A/N
Ok, this chapter (split over today and tomorrow) is now unashamedly Tivaish. I still maintain that is not beyond the realms of possibility but it is no longer remotely canon. I tried. I hope you enjoy it. If you want to see more of my (also now proved non canon by Masquerade) interpretation of Paris, check out my other story on it. It is obvious which one it is…
Six hours later, Tony was woken when the passenger on the aisle seat kicked him in the calf. Hard. He heard the snuffling behind him as the man, obviously asleep, readjusted his position.
Tony opened his eyes. The first thing he realised was that he too had done some mid-slumber position changing. Instead of being reclined against his partner, he had turned towards her and flung his arm across her sleeping body. He did not mind at all where his face had ended up finding rest. He could hear her heart beating and feel her lungs fill and empty with soothing regularity. His back would surely protest the awkward position in the coming days, but his subconscious, it seemed, was only doing what it had become used to. It was admittedly a lot easier to do lying down than crammed into an economy class seat.
The second thing he realised was that if Gibbs caught him lying like that, he would need the emergency oxygen mask to recover from the headslap. With that thought, he carefully lifted his arm from across Ziva's body and straightened up in his seat. He didn't mind this position either because now he could watch her sleeping. Not in a creepy way. He enjoyed the peace that came over her when she was sleeping and he rarely woke before her 0500 running sessions.
The third thing that Tony realised was that he liked waking up next to Ziva. That he had missed waking up next to Ziva that morning. Not that he would, or could, admit it to anyone else yet. He had no idea how it had come to be that he woke up more mornings at her house than his. He just could not believe that it had become his daily routine with such ease. But he did know when. He could pinpoint the exact night that it had begun.
Paris. What a trip that had been. Tony could hardly remember the whirlwind visits to museums and statues. But he would never forget waking up in the middle of the night to Ziva thrashing on the floor beside the couch. He had suspected she did not sleep. The dark circles ever present under her eyes had made that pretty clear. But he had no idea the ferocity of her nightmares until that night. He had held her until she stopped shaking and then carried her, exhausted, to the soft bed which he won in the coin toss. He remembered how vulnerable she had seemed to him that night as he stroked her hair and whispered soothing words. She had eventually drifted off, but he had been afraid to let her go in case she drifted back to that place again. He remembered how it felt to hold her, not expecting anything and feeling totally at ease with that.
The next night, after they had arrived home, he remembered that he had left his clothes in her luggage as he had overindulged a little on the souvenirs. Ok, he had overindulged a lot. He had gone to her house after work to get his things and they had ordered pizza and watched a movie. Time had slipped away from them and he had ended up sleeping on her couch. She woke in the small hours of the morning, yelling something in Hebrew. He had gone to her room and woken her up, again assuring her that it was a dream and that she was safe now. When he was sure she was asleep again, returned to the couch for a few more hours sleep himself.
And that was how it had been well over half of the nights since the end of January. Some nights she had nightmares, some she did not. Many nights they shared her bed, some nights he slept on the couch. There was no rhyme or reason, no pattern to the arrangement. Neither of them had ever brought it up. It was the new status quo.
Some nights he would not go over and he would lie awake in his empty apartment. Sometimes, he would give up on sleep and sneak into her house. She was never alarmed to wake up for her run and find him sleeping on her couch. They had not swapped keys or anything like that. To do so would be purely symbolic for two people with their particular set of skills...
The fourth thing that Tony realised was that this would probably be the last time in a while that the third thing happened. He did not like that realization.
The fifth thing Tony realised was that he hadn't noticed until that morning how much of his stuff was at her house now. After the initial Paris stuff never made it home, the rest seemed to have migrated there with him. The clothes he had worn to work that day. The running gear he took for the rare mornings he was awake early enough to join her. The razor had migrated after the head slap and the "Shave your face DiNozzo or my knife will do it for you." He had started throwing his clothes in her washing machine ready for work the next day and they had just not found their way back to his house. That is how she was able to pack an entire bag for him without visiting his apartment.