I'd like to thank everyone for the great response you gave my first NCIS fic, 'For Her'. Your kind reviews meant a lot to me, and well, I'm back. This contains tags to 'Under Covers', 'Jet Lag', and 'Shiva', though there are no major spoilers. Hope you enjoy this one too :D

She'd always taken the side of the bed closest to the door. It didn't surprise him, it was part and parcel, he guessed, of having been brought up to be ready to fight at a moment's notice. An upbringing he also blamed for her need to sleep with a gun under her pillow.

They'd agreed early on in their partnership that they could be adult enough to sleep in the same bed without breaking boundaries, their time as Sophie and Jean-Paul Ranier aside. The various times they'd shared a bed undercover or whilst on protection detail she had always insisted on having the side closest to the biggest entrance, door or window, and on those rare occasions that they were deemed equally high risk, she wouldn't sleep at all, choosing instead to sit on a couch or sometimes even the floor so that she could be ready should they have unexpected guests during the witching hour.

There had been no exceptions to this rule. In Los Angeles, she had taken the side closest to the large balcony, in Paris the double doors of their Renaissance-style suite had caused her obvious panic, but she had still insisted he take the side adjacent to the wall. He'd argued back, for once, not wanting her to force herself to be too strong after Somalia. It had been the first real headway they'd made since her return, the first time they'd talked about what she'd experienced.

…

"To be a true soldier," Ziva had told him, after they'd stopped arguing so intensely. "Is to hate the people you oppose in every single way you can. To think nothing of taking their life, to not feel any guilt as you witness their last breath. But, also, you must love the people you fight for with a patriotic passion. To be prepared to do anything for them, to be tied, tortured and tainted. You must be prepared to die. I was prepared to die in Somalia, but there was one thing stopping me from just giving in and annoying them enough so that they'd just end it. He was only a little thing, I believe around six. We did not share a common language, but I figured out pretty early on that his parents had probably been killed. He was barely alive when I arrived there, and they were cruel to him. Whenever I was not enough of a stress relief to them they would bring him in too, knowing that it hurt me more to see them mistreat him than it did to bruise and bloody me."

"What happened to him?" Tony had asked, shocked by the story, but at the same time so intensely thankful that she trusted him enough to confide.

"He died. A week before you arrived, actually. We shared a cell, and I was, for the first and only time, on the side closest to the wall; I'd been chained up for 'bad behaviour'. They would not let me hold or comfort him. Then they came in and..." she'd paused, catching herself and looking away from Tony's intent gaze, "Well, I won't say, but I have no doubt that I will continue to hear his screams in my dreams for the rest of my life. The point is, Tony, I could not protect him and so I lost him. I could not bear to lose you too."

…

It did not explain to him her need to be alert before Somalia but, in face of such honesty, how could he have denied her anything? He'd let her have the side closest to the door, and had continued to let her pick her preferred sleeping arrangements in subsequent bed-sharing scenarios. It had seemed odd to him that the one thing that made her feel safe was the opportunity to risk her own life for the sake of somebody else's, but he went along with it regardless.

After her father had died she had allowed herself to break her rule. She'd stayed in the room farthest from the door, tucked up in the bed least likely to be found first. She'd slept without her gun, extending to him the, what he considered to be, greatest show of trust she ever had before. He hadn't said she couldn't sleep without a gun in his home, he would have had no problem with it, but she had allowed herself to be weak in his presence and he made sure that he stepped up to the mark. He'd let her push him away after her nightmare, he'd let her have that one moment of independence because she'd needed it, but in the morning he had not been even the slightest bit hesitant in his encouraging her to grieve, knowing that it'd only do her more harm in the long run if she'd kept it bottled up.

They'd started dating seven months after she returned from Israel. He'd been gravely injured in an undercover mission and received a six-week stay in hospital for his trouble. Ziva had turned up on the second night, eyes full of tears, and had climbed gently onto his hospital bed. He'd cocked an eyebrow questioningly at her, wondering why she chose to be there instead of on a bedside chair, when she answered his unspoken question with a kiss so tentative that he barely believed it wasn't a morphine-induced delusion until he heard her say "If you have to leave, at least know that I love you."

She'd stayed the night, curled up on his chest, gun in hand, ready to take on whatever and whoever may come their way. Nobody did, but the fact that she had been ready meant more to Tony in that moment than it ever had before. He'd always felt slightly emasculated, not that he'd ever have admitted it, by Ziva's silent implication that he was somebody vulnerable enough to warrant her worry, but there was a certain definition, a particular tranquility that came with knowing that even as he hung in the limbo between life and death that she was there. That she was going to do everything she could to ensure his survival.

That she loved him.

…

Their bed, a queen-sized affair with plush pillows and a strong headboard, stands between two single-pane windows. The door stands eight feet away from the foot of the bed and measures equally across both sides. It opens on her side, he let her have that, knowing that it was something she needed. Sometimes they switch. On the nights she's feeling particularly vulnerable she lets him take the more open side, lets him protect her. He's grateful for these nights, not because he feels a masculinity in protecting her, but because those are the nights she gives herself up fully, she lets the final vestiges of her already broken-down walls come down and becomes an entirely different person.

Tonight is one of these nights. He runs a hand lazily through her hair, easing off when he meets a stubborn tangle; he doesn't want to wake her. She snores gently, though because she's laying on her side, curled into his chest, it's not quite so much 'drunken sailor with emphysema' as it is her just snuffling in a way he finds entirely adorable.

He'd never say so to her face, because he's not sure she'd understand, but it's during moments like these that he considers her to be at her strongest. Her protective ways were a defence mechanism, something she'd taught herself in order to ensure as little pain for herself as possible. He's not sure she'd see anything strong about allowing herself to be weak, but he can't help but think of how much she's grown since Paris, where she rejected his comfort, to now, where she openly sought it out.

If he ever had to leave, he knew she loved him. He could only spend the rest of his life trying to ensure that she knew it went both ways.

AN: Thanks for reading :D Please review, even a quick word or two would do, I'd just love to know what other people read into stuff like this, the side of a bed the person chooses to sleep on can be a very defining thing, I've always thought.