A.N. Once again this has taken a while to get up and I would have had it up yesterday but my dumb internet decided to stop working so I had to wait until it was up again. Short A.N this time =P I hope you enjoy the chapter and please review!!!! It makes me sit down and start writing instead of sitting down and playing solitaire.

Dislcaimer: I don't own any recognisable characters.

It didn't take her a few moments to figure out where she was or who she was with. She remembered every detail perfectly; every touch, every sound and every feeling. She remembered the satisfaction as the words clambered at the door unable to get in and she remembered the guilt as they finally laid down to go to sleep, of using Tony, her best friend but then she heard the words rattling the door handle and she tried her best to ignore that feeling and focus instead on falling into a, hopefully dreamless sleep. But now the morning light was shining through the window she felt the guilt creep back again and another feeling she wasn't sure she wanted. Regret. What did she regret? Sleeping with Tony? Letting him see her that weak? The fact that she had begged? The fact that the sex hadn't meant anything? That opened up a whole lot of new questions in her head and Ziva realised with an angry sigh that she hadn't gotten rid of the words, just replaced them with new ones.

Did she want last night to have meant something? If someone had asked her that last night she would have said no without hesitation but now she wasn't so sure. She loved Tony but she loved everyone at NCIS. Was her love for Tony different? Was he even more than her best friend?

The new words got too much to bear and Ziva pushed herself gently away from Tony and got out of bed, putting on her running clothes and trying to gain some form of normality after the jumble of unanswered questions that was last night.

-

He groaned and rolled over, trying to shield his eyes from the bright sun from a window but the thin pillow did little to stop the glare. Wait, thin pillow? His pillows were thick and covered with dark cases, not thin and white like these were which meant he was at someone else's house. Then he smelt something, something achingly familiar that no matter how often he smelt it, it would never fade into the background. Ziva. A sweet but not a sickly smell, something exotic, musky, Ziva.

Last night came back to him with a big bang and a sore head as he rolled off the bed and hit the floor.

"Ziva?" he whispered urgently. He didn't know why he was whispering. It wasn't like they had to hide what had happened here, just around Gibbs.

He took a big breath in. Gibbs was going to kill him.

Tony knew he shouldn't have allowed last night to get so out of hand but it was like the only thing he could see was the crazy in Ziva's eyes when she had looked at him, begging for him to let her escape and it was all he could see now. She hadn't dreamed last night as far as Tony knew; she hadn't woken up screaming or clutching herself to him, trying to show herself he was still alive and he hadn't been sobbing silently in her sleep as an endless roll of images went around in her head. Surely that counted for something? He had stopped her remembering for one night but that wouldn't matter to Gibbs. He was still going to kill Tony.

He groaned and pulled himself up off the floor, walking to Ziva's wardrobe and pulling out a selection of the spare clothes he kept here before shuffling into the bathroom to have a burning hot shower that hopefully would ease the worry and guilt he was feeling.

-

She slammed the door open, lungs bursting and legs aching, wanting nothing more than a hot shower to warm up her cold fingers and toes when she found Tony already up and showering.

Could she? Technically he had seen everything last night but just because they spent one passion-filled but meaningless night together didn't mean she could step into the shower with him and expect everything to be normal.

Normal. She hated that word. What was normal for them? At the beginning there were two settings, flirt and fight. They had either been all over each other, just asking for a head slap from Gibbs or they were having screaming matches across the office, sending everyone running for cover from the flying office supplies. After time they had worked out a balance, they started having dinner at Tony's apartment once a week and watching a movie afterwards. In those days things were fairly normal, if by normal it meant carefree and easy. Easy to be friends and easy to let their strong flirtations from earlier in their relationship die down until they were just simmering beneath the surface. Then Jeanne had happened and with it came all the secrets and loss of trust, the worry and then finally out the other side, the forgiveness. Things had been rocky for a while after that, both of them feeling the simmering feelings start to heat up again but the secrets each had kept from one another had put a gap between them and they didn't know how to close it up. Jenny's death, being sent back to Israel was all a blur now and Ziva wondered if it was because she was trying to keep those memories far away, she dwelt on Jenny in her sleep she didn't have to do it while she was awake as well but with their separation came the time when they came together again and it was like a second chance to get things back to normal, back to the carefree and easy days. They were nearly there when Kiara came in and threw any balance in her life in the air and even once she wasn't a major part of her life like she had been those few days, the pieces were still in the air, slowly landing. They had landed last night but not where either Tony or Ziva were expecting. But they would survive as they had in the past; Ziva just hoped they wouldn't lose anything on the road to the survival. Like the head she was going to lose when Gibbs found out what she and Tony had done because there was no question if he was going to find out, only when. She just hoped she was out of arms reach.

The shower stopped and Ziva realised gratefully that she didn't have to decide whether going in was right or not and instead starting peeling off her sweaty clothes in preparation for the burning hot shower that hopefully would ease the memories she was thinking about.

-

They arrived at work only ten minutes late and not having spoken a word all morning except for when Tony had tried to start a conversation they both knew they were going to have to have eventually.

"Ziva-" But that had been as far as he'd got after Ziva gave him her death glare which she reserved for him only, her hand twitching towards the gun attached to her hip. Tony thought it would be best to shut up after that.

They got to their desks without Gibbs seeing them come in but McGee, it seemed, chose today to pay close attention to the pair which resulted in the very question they didn't want asked.

"What happened between you two?"

Thanks for reading, please review. Jules.