One good thing about leaving the office at seven was that rush hour traffic was almost over, making it much easier to navigate the city. Ziva flew home at her usual speed, loosing Tony in a matter of minutes behind her on the interstate. She knew that she was going to be late to Abby's dinner party, but she still wanted to enjoy the majority of the festivities.
She felt out of the loop from all of her office friends, since she had absconded with Tony into what seemed like a two week sex haze. She knew it was unhealthy to keep them so isolated from the rest of the world, but something about the Jameson case had made her want to closely protect everything she valued in her life. Ironically she had done just the opposite, putting their relationship in peril instead of protecting it.
She felt like an idiot for jeopardizing their relationship over this whole baby thing, when she could have just talked about it with him from the beginning. Her trust issues had in many ways resolved themselves, since her return from Somalia and resigning from Mossad, but she still managed to mess up every once in a while, and this was messing up in a big way.
She knew that she was lucky that he valued her crazy side. The side that might trick him into getting her pregnant one day, and the next day, freak out about having deceived him, blurting out everything she was feeling in the middle of the office. In fact, it was becoming increasingly clear to her that she was unintentionally taking advantage of this, and as a result she was less cautious than she should be about losing him. She knew that she would need to work on this, especially if there was going to be a baby in the picture soon.
She still could not get over how easily he had forgiven her for her transgressions. If the tables were turned she would have been furious at him, but somehow magically they had ended up at the same place at the same time without even consulting each other about it. The connection they had was uncanny, like there had been some kind of tantric soul, mind, and body meld held somewhere in the cosmos millions of years ago before they had even existed.
He was her true partner, and they shared many of the same weaknesses, which increased their understanding of the other person's shortcomings. They were both reckless. She had decided she wanted a baby, because of the loss of another child that she had grown attached to, and had gone after her goal with zeal. He had decided that he wanted to have a baby upon learning that the woman who he wanted to carry that child wanted one so badly that she was willing to deceive him to get it. It wouldn't make sense to anyone else, but it was uniquely them, and it was working for them.
Upon entering her apartment, which had that musky uninhabited smell, resulting from her recent perpetual shacking up with Tony at his place, she stripped down and jumped into the shower. She showered quickly, rubbing herself down with tea tree oil body wash and sandalwood shampoo in a mad rush. She didn't even bother shaving her legs, as she wasn't going to be seeing Tony tonight anyway.
She toweled off in front of the mirror, examining her body, swearing that she wouldn't let herself go during motherhood. Tony wouldn't like that.
x
Meanwhile, Tony took his time making his way back to his apartment, processing everything that had happened during the day, especially the last hour. Tony was accustomed to using his drives home for thinking and analyzing over cases, and occasionally his personal life would find its way into his thoughts as well, but tonight his thoughts were entirely occupied by his personal life.
His Ziva was such a strange creature. A month had gone by without them having any sort of serious conversation about their relationship, and today everything boiled over suddenly in the break room of all places.
Mostly he liked it this way because their relationship seemed so organic and unforced. When they really needed to talk about something it would unfold just as it had today, after one of them had kept whatever was bothering them bottled up for a couple of weeks, until they realized that it couldn't be dealt with on their own. However today was different and in the future he decided that he would try to be more mindful of changes in her mood, and try to talk about things before they get this out of hand again. He didn't want them to end up like his parents were before his mother had died, and consequently the same way the relationship was between his father and his many stepmothers.
He understood that she would never readily offer a lot of information to him, unless she felt that it was absolutely necessary for him to know. She was a self-soother, and thirty years of programming by her father was not going to be effortlessly erased by a couple of years with him. Not to mention this whole idea of openly talking about everything hadn't come naturally for him either. They were both private people and melding their private lives together was never supposed to be easy, but it was worth it.
The first thing he did when he got to his apartment was head to his neatly organized walk-in closet. He liked his life to be tidy and organized. A trait that he would most likely need to forgo before having a child of his own with his ex-assassin co-worker girlfriend out of wedlock. Since it had occurred to him on his drive home that they would have to be make their affair public if she became pregnant. Although he had told his dad and most of his friends about them, mostly so they would get off his back about his lack of womanizing of late, only Abby knew for sure that they were together out of their co-workers. The others had only speculated about what was going on between them.
Tony could tell that Gibbs knew that something was going on between them, and although he would never approve of a relationship between co-workers, he would be a hypocrite if he banned it outright. Most likely Gibbs just thought that they were just screwing, which they had been for a long time before it became more serious, before Somalia. However he would have been an idiot if he didn't realize that Tony had genuine feelings for Ziva. Ziva on the other hand was more unreadable.
McGee probably had the best idea of what was really going on between them. He endured many hours of them interacting with each other. It was enough to make him absolutely sick sometimes. The teasing banter, incessant flirting, and the knowing looks that passed between them on a daily basis had not gone unnoticed by the Probie, no matter how hard he tried to ignore them. Not to mention that Tony had stopped talking about girls almost altogether and Ziva didn't seem quite as eager to flaunt men in front of his face anymore. It still happened on occasion, just rarely. The other big indication was that he and Abby had used to joke about them together, and now when he tried to bring it up she had just said that it was none of their business.
Tony went to the back of the closet and pulled down a clear gray unlabeled plastic container. Months ago his father who he had recently begun talking to on a regular basis had sent him a box of things from his childhood that he had thought that Tony might want one day. He had gone through it hastily, as some of the memories were bittersweet. His childhood had been quite blessed until his mother had died when he was eight, but after that it had been a sequence of distant boarding schools and summer camps until he was eventually cut off by his father before college. He did have one picture of him and his mother framed that he had liked. It was a completely cheesy one of them wearing coordinated outfits at Christmas time.
Eventually he would give all of it to Ziva, because she would truly appreciate it, but tonight he was searching for something in particular to gift to her to commemorate their recent decision. He rummaged through the box, which contained many smaller boxes of loose photos, framed family photos, a baby book, old baseball cards, a baby blanket, and a couple of stuffed toys that he had been fond of as a child. It also had some estate jewelry that had been his mothers, which he should probably take to his safety deposit box instead of leaving lying around.
He grinned as he opened the box to a four-carrot emerald cut Harry Winston engagement ring that had been worn by his mother. Ziva definitely did not need to know about that one. Of course, knowing her she probably would have found something wrong with the cut or the clarity would not have been good enough. Or it would have been too big, and she would have considered it tacky. Or she wouldn't want to wear it because it had belonged to his deceased mother and wouldn't want to wear something that special. She was so difficult, but so easy at the same time.
He finally found what he was looking at amongst the treasures. A small blue box, which was heavier than it appeared…