I started this fic before EJ showed up, so she's left out of it; I wrote as though her relationship with Tony was too brief to be mentioned. Given Tony's track record, that seems a definite possibility.

McGiva is my new NCIS pairing of choice. There are many wonderful McGiva fics on this site, but many of them deal with the pair as an established couple. I wanted to write a fic that tried to explain how such an odd couple might end up together.

It starts innocently enough, with a stray thought on an unseasonably warm March evening. It's the end of a long day and they're sitting on a park bench across the street from a row of townhouses where Tony and Gibbs are having one last conversation with a bereaved family. The air is quiet, there's a gentle breeze blowing, and they sit in companionable silence, looking up at a sky stained orange by the setting sun. At the same moment they glance at each other, and that's when he has the strange and sudden thought that it would be incredibly easy to lean forward a few inches, closing the gap between them, and kiss her.

The thought is so surreal and so vivid that it startles him. Of course he can't do that—even if there wasn't Ray, and Tony, and the fact that they're on the job right now, he's never even thought of her that way before. It's such a bizarre and out-of-the-blue thought that he decides it was a momentary aberration, like when you walk past a very expensive vase and have a moment's crazy thought that you could knock it to the ground and watch it shatter, even though you know you'd never actually do such a thing. That explanation makes sense to him, and by the time Tony and Gibbs return, he's quite confident that the thought was a fleeting, meaningless lapse and will certainly never happen again.

He's wrong.

. . . . . .

"Look who's late to work," Tony says one morning a week later, and McGee doesn't even have to look up from his desk to know that Ziva has just entered the room. Tony's always had a special tone of voice he uses for these morning tête-à-têtes with Ziva, ever since she first started working there. McGee notices these things; he's an investigator and writer, and both have trained him to notice details. And one he's noticed for a long time is the bright, falsely cheerful tone Tony uses when he starts needling Ziva in the morning, whether about tardiness or trips to Israel or her latest boyfriend. The tone has gained and lost various shadings over the years—at first it was slightly suspicious, then it became friendlier and less persistent when he was with Jeanne, and for some time now it's been tinged with jealousy—but it's always there; McGee can count on it just as much as he can count on the fact that Gibbs will enter the room just as Tony says something embarrassing. Most mornings McGee tunes them out, but today it gets under his skin in a way he can't quite put his finger on.

"I've had a full morning," Ziva says simply. Most of the time she'd flirt ever so slightly with Tony, giving that answer in a way that dared him to ask her why her morning was so full, but today she doesn't. Her answer is straightforward, keeping the conversation professional.

Tony doesn't notice, of course. "Busy morning, is it? I didn't know your gentleman friend was in town."

McGee fights the urge to snort derisively, though Tony and Ziva are so focused on each other that he doubts they'd notice. Tony is in many ways still caught in the sixth grade: Ziva is cute but he doesn't know how to tell her that so he pulls her pigtails instead. This regular Ray interrogation, which has become routine for them, reminds McGee of a line from Pride and Prejudice, which he's not ashamed to say he's read: "Miss Bingley was left to all the satisfaction of having forced him to say what gave no one any pain but herself." It's clear that Ziva having a boyfriend bothers Tony but he can't seem to keep himself from talking about it.

McGee's not surprised that he's tired of listening to it every day, but he is surprised when he looks up and sees that Ziva is tired of it as well. She's leaning against her desk, looking deeply annoyed, and Tony's too busy pulling her metaphorical pigtails to notice.

"He's not in town," she says shortly.

"Ah," says Tony. "New gentleman friend? Fling on the side? Prostitute?"

"You are ridiculous," she says, firmly but not unkindly, but McGee can see in her face that she's bothered by the conversation more than she usually is, like something is wrong that they don't know about yet.

"You know, you still haven't let us see what he looks like," Tony persists.

"Why do you need to know?"

"He's ugly, isn't he? I knew it, he's hideous. He's John Hurt in The Elephant Man, isn't he? No, wait, I know what it is. You made him up, didn't you? He doesn't exist at all."

And maybe it's that he's sick of listening to this childish exchange, and maybe it's that he's feeling short-tempered, and maybe it's that the beleaguered look on Ziva's face suddenly makes him feel protective, but McGee snaps. "Would you lay off her, Tony? It's none of your business."

It's nothing he hasn't said before but it comes off harsher than is normal for the mild-mannered agent; Tony turns to look at him in surprise, and in that moment Ziva slips away and escapes.

In the next few minutes, Gibbs arrives, sends Tony down to talk to Ducky, and goes to see Abby himself, so that by the time Ziva comes back she and McGee are the only two left. She looks fine and he doesn't want to be pushy, but he can't help but remember that moment before he intervened, when just for a moment she looked genuinely upset.

So after a moment's hesitation he asks, "You okay?"

"Of course, I'm fine," she says, and he knows better than to press the matter.

"All right," he says, and turns back to his computer. And maybe it's because of the weariness on her face, but he isn't surprised when she gives in and talks to him.

"It's Ray," she says, wandering over to his side. She leans against Tony's desk and picks up a paperweight there, examining it nonchalantly. McGee knows this move; she's using it to buy time and to defuse the situation, to pretend that she's not as invested in the conversation as she actually is.

"Ray?" he repeats when she doesn't continue.

"Yes. Ray is . . . he is a wonderful man. I am very happy with him. But the truth is that having a long-distance relationship . . ." She tears her attention away from the paperweight and looks directly at him. "It is difficult."

"So I've heard," McGee says neutrally. He's found over the years that often the best way to talk to Ziva is just to stand back and let her choose the pace.

"I was late this morning because I was on the phone with him. He also finds the long-distance relationship difficult. He thinks we should be in the same city."

He has a sudden vivid vision of the office without her, with her desk standing vacant, and the idea is a tragedy—which is funny because only a few months before they'd talked about the possibility of the team splitting up, and it didn't bother him this much then.

"And what do you think?"

"It is a good idea, in theory. The trouble is deciding who moves. That's what we were discussing this morning: who would give up their home and move. And I thought—he has a job he can do anywhere, and his family is close by in Boston. I have only just reestablished myself here at NCIS, and this is where—it's the nearest thing I have to family." She glances at him when she says that, and the thought that she might include him as family makes him smile. "So I thought it made sense that he be the one to move, but he does not see it that way. He insists that I be the one to move to him. He acts as though it is the obvious choice." She looks straight at him, plaintive. "Am I being unreasonable?"

"No, you're not being unreasonable," he says steadily. He believes this thoroughly and he's annoyed at Ray for her sake, but in the back of his mind he knows his motive in telling her that is selfish, too; this team is so much of his life right now and it's not the same without her, as they learned when they lost her one terrible summer.

She nods mutely and pushes herself off Tony's desk, preparing to return to her own seat, and the somber, pensive expression on her face makes him speak again. "And Ziva," he says, uncertainly but honestly, "you're family to us, too."

She smiles at him and the day is that much brighter.

. . . . . .

The second time it happens they're at a jewelry store, keeping an eye on a suspect they can't arrest yet because they don't have the warrant. McGee makes brief eye contact with Gibbs, who's standing outside drinking coffee and talking on a cell phone, and their gray-haired boss gives him a nearly imperceptible shake of his head: no warrant yet. So he keeps browsing the cases, aware of his colleagues perusing the jewelry in other parts of the store.

A voice breaks him from his reverie and he looks up to see the suspect, who owns the place, grilling him politely about what he's looking for and why he's there; apparently the man has become annoyed—or suspicious—about the three agents wandering his store aimlessly. McGee's not really sure what to say, as he doesn't know a thing about jewelry, but before he can embarrass himself there's a voice to his right. "I like the princess cut, don't you, dear?"

Breathing a sigh of relief, he turns toward Ziva. She takes advantage of the distance he's created between himself and the display case to slip smoothly in front of him with her back against his chest, and just as smoothly his arms go around her, so natural that you could believe that she'd been in his embrace a hundred times before. "I think the princess cut's great," he says, looking over her shoulder at the display case of engagement rings in front of them, wondering inwardly what on earth a princess cut is. "Which style were you saying you wanted?"

And now the suspect is properly distracted, discussing settings and sizes with Ziva; McGee's hands slide down her arms and settle on her waist and she leans back against him, fitting perfectly into his personal space, and just for a moment he's not thinking about the case because he's thinking about the fact that right now, if she turned and looked up and he looked down, they'd be in a perfect position for him to kiss her.

Then the door chimes as Gibbs walks in, warrant attained; the moment is over and McGee releases Ziva and draws his gun, momentarily disturbed by the knowledge that for that one, brief moment, the way he'd held her had definitely not been about maintaining their cover. But then he remembers that sometimes being in close physical proximity with someone can mess with you, can make you start thinking about them in a way you wouldn't otherwise, and he tells himself that it was a human and perfectly understandable reaction, one that doesn't mean anything and won't happen again.

He's still wrong.

. . . . . .

"The Sixth Man, David Baldacci," says the perky bookstore employee, plucking the novel off the display of new fiction and handing it to McGee. "Is this the one you were after?"

"Looks like it," he responds.

The girl doesn't leave just yet, looking coyly up at him. "I've never read anything of his, is he good?"

McGee shrugs. "I like him. If you're into this kind of thing."

"I don't know if I am," she says, twisting a strand of her long red hair between her fingers. "I've never read any of these . . . crime . . . mystery . . . thriller . . ."

"This one's more of a political thriller," he supplies helpfully, though he's distracted by that little movement of her hand. Is she flirting with him?

"Maybe I should read one some time. Know any good ones?"

And he feels like an idiot that he's even considering doing this, but who'll ever know? "There's this one author, Thom E. Gemcity; he writes crime novels. He's—"

But he doesn't get to finish telling the cute bookstore employee why she should read his books because there's a soft chuckle from behind him. He turns and it's Ziva there, in that blue coat she often wears, and he finds himself grinning. "Ziva, what are you doing here?"

"Buying a book," she says, and her dark eyes flit briefly to the bookstore employee who's still standing there expectantly.

The redhead, realizing she's lost McGee's attention to another woman, heaves a sigh. "Well, enjoy your book. Thanks for coming in." With one last look at McGee she wanders back to her desk.

"Sorry to interrupt you," Ziva says. "You could still go get her number."

"Oh, no, that's all right," he says. "I was looking for a book, not for a girl."

Her lips smile but her eyes don't; despite her laugh just moments ago, clearly something is on her mind, and he wonders what to do next. As he thinks, his gaze falls to the book in her hand. "Balzac?" he says, surprised, and glances down at the pulp fiction in his hand. "I think your reading habits are a little more impressive than mine."

"I knew someone in Israel who loved Balzac," she says, and now her smile is even less convincing. "I . . . wanted to remember her." And then he can see her pull herself back together and smile down at his book. "But I'm sure David Baldacci is very nice, too."

"Just released," he says, gesturing with the book. "I like to keep tabs on my competition."

"Ah, he also writes thrillers, then. Maybe once that girl you were talking to is done reading Thom Gemcity, she can read this book as well."

He grimaces. "I know, that was . . ." He shakes his head. "That looked arrogant. But I really do think they're a good introduction to the genre—"

"Don't apologize," she says with a lopsided grin. "It made me laugh. I needed a laugh."

He'd been planning on leaving it alone and not prying, but after a comment like that he can't help it. "Ziva, are you okay?"

She leans back from him a bit, as though trying to extricate herself from the conversation. "Of course," she says.

He doesn't believe her; who would? But in her face he can almost see her defenses going up, so he changes tactics and asks, "What are you doing right now?" It's late on a Saturday afternoon and in the usual way of things he'd assume she had plans for her Saturday night, but with Ray living out of town he figures she might be free.

He's right. "I was going to go home and read," she shrugs.

"Do you want to get coffee?" he asks. "There's this great little shop around the corner—you know, gourmet coffee and fancy cupcakes and trendy modern furniture. It's my sister's favorite; we go there every time we get together. It's called the Cupcake."

And this time her grin looks convincing. "You let your sister drag you to a place called the Cupcake?" she asks. But it's not mocking or disparaging, the way it would be if Tony had asked, so he smiles back, and she tilts her head toward the cash register, and they both go to pay for their books.

A half-hour later they're ensconced in a nook by an upper-story window, seated in plush wingback chairs and finishing off peppermint and white chocolate mochas. She was stiff at first but then she relaxed, and they've been chatting very comfortably about her apartment and his sister and what's the most interesting place they've ever visited.

"This place is very . . . cute?" Ziva says, looking at the white leaf pattern painted on the blue wall. "Can you say a place is cute?"

"Yeah, I think that's something you can say," McGee says, leaning back in the rose-colored chair. "And yeah, it's cute. Which is why you can really only come here if you are a girl or if you're with a girl."

"You bring girls here often?"

"Uh . . . no," he admits. "Just my sister."

She laughs but then in the silence that follows a darker look crosses her face, and she looks down at the cup in her hands. "I was on the phone with Ray this morning," she says after a moment, unexpectedly, "and I told him I didn't want to move."

He blinks, taking a moment to process this change in topic. "What did he say?" he asks, wondering how and when he became Ziva's confidante. But then he thinks, of course, who else does she have?

Her eyes are still determinedly fixed on the rim of her glass, as though the bits of crushed peppermint still clinging to the sides are the most interesting thing in the world. "We fought," she admits, her voice quiet and carefully calm. "He said that if I loved him, I'd move. I said that if he loved me, he'd stop pushing and work on making it work long-distance."

"And then?" McGee prods gently when she doesn't continue.

She takes a deep breath. "We decided it's best if we take a break. See how we feel in a month or two."

"And how do you feel about it?"

"I am angry at him for trying to make me make that choice," she says, then pauses. "And I miss him already. It is very complicated."

He doesn't know what to say to this; he's not the best person to talk to when it come to relationships. Fortunately she doesn't wait for a response. "I want another one of these," she says, gesturing at him with her cup. "I'm going downstairs to the counter. Do you want anything?"

He shakes his head and she leaves the room, and by the time she reappears with her drink, this time in a to-go cup, she's gotten hold of herself again and her face is calm. "Do you want to go see a movie?" she asks without preamble.

It's the second time in the last few minutes that she's surprised him. "Uh, what movie?"

"Water for Elephants," she says. "I wanted to go see it with Ray next weekend, but that is obviously not happening, and I don't want to spend tonight feeling sorry for myself."

"Oh, that's based on that book, right? I read it last summer. It was great."

She smiles, for real this time. "So our reading preferences do coincide sometimes."

Well, it's better than spending yet another Saturday night alone, he decides, and it really was a good book. "Sure, let's go see it."

And he smiles, and she smiles, and he picks up his jacket, and she picks up her jacket, and they leave the cafe together.

. . . . . .

The third time it happens they're at a supermarket. Gibbs has sent them in search of security videos that may or may not show the suspect purchasing grape juice she later poisoned, so McGee and Ziva are stuck waiting at the store while the shift supervisor attempts to get hold of the store manager, who is the only one with a key to the security camera room. After what seems like an interminable wait, McGee gets the call that the manager is pulling up to the back door, so he and Ziva make their way to the back of the store, weaving through the aisles and displays.

As they walk into the breakfast cereal aisle, a new song comes on the radio that's playing over the sound system and Ziva stops and grabs his arm. "This is it!" she says, pointing upwards as though she can see the warm guitar sounds, the earthy singing coming from above them. "The song I was talking about, the one I keep hearing and I can't figure out the name of."

"Oh," he says, remembering her mentioning that at the Cupcake a few days earlier. "Well, let's Google the lyrics, then." He pulls out his phone and starts typing. "There's actually an app for this—"

But she doesn't seem to be listening. She's still standing motionless in the center of the aisle, her hand still on his arm, a smile on her lips, her focus still on the song floating above her head. He gets the feeling that if it were anyone but her, and if they were not working, she'd be dancing. Or at least singing along.

And he realizes he's never seen this side of her, never even suspected it, that she could so moved by a song, and it makes him laugh. And he realizes he likes this side of her. And then he realizes that he's still staring at her lips, and that her hand is still on his arm, and that with her guard down, it would be incredibly easy to lean in and kiss her. And the music—she's right, it's really good—is sweeping him along, and for the briefest of moments he actually considers giving in.

But then the breakfast cereal intrudes on his consciousness, and he remembers where they are, and he laughs again and starts down the aisle, fingers flying over his phone as he Googles the lyrics for her, and she hurries after him, and the moment is over. And he reminds himself that it's just because they've gotten closer in the past few weeks, he and Ziva, and it seems only natural that if you spend more time with someone you have more chances for strange thoughts like that to pop into your head, but it doesn't necessarily mean anything. Besides, she's his friend and he doesn't want to jeopardize that. But somewhere in the back of his mind, he can't help but notice that this is the third time in as many weeks that he's been tempted to kiss Ziva David, a number that makes it harder for him to convince himself that such a crazy thought will never happen again.

. . . . . .

"All right, these cucumbers are washed," McGee says, drying his hands on the hand towel that hangs from Ziva's oven door. "Should I chop them up or something?"

"I will do that," Ziva says, sweeping past him to the cutting board where the dripping cucumbers lie. "There is a special art to chopping cucumbers for this salad." But she's smiling to show that it's not a reflection on him, and he smiles back and moves to the fridge.

"You weren't kidding when you said you had a lot of radishes," he says as he eyes the middle shelf. "Where did they come from?"

"My neighbor downstairs grows them on her balcony—it is amazing how many she can produce in such little space—and she has been forcing them on the whole building for days. I finally gave in and took a pile."

"Clearly," McGee says, pulling a handful out and moving to the sink.

"Actually, it is the radishes that inspired this dinner," she says, her knife moving like a blur across the cutting board. "They reminded me of a very popular salad in Israel. Everyone makes it with tomatoes and cucumbers, but my mother always added radishes. It is one of the first things I learned to cook."

She never, ever talks about her mother and McGee's afraid that if he brings attention to the fact that she did, she'll clam up again. So he simply says, "I'm flattered I get your signature dish, then."

She laughs, sliding a pile of tiny, neatly cut cucumber pieces into a waiting bowl. "Actually, I almost never make this."

"Not enough radishes?"

"No, because it is . . . what is the word . . . home cooking?" Her smile suddenly becomes rueful. "Ray and I would cook for each other frequently, but I never made him this. When someone is making you pan-seared duck breast with a raspberry gastrique, you can't respond with salat yerakot."

"So I get salad yera . . . I get this salad because I'm a bad cook?"

"No," she laughs. "Because you won't judge. Because you are . . . comfortable."

She's turning away to get the tomatoes so she doesn't see the thoughtful look on his face. "Comfortable" is not the most flattering thing he has ever been called, but it fits, in a way. His friendship with Ziva right now is, in a word, comfortable. The Tuesday after they'd gone to Water for Elephants together, he'd invited her, spur of the moment, to grab dinner at a new Greek restaurant in Silver Springs. That Friday she'd invited him out for drinks. Saturday afternoon they went back to the Cupcake, and slowly, over the following weeks, their relationship changed. They've always been good friends at work, but they've become good friends in the real world, the kind of friends who see each other when it isn't strictly required for the job, the kind of friends who have little inside jokes and watchwords that they'll occasionally slip into conversations at crime scenes while the other tries not to laugh, the kind of friends who meet so often at the Cupcake that it has become their place. She drags him to movies she wants to see, concerts she wants to hear, and he pretends to grumble but he goes along willingly because he's glad to have a friend who seems to be glad to have him, and even if they've only been forced together by necessity—no one else keeps the odd hours that they do—a friend is a valuable thing to have.

"Could you set the table?" Ziva asks, but he can't find the plates and she has to get them for him. This is the first time since they embarked on this new friendship that either has been to the other's place, and the writer in him wants to feel like it's a drastic change, an omen, a sign of something important, but the fact is that his being there is . . . comfortable. Like he should be there, like it's the obvious next step.

He sets the table and she pulls the chicken out of the oven and they sit down to eat, talking and laughing over their food. She's different when she's not at work, he's decided. At work she's trying to be serious and efficient for Vance, to prove he made the right choice in hiring her, and she's trying to be productive and thorough for Gibbs, to prove he should keep her on his team, and for Tony—well, who knows what she's trying to be for Tony? That is a puzzle he has not yet figured out, because while it's clear she still misses Ray, and while she seems often to be annoyed by DiNozzo and sometimes to genuinely resent him, it seems to him from the tension between those two, the constant flirting and the double-edged words, that she's trying to be something for Tony.

Away from work she's not like that at all. She's relaxed, funny, generous, smart. He's read a lot of books but she's read all the important ones, the ones that everyone talks about but no one really reads, and they talk about literature for hours. Away from the pressures of proving herself she's much kinder, more forgiving, than he ever knew her to be. And she's never the mocking flirt that she is at work. He's grown used to her this way, this away-from-work way, and now it almost bothers him to walk into the squad room every morning and see her slip back into her old tough-as-nails, teasing persona, because he knows she's so much more than a pretty face and killer instincts and he knows Tony doesn't see it, and he doesn't understand why Tony doesn't do something about the fact that this extraordinary woman seems, in some way, to care for him.

"McGee," Ziva says some time later, as they're standing at the sink washing dishes, "thank you."

"I should be thanking you," he says. "That was delicious."

"No, I mean thank you . . . for being a friend. I did not realize until you and I . . . started hanging up—" here he resists the urge to correct her— "how much I needed someone."

"Likewise," he says with a lopsided grin, and because it's strangely easy to be honest with her, he adds, "Our job doesn't exactly make it easy to socialize, since we work all the time."

She looks at him, a thoughtful expression in her eyes. "May I ask you something? What is the story with you and Abby?"

"Story?" he stalls, taking longer than necessary to dry the plate in his hands.

"Yes. You dated once, did you not?"

"For a little while," he shrugs. She's still looking at him expectantly, so he sighs and continues, "I wanted a relationship. She wanted a fling."

She considers this. "Do you . . . still regret how things turned out?"

It's an interesting question, one he's thought about a lot recently. "I did, for a long time. We were still really good friends after we broke up and I spent—oh, years, I guess, hoping she'd change her mind and one day she'd turn around and realize I'd been the one for her all along."

There's a self-deprecating smile on her face, as though she knows the feeling of waiting for love that isn't coming. "And now?"

"I guess for the last year or two I've realized we wouldn't work. We . . . she's a great girl but we want such different things."

"Such as?"

"You know Abs. She's married to her work. She's married to her independence. There's no room in there for a guy." It's the first time he's vocalized these thoughts and as he speaks them, he's surprised at how true they ring.

"And you?"

"I guess I want . . . I want someone who wants to have someone," he says, his eyes on the silverware he's drying. "I want someone who's in it for the long haul, where it's not just someone to jump in bed with every now and then but it's . . . breakfast on the weekends, and grocery shopping, and watching TV until you both fall asleep . . ."

"Marriage?" she asks. "House? Children?"

"Yeah, someday." He pauses. "I guess that seems sappy—"

"No," she says, and she gives him a smile that makes his head feel strangely light. "I feel the same way."

. . . . . .

The fourth time it happens they are standing in her kitchen, where she has just made him her mother's special salad, a gesture which rather moves him. And now they are standing side by side in front of the sink, washing dishes, and it's so natural and comfortable and homey that you could almost believe that they're any couple, washing their dishes in their sink in their kitchen in their apartment, just a typical Saturday night in a happy home.

And the topic of marriage comes up, and they admit they both want to be married, and they're standing there doing dishes as though they already are, and that's when it occurs to him that they're so close together that it would be incredibly easy to lean over and kiss her, completing their tableau of domestic bliss. And this time the thought doesn't surprise or confuse or scare him, not at first; this time it seems natural—it seems right. When he realizes what he's thinking he reels his mind back in and waits for his logical half to tell him that his sudden need to touch her can be easily explained away.

After all, this is Ziva, Ziva David, and he can't count the number of ways that feeling like that about her would cause problems. Not to mention that before these last few weeks it'd never even occurred to him to think of her that way; it's always been her and Tony, for as long as she's worked there, even when Jeanne and Michael were in the way. And he—well, he has Abby, as much as you can have someone who cares deeply for you as a friend and would do anything to keep you from remembering that the two of you were once more than that.

But this time his logic fails him. This time his usual self-deprecating practicality is silent and all he can think is how good she smells, how soft her hair looks, how easily she makes him laugh, how happy he is just to be near her. And that's when he realizes that he might be in over his head.

He doesn't react, doesn't do anything to let on that something is wrong as she hands him another bowl to dry. But in his heart he knows that he just crossed a line that will be difficult to come back from.

. . . . . .

"What's wrong with you?" Tony says as he and McGee step off the elevator. For a moment McGee thinks he's talking to him, but then he sees that Tony's gaze is on Ziva, sitting at her desk with a somber expression on her face. Ziva, of course, sits up straighter and starts typing away at her computer, but this is Tony and he's not going to drop the subject.

"Come on, I see you over there looking miserable," he says. "Give me all the details."

McGee grimaces as he sees Ziva stiffen. He hasn't talked to her about how things stand with Ray, but he knows that they haven't patched things up and he knows that their set month-or-two trial breakup is nearing the end of its prescribed duration; he's been worried for some time now that he would come into work or meet her for dinner only to find her in tears—well, grieving, anyway. Ziva's not a big cryer.

"I do not want to talk to you right now, Tony," she says stiltedly, and McGee sees genuine concern flit across Tony's face as though he finally understands that she might be seriously upset.

"Uh, anything we can do?" Tony asks, and Ziva's face softens just a little. But then he ruins it. "Is it your boyfriend? Trouble in paradise? Because I could have told you long-distance relationships never work."

She glares at him and gets up from her desk, storming toward the elevator. McGee's first instinct is to go after her but he hesitates, feeling that despite everything, that right still belongs to Tony.

But Tony does nothing; he simply stares confusedly and a little helplessly at Ziva's retreating back, then sits down at his desk. McGee almost feels bad for him and maybe if there were more time he'd tell him to man up and go after her, but right now he wants to catch her before the elevator leaves and she leaves the building, catch her before she falls into the sorrow that was hovering all around her just now. So he leaves Tony behind and jogs toward the elevator, managing to slip in just before the doors close.

She looks up at him slowly and he wonders if she wishes he were Tony coming after her, but apparently he's an acceptable second choice because she hits the emergency stop on the elevator before he can even start reaching for it. The elevator comes to a standstill and they stand for a moment in the dim light.

"Ray?" he finally asks.

She nods mutely, lips tightly pursed. There's a moment's pause, then she says, "I knew it was coming, but somehow I did not expect it to feel like this." And she's not crying and he's fairly sure she won't—she's been through too much to cry over a man—but it's clear she's upset, and his heart hurts for her and he lets his instincts for sympathy take over.

"Ziva," he says, turning toward her, but he doesn't get to finish his sentence because as though her name was an invitation, she has stepped to where he stands and hidden her face against his chest, and his arms come up around her without waiting for him to tell them to. He can feel her trembling ever so slightly in his arms, can feel her mute grief that she refuses to let come out in a big emotional show. He feels guilty for enjoying the feeling of her against his chest, since this moment of closeness is directly related to her heartbreak, so he puts the thought from his mind and focuses on rubbing her back and pressing his lips to her hair and murmuring the quiet, meaningless things his mother used to coo to him when he was sad. But that doesn't change the fact that he enjoys having her in his arms.

He hasn't said a word to anyone about his sudden realization the week before that his feelings for her might be more than platonic. Mostly he's just hoping that if he ignores those feelings they'll go away. Thus far it hasn't worked, and it certainly doesn't help that he sees her every day at work and has spent three evenings with her over the last nine days. But he's afraid she'll notice if he starts pulling away, and then she'll know something's wrong, and the possibility of her guessing what's on his mind terrifies him. So he subjects himself to the pain and the pleasure of continued friendship with her.

After what could have been seconds or years she pulls away, laughing softly and self-deprecatingly, and his hands disobey him once again by reaching up to run his thumb along her jaw. "Do you need anything?"

He might be imagining things but he could swear she leans into his touch. "I'll be all right," she says simply, and he knows she's right, because this is not a woman who lets her emotions get the better of her. "Gibbs saw me just before you two did and sent me on an errand to Bethesda; I don't know if he realized something was wrong or it's just stupid luck, but I am going to take advantage of the chance to get away for a little while."

"Dumb luck," he corrects, and his rebellious lips press against her forehead even as he reaches out and restarts the elevator.

When it reaches the parking garage and the doors slide open, she turns to him. "Thank you . . . Timothy," she says, and it's such a rare occasion when she uses his first name that he has a moment's useless wish that she were saying it when her thoughts weren't so completely occupied by another man. "We are still on for the ballet tomorrow night, I hope?"

"Of course," he says, warmed by the thought that she's thinking of him.

The moment is short-lived. "And tell Tony—" she says, and then she shakes her head. "I never know what to tell Tony," she finishes, and walks away.

"I've noticed," he says to the empty air in the elevator, and the doors close.

Back in the squad room he sees Tony sitting at his desk, and with Ziva's last words ringing in his ears, he feels he has to say something to his partner.

"Why didn't you go after her?" he demands, the words coming out before he can think about them.

Tony looks up, surprised, then back down at the paperwork he's working on. "Ziva? Why would I go after her?"

"Because she was your partner for four years," McGee says, and part of him can't believe that he's encouraging his rival—if, course, he had any intention of pursuing Ziva, which, of course, he doesn't. "Because she's your friend. Because she wanted to talk to you."

Tony's head snaps up. "She said that?"

"Well . . . no. But I'm pretty sure. I could tell."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because . . ." McGee tries to stifle the sigh that bubbles up. "Because I want her to be happy. She's my co-worker and my friend and I want her to be happy."

"And you think I'm the path to happiness?"

"Well, aren't you?" McGee demands, and Tony leans back a little, unused to the younger agent being this forceful. "You've been flirting with her since she came here six years ago. You get wildly jealous whenever she dates someone else. And don't try to tell me you don't," he says forcefully as Tony opens his mouth to interrupt. "Why don't you do something about it? Why, in the last six years, have you never done anything about it?"

Tony hesitates, then gives in. "Me and Ziva—it's complicated," he says, serious for once. "She's a great woman, really. But she's . . . intimidating. And yes, partly because she's a trained killer and she could kill me with her thumb. But also I mean that she's intense and passionate, and if anything started between us it would get intense and passionate really fast, and I don't know if I'm ready for that. I mean, the commitment . . . the potential for catastrophic disaster . . . she's kind of terrifying sometimes . . ." He shudders. "I'm not sure that I think it's a good idea to pursue her. So I'm not going to seek it out or push things. If it's supposed to happen, it will."

And McGee realizes, staring at his partner, that the man sitting in front of him doesn't know Ziva David at all. Oh, he knows the parts that she lets him see, the parts that he needs to know for work, but he doesn't know the Ziva David who reads Balzac and loves Vermeer and who may have had a checkered past but these days would never use physical violence, not real physical violence, against someone who isn't an actual threat to the physical well-being others. And he doesn't know that commitment to such a woman is not something to be dreaded, but to be sought out and welcomed.

So he shakes his head at Tony and goes to his desk and sits down, and suddenly he smiles as he realizes he may have less competition than he thought.

. . . . . .

The fifth time it happens (and we're talking specifically about the big ones now, when he has to clench his hands to keep from reaching out for her, because if we were just talking about times he wants to kiss her—well, that happens all the time) they've just left the ballet. The ballet she chose to go see is Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty and truth be told, he doesn't really like ballet, but this one's all right, partly because it's the same music they use in the Disney cartoon, so at least that's familiar, but mostly because she's there next to him.

He hasn't seen her since the elevator yesterday; he left for home before she returned and today is Saturday. He wondered all day if he should go talk to her, but when she meets him at the theater she seems all right: subdued, definitely, and she pointedly ignores his gentle questions about how she's doing, but at least she's not sobbing, which is something he always feels a little awkward around.

And in the end the ballet's not so bad; something about the color and the movement is soothing, and as they leave the theater he feels rather happy and relaxed. It seems to have had the same effect on her because in the light of a streetlight outside he can see her face is glowing, warm, wide open like a book.

"That was lovely," she says. "That music thrills me every time. Thank you for coming."

"Anything for you," he says without thinking, and she smiles and slips her arm through his as they walk down the street. And when they reach the corner where they have to part ways, she looks up at him and smiles, that same openness all across her face, and he looks down and smiles back, and every muscle is aching to kiss her, but he can't do that right now, not when the wound of Ray is still so raw—he'd practically be taking advantage of her emotional state, and anyway he'd hate to be a rebound, to think she'd only be with him because she was lonely—so he contents himself with looking at her for now.

And they stand like that for a long moment, and this time she's the one who looks sharply away, suddenly shy. And then she's gone, leaving the spot where her arm had rested suddenly very cold.

. . . . . .

"You know," he says as they stand at a street corner, waiting for the light to turn, "this feels a lot longer on foot than it does in a car."

She laughs. "Things usually do. Think of this as . . . invigorating. And it is a good way to exercise after that brownie."

He can't argue with that. Instead he looks up at the late afternoon light, dimmer than usual from the steel-gray clouds that fill the sky. "I just hope we make it before the storm hits."

"You didn't have to walk me home," she says, but she's smiling, not annoyed.

"I'm here to protect you," he says seriously, and she gives him a curious look. "If someone tried to mug you and you killed them, the police would have to get involved, and there'd be an inquiry at work—"

He breaks off as she pushes him good-naturedly with her shoulder, knocking him off-balance, and he chuckles and rights himself. "Anyway I'm kind of glad you wanted to walk. I never walk around town. It's like seeing it from a whole new angle."

"You run," she points out as the light turns green and they start across the street. "Tony tells me that ambassador's daughter was very impressed with how you kept up with her."

He winces at the reminder of that fiasco. "She was just trying to get on my good side. And we all saw how that turned out." And as he looks at Ziva next to him in the fading light, he suddenly wants to change the subject, not because he doesn't want to think about the ambassador's daughter, but because he doesn't want Ziva to think about Tony right then. At work, she's occupied with Tony, and Gibbs, and Abby, and the criminals; after work is his time.

So he tells her a story about running in PE once as a kid, and she laughs delightedly, and he relishes the sound as he tries very hard to think of something else to make her laugh. In the week after she broke up with Ray, she didn't laugh much at all, and he missed it. But her mood has been improving since then; she feels things a lot more deeply than many of her acquaintances would believe, he's discovered, but she's still Ziva, and moping is not part of the way she works. It's been a month since things were officially over with Ray, and she seems to have left the sorrow long behind her.

Unfortunately, he can't say the same thing about his crush on her, which doesn't seem to be going anywhere. For weeks now he's been carrying this secret around with him, guarding it jealously, because if anyone finds out it's going to give him endless grief: Gibbs will quote rules at him, and Abby will pretend she's not hurt (even though she'll still refuse to pursue him herself) and Tony will rib him endlessly, but rather less good-naturedly than normal, and Ziva—

Well, he has no idea what Ziva would do if she knew he thinks about her constantly. That she considers him a dear friend he knows for certain; she introduced him as such to Mrs. Winston, the woman who grows radishes on her balcony. And sometimes, when he's feeling brave, he dares to think that it seems that they've grown even closer than that; they laugh, they walk arm-in-arm, they talk about everything. He wants badly to believe that means something. And he wishes desperately he weren't so bad at reading women.

"Do you walk this way a lot?" he asks.

"Occasionally, when I don't have my car."

"Don't have it? Where is it?"

"I lent it to Tony," she says. "Normally I would not trust him but he seemed quite desperate. His is in the shop and he has a date tonight."

She says this matter-of-factly, with no trace of bitterness in her voice, and he is perplexed. Apparently this shows on his face because she looks at him curiously. "What?"

"Nothing," he lies, and he must be a worse liar than he thinks because she gives him a thoroughly skeptical look. "Well, it's just that . . . normally you seem—you don't seem to like it when Tony dates other women." Well, he didn't mean to bring Tony up, but here it is, the conversation he's been hoping for and dreading for weeks.

"Oh, Tony," Ziva laughs, and she hesitates a moment, as though trying to decide how to phrase her next words. "Tony is . . . I was crazy about Tony for years. Every single man I dated was just there to make him jealous." She pauses as he finds himself exhaling slowly, his shoulders slumping. "Although I actually fell for Michael," she says in a more subdued tone. "You know what happened there. And when Tony came to Somalia—when you both came Somalia—" and she gives him one of her warm smiles— "I felt that between that and how upset he'd been when I dated Michael, that surely now he would . . . do something. And when he did not, I realized something I should have realized a long time before that."

"That Tony's bad with long-term relationships?"

She shakes her head, smiling. "That nothing was going to happen. We had already wasted so much time, and—what was it you said about Abby? 'We wanted different things.' We had grown apart."

This conversation is making his heart pound, and he works hard to keep his face neutral. Fortunately she doesn't look at him. "To my surprise," she continues, "this realization did not upset me very much. I think I had actually known it for years. He'll always be important to me, but not in that way. Not anymore. I'm looking for something else."

He's got to say something, he knows he's got to say something. His heart is in his throat and he feels that if he could find the perfect words, right now, to say what he's been feeling, then she'd know that what she's been looking for is him, but his writing skills fail him and no words come. And then she says, "Ray really helped me feel like I got over Tony for good."

Well, that was a mood-killer; her ex is the last thing in the world he wants to talk about right now. The moment has passed, so instead of pouring out his soul to her he asks, "But you flirt with him all the time."

She wrinkles her nose. "Do I? I don't mean to, not really. But it's . . . I suppose it's as though I have to prove to him that I'm doing well without him, that I'm happy. And maybe on some subconscious level I want—not to make him jealous, exactly, but I want to make him understand what he missed." She pauses. "That sounds so petty now that I think about it."

"No, I know the feeling," he reassures her, and finds himself smiling a little. That conversation didn't go as well as it could have but it did go better than he'd expected. And he contents himself with the thought that no matter what happens, he's happy now, in this moment at the brink of twilight with this woman he cares so much about walking by his side, and he tells himself that the right time will come when he'll tell her everything.

They're nearly to her block now. "It does look like rain," she said. "I was going to run tonight but it seems that would be unwise."

"So what are you going to do instead?"

"I'm not sure." She paused, then: "Oh, but I just remembered! I took your advice and rented Tron."

"The original?" he asks, delighted and incredulous. "I didn't actually expect you to watch it; it's not really your usual kind of thing."

"You said it was an important landmark in computer graphics," she reminded him with mock seriousness. "And I wanted to see how it compared to the new one."

"So you're going to watch it tonight?"

And she's giving him one of those smiles that makes him light-headed. "We could watch it right now, if you've got time."

Even if he didn't, he'd make time. So he agrees and leads the way into her apartment building, and he wonders if he dares try to hold her hand while they watch the movie, and just as he's kicking himself for having such a juvenile thought, he rounds the corner to her hallway and sees something that drives all other thought from his mind.

There's a man standing outside her door, dark-haired and handsome and well-dressed. He exudes an air of confidence, like it's perfectly natural for him to be standing outside Ziva's apartment, and before she says his name McGee knows who it is.

"Ray," Ziva says, surprised and confused, and McGee instinctively steps back a bit to give her room to approach the man. "What are you doing here?"

"Hey," the man says, and his eyes rove over her face like they've been hungry for the sight. "I know this is unexpected but I was afraid that if I called, you'd tell me not to come."

And McGee wants desperately for one of them to notice that he's still here, because he can't think of a good reason to speak up but he wants more than anything to break up this moment between the two of them. And then he changes his mind and decides that all he wants to do is get out of there before he has to personally witness the moment when he loses her after such a brief window of time when she could have been his.

"I missed you," Ray is saying as McGee quietly backs away, and he's down the hallway and out of earshot before she responds. It's better this way, he decides as he strides quickly out of the building, as though maybe by walking quickly he can get away from his thoughts. Better that this happened before he did something foolish like telling her how he felt. At least now they can still work together, because she won't know what he almost did, what he let himself want.

He's barely two steps out of her building's front door when the rain that's been threatening all day finally starts, gently at first, making dark splotches on the sidewalk and on his jacket. The clichéd symbolism of that isn't lost on him, and the writer in him quickly spins a line about it in his head—The rain poured down around him like tears, reflecting the sorrow in his heart—and he's glad that at least one part of him is still functional and joking. The rest of him is quite still, and he's not sure if he's taking it very well or if it just hasn't sunk in yet.

He's made it all the way to the corner and is trying to decide if it'll be more of a hassle to find a cab or a bus stop when he hears his name coming faintly through the dimness behind him.

"McGee! McGee! Timothy!" It's Ziva, jogging up to the corner where he stands. "Where are you going?"

"Home," he says automatically and dumbly, because most of his mind is taken up with surprise at seeing her here. She gives him a quizzical look and he forces his brain to function. "I thought you'd want some privacy," he manages to add.

The corner of her mouth quirks in a smile and she opens her mouth to speak, but any sound that may have come is drowned out by a dull roar as thunder rumbles above and the drizzle suddenly deepens into a proper downpour. He looks up, momentarily distracted, and she grabs his arm and tugs him across the sidewalk to shelter under the doorway of a Chinese restaurant, the thin silk curtains in the windows letting out light from inside but blocking them from prying eyes. Apparently getting caught in the rain amuses her, because she's looking out at the worsening storm with a smile on her lips as she wipes water from her face.

He's still staring at her, though, his brow furrowed, ignoring the rain that managed to get down the collar of his jacket. "Where's Ray?" he asks, forced to raise his voice to be heard over the roar of the rain.

She looks back at him, that same smile still playing across her face. "He's gone." She steps closer to him so she can be heard without shouting, and he's probably overreacting but he could swear he can feel her warmth across the cool night. He's been close to her before but it's never felt like this, never this face-to-face and intimate and heart-pounding.

"Oh," he says.

She waits politely clearly waiting for him to say more.

"You . . . weren't happy to see him?"

"I suppose I was, for a moment," she says, shrugging delicately. "But then I realized that . . . things have changed recently. What I want has changed."

And now he's on unstable ground. If he thought he had a prayer of Ziva feeling that way about him, he'd think she'd just confessed something very important. But this is sophisticated, beautiful Ziva, and he's comfortable, geeky McGee, and such a thing seems like more than even a writer could imagine.

So instead he fumbles and tries to imagine what she could be feeling right now. She did just break up with her boyfriend for the second time, in what seems like a very final way, so he guesses that maybe she's feeling some emotional upheaval. So he ventures, "Do you need some time alone?"

And she backs away from him ever so slightly, as if surprised, and a look of self-doubt flits across her features, a look that he can barely reconcile with her usual confidence. And he's not great with women but he's not stupid either—he can add up the pieces, at least sometimes—and things are coming together.

So he reaches tentatively out, astonished at his own audacity, and takes her hand in his. "Or I could stay," he says, and everything rides on her answer.

Her hand is warm and her fingers tighten around his as the smile returns to her face. "I would like that."

. . . . . .

The sixth time it happens they're standing in the doorway of a Chinese restaurant as the rain pounds the sidewalk just outside. Night has all but fallen and the damp evening is dark, but they're bathed in the light from the restaurant and in its reddish glow he can see her face: open and vulnerable and joyful and for once in his life that look is all about him. Her left hand is warm in his right, and his fingers that touch her palm can feel the callouses there, remnants of a life she's left behind but which will probably linger with her forever, and as far as he's concerned, that roughness somehow only adds to her other perfections.

Her eyes are searching his face and he understands that the next move is his, and he hesitates—this moment feels so delicate, like it might break, and anyway he feels so out of his depth—then takes her free hand in his left. His eyes fall to their joined hands as he wonders just what he dares do, and as he looks back up he sees she's smiling broadly. Months of friendship have taught him what that smile means: she's amused at his shyness but she's telling him it's okay. And that smile makes him brave, and he returns it as he releases her warm fingers so he can cup her face in his hands and kiss her, smile against smile becoming lips against lips. He drops his hands to her waist, as he did so many weeks ago at the jewelry store, and her arms coming up around his neck to pull him closer erase his last doubt.

And some time—a lifetime—later, they step out into the rain, his arm around her shoulders and hers around his waist, and he knows work will be a mess on Monday but just at the moment he can't be bothered to care. This is the first time he's kissed Ziva David, but given the way he feels, and the way she's smiling, he's quite certain it won't be the last.

fin