Deeks used to damage every part of himself that he ever gave away. Chipped off the corners, left them out in the sun to fade in a calculated attempt to turn what should have been a gift into something that couldn't be given back. Hetty once told him that the illusion of loneliness was often worse than the real thing and for the longest time he thought she was missing the point. It's not that he wanted to lose substance, not that he wanted to crumble from the inside out or walk around hollow. He just didn't want to give the few people he cared about the opportunity to take away something he hadn't already written off. This is my strategy, he often thought. This is how I will survive the war.

They begin here.

Kensi's entrance into his life does not change his perception of risk. Does not convince him to take gamble in the name of potential.

Instead, he is fragile and she is unsettled and while there is something to be said for two lost souls finding comfort in one another, this only happens if they are looking in the same places. He remembers wondering if he would ever be able to trust this woman enough to watch his favorite movie with her, much less to have his back.
Those days were gray smoke and he woke up every morning exhausted because the struggle to fit in with the damaged, untrusting people that made up his new team was unrelenting. It's clear that they underestimate him, clear that they don't want him to belong. In his darkest moments, he is still angry about this. Still hurt and still filled with a desperate need to either prove himself or walk away. Sometimes, he remembers that he did not want to belong to them either and thinks that maybe this places them on even ground.

Tonight, as Kensi snores softly beside him, he wonders how they ever got to this point. How a man who only knew how to love in pieces, and a woman who only let herself love in one dimension somehow found faith in one another. A part of him feels as though he's known Kensi his whole life. Her smile, her laugh, the soft touch of her hand all run beneath his skin and crisscross around his chest. She etched out the lines on his palms, chose the color of his eyes. He has spent his whole life running with her.

The other part of him believes that he was not complete until he found her. That he was transparent, colors muted and features ill-defined. She is not a part of him as much as she is his complement, and the power to let her see the darkest parts of himself is still a choice rather than an inevitability. He has spent his whole life running toward her.

Lately, he has spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with the fear that he will someday lose her. That one day his luck, the luck that helped bring her home from Afghanistan and Syria and Ferris, will run dry. The thought burns like gunpowder on an open wound, glows bright blue in the back of his mind and rolls down his spine in his sleep. Kensi has been his touchstone for so long that the thought of navigating the world without her leaves him breathless. She taught him that it is possible to grow roots without drowning, that he is worth more than the memories he is ashamed of and the people in his life he will never be able to forgive.

He loves her like a train running off its tracks, like a trapeze artist who knows that he is safer on the tightrope than he is on solid ground. He loves her because of her wildness, because she is a lightning bolt in the desert, leaving crystals in her wake. A volcano that has never been dormant, rumbling along the ocean floor for thousands of years. Loves her loudly, like it's the only truth he's ever known.

Still.

I can live without you. Deeks thinks this softly, tracing the scar on her neck, almost sick from the thought but refusing to back down from what needs to be acknowledged.

He knows that this is important. Knows that loving Kensi enough to live without her -if he must- is the only way to love her right. Knows that the surest way to lose the her is to want her too much.

Kensi sighs in her sleep, curling up tightly against his side as if she can feel his deep-seated need to keep her close. He closes his eyes.

I will love you with all that I am for as long as we're given.

This is his strategy.

This is how he will win the war.