A/N: Based on the Kenny Chesney song "Come Over". Go listen to it. I'm going to go sleep for... the rest of my life. Relay for life makes me tired.

Disclaimer: tooooo...ttttiirreeedd...

In pure frustration, I grabbed the remote and turned the television off. The episode of Friends I'd been watching disappeared from my screen, only to appear once again. I needed the television on; I needed something to be used as a distraction from the only thing that had been on my mind – for years now, actually. But tonight was the worst. The emotions I'd been bottling up for the longest time had met their peak and I was left lying there, questioning every decision I'd made in the last seven years.

I stared blankly at the ceiling in my bedroom, watching the fan spinning. It was somewhat metaphorical. A perpetual circle. It was like my relationship with my partner. Sometimes it got turned off, but when it was on, it kept going. Stuff had a tendency to hit said fan, but it always recovered quickly. It just went on continually. Because that's what we did. We always recovered. Sure, we bickered, bantered, and paraded the occasional significant other in front of one another, but we recuperated. Every time. Even if it took four months in a terrorist camp in North Africa.

Forcing myself to move past the fan, which only reminded me of why my slumber was being hindered, I began counting the cracks in the ceiling of my old apartment. Each represented a single moment in my life. Crack number one was in the far corner of my bedroom. And it represented the true beginning of my life – Baltimore. That was where I had first made a difference. It was where my law enforcement career began. It was where I had first fallen in love and committed to a single woman who meant the world to me. I'd gotten closure on the first and third things – I'd confronted both Jason and Wendy. And I was okay with where I stood on those two subjects. They were in the past. I'd moved on. But as far as the law enforcement career went… well, I was in my forties and still just a senior field agent. I could've been so much more by now – could've had my own team in Rota. Hell, I'd had that opportunity twice. And I'd given it up. Sure, sometimes it really sucked to always be second to Gibbs. But I was okay with that. Because they were my family. They were everything to me and I wasn't sure if I was ready to move on.

There was another crack beside that one, and I took that one to represent everything that happened immediately after Baltimore – joining NCIS, working with Gibbs, being partnered with Viv for a short period of time. I left Wendy and the broken-off engagement out of this category – I didn't think that, although she was a huge part of my life at one point, I could stand putting her into a second category. My life with her was most definitely gone. I wasn't about to let myself continue bringing her back up. That would surely result in disaster. And letting my life become a catastrophe was unacceptable – I'd spent too long building up walls to simply let them come crashing down.

The third chink that I counted had to show my early life at NCIS, before my current partner had joined. It was that time with Kate and Gibbs, joined by McGee soon after. When our biggest worries involved a certain rogue Israeli Mossad officer who later ended up murdering Kate. Before a certain handler/half-sister of the aforementioned rogue Israeli Mossad officer walked into my life and just screwed with me on so many levels. Before I realized that I could truly fall in love after everything that happened with my ex-fiancé.

The fourth signified the time between meeting her and the time when Gibbs returned from his margarita safari. A great deal had happened within that time. It started with a single question from her – which, I have to admit, attracted me to her from the moment she walked into the bullpen and slouched provocatively in her cargo pants – and progressed into our weekly movie nights. And, over time, those evolved into a semblance of a relationship. We'd even ended up sleeping together – something I regret having done at this point. The relationship had never actually gone anywhere – Mossad had, apparently, discovered that we'd been together – because she'd ended it before we'd really even committed to one another.

The fifth was everything that followed with my relationship with Jeanne, La Grenouille, and Jenny's death. I wasn't about to dwell on that, so I moved on. The sixth symbolized what had gone down over the next year with Rivkin, another thing I wasn't about to ponder for more than a short moment.

The seventh was that summer. Somalia, the Damocles, the heartbreak I'd felt upon hearing of her death. Even thinking about it filled me with dread, and I had to stop. I looked toward the clock to see it was just after one in the morning. I thought about how, if I were younger, the night would only have been beginning. It made me feel old. I mean, think about it: I was in my mid-forties, and Ziva was in her mid-thirties. What chance did I think that I had? She was young and beautiful and intelligent, whereas I was nearing fifty and had nothing going on for me beyond my senseless movie analogies. What could I possibly offer her? I was struggling financially, and I knew I couldn't give her the American dream of a white picket fence in the suburbs. Wasn't that what she wanted? She told me she was looking for something real, something structured. I didn't think I could give her that. Our partnership was constantly on the rocks; how were we supposed to make a relationship work out of that?

That's when I started talking aloud to myself. Everything I said was nonsensical and without order: movie quotes, lines from songs, even words Ziva and I had exchanged over our seven years. I had to make sound because the silence was deafening and it allowed me to think. And if I kept thinking, I'd do something I might regret. Maybe that didn't make sense: how could thinking something through make you regret something more? If I thought it through, I'd have realized that it had been seven years of avoiding the truth. I'd have realized what we should have done so long ago. What I should have done so long ago.

Locating the fourth crack in the ceiling, my thoughts returned to the "relationship" that Ziva and I had once shared. When she broke things off, I had said some stupid things. I was angry. I felt betrayed. She was supposed to be my girlfriend, wasn't she? I hadn't seen it as just sex. I had seen it as more than that – an opportunity to take this to another level. Apparently, that was all she'd considered it…

"I think this needs to end…"

"The movie, or—"

"No, Tony, this. Us… being together. Mossad knows about us, and I am scared that they will come after you."

I sat up straight for the first time that evening.

"I can protect myself, Ziva."

"I know that you can. But my father and Mossad are both far more powerful than you can imagine—"

"I don't care. I want to be with you. I want—"

"No, you do not. I do not think that you understand. You chase another skirt every week. You cannot actually expect me to believe that you want to settle down with someone, especially me."

"Did I say anything about settling down? No. I said that I want you. And I want only you. You're different from the others. None of the other girls makes me laugh like you do. All last year, I tried my hardest to charm you. To get you to feel differently than you did. I wanted you to feel something for me. One thing I refuse to do is have a relationship with a close coworker if we're just sleeping together. You were my partner and I wanted something with you. This is it. Are you telling me that I broke one of my only rules?"

"I am sorry."

"Well then…" I started, standing from the couch. "If this ends here… there's no going back. I won't call even when it hurts not to. I won't care that you're seeing other guys. I won't care that something went down here. If this ends here… it ends here."

She dropped her eyes to the ground, but stood up steadily. I stared her down, praying that she would realize how stupid this was. I cared about her more than I was scared of Mossad. She had to know this. And that's when I realized that I'd never voiced what I really felt for her. And by then it was too late.

I know what I said back then. I know that I'd said it was over from the moment she walked out that door. But lying there, I realized just how utterly dumb it was for us to keep fighting this. Even I could tell there was something going on, whatever that might be. There was something between us. That was made obvious that night when Ray called after eight weeks of silence. I was in her life. I'd been a huge part of her life.

Hell, I was the reason that girl was alive. And she had the nerve to claim that I wasn't even her friend?

This outburst faded as quickly as it had come. It was all just the buildup of the frustration getting to me. This bed had been far too cold for far too long. EJ was the last, and before that the women had been few. I was sick of just taking women home and sending them off in the morning. I'd denied everything that involved Ziva for the longest time. I needed to stop trying to escape the truth and climbing walls I shouldn't. I wanted her.

I needed her.

Maybe she'd say that we were over, that there was nothing between us. She was a worse liar than I was and maybe that's because the only person I lie to is myself. I'm good at that kind of thing. She's not. She's lied to people before; her whole life in Mossad has been staked on it. She lied to herself too long when she was working for her father. I suppose she was just sick of it.

Maybe she'd say that Gibbs would never approve. And in all honesty, I didn't care. Forget about Gibbs. Screw his rules. There was no way I'd ever find love while I spent my life at work. My only opportunity to find love was where my life was: work. Maybe we'd be bad for each other, but it was something we'd have to find out for ourselves. I wasn't good for anyone else, and seeing her past with men, she wasn't either.

We'd been there for each other through the most difficult of times. Through hurt, anger, and death, we'd been by each other's side. It was the way we operated. Sure, we'd argue, and things like Rivkin and Somalia and Saleem would happen. Those were freak accidents that made us who we were. And freak accidents like what happened with Harper Dearing and that elevator shaped the rest of our life together.

I gained consciousness amid a cloud of dust and debris. I felt a warm body on top of me. When I tried shifting, I gasped in pain. I assessed my injuries quickly – sprained wrist, bruised ribs, concussion. Not that bad. My eyes slowly opened, looking at Ziva to see her eyes opening.

"You good?"

She groaned slightly in pain, trying to move, but I held her carefully in place, not wanting either of us more injured than we already were.

"You're hurt?"

"Some of the wreckage hit me on the head. I think I might have a concussion. And I think I sprained that wrist." She indicated the hands we'd joined upon falling over in the elevator. I almost laughed, despite the situation. Even when we get hurt, we do it together. Identically.

"Don't tell me you hurt your ribs, too."

"I think so. Why?"

"I have the same wounds. Looks like we do share everything." There was a long pause where we just lay there, focusing on breathing. The situation felt familiar – Ziva had a tendency to end up on top of me – but neither of us commented on it this time. She didn't make a joke about my knee. It was too dark of a situation to mention that simple of a time. We didn't even know if the others were alive at the moment.

Through all the chaos, we'd completely forgotten one key thing.

"Great way to spend an anniversary, partner."

Her head moved from its spot resting on my chest to meet my eyes.

"I had forgotten… seven years."

"I know. Seems like only yesterday we were undercover together for the first time, right?"

There was a long silence in which we'd held each other's stares and smiled.

Seven years. Most partnerships never lasted past five. It was a feat that I'd lasted eleven with Gibbs and eight with Tim – maybe even unheard of. I'd only made it to one anniversary with Kate before she was killed. We'd gone out drinking with Gibbs, Abby, and Ducky. Ziva and I had never really celebrated the anniversaries of our partnership. I'd thought about it a lot, despite this. Ziva and I had broken up on our first anniversary. On our second, my car had been blown up. I'd been on a freaking ship for our third. I'd thought she was dead for our fourth. Our fifth, she'd been in Miami, and our sixth, I'd been shot by Cole. This was the first time we'd even acknowledged it. I think it was time to make a point of it.

We didn't have to spend any more nights apart, missing one another. I was sick of it. I was so sick of the loneliness. She didn't have to protect me. She was an NCIS agent, and an American citizen now. We were both safe, now that we'd dealt with Dearing. Maybe tonight wasn't a commitment for forever. But it could be. She didn't have to stay if she didn't want to. This could last for now, for tonight, a week, month, year, or seven of them. Maybe it did mean forever.

The bed was too big and cold without her. I missed Paris. I missed just holding her, kissing her, loving her and feeling loved. She was everything. Without her, the world was empty. Without her, I had nothing to fight for. I reached for the bedside table and grabbed my cell phone, blindly dialing the numbers I knew by heart.

She sounded wide awake, like she'd been up all night, too, thinking about the same thing as me. It gave me the confidence to say what I needed to.

"Come over."

Yeah... you know the drill... say words...