Ziva David doesn't sleep.

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration. She does sleep.

But not without a gun on her bedside table.

Not without double-checking her intruder alarm to make sure it's on.

And definitely not without taking the pill her psychiatrist prescribed to chase away her nightmares, her demons, her fears.

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Tony is over. He and Ziva sit on the couch, watching a movie that just came out on DVD. Ziva is watching the movie, but she is also wondering why Tony decided to come over so late. It's now almost two in the morning, and her eyelids are beginning to droop. She cannot fall asleep until he leaves; she still needs to get her gun, and set up the alarm system. She cannot rest yet.

"How much longer is this movie?" she asks, lifting her head from his shoulder, her voice small and groggy.

For the first time in over an hour, Tony takes his eyes off the TV screen and looks at her. "I dunno. Half an hour. Why?" A teasing grin takes shape on his mouth. "Do you want me to leave?"

Yes. Well, no, but… "Of course not, Tony. I was just wondering."

"Okay." Satisfied with her answer, he returns his attention to the movie, leaning back into the couch and casually draping his arm over Ziva's shoulder. Her eyelids droop, then spring back open as she fights unconscious. I can stay awake for another half hour.

Tony's hand is now moving up and down her arm, and it feels too good. Too comforting. So comforting, in fact, that it's making her even sleepier. She wants to swat his hand away, tell him to cut it out, but then he'll want to know why. He'll know something is wrong, because he reads her like a book. So she just sits there, and she allows her eyes to drift shut, and when he rests his cheek on top of her head, Ziva stops fighting sleep. She succumbs to it.

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The next morning, Ziva is awakened by the beams of sun brightening her living room, and her first thought is, Where is my gun?

She sits up and reaches to feel for it on the coffee table, but stops when she sees who is asleep at the other end of the couch. Tony. His head is on the armrest, one hand on his stomach and one hovering just above the floor, and his legs are entwined with hers.

That's when she realizes that her gun is not around. It's in the other room, in her bedroom, waiting for her to come and guard herself with it. And the alarm system… she never turned it on.

She slept through the night without those things.

And she survived.

Ziva gently untangles herself from Tony and stands up. She looks down at his sleeping face and smiles, then goes into the kitchen to make him some breakfast.

Making her feel safe deserves a thank you.

I actually like how this turned out! Yay! I don't write in present tense too often, and when I do I often mess up and slip back into past tense, so forgive me if I messed up and did that somewhere in here.

Is anybody else doing NaNoWriMo? Or has done it in the past? Just wondering! :)

Thanks for reading. Please review! :)