Ziva wasn't sure how long she'd been asleep when she woke up feeling overheated and sticky. She thought that hours must have passed, but it was still dark in the hotel room and the noise from the street three floors down barely seeped into the room. She kicked off the sheet that had been covering her, flopped onto her side on a cooler spot on the mattress and pulled her hair out away from her neck. It gave her some relief, but she was still uncomfortably warm in the cheeks. She heard a chuckle in the dark as she fanned her face, and angled her head so she could see Tony around the nightstand. His sheet was down around his hips, but she couldn't tell much more in the dark.

"Are you laughing at me?" she asked, assuming that he was awake and not laughing in his sleep.

"Only in sympathy," he replied. "I don't think the air conditioner is very good."

She sighed at the understatement. "Why are you still awake?" she asked. "You were exhausted—Oh, was I snoring?"

"Like a tuk-tuk on its last legs," he said. "But I'm used to that. In fact, it's almost comforting."

Ziva rolled her eyes to herself. "There is no need to make fun."

"I wasn't," he said, and turned onto his side to face her. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, his face came into focus. He looked a lot more serious than she was expecting. "I was thinking about Viv."

"That is what was keeping you awake?" she asked. She didn't doubt that Tony often thought about the families of their victims during an investigation, or even after. She knew she did. But she didn't feel this was a case that he would lose a lot of sleep over.

As it turned out, it wasn't. "No, I'm awake because my body still thinks I'm in DC," he said. "But while I was lying here and listening to your comforting snores…"

"Tony…"

"…I started to think about Viv. And I realized I feel really bad for her."

"Because you knew her," Ziva said.

Tony's bare shoulder lifted in a shrug. "Not well. I knew her for a few months about ten years ago. It wasn't really long enough to become close." He paused, and there was something about the way he spoke to her in a hush that made it feel like he was sharing an intimate confession. "I think I feel bad for her because her life's just been completely changed, and she's got two young grieving kids who she has to raise while she's grieving as well. And that sucks for anyone."

Including you, Ziva thought. Tony had only been 10 when his mother had passed away and he'd been left with his grieving father to raise him—a father who had let his grief get in the way of being a parent.

"But I think it's mostly because she seemed to have her life together. She navigated the path from, well, I guess where we are and McGee is—" He stopped abruptly and then corrected himself. "No, not where McGee is. McGee's ahead of us now."

Ziva nodded. "Yes."

"She started the same place I did, and somehow she ended up with all the things we're supposed to want. Spouse, kids, house in the suburbs."

"You would not be happy in the suburbs," Ziva pointed out, but he didn't appear to be listening.

"She got herself there," he stated. "Despite the barriers of her job—and Tom's—to some kind of traditional family life, she got there. Even though it was probably really hard. They'd found a way to make it work. And I think that if they managed to succeed at that, it would only be fair if they got to enjoy it into old age. You know?"

It was a similar thought to the one Ziva had in the Wests' house. A family made up of a detective and a navy lieutenant would have made things difficult, but they made it work. Ziva admired that. "I think I would have found comfort in that," she told him softly. "But perhaps there is also comfort in the thought that they did make it work. If not for Tom's death, they would have continued to. Their marriage did not fall apart because of anything they did or did not do."

Tony considered that for a moment. "Yeah."

"What is that saying?" she asked, searching her memory as she stretched her legs out on the bed. "It is preferable to have known love and lost it than…something something something?" She watched a smile stretch over his face, and felt a flash of satisfaction that her deliberately selective memory had amused him.

"Yeah," Tony said. "Something like that."

"Yes."

His smile slowly fell away. "Not sure I buy it, though."

Ziva would be lying if she said she had devoted time to thinking about her position on the statement, and she had a feeling that she should not start thinking about it now.

In his bed, Tony drew a deep breath and let it out, and Ziva felt that was a sign that the conversation was over. She closed her eyes and deliberately steered her thoughts away from calculating the likelihood of two detectives being able to make things work between them to something far safer, like the drug trade in Thailand. But she had read her partner's signals wrong.

"Hey," he called softly, and she opened her eyes again. "I wanted to…" He stopped and pressed his lips together tightly, and Ziva's heart started to pound. She knew that tone. He was about to get very intimate somehow, and she braced for impact. "I know this week is the anniversary of Tali's death," he said, and although his tone was careful, it sliced her. She tried not to wince, and either she succeeded or Tony was gracious enough not to draw attention to it. "I wondered if the prickly thing bothered you more because of that."

Ziva didn't follow. "What?" she asked, her voice only half there.

"No one would know better than her how compassionate you really are," he said. "And from what you've told me about her…I feel like she would have stuck up for you."

Just like Tony had stuck up for her, apparently. Tears stung her eyes, but Ziva didn't want to cry over it. She took a leaf out of the Tony DiNozzo Book of Distraction. "One of those things is a lie," she tried to joke.

"I have my doubts about that."

She rolled her eyes, but gave him a grateful smile. It was hard not to love him right now. She hadn't expected him to remember that this was the week she had lost Tali, but of course he had. Because that was Tony. He knew it was important to her, and because he cared for her, he'd remembered. He used the information to try to understand her better. And he offered her comfort at the same time.

She hadn't intended to talk about it with him at all, but now he had reminded her that she could trust him with the thoughts she had been having this week. She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the mattress so that she was facing him, and found that with the glow of the digital clock on the nightstand between them, she could see him quite well.

"I have been thinking about her this week," she said. Her throat grew tight suddenly, and she had to swallow a few times to loosen it up. Tony sat up on his bed to mirror her position, and she gave him a warm smile. "I think Tali would have loved you. I think she would have thought you were kindred spirits of sorts."

Tony looked surprised, but pleased. "Really?"

Ziva tipped her head back and looked at the ceiling as she sighed. "She was light, yes?" She looked at him with a rueful smile. "Such a contrast to me and Ari. We were dark. Sucking the life out of everyone around us. Except Tali. She shone. She loved hard. She searched for the bright spot in everyone. She wanted to believe—she did believe—that despite the conflict that we lived with in Israel, the world was a good place. That there were just some people who had lost their way, and we had to help them find it."

Tony smiled. "She sounds perfectly idealistic. But I'm not sure how that makes us kindred spirits."

"Because you are light," she told him, feeling her affection for him spread through her chest. "It does not matter how much darkness I or the world throws at you, you are still light."

He shook his head. "Ziva…"

"You still look for the good in everyone," she explained. "Despite everything you have seen and how much you have been hurt. How much you have lost. You still want to help fix the world." Her smile grew with the comfort that gave her. "I think she would have loved your heart."

Tony leaned forward and gave her a knowing look that only he was qualified to give. "You're not dark, Ziva."

She had to chuckle. "I am charcoal."

"Honestly? It bothers me that you think about yourself like that."

Ziva shook her head and waved her hand. "Tony, I am not feeling sorry for myself," she assured him. "It just occurred to me that Tali would have loved you. That has been on my mind."

"I'm sure I would have loved her."

"Yes. I think you would have been very fond of her." She had to chuckle when another similarity occurred to her. "She would have agreed with you too."

"Of course," he said quickly, and then paused. "About what?"

She rewarded his deliberate attempt to make her smile. "She would have encouraged me—no, forced me—to go after what I want. And if I tried to explain to her that it all seemed too hard or out of reach, she would have argued."

For a few moments, he just watched her with that heart-crushingly intimate expression of his that she had gotten to know in the time since they'd been stuck together in an elevator as the world fell down around them. But there was something off about it. It wasn't as natural as usual.

"Ziva…do you really not know what you want?" he asked, and when she heard the hurt that was hovering around the edges of his voice, she got an idea of where he was coming from.

Her mouth went dry, and she cursed herself when she couldn't quite hold eye contact. Yes, of course she knew what she wanted, but she still struggled with how much that mattered in the scheme of things. She couldn't bring herself to put it so bluntly, though.

"Perhaps it is just hard to imagine how it would all come together," she tried to explain, and then tried to slyly turn it back on him. "The other day you said that you were getting closer to working out what you wanted."

His intimate look turned more natural, and her body flushed when he aimed it at her full force. "Yes."

She swallowed nervously. "Do you think that when you work it out, you will find it too hard to go after it?"

Tony let out a deep breath. "I think that's really up to…me," he said, although she heard the us that he had intended to say. "Maybe I haven't always believed that, but I've seen enough evidence lately to convince me that it's true."

It was what she wanted to hear. But on the other hand, it was not what she wanted to hear. Because it sounded like he was almost at a point where he would tell her he was ready to make their relationship more defined and bring it into the open, and Ziva still wasn't sure that she could agree yet. Or should.

She cleared the sudden tightness from her throat. "And if other factors were to keep you from moving forward—"

"I'd be patient," he told her. "I've had some practice with that."

"But another thing you said recently was that you feel you are on a clock."

"I do."

She couldn't reconcile the seemingly conflicting feelings. "So how—"

"I don't have all the answers, Ziva," he cut in with a tired chuckle. "I'm still trying to work it out. But I do think that I—both of us, actually—are guilty of making things harder than they should be."

The pang she felt in her chest suggested to her that she thought he was right. "I do not know why that is," she said.

Tony gave her a knowing smirk. "It's probably some reflection of the scars we both carry deep down."

She smiled at his deliberate—albeit accurate—drama, and felt some of the heaviness lift from her chest. "Yes."

"I'm kind of sick of being scarred."

She nodded, but didn't know what to say. "I have an oil you can borrow that will help them fade," she said flippantly. "They will never go away completely, but your skin tone will really improve."

To her relief, Tony chuckled. "The physical ones don't bother me so much," he told her, then gave a quick, one-shouldered shrug. "Chicks dig scars."

Ziva smiled and then got to her feet. "Just a few here and there to spark interest," she told him, and walked through the dim light to the mini bar to retrieve the bottle of water she had put in there before bed. The movement helped to draw a line under the previous conversation. "Not so many that you wonder how many bar fights he has been in." She straightened abruptly as a thought occurred to her and spun back to face him. Tony was already shaking his head and holding up a finger of dispute.

"I know what you're going to say here…"

"How do you not have more scars than you do?" she asked, allowing herself to be predictable. "When you have been in so many bar fights."

"We have been in so many," he corrected. "And they're always your fault."

"Never."

"Literally every single one."

Ziva shook her head as she uncapped the bottle. "No, someone else is always responsible for starting them. I simply defend myself. If a bar bee insists on grabbing me, I must insist on punching him in the face."

"Fair enough," he agreed, but then frowned. "Barbie? Where does Barbie come into it?"

She swallowed a deliciously cool and refreshing sip of water. "Is that not what people who hang around bars are called? Bar bees?"

He stared at her blankly for a few seconds, and then burst out laughing. Ziva put her hand on her hip and glared at him, and he quickly covered his face with his hands as his shoulders continued to shake with laughter.

"What?" she demanded.

"Bar flies," he told her breathlessly. "They're called bar flies."

"Well I was not so far off!" she argued.

He lifted his head to look at her, and his eyes were wet with tears of laughter. He held his hand out to her. "I thought you were saying Barbies. You know, the doll that little girls play with?"

Now that she was in on the joke, Ziva blew out a laugh and came to stand in front of him. "I have been fluent in English since I was a child, but I will never stop making these mistakes, will I?"

Tony's head dropped to the side as he looked up at her. "Oh, I hope not."

She narrowed her eyes again at his very light attempt to make fun of her, and held the bottle of water over his head threateningly. She didn't intend to go through with drenching him, but she had done so in the past and Tony clearly remembered. He grabbed her hips and pulled himself closer to her, as if having his head an inch away from her stomach would stop her.

"Don't do it," he warned playfully.

For a moment, she thought about doing it anyway, just to see what he'd do. But then his hands slid down her hips and around to the back of her bare thighs, and her spark of mischief was replaced by a much stronger spark of desire. She loved his hands. She loved the way he'd touched her. And it had been so, so long since the last time he had touched her on another case when they were far away from home. Her heart pounded and her skin flushed as he gazed up at her, and then his hands slid down and up the backs of her thighs again, very slowly. Delicious tingles shot between her legs, and she put the water bottle down on the nightstand before she poured it all over him by accident. Tony watched the movement and then gave her an encouraging smile, but Ziva wasn't sure what to do.

Her head told her that she should resist the almost unbearable temptation of his hands and mouth and body, and just the closeness of him, until they had both come to the agreement that they really were going to commit to each other. Surely that was the sensible thing to do. But…

She slid one hand over his shoulder and curled the other around the back of his neck. Even if they didn't know exactly what to do with their feelings, there was no doubt as to what those feelings were. They spoke vaguely to each other about working out what made them happy and whether they could see themselves being brave enough to chase that happiness, but they both knew what they were really saying. That they loved each other deeply. That they made each other happier, despite the sudden lows that hit them from time to time. But that they were scared they weren't actually that well matched, and that they wouldn't last the distance. And then Gibbs would be there to say 'I told you so'. That was the risk they were both grappling with. But knowing that didn't make those feelings of intense love and maddening desire any easier to deal with.

And she was so tired of resisting it.

She tunneled her hand up the back of his head through his hair, and Tony's hands slid back up over her hips and up to her waist. He caught her singlet with his fingertips with the move, baring a strip of skin on her belly. The tingles between her legs started turning into a throb, and she knew that if she gave in to what her heart wanted right now that his mouth would very soon find that spot on her neck that absolutely undid her. She knew that for the next few hours there would be no pretending. She knew that she would not have to act like she didn't want or need to be as close to him as she did. She knew they would laugh a lot in between long moment of perfect pleasure. She knew that when she finally fell asleep, she would do so feeling loved and exhausted. And that when she woke up in the morning she would be able to smell him on her skin.

It would be real. And that, at her core, was what Ziva really wanted. Something real.

So although it was probably not the right thing to do, she did it anyway. She dropped her head down towards him just as he gave her waist another encouraging tug, and Tony stretched his neck to meet her. Their first kiss in five months was like a shot of heroin to her brain, and just like an addict, once she started she couldn't stop. In moments she found herself lying on top of him and getting lost in sensation—the taste of him, the smell of him, the heat of his body and his hands running all over her. She wriggled her hips against his as Tony stripped off her singlet, and then he used his size advantage to roll them over. Ziva's heart was already hammering by the time he started kissing his way down her throat, and she drove her hands into his hair as he went lower.

Maybe it wasn't the right thing to do. But it was sure as hell better than pretending that her heart didn't want what it did.

Apologies for the delay, and that this chapter is short. And thanks everyone who reviewed last chapter. I wasn't expecting more than a handful. You guys are lovely.