I opened my eyes to see Deeks’ eyes open as well. Our bodies were still pressed together and my head had still been on his chest before I looked up. “Good morning,” I yawned.
He smiled tiredly at me. “Morning. I didn’t want to wake you so I didn’t move.”
“Sure, that’s the reason,” I teased him lightly, laying my head back down on his chest.
“They should be here soon,” he whispered into my hair.
“Then we should probably get up.”
“Probably,” he agreed. Neither of us moved.
“Deeks,” I breathed, my voice low so the microphone in the room wouldn’t pick it up.
“Yeah?”
“Is it weird that I almost wish we didn’t have to leave today?”
He laughed. “You mean is it weird that you don’t want to leave me?” he asked.
I cleared my throat awkwardly, and then decided that I didn’t care if he knew and nodded. “Yeah.”
“Is it weird that I feel the same way?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so,” I admitted, biting my lip. “But I don’t know.”
“So we’re not together, but neither of us wants to be not together.”
I grinned. “I guess so.” I looked up at him, but his eyes were so full of love and awe that I had to look away before I drowned in them.
I rolled out of his arms and stood up, aware that his shirt was all that I was wearing besides my underwear and that the shirt only went down to just below my underwear. I glanced over at Deeks to see him standing in only his boxers, staring at me. I quickly looked away and grabbed a pair of jeans and a simple, short-sleeved white V-neck.
I went into the bathroom to shower. Against my will, thoughts of Deeks in only boxers raced through my brain as I ran the soap over my toned, flat stomach. I hurriedly finished my shower, and turned off the water. I stepped, naked, out of the shower and reached for a towel. I didn’t notice Deeks until he was gawking at my nakedness. I quickly covered myself with a towel.
“Get out!” I shrieked, tossing the conditioner bottle at him.
He dodged it, grinning, and covered his eyes with one hand. “I told you I was brushing my teeth!” he objected.
“I didn’t hear you! Now get out,” I ordered him.
He took his hand off his eyes and smirked at me. “I think you secretly just wanted me to see you,” he commented nonchalantly, moving towards me.
“No, I don’t!” Well, maybe I do, I contradicted myself in my head. “You saw me naked. That is breaking all sorts of fraternizing in the bathroom rules! Now get out,” I hissed, my voice low.
“I’m your husband. It’s not like I’ve never seen you naked before, Sugar Bear,” he teased me.
I narrowed my eyes at him, reaching for another shampoo bottle. He came just a little bit closer to me, and I hurled it at his crotch, hitting him dead-on. “Out,” I barked as he bent over.
“I still have to shower,” he objected when he finally caught his breath.
“I have to get ready,” I countered.
“We’re professionals, Kens,” he murmured, soft enough that the microphones from the living room couldn’t pick it up. “I’ll take my shower, you get ready. Deal?”
I huffed out a sigh. “Deal.”
I went around him to the mirror and closed my eyes. “Okay, my eyes are closed. Now get in the shower.”
I heard the water start and opened one eye. Okay, he was in. “Warn me before you get out!” I yelled at him.
“Okay!” he called back.
I shed my towel and slipped on my bra and panties, and then brushed my teeth. I brushed my hair and got the blow-dryer from under the sink. I turned it on and started blow-drying my hair. A few minutes later, the water shut off. “I’m getting out, look away!”
I turned away, continuing to dry my hair. A second later Deeks, his lower half wrapped in a towel, came over to me. “Hi!” he shouted over the dryer, looking up and down my body.
I blushed suddenly. I’d forgotten I wasn’t wearing anything other than my black-with-purple-polka-dots bra and hot pink, lacey underwear. “Hi,” I mumbled, turning off the blow-dryer.
“I’d never have guessed you were the polka-dotted bra and hot pink underwear type,” he commented casually, his eyes wide. I stared at the droplets of water glistening on his bare skin. Desire unfurled in my belly and I turned away, running the brush through my hair again.
“Well, I’m full of surprises,” I commented dryly. “And you’ve seen enough of my body for one day so I’m going to get dressed now.”
“I’ve seen all of your body!” he yelled after me as I grabbed my clothes and went into the living room. I pulled on my shirt and then my jeans, putting in my earwig and sliding on my glasses.
“So, what exactly happened in there?” Nell asked me as soon as I put my glasses on.
“I got out of the shower, and he was in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. He saw me naked, Nell,” I whispered, turned towards the door.
She laughed loudly. “Wow, Kens. Wow.”
I rolled my eyes even though she couldn’t see me. Deeks came out of the bathroom, dressed in jeans and a green shirt, and smiled at me. “No, you don’t get to smile at me,” I snapped instantly.
“Awe, someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?” he asked, making a faux-pouting face at me.
“Yeah, it’s called the side that you were on!”
He faked a wince, patting his chest where his heart was. “I felt that one right here, Fern.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Oh!” he exclaimed suddenly. “I know what’s wrong! You’re mad that I didn’t return the favor.”
My jaw dropped open. “Did you seriously just suggest that I wanted to see you naked?!” I asked, shocked.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Lots of girls want to see me naked,” he said simply, with a shrug.
“I love your modesty,” I muttered.
“There’s the L-Word again,” he cut in before I could continue.
“Again?”
He was just about to reply when there was a pounding on our door. We exchanged a knowing glance and then I answered it. The man from yesterday barreled into me, knocking me to the ground, while Anahi and Jaqoblynn attacked Deeks. Both Deeks and I pretended to fight back, but eventually pretended to be unconscious. They tied us up and dragged us into the elevator.
I opened my eyes as we started moving upwards. Deeks looked over at me and smiled. I smiled back, and then resumed my fake unconscious state. I felt myself being dragged down a hallway and then a door opened. I was shoved inside and Deeks was shoved inside next to me. There were a few hushed voices around us, but it was mostly silent.
I tried hard not to move or make any facial expressions at all. There was a loud creaking noise and then I was picked up. I was kind of relieved to not be dragged anymore. I was set down gently on the floor, and small, shaking hands placed a gun against my bottom. Anahi. I heard her footsteps scamper away.
Keeping my eyes closed, I listened as someone said, “José, these are the agents you were asking for.”
A deep, booming voice spoke next. It was José. “Everyone leave, except for you guys.”
I heard the door reopen and close after the sound of footsteps. I opened my eyes just a little to six of José’s men standing patiently, and beside them Anahi, Jaqoblynn, and the man. José was standing in front of them. Deeks was a few feet away from me, slumped against the wall, his eyes closed. I slid my hands out from their restraints and grabbed my gun, holding onto it tightly.
I waited until Sam’s voice crackled into my ear, “The security outside has been taken out. On my count. One, two, three!”
I sprang to my feet, my eyes flying open. I quickly ducked down again as a bullet whizzed past my ear. The door opened and a team of agents infiltrated the room. What happened next was a blur. It all seemed to be in slow-motion. I took down two men, and saw Anahi fall to the ground as a bullet aimed for me hit her instead.
Just as quickly as it began, it was over. Men were being wheeled away on gurneys. Anahi was being wheeled away on a gurney. Sam had José hand-cuffed and was pushing him out the door. The whole world slowed down as my zeroed in on Anahi’s limp form. I ran to her side as she was being taken away.
“Anahi!” I cried out to her urgently. “Open you eyes, Anahi. Please, look at me.”
She didn’t move. An EMT pushed me out of the way, yelling for anyone to hear, “She has no pulse!”
I felt the tears well up in my eyes. That bullet was aimed for me. It should have hit me. Not her. I went to the back of the room, stifling sobs as I turned towards the wall, away from everyone and everything.
A hand placed lightly on my shoulder made me jump. “Kensi,” Deeks murmured, his voice full of concern.
I sniffed, wiping my nose with the back of my hand. “What, Deeks?” I demanded, my voice weak.
“She’ll be okay, you know. She’s a fighter. She’ll live through this,” he comforted me.
I wheeled around, taking him by surprise. Honestly, my anger surprised me, too. “She’s twelve years old!” I cried angrily. “She was shot, Deeks! That bullet was aimed for me and she was shot! And now she has no pulse! No pulse, Deeks. That means dead!”
Deeks took a step towards me. “This is not your fault, Kensi,” he told me slowly, his voice firm. “This will never be your fault.”
A single tear fell down my cheek and I turned my head away, shaking it slowly and biting my bottom lip. “I was supposed to be hit by that bullet. Not her.”
I pushed my way away from him and took off down the stairs. Her ambulance was long gone. Sam was waiting for me, his face full of open concern,
“Kensi!” he called to me as I walked past him. I didn’t stop, heading for my car. “Kensi!” he tried again. I ignored him.
I flung open the door and climbed inside, turning on the engine and driving as fast as I could towards the nearest hospital. They’d take her there. When I got there I didn’t even bother to park, just left pulled off to the side and sprinted into the hospital. A woman looked up, noted the blood on my shirt, and hopped up to her feet.
“Miss, do you need help? You’re bleeding.” Her elderly, concerned face was enough to make a new wave of tears spring to my eyes.
“Her- her name is Anahi. She was brought here after she… After she was shot,” I choked out, wiping my cheeks furiously as tears streamed down them. It sounded so surreal. A little girl, taking a bullet for me. Anahi, taking a bullet for me.
The woman’s face darkened. “Anahi? Blondish, brownish hair? Blue eyes and braces?”
I nodded vigorously.
“You a relative?”
I shook my head. “No, I’m an NCIS agent. But she…” My voice broke and I stopped, taking a deep breath. “Is she okay?”
“She’s dead, Agent. I’m so, so sorry. She was dead when she got here. We tried everything we could, but we couldn’t save her. She was hit twice, once just over her heart and then again in the neck. I’m so, very sorry.”
I didn’t even register her words for a second, and then broke down, sobbing. I turned and ran to the nearest room, opening the door and slamming it behind me. I slide down the door to the ground and pulled my knees up to my chest. Sobs wracked my thin frame and I sniffed over and over, but it didn’t help. There was a soft knock at the door, and a tentative voice calling, “Kensi?”
I stopped crying as quickly as I could, but with some difficulty. I stood, opening the door. “Jaqoblynn,” I greeted her. She looked up at me, her lip quivering, and then collapsed against me. I wrapped my arms her as she wrapped her arms around me. She cried into my shirt as I tried to hold in my tears, unsuccessfully.
I looked up to see Deeks looking over at me. Tears glistened in his eyes but his cheeks were dry. He was being strong. Probably for me. He tried to smile at me, but he couldn’t. I understood. I couldn’t either. Jaqoblynn eventually pulled away from me, giving me a small, toothless smile.
“She really, really liked you. She said you were what she wanted to be like someday. S-She looked up to you,” Jaqoblynn whispered, her voice turning into a sob on the last few words.
Tears streamed down my cheeks, and I nodded. “You were her best friend, her sister. She loved you more than anything, and she’ll always be with you,” I assured her, my voice cracking.
She nodded, the tears falling in a relentless stream down her face. I don’t think she even noticed. She turned away to embrace a crying, very skinny woman who was standing in the middle of the hallway. “My baby!” the woman wailed, her voice so full of anguish that I wanted to just plug in a pair of headphones and block it all out. “My baby girl is dead!”
Deeks came over to me and carefully pulled me in for a hug. “I’m so sorry, Kens. Anahi and I weren’t as close as you two were, but she was an amazing girl. She’ll be missed by everyone.”
I cried silently into his shirt, nodding. “C’mon,” he urged me, “let’s go home.”
I wanted more than anything to go home with him, to curl up on his bed and be allowed to cry and then watch movies and eat unhealthy things, but that wasn’t me. I wasn’t the girl that cried in front of people; yet here I was, crying. In front of everyone.
I nodded. “I-I’ll pick you up tomorrow for work, okay?” I suggested, pulling away and wiping my cheeks.
He tilted his head at me. “Hetty wants us to take the day off tomorrow. She said to tell you that we did an amazing job and we deserved this.”
“Okay. I-I’ll drive you home,” I told him, remembering that I was his ride. He nodded, and we headed for the doors. Halfway there, he intertwined his fingers with mine. I didn’t have it in me to do the whole pretend-like-you-don’t-want-this-and-smack-his-hand-away-act so I just let it be.
I drove in silence back to his place and pulled to a stop. “Do you want to come in for a drink?” he suggested lightly to me.
I glanced at the dashboard and then at him. “It’s, like, eleven AM.”
He shrugged. “It’s five o’clock somewhere.”
I smiled a little at him, and then nodded. “Yeah, a drink sounds good.”
We went inside and he handed me a beer. I sat down on the couch, curling my knees up to my chest. I took a long drink of my beer, downing about half of it. Deeks sat down at the other side of the couch. “Are you okay, Kens?” he asked finally.
I was taken off-guard by his question? Was I okay? I didn’t even know. I took a shaky breath. “I honestly don’t know, Deeks,” I admitted truthfully, biting my lip. “The bullet was intended for me. Both of them were. Yet, she’s dead, and I’m sitting on your couch drinking a beer at eleven in the morning with tears in my eyes.” Another tear slid down my cheek.
Deeks moved a little bit closer to me and tugged on my arm. I fell back willingly into his chest. We weren’t dating. I don’t know what we were, but we weren’t even together, but right now I wanted nothing more than what we had. He kissed the top of my head and held me tighter. “It’s not your fault. Stop blaming yourself. It’s the man that shot her’s fault, and I killed him. It’s not your fault,” he repeated, his voice soft.
I shivered a little. “She was just a kid.”
“I know, Kens. I know.”
His voice was enough to make me burst into tears again. I turned so I was lying on my side, pressed against him. He took my beer from me and set his and mine down on the ground, pulling me against his chest. I cried harder against him as I thought back to Anahi’s sweet, smiling face the first time she saw me. The way she laughed and talked. The way she joked with me about the intro to Les Misérables.
Deeks was humming softly to me. I looked up and saw the dampness on his cheeks. I settled back into his chest, lost in my memories of the girl that died for me until I drifted off into sleep.
When I woke up, it was pitch black in the room. I was aware that I was laying on Deeks’ bed, and that he wasn’t anywhere to be found. I reached my arm cautiously out around the bed, but he wasn’t there. I stood up, shedding my clothes and quickly finding one of Deeks’ shirts to put on, and then I went out into the living room. Deeks was awake, typing on his laptop, the TV on with the volume turned down low. He looked up when I came in and smiled at me.
I did my best to smile back.
“Hey, Kens. Are you hungry, thirsty…?” Deeks trailed off, gesturing with his hands.
I shook my head. I didn’t know what I was. I wasn’t… anything. “No, I-I’m not anything. I’m numb,” I breathed.
His brow creased with confusion and concern. “Is that better than being sad?” he asked me gently.
I shook my head. “I just want to feel something. But right now, I don’t feel anything.”
He stood up and came over to me. He leaned down, and kissed me lightly on the lips. “I’m sorry, Kensi. I don’t know what I can do.”
My breath hitched and my heart sped up. “You… You could do that again.”
He smiled at me, a real smile, and leaned down, taking me into his arms and pressing his lips to mine. This wasn’t like the ‘cover’ kisses. This was sweet, and melancholy, and… Real.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and he picked me up, carrying me into his room and setting me down on the bed. He kissed me gently, our lips never breaking contact. I kissed him back, pulling him down to lay beside me. When I finally pulled away, I simply curled against him and pulled the covers up to cover us. He wrapped his arms around me and dropped one last, much-too-brief kiss against my lips.
“Everything will be clearer in the morning, Kensi. Let’s get some sleep.”
I nodded sleepily against him, kissing the fabric of his t-shirt before I sunk back into oblivion.
The next morning, I awoke to find Deeks with his arms around me, lying on his side in only his boxers. For a moment, I forgot all of the last mission’s events. For a moment, I was completely blithe. But then it all came rushing back to me at once, and the image of Anahi’s pale, lifeless body flashed across my mind. I fought back tears as I detangled myself from Deeks and all but ran to the kitchen. I slid down to the ground against a counter, the coolness of it sinking into my skin through the fabric of Deeks’ shirt. I cradled my head in my hands, my knees pulled up tightly against my chest. I took deep, even breaths to calm myself down.
“Kensi?” a sleepy voice asked. I heard Deeks’ footsteps as he came into the kitchen. “Kensi!” He dropped to his knees in front of me, lifting my head gently off my knees. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
His eyes were wide with concern. “Kensi, you’re not fine. I know you’re not fine.”
I looked away from him. “I don’t want to talk about that, Deeks.”
“Okay, we won’t talk about that. But we do need to talk.”
“About?” I prompted him, turning my head back to face him.
“About us. About… this.” He gestured between us.
“What about… this?” I asked him, sitting up a little straighter.
“About the fact that you asked me to kiss you, and then willingly fell asleep in my bed last night, with me. We need to talk about that.”
I eyed him suspiciously. The truth was that I had no idea what to say about that. I didn’t even know what that meant. Were we a couple now? I mean, we couldn’t be! We’re partners.
“Okay, so let’s talk,” I agreed.
He turned and sat down with his back against a cabinet next to me. I turned my head to look at him, and he turned his to look at me. Our faces were incredibly close. “Let’s talk,” he murmured, in his extremely sexy, sleepy voice.
We stared at each other for a second, and then I couldn’t take it anymore. I practically pounced on him, kissing him with an intensity I didn’t know I was capable of. I wanted this man so badly. I’d wanted him for a long, long time.
He kissed me back passionately, I moaned slightly, running my hands through his hair. He wrapped both his arms around me and lifted me easily into the air. He carried me into his room and set me down on the bed, crawling over me as he trailed kisses from the corner of my lips to my collarbone. I writhed beneath him, desire unfurling in my belly.
I pulled his shirt over his head, and then the thing I’d been anticipating for years finally happened. The dream was a reality.
I sat on his couch a few hours later, eating a slice of pizza. I was still wearing his shirt. He was staring at me openly, and I was staring back. “That was definitely worth the wait,” he said finally as I swallowed my last bite of pizza.
I smiled. “Yes, it most definitely was.” My face fell a little as I thought about going back to work tomorrow. We couldn’t be a thing, right? I mean, we worked together! “But… It cant happen again, Deeks,” I added. His smile faltered.
“And why not?”
“Because it just can’t.”
He gave me a crooked little grin. “I disagree. I think it can happen again…” He moved towards me, pulling me against him and kissing my neck. “…Right now.”
I pulled his face to mine, pressing my lips to his. I felt him smile against my mouth. “Okay,” I obliged, “maybe one last time.”
Later that night, Deeks and I were in his bed, comfortably resting against one another. “Deeks, we could never be a couple. We would suck as a couple. And we have work. Partners can’t be more than partners!” I said in exasperation as he leaned down to kiss me.
He kissed me anyway. “We can be a couple, we would make a great couple, screw work, and we are way more than partners. There, all of your objections clarified in one sentence. I’m pretty awesome.”
I laughed. “Deeks, I don’t think you’re hearing me!” I rolled onto my stomach. He was on his back beside me, his arms up behind his head. His naked body, only his lower half covered by the blanket, was very, very, appealing, but I used my self-control. We needed to talk about this.
“I hear you loud and clear, Kens. You have your doubts. You have the right to be doubtful, okay? I have doubts, too. But don’t you think this is worth it? Don’t you think we’re worth it? Because I do.” His eyes were immensely sincere, his voice soft yet so full of truth at the same time.
“Of course I do! But, Deeks-” He cut me off, leaning down to kiss me hard on the lips.
I was effectively shut up, and went to putting my mouth to better use than to talk. We could make this work. I mean, we were Kensi and Deeks! We were partners. We could at least try.