Hello everyone! Back sooner than I'd thought - the ideas are flowing faster than usual. I didn't get a chance to reply to the reviews for the second part of 'Absence' but I appreciated every one and it was a real confidence boost for someone returning to writing after so long. There may be a sequel to that but I'm a bit stuck with it at the moment.

(Still not mine: if they were there wouldn't be enough actual plot to sustain the show!)

There was a kiss and then there was awkwardness. And now he's in front of Hetty trying not to tell her why he needs out of NCIS.

"Are you unhappy with us?" she asks, in that deceptively mild tone she always uses.

He doesn't know any more. "No," he says, forcing himself not to give in to the urge to fill the silence with explanations.

"So something has changed?" she persists.

She's the smallest woman he knows. He's pretty certain he could lean on her and she'd break. And she still makes him more nervous than Sam does – well, most of the time.

"No," he repeats, almost biting his tongue to prevent more words.

She sighs. "Forgive me if I appear stupid, Detective, but I fail to see why else you would want to leave."

"Time for something different," he says, keeping his voice deliberately light. "New challenges, new ways of working, new… people."

She's staring at him as though she doesn't believe a word of it. This whole conversation had been a lot easier when it was only in his head.

"Well, I don't think I can stop you. After all, you are not my agent, however much I had hoped… However, I will ask you to give it a few more days, just to be sure."

"Hetty, I've been thinking about this for weeks already," he insists, trying not to sound desperate. "I know what I want."

"Sometimes, my dear, what we think we want isn't what is wanted for us."

Wherever he goes, he's sure there won't be anyone as cryptic as Hetty.

He pulls a face. "Okay. Three days."

"A week," she counters.

"Hetty… You said a few days."

"A few days, a week – what's the difference?" she says dismissively, with a casual wave of her hand. "Now, a week. Next Friday, if you still want to go, I will make it easy for you."

He looks at her suspiciously. "That's not a week. A week is Thursday."

"Splitting hairs, my dear. It's easier if it's a Friday. Administratively."

He's pretty sure she doesn't care about easy administration. "And then you'll back me?"

"I will."

He nods. "Okay." He turns to leave, but as an afterthought adds, "Thank you. I appreciate it."

He's almost at the door when she says his name and he has to turn again.

"I said I'd make it easy for you then. I don't promise to make it easy for you before then," she says, pointedly.

He doesn't really know what she means, but he knows he's already won as many concessions as he could hope for. So he leaves it at an acknowledging nod before he closes the door behind him.

She hears him come back but resists the urge to look up.

"Everything okay?" she asks, deliberately keeping her voice light.

"Fine," he says shortly, not offering anything beyond that.

Her mouth opens to say something else – what else, she has no idea – but she closes it again, staring at her screen without blinking until the words blur in front of her and she feels the sharp sting of tears behind her eyes. She doesn't know if she's upset or angry or just plain frustrated with this whole situation but she does know that it's going to take both of them to snap out of it. As much as she wants to blame him, she can't, not really.

The claustrophobic tension envelops them as they studiously ignore each other. She's pretty certain he's only pretending to be engrossed in his work – just like she is – but every second ticks by without the kind of flippant remark that always distracted her in the past. She used to struggle to finish her paperwork against a background of silly jokes and persuasive distractions – c'mon, Kens, just a few minutes – but the past month has seen her catch up to the extent that she's worried she won't have enough work to keep her occupied and not think about them and this painful, cyclical state of affairs they've landed in.

She'd like to think this is all the fault of the kiss they've never talked about but if she forces herself to be honest she knows they could handle that were it not for the weeks preceding. It's those weeks that have done the damage, when they were locked into a spiral of mutual antagonism that neither realised wasn't just their usual banter until too late.

And she knows now, with a clarity that only ever strikes in hindsight, that it's always been about Drew, the man she met quite randomly on the beach two month ago – and yes, she knows too that being there with her partner and giving her number to another man was a mistake she shouldn't have even contemplated before avoiding it. She hadn't intended to take it any further than an interesting conversation with a nice man whilst she watched the waves peacefully and waited for Deeks to return with a promised ice cream. At that point, Drew (and his friendly dog, who had helpfully acted as a conversational catalyst) had waved merrily and gone on their way, possibly never to cross her mind again. Except he had to open his mouth, because he never missed an opportunity to see if he could fit his foot in it.

"Clearly he couldn't handle the competition."

And he'd winked as he passed over her ice cream and to this day she has no idea why it got to her. Why on that day, rather than any of the previous seven hundred days, had she had enough of his assumption of ownership and why, suddenly, couldn't she stand the idea of this merry-go-round they'd got themselves into.

"You're hardly competition, Deeks."

Something had passed behind his eyes, a glimmer of hurt that disappeared so quickly she started doubting she'd ever seen it.

"C'mon Kens, he clearly thought we were together."

"Well, if he did then I should have corrected him," she'd retorted sharply, gulping the peak of her ice cream too fast and feeling the cold freeze slither down her throat.

He'd laughed. "Like you would have done that."

And suddenly, she was angry, disproportionately so considering she heard remarks like that come out of his mouth every other day.

"You don't own me," was all she said, but she knew he'd recognised her tone.

"Kensi..."

"No, forget it," she'd cut him off hurriedly, instantly realising that this was the conversation that would get them nowhere but take them too far. "I don't... Just forget it, yeah?"

He'd nodded and that was never a good sign. They argued, they bickered, they outright disagreed, that was their thing as much as anything was – harmony and cooperation simply didn't sit well with them.

They'd walked along the beach and he'd talked too much and she'd talked too little, both instinctively aware of a change that neither could describe but knew they should lock at the back of their minds. She had never before wanted to be away from him so much, even at the beginning of their partnership, but what scared her more was the deep-seated pool of adrenaline telling her this meant far more than five or six outwardly flippant sentences.

And maybe – if they'd reached their destination, gone their separate ways, spent a couple of days apart and had time to think properly – it would all have gone back to normal, with the incident no more than a slightly uncomfortable memory. It's possible that, if they hadn't run into Drew as they neared the car, there would never have been an exchanged number (that wound him up), a date (about which they argued) or a kiss (that she should never have let happen – or at the very least should have stopped before she did). But she was angry and confused and goodness knows what else, so when Drew had asked if she was single, she'd said yes before thinking twice (because she was single, she reminds herself quickly), reeling off her number so he could save it in his phone. She'd ignored her partner's burning eyes and the little voice in her head that told her this was one of her more stupid ideas.

And now she has a boyfriend – a nice one, someone who's entertaining and funny, considerate and thoughtful. Someone who clearly likes her enough to overlook her evasive answers about her work – so far – and seems to be okay with her reluctance to look too far ahead – at the moment. Someone worth breaking her no-second-date rule.

She looks at Deeks, sat so near to her, and wonders if this can be fixed. She doesn't even want to contemplate why he wanted to see Hetty this morning, however loudly her instinct is knocking on the door of her denial. There's no way he's leaving her, not before they've given themselves a proper chance to get past this. It hasn't been long enough for this new situation to settle yet and it was always going to be strange when one of them was with someone else and they simply need time.

Time will help them – it has no choice.

This started off as a one-shot but the story arc I have worked out seems to prefer chapters. Everyone cross their fingers my imagination/discipline doesn't fail me...

As always, I love the reviews but I don't mind people reading and moving on at all.