He stood in the middle of the living room, staring at his apartment. He had been so certain that she had been there; that he had awoken with her tangled in his arms before he went to work; that she had shown up on his doorstep the previous evening telling him she was pregnant. Had she left? How much had he drunk last night? Had he imagined the whole thing?

He slumped down onto the couch, wiping his face with his hands. Had his despair and depression really reached a level where he was hallucinating her, and of everything he wished they could be together? Lovers. Parents. He closed his eyes, resisting the urge to cry. There were very few things he cried over – after all, DiNozzo men did not shed tears. But when it came to her, everything was different. When it came to her, he felt it all.

The sound of the lock turning broke his thoughts and he sprang to his feet, drawing his gun from his holster. Perhaps he was still a little jumpy from almost having been framed for the third time in his life, that he didn't put it past someone with a grudge to break into his apartment to so cleverly set him up. He aimed his weapon towards the entryway, his finger hovering over the trigger, calm and ready to fire as he had done so many times before.

But, as the door opened, his heart leapt and he breathed a sigh of relief. Her curly hair came into view as she strolled in so casually with headphones in her ears, nibbling on a half-eaten burrito. She closed the door behind her, catching a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye. As she turned to him and smiled, removing her headphones, he instantly holstered his weapon. But she could barely swallow the mouthful of food she was eating before he raced across the room and pressed his lips to hers, firmly and desperately, his hand instinctively grasping her hair.

Her body tensed in surprise before relaxing into him, holding her burrito out of the way. An accidental moan escaped her. God, he was a fantastically good kisser. When they pulled apart, breathless, she looked at him, stunned.

"Hello to you too," she laughed when she finally regained her breath, slinging her bag off of her shoulder and onto the floor.

He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her into him. "When I got back and you weren't here, I thought you'd left or that I'd imagined the whole thing," he admitted.

She smiled at him, pressing a soft kiss to his mouth. "I am very much real, my love," she replied. My love. He licked his lips, the taste of guacamole from her burrito, lingering. "You have no proper food in the house," she began, "and I was hungry."

He chuckled. "If I had known you were going to turn up on my doorstep and we were going to be in the situation we are in now, I would have prepared. But evidently I didn't have enough time to hit the grocery store."

"We shall have to remedy that. I do not want to have to walk four blocks every time I want something to eat," she smiled. "Though, this burrito is so wonderful that I may actually consider you not having food in the house just so I can get one."

He smiled, softly taking the burrito from her hand and taking a small bite. She smiled back at him as their gaze locked while he chewed, the two of them indulging in a memory from many years ago, where she had taken his burrito from him and stolen a bite herself. She laughed inwardly as she remembered the way he tossed it into the bin afterwards, not wanting her "germs." How things changed…

"I promise I'll go shopping when I get home tonight," he replied. "While I'm at it, I'll also make another key, because if any of my neighbors see you picking the lock, they're going to have questions," he laughed.

"I fear the woman your father slept with may have seen me. She doesn't like you very much, does she?" Ziva teased.

"Not really," Tony replied, "but you can blame my father for that. She didn't take too kindly to him ending things with her. She keeps knocking on my door every other day because she wants to see him again… I think just to give him a good slap, if I'm being honest. Though, I'm kind of surprised she hasn't put cat poop in my mail for me to give to him or something."

"Perhaps it's because she knows you are a trained federal agent," she replied.

"Or maybe she's just waiting for the right time to unleash Satan on me…" Ziva's eyes crinkled in amusement. "The cat." He paused for a moment before shifting the conversation. "You seem like you're feeling better today."

"I am. Much." She nodded.

"No morning sickness?"

She shook her head. "It does not happen every day, thankfully. It is less frequent when I am relaxed and comfortable. And well rested."

"Good," he smiled. "I"m glad. But just in case, I stopped by the store on the way here and picked up virtually every snack imaginable. I didn't know what you'd be craving, so I basically got one of everything."

She chuckled. "I appreciate that."

He glanced around the room, before asking her his next question. "Out of interest, what have you been doing since I've been gone? I was half expecting my DVD's to be all over the place."

"Mostly sleeping," she replied, the corners of her lips turning up. "Until my stomach gurgled, and I had a craving for burritos. But I was just about to put on The Sound of Music." He grinned. Of course she was. "How has your day been so far?"

"I snapped at McGee."

"Tony," she lightly scolded, in the way she had done so many times before.

"He asked me about you… well, actually, he asked me about my drinking habit and whether I'd been moping over you while watching Casablanca, and I obviously couldn't tell him that you're here or that you're pregnant."

"So, you snapped at him?"

"Unintentionally. But maybe a little intentionally. I'll apologize later," he replied. "I just… I don't know how to do this. To keep this between us and go to work and act how I have been acting for the past three months."

"Which is?"

"Lonely, sad, depressed, and irritable," he replied.

She rested her forehead against his chest before looking up at him. "Then maybe we come up with a… plan of sorts. To make things easier."

"A plan?"

"Yes. A plan. Like… you said this morning that you would like for us to go on a date? Considering I have been able to stomach this burrito, how do you feel about tonight?"

"Tonight?"

"Yes. Tonight. As in this evening," she said, playfully, "the time when most dates usually happen?"

He smirked at her. "Alright, you've got yourself a deal."

"And if it goes well, you can simply say that you are seeing someone." She raised her eyebrows.

" If it goes well?"

"I do expect this to be a first date," she teased, her finger poking at his chest. "Do not think that just because I love you, we have slept together already, and are having a baby, that you will be half-assing this."

"I would never half-ass this. In fact, just you wait, Miss David. I'm going to romance your freaking ass off."

"I look forward to it," she replied, pressing a kiss to his lips.

"Where have you been?" McGee snapped as Tony entered the squad room. "Gibbs has been asking after you."

"I had an errand to run," he replied, refraining from smiling. The errand being finishing the last of his kind-of-sort-of-not-yet-girlfriend's burrito and then making out, while half-watching Julie Andrews dance atop an Austrian hill before he had to leave.

"An errand?"

"A pipe burst… in my apartment," he replied, singing his bag back before his desk and joining his colleagues in the center of the room to stare at the monitor. "Well, not my apartment. The apartment across from me, and I wanted to you know… check that my home wasn't sinking."

"Hey, doesn't the lady your father slept with live in the apartment across from you?"

"She does. Somehow she thinks I had something to do with her plumbing springing a leak, on account of my father breaking up with her."

"That's ridiculous," Ellie chimed in.

"Not for Mrs Parkinson. Maybe the new woman in my building can change her mind," Tony bit his lip with a smile.

"You have a new neighbor?" McGee asked, his brows furrowing.

"Of sorts," Tony replied. "But, you'll be pleased to know, I asked her out."

"You did?" McGee and Ellie exclaimed in unison.

Tony nodded. "Well technically she asked me out. I wasn't going to because she's brand new to the building, but when I went home to check on things she was there, and she thought it would be a good idea, having admired me from afar. We're going out tonight."

McGee chuckled. "Admired you from afar?"

"What can I say, I'm charmingly handsome."

"Charmingly something , alright," McGee said to himself. He paused, thinking. "Wait, but what about Ziva?"

"What about her?" Tony asked, nonchalantly.

"What if she changes her mind?"

Tony sighed. "It's been three months, McGee. She's not coming back."

Later that evening, the squad room cleared out, leaving just Tony and his fearless leader, Gibbs. Tony had apologized to McGee earlier in the day, to which McGee shrugged it off, understanding how difficult things were for his friend. Of course, Tony felt deeply guilty because he no longer had any reason to act the way he had been acting, but the thing about having Timothy McGee as your best friend was that he was quick to forgive, no matter who had wronged him or how. He hated holding grudges as he thought they were a waste of time (sensible, really), and he just hoped that people would learn from their mistakes and make things right in due time — even if he had to be the bigger person.

"DiNozzo!" Gibbs called.

"Yeah, boss?" he replied looking up from his desk.

"Go home," Gibbs muttered, taking a sip of his black coffee, in his classic takeaway cup. If there was one thing that represented the Marine, it was coffee strong enough fuel to a car.

"Thank you, Boss."

Tony began clearing his things, placing case files inside his desk and locking it securely, gathering his gun and slipping into his holster, and ensuring that he had very little in the way of things to do in the morning. He knew he was going to be up until the early hours of the morning — not that he was expecting sex, because he wasn't in any way, even though Ziva had teased him about it. But he figured that her morning sickness (which wasn't exactly morning sickness), may hit somewhere in the early hours after their dinner, and he would be too shattered from comforting her all night, to even be bothered to attempt to clean his desk when he arrived at 08:00.

"So," Gibbs began, "I hear you have a date?"

"Yeah," Tony replied, attempting to contain his excitement. To outsiders, this was just a normal date for him. They didn't need to know who he was actually dating. "This new woman in my building. Beautiful. Kind of feisty. You know, she actually asked me out?"

"She did?" Gibbs smirked.

"Yeah. I went home at lunch to check on things, and there she was, in the corridor. Just asked me out, right then and there."

"Well, good on her. She could do a lot worse," Gibbs smiled. Tony's head sprang up to meet his boss's eyeline.

"You mean that?" Tony questioned, looking at the elder gentleman.

"I do," he nodded. "Just… don't hurt her, DiNozzo."

A silence formed between the two men as Gibbs' words sunk in. Was it just Tony or was Gibbs looking at him strangely?

"I have no plans on it, Boss," Tony replied, sincerely. He loved Ziva too much to ever hurt her.

Gibbs nodded in satisfaction. As Tony slung his bag over his shoulder and began to head out of the bullpen, his boss's voice cut through the air one last time. "Tell Ziver, I miss her."

Tony froze. He turned around, facing the man who was still sitting at his desk. "Boss, I haven't spoken to her in three months… not since I left Israel."

Gibbs smirked and hummed, in a way that told Tony he knew his jig was up. He stood, tossing his empty cup in the trash, and brushed past him to head towards MTAC, but not before giving him some parting words of advice.

"Buy her some flowers, DiNozzo. Always goes down well… and knowing Ziva, she's probably never had them before."