They decide not to tell Gibbs. Or really she decides and gives him that look that tells him she was one step away from clocking him with an elbow when they had arrived the next day at work.
So they don't tell him. But it turns the scale of Tony the goof-off with no sense of an off switch from 10 to 100. Gibbs has already head slapped him 4 times by the time Ziva juts her head in the director of the elevator once they have a moment alone.
She slaps at the emergency switch once he's in.
"What are you doing?" She grits out through her teeth.
He turns around in a circle, twisting his hair up with his hands, "I don't know, I can't help it, it's like he's a freaking lie detector, he's been looking at me with those beady eyes all morning."
She rolls her eyes because it was completely idiotic but watching his worried face, his hair sticking up in all directions, she smiles. How could she be angry at that?
"Well, if you were not so obvious about it Tony, maybe it would not give him the reason to become one." She gently says reaching over and pulling him into her arms.
She feels the huff of air he breathes against the skin of her neck, rubbing the tip of his nose back and forth, knowing that's he's already calming simply by the touch.
"We have to tell him, " He whispers quietly.
She shuts her eyes, slightly shifting her weight off of him, knowing he was right but telling Gibbs felt almost like that thin line she quivered between fact and fiction, devastation and love. Telling him would remind her that she might never be able to tell her father, could never see his face as he heard.
Like he knows but really he's felt the way she's tensed, her shoulders curving into his chest, he kisses the corner of her forehead gently and lets out a sigh, "You should tell him too, Ziva."
"It was why I began to email him, I know that it is awful, that I was thinking of telling him before you, " Her voices falls, softens on the you as she looks into his eyes and he needs to swallow because it still gets to him that they actually have each other now (baby and all) and that she loves him, just in her voice, "But I thought…I hoped I could…"
His hands graze her lower back; they've gotten pretty good at finding those spots, the ones they know will get them gasping for more, breathing out, breathing in.
"Telling Gibbs will feel like you need it to feel, Ziva. He's not your father but he's been as close to it, you will be able to tell your own father, just practice on Gibbs first."
She rubs her nose along his neck, breathing in his familiar scent, "I'll tell him tonight."
"Good." He says, patting her sides just as she moves to flick off the emergency switch, "I hate keeping this a secret."
They remain encircled even as the door dings open, the light cascading though and she voices aloud what they've both been privately thinking through all of this, what they've both been fearing, "I do not want this child to grow up like we did."
And as he gathers her hands up against his chest, he bends his head, kissing that spot right below her ear for all the world to see, "They won't."
The case they've been working on gets successfully wrapped up just after noon and Gibbs surprisingly sends them all home early. Ziva lingers behind and she and Ducky end up having tea which eases her nerves immensely until she eventually tells him she needs to go home.
Ziva eases her way down the steps of the basement; the only way she's ever been able get herself down there. The image of her brother, the smell of gun powder, the sound of the rain ever fresh in her memory every time she entered, but it was where Gibbs was, the papa bear down in the cave and so that was where she had to go.
"Gibbs?" She calls out, making herself known.
He pops up from behind the bow of a new ship he's building, grease marks across his cheeks.
"Ziva."
She steps off the last piece of stair and slowly makes her way over towards the bench, letting her hand graze the wooden frame of the ship.
"What number does this make it?"
"8." He grunts now laying against his back with a hammer in his hand.
Ziva hums in reply finally making her way onto a stool and they both sit and work in a comfortable silence for a moment.
"Gibbs?" She asks eventually, her voice sounding smaller that he had ever remembered hearing it. He pauses mid hammer.
"Ziva?"
Ziva folds her hands together and closes her eyes, "I'm pregnant."
Gibbs slides himself up from the floor, brushes himself off and drops the hammer onto the bench top, leaning against it on a sigh.
His eyes wonder over her for a moment, "I know."
She shouldn't be surprised but she can't help but widen her eyes slightly, her voice lost in her throat.
"You've been tired lately without bothering to cover it and DiNozzo practically shot up out of his seat anytime you so much as blinked today and you're not hurt."
She nods to this as she looks up at him.
"Is this the part where you grill me with a lecture, give me a rule, tell me I'm an idiot for being so stupid." She asks, flicking her eyes nervously between his.
"No Ziva," And he stands, walking towards her and she feels the tears, the ache of it all, in her eyes, in the warmth of her belly as he wraps both arms around her, "It's the part where I tell you how happy I am for you."
She grips to him harder and she remembers suddenly, the first time he had hugged her like this and how familiar it had felt, safe, how she had let herself go; how she had cried.
She wipes her eyes as they break away, chuckling a little at herself as Gibbs picks up the hammer again.
"I always wanted to be a grandfather." And he doesn't say any more, though he doesn't have to. His daughter's face is his words, his voice.
Ziva gets down off the stool, smiling, "You'll be beautiful."
Her feet are just hitting the stairs again when Gibbs speaks again.
"You should tell him, Ziva."
She freezes and feels her heart suddenly beating in her ears and she spits out the first thing she can.
"He will not care."
"Try him."
She pries her fingers off of the banister and nods once, walking so fast out of his house that she's running to get to her car, slamming the smells, the sights, the memories out. Telling Gibbs was supposed to be uplifting, a relief, which it was, all so much but she couldn't stop thinking of her father and it makes her want to cry.
It takes her longer to get back to his place than usual and she's not surprised to hear her phone ring just as she pulled up to the curb.
He's waiting just a few feet from the front door, his expression apprehensive, like he was expecting the worst but as she shuts the door, letting herself rest against it, it fades quickly and is instead replaced by a small smile.
"Are you okay?"
Though he can tell that she isn't.
She nods anyway, pushing away from the door and dropping her bag against a chair, colliding into him to be held.
He simply grins, wiping the hair back from her face, wrapping both arms over the small of her back.
"Papa smurf tell you he was happy for you?"
He feels her head nod, her fingers gripping a little too tightly to his wrists.
She uses them to push herself back, standing within the circle of his arms as his gaze falls over her, his nose nudging the nearest cheek.
"What do you need?" He softly asks.
And without a word, a hint of a grin he defines as only pure Ziva, that one he fell in love with, slips onto her face as she tugs at him to follow her towards their bed, peeling off her layers before he can.
She doesn't want to think of her father, of Gibbs, of anything but Tony. To be with the only one who knew just how hard this was, how much it was.
And as his kisses melt against her collarbone, her skin, she cups with both hands his face in hers, sliding up against it to whisper into his ear; he's just untangled her belt buckle.
"Make love to me."
She can feel his breathing stagger and he kisses her cheek before taking them both slowly backwards, laying her down with a soft thump.
She slides off his pants with just her toes and wraps her legs around his waist, bringing him as close as she could get him and he ranks down her body with just his lips.
"Tony."
His mouth finds her belly button, tracing lines with his tongue and she moans, balling up the sheets with her fists.
"We're having a baby," He suddenly whispers, fingers brushing across her stomach, tracing a line down her belly button and into the curve of her thigh; she shivers, her back arching off the bed.
"Yes," She gasps, "Yes."
Her underwear gets peeled off and he comes back up, planting kisses across her shoulder and neck before she tugs at his head, kissing him before he could shut his eyes.
She's sucking on his lower lip, their moans filling the air as he takes her in one flush motion, kissing her before she could gasp.
And she seeps into him forgetting everything.
He's watching her as she stares out through the window later that night.
"I hope it's a girl." He murmurs and brushes his hands down her side, feeling the curve of her hip.
She slowly turns, blinking lazily at him, a smile spilling onto her face, "Me too."