The house was utterly and completely quiet, as it should be at 3 o'clock in the morning. She made her way down the narrow hallway, maneuvering by memory alone as she refused to turn on a light and break the spell of the still night.
She froze when she reached the end of the hall. As she listened for any movement, any sign of life, she started to wonder if he had actually left. Perhaps he had gone for a run, or was making his way to the gym at the office. He had been wound especially tight when they went to bed earlier, and not even her enthusiastic back massage had been enough to relieve the tension. She was about to give up and crawl back into the warmth of their previously shared sheets when she heard the faintest tapping of keys. The computer. She should have known.
She took the few steps to close the space between her and the door to their makeshift home office, though she hesitated to call it even that. There were boxes piled up in the front corner of the room, still untouched since they moved into the place almost 2 years ago, and a large bookcase against the wall that was so full of miscellaneous items that she had often voiced her concern for its safety as a piece of furniture. As she took a few steps into the room, she realized that it was the presence of these messes that kept her from seeing the glow of the screen within. He was sitting with his back to her, and she took several more silent steps before leaning back against a foolishly placed table to watch him. He stared at the screen for several seconds before slowly moving the mouse and clicking. He typed so lightly and so slowly, and she was almost touched by the action. He was trying to be quiet. He was letting her sleep.
Finally, she shook her head and allowed her foot to tap lightly against a leg of the table, alerting him to her presence. He turned his head quickly, but didn't seem surprised to find her standing there. He glanced back at the screen for a second, debating whether he should close out of the webpage he was on, but decided against it. There was no use hiding his thoughts around her. Plus she could always use her McGee-given computer skills to pull up the page later. He sighed and turned his chair to face her.
His eyebrows furrowed, "Did I wake you? I was trying to be quiet."
She shook her head, "I rolled over and you were not there. I guess I do not like you disappearing in the middle of the night."
He nodded slightly, "Sorry. I was just thinking."
She waited for him to meet her eyes, but he couldn't seem to do it. She watched them drift from her face, to the table beside her, to her arms crossed against her chest and finally to the pile of boxes in the corner, never resting anywhere for too long.
She finally moved, taking the several steps to cross the room and pushing his shoulder back so she could sit across his lap. He was surprised by her actions, but recovered quickly to wrap an arm around her waist and move her legs to the side so she fit more comfortably. She leaned back against the arm rest and he loosened his grip once he knew she was securely seated.
Eventually, she turned her head and looked at the computer monitor. She squinted into the light for several seconds before turning back to him, "Alexandria sure is beautiful this time of year."
He sighed and buried his face in her hair, inhaling the sweet and familiar scent of her.
She sat still for a while and focused on his breathing, his heartbeat. They were both fast and shallow, and she couldn't understand why.
Finally, she shrugged her shoulder to force his face out of his protective cocoon. She stared at the side of his head intently until he finally took a deep breath and met her eyes for the first time since he had walked out of Vance's office that morning.
"What is wrong, Tony?"
He moved his head to look down and she placed her hands of either side of his face, forcing him to meet her eyes again.
"Talk to me, ahava." She whispered.
His shoulders heaved with a heavy breath, "I'm ready, Zi. I'm ready to lead my own team."
She nodded, her forehead creasing with confusion, "I know you are."
He relaxed the slightest bit at her confidence in him, and he made a broad gesture towards the computer with his chin, "He offered me the job. Vance wants me to head the new team in Egypt."
She nodded again. She knew Vance would choose Tony. There wasn't a more qualified man in the whole agency. But she still didn't understand why he was so worked up.
"And I want to go, but-" he went to look down again and Ziva let him. After several seconds of him restructuring his thoughts, he looked back up, "I don't want to go without you."
Her confusion grew "Without me? Why would you go without me?"
He shrugged, "This is your home, Ziva. Gibbs, Abby, McGee. They're your family. I can't expect you to give up your family to move halfway across the world with me."
She leaned back, growing increasingly confused by the situation, "So you thought… you didn't think I would... "
He shrugged again, "We're not married. You aren't obligated to come with me."
She shook her head, taking a hand off of where it had been resting on his shoulder to hold it up in a Stop motion, "Hold on. We are not married because we both decided against it, not because we lack commitment."
"Still," He sighed heavily, moving his hand up and down her outer thigh in an attempt to calm himself and recenter his thoughts, "This is a big deal, Zi. I don't want you to give up the home you've worked so hard to build over the past few years for me. You've already lost so many people in your life."
"And now I'm expected to lose you? Are you really that dense, Tony?"
Her words were harsher, more aggressive than he had expected, and he almost flinched, "Huh?"
She shook her head and lowered her eyes to his hand on her thigh, no longer rubbing the exposed skin. She took in their position: his bare chest and shoulders underneath her palms, her bare legs folded across his lap, the oversized USMC shirt that she was wearing just barely covering her her frame, nothing but panties underneath. They were so comfortable, so close to each other. She thought back to when they were just work partners, always teasing and brushing each other but never allowing too much contact for fear they would fan the flame and burn the whole friendship down. They had grown so much together in the past 3 years. They had become a team- a true partnership that extended beyond the 9-5 (not that Team-Gibbs every actually worked 9-5).
She finally looked up at him with a small red mark below her bottom lip where she had been gnawing at it, "I have not spent these past years building a home and a family around DC. I spent them building a home and a family around you."
He stared blankly, clearly not understanding what she was saying.
She sighed, "Tony, I love you. You are my family. You are my home. You are my… everything. I do not love DC because of the winters or the coffee shops. I love it because you are here. Gibbs, Abby, McGee- they are not MY family, they are OUR family. They are people who love both of us equally. Without you, the family is incomplete. Or, at least it is to me."
He chuckled a bit, "Gibbs loves both of us equally? Yeah, sure."
She shook her head and ran light fingers down his jaw, "You are so much more important to him than you know. You are more in important to all of us than you know," she leaned in to whisper in his ear, "Especially to me."
She ducked her head to place a feather light kiss against the skin of his neck, and she felt his muscles finally relax under his finger tips.
His arms tightened around her waist and pulled her impossibly closer to his chest, letting her loose hair fall across his skin and tickle his face. They sat like that for several minutes. So long that Ziva, so used to falling asleep in his embrace, had to fight to stay awake.
Surprisingly, it was Tony who broke the spell. He ran a hand up her back, resting it firmly on her neck and letting his thumb brush over her lips as she moved to look at him.
"I've never been anybody's everything before," there was a smirk on his lips, but his eyes were heavy with the emotion that her declaration had invoked.
A handful of jokes popped into her head as she looked into the eyes of the man that she had decided to make the rock on which she built her castle, but in the end, she decided to capture his lips with hers and let her kiss tell him just how much she meant that statement.
It was a slow and impossibly sweet kiss. Peaceful. Content. When the need to breathe freely forced them to separate, she sat back and let her fingernails run gently up his arm and cover the hand that was still resting on her neck.
I should tell him now, she thought, the memory of a dimly lit office bathroom and a set of tiny pink lines clouding her mind.
"So," he spoke, forcing her to bite back her confession, "We are moving to Africa."
She smiled, "It appears we are."
"And you are totally okay with this, right? I don't want you holding back your feelings and resenting me down the line."
She laughed slightly, "Egypt is a beautiful country."
"Yeah, but what will you do there?" the assumption that they would not be reassigned to the same team in yet another country had been all but confirmed during his conversation with the director earlier.
"Well, I admit, I have been doing some… let us call it optimistic research since we talked briefly about the job the other day. Turns out, they are in need of translators over there."
He scrunched his nose, "Translators? That sounds like desk work. You would go crazy."
She shook her head, "It would be very different than what I am doing here in DC, but I am sure I would get used to it. I have actually been considering a less demanding job within the agency anyway."
His eyebrows furrowed, "I didn't know you wanted to do something else. Since when?"
She shrugged, "I was just considering how to save everyone a little work down the line. I mean, they would have to bench me when I blow up in a few months anyway."
The creases in his forehead grew deeper, "Why would they have to-"
His hand moved up her thigh to grip her hip as realization dawned in his green eyes. Ziva bit her lip to keep from cracking a smile.
"You mean…?" His face lit up as he continued to process what she had just said.
She watched the emotions place across his features for several seconds before finally nodding, "Yes, Tony. I am pregnant."
A painfully big smile broke across his face and the amount of joy and love in his expression as he looked at her made her tear up. He quickly moved his arm to behind her knees and jumped up out of the chair with her bridal style. She laughed as he spun her around several times before reluctantly placing her feet back on the floor. As soon as she had regained her balance, he pushed her hips up against the wall, narrowly missing the misplaced coffee table, and attacked her mouth with his own.
He pulled away suddenly, "The kid is mine, right?"
"Tony!" She scolded, lightly smacking his shoulder before pulling him back in for another kiss.
He broke it and bent down a little, wrapping his arms around her hips and causing her oversized shirt to ride up. He lifted her into the air again and she had to brace herself against his shoulders to keep from tipping them both over.
He put her down again and moved to place his hands lightly on her back, hers laying flat on his chest, "This is perfect, Zi! We can move out to Egypt and I can get us a real nice place. Lots of room to run and play- near a good school, of course- and they can grow up playing with the neighbor kids on the base- since we will definitely live there for safety reasons."
He paused his rambling to put his hand on her cheek and let a certain softness fill his eyes, "And with my new salary I'll be able to buy you nice things and make sure that little bugger in there never wants for anything," he brushed his fingers through her hair a bit, "and you will be nice and safe on the base reading your little memos and translating god knows what in god knows how many languages you actually speak. And every night we will come home to each other and our kid and maybe even a dog. It's perfect, Ziva. Our life is going to be perfect. I promise."
She shook her head, "It won't be perfect, Tony. It doesn't have to be. As long as you're there, its good enough for me."
He stared at her for a long second before pulling her to him and pressing their lips together again. As the gesture progressed, he started gently pushing her backwards, towards the door, into the hallway, and back towards their bedroom door. As Ziva felt the mattress against the back of her knees and fell back against the silky sheets, she sifted through the stock-hold of excuses they could use when then inevitably walked into work late that day, and wondered if any of them would be good enough to fool their omniscient boss.