Been awhile and so my toe-dip back into this universe is short. And a birthday present. Happy 15th birthday, Jess!

Takes places after 6x03 (I think that was the last ep that aired). Mostly just a tender scene between partners that references what both Kensi and Deeks went through last season.

She's not the least bit surprised to find Deeks already inside of her bungalow when she gets there, already flipping through her DVD collection and making comments about each and every one of the movies. Deeks is not the least bit surprised to find Kensi holding a plastic bag full of burritos from his favorite place.

The bag is clearly heavy in her hand and even though they hadn't made plans together and hadn't informed each other that they would be meeting here at her place tonight, he knows full well that there's food for him inside of the bag.

There always is; lately, this is just their way. Their thing. Their survival method.

So he opens opens with, "So what shall it be tonight, Fern? Blood and guts or –"

"You tell me," she counters. "Do you need to shed a few man-tears?"

Her words are light and he knows that she means nothing serious by them, but they make him think of their moment in the Boatshed from earlier and how close she had been to fully breaking down. She's tough, of that there will never be a doubt, but sometimes she holds herself to an impossible standard that robs her of the very simple right to feel and to be in pain. He understands this need, but it hurts him to see how much closing down is hurting her. He wants to protect her, even needs to protect her a little bit, but he also knows Kensi better than just about anyone else in the world and if she ever perceives that someone thinks she's not strong enough, she'll retreat and throw up as many walls as she can.

She'll fall back, bunker down and find a way to get even tougher.

Which means – has always meant – that the way to be there for Kensi isn't to try to scale the walls, but rather to make her laugh and smile and understand that he really is okay with whomever she wants and needs to be. The truth is that he adores the tough Kensi as well as the one that sometimes gets tears in her eyes because she's trying to figure out how not to lose her shit in front of everybody.

"Deeks," Kensi says softly, pulling him from his thoughts. He looks up at her and grins and it's probably too late because her eyes are hardening and he knows that he has to think fast here or she's going to get pissed. She doesn't handle what she perceives as pity well and despite how far they've come and how much she knows he would never pity her, her natural inclination when she sees worry headed her way is to assume that someone thinks she can't handle something.

Which is probably why Callen never dares to look at Kensi with any expression on his face besides cocky confidence mixed with big-brother shock and awe.

"Sorry," he says and then grins. "I was remembering something stupid."

"Care to tell me?" Kensi asks, her eyebrow. She sees the lie where it is.

But she's going to let him dig his way out of this and he thinks that that matters because if she wasn't, if she was just charging ahead and getting upset, then he would know that she was probably past the point of humor. Right now, she's still clearly smarting from the walk back through her memories of her captivity in Afghanistan, but she's handling them. She's on top of them for the moment.

So he tells her a story about Ray and how they'd nearly gotten their asses kicked because neither one of them had been able to play the straight man when they'd both desperately needed the either guy to. "So Dumb and Dumber?" Kensi asks.

He laughs. "Dumbest. He would say something stupid that would piss Wingo –"

"I can't believe you got beaten up by a guy named Wingo."

"Did you not hear the part when I said that Wingo was a very big man? Very impressive. He had these arms like…" Deeks uses both of his hands to show her the size of a man's arms. "Like Popeye. But he wasn't as nice as Popeye."

"Sam has bigger arms than Popeye."

"You think so?" Deeks replies with a frown. "I mean I think Sam is this big –"

Kensi moves his hands apart. "Bigger."

"You realize that this is a really odd conversation, right?" Deeks asks, trying not to react to how close she is to him again. Which is goofy because he'd woken up next to her on the couch and had held her in his arms earlier that afternoon.

But there's something about her and until they figure out what's really going on between them – whether something should be going on – he finds moments like these when her hands are on him and everything is calm the hardest of them all.

"I do," she answers and then she's stepping away and dropping the bag full of burritos onto the table. "Something to distract me," she adds, gesturing to the TV.

"High body-count or low?"

"No body-count. Comedy."

"Really?" he asks, his eyebrows up. "And you're letting me choose?"

She grins. "Just this once."

"You're too good to me."

"I am so choose well, Partner."

Deeks knows his comedies and so he spectacularly chooses well.

It's past midnight and Kensi is slumped against Deeks with her head against his chest. The movie is over and she thinks her ribs hurt from laughing so much.

All in all, it's a good night and yeah, she'd even forgotten for a few minutes.

But now she remembers and it makes her say softly, "Is that what helps?"

"What?" he asks groggily.

She rolls in his arms and there's a moment there where he has to center himself because she's leaning on certain parts of him and his mind is flashing back to a night that they're both pretending never existed. Even if it changed everything.

But he smiles down at her and moves her hair out of her eyes and he waits.

She licks her lips and says, "When you remember what you went through, what they did to you. When you remember, do these movies help you forget?"

"Ah," Deeks says and then he frowns because he has tried hard not to think about the torture that he'd endured. He's spent so much of his life not thinking about the things that hurt him (his mother, his father, his youth and his uglier days undercover and the many things he's lost along the way) and it's always been what's helped him to survive. Kensi run hotter, though, and so it's no great surprise that she's struggling to deal with a time when she wasn't strong enough.

"That's not an answer," she reminds him.

"No," he agrees. "And no."

"So what do you do? How do you keep the nightmares away?" she asks. He stops for a moment, doesn't say anything at all because he knows that this is an important moment and if he walks into it with a quip, she'll close down again.

But she's reaching out to him right now and though every single part of him wants to either hug her or make her laugh once more, he says, "I have you."

"Deeks –"

"What I mean is, I have the job to help me get out of my own head and it's always better when I'm not in there. For everyone. The job helps me focus on what I'm good at instead of thinking about what I wasn't good at. Like how I couldn't stop them from torturing me and I couldn't get to you in time to stop you from going –"

She cuts in quickly. "That's not your fault. None of that…none of that is on you."

"Did you blame yourself for not getting to me quicker?"

She doesn't reply.

"We're partners," he says and means something else entirely.

"I need to be tougher than this," she murmurs, looking down for a moment.

He shakes his head. "No, you don't. You need to feel what you feel and know that no matter what you feel, I still think you're the toughest woman in the room."

She can't help the smile that comes over her face as she meets his blue eyes.

"There we go," he grins. "That's my girl."

"You think you know me so well," she offers up, unsteady but trying.

"Well, I knew that would make you smile."

"It's making me –" she wipes at her eyes.

"That's okay, too," he says. "But uh, what might not be is where your knee is."

"My knee – oh!" She grins sheepishly at him. "Sorry."

"Yeah. Which you know, doesn't mean you have to get up."

She smiles again and moves away from him, but then her hand is straying out and catching his and she doesn't even look at it, like it's not supposed to be the big deal that it quite clearly is. "You know," she says. "It's okay if you need to talk about what happened. If you need to talk about the nightmares that you have."

It's tentative and uncertain, like she thinks her offer might be rejected or like he might think she's playing an angle – trying to make herself stronger by making him weaker – but he knows her better and knows that this is her trying to turn things around and be there for him. She's an action hero and being an emotional rock isn't what she does best, but for him, she will damn well try to be one.

"I'm okay," he assures her. "They don't happen as much anymore and Nate is there when I do have one that I need to…figure out. And then there's Sam when I need to hit something. And you when I need to laugh." He grins. "At someone."

He's expecting another smile but then she's shaking her head. "We're partners," she says to him. "We should be able to be all of those things for each other."

"Sometimes it doesn't hurt to have multiple outlets. And Kens, you're not less to me because I don't tell you that I can't figure out why I was in a room all alone."

"I don't know how to do this," she says softly.

"Do what?"

"Feel like I can't find the ground beneath my feet. I've been out of control before but it was always…it was different than feeling like I'm fighting my own mind. I always knew what Jack was going through in technical terms, but not like this."

"It sucks," Deeks says succinctly. "But you're not alone and neither am I."

"If I asked you to kiss me, would you?"

"Every other moment of every other day, yes. But not this one. I care for you too much to have that be our relationship. And I believe that you do as well."

"I do," she admits. She sighs then and looks at the clock. "Five hours to go."

"So do we sleep or find another movie?" he asks, brushing her hair away again.

"I don't want to dream."

"Movie it is. And I have just the one." He then leans forward and presses his lips to hers, holding the kiss there without pushing any further, just enjoying it.

When he breaks, she tilts her head. "I thought you said –"

"That was you're beautiful, my tough little Kensi."

"Little?"

He holds up their still joined hands. "You have little hands. Compared to mine."

"You wish."

"I mean they're man hands, but –"

"Put the movie in before I put my knee back where it was."

He laughs and she laughs and he thinks that they don't know what they are and they're both figuring out where they've been and maybe even where they're going, but they're doing it together and that's why the nightmares mean less.

Because this – these moments right here – will always mean more.

-Fin