Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS: Los Angeles. I also do not own "The Definitive Version" by Richard Siken or "Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe, both of which are briefly referenced.

Deeks is seven years old and the world freezes for the very first time in nearly two thousand years.

Lightning struck the tree outside of his window while a storm raged down in the living room and he almost forgot to keep breathing when the pillow he threw in frustration stopped just before it hit the carpet.

He walks downstairs to find everything at a standstill and he feels like an intruder in his own life because there is broken glass on the landing and the kitchen is empty. His mother's hand caught reaching for the first aid kit in the bathroom and he can see his father's silhouette through the raindrops that hover over the front porch.

Everything is waiting for a signal to jump back to life and he wonders if this applies to him as well because he's old enough to understand that things are not going to get better for a long, long time. Sadness begets sadness and sometimes it's not enough to want to be anything but what you've always been. He whispers this like a prayer before he falls asleep; he etches it into the foggy bathroom mirror and watches it disappear like a secret.

The world is frozen and Deeks is alive and when his best friend invited him to his birthday party last week he said no because he can't eat cake and play games and pretend like he's not jealous for long enough to make it worth the effort. The last time he played hide and seek he nearly had a panic attack because for some people this is a game and somehow this has become his life and he wishes he could go back to the hospital and ask the nurses if they could read his future in his parents' faces just after he was born. Some people are born great and some people are born old and some people are born ready to disappear. He's never been told he was anything at all and when the wind blows through the crack in his window he wonders if it'll pick him up and carry him away.

So he crawls under his bed until the thunder finally shakes everything back into motion and he counts the springs under his mattress until the lights in the hallway finally flicker off.

Deeks is ten years old and his mother bakes bread on a Saturday morning when his father is at work.

He sits on the counter and watches her move steadily around the room. She hums slows songs from her childhood and tells him that her own mother used to make cinnamon rolls and while her father was a railroad conductor out of Ohio. She moved out to California to live with relatives and go to college and she met the love of her life on the boardwalk and it was like summiting a mountain after a lifetime of climbing.

The story crumbles in his mouth like sawdust and he nearly chokes because he wonders if she ever thought she'd end up so unhappy and so unsure. If everything was so perfect then why aren't there any family pictures on the mantle and why does she sleep with her fingers crossed under her pillow like she's waiting for a promise to be kept?

She used to read him fairytales but then someone left a library book on his desk one day and the words "Fairy tales have rules" are highlighted and all of a sudden he doesn't want to be a knight anymore. There are ghosts in the corner and sometimes he thinks that she might see them too because they sit in silence at the dinner table and when she hugs him goodnight it always feels like goodbye. Neither of them is strong enough to leave first but they cannot keep sweeping up broken glass and bandaging wounds. Everyone bleeds out eventually.

He finds a brochure for San Antonio in her purse when she sends him to get the mail key and he folds it up and buries it in the backyard.

The first rule of fairy tales is that only the good guys get happy endings.

The second rule is that sometimes the good guys are not part of the story.

Deeks is fifteen years old and he shoots his father on purpose.

His fingers tingle for three weeks afterward and he speaks in riddles because it's the only thing he can remember how to do.

The doctors shine a light in his eyes and the social workers ask him questions with sour answers. None of them notice the map he drew on the back wall of his closet where he's labeled every major city in the United States and the highways that could lead him there. None of them ask about the backpack he's stuffed under the extra towels in the linen closet. His mother left on a Sunday morning after making him toast for breakfast and kissing him on the forehead. He waited up for three nights for her to come back and hid every single picture with her in it under the floorboards in the living room. (It felt like a heartbeat and it suffocated him just like they told him it would)

Something has exploded in his mind and he wakes up one morning to find that people are walking on the ceiling. All he can remember is the look in his father's eye when he pulled the trigger and the bullet that screamed things like I wanted to love you but you never taught me how and now look at me look at me and be proud of the only thing you've ever made before blood splashed on the sidewalk and the neighbors called 911.

He shoots his father but he doesn't kill him.

But sometimes he wishes he had and this terrifies him because he's not ready to accept that he holds that kind of darkness inside of him. He wants to be kind and he wants to be strong and he wants to be different but he cries in the waiting room of the hospital and refuses to eat for nearly a week because all he wants to do is claw his way out of his own skin. He's all grown up and he's barely fifteen. He knew that the fall would hurt but he didn't expect the recovery to be quite this lonely.

Deeks is twenty and in his sophomore year of college when he takes a girl out on a date and she asks "So what's your story?"

He chokes on his water and ducks and dodges but she won't budge and he can see in her eyes that this is important to her. It's frightening because his whole life all he's wanted is for someone to listen and now he doesn't know what to say.

I was born to parents who might have loved each other once but I think they were just so desperate not to be alone that they decided to be unhappy instead. My best friend tried to kill himself when he was fourteen and I don't think he'll ever forgive me for saving his life.

I don't think I'll ever forgive myself because I didn't go to his seventh birthday party because I thought he was happier than me and it turns out his shoulders are black and blue from holding the world up on his shoulders, just like mine.

When I was sixteen I saw two cars crash at a busy intersection when I was supposed to be in school; they erupted into a ball of fire in the left-hand lane and when we pulled open the doors to pull out the survivors we realized that there were none. One of the cars belonged to the father of a girl in my history class and every time I saw her after that I felt sick and responsible and she could never really look me in the eye.

There are so many things that I don't have a place for and I can feel them rattling around inside of me when I breathe too deeply. I cut myself on my own rough edges and all I've ever wanted is someone who doesn't lock the door because they aren't afraid of what might come in.

She reaches over and grabs his hand and he breathes deeply for the first time in nearly two decades.

They date for six months before she tells him she needs someone who doesn't carry their past around like a suitcase. When she kisses him on the cheek it sinks into his skin like poison.

He doesn't love again for a very long time.

Deeks is thirty one years old when he realizes that the war inside of his mind has finally stopped.

Maybe the scars on his chest are constellations instead of tally marks and maybe the door he's been trying to open for thirty years isn't the one he really wants. A woman sits next to him in a bar and offers him a job even though his teeth taste like smoke and his hands tremble when he pays for his tab.

He says yes because he needs to pay his rent and because she smiles at him like she has something to tell him but doesn't think he's ready to hear it.

And suddenly the people he works with are made of fire. When they say Welcome to the team he knows that they mean We'll see. He is the only one who knows that this goes both ways, because he is familiar with back doors and loophole and even though LAPD never invites him to the office Christmas party they would still let him die in the line of duty if he asked them for his old job back.

But he proves himself in the explosion of a press-box bomb and they stop walking around his desk like it's going somewhere. When his partner steals his pencils and buys him coffee in return he thinks that this might be the first real thing he's ever been a part of.

Deeks is thirty three years old the first time he sleeps through a thunderstorm and he decides that things might finally be looking up.