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Deeks

He enters the world on a cloudless Wednesday afternoon to the stony silence of an impassive father. His mother holds him limply as she gazes out the window, and the half-hearted attempts at congratulations by the nurses that bustle in and out of the room fall on deaf ears.

The general themes of his life greet him here, wrapped up in his beige blanket and folded against his soft skin. A woman with all the wrong reasons and a man with heart too stubborn to love, and he does not doubt the possibility that the reason he did not cry was because –even then- he knew there would be no one to listen.

And the silences he will never shake, the disappointment he never earned, will follow all three of them home.

Kensi

Her apartment is meticulously clean. The dishwasher is empty, the laundry is done. The couch is made up in case Callen ever needs a place to stay, although it has been some months since she'd woken up to hear him shuffling about in the living room. There are no new voicemails on the house phone, and there is no mail.

And it is here, in the safety of her home that she lets down her walls. Sinking heavily into a kitchen chair, Kensi shakes her head remorsefully.

'It should never of come down to this,' she berates herself.

She wonders if it was inevitable.

'It should never of come down to this.'

And she will say this over and over and over again.

For the rest of her life, until it is engraved on her wrist and wrapped around her fingers like string so that she will never –ever- forget.

And she will always think that people deserve more than they receive. And Moe is still dead and Callen is still lonely and Sam is still stuck inside his own routine that will one day get him shot as well.

And while she accepts it all on principle, that does not make it easier to hide.

Deeks

The light on the stove stares solemnly back at him from his position on the sofa.

3:10.

He shifts restlessly on the worn cushions, squeezing his eyes shut at the pain that shoots through his chest. His bandages itch, his head throbs from a lack of sleep, and he wishes more than anything that he was in his own bed, in his own apartment.

The morning that he jogged out of his apartment and into a line of fire feels like a lifetime ago.

(And if it were not for the two holes in his chest, he'd be willing to pretend like this had all never, ever, happened.)

His stay in the hospital has become fuzzy; highlighted only by his many empty Jell-O containers and the realization that his (danger-prone, stubborn, incredibly lucky) partner was playing right into the hands of his shooters.

(And Deeks suspects that his daring rescue might have something to do with the fact that he is now confined to Kensi's apartment, rather than another member of the team's.)

Not that she'd ever admit to feeling indebted to him.

Feelings like that (of regret, of doubt, of paralyzing fear) fell to the side of Kensi that was shrouded in pent-up aggression and determination. But he sees the anxiety in her eyes whenever he moves too quickly, felt the slight tremor in her fingers as she replaced his bandage on the first night, and knows that she blames herself for putting him here.

He wonders when they will stop hurting one another.

He wonders if they will stop hurting one another.

Heaving a sigh, he glances at the clock once again.

3:13.

Kensi

She watches the security footage.

Breaks into the Ops room one night, when even Hetty has switched off her lamp for the day, and manipulates that camera's history until a grainy video pops up on the big screen. And she watches her partner tumble over from the shock of impact. And she watches his face falter as the gun is aimed just past his heart.

And if she squints hard enough, she can almost see him dying there, his ghost hovering just off screen.

Legs hanging from her seat on the glass table, remote in hand, and maybe she does not breathe.

And he has saved her from desperate fathers to hit men, from liars to Russians. And he has bled from bullets that should have been hers, and she fears that one day, he will die for her if she cannot break this pattern.

The sun has begun to slide through the closed blinds that make up the room's walls before she move again. Replaces the remote, and deletes the evidence with a few swift clicks of the keyboard. Slips out the mission's back door to find the world empty, and it is nice to be alone. Without the watchful eyes of Hetty or the well-meaning glances from Callen and Sam, and she leans her head against her steering wheel in exhaustion because she has not slept since this began.

Dom still visits her when things become too much to handle. Hazy and bright, he whispers about Sam and she answers his silent questions about Callen. She tells him stories from her early days as an agent as he bleeds out over the roof, gasping and shaking. Once, she reaches out to touch him and finds herself lost in a storm of fire and fear.

She wakes up, and everything glows crimson and dull.

Deeks

He dreams about her.

Long after Hetty has left, when the hospital becomes dim and eerie. And he sees the uncertainty in her eyes as the shooter rounds the van, a gun pointed at her heart. And he feels the relief on her skin as she helps him to the ground just seconds later.

But he cannot ignore the aching suspicion that she will leave him one of these days.

And even when he jerks awake to find her resting quietly beside his hospital bed, it does not go away.

He is defined by the consistency that the others have been trained to avoid. He craves the human contact that comes from knowing that someone is expecting you, every day. The familiarity of a cashier, of a jogger, of a barista is comforting and rewarding, because it means that there is someone who will notice if he is gone.

(And really, all he wants is to be remembered.)

Sam goads his foolishness. Callen smiles apologetically.

(And really, neither reaction would have been enough to convince him that he should take this whole routine thing seriously.)

But then Kensi is nearly gone, and he realizes that there are many ways to let your partner down.

(He wakes up in the middle of the night to find her sleeping fitfully beside him. And she might be fragmenting at the edges, and he might always be a little too far behind her to make much of a difference, but that will not stop him from trying.)

Kensi

Jack vanishes, leaving clothes hanging in the closet and shoes by the front door, as if he planned on coming back.

(That is a dangerous train of thought, one that leaves her with a stomach full of knots and a whole notebook of 'what if's')

Jack vanishes right after she holds his hand through another panic attack, listening to his whisperings over a life she'd one day share.

And she promises in a shaking voice that she will not leave him.

So he leaves her instead.

3:57.

She knows that he is sleeping now, his heavy sighs long since stopped.

And she knows that they have missed so many chances. And they are both stubborn and proud and desperate to prove themselves. She knows that while he may save her from the rest of the world, one day, she will need to save him from himself.

Words are low and sweet and roll of her tongue. How neither of them will ever have the courage to walk away. The ache of a moment and the sting of a second chance.

They will fight this fight tomorrow and the day after and the day after. And it will never be any easier, but maybe one day, it will be worth it.

Kensi closes her eyes against the flashing numbers of her alarm clock.

4:00.