counter-top. On the third day, Tim gave her hand lotion. It was expensive, and it was her favorite scent. When she asked him how he found out just what, exactly, her favorite was, he sputtered and blushed. She smirked, choosing to take any possible privacy invasion in stride because it wasn't like she didn't go through his things too. On the fourth day, Ziva gave him new headphones and another keycap, this time for the letter “R”. It joined the others in the wine glass. She could tell that the letters were confusing him, and she caught him staring at the glass more than once before and after work. She smiled and distracted him with a kiss. On the fifth day, Tim gave her a new set of lingerie. Ziva laughed and said that it shouldn't count, as it was more of a present to himself, but he just grinned like a schoolboy and told her to try it on. She did, and then they took it off together. On the sixth day, Ziva got him a new iPod to go with the headphones. She slipped an “O” into his pocket as they left for work. The MP3 player was already full of his favorite lecture series. He hooked it up to a speaker system when they got back to the apartment, and she spent the night trying to ignore the sonorous voice of a computer ethics professor. He dropped the letter into the wine glass before they went to bed. On the seventh day, he got her a new knife. It was her favorite brand and of excellent quality. She knew that he had gone to Gibbs for help picking it out, but that just made it more perfect. Tim was still a little afraid of their boss, and facing that fear for her? She put on the lingerie again. On the eighth day, Ziva left a computer game on his pillow before she went to the gym, alongside a “W” and an “E”. When she returned, the keycaps were in the wine glass with their fellows, and Tim had already set up the gaming console and gotten out two controllers. He walked her through the basics, and they spent the morning playing against each other. On the ninth day, he gave her new combat boots. She grinned and put them on for when they went walking. She modeled them for him, and she could tell from the way Tim's eyes lit up that they probably were going to get another kind of exercise instead. On the tenth day, she returned the favor and got him lingerie. Tim blushed like a virgin, but as always, he could never truly deny her anything. She made sure to make the night extra special for him. She slid an “H” and a “T” onto the nightstand afterward. On the eleventh day, he gave her a sweater, a large fluffy sweater. She wore it while she read a book and listened to him slaughter monsters on the computer. On the twelfth day, she gave him high heels, and he blushed like a schoolgirl again. She waited to give him the letter, trying to see if see if he would notice it's lack. He did, and he asked. She dropped the “N” into the wine glass while he watched, and then she went to make his night extra special again. On the thirteenth day of December, Tim almost got shot while chasing a suspect. She dragged him home as soon as Ducky finished looking him over, driving like even more crazily than before. After they finished the Yay-you're-still-alive-Let's-go-another-round sex, he fished a box out of the bottom drawer of the nightstand and gave it to her. She opened it, revealing a gold Star of David on a silver chain. She trembled to think that she may have lost Tim, her sensitive Tim. On the fourteenth day, she gave him the letters “I” and “T” over breakfast in bed. She made his favorite: waffles with chocolate chips sprinkled on top and covered in strawberry syrup. She thought it looked disgusting, but the adorably schmoopy face he made when he took the first bite more than made up for it. On the fifteenth day, he gave a new gun cleaning kit, complete with panoply patches and a heavy-duty bore brush. She immediately took out her gun and began to test it out. Ziva was very happy with the quality, though she worried about how he would feel about her gift the next day. On the sixteenth day, she gave him a new gun cleaning kit, complete with panoply patches and a heavy-duty bore brush. He grinned, made a sly remark about great minds thinking alike, and immediately took out his gun to test it out. Reaching inside the kit, he found the “H” she had hidden there. It soon joined the others in the rapidly filling wine glass. On the seventeenth day, Tim gave her a waffle iron, another indirect gift to himself. She rolled her eyes and told him to keep it at his apartment since she was there all the time anyway. He bounced like a schoolboy and went to set it up in the kitchen. Ziva paused in the doorway, enjoying the sight of Tim's rear as he bent to find the waffle mix in the pantry. He paused mid-bend and mentioned needing something from the bedroom. She rolled her eyes—again--and went to retrieve it after he claimed that she “couldn't miss it.” On the bed, a bright box wrapped in shiny blue paper beckoned for her to open it. She did, using the knife Tim had given her. Inside, nestled perfectly within the packaging, was a new gun to go with the cleaning kit. On the eighteenth day, she put the letters “G” and “I” by the wine glass and put her gift on his desk. He stumbled out of the bedroom with sleepy eyes, clutching the keycaps between his fingers. He dropped it into the half-full wine glass and collapsed tiredly at the kitchen table. She presented him with a carefully wrapped box and encouraged him to open it. He did, and she watched as his eye got comically wide at the sight of a woman's blouse in his size. On the nineteenth day, she woke up at midnight to find Tim swearing in the living room. In his hands was a long rectangular package. He'd tripped and stubbed his toe. She put away her gun and helped him stand again, carefully taking the gift away from him. He blushed and said that she should just open it now. She peeled back the wrapping paper, revealing a Remington 700 Tactical Rifle . She stayed up the rest of the night taking it apart and putting it back together again. On the twentieth night, Ziva gave him a new old typewriter and the letters “L” and “E”. She drifted off to sleep that night to the sound of keys pattering against paper. On the twenty-first night, Tim took her ice-skating, swinging her around while snow drifted down from the silver-lit clouds above them. She laughed until her face hurt and she couldn't feel her toes. On the twenty-second night, Ziva gave him a pair of women's leather boots. They were low heeled and soft to the touch. Inside the shoe box, she'd put a keycaps for “H” and “T”. He added the letters to the wine glass and went to put the boots on, bending low to zip them up. She knelt to help him and the position gave her the perfect angle to lean up and kiss him. On the twenty-third night, Tim gave her a night on the town, filled with laughter and snow ball fights. They made snow men outside his apartment, sculpting each one to look like there coworkers. They gave Abby's a dog collar, Tony's an empty DVD case, and Gibbs an empty bourbon bottle. They took photos and submitted them to one of the fansites for Tim's books. On the twenty-fourth day, Ziva pulled Tim into a car and took him to a clothing store. There, she made him try on dresses until she found the ones that made her heart pound the hardest. She bought them and tugged Tim back to the apartment, where she dropped the letters “E” and “R” in the wine glass as she dragged him back to the bedroom. On the twenty-fifth day, he slipped something into her purse, but they were too late for the emergency at work for her to stop and see what it was. She checked later, when they had a break after tracking down the missing child. Inside a small envelope was an apartment key. On the twenty-sixth day, she gave him the letters “A” and “U” and a laptop that she had picked out with Abby's help . It had a huge amount of memory space, a huge screen, and the best accessories that money could buy. It was a win-win for her because she not only made him happy, she also made him want to make her very, very happy. Which he did. In bed. All day. On the twenty-seventh day, Tim took her out to lunch at her favorite restaurant, and when they sat down, he gave her a journal. Her brow furrowed when she saw that it had writing in it, but the expression cleared when she recognized the shape of the letters. It was Tim's handwriting, Tim's journal, and he wanted her to read the story of how he fell in love with her. On the twenty-eighth day, she taped the letter “O” to the bathroom mirror and set up her gift in the living room while he showered. He came out with dripping wet hair and the letter, but he froze when he was what she had in her hands. A slow, somewhat mischievous grin bloomed on his face. He set the letter on the table next to the glass and all but carried her back into the bedroom. On the twenty-ninth day, he made her dinner and handed her a hardbound book. She frowned and opened it, recognizing it as one of his thrillers. And right there, on the very first page, perfectly centered, was the dedication: “For Ziva, who makes my heart pound and my legs shake and who never, ever takes me too seriously.” On the thirtieth day, she gave him the last letter, pressing the “Y” into his hand as they kissed. He sat down at the kitchen table and spilled the contents of the wine glass out. She watched as he rearranged them and rearranged them until he got the right combination. You are the light in the world. On the thirty-first day, Tim wore the blue-knit dress with the boots and leggings. They went to the most ridiculously expensive restaurant they could find and spent the whole night staring into each others' eyes until the count down for the new year started. They kissed as fireworks exploded in the air above them.
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