A/n For any of you guys following Duly Noted or Keep the Faith, Keep the Grace, I apologize for not updating. But, believe it or not, they're still in the works and are far from being abandoned.
This is a short hurt/angst drabble that I've had in mind for a while now. I understand that this is a sensitive topic for some, so the trigger warnings are as followed: hurt, grief, loss. Thank you guys for your continued support!
- Cierra

They don't want another baby after the first, which they hadn't planned on, hadn't tried for, hadn't wanted - that is, until they nearly had it. She lost him, her first, when he came three months earlier than planned. Had it been a week later, maybe he would've survived, and maybe Kensi would be celebrating his first birthday today, instead of wondering how she could allow this to happen again.

Deeks doesn't even pretend to be happy when she shows him the test. He lets her eyes brim with tears and says, "Okay." No We can do this, Kens! or Yay! Parenthood! So different from her first pregnancy.

Through the view that their kitchen window provides, she can see the backyard, and, in the backyard, the tree Deeks planted when they first moved in together. He laughed and told her that she was not to touch the tree, and with his capable hands she watched him tend to it, carving their initials against smooth bark when it became more than a sapling. She thinks it looks like it's wilting. Next to theirs, still small, stands another tree, this one in full bloom. One day it wasn't there, and then it was, right next to theirs. She knows he planted it for their son, and she's grown attached to the rich-colored leaves, the strong stump, the blossoming branches that seem to grow longer overnight. She looks at that little tree, now.

She used to think she understood loss. She didn't.

In that moment, more than anything, she wants her husband to take her by the hand. When their first was little more than a dot on an ultrasound and she discovered she was pregnant, he lifted her off of her feet, kissed her over and over. But now, his expression is hard. His shoulders are squared, mechanically built. In a word, tense. As he has been for months.

Time heals. She realized, as time went by, things were changing. One morning, a few months after everything, she woke to the smell of pancakes and a note saying that Deeks had went surfing. When he returned he tasted like sunscreen and salt water. It wasn't the beginning of their recovery, but it was, instead of the baby steps they'd been taking previously, a leap in the right direction.

There were steps backward. She started hiding from him a week after the incident. She locked herself in the car, the bathroom, the locker rooms at work, and cried. She never let him in. Eventually he stopped trying.

Worst still, sometimes he would leave. He didn't think she knew, but she did. She would feel him leave in the middle of the night and come back hours later, smelling neither like Chanel, booze, nor cigarettes. But every time she felt him step out of the bed, her heart would lodge itself in her throat, and she would lay awake, wondering if he was going to return to her.

She couldn't tell him to stay. She didn't know how to help herself, much less help him. They both refused grief counselors. G let them abstain from psych evaluations when she returned to work. And eventually, the hole in her heart became easier to ignore.

She realizes that throughout the month before she discovered she's pregnant again, she didn't cry, not once. Deeks took her to an upscale dinner club and bought her flowers just the night before. She looks at them now, sitting on the counter. The petals are already curling around the edges, losing their vibrancy. She wants them to last. Even though the kitchen is tense, suffocating, and even though this probably isn't the most opportune moment to place them in water, she fetches a vase.

She stands against the counter and looks at their trees. She touches her stomach. In her head, she says, "Mommy's not going to let anything happen to you."

She wanted to know why. It was the only question that she could put into words. The others were too complicated to try to voice.

There was no reason. This angered her, hurt her. She said that there had to have been a reason, but no infection ailed her, no unknown, harmful bacteria coursed through her body. She asked, if she really wasn't sick, why she wasn't still pregnant. The doctors apologized, and told her that every now and again, things happen for seemingly no reason. No reason whatsoever.

In the months that followed she decided that it wasn't meant to be. Motherhood wasn't something the universe had planned for her. She wasn't meant to have two boys in her life that she could love, cherish, be loved by.

She thinks that if this baby is a girl, it might have a chance. When she's told that it's a boy, she goes home and she cries.

That night, Deeks holds her. He kisses her for the first time since they discovered her second pregnancy, and then he kisses her stomach. He tells her he loves her to the moon and back. She chooses to believe him.

Her belly is smooth and rounded, officially worthy of being classified as a bump. She's shining with the light of not just her usual aura but also the light of the new life growing inside of her. Deeks missed her pregnancy glow most of all, but he doesn't tell her how happy he is to have it back.

He's her rock, now. Stable, grounded, collected, but a rock, nonetheless. He seems nearly afraid to display excitement, happiness, anything other than poorly hidden wariness. In this way, he's a diamond to her - hard and translucent.

Unpacking the nursery is one of the hardest things she's ever did in her life. Nell had put away everything baby related for her after she lost her son because neither she nor Deeks were able to. She offered to set it up for them, but the building of the nursery, Kensi decided, should be something she does for her son.

So she does. Toy by toy, picture by picture, outfit by outfit, she assembles another nursery, so similar to the last, so different. Deeks comes in behind her, wraps his arms around her stomach from the back, rests his head against her cheek, her collarbone. "It's nice," he tells her, kissing her on the cheek. "Really nice."

Now, eight months in, he presses his head against her belly at night. He tells her that their son's going to be a rocket engineer who doubles as a volunteer firefighter and does stand-up on open mic night. He tells her that their son's going to be another blonde haired blue eyed Capricorn who loves to surf and drive her crazy. He says that one day, their boy will save the world.

He's right about the blonde hair, the blue eyes, and the Capricorn. She doesn't know about the firefighter or the rocket engineer or a savior of the world, but he loves the water, and he makes her laugh everyday because all of the joy she feels just seems to bubble over when she looks at her son. They name him Matthew, meaning "gift".

Matt, two years old, toddles over to his brother's tree. He hugs its base, as if to climb it. He looks up the tree, into the leaves, and points, grinning. Deeks smiles as Kensi lifts him up, and they look at each other, knowing. The sky's gold with the setting sun, and a breeze cuts through the hot California air. The light gives both her husband and her baby a halo, christening them angles.

Deeks looks at Matt, who looks at Kensi, who looks at Deeks. Inside, through the window, Kensi watches the shadow of their trees fade into the darkness of the night, and she goes to bed, knowing they'll have returned with the sun when she wakes.