A/N: And the last planned entry of this series, closing up this story after episode 2x01 ("Human Traffic").

Deeks didn't want to drink, he wanted to fight. One of the reasons he'd quit being a lawyer is that the criminal justice system seemed to do so little to punish so many of the worst criminals. But on days like this, even being a cop didn't cut it. He wanted to go all-out vigilante.

If the NCIS team hadn't been there, he might have pulled the trigger. If Kensi hadn't been there, he might have shot that dirty, cop killer. But he listened to her, and she led him away. Sam and Callen had taken soon-to-be ex-Detective Scarli into custody, leaving Kensi to drive Deeks back in his own car. Immediately into their drive, she started trying to make conversation.

"You work with Traynor a long time?" she asked, her voice full of sympathy.

"Actually, no," he answered. Pausing to reflect on a more complete answer, he continued, "I'd seen her around the precinct once or twice before. But we were only partnered up just after you and I met." He paused again before prodding, "You gonna tell me how stupid it was to get involved with a partner?"

"No. I'm not that cruel," she assured him softly. "You don't have to explain yourself to me."

Deeks would have thought he wouldn't feel like talking about it. But the second he opened his mouth, it all spilled out and he found himself telling her everything.

"Even so, I feel the need to say that I never meant it to happen. About a week ago, we had been meeting up to exchange information when we realized that we were being watched," he explained. "She was a quick thinker and turned it into a situation that looked more like a booty call. Even took me home to try and sell it. I thought we weren't followed. But we'd already been outed by then, so it didn't matter."

They were stopped at a red light, and Kensi was meeting his gaze intensely and expectantly. She looked like she wanted to know exactly what happened next… but also like she didn't. A car honking behind them saved him from her piercing, mismatched eyes once the light had turned green.

"She liked me. But honestly, we weren't that close, and I barely even knew her. Which almost makes it worse," he said. "She deserved to see this case through. And she died before she could make that happen."

Kensi continued to drive in silence. She took them back to the Mission, so she could switch back to her car and let him go on his way. As they neared the parking garage, he groaned when he remembered, "Agh. I have to leave this car with the fleet for now. It's evidence."

"How are you getting home?" she asked with concern.

"I guess… a cab?" he wondered aloud.

"I can come get you when I'm done," she offered.

Deeks peered at her and told her honestly, "With Internal Affairs involved, this could take a few hours."

Nodding knowingly, she retorted, "I just sniped some foreign nationals through the window of an old government building. Believe me, I have paperwork to do too. Just give me a call."

"Okay."

The preliminary reports he had to file for the case weren't as bad as he thought they'd be. Mostly because he hadn't been a witness to Jess's murder. Other cops in the department were unnaturally nice to him, and he hated to think about the reason why.

As he finished with the bare minimum required paperwork he needed to get done, he thought about texting Kensi. He decided against it. Whatever the two of them had been doing prior to all of this, it likely wouldn't continue. Between his unprofessional outburst, the implication that he had been involved with his partner, and the fact that he was going back to the NCIS team, she likely didn't want anything to do with him outside of work. So he called a cab, and made his way back to his real apartment for the first time in months.

His body still stung from the explosion yesterday. So one of the first things he did was get out of his clothes and into a jarringly cold shower to sooth his skin. Once dry, he put some aloe on the burns and trudged back into his empty kitchen in nothing but sweatpants.

"Ramen it is," he announced to his bare cabinet after inspecting the slim dinner pickings available.

"Or we could just order some take out," a sharp, feminine voice answered from behind him.

"Gah! Kensi!" he shouted, his heart racing in surprise. "What are you doing here?"

"You didn't answer your phone," she stated plainly.

"How did you get in? Did I leave the door unlocked?" he wondered aloud.

"Nope."

Shaking his head in confusion, he collected himself and asked again, "What are you doing here?"

"I came to see if you were okay," she replied honestly. "Today was hard on me, and I didn't even know any of these people."

"I'm fine," he answered. When her eyes narrowed at him he altered his statement. "Or at least, I will be. I've been through rough days like this before."

"Okay."

"Okay," he repeated.

Deeks put a shirt on and Kensi ordered food from a near by Chinese restaurant. It arrived, and they ate in front of the TV, making simple conversation with a baseball game on in the background that neither of them were really watching.

After they were done eating, she sat next to him with her arms crossed, staring him down. Her face softened, and she started to tell him, "There's another reason I'm here. You're back with our team in a few days, right?"

"Yeah," he confirmed. "Once I'm through with interviews, psych evals, and reports for this case. Could take a day, could take the rest of the week."

"Hm. Well… None of the others know… about what we've been doing," she said, trying to convey meaning with her eyes beyond what her vague words had said.

"You mean, that we've slept together," he clarified, watching her steadily.

"Yes."

Under his breath he added, "Like, five times."

Kensi rolled her eyes and continued, "And they can't know."

"I wasn't going to tell them," he assured her.

"And it can't happen again," she stated.

"Well, that's a shame. But that's probably for the best," Deeks sighed. With his eyebrows raised and a tone of genuine curiosity in his voice, he asked, "Just, tell me you weren't relieved when you saw me alive."

She considered him a moment, and answered with a playful smile, "I was relieved. Then you opened your mouth, and I was over it."

Deeks returned that smile, and switched seamlessly into his taunting, sarcastic voice. "You're right of course, we can't have sex again," he said. "You'll just have to resist me."

"Oh, for the love of—"

Amused by her feigned indigence, he continued to prod her, "So what I'm saying is, no matter how hard you beg—"

"Ha!"

"—We can't sleep together again," he insisted.

"I'm glad your sense of humor is back!" she teased. Kensi still seemed incredulous, and challenged him, "You're telling me that if I stripped down right now, you think you'd be able to resist me?"

"Guess we'll have to find out," he taunted.

When he said that last, arrogant line, Deeks never would have imagined that it would actually work. But Kensi was either more competitive or more horny than he had originally thought. At his suggestion, she peeled her shirt off and literally threw it at his face before kicking her boots off and sauntering back to his bedroom. He may have been hurting, but he wasn't about to pass this opportunity up. So he followed her back there.

He caught up to her in his doorframe, and pinned her to it.

"I knew it!" she declared. "You're so easy."

"Me?" he asked indignantly. "You're the one who folded!"

"I've taken pity on you," she insisted.

"How kind. And it has nothing to do with how thoroughly I rock your world whenever we do this?" he asked seductively.

"Hmmm," she considered. "Only a little."

Through with talking, she melded her lips with his, and tugged at the drawstring of his sweats. He ditched the sweats, and helped her rid herself of her pants. They tumbled back on his bed and settled into a series of softer, more languid kisses.

Deeks kissed her cheek, then her jaw, and down her neck where he lingered for several moments. He stopped kissing entirely and sighed heavily as an unexpected wave of sadness and guilt washed over him again.

He lifted his head to look down at her, his sad eyes meeting her concerned ones. Softly, he spoke, "I don't know what you must think of me. I swear, I don't fall into bed with every hot female cop I meet."

She brushed the hair from his eyes, and met them with sympathy. "I think you're a guy in a lonely profession that makes it hard to trust people. I know what that's like."

"I suppose you do," he agreed, not knowing if that made him feel any better.

"And hard to connect with anyone you might lose. I know a thing or two about that, too," she continued, her voice heavy with regret. Cupping his face, she waited for his gaze to return to hers before asking, "Hey, seriously. Are you okay?"

Deeks paused a moment to consider, then answered truthfully, "No."

"Well, you will be… Eventually," she promised.

Kensi continued to run her fingers through his hair. She tilted her head up and waited, her eyes finally closing when he lowered his face to hers in a gentle kiss.

However playfully they had started off a minute ago, they now moved over each other's bodies slowly, with emotion; with a connection Deeks was sure they both felt, even if they were trying to deny it. He tried to force these thoughts from his mind as he sunk deeper into her kisses.

She was running her hands up and down his bare back. His skin was getting hotter by the second, and it had nothing to do with the shallow burns. She squeezed his butt cheeks, then pushed at the elastic of his underwear until he lifted his hips enough to let them slide down his thighs. His cock sprung free, already half hard, and her hand immediately dropped down to help him along.

Moaning into her continued kisses, Deeks slid off of her so he could peel her panties slowly down her long legs while she unfastened and shed her bra. He crawled back up her body, dragging his lips along her smooth skin until he returned to her doting kisses.

His face still hurt from earlier in the afternoon, and she tenderly avoided his cuts and bruises. But something else was different. Something about the way Kensi was letting him take his time. Maybe she was serious about calling it quits after this— maybe she also wanted to savor their last time together.

Despite his intention of taking things slowly, he couldn't help but feel the moisture and heat radiating out from between her legs. His cock was dangerously close to poking in, so he reluctantly pulled away from her before he could get ahead of himself.

Instead he moved his fingers between her legs to spread apart her folds while his lips repeated the journey down her body. Kensi arched her back up expectantly on the pillows above him, impatiently waiting for him to quit teasing her. Holding the lips of her pussy with two fingers, he grazed the tip of his tongue against her clit in a barely there touch.

Kensi moaned in pleasure, and maybe in frustration as he continued his pattern of feather light flicks from his tongue, and slow caresses from his lips. If she wanted more though, she didn't ask for it out loud. All she did do was start to gyrate her hips, pushing herself harder against his face. Deeks thought that was perhaps the sexiest thing ever, and responded by wrapping his arms around her thighs and pulling her closer to him still.

He increased the intensity of what he was doing with his mouth, content to go all night if he had to. But it was Kensi who pulled him off and up to her level. His hand replaced his mouth, and he could feel that she was already pulsating gently as he delved deeper and deeper with his dancing fingers.

Somewhere between the messy kisses that had started up again, she broke away to give him a wild look.

"Deeks! Now!" she commanded him.

He scrambled to reach the drawer of his bedside stand and yanked it open. Immediately, he found what he was looking for, frantically tore and tossed aside the packaging, and rolled the condom on himself. Barely a second later, Kensi wrapped her slender fingers around his girth and guided his cock down to where they both wanted it to be.

Deeks pushed inside in a single smooth motion, grunting in deep satisfaction when he slid all the way in. No sooner had his thighs touched hers, than he felt her gentle throbbing escalate into chain of fluttering spasms that gripped and pulled at him as he held steady, buried in her heat.

Kensi moaned, and whimpered, and stretched out her body beneath him. She swayed her hips back and forth, keeping the sensations alive for both of them. He patiently waited for her to settle down, unsure about how long he could resist the urge to move. When she opened her contrasting eyes and met his again, he decided to test the waters with a single, deliberate thrust.

She gasped and lifted her chin, slamming her eyes shut as she bit her own lower lip. When he did it again, her hands slid up from his shoulders to his neck and gripped at the short hairs there. She pulled his head down to hers and gently nibbled at his lips instead. Through sharp, steady breaths, he returned her devouring kisses and started to move in and out of her with slowly increasing speed.

After a minute of this, he broke their kiss and sat back up on his knees. Continuing to thrust, he held on to her sprawled thighs, pulling her to him in time with each of his strokes. He looked down and saw how the lips of her pussy gripped his cock, clinging to him as he pushed in and out. That sight coupled with the feeling of her around him was nearly enough to finish him off much sooner than he was ready for. So he slowed down again, and bent over to return his eyes to the level of hers.

She welcomed him with a kiss, and they focused more on what their lips were doing for a few moments. Then Kensi pushed on his shoulders, rolling him until their positions were reversed. Her breasts pressed flat against his body, she raised and lowered her hips in a deliberate way to maximize the friction between them.

Some of her motions were more side to side, and his cock was squeezed back and forth inside her as she swayed. As much as he loved being in control, there was something to be said for letting her do it. When Kensi was the one in charge, she was unpredictable. He didn't know what was coming next, and the surprise element of it made him that much more sorry that this was to be their last time.

She had really upped the tempo, crashing down on him with speed and force. And Deeks could no longer lay idly beneath her. He had begun to push back up against her, holding onto her ass as she sat straight up above him.

Again, he found himself transfixed by the sight before him. Her fiercely beautiful face was scrunched up in pleasure, the muscles of her toned stomach were flexed, the crystal of her naval ring dangled back and forth, and her perfect breasts bounced as she rode him towards her second climax.

He thought he was about to lose it again, as she collapsed back on top of him, biting his shoulder and clinging to him. Her hips moved as erratically as the convulsing muscles within her that were clenching around his cock and threatening to pull him with her.

With a strength he didn't know he still had, he rolled them one more time. Free to move without hinderance, he started to pound into her repeatedly. Her body was still wrapped tightly around his, and her moans of ecstasy were broken only when she needed to take a ragged breath.

As the sensations that now controlled his whole body started to crash over him, Deeks himself found it impossible to contain the grunts and groans that broadcast the pleasure he was feeling. Her lips found his again, and their dueling tongues muffled his cry as his tension was finally released. His body quaked, and his cock— still buried deep within her, throbbed as he spilled himself after a final thrust.

Panting, and groaning with effort, he pulled away to deal with the rubber and the results of their romp on his bed. Kensi was still laying there when he returned, sprawled across his entire mattress and catching her breath. To his surprise, she nestled back into him when he pressed his chest to her back, and wrapped an arm around her waist.

"I should go soon," she said somewhat wistfully with a sigh.

"I'd tell you to stay, but it's become clear to me that you respond best to reverse psychology," he informed her. "So yeah, go."

She turned her head so he could see her roll her eyes at him. With a smile, she said, "You must think I'm pretty dim to try that again."

"Not at all, actually," he disagreed. "But I don't know what to think of you. Despite of what we've already been through, I hardly know you. I suppose that'll change soon, now that we're partners."

"Maybe. Maybe not," she said. She turned away again before continuing, "I never got to know my last partner that well."

Deeks wanted to ask her more about that; about her mysterious partner who was absent when they first met, and now seemed to be entirely out of the picture. But now wasn't the time. So he just continued to hold her.

"You're still here," he reminded her in a whisper, smiling.

"I said I'd go soon," she clarified, rolling to face him and tracing little circles with the tip of her finger on his chest. "But not yet."

It was two hours, another round in bed, and a shared shower later before Kensi was finally serious about leaving.

As he walked with her to his front door, he was pretty sure he saw her shooting anxious glances his way. He was a bit nervous himself, knowing that he'd have to start working with her on a daily basis. He had no idea how they would interact, and despite her kind words to him earlier, he still wasn't sure what she really thought of him.

"For real, though. Never again," she insisted once they'd reached his foyer.

"Right," he agreed, intending to sound serious.

Giving him a stern look, she said, "We can't…"

"I know," he said, nodding genuinely. "Because we work together now."

Deeks felt almost a little bit choked up when she looked him in the eye and finished saying in earnest, "Because, you're one of us now."

A/N: I had to watch the last part of season 1 to make this whole story line up with the show. My intent is that they now return to the cannon events that follow, and the pair continue on as if nothing ever happened.

Now, some day when I get around to going through season 2, I'll have this in the back of my mind. And I think I'll enjoy imagining that all their banter is just because two sexually frustrated people just want to bang again, and they can't/won't.

I doubt I'll write much more on that given the list of other stories I intend to write, but you never know. If I do decide to do another early season 2 story, it would likely appear here. For now, I'll mark this one as complete.

As always, thanks for the follows, favs and reviews. You all are great!