There Are Rules For A Reason
He does not hear Ziva walk down the stairs to his basement. He's working with a plane on a fiddly bit of wood, and between the sound (Softly curling wood, if it sounds different he knows he's not doing it right.) and the concentration he does not hear her until she says his name from the bottom step.
She looks hesitant, and as he looks up he does as well. The last eighteen days have been warm, comfortable, and intensely erotic. But this morning he won. She, and Tim and Tony are his team once more. Tomorrow they will be back on duty. Which means the rules have changed again, and neither of them are quite sure where to go from here.
He has learned that she was close enough to Jenny to understand why trying to keep up a relationship with him while working together is not a good idea. And he's honest enough with himself to know that he's not sure he can work with her any longer. What galls him even further is that if there was a woman he could work with and sleep with it's probably her. But Shannon's, Kate's and Jenny's ghosts hover over him, and he's not sure he can take loosing another woman, and he knows that will cause him to make mistakes, and possibly get the rest of the team hurt.
He returns from his woolgathering and realizes that she has not yet said anything beyond his name. They are both good with quiet, but this is a flavor of quiet he doesn't recognize.
He walks to where she stands on the bottom step and takes her hand in his. His eyes search hers, expecting to see her practicing a brush off speech, one that will probably be pretty similar to the one he's been practicing as well, and dreading saying.
Instead he sees something, different. It's triggering very faint memories. Ghosts of memories. His eyes search hers, trying to find the missing piece, the thing that tells him what is about to happen. But she speaks before he can find it, so he is not prepared for her words.
"I am pregnant."
An electric current of joy spreads through him, leaving him grinning like a dope and his knees feeling weak. He notices that she is looking deeply alarmed. His facial expression was probably not one she was expecting.
"You are happy?" Ziva sounds incredulous.
He blinks, shakes his head, and regains something of his usual cool. "For now." Which is true. The longer he thinks about it the faster the glow of her words leaves him. "Let's go upstairs."
He leads her to his kitchen, and pours himself a drink, and has a good portion of bourbon in a glass for her when his hand stops, hovering over the glass. His gaze is a question. She shakes her head. He pours her drink into his glass and takes a large swallow.
"What can I get you?" He has coffee, bourbon, and some milk that's very close to becoming cheese in his refrigerator. Memories more than twenty years old tell him that none of those options are pregnant woman friendly.
"I'll have water."
"Good choice." He rinses out the glass he had poured her bourbon in, and then fills it with water. He hands her the glass and the hurries to his pantry. "Food?"
"No. I ate before coming here. So, you are happy?" She sounds less shocked, but still very unsure of him.
"I…" He sits across from her and tries to think of how to answer. Yes, he is happy. A child! Another chance at being a dad? Of course he's happy. No, he's not happy because this is the mother of all fuck ups, and right about now he needs to get slapped upside the head with a brick. He'd cut Tony's nuts off if he got himself into a similar situation, and Mike just might come all the way from Mexico to do the same to him. Their work situation just went from complicated to impossible. It's one thing to fool around with a subordinate, it's a whole other thing to get one pregnant. If he doesn't resign Vance will fire his ass so quickly that time might as well be moving backwards.
Bigger questions: Would she keep the baby? If so, should they get married? Hell, would she marry him? There's a good possibility that she considers being married optional. God, even if she said yes, could he make a fifth one work? ("Your first one would have worked out just fine if they had lived," said a very small voice in the back of his head, "and you've been trying to replace it ever since.") Do you love her? Yes, not hearts and flowers and all that romantic crap, but he respects her and trusts her and knows that he is richer for having her in his life. Probably a better foundation than the hearts and flowers. Am I too old for this? Of course, but that's not going to change anytime soon.
"Yes, in my gut." Once again he's got that dopy smile on his face, and it seems to really disturb Ziva so he tries to reign it in.
"And in your mind?"
"Ah…"
"Yes." He can read her look now, and he knows that she's just as aware of how hard work will be now.
"I should resign."
She gives him a gentle slap on the back of the head. "That would be stupid. You make more money than I do. You're less than three years from retirement and a good pension. And in a matter of months I won't be up to running after the bad guys. Plus, do you really think I want to be waddling around work with Tony at my side?" She shudders. He nods, all of her points are good, and he can very easily imagine how Tony would act with a pregnant partner. It's not pretty. "Besides, even fat and lazy I have more saleable skills than you do. My understanding is that people who can read and speak Arabic are in great demand with the FBI. People with my security clearance are in even higher demand."
"And we both know someone who might have an in at the FBI." Granted, Fornell would likely spend the next ten years on his back about this, but he had some leverage with Fornell. After all, the man had married one of his ex-wives, after he told him what a bad idea it was. And Fornell had also experienced the joy that is a very unexpected child much later in life than anticipated.
"You love your job," he says.
"Yes, but by the time this child is school age I'll be able to go back to it, and you'll have passed the mandatory retirement age for field agents. You might as well be there for the next three years."
He gave her a quick glare. He had been planning on making sure that sometime in the next year or so his birthday magically changed on some rather important documents, several of which he'd need Ducky's help to get. He didn't think Ducky would hinder him. At sixty-nine Ducky was very understanding of Jethro's annoyance towards the NCIS mandatory retirement age of fifty-seven for field agents.
They sat without speaking, and he knew he should ask her if she intended to keep the child. The last several minutes of conversation certainly indicated that, but she hadn't actually said. The problem was he didn't think he could actually say the words. He had already lost one child, and he desperately hoped she wasn't cruel enough to tell him she was pregnant just to take the possibility of another child away. He settled for the same question she had asked him.
"Are you happy?"
She shrugged. "Yes, originally, when the test first showed two pink lines. There was a…trill? Thrill. Now? This is big and scary and changes everything. Something that should have been simple is now complicated. Something that should have been a pleasant secret memory will now publicly outlive both of us."
God willing. He thought it but didn't say it. No need to remind her that sometimes children don't outlive their parents.
"Do you want to get married?" It had come out of his mouth before he could stop it.
"Would you ask if I was not pregnant?"
Part of him very much wanted to lie, or at least come up with a softer version of the truth. But he didn't. Hell, if there was any chance of this working honesty might be a better technique than those he had used in the past. So he shook his head and said, "No."
She quietly drank her water. He quietly watched her drink, and waited for her to respond to him. Several long moments passed, but he was well schooled in waiting patiently for someone to answer his questions. Of course, he also remembered that she was just as well schooled in not talking if it suited her. Finally though, she did start to talk.
"I know my mother would prefer I had a husband to go along with a baby. She would also prefer a nice Jewish boy about my age, and that we live somewhere she could visit each week."
Now it was his turn to think about what she had implied. She hadn't said she wanted to get married, and she hadn't quite said his becoming Jewish was required to get married either, or that moving to Tel Aviv was a requirement. But all of those things were at least on the table for discussion now.
"I can be a husband. Hell, I've had more practice than most guys." He gave her his dry smile, and she obliged with a little laugh. It was funny, sort of, and it was good that he was poking some fun at one of the eight-hundred-pound gorillas in the room. "I'm not sure if I could be Jewish, but I can find out if it's a possibility. It might be hard to say goodbye to bacon. Can't do anything about being your age. And I don't want to live in Israel, at least, not now. Maybe when that eventual forced retirement shows up…But not now." His answer had helped to lighten the feel in the room, and once again he took her hand. "That still doesn't quite answer my question."
"I don't know. Ask me again when I've had some more time to think about it." She lifted his hand and kissed it. Her gesture telling him that her words did not mean she didn't want to be with him, but that she wasn't sure that this was a good idea. He could respect that. He'd not be too interested in jumping into a marriage with a woman who had three ex-husbands either. Let alone based on their rather unconventional courtship to date.
"How long are you going to keep working with NCIS?" This was safer ground. They had both read, and initialed the sexual harassment manual, including the parts that stated that any fooling about with a superior or subordinate was grounds for immediate dismissal.
"You remember the Director had me stay behind after he dismissed Tim and Tony?" Gibbs nodded. He had wondered what was going on, but Ziva's employment with NCIS was more complicated than McGee's or DiNozzo's. "Unlike them I do not work for NCIS, so I cannot just be reassigned. He had offered me a contract, and the time to read it. I finished reading, took the test, confirmed my suspicions, and handed it back to him unsigned. I told him that I would not be returning to NCIS. I do not think that we broke any rules, but it would make things awkward, and I did not want to offer Director Vance anything that could make life more difficult for either of us. As it is, I am still on payroll with Mossad, and intend to see if I can get a job with the FBI before giving them notice. I do not think I will have too much trouble with that."
"No, probably not." Gibbs didn't need reminding that her father was placed in such a way to make sure that everything went smoothly for her transition. And was well connected enough to make sure that Gibbs would never be seen again should he so choose. Hell, he'd probably have to talk to the man, and sometime soon. He was bound to be a son of a bitch, the cold blooded efficiency of the Ari situation told Gibbs that, the question was, was he the kind of son of a bitch Gibbs could work with?
"So, now what?" she asked. Her eyes told him that she already had a pretty good idea of what came next, but wanted to sound him out as well.
"There'll be a lot of questions tomorrow as to why you haven't come back. It would be a good idea to have answers ready."
"Tomorrow night, my house, I will cook, you make sure everyone is invited. The fastest way to kill scuttlebutt is to make sure everyone knows what is going on, no?"
He sighed, his, their, private life was about to get a whole lot more public.
