Chapter Two
The next time Ziva felt aware of herself, she found herself basked in the comfort of the bed she had woken up in; the bed that wasn't hers. Despite the comfort that the cotton sheets offered she still felt like death warmed over, if possible, worse than she did before. She turned her face into the pillow, attempting to rid herself of the feeling, but it was to no avail. The familiar musky scent filled her senses, dragging thoughts, no, memories, freshly back into the front of her mind - tangled bodies, enamoured moans, and indescribably good sex with somebody she really shouldn't have had indescribably good sex with in the first place, and this only added guilt to the mixture of feelings that were leaving her wishing for sleep that wouldn't come. She groaned as her head began to pound again, and a sudden freezing sensation became present on her forehead.
Trying to work out what it was that had been so cold, yet not caused her to shiver, she frowned a little, blearily opened her eyes. Everything started spinning again, and she closed her eyes once more, willing her vision to still slightly before she attempted moving again. It wasn't that she needed help remembering what the room looked like, because it was one she had the feeling she should never see again, but it would help if the presence beside her was explained by something more than a silent, colourful blur. The ache in her head increased, resembling a heartbeat once again, and the dull thudding matched her regular, but quick, breathing. After a few moments where her stomach didn't feel like exploding upwards, she tried opening her eyes again. The spinning was still there, but she fought past it, finding that everything became focused on the presence beside her.
"Welcome back," Tony whispered to her, replacing the damp cloth on her forehead now that she had stopped moving around. Ah, she realised, so that's where the cold came from.
"What happened?" she asked, her voice matching his whisper, though she was unsure of the need to be so quiet.
"You passed out," he explained, looking down at her. No matter how disorientated she was, she couldn't miss the concern in his eyes, and it flooded back more memories of the night before, mainly ones of locked eyes and the various devoted expressions she'd seen in his intoxicated brown orbs. Concern wasn't something she'd seen last night, however. There was attraction, lots of attraction, and fleeting looks of disbelief and amazement in between those, but never concern. "How do you feel?"
"I am never drinking again," she offered as an answer.
Tony gave her a weak smile, knowing that this was one of those things she'd said hundreds of mornings, just like he'd done himself, and it was a promise that would be completely forgotten by the following . "Yeah, I'm thinking of doing the same," he agreed. She groaned in response, resisting the temptation to bury her face in the pillow again, but she knew it would only make the pillow wet if the cloth got pressed against it. "Hangovers suck," he said lightly, in a voice that suggested he was merely attempting to make conversation and get some answers that weren't irritable, sick groans. "Especially on the one day we get to enjoy before another week of work."
"At least hangovers usually disappear by midday," Ziva said quietly, a hope that she'd spent many mornings clinging to.
Tony frowned at her, glancing down at the watch he was wearing. "Ziva, it's three in the afternoon," he told her.
"What?" she asked, sitting up in shock but quickly regretting the action. She fell forwards with the motion and came into contact with something hard, but soft at the same time. The way a pair of arms enclosed around her almost immediately told her that it was Tony's shoulder.
"Hey, hey, just take it easy, okay?" he said softly, keeping her supported for a moment as she raised her head, her hands landing on his shoulders for support. She only allowed herself this support for a few seconds before she placed her hands down in her lap, letting herself sway for a moment before successfully remaining upright. "Better?" he checked.
"Yes," she mumbled, shutting her eyes against the nausea.
They were silent for a while. Tony remained where he was, too afraid to move the hand on her upper arm in case it alerted her to the fact it was there in the first place, and he suspected she wasn't just keeping still near him for the sake of nausea. He wondered whether the touch of skin on skin was bringing back the same heated flashbacks for her as it was for him. Sometime in the night before, he couldn't say what time it was for the life of him thanks to a mixture of alcohol and frenzied needs, he'd sat in the same place, holding her in the same way he was holding her now, tracing his fingertips along the bare skin of her arms, making sure that he took his time and tortured her until he'd heard sounds he couldn't possibly imagine he'd ever hear from his partner. Remembering this, he had the temptation to move his fingers in the same way again, to gently drag them across her arms to see if it elicited the same reaction now, but the mere fact that he wanted to caused him to drop his hand from where it rested. This was his partner, what was he thinking?
"So, uh…if you want to take a shower or anything, you can," he told her, suddenly looking at any other part of the room to avoid her gaze. Unfortunately many part of his bedroom held memories that kept flashing before his eyes - the lamp that had been knocked off the bedside table, the top bedclothes which had been thrown and forgotten, even a few buttons from the shirt he'd worn last night that Ziva had deemed insignificant at the time they'd been ripped from the fabric and wound up dug deep inside the carpet fibres. "Or if you want some food it's in the kitchen, of course. Where else would it be? Can't keep food anywhere else in the house…"
"Tony," she mumbled, trying to stop the familiar barrage of rambling that came from his mouth whenever he was nervous.
"…not that this house isn't fit to store food, because I actually do my own cleaning since the maid went back to Spain and I think I'm doing an okay job of it…"
"Tony," she tried again.
"…still haven't had the guts to clean the oven yet, though. She always looked like she was feeding a dragon when she did that…"
"Tony!" she snapped, a little harsher than she should have done, but aside from the obvious sign that he was trying to avoid an inevitable conversation, his rambling wasn't helping her headache any. "Sorry," she whispered, when the room was silent again. "You wander worse than Abby, sometimes."
"Ramble," he corrected her. "And yeah, I guess I do."
"Only when you are nervous, yes?"
"Nervous?" he laughed off. "I don't have anything to be nervous about."
She raised an eyebrow, which was hard with a sluggish body and probably looked more like a wince. "Other than the conversation we need to have now?" she asked him.
The laugh wore off very quickly at that. "We don't need to have a conversation…" he trailed off, hardly able to convince himself of that matter. He knew that it was coming, but he wanted to delay it for as long as possible, until at least he could figure out how they had allowed this to happen - a reason other than the obvious 'we were drunk'. Unfortunately that was the only reason his hung over mind was present himself with.
"Yes," she corrected him, watching as in his absence of an answer he began to shake his head slowly. "You know that we need to speak about this."
"What is it that you want me to say?" he asked, just to see if she had any more idea about how to deal with this than he did. After all, it wasn't like he did this often. Sleeping with girls, yes, but not girls who were his best friend.
"The truth," she said instantly. "I want to know what you are thinking about this," she elaborated at his confused expression.
He sighed, with a hint of irony in his huff. "To be honest, Ziva, I'm trying to remember what I was thinking last night."
"We were not thinking clearly," she agreed.
"We weren't thinking at all," he corrected her a little sharply.
"Tony-"
"If we'd been thinking, we wouldn't have done this," he pointed out.
"How did this even happen?" Ziva asked, struggling to remember through her headache. "How did it come to this?"
Tony rubbed at his forehead, the hangover fog blocking most of the evening from his mind. "Damn hangover," he grumbled to himself, before he pushed through the fog and began to reclaim some of his memories. "Uh…we were at Abby's house. Party."
Ziva nodded, that made sense. A party at Abby's would certainly involve alcohol, especially seeing as it was - "her birthday," she added. "We went to a club after."
Oh yeah, the club. He remembered that. He also remembered- "we were dancing."
"Together."
"All night."
"Abby was buying us drinks," she recalled.
"Correction, Abby was buying us shots," he told her, putting an emphasis on the word that suddenly presented the biggest explanation for most of the nights antics.
Ziva grimaced. "I no longer feel as passionate about tequila as I did last night," she admitted, as the ever present nausea reminded her that it was not looking to fade any time soon.
Tony shut his eyes tightly, shaking his aching head for a moment. "Please, don't say the word 'passionate'," he grumbled. "It's bringing back some pretty graphic memories of us last night," he explained. Yes, some very pleasing memories of bare skin on bare skin, lips clashing, tongues colliding, fighting for domination…
Ziva's heavy sigh interrupted his fantasies. "Could we please have this conversation without you thinking about sex?" she asked tiredly.
"Considering we're talking about sex, no, I have to think about it," he explained simply. "It's impossible not to."
"Can you at least look at this seriously for a moment?" she asked instead, rubbing at her temples.
He sighed. "Look, Ziva, we slept together." Stating the obvious usually helped, right? "We were drunk, we were looking for a good time, we made…"
"A mistake, yes?" she finished for him. "You think this was a mistake?"
He looked around at the scattered items of clothing - her clothing - littering his bedroom floor. "Not for the reasons you're thinking," he said softly.
But she seemed too outraged for his reason to be able to hear what he'd said afterwards. "You think that you made a mistake in sleeping with me?" she repeated. "Was it bad? Unsatisfying?"
"No!" he assured her quickly. "God, no, I just….Ziva, we're partners, friends…"
Understanding dawned on her. "Oh, I see," she said gentle, removing herself from under the blankets and standing up. Tony frowned, but didn't really see what she was doing until he watched her pull on her jeans and head towards the closed bedroom door.
"Ziva, wait-"
She turned to face him for a moment, but then turned back to the door so that she wouldn't have to see the disappointed look in his eyes, the look that would prove this had ruined everything. She heard him get up from the bed and follow her over, but she didn't turn to look at him. "Wait for what?" she asked, her voice slightly bitter just to disguise the hurt in her own tone. "For you to tell me that this was a mistake…and that it meant nothing and that we should forget about it? Let me sake you the trouble, Tony." She shook her head slowly, her hand closing on the door handle and pulling it towards her. "This was a mistake. It meant nothing, and we should forget it ever happened."
"It meant something!" he cried out, grabbing hold of her wrist as she tried to leave the room. He pulled her back to him, not forcefully, but he kept his hand on hers as she stood before him. She avoided his eyes still, instead focusing on a spot over his shoulder. "It meant something," he repeated, quieter this time. "It meant…it meant a lot, and I don't want to forget about it. But I can't…you're my best friend, Ziva," he told her softly. Her eyes flickered to his, remaining with him as he continued. "I mean it. I have friends and family, but you? You're close than that. And I can't go through with anything that might compromise that. You're my best friend, and if…some risks I just can't take, not when it means I risk losing you," he told her.
She stared at him for a moment. She understood the risks he spoke of - he wasn't the poster boy for commitment after all. She would like to think that if anything came of this night he would be faithful and want to stay with her, but there would always be the fear of normality sinking in and his easily tempted mind and body straying, no matter what feelings were bared between them both. She sighed, her wrist falling limp in his hold, no longer fighting against him. "Tony, we took a risk last night," she pointed out.
"And I won't take another," he insisted firmly. "Can we just…well, not ignore it, but not let it affect us?" he half-begged. "Please, we're a good team in and out of the field…and I know better than anyone that sex just complicates things." Even amazingly good sex, he thought to himself.
She looked at him, and he tried not to pre-empt her reaction, but her eyes weren't working wonders with concealing her emotions at the moment. Either she was too distracted to hide her feelings on this matter from him, or she had accepted that it was useless to try and disguise things from somebody who now knew her so well. After a while, she looked away, sighed, but then she nodded, returning her eyes to his once more. "Yes," she whispered. "We are good friends."
He gave her an encouraging smile. "What do you say?" he suggested. "Can we do this?"
She held out her hand in a friendly gesture. "Best friends?"
He smirked, winding his arms around her and bringing her in close to his chest. The fact that she was wearing clothes made it possible for him to block out the memories of holding her this close and tight last night. "Best friends hug, Zi," he told her. She looked up from his shoulder, arching her eyebrow at him curiously. "Well, normal friends. I guess we're not all that normal now."
She looked into space thoughtfully. "An Italian fraternity whore turned NCIS agent and an Israeli Mossad liaison officer…yes, that seems very normal," she told him sarcastically.
He smiled at her sarcasm - after all, they had barely ever been normal, but that was what he liked about their friendship - unconventional, exciting…. "I'm glad this hasn't messed things up," he admitted, looking down into her eyes with his hands planted on her shoulders.
"It has not messed things up," she assured him. "But it has changed things."
He half-shrugged. "Don't worry. We'll be friends, and nothing will have to change," he assured her.
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Three weeks passed, and things didn't change, not at first anyway. They did, however, change quite rapidly when Tony found himself being pulled into the elevator quite swiftly by a pale, sickly Ziva one morning. It wasn't the sickness that changed things, though, because he knew she'd been sick for a while - to the point that she'd actually surrendered and gone for a doctors appointment. He'd offered to go with her, but she denied that anything was seriously wrong and gone alone. He would later find out that Abby had gone with her to the appointment, and that it was Abby who had encouraged her to go in the first place. He'd just been ready to ask her how it went when Ziva had grabbed his him into the elevator before Gibbs even noticed that he had arrived. But the sickness, the doctors appointment, the small scale elevator abduction…that didn't change things. What changed things was the words she spoke once the elevator doors were closed.
"Tony…I am pregnant."
