Chapter Text
Tony sets a fresh cup of decaffeinated coffee on his kitchen table as he sits and opens the next client contract to review.
Tali’s finally asleep. When he checked on her a few minutes ago, she was curled up with Chatul the stuffed cat.
She was stubborn about bedtime tonight. The way she stands her ground even when exhausted has always, always reminded him of Ziva. It’s the way she stares at him, and how she gets that stubborn furrow in her brow that smoothes out in sleep.
He shakes off the thought.
Ever since he and Ziva ended things last month…
Work, he thinks, retraining his eyes on the prices Claudette has negotiated for a conference just outside the city in February. He turns the page on the draft. They’ve worked with this conference center before. He rarely has changes to Claudette’s paperwork anymore, but he still likes to look—
There’s a knock at his door.
His brow furrows together. Eight thirty on a Tuesday night? Maybe Sophie forgot something? He glances around as he stands and goes to the door, but he doesn’t see anything.
A look through the keyhole tells him it’s not Sophie.
It’s Ziva.
He tries to fight the knot that has already begun to form in his chest as he opens the door. She’s hardly been at his place.
Not since the day she’d met him during Tali’s school day to grab the last of her clothes and other belongings that had migrated to his apartment over the past two years.
Not since she gave him a sad, guarded smile, and squeezed his hand goodbye, and he drew her into a tight hug that had probably lasted a few minutes longer than it should have, and a few thousand minutes shorter than he’d wanted. He remembers every second of that touch: how her body felt pressed against his, and the warmth of her breath washing over his neck, and the way she’d relaxed into their embrace.
They’ve hardly touched since.
She’d walked out of this door moments later with her single duffel bag of belongings. He remembers thinking, as she’d held a that bag with those final odds and ends, that it had never quite felt like she’d let herself live here. Had she always kept one foot out the door of their life together?
Why is her presence still everywhere, in her favorite brand of tea in the cupboard, and the backpack she’d bought for Tali, and the memory of her sitting at the kitchen counter or sleeping in their bed?
He shakes off that thought, too, as he opens the door wide and steps back to let her in, trying not to meet her eyes, to feel her presence.
She brushes past him. He tries not to notice the familiar scent of her hair.
“Everything good?” he asks.
Obviously it’s not, he realizes, suddenly more uncertain. She’s here.
(She’s supposed to be here, working across from him at the kitchen table or reading on the sofa. She’s supposed to live here with them.)
Not helpful, DiNozzo. Not helpful.
She spins around to face him in front of the sofa.
When he looks at her, his stomach drops. Her hair is mussed, like she’s been running her hands through it, and her face is pale and tense, and her whole body has a vibrating energy to it that seems out of place.
Something is wrong. Something is wrong with her.
“Ziva—“ He breaks off, because her breathing begins to collapse into a pattern that is too deep, too rapid. Her eyes widen. Her shoulders lift high and tight.
She’s having a panic attack. Shit.
She grabs for the arm of the sofa. Her hand blanches white.
Hs steps closer out of instinct. “What is it? What’s going on? Are you—“
He stops abruptly when she holds out a single, trembling palm. Right. Idiot.
She'd taught him what helps her, or at least she'd tried, and he is doing it all wrong.
He very deliberately forces himself to do what she’s always asked, now. He backs away a couple of steps. He returns his arm to his side.
He speaks clearly, but gently. “Ziva. Breathing.”
His reminder or her own awareness must be enough, because she closes her eyes and falls shakily, deliberately into the familiar, even breathing pattern. She slowly lowers herself to sit on the sofa.
As he watches her, he finds himself counting the breaths in his own head. Five in, five hold, five out, five hold.
He cannot help staring. She never wanted him to do that, either. He forces himself to look down. He hates seeing her like this, anyway. He hates it.
He hates that she has panic attacks alone, even if she sometimes said it was better that way. He’s not sure he believes it. If it were happening to him, he would want…he would want her there.
“You want your meds?” he offers. “You got them with you?”
Her lips press together. She’s shaking a little. She manages one word: “Can’t.”
“Okay,” he answers, though he doesn’t understand. She has rescue meds that she can take when things get bad. She hates how she feels on them, but she’s been better lately about taking them. At least, he thinks she has. Maybe he wouldn’t know. There has been a fault line between them for months. Years.
Often, he thinks he’s never known another person so well, and yet never known someone whose thoughts and feelings were so hidden from him.
How can he not know why she’s having a panic attack?
His mind races through several possibilities. Something wrong at the language school? No, that doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t she go to Sophie? And wouldn’t he have heard already, on the news, or from Sophie or Claudette, if it was a big deal? A problem with one of their old friends? But surely he’d have heard from someone else? Abby would’ve called him, or McGee, or even Gibbs. Tali? No, that he would definitely know about already. Tali’s right here, and he heard all about her school day while he cooked dinner. His stomach drops. Are they in danger again? Is there someone else from their past who is after them? After Ziva? If she tries to start some other ridiculously solo mission without them, he would swear he’s going to—but would she do that to Tali? Not if she didn’t have to. He hopes, believes. She wouldn’t. She’s here for their girl. She promised. She deserves to be safe, to live some sort of normal life, and if someone is trying to stop that again, he’s going to stand in front of her and stop them no matter what she says because he just can’t watch her lose things anymore. (He made her lose them, her family, even though she’d said it was her biggest fear, because he couldn’t talk to her, literally, truly couldn’t, any more than she could walk through a crowded room full of the crack of gunfire. Some nights, when Tali is at her place, or after their daughter is asleep, his guilt feels bottomless and angry, until he forces himself to pack it away, like that last bag she’d packed with that purple sweater Tali had bought for her, and the gold earrings that had somehow ended up in his nightstand drawer, and the picture he’d had framed for her of the first teaching team at her school.)
It isn’t the anniversary of anything. He knows her life so well, and it’s not her siblings’ birthdays nor the anniversary of her father’s death nor of the day she left Tali to him, nor anything else that he often watches weigh on her or send her falling.
She’s wearing that purple sweater today, over black leggings like she often does.
She has to be okay. She’ll be okay. He can call Sophie for her, if she needs someone to talk to who isn’t—
Maybe she’ll take the meds once she’s caught her breath. That would be good. Maybe she just needs to look in on Tali. Their daughter can sleep through absolutely anything, so it’s never a problem if Ziva wants to go adjust her blankets and see that she’s fine.
He stares at Ziva’s hand. She’s still gripping the armrest, still breathing in that stubborn pattern. In, hold, out, hold. He glances up at her face. Her eyes are still closed. The tension that had been all panic is now partly of concentration. How did she manage these when she was alone and on the run? How did she sleep? Some nights, after Tali was in bed, he used to wonder what she might be doing, alone, somewhere halfway across the world (or was she closer, sometimes, in London or Rome or Berlin, just a few hours away)? How often was she sitting on the floor of an empty, decrepit safe house, having a panic attack, while he was here, in this very room?
He glances down again. He doesn’t like imagining that. Not at all.
Even without looking at her, he can hear her breathing. The room is so quiet that he can also hear the tiny mechanical clicks of the clock he’d placed on one of the bookshelves, back when he’d been teaching Tali how to tell time. Her breathing seems to line up with the sound, and he wonders if she’s using it to pace her breaths. A car honks in the distance. A few tires splash through a puddle from the cold rain that has been falling since the afternoon. He realizes, looking briefly at her shoulders and knees, that her hair and clothes are a bit damp. Should he offer a sweater? Would that be too much?
Ziva shifts forward. Her hands land on her knees. She lets out a heavy breath, and the steady pattern becomes more natural, less rigid.
He waits another twenty seconds, watching as her posture relaxes bit by bit. “Over?” he confirms.
She nods. He has the strongest impulse to reach for and squeeze her hand. To touch the wild curls draped around her shoulders. To kiss her forehead. He draws his hand into a fist by his side instead. “Tali?” she asks. Her voice is ragged even though she’s trying her best at normal.
Surely he’d know if there was something to worry about with Tali? “Fine. Sleeping. Despite her best efforts at negotiating a fourth bedtime story.”
Ziva nods again, her lips pulling into a faint, fleeting smile, her eyes flickering open.
“There’s nothing up with her, is there?”
Ziva shakes her head.
He nods, letting out a relieved breath. “You want to see her?” Sometimes, Ziva just needs to see their daughter’s face. It’s an impulse he understands.
“Not right now,” Ziva answers.
“You sure?”
“Tony.”
His name feels harsh on her lips. He doesn’t know why, except for…everything. He falls silent.
“I am—“ Ziva cuts herself off. She swallows. She wets her lips. His heart pounds. His head buzzes. He ignores it. He’s fine. It’s going to be nothing, surely. A simple misunderstanding. Some little thing about work. “I think that I am pregnant.”
He has to replay the words in his head several times before they mean anything other than sound.
I think that I am pregnant. I am pregnant. Pregnant.
He stares at Ziva, but doesn’t see her.
He feels flushed and hot. His head spins. His ears buzz. He feels like he’s floating away into another room, but without his limbs. Pregnant.
He drops to sit the sofa beside her, though he hardly feels it, hardly remembers telling his legs to move.
It has to be a joke. The universe is playing a joke on them. Haha, very funny.
Fucking hilarious.
Pregnant. That absolutely, definitely cannot be real. He must've misheard.
She’s pregnant?
“Well, fuck,” he says, staring into the apartment, trying to catch his breath.
He hears her breathe sharply. He can't even think about what it means.
He huffs a noise somewhere between a laugh and a cry. “Pregnant,” he repeats.
“Yes.”
They were supposed to be married now. They were supposed to be a family. “Pregnant,” he says again, soft and bewildered.
“Yes, Tony.”
His first thought is that he is still, always, so fucking crazy in love with her. How was he ever supposed to stop loving her: this amazing, wild, wounded, strong woman? Her voice is so familiar, as is the way she says his name. Her body is just close enough that he can feel her presence, and smell her hair, and see out of the corner of his eye that her hands are twisted together in her lap. He forces himself to take a breath. “You think you're pregnant?” he repeats.
Her eyes find his. A brief, lingering, endless instant.
Then, she turns away and reaches into her pocket, and pulls out an unmistakable plastic stick, secured in a small plastic bag. He takes it with shaking hands. She’s never handed him one of these before. It’s a strangely out of body experience. His shoulders are floating. His head is floating. His hands are floating. “Wow,” he manages, staring at it, gripping it like it might disappear.
For a moment, he experiences a surreal not-flashback of something that should’ve happened eight years ago, on a grainy Skype call, or in Ziva’s bathroom in Israel, or on the sofa in his apartment in D.C.. What if she’d called him, or come to him, or he’d gone back for her? The bunch of cells in question then would turn into the girl who is a whole seven-and-a-half years old, and giggles and rolls her eyes at his jokes, and loves soccer, and is so kind, and curious, and smart, and so very much like her mother.
“Are these things…?” He keeps gripping the bag, staring at the test, though he’s hardly seeing it.
“Accurate?”
“Mm.”
“Yes. Very. Besides, I’ve had some of the same symptoms as with…”
“Tals. Right.” He doesn’t know why it should surprise him. He knows of course that she carried their daughter, but mostly he avoids thinking of it. It hurts too much to imagine her nauseous and preparing herself strange foods or taking a rare nap, to imagine her feeling Tali kick against her ribs, in the very same house where they’d been together. To imagine her looking at her stomach in front of the very same mirror where he’d wrapped his arms around her and kissed her neck and asked her to come home with him. Did she miss him in those moments? Did she think of calling him? Did she wonder what it might be like if he were there to rest a hand on her stomach, and kiss her neck, and hold her?
Was Tali clever and funny and kind even as a little baby?
“Tony.”
“Mmhm.” Will this baby have the same wild hair as Ziva and Tali? The same way of putting a hand on their hip or narrowing their eyes and having him wrapped around their finger? Will he even be able to figure out how to hold a baby? How to make a baby laugh? How to comfort them when they’re crying? How to be a dad again? Maybe he’ll be miserable at it. Maybe they’ll stare at him the way Tali used to in those early days, as if to say: you really haven’t done this before, have you? I wanted to, he thinks. I would have. I would have.
Will he get to be there when this baby kicks in Ziva’s stomach? Will this baby ever know that he is still desperately, deeply in love with their mother?
How will Tali handle it? Christ. Tali. How will they tell her? How will they explain why this baby gets both parents from the start? How will they explain why they aren’t together? Or why Tony can’t tell her what she was like as a baby?
They were supposed to be married.
“Are you alright?” she asks.
He swallows hard. “Yeah. I, um—No,” he admits, adrenaline buzzing in his hands and around his temples.
“Yeah.” She sounds defeated.
He can’t speak enough to tell her that he doesn’t mean it like that. That he loves them. That it’s going to be alright. He doesn’t have the words to ask whether she’d believe him now if he said that he is here for Tali and her and this baby no matter what. He doesn’t have the words to tell her that being here for them, loving them, is a decision that took less than an instant to make, and one that he will never regret.
He wishes he could tell her that it is a decision: that it took no thought, but still, he doesn’t love any of them by accident or because he felt like he had to or because it feels good to be needed. He loves them because they are his family. He loves them because they are amazing.
(It does feel good to be needed. It feels good to have a family. It feels good to know that he did an okay job at becoming one of Tali’s people. He was that for Ziva, too, once.)
The love he'd felt the moment he first laid eyes on Tali, and every minute of every day since? The love he'd felt when Ziva was pushed into a chair before him, and a sack was lifted from her head, and he knew that she was not lost to him? The love he feels for them? He feels it again.
Another person who’s half Ziva and all amazing?
How could he not fall in love?
He drops his hands to his lap. He doesn’t want her to see how they’re faintly trembling. She is pregnant. He’s never seen her pregnant, unless you count that stupid undercover case all those years ago. He’s never even seen a picture of her pregnant. He’s hardly heard about it. What did she look like? What would it have been like to good-naturedly tease her for losing her ability to walk like a ninja? Was she nauseous a lot? Obsessed with weirdly specific foods? Tired? Worried? Happy? “You—um—you feeling alright? I guess not, if you decided to take a test.”
“I am.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. Tired. Nauseous.” She gives him a weak smile. “It is normal.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. At least six weeks, obviously—“
It’s a sudden flash of memory. The night before their not wedding. The last time they…Her laughter. The way she’d held onto him after, her arms wrapped protectively around his middle, like she was always living on borrowed time; like, if she let go, she’d lose them. “No—no I meant, when did you find out—”
“—I came straight here—”
“—your doctor didn’t tell you? How far along you are? Can’t they tell—”
“—I haven’t been to the doctor. I couldn’t do any of that without—I took that test an hour ago. That is all. I would’ve done that here, even, but I couldn’t bring it all up if it was nothing. I couldn’t be sure—“
“Ziva.”
“I waited until I knew Tali would be asleep. I thought it would freak her out, if she saw me like this.”
“Ziva.” He finally looks at her. In some ways, she looks calm and defiant, as she always does when faced with anything difficult. But beneath that, she looks…small. Afraid. Alone.
She glances into his eyes. He starts to reach for her hand, and she scoots it just a few inches away. He lets his hand fall back to his own thigh. “I am sorry,” she says softly. “I am sorry for how this feels. I began to suspect a few days ago, but I thought it was just stress. It has happened before. I was certain…”
He reaches for her almost without thinking, letting his fingertips brush the back of her hand. This time, she doesn’t pull away. “Ziva, I was involved, okay? You didn’t do anything that—” The memory crashes over him; even more vivid this time. For a moment, it pulls him under. He is back in that hotel room, with her hands twisting in his hair, hearing her moan in his ear as she came, feeling the weight of her body above his, her lips on his neck, her soft laughter as he whined and held onto her and followed her over the edge.
He hadn’t known, then, that it would be the last time. The last time he made love to her, the last time he slept in her arms, the last time she looked at him without the haunted gaze of someone who believes she deserves to have her heart broken.
“I know,” she says.
Would it have been like this, if she’d told him all those years ago?
He wishes he could go back and find out. He wishes he could tell himself to buy that plane ticket he’d thought about for months and years after he’d left her. He wishes he could tell himself not to leave in the first place, even though he knows he was trying to do right by her. He wishes he could’ve been there for his girls as the farmhouse burned.
Then, maybe, this poisonous distrust would go away, and he wouldn’t feel so ashamed of how he…
Maybe he wouldn’t have broken her heart.
He slides his fingers down between hers, his palm covering the back of her hand. She lets him.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Fine. Like I said. Tired. Nauseous. Nothing terrible.”
His heart trips over her dismissal. Maybe she hadn’t even meant it, but her distrust of him stings. “Not what I meant.”
Her eyes are clear as she looks at him. They both hesitate. Her hand remains in his. “No,” she finally admits. Her voice is quiet.
“Zi—“
A breath later, she is in his arms.
She crashes into him, and clings to him. She presses her face into his neck, looping her arms beneath his, spreading her hands across his shoulder blades. Her fingers dig into his back.
Letting out a shaky breath, he wraps his arms around her and tucks his cheek over her hair.
A few tears escape his hold and slip down his cheeks.
They haven’t hugged since that day in this apartment, when she packed up her bag of clothes and a couple of novels and the other remnants of her presence here.
Except Tali, of course, who will forever remind them what they were, are, could’ve been.
And this baby. Who is also theirs.
Her hair is soft beneath his chin and a little bit damp from the rain. The scent of her hair is familiar and haunting. Her body feels wonderful against his, even though she is tense. Perhaps he will never recover from the miracle that is getting to hold her when, more than once, he’d thought that he would never see her again.
Holy shit. A kid. Maybe it should bowl him over less, seeing as this one is a bit less real than the whole toddler he’d been confronted with five years ago, the day after learning that he had supposedly lost Ziva.
But he’s just about as shocked as he had been then, though at least not quite so numb and bitter and angry with grief. After all, Ziva is right here. Her breath washes against his neck.
They’re a mess, and they didn’t get married, and they’re not together, and they have a seven-year-old.
Ziva is here in Paris, safe. She’s told him.
He holds her a little more tightly.
He feels her stomach jerk, and a sharper puff of her breath against his neck. It takes him a moment to realize that it is a silent, suppressed sob. “Ziva.”
Her fingers draw into fists in his shirt. Another sound, more a broken hitch of breath than anything else.
“Hey. I’ve got you.”
Everything has always been so complicated between them, more complicated than he’d ever wanted. But holding her when she’s hurt or upset or terrified has always been easy. “Sorry,” she manages.
“It’s okay.”
She shakes her head. Her fingers twist in his shirt. “It is not. It cannot always be—”
She cuts herself off, and his stomach twists, and his heart pounds. “Honey,” he breathes.
She shakes again, trying to hold it in. “I’m sorry. I know we shouldn’t—“ She cannot stop crying, even though he knows her well enough to know that she’s trying with all her might. Her breaths are ragged, and quiet, an effort to keep herself contained, but she cannot stop the shaking of her shoulders, nor the quiet, broken sounds that burst out of her and against his skin every few breaths. He ignores her halfhearted admission. He’s supposed to push her away right now, when he’s pretty sure that neither of them wants that?
“What is it, hm?” he asks, weaving a few fingers through her hair and lifting her curls back over her shoulder. “Scared? Sad?”
She hums: a strangled, broken sound rather than an intentional one. His chest aches. She speaks in a broken rush. “I’m doing to this baby what I did to Tali. They won’t have you because of me.”
“Hey.” For a breath, anger floods his chest. Does she really think he’d leave them? Is she planning to leave herself? After everything?
But the anger quickly gives way as she pushes a hand into his hair and he realizes what she means.
Tears burn in his eyes. He tilts his head atop hers, tucking her more firmly against him. He knew that she blamed herself up to a point, but to hear her say it like this…
She blames herself for them. She thinks she’s the reason they don’t fall asleep and wake in the same bed each day. “Hey,” he argues, reassures, “I’m right here. Listen to me. I’m gonna be right here.”
She nods into his neck. Her voice is low and ragged. “You are the best—the best father.”
“Don’t know about best.”
She huffs. With relief, he feels her begin to settle. Her muscles give just a little, and her breathing eases into something just a bit less ragged.
“Tali will see me, and think, why didn’t Mom do all of that for me? Why is Mom staying for this baby, when she couldn’t for me? Why does my sibling get both of them?”
He makes his touch light as he runs his fingertips along her upper back. “Tali knows we both love her more than anything.”
Her hand cups the back of his neck. “I wasn’t okay when I was pregnant before. Tony. I wasn’t okay.”
He tightens his arms as though he could protect her from all of it. He buries a hand in her hair, cradling her head without forcing her close, but she doesn’t pull away. He just stops himself from turning to drop a kiss in her hair. He hates how much he’s missed being this close to her, and how good and right it feels. He hates that he is soaking it up, even like this. “It’s different from before, isn’t it? You’re different.”
She scoffs. “I have panic attacks now, and can’t be around crowds without falling apart.”
“You’re working on it.”
Her thumb sweeps along his neck, over his pulse.
“You don’t have to do this, you know.”
Her answer is rushed; voice quick and certain. “I will. I already love—it’s like it was with Tali. Would you prefer?—”
“No,” he says quickly, equally sure.
“Should I...” She goes to pull away, and he relaxes his arms to let her.
“If you need to.”
“No, I want—”
He takes a risk, and doesn’t pull away. “I think, given how we ended up here, a hug isn’t gonna—”
“Yeah.” She sniffs.
“Have the panic attacks been bad?”
“No. That was the first in months.”
“That’s good. I mean, bad, but—”
“Yes.”
He wants to ask which months she means, but he doesn’t. He knows she didn’t always tell him about the bad days, even though he could usually see it in her worn face and the protective hunch of her shoulders. “Sorry you had one.”
She stiffens. “It is not—” But she cuts herself off, and sighs. “It happens.”
Especially when she has to manage this. She’d told him a while back that her therapist thought she had them when she felt trapped. He tries to remember what else she’d said. Something else about situational triggers? He should’ve paid more attention. He should’ve written it down.
He wonders, for a moment, if he makes her feel trapped, but he quickly stores that thought away. If he studies it too much, he’s afraid he won’t be able to breathe.
“You sure you don’t want to take your meds?”
“I don’t know if they’re safe for the baby.”
Shit. Right. There’s a baby. Their baby.
She’s breathing calmly now, and, ever so gently, she pulls away.
He doesn’t try to hide the tears that streak his face. Her cheeks, too, are damp. They watch each other.
She raises one hand towards him, giving him plenty of time to pull away. When he doesn’t, she gently run her fingers beneath his eyes, swiping away his tears.
He sniffs, and tries not to lean into her touch. He wishes he could bury his face in her neck and wrap her arms around him again. He wishes he could look away, except that he doesn’t, never, not at all.
“Why are our lives so fucking crazy?” he asks.
She laughs wetly. Encouraged, he reaches out and gently swipes her tears away, too.
“We’ll be okay. We’ll figure this out,” he promises.
“Tali.”
“She’s gonna be okay. We’ll work it out.”
Ziva shakes her head. “You can’t know that.”
“We’ve been doing okay so far, haven’t we? Even with—” He stops. Their relationship has always been complicated, but somehow these past months have made it feel as though it’s more full of landmines than ever.
Ziva brushes his hand. “We have.”
He frowns.
Ziva David has remade his life, again. Another time. (The thousandth time.)
He’d meant to do the right thing for her. That’s all he’d wanted. It’s all he’d wanted eight years ago, too, when he boarded that plane and flew away from her. “You should talk to Dr. Lang.”
“I have an appointment tomorrow.”
“And a doctor?”
“I will make an appointment for us with an OB.”
“Alright.”
“You’ll come?” Her hand lands on his. He tries not to grip her fingers back as tightly as he wants to.
“Of course. Of course.” He wonders how she found out, back then. What had made her first suspect Tali’s existence? He’s never asked, and she’s never said. Did she bring someone with her to her first appointment? Knowing her, he would guess that she probably had not. How far along was she by then? Did she think about calling him? Did she want him there, while she sat alone in that exam room?
He’s not sure if it would feel better to know that she did. Either way, they’ll never get that moment back. “I couldn’t call the doctor earlier. I didn’t suspect. And anyway, I had to tell you first. I needed to tell you. I almost went crazy for the last hour, waiting for her bedtime.”
He swallows past a lump in his throat, and squeezes her hand.
“Tony—“
“I believe you. I believe you.”
He feels her nod beside him.
The air feels thick. He pushes against it.
“Tony.”
He nods, and breathes. There’s a softness in her voice, and it feels wonderful, and it hurts.
When she wraps both her hands around his, he almost pushes her away, but he doesn’t want that.
He’s never wanted her touch more in his life, except maybe during those two painful summers when he’d thought she’d died.
He forces himself to breathe as she slowly strokes his hands.
They both are silent.
“I would’ve married you,” he says softly.
She breathes in sharply. “Not right now. Please. Not us. I can’t.”
“Okay,” he agrees, not turning to look at her, refusing to be the one to drop her hands. “Okay.”
“You’re shaking.”
Tears slip down his cheeks, and he cannot stop them. “I’m fine.”
Still, she tugs at his hand; and still, he turns to look at her. “I am right here, too. I am not going anywhere.”
He doesn’t point out that she moved out a month ago, nor that she’d never properly moved in, never subleased her apartment like he’d wanted. It feels good to hear. He wants to believe it. He does believe it, he realizes. Mostly.
She sighs, and leans forward, and she lets herself (or he lets her, or they let themselves) kiss his forehead. “I should go home.”
The idea of watching Ziva walk out that door makes him nauseous. “You could stay, if you want? I’d take the couch.”
She hesitates just a moment. Her hands slip from his. “We cannot confuse Tali like that.”
He nods and glances down, taking a shaky breath. Maybe they can’t confuse him like that, either.
She stands, leveraging her hands against her thighs. He watches as she hesitates again, this time with a sense that she’s trying to find the right words. “You should remember that it is early. Things can happen. Tali was—there can always be complications. What my body has been through—”
“We’ll deal with it.”
“It may not be something we can control.”
“We’ll deal with that, too.” He wants her to stay. He wants to sleep with his hand on her stomach, and promise her that whatever happens, she is enough.
She smiles a sad, almost weary smile. She was always the optimist about human nature, in the end. He’s not sure when she became a pessimist about them. “Okay.”
She turns to walk to the door. He stands and follows her. “Will you call me? When you get home?” he requests, as she turns the doorknob. Home was supposed to be here, with him.
She looks back for an instant. Her gaze is soft. “I will text. I promise.”
“Okay.”
“Is there a day this week that’s best for you? For the appointment?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll be there.” There is literally no meeting imaginable that he would not cancel for it.
“Alright. I will call you, when it’s scheduled?”
“Yes. Do you need anything else?”
“No.” She nods towards Tali’s room. “I will be here in the morning to get her. For pastries.” They’d agreed she would take Tali out for breakfast at least one morning each week, while she gets her apartment arranged for more than weekend sleepovers, and they work out a formal schedule. “That smell, at least, has not bothered me this week.”
He glances at her stomach without thinking about it, although there’s nothing to see yet. She is pregnant. “What has?”
Her nose wrinkles. “Fish. Perfume.”
“Those are two separate things, right?”
She half smiles.
“If I can help with anything, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”
“I will ask.”
He nods. And because fair is fair, and he needs to, and she’s right there, and he misses her, he leans forward and softly kisses her forehead, too.
They both linger a moment.
Perhaps it had been a bad idea, because now he wishes desperately to kiss her properly.
“Goodnight,” she says. She squeezes his bicep, a barely-there pulse of touch.
“Goodnight,” he returns.
She pulls away, and slips through the door.
He rests his forehead against the wood frame once it is shut behind her, and she is out of sight. He is still there fifteen minutes later when his phone dings on the table across the room to tell him that she has made it home.