"Oh Ziva," Tony sighed, "you're such a gentleman."

He looked positively gleeful at his own observation, and was careful to stare directly at McGee as he voiced it. Lunch was unpacked and distributed and McGee decided to defend himself.

"She pulled my chair out for me because my hands were full. It's not a statement on gender roles."

Tony scoffed with more animation than was probably necessary. "You say that now, but pretty soon you'll be wearing an apron and baking cookies while you patiently wait for her to get home from a hard day at work. Tell me, are you a waist or bib apron kind of guy?"

"He wears a bib apron," Ziva supplied helpfully. The feeling of McGee staring spiteful holes into the top of her head caused her to stop her raid on the Chinese container and look up. "What?"

McGee rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the now even giddier Tony. "I helped her with dinner when she was hosting a party. Once. And for your domestic situation to be at all plausible, Tony, Ziva and I would at least have to be dating. And there's nothing effeminate about wearing an apron."

Ziva made a noise indicating she was going to speak when she had finished chewing, and accidentally waved a chopstick close enough to McGee's eye to make him flinch.

"I do not understand why you are so offended, McGee. You should not consider it shameful to be dominated by a woman if she is a worthy adversary."

Tony choked, and used his chopsticks to take a piece of meat out of his mouth. "Hey, hey, no one's talking about adversaries or domination here. Well, domination, kind of. But I was talking about you being his knight in shining armor, not beating him in some kind of geek/ninja battle."

Ziva and McGee were too busy staring at the half-chewed meat with mild horror to respond. Tony put it back in his mouth to remove the distraction.

"I'm going to eat at my own desk."

McGee left, Ziva shrugged and Tony waved.

The elevator broke on Thursday. Ziva was the first to get to the stairwell.

"After you," she said.

"No," said McGee.

Ziva raised an eyebrow and pushed him through with a hand on his back.

Thursday, an agent from another department knocked McGee on his way to the water cooler and looked back as he tried to pick up the files now scattered across the floor. By the time he reached his destination, Ziva was there with a cup full of water and an insincere apology for the way it spilled onto his pants when she stumbled.

McGee grinned, then frowned, then covered his face with his palm.

On Friday, when McGee went down to autopsy to collect results from Ducky, he found a cinnamon donut waiting for him. Ducky used hands McGee was sure had all too recently been used to handle the dead to pass it over, and told him simply that it was "compliments of Miss David." That wasn't quite enough of an explanation, and as he folded back the napkin to check for signs of anything life-threatening, McGee followed Ducky to the other side of the autopsy table and asked him to elaborate.

"It has something to do with Agent DiNozzo, I believe. Ziva says that you've been acting strangely ever since he made a comment about you baking her cookies. She thought you might feel better if she gave you a dessert item." He stopped to take in McGee's expression. "I did not understand either, my dear boy. But she seemed very earnest."

"That doesn't really…" McGee was stopped by a very unpleasant cracking sound emanating from where Palmer is attending to a cadaver, before he continued "…explain why you're giving it to me, Ducky."

"Well, apparently, the last time she tried to offer you food it was intercepted by Tony. An apple, I believe. She trusted the task of giving you the donut to me because she knew my chances of achieving it unhindered were much higher than her own."

"Oh." McGee shifted his feet uncomfortably and cast his eyes around the room. "Well. That's nice."

It rained while McGee tried to install a surveillance camera in an alleyway. The rest of the team waited in the car, and McGee thought Tony was 

probably laughing at him. Strangely enough, it was just as he was considering that possibility that a low chuckle resounded behind him.

It wasn't Tony.

McGee sighed. "Ziva, if you just came out here to laugh at me, you could have waited until I got back and saved yourself the trouble." He turned to face Ziva, who was standing with a black umbrella and an amused smirk.

"I am sorry, McGee. It is just that you look like a drowned mouse."

"That's not – never mind. Why did you come out here? I'm nowhere near done."

Ziva motioned to the item over her head. "I brought you an umbrella," she said, and, rather than handing it to him and leaving, stood beside him and held it over both their heads, which really only allowed them each to be half-covered. He gave her a questioning look. She shrugged. "You cannot hold it yourself. You need your hands." She pointed to where he was fixing the camera to the wall.

McGee looked at her disbelievingly. "So you're going to stand out in the freezing cold. So I don't get wet. Which I already am."

Ziva stared back at him. "Yes," she said, as if it were obvious.

McGee groaned and let his head fall forward to rest against the wall.

"Ziva!"

She blinked. "What?"

"You can't keep doing this!" He lifted his head to look at her only to be met with a confused expression. "This! The letting me go through doors first, the standing up for me - the, the man jobs!"

Ziva sighed. "You did not get the donut."

McGee gave her an exasperated look. "No, Ziva, I got the donut. I still want you to stop with the gallantry."

Ziva moved the umbrella to better accommodate the slight veer to left McGee's ranting had caused him to take, and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"McGee, you worry far too much. Neither of us conform to stereotypical images of our gender, nor are we complete inversions of them. It is not our concern whether we fit someone else's template for our behavior. "

McGee continued to look worried. "What do you mean I don't fit the stereotypical image of my gender? If you're talking about the moisturizing, I told you…"

"McGee," Ziva raised the hand on his shoulder to hit him playfully on the cheek, "I hope you will not be this neurotic while we are out tonight."

"Tonight?" McGee rubbed the spot where she'd hit him. "Did you just ask me out?"

Ziva grinned. "Well, someone had to…"

"Don't finish that sentence with 'be the man', and I'll say yes."

When Ziva paid for McGee's beer as the team met for drinks, Tony let out a cry of victory.

"Aha! I told you! Didn't I tell you? You've only been dating two weeks and she's already buying you drinks. I'm telling you, man, the apron and oven mitts," he held his thumb and forefinger in a position to indicate a very small space, "this close."

Ziva and McGee glanced at each other in their peripheral vision. He pretended to be offended, she pretended she hadn't heard, and they both pretended they weren't smiling.