I know I should be updating my other stories, but I have one that is almost finished and I want to get this one started before it finishes, so here it is.

This is very different to what I usually write, and I'm not sure whether to leave it rated T or have it rated M because I think I might be on that fine line lying between both. Its not by all means explict but does have intended nudity and a few other things in it. If you think the rating should be raised, please tell me and I will do so.

For the record; I don't think that she would ever do this. This is my imagination working with three single words...

I hope you enjoy and it will depend on 1) the response or 2) when I get the next chapter finished for when I update next.

Disclaimer: Not Mine

It was dusk and she didn't usually go for a walk at night, but she got off work early and it was a nice day. Ziva David walked down the eerily quiet footpath alone, which given the warm weather was strange. The scene surrounding her was a symbol of what was to come; the silence before the storm.

In her line of work, in the entirety of her life she was surrounded by people, but she knew what was to come she was going to have to do alone; and one way or another she was going to hurt one of them, she couldn't go on pretending like nothing was wrong, when in fact everything was wrong. There was no way to get around it; it was eating her from the inside out.

She sat on a park bench under a street lamp; she needed to asses her situation. Like when she was on mission, look at what needs to change and do every thing to change it. Ziva sighed dramatically - frustrated with no one else other than herself. It was sad that she was going back to her old Mossad ways of dealing with things. It was not how she was going to deal with this.

She had to choose. Choose between her boyfriend and her lover. The only problem was; her boyfriend was... well, her boyfriend. Her lover was one of her best friends and he was everything she had put to be the kind of person she would never be with - the 'playboy'. He knew that she was with her boyfriend. Ziva also knew that he wasn't entirely responsible for where she had found herself in the past two months.

She was constantly feeling guilty and she knew that her boyfriend knew something was up, he could tell she was lying and that made her feel even more guilty. She had no idea on how to get herself out of this. She had been trained for every situation possible except for this one.

What she was doing was adultery, she was cheating on her boyfriend and she didn't feel guilty while she was doing it, it was after when she was with him. When she was with her lover, no one else existed - just him and her.

She could still remember that one night when everything changed...

Two months earlier...

It had been a long day; Ziva had worked undercover to get the man who was killing Marine's daughters. Each was no younger than twenty five. Being the youngest and the only girl on the team made the choice for Gibbs easy. When they found him, the man had approached Ziva and had begun talking to her. Ziva played along as he led her to a side street. When he had worked out what was happening, that she was a cop, he held her at gunpoint. She had no way of communication; she had no way to defend herself she didn't know where the team was. They got there in a nick of time; Gibbs took the shot before the man could. But it still shook her.

Ziva put her face in her hands for what had to be the third time in one minute. Tony looked over to her, "Are you okay?" He asked as he watched her drag her hand down her face.

"Fine," she replied, looking back over at her screen and furiously hitting the keys as her fingers type words that when read made no sense.

"Ziva, why don't you go home and finish this in the morning? You've had a long day and you need to sleep," Tony told her.

"So do you," She replied, not looking away from her computer screen.

"Okay... New topic. How are things with you and Ray?" He asked. This was a daily occurrence. Ziva knew that he wouldn't admit it but she knew that he was jealous, the more she thought about it over the years the more she realised that it might just be protection. She couldn't blame him, after loosing his mother and then his partner in different ways, but still, he didn't want to loose her now. He just might not have exactly realised that there is a difference between protection and over protective.

"Fine, nothing is wrong between us, everything is just perfect," Ziva said.

"Are you going home to him tonight?" Tony then asked.

"No, he is away on business," She replied.

"How long a time does he go away?" Tony said dropping the jealously in his voice and swapping it with care.

"A few days, a few weeks, to a few months. It depends on what he is doing," Ziva explained.

"How long has it been since you've seen him?"

"A few weeks," Ziva said. They slipped back into the silence that was only filled with the sound of the clicking of keys as the only two people left in the building finished off their case reports. After another hour of getting nothing written, Ziva abruptly stood from her desk and mumbled something about coffee.

Tony sat at his desk and stopped what he was doing. He had been finished for an hour and a half, but he could see that Ziva was having trouble keeping it together, he wanted to makes sure she was really okay before leaving her alone, he wanted to see it with his own eyes rather hearing it from her words from her mouth. He stopped doing the report that was due the next night and walked over to her desk. Once there he looked at her unlocked computer screen. In the past three hours she had only written just over a hundred words. She wasn't as long as he thought she would be he heard the ding of the elevator and he quickly walked over to Gibbs' desk picking up the folder he put there earlier and putting it down again as she walked around with two Styrofoam cups of coffee. She put one down on her desk and the other on his before throwing the cardboard tray in the recycle bin.

"Are you finished?" She asked.

"No, I just needed to re-read something I finished before," He replied.

She sat back down in her seat and began typing before hitting the backspace button and starting over.

"Ziva, talking about it might make you feel better," Tony stated.

"I don't think so," She replied.

"Why not?" he asked.

"Tony, how may time have you been held at gun point and then not gone to a bar to get laid?" she asked.

"Never," he said.

"Well, tonight I need my boyfriend's comfort and he is not here. I am in a relationship which means that I am not allowed to see anyone else. Tonight I am going to go home to an empty apartment and think about how close to death I came today," she said.

"Ziva, you can stay over at my house if you want, that way you won't be alone, if that's what you're worried about," Tony offered.

"I do not need to be babysat Tony," she said.

"I know and I'm not saying you do, I'm saying that if you want company I will be there for you," he said.

She didn't respond that time, she remained quiet: she continued typing at a constant pace and finally saved one last time before hitting print and gathering all the files that were on her desk that had to go in the folder along with her report. She stapled her two page report together and put it in the folder.

Ziva walked around to the front of her desk and went to hit the folder against her desk to get them lined up. In her groggy state she miscalculated where the desk was in comparison to her and the folders slipped out of her hands and on to the floor.

Ziva stared at the fallen files before she knelt on the floor and began trying to work out what went where. Tony came to help her.

"Are you sure you don't want to crash at mine?" he asked once more turning his face to look at her. She turned to look at him when he spoke. Her eyes flickered to his lips before she looked away and stood up with the papers she held and put them on her desk. She sorted through them while Tony placed the papers he held on her desk next to the one's she was sorting.

A few minutes later she said goodnight and left. Tony not wanting draw attention to the fact he was finished, stayed for another fifteen minutes before he stood and left as well.

Ziva arrived at her apartment and turned on the light to her empty apartment. It was too quiet. She walked to her bathroom and turned the taps to her shower on while she stripped down to nothing. She hoped that the hot water would sting lightly at her skin - not enough to burn, but enough to know that it was hot - as it washed away what the day had brought her. She let her mind wonder. She wondered if this is what it would be like if she would continue moving forwards with Ray - coming home to an empty space when all she really needed was to have him comfort her in the subtle ways that he hadn't quite perfected. Only - at the most - two men knew how to do that - to comfort her, be sure to tell her that it was okay in a way so she knew she was being comforted but not in a way to have her smothered with comfort. Ray was too up front. He would continuously be asking if she was okay, hugging and kissing her, making promises that he knew couldn't be kept. Sure it made her feel wanted, but she didn't need to be comforted like that, she needed to be told truth - it was what made her deal with things. Deal with the real thing. Either way, she wanted him there with her.

As she rubbed her shampoo through her long, dark hair she felt the suds fall lightly down her back, it made her relax more. She began thinking about the future. What would happen if one day in their relationship, she was breaking at the seems, what happens then? Who would she go too? What if she didn't want to talk about it with someone other then him? If she was being honest with herself, she knew that what they had wouldn't last much longer if he was away for such long periods of time. She knew what it was like to be away from family and friends with work, but this was her first time experiencing being the person who had to stay behind.

She shut off the water and dried herself with the towel that was hung in her bathroom. Once dried she got into her underwear, loose fitting cotton shorts, and her singlet that she wore to bed before wrapping herself in her dressing gown and walking to the kitchen to make herself toast that she could eat before going to bed. She ate absentmindedly and somehow made her way to her bedroom, turning off the lights to the rest of her apartment as she went - stopping at the bathroom to put her wet hair up so it wouldn't soak her pillow. Once she got to her room, she removed her dressing gown and exposed herself to the chill of the night and quickly turned her light out before getting into her usually inviting bed.

She lied in bed and stared at the ceiling of her dark bedroom. During her past she had dealt with a lot, worse things then what she had faced that day. But it had shaken her. That man - if Gibbs hadn't have shot him - would have killed her with a shot. He had the gun pressed to the left side of her chest; where he was pointing it would have missed her heart, but would have cause her a painful death, they were too far out of the city for rescue crews to get there before she died of blood loss or drowned on her own blood. While that was happening and in the hours afterwards she thought of how much her life had changed. She wasn't ready to let it go - not yet, not when it was just starting to get on the path she wanted it to be on.

She tossed and turned in her bed, tying herself up in the sheet and quilt of her bed, before throwing the covers off her body in frustration and walking to her door grabbing her keys on the way out. She walked to her car in the cold, dark night. She cursed to herself, remembering when she got to her car that she had taken her jacket up to her apartment and not left it in the car as she usually would.

She didn't know where she was going until she got out of her car and was knocking on his door. She suddenly felt stupid showing up in nothing but her pyjamas, unannounced. She knocked once and after a few moments went to turn around, she began walking back down the hall. She heard the door open, "Ziva?" She heard the owner of the apartment say, groggily. She turned back around and looked at him, "Why are you here?" He asked.

"I was wondering if I could still take you up on that offer," She said. He looked at her, she looked mentally weak. She still held herself in the confident facade that she always had but when he looked into her eyes they were filled with sadness and the need to be wanted. She looked into his soft, caring eyes.

"Yeah sure," He said, holding the door wider for her.
"I'm not interrupting anything?" she asked as she timidly walked into his home.

"No, I was in bed," Tony replied.

"Sorry," She said.

"Don't worry about it. You know where the spare bed is?" He asked. She nodded, "Want something to drink?"

"Water," she stated as she walked down the hall to the spare bed.

She didn't realise how tired she was until she lied down and closed her eyes. She felt more comfortable here.

She was just starting to drift off when she heard footsteps on the floor to the room she was in. She watched him as he put the glass of water on the bedside table. He turned to look at her again, she had let her defences slip, she looked weak - in more ways than mentally. She looked close to tears. He squeezed her hand that was lying in the bed next to her before turning to walk out.

"Tony..." She seemed unsure of whether to continue. He stopped and turned to face the young Israeli.

"Yes," He said quietly.

"I... I do not want to be alone," she whispered. She didn't look at him as she said it; she felt as if she was loosing some of her pride by admitting it.

She looked up at him when she heard him walk around to the other side of the bed and pull the sheets back, "It's okay to admit that," he stated, moving closer to her, "Just try to sleep Ziva," She moved closer to him, allowing him to comfort her while she lied in his arms. The thing that bothered her was that she didn't feel guilty that she was lying in another man's arms. Tony kissed the top of her head and she looked up at him. She leaned forward until her lips met his, she didn't think about what she was doing until she had done it - she knew it was wrong but she didn't stop it. She needed this type of comfort to remind her that she was still alive. He was shocked at first before he pulled back, "Ziva, what are you doing?" He asked.

She didn't know, she didn't come here looking for this, she didn't know she was coming here until she was at his door, "I don't know," she whispered again, "I swear that is not why I came here," she added looking back up into his eyes so he could tell that she was telling the truth.

She knew she shouldn't be doing this but the desire for her partner was a lot stronger now than it had been in ages, "Please, Tony, I need to know that there is someone out there who would care if I died - who would be here if I died,"

"This is what this is about? Him not being there? If that is the case then leave him Ziva," he replied. Ziva felt the side effects of rejection wash over her, she began to feel emotional. She tried to break free of his hold on her before she fully lost it. His arms only tightened, he kissed her this time, "I would care if you died, and so would a lot of other people," He said, his voice softer as he kissed her again. She felt his hand run down the side of her body and she knew that he wanted her now just as much as she wanted him. The day must have shaken all of them. They needed each other in every way to make sure that they were okay.

She moved so she was straddling his hips. His hands moving up and down her back, around her hips and over her legs. She had her hands to the side of her face. She began kissing down his neck and along his shoulder. She wanted control that night.

He moved his hands to the bottom of her top and slid a bare hand up her back again; he discovered she was wearing no bra. He pulled her back and looked at her questionably.

"It is uncomfortable to sleep in," she shrugged before attacking his lips again. Ziva didn't have to worry about Tony's shirt - he didn't wear one to bed - she sat back up and pulled her top over her head and threw it somewhere else in the room.

He rolled her over so he was hovering above her still kissing her, kissing every part of her body that he could reach. Every time he moved his body against her it earned a light moan from her.

Present day...

That night they got to know each other better than just partners or friends. They had crossed lines that they were never meant to cross as partners, but that one night of weakness for the both of them had put her in a bad situation. She had to choose - she had to make a choice, had to work out where her feelings with both of them lied. She had quiet a journey in front of her.

What do you think; should I continue for starters? do you think the rating should be raised? and do you like it?

Review Please :D