AN: There is so much hurt (go research the background of the song), we need to stop crime and war especially!
Thanks to BlackBeltGirl67 to beta this. She has so much patience with me :-)
A gunshot rung throught the hot afternoon air.
A shot followed by a rumple and clatter.
A shot that made Deeks' heart stop.
He turned around and ran the direction his partner had gone.
His feet moved as if throught jelly, his brain ran thousand miles per hour.
Why didn't he listen?
Why did he fight her?
Why did he know she was...
"Kensi!"
She had to be alive.
She had to be okay.
She had to stay with him.
"Stop! Or I'll shoot!"
Without even acknowledging, only reacting, he shot the owner of this voice.
He was dead without even a second to think.
What if Kensi was...?
No!
Don't go there, Deeks.
She is alright, she is-
"Deeks..."
He rushed to her side, taking her hand from the cold floor.
He saw her faint smile.
Then he saw the blood on her side.
"Guess this is it, huh?"
How could she smile in such a situation, how could she joke?
"No, Kens, no this is not it. This is a bad situation, nothing we hadn't had before. But we'll make it throught, you'll make it through."
Never letting go of her hand, he ripped her blouse open to see the wound.
A sharp hiss of pain made him flinch.
Whose it was, he'll never know.
"No worse than yours."
How didn't she have fear?
How did she not cry and scream the whole time?
How damn long could it take for the back up to come?
"Hold on, Kens." His voice was teary, his cheeks wet. He was the one crying.
Only briefly did he let go of her hand, as he pulled his shirt over his head and pressed it to the wound.
"Now that I'm...now that it is your last chance you rid us of our clothes?" She chuckled quietly.
Deeks couldn't smile, not even for her sake.
"You will have lots of chances to undress me, princess, once we're outta here I'm not letting you get away."
Her numb fingers searched for his over the blood- drenched fabric.
"Tell me about it."
*I will tell you a story if you die*
Her eyes drooped, her breathing became slow.
It was his responsibility to keep her awake.
So he did as she asked.
Not only because she wanted it. He wanted it too. This was his his perfect life with her.
*I will tell you a story and keep you alive*
"About how after I will have taken you home from the hospital I'm gonna wine and dine you? About how we will watch the sunset, cuddle on the couch and kiss goodnight?" He smiled too trying to lose himself in the dreams he had about them.
"You'll get your most beautiful dresses out -maybe even a short one," he tried a joke, "and we'll go to that restaurant at the pier, where you need a reservation years before you want to eat, but we'll get in, because I once safed the manager from a serial-poison-killer."
"The one you knocked out with a door, because you didn't know what 'in' and 'out' on the kitchen-doors meant?"
*The best I can*
"Yeah, that one," he bowed his head as he felt the redness on his cheeks. She always managed to make him blush. She brought him down to earth and made him fly with one smile.
"And in a few years when I carry around our first child in the middle of the night while you're fast asleep taking up the whole bed for yourself, it will hear this story too."
*I will tell them to the children*
"And I will repeat it over and over for our seventh child again-"
"Seventh?"
He looked down at her, only her face, as not to see the wound on her chest. And all the blood she already lost.
He needed to focus on the light things. On the hopes he had.
"Eight then? Might be a bit much, I mean we need a bigger house for them."
Kensi brought up her other arm in order to slap him on the shoulder.
But her face scrunched and a small cry of pain escaped her as she too had forgotten what was happening here and now.
"If you keep making me angry like you love to, we have to adopt them." She said after a few minutes of silence.
*If we have some*
"What can I say, I love pushing your buttons. And my name, falling from your lips in that voice thick with wrath, that totally turns me on."
His hand, covered in her warm blood, found her face and stroked over her cheek.
He had known about the perks of this job.
He had known how it felt losing a partner.
He had never known losing the one he loved for good.
*But I have always felt the feeling we would die young*
Callen had told him that working their jobs meant probably not becoming old enough to care about wrinkles and retirement.
And still they got up every day, hoping to see tomorrow's sunrise too.
*Some die young*
She had lost Dom, and he had lost Jess.
They had seen that Callen's warning wasn't empty.
But Kensi...she couldn't die, not like this. Not without them being brave enough to commit to their thing, to commit to each other.
*Some, some die young
But you better hold on*
Her eyelids fluttered, it became harder and harder for her to stay awake.
"Kens," his voice was hoarse, "Don't close your eyes."
She looked at him and he was relieved to see the light that was still in them.
"It's not over," he whispered. „Let me say those three words when you're ready, when you stand in the middle of hundreds of rosebuds on the beach and me having you in my arms."
*Some many things I need to say to you*
"Don't make me say them now, when you're lying on the ground of some bad guy's house, while we're waiting for help." He was flat out crying now, his hand clutching hers as if keeping her in the land of living, keeping her with him.
*Please don't, don't let me go*
"Hold on, Kens, hold onto me," he repeated over and over, stroking her face and holding her hand and pressing on her wound all the same.
If she had to go, why couldn't it be with him?
Why couldn't they have a deadly car-crash or drown in the surf or...however it could have been, why would she be the only one getting a bullet when he would have to follow her with a method he'd have to chose? He sure as hell won't live without her. Not that he would be able to.
*We said we would die together*
"Hey," Kensi's voice brought him from his dark thoughts. "You need to stand strong, so I can hold onto you." She was too weak to smile, but he felt she would have done so.
He nodded, nodded as if his head would fall off every second without him doing so.
"Deeks, if I...if they're not here...in time-"
"No, Kens, don't even think like that!"
"Deeks." Right, he mustn't lose it now. „Some die young..."
"But let it be the bad guys, not you."
She looked over at the guy on the floor. The guy Deeks had shot without even thinking about it.
"Clean shot." Kensi analysed dryly.
"He was lucky," Deeks snorted. "If I had the chance I would have done things to him, he would wish he were dead instead." The mere attempt to hurt his partner was the death-sentence to every human being out there if it were his decision.
"That's kind of cute," she knew how he hated being called cute by her, no matter how often he heard it. "But for now you have to keep it low, okay?"
*I will tell you a story if you try*
"I don't want to be dressed up to the nines when I only visit you in jail."
"In that red hot dress?"
"The shortest you know of."
"Does that mean there are shorter ones?"
She winced, and clenched his hand even harder. But she carried on. „You'll have to wait, Shaggy, you'll have to wait."
*But along with your thoughts of valleys they are green*
"It would go well with my red dress shirt."
"You hinting on going dancing?"
"Maybe." He smiled full out now, reassuring her that if there are dreams, there are possibilities.
"How far have we come for us to have this conversation?" He mused scrunching his shirt on her chest together to get the clean parts close enough to the blood.
*When the world you were born in changes with seasons*
"Far enough to not run from our thing anymore. Not that I can do much running right now," Kensi tried to lighten the mood.
"You will be able to. Give yourself time, now that you've given it to us. I'm waiting for your next steps."
How can someone speak so much with so few words?
How can he calm the storm with one look?
How can he be so strong?
*Will you run with this dream or will you run alone*
"Kensi! Deeks!" Callen shouted from not too far away.
"Here!" Several footsteps sounded on the floor, as not only the two NCIS-agents, but also to paramedics came their way.
Deeks almost overheard his partner's hoarse plea in all the noise. "Stay with me?"
He squeezed her hand. "Just like you did, princess."
Deeks never was more than a few steps away from her, seeking her eyes as often as possible.
He kept smiling, for he had to be the one to stay brave and strong.
When they brought her into surgery, he finally allowed himself to slump into one of those uncomfortable chairs. His elbows propped on his knees only supported his still naked torso.
Temperature, sounds, light- nothing mattered anymore. For as long as he didn't know how Kensi is nothing mattered.
Deeks didn't know how much time had passed, for what it had felt to him it could have been years or decades, when someone put a blanket around his shoulders.
He looked up to find Callen standing before him.
"She'll pull through," he only said and sat down next to Deeks.
Unable to add anything to this, he took the fabric from his shoulders to find it being a t-shirt.
"Kensi shouldn't have to put up with you being ill after all this," was Callen's explanation.
Deeks put the shirt on and looked at the man beside him.
"Does it always feel like that?"
His eyes added what he couldn't voice: does it always feel as if you fall into a bottomless hell, when someone you are so close with could die?
*or will you run against*
"When you're not sure, if they'll make it, it's even worse." His team leader had seen worse, so Deeks knew. „Kensi has something she has to fight for, a future she can live when she gets out."
When, not if.
"Solve that thing the two of you have, and stop dancing around each other. You will work together even better." Sam sat down on the other side of Deeks.
He only nodded and looked at the coffee the man handed him.
"We can't guarantee that delicate situations won't appear anymore, that would be a lie. But if your head's one hundred percent in the game even when you have her too close to you, this situations will less likely go south." Callen said.
*and finally reveal why some die young*
"A team is great to work together. You know your partner's strenghts-"
"-and weaknesses-"
"-and cover it-"
"-and work it out."
A light chuckle escaped Deeks lips.
"That little game of Ping-Pong was just showing off now, right?"
Callen and Sam only smirked. They knew how to complete the other's thoughts and sentences as well as they knew how to improvise in the field.
"But a relationship like yours has its own advantages. It offers ways to not only know, but feel how you need to react. Believe me," Sam continued joking as if Deeks had never said anything. "Working with your wife is something else than with your work-wife."
Before Callen could open his mouth to add something, may it be nice or not, to his partner's words, a doctor came out of the room where Kensi was in and smiled.
"You can follow me to the room she's being brought into now."
x-_-x
This was written one week before my little one got her diagnosis. Wherever you are now, you know we love you always.