AN: I know, amazing right? No, I am not dead, but I got into a lot of new writing, then I got burned out. Finally, I got sick and burned out. However, I've decided my writing needs to move forward. I need to finish unfinished projects, and start new ones. I can't promise too much new NCISLA stuff, however I will definitely be focused on completing what I already have up.

On an average day Callen believed he and Deeks enjoyed a friendly working relationship. Neither of them liked to let colleagues run amok in their personal lives. The only exceptions to that preference extended to their respective partners and Hetty. Even then, Deeks needed Kensi in his personal life far more than Callen wanted or needed Sam in his, and that was without the insane levels of unresolved sexual tension between the younger pair. Still, over the years, the two misfits of the OSP had their opportunities for 'bonding' as Nate said. They enjoyed teaming up to gently torment Sam and Kensi at times. Callen reached out to his teammate when he felt he needed to do so, and Deeks silently and loyally stood with his team leader throughout the war to discover who he was. Watching Deeks pull up to The Mission on his new motorcycle had amused him. Hetty took rules about 'down-time' safety seriously, but Callen firmly believed that some rules were made to be broken. Like the rest of his team, he watched the young detective with concern, and looked for signs that he could be a danger to himself, or others, after his torture by Siderov. He knew that the shaggy surfer-cop had a long way to go before the scars faded, but he also knew that the motorcycle wasn't evidence of reckless behavior.

While the team prepared to go to their favorite watering hole, he doubled back to Hetty's office. One of the assistants from the wardrobe department burst in with an emergency involving a stain of squid ink. He stifled a chuckle as a vicious scowl settled over his tiny boss' face, as he watched her storm to wardrobe. Quickly, he went to the confiscation box kept in a false bottom in the cupboard where she kept the swear jar. He effortlessly jimmied the lock with his hairpin and took Deeks' keys. Carefully erasing the evidence of his theft, he sat back down at his desk and waited for his team. A self-satisfied grin formed on his lips as he glanced at his watch. 'One minute and forty-eight seconds! I beat my own record,' he mentally cheered.

"It's not fair!" Deeks cried out, dodging Kensi's hand. "It's not! YOU ride that bike of yours on down time and stop spouting those idiotic statistics! If I wanted to risk my neck I wouldn't have bought a motorcycle, I would've waited until the deadly waves hit the pipeline in Hawaii and then taken the one I knew I couldn't ride. I would've gone skydiving and opened the shoot too early, or too late! I've got a buddy that goes cave diving, if I wanted to risk my neck I could call him up and be off tomorrow! I bought a bike, I WORE A HELMET, I FOLLOWED THE RULES OF THE ROAD!" he shouted, getting up in her face. "If it's Hetty's rule that I don't ride my bike right now, I'll follow it. If it makes you scared for me right now, I'll respect that. What I WILL NOT accept is hypocrisy, Kens. Not from you, or anyone else. Now, get off my back."

"Deeks," Sam said softly, coming between the feuding pair. "Ride with me to the bar okay, I remember how bad it hurt when Hetty first came down on me. Kensi and Callen are the spoiled ones, they just don't get it."

"Fine, I'll be in the car," Deeks replied in a calm but stiff voice.

Callen watched his strong Kensi flinch as her partner marched past her without as much as a backward glance. He stood up and flung his arm around her shoulder. "Well, we better catch up to them if we want any potato skins," he sighed, as she roughly shoved him away. "Well, I was going to let you drive the Aston, but if you want to act like that I'll let you get a ride with our geek warriors," he admonished with a smirk.

Kensi's mismatched eyes turned on him with a searing glare. He met it with his typical nonchalance when he knew he was in the right. The younger woman jutted out her chin, and she grit her teeth repressing the agonizing frustration plaguing her Deeks captured. After a moment, reason returned, and she let out a long sigh as tension drained from her body. "I don't think I can handle watching Eric attempt to interrogate Nell about her squad of admirers," she whispered.

He grinned, throwing his arm around her shoulders once more. "Come on then, I'm starved." As he gently guided Kensi to the garage they passed Hetty returning to the bullpen. "We'll meet you there, Hetty," G. called out.

"Very well, Mr. Callen," the older woman acknowledged.

As she gathered her things together at the end of the day, Hetty cursed the uncomfortable position she found herself in. She considered herself a guardian of the men and women under her charge, and when her people were injured physically or mentally her protective instincts heightened dramatically. She chuckled as she tied her latest Parisian scarf around her neck. Deeks' sassy assertion that she worried more about him than the others due to favoritism amused her. She considered each individual relationship with her people unique and equally important, but she did consider Deeks as the 'baby' of her family. As the 'baby' of any family, there were equal amounts of coddling and vexing heaped upon him. Also, as the 'baby' Deeks had the least amount of experience with the inherent dangers of the work they did. His life as an undercover detective could not prepare him for the unique challenges of the OSP of NCIS. That fact had made her offer him the applications before her trip to Romania. His full potential could be realized away from the LAPD, but she understood he must make the choice for himself alone. So, she did the only thing she could do for him now, watch over him as he healed. If that required a certain amount of over-protection during his off-time then so be it. Switching off her desk light she sighed, she had just one more duty to preform, and then she intended to have a long hot bath.

Despite some merciless teasing and a few brushes of death, Callen didn't mind Kensi's crazy driving. Perhaps due to his misspent youth where joyriding had been a regular past time, his time racing with Gibbs through Eastern Europe, or just the fact that Kensi knew how to drive dangerously made him immune. The same could not be said for the driver of the SUV she cut off. He could hear the man hurling expletives over his blaring horn. "Kensi, I trust you with my life, but it's not a good idea to provoke others into road-rage."

"I'm not worried about their road-rage, they should be worried about mine!" Kensi snapped as she accelerated.

"Okay," he replied nonchalantly. "Here's the thing, I'm pretty sure you're not dealing with road-rage."

"Really, Dr. Callen," Kensi answered with a voice as sweet as honey. "Has Nate been giving you shrink lessons over a secret hook-up?"

"I don't need Nate for shrink lessons I've seen hundreds in my life," Callen laughed. "Deeks isn't your ex-fiancée, Kensi. He's not the same man as before, and he will never be that man again. We both know that. However, that doesn't mean he'll develop PTSD. You have to stop projecting the past onto the present. It's not fair to him, or to you."

"Callen, don't take this the wrong way, but you don't know PTSD like I do, so please, piss off!" she snarled, as she took an exit at seventy-five miles an hour. "And, I am NOT projecting anything," she growled, merging with the traffic.

"Kensi, I might not like to play Boss, but don't forget you're both on my team. I'll get into anything I think is damaging to it," he answered with a firm but gentle voice.

"Watch it destroy someone you love, and then interfere all you want," she whispered, slamming on the brakes for a red light.

"Kensi, he doesn't have PTSD!" Callen exclaimed, throwing up his hands. "Do you honestly think Nate would have missed it? Do you honestly think that Hetty, or I, or Sam haven't been watching? I talked to Deeks when I saw him hesitate, and I'm sure he won't again. I wouldn't let him out with us if I didn't know he can handle it. I care about him and you far too much to put your lives at risk. More importantly, what we do is too important to compromise the interests of the people we protect by letting him out there if he couldn't handle it. Are you saying you don't trust me?"

"I'm saying that I saw him walk out in front of a speeding car and just stand there!" she growled, as she cut off a flashy Mercedes. "Look," she sighed. "We've both been through things like this before. Can you tell me that when the initial fallout ended you never went and did something risky just to feel alive?"

"You know I can't, and neither can you, Kensi," he answered, taking her free hand in his. They'd entered a residential area, and even Kensi adjusted her driving accordingly.

Her bottom lip quivered with the force of her emotions. "That's how it starts," she whimpered. "You find something that makes you feel alive: sex, speed, alcohol…" she trailed off and chuckled bitterly. "Deeks might have a point about being able to get killed by anything. The cycle starts, and then sufferer along with everyone, and everything around them gets sucked into a vortex more destructive than any storm you've ever seen. I lived through it once, barely," she hissed. "Now, my partner wants to ride dinky motorcycles, and stand in front of oncoming traffic! All because we thought you almost killed a driver who turned out to be a madman!"

He knew Kensi's last remark simply stated a fact, and she didn't blame him for The Chameleon. Still, the pain of the vicious human chess match between him and that psychopath, and the lives it took remained in him with blinding intensity. "He's in a hole now, Kensi. I did it the right way these past two times because I couldn't live with killing him in cold blood. If he gets out again, I'll put him down like the mad dog he is."

"Get in line," she whispered. "They hurt him, Callen. He'll never be the same again, and it isn't right!" she blinked once as tears pricked the corners of her eyes. "He's been through too much."

"I know, Kensi, I know. Listen, I'm not trying to tell you that you shouldn't worry. You have a right to worry, and we all do. But remember one thing, he deserves to see himself in your eyes not Jack."

She smashed her fist down on her horn as they pulled back onto the main street scaring a small group of tourists too engrossed in the sights to look at the road. "First dad, then Jack, Kevin in that stupid drug OP, then Dom…" her voice broke softly over the sweet young man's name. "Callen, I'm not like you. I'm not steel that gets stronger as it's tempered. I'm not like Sam who has Michelle and the kids to keep him strong no matter what. I'm certainly not like Hetty! I think she's made of Kevlar. I can't take another loss of someone I depend on, I can't do it. I'll crack. I'll crack, and never recover."

Sam Hanna counted only four things in his life that provided him with complete joy: his wife and children, a fine glass of champagne, good music, and the hum of a perfectly running engine. While he missed Charlene desperately for down-time, his recuperation from Siderov had given him ample time to make real progress on Helen. Until she became roadworthy, he made due with his trusted Challenger, letting the soothing vibrations of horsepower and the rhythm of the road clear his mind. His companion's outburst with Kensi concerned him, but the fact that he'd been silent since entering the car worried the older man more. "We can turn on the radio if you'd like, Deeks. We're about to hit rush hour."

"I'm fine," the younger man muttered.

"It's okay for you to be angry," Sam continued, ignoring Deeks' unspoken request for silence. "Nobody thinks the less of you. It's a natural part of the recovery process."

"What makes me angry is the ridiculousness of confiscating my bike!" Deeks snapped. "Do you realize that I can more easily drown or hurt myself surfing than I could riding that bike even if I was one hundred percent recovered? Why hasn't Hetty taken my board? Let's not even get into the fact that you all started hounding me with teeth and torture jokes the day I left the hospital, but it's perfectly fine to treat me like a child!"

"No, I think we should get into it," Sam asserted. "Do you really think we want to treat you like a child?"

"I think you all forget that just because I'm not ex-Military or a Fed that doesn't mean I've never dealt with trauma! I assure you, Sam, I've been through things a guy like you can't imagine!" he growled, leaning his forehead against the cool glass of the window. 'Let Sam get mad about his car. I don't want a headache,' came the petulant thought.

Sam inwardly cringed at the scruffy young man's treatment of his baby but said nothing. After all, he'd done worse to one of G's, cars after he'd blown off a run. "Deeks," he answered softly, making sure he wouldn't sound patronizing. "Out of all of us, I am the worst offender when it comes to doubting you, and believe me, it will be a long time before I get over the shame of that," he added, swallowing heavily. "There's nothing I can say to make that right, and I'll never be able to repay what you did for my family. The only way I can explain it is to say that this world you got thrown into is very isolating and extreme. Over time, it takes a toll on how you view, 'outsiders,'" his voice hitched over the unfriendly word, but he owed Deeks respect by being honest. "It's harder for me because I've lost a lot of people throughout my career. People who gave their lives for mine, and people who depended on me for protection I couldn't provide. You arrived at one of the lowest points in my life, both professionally and personally. I couldn't understand you then, and to be completely honest, I'm not sure I understand you any better now. I just know that I've been unjust and wrong in the way I've treated you, and from now on, I don't want you to have any doubts about my loyalty."

Deeks slowly turned his head to face the former SEAL. Sam had always been a huge package of contradictions for him: a giant of a man whose voice and demeanor showed gentleness (most of the time). A man who valued team work with a dedication to rules and regulations but didn't hesitate to go against his principles if his loved ones were in danger. A man whose innate core of honor, decency, and honesty that made him appear to be the worst possible candidate for work that hinged on deception but excelled at it. He understood what it cost a man with strong pride and principles to admit his errors, especially to a mutt like him.

"I won't deny I haven't liked the occasional, 'red-headed stepchild' treatment you so lovingly dished out, Sam," Deeks answered gently, with a faint smile forming on his lips. "One thing I have never doubted is your capacity for loyalty. I understand Dom meant a great deal both to you and to Kensi. I only hope you know that I've never meant any disrespect to his memory, and I'm glad that what happened finally let you trust me," his faint smile deepened into a grin. "I only wish it hadn't taken power tools to do it," he added with a wink.

"I'm sorry too," Sam choked out.

A spike of guilt shot through the younger man's stomach at how he let his annoyance with the motorcycle affect his temper. Sam didn't deserve his foul mood. He knew deep down in his heart that he'd been too harsh with Kensi too, but his ire at her hypocrisy hadn't cooled enough for him to accept it. All he could do is hope that he could make it up to her at the bar. For now, he could do something for the man he'd long admired. "Whenever I start dwelling on the past, a mistake I made, or something I missed out on, I remember my mother's mantra… 'The past is gone, it can't come back, the future is unknown, and that's why we call the present, a present.' Don't live in the past, Sam. All we really have is right now, and it shouldn't be wasted."

A bright smile threatened to split the formidable Sam Hanna's face in half. "The next time G. starts getting sucked into his past, I'm stealing that."

Deeks raised his eyebrows in slight alarm. He didn't want to take the blame if his team leader decided to take issue with any interference in his personal life. "Well, my mother also taught me that, 'there's an exception to everything that isn't an absolute wrong or an absolute right.' In my life, I've learned that there are far fewer of those then even the best of men know."

"Careful, Deeks, people will start thinking you're smart," Sam chuckled, with a strong current of admiration running through his tone.

A devilishly wicked smile made the young detective's point without a single word…