Standing

Summary: Of course Hetty had cameras installed in the weapon room. Drabble, post-ep to s04ep23. Kensi, Deeks.

Warning: -

Set: Spoilers for season 4, episode 23.

Disclaimer: Standards apply.

Of course Hetty has cameras installed in the weapon's room.

Deeks looks down on the paper with her neat handwriting – he imagines his grandmother's letters to him would have looked like this, had he known his grandmother and had she lived long enough to write letters to him – and swallows all the things he had wanted to say. Not to Hetty, obviously.

Sunshine and gunpowder.

So now he can busy his mind with the question: had Hetty wanted to stop him from blurting out anything stupid because it would either damage Kensi and his relationship or take it a step further – a step which might not be allowed in NCIS? Or had she wanted to give him the push to actually say something? Whatever it was, he isn't sure he would have found the right words, anyway. It is always the same: the moment Kensi and he start talking seriously, one of them runs. So this time she was the first to do so – it did not matter, he could have been it in her stead. We're good. What else was it but pure evasion.

That morning he had found himself on the run with a woman he had taken years to seduce – because, face it, that was what he had done, had seduced her and blatantly used her for his purposes – and then, suddenly, he had two women talking to him simultaneously. Only one was talking to Max and one to Marty and perhaps he would have taken it well had he not been brittle and confused right from the start. Monica was like Max – not matter what she said and how she looked at him, he did not believe he had broken her heart and ruined her life for even one second – and Marty is like Kensi and no matter how much he has persuaded himself to believe just that – that what Max does it not the same what Marty does – sometimes it feels like it is the same. And it makes him feel like shit.

Right now he isn't quite sure what is more painful: the way Monica looked at him when she realized he was a cop, or the way Kensi smiled when he said they were good.

Sunshine and gunpowder.

The only alternative, he guesses, is to go home and get drunk. Badly. Tomorrow it will be like every day, because it works like that with him and Kensi. He has taken two years and more to break down her walls – patient, he is nothing but patient – and hasn't noticed that she, in return, hadn't even tried to be subtle, tearing down his own defense with a bulldozer. The image stuck in his head, he chuckles and stops again. Folds the letter, places it back in the envelope carefully.

"What do you want me to do, Hetty?" He asks into the room, but he is pretty sure she has already turned off the cameras. She has a timing like that.

…

The second she uttered the words she already felt guilty.

Kensi's not the type of person who actually feels the difference. She goes undercover and afterwards sheds her cover like others shed their clothes after a long day of work. But she, as opposed to Deeks, never went under deep cover, so perhaps there is the point? Looking back at that day she knows she should have behaved differently towards him, perhaps shouldn't have told Monica who he was so cruelly. It was a stupid impulse, a primal marking of territory: You had Max Gentry, but Max Gentry is Marty Deeks, he's a cop and my partner and he belongs to me. But he had looked so lost, pointing his gun at a woman he had taken pains to make her trust him, and Kensi had wanted to get over with it as fast as possible.

And he had smiled at her joke from before.

Kensi is quite sure she shouldn't think of him like that – they are partners, nothing more – but she cannot help herself anymore. It shouldn't hurt when women lean over to whisper something in his ear, or when someone tells her she can't trust him. The first answer that comes to her mind is that Monica is wrong, completely wrong: The only person in this world she trusts is him. Because he is her partner. Because people leave, and die, and deceive. And whoever will deceive her next, whoever will run out on her and leave her broken and bruised: it won't be him. Deeks will stand in the door the next day and will bully her to drive out to the beach with him to watch him surf, he will get her donuts and coffee and will annoy her until she forgets herself and punches him. He will have her back when she is undercover and when she is in a shoot-out and when she is lost. He has already proven it: He will be there. Always, always, whether she wants him or not. And she does. Want him. The moment the thought crosses her mind, she knows it is true. She knows it is dangerous, too, but it is too late to go back.

It makes her feel a tiny little bit happy.

He smiled, but she still feels sorry. Leaving him in the dark room feels wrong but she cannot simply drag him out and take him home with her. He's not a stray dog, even if he looks like one. It's not attraction, not today, she just wants to curl up next to him. Wants to hear him, see him, feel him and know he is there. That he is there with her, not with Monica, she wants Marty Deeks not to think of Max Gentry and of how he will ever be able to forgive himself and of how many people he betrayed. She wants him to fall asleep and stop thinking at all and when he wakes up the next morning she wants to watch him blink adorably drowsily and then spring into action, annoying her until she consents and they drive down to the beach to catch the morning sunshine and waves.

She will buy him coffee, even though he only gets hyper from it.

But Max has not yet abandoned Marty, still hangs like a cloud over his head and dances in his eyes. So she leaves him in the dark room and prays he will be better tomorrow.

She does not know what she will do if he isn't.

…

It is where they stand: at a precarious edge, keeping each other from falling, at an abyss that is filled with the bodies of people both of them have left, abandoned or lied to. If the entire world goes up in flames, they know, they will still have each other, but sometimes it feels like it should not be that way. And it makes them both a tiny bit happy, but it hurts, too, because it could be so much more.

But they are still standing. That alone should count for something.