When she tells him, they're fighting.
It happens by accident really. He hadn't meant to look at her computer screen, or open the flashing email, read the words across the screen, not really. But he was trying to find some papers on her desk she had signed for him and the screen that was flashing her emails had just been…well…on. So glancing across it, more or less dully bored (and also curious to see if she'd saved any of those emails he'd sent her the other day) and seeing a name there that he hadn't heard uttered in over a year and a half made his next breath come out in a choke. There are no less than 5 emails and no less than 5 replies.
Completely forgetting why he had come over to her desk in the first place and not realizing the folders he had been holding in his hand have fallen across the floor, he sinks into her chair.
"Gibbs wants us to follow the hotel bar lead, he thinks that it might answer the…Tony?"
Ziva.
She enters from the other opening of the gates but she stops suddenly, her words a faster ravel of his beating heart and he can't even glance up at her.
"You wanna explain this to me?"
Ziva frowns sensing the tone and that he was hunched over her desk. As he looks up at her, his eyes a deep mixture of hurt and disbelief, her fathers name begins to pound like guilt against her heart.
She shuts her eyes against it as he stands, his hands gripping to the desk like a vice.
"He leaves you for dead, he abandons you, Ziva, and you're exchanging pleasantries with him now?" He's past the point of reasoning, she can hear it in the uneven bitterness of his voice and a small part of her begins to panic; they've only just started being properly together, finally, this cannot possibly be the thing that ruins them.
"Tony…he is my father." She whispers, focusing her eyes on his and it's only then that he notices the faint black rings beneath her skin: she looks exhausted.
It falters him slightly because he can't remember her ever looking this worn out and he can't believe it has taken him this long to notice, given that it's her face he goes to sleep with, wakes up with, holds, needs.
He lets out a shaky breath while noting the fact that she was now leaning slightly against her desk like she couldn't keep herself up right. Why was she so tired? They were going to bed at around the same time and she was sleeping right next to him, wasn't she?
He watches her inch closer towards him and it breaks his resolve and flares the anger because he just can't bear it even though his head is screaming at him to understand, to realize that being estranged from your family wasn't easy and never simple, he of all people should know that. But it's like he's just swallowed something bitter down his throat, his stomach a pit of acid. Her father or not, he used her like the dirt under the sole of his shoe; he didn't deserve anything.
"When?"
She closes her eyes but reaches for him, a couple of her fingers around his wrist but it's still not close enough, "They started coming 6 months ago. It has taken me this long to respond."
His eyes search hers and he opens and closes his mouth a few times before he can find the words, "I don't…I don't understand." He finally says evenly.
He feels the squeeze of his wrist, sees the need for him to understand in her eyes almost as if these are things not happening to him, "You do not have to. Know that he is my father and that he is trying, I'm not about to let him in again, Tony, I just think that it is important to let him try."
He frowns, taking her words in methodically because something was off and it takes him a couple more seconds to realize why.
"Important Ziva? He left you for dead. Why should he ever be given the right for something he openly wanted to take away?"
The words seem to dredge up the memory more clearly and he moves back and away from her, heading towards the exit.
"Tony!" She yells, watching him go and he can't ignore the anguish in her face and how it rips through his skin but turning around and running down the stairs, he thinks he might be able to at least flee from it.
Later on, when he's run off most of what he's been feeling and he's returned back to the base, Gibbs is waiting for him.
"You're too late, DiNozzo, she left about an hour ago." Gibbs says and spins in his chair, watching Tony rush through the gates.
Tony falls slightly back against one of the barricades and clutches his chest, getting the breath back. He eventually nods, wanting to deter Gibbs because he can only guess from the look on his face the lecture he's about to get. He had warned them a few times (7 to be exact) that they had to keep it out of the office. Tony lets out sigh and moves to get himself back down the stairs.
But he hears it just as his back is turned, "DiNozzo."
"Boss I know, outside the office but I don't have time for a lecture right now, I screwed up and you don't-."
"Hey!" Gibbs shouts and Tony, startled gapes wide eyed at his boss, "I wasn't gonna tell you that at all."
"You weren't?"
From instinct, Tony leans back a little, as Gibbs comes slowly forward, "No. I was gonna tell you that Ziva left her jacket."
Tony watches, stunned as Gibbs reaches over her desk for the jacket, sitting folded on the chair. He lets his stare linger, catching Tony's eyes before letting the fabric go.
"Fix it."
Tony only nods, "Yes boss."
For some reason, even though he prefers the feel (it's honestly the warmest, safest place he's felt in) and look (it's almost double the size of his) of her apartment to his, they've made his place their home base. Though with all of her things there now anyway, it pretty much was home for her, in every sense of the word. She has her toothbrush in the cup beside his, makeup scattered along the countertop, a brush beside the dresser where he'll put his gun (she no longer sleeps with one under her pillow) and her clothes have a drawer of their own (though most of them somehow end up mixed in with his). It's only taken them three months and it looks (and feels) like they've been living together for years. He's suggested her moving in permanently but she put it off, telling him they'd need separate apartments just in case.
"Just in case of what?" He'd asked her, feeling a little hurt but she had laughed, the sound vibrating against his throat, "Maybe you'll get sick of me, Tony." That conversation had abruptly ended with her shirt being pulled off, his hands lacing through hers above her head and his voice growling lowly in her ear, "Wishful thinking baby."
But now, as he drove through the rainy streets of Washington he was beginning to understand what she had meant by it. Just in case of a fight, just in case one of them stayed later than the other, just in case they just needed a little space, just in case they broke up.
He grips the steering wheel harder; it had only been 3 months. 3 beautiful, passionate and incredible months. They weren't going to break up. Fuck, why was he being so insecure?
Shaking that thought so far out of his head, he slams his door shut and races across the street to dodge the rain.
But he's still drenched by the time he gets up to his apartment and unlocking the door and pulling off his jacket, he throws it across the room hoping to hit the couch, not thinking that his girlfriend would be sitting there crying on it.
"You are right."
He clutches his racing heart at the sight of her, his keys still dangling from the door.
"Ziva. Geez, what the hell are you doing over there, you scared me."
But she seems to have not heard him, her face placid as she looks out in the direction of his blank television.
"Ziva I-" He starts, coming into the room.
"He doesn't deserve a second chance."
He bites his tongue against the urge to say it'd be more like 100th and walks towards the couch.
"I shouldn't have said those things, I just snapped. If you want to give that…him…a chance and he's trying to make up for what he's done, he should be allowed to."
He moves his coat and sits beside her but she gets up quickly, shifting out of his embrace and walks into the kitchen.
"I don't know what I was thinking, I am foolish to trust his words." She bites out.
He watches her, worry etched across his face, filling in the pit of his stomach as she begins to pull things vehemently out of the fridge and cabinets, preparing their dinner, so aware of what she was doing, that the crash was coming.
But deciding the moment they first were together not to wait for it anymore, not to pretend that it wasn't there, he pushes himself off of the couch and stands, moving hastily towards her, "Hey, slow down will you? Look at me, don't do this to yourself."
"I am not doing anything to myself, Tony. I am doing nothing." She says roughly but her voice breaks and she accidentally drops the bag of peas she has just grabbed out of the freezer.
Both of her hands immediately go up to cover her face as the smack to the ground echoes and silences the apartment. She's trembling as he moves for her and she drops her arms, looking away from him.
"I'm pregnant."
His breathing stops and then starts just as suddenly, coming out in clumps of air.
Pregnant.
She was pregnant.
She was standing in his kitchen, her hair falling around her face, her eyes wet with tears. And she was pregnant with his kid, they were pregnant.
He keeps his eyes glued to her as he slowly comes down to the ground, resting on his knees, right up against her, his fingers finding the hem of her shirt. She lets out a slow breath as he peels up the fabric, those green eyes she thinks she could spot a mile away, those eyes she has memorized, could tell you how they grew in color whenever he was upset, happy, looking up at her. He lifts her shirt until the plane of her tummy is exposed, the skin marveled with goose bumps.
"Ziva…" He whispers and it spreads across her naval, his finger tips brushing her skin, "How long have you known?"
Her hands claw through his hair, letting herself lean into him, "Just two weeks. I…took a test, made an appointment with my Doctor to confirm."
"You held this with you for so long?" Though he isn't angry just completely awed, completely stunned, completely changed.
He slowly peals his lips, his mouth, his face away from being pressed against her stomach and rises up, not bothering to hide the tears in his own eyes from her.
They stare at one another and it's in those seconds that pass between them where they speak, where they fall against the other, bearing the weight. He can feel his already raising heart picking up speed and he doesn't know but he thinks he might vomit, scream or wrap himself around her. But their foreheads seem to graft together, seamed together in the middle of his darkened apartment, the safe lining of the walls holding them upright and it's both calming and exactly what they need.
"God, Ziva, a baby." He whispers and she manages to laugh a little, sniffing against the tears that don't seem to stop.
"I know," She says, "I know."
He holds her tighter, "We can do this," He murmurs though as he looks around their darkened apartment, his hands beginning to tremble he wonders if they really can.