Wrecks, Rounders and Rapport
Author: Cheryl W.
Disclaimer: I do not own any characters or any rights to LA NCIS, nor am I making any profit from this story.
Summary: After gaining and losing his sister all in one day, Callen could use some company, he just never expected it to be Deeks. An AU missing scene for season 1 finale. No slash.
Author's Note: In the Season 1 finale, I thought Deeks got ripped! They mentioned contacting LAPD to shadow Callen's car chase with the kidnappers (and his subsequent car accident) but Deeks didn't get to make an appearance. So this is my "Missing Scene" to make up for that.
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Marty Deeks had thought his LAPD cohorts had finally run their gamut of heckling him about his helping NCIS, but the jeering taunt that greeted his entrance into the Precinct proved him wrong.
"There he is! Deeks, exactly how fond are you of those NCIS blowhards?!" Leon, the department's resident loud mouth, called across the bullpen.
Crossing over to his desk, Marty waited for the punch line because, with Leon, there always was one.
And then it came, with Leon's smug smirk in place. "Cause the white guy with the crew-cut, he just rolled his car two times."
Marty's head snapped up, praying that it was one of Leon's sick jokes. "Callen…" he stammered, dread settling over him as he stalked toward Leon, swearing to kill the man if this was another one of his pranks. "How do…"
"Rolled it five times, actually," Dan, the department's anal retentive sergeant piped in. Then he pointed to the Plasma screen and hit play, let the video playback speak for itself.
Watching the van and the Mercedes side swipe each other, trying to run the other off the road, Marty tensed, knew what to expect, thanks to his "thoughtful" coworkers…and yet, he didn't. Found that he wasn't prepared enough when he saw it in living color. His stomach drop to his shoes when Callen's car hit a parked vehicle and then …it just flew, became airborne. But its flight didn't last long. When it impacted with the ground, it impacted hard, some of its parts breaking away to rain down o the pavement. And then the car rebounded into the air, did a horrific dance of twisting in the air and crashing to earth, again and again and again until Deeks felt lightheaded, couldn't breathe, could only pray it stopped soon.
But when the Mercedes at last came to rest on the street, roof side down, with its tires broken from their axles, and its frame crumpled, there was a horrifying lack of movement by the person in the upside down driver's seat. And Marty started to do what he hadn't done since he was a kid: he silently offered up a litany of prayers. 'Don't let him be dead. Don't let him be dead. Don't let Callen be dead.' Because no matter all the walls he had put up to guard himself against making attachments, he liked Callen, liked Kensi, even liked Sam.
Bracing himself for what came next, he swallowed hard and then…the plasma screen went blank.
"Put it back on," he hoarsely demanded, forced his eyes away from the screen to Dan.
"That's all we got. Your NCIS pals cut our access after that," Leon eagerly supplied.
'To give respect to their dead?' Marty desolately wondered.
Dan was about to rattle off jurisdiction parameters but his explanation got caught in his throat when he turned to Deeks. He had never thought to see the always flippant, never serious Marty Deeks looking so stricken.
If Leon noticed, he didn't care, proceeded with his hazing. "Maybe when you were liaising for them, you should have taught them how to do a chase. Least now it seems they have an opening on their team. You gonna try out for …" But Deeks' right cross cut off the man's words.
Before Leon even hit the ground, Marty was striding for the door even as he was reaching for his cellphone, praying all the while that he hadn't just watched G Callen die.
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G Callen wasn't one to have house guests, certainly had never had someone waiting for him outside his apartment. Well, unless they were there to kill him. But this particular visitor he recognized, even with his shaggy head of blond hair bowed low over his drawn up knees as he sat on the hallway's grimy carpet by his apartment door.
"Deeks, what are…" he began as he slowly came to a stop by the seated LAPD detective.
Raising his head, Deeks cut across Callen's bewilderment. "I'm not gonna ask you about your case, just came by to see for myself that you're OK after the car crash." And he was already doing his own assessment of the man standing over him, the bandage along his hairline, the uneven gait he noted in Callen's approach, the drawn, tight set to the Federal Agent's face.
Callen didn't even bother trying to pretend he misunderstood Deeks. "How did…"
"Traffic cam," Marty supplied, wished his voice hadn't cracked, revealed how much that the clip of 'deadliest chases' had affected him. "Well, until Eric cut our feed," threw in an indignant huffiness in there like he was complaining about the President daring to give a televised press conference and thereby preempting his favorite TV show.
Callen pulled on a tired smirk. "Need to know basis."
Deeks snorted. "Figures." Then he was climbing to his feet, stood eye to eye with Callen, with the man he thought he had watched die. And he couldn't shake the way that had felt. It had been a good long while since he had let someone be a part of his world, that he had found someone that he wanted to be a part of his world. And the thought of losing one of those someones without any say so on his part, it was wholly terrifying. Had him speaking before he could think better of it. "Probably doesn't mean much coming from me but….I'm glad you're not dead." Then he walked past Callen, headed down the hallway.
"It means something," Callen called to Deeks' back. The detective didn't have to know how much it meant. "Enough to earn you a beer." He knew he had Deeks' attention when the detective stopped.
Surprised, not only by Callen's reaction but by his unexpected invitation, Marty turned around, faced Callen from the ten feet that separated them. "Domestic or foreign beer?" As if he cared, but he needed the distraction so he wouldn't let slip the goofy, happy smile that he was holding back.
Narrowing his eyes, Callen guessed, "I'm thinking you're a domestic fan."
"All the way," Marty boasted, wasn't sure if it was a test he was about to fail or not.
"I think that's on the menu," Callen stated. Then, unlocking his door, he walked into his apartment, leaving his door open in his wake.
For a moment, Deeks froze. This wasn't how he saw things going down. Thought Callen would brush him off and then he'd be gone, would again be off the NCIS team's radar. Maybe forever.
What he wasn't expecting was the 'come in for a beer'. Not ever.
It put him on a ledge he usually didn't allow himself to be maneuvered to. If he walked through that door, he was making a decision and he knew it. A decision to care. A decision to get to know Callen a little bit better. A decision to not be alone anymore.
And he didn't think he could do it, risk that, the rejection, the isolation that would follow, always followed when one of his ill-conceived friendships tanked. He stepped up to the doorway, with every intention of telling Callen 'thanks but no thanks' for the offer of the beer. But the raw barrenness of Callen's apartment hit him right where he lived, literally.
In that moment Marty knew that, if anyone understood being alone, cutting oneself off from others, G Callen did. "And get some ice," he suddenly called as he stepped into the apartment's living room, scoped out the other rooms from his vantage point and noted the bedroll sitting by the nightstand, the duffle bag with the "G. Callen" stenciled on it and the starkness of the bureau top and nightstand.
"Ice for your beer?!" Callen scoffed with effrontery from the small kitchen.
Deeks headed that way, leaned against the countertop and watched Callen attempt to get his ice maker to work. "No. Ice is for your head."
That statement got Callen's head out of the freezer and his eyes darting to Marty.
Marty pointed to Callen's forehead. "You don't stop the swelling, you'll look like Bane from Batman by tomorrow."
Firmly closing the freezer door now that he knew he was on a snipe hunt, G countered his house guest's taunt, "Nah. I'm more like Robin."
Deeks rocked back on his heels a bit. "You wanna wear the tights. I totally did not see that coming."
Giving a tolerate smirk, G handed Deeks the beer. "So, how did you know where to find me?"
"Hetty," Deeks replied, still was a little surprised the operation manager gave up Callen's home address before he started hedging for it.
Callen's own surprise showed in the arch of his raised eyebrows and the way he drew out his question, "Hetty told you?" But then suspicion replaced astonishment. "Or Hetty asked you to come?" Had come to see that behind Hetty's growl lived a mother hen even worse than Sam.
Taking his jacket off, showing his intentions to stay awhile, Marty reasoned, "I'm assuming if she didn't approve of me showing up here she wouldn't have given me your address."
Callen nodded, was Ok with not only that answer but Hetty's insight. He really didn't want to be alone right then. "So true," he allowed, then he and Deeks drank in silence before an idea came to G. "I think it's time I find out what kind of undercover operative you are." And with those cryptic words, he exited the kitchen, left a slightly apprehensive Deeks behind.
"Yeah and how are you going to do that?" Deeks called to the man's back, watched G disappear into the apartment's main room. Taking up pursuit, he came into the room in time to see G retrieve something from a drawer and hold it triumphantly up.
"See how well you play poker," G announced, tossing the deck of cards to Deeks, who easily caught it.
Relieved at G's version of a test, Marty boasted, "I don't want to brag but I put myself through law school with poker winnings."
"You're confused, that wasn't you. That was the move "Rounders." Matt Damon," G sallied back as he passed Deeks on his way back to the kitchen. He claimed a chair at the table.
"Ha Ha," Marty sarcastically responded. "Tell me, do you get funnier the longer people know you?" he said as he joined the NCIS agent at the table.
Holding Deeks' gaze, G laid down his challenge with a smirk, "Guess you'll have to find out." Hoping the other man took him up on it, didn't bail on his liaising for NCIS.
"I won't get the chance if you don't learn to drive better," Marty countered with his own challenge and reprimand as he met Callen's gaze unflinchingly, needed the man to get his point. But Callen was still wearing that same self-assured smirk, wasn't getting Deeks message, didn't understand that Marty never wanted to witness Callen's supposed death ever again. "Five flips. Five," he recapped, a harsher edge to his tone than he intended. But thinking about the video, the way the car had flipped over, it made it impossible for him to play it, like he didn't care. "And you weren't wearing your seatbelt, were you? Trust me, I worked traffic and wearing your seatbelt saves lives. This one accident…."
"Deeks, just deal the cards," Callen interrupted but there was more affection than annoyance in his tone and the look he leveled at the younger man.
Deeks made quick work of dealing the cards then spent more time studying his companion than the hand he held. "I have a first aid kit in my car. I can go get it. One crack and that chemical ice pack starts working. They don't wrap injured ribs anymore because of the chances of pneumonia so putting ice on your ribs seems risky but its still practiced…."
Surprised that the other man wasn't letting his Red Cross routine go, Callen tried to distract the police detective. "You go to medical school too?" he snarkily shot to Deeks.
Deeks gave a wide, cocky smile. "Nope. Just dated a nurse one time. Well, two times. Not the same girl, same name though. Weird."
Callen didn't answer, found he didn't have to as Deeks launched into a detailed description of each nurse Brendas. Silently, G contradicted Marty Deeks. No, weird was coming home after a day of horrific personal revelations to find the last person he expected to drop in for a visit patiently sitting outside his door because he was worried about him. Weird was realizing that he was so pathetically grateful for that person's presence right then that he was contemplating letting Deeks win. Weird was losing a sister he didn't remember but being more certain than ever that he wasn't alone. Weird…was the cornerstone of who he was, of his life. And Deeks, he would fit in just fine. Course there was no reason to let Deeks know that.
"You have a crappy hand, I can tell by the way you're squinting your eyes," G predicted.
"I do not squint my eyes and my hand's awesome!" Deeks denied and boasted in one breath. But at G's raised eyebrow of challenge, he threw his cards face down onto the table and reached for the deck of cards to deal another hand. A hand that hopefully didn't suck the 2nd time around. "This means nothing. I'm the world's best undercover guy," he reassured, hoped Callen didn't write him off his team over one lousy allergy inducing squint.
"So far, I'm not seeing it," Callen taunted before he read the minuscule flash of worried hurt in Deeks' features. "But we have this case we're stonewalled on, Kensi, Sam and I have all been locked out of their click but maybe, if you have time, you can give us a hand."
Marty's eyes lit up at Callen's invitation, recognized it for what it was: Trust. "I think I can convince my captain to let me do some more liaising with you guys."
"You know Sam hates when you say 'liaising'," Callen warned, didn't exactly want Deeks and Hanna to forever be at each other's throat, not if things turned out the way he wanted and Deeks ended up spending more time with his team. But his warning got a different response from Deeks than he expected.
Giving a big bold smile, Marty deviously replied, "Yeah, I know."
To his surprise, G Callen found himself smiling back. And it didn't feel like an insult to his sister's memory to smile. Instead it felt more like a tribute to her wishes because she had wanted him to not be alone, to be protected. And he wasn't alone, was actually being, sometimes suffocatingly, protected by a former Navy Seal, an NCIS operation specialist, a beautiful but deadly brunette NCIS agent and now, apparently, an LAPD detective. In his heart, he knew his sister would approve. And that made the ache in his soul lessen, made him humor Deeks by getting up, grabbing some ice cubes from the freezer, wrapping them in a towel and holding the makeshift ice compress against his throbbing head as he reclaimed his seat. It did not, however, make him hold back on laying down a straight and decimating Deek's belief that 'Rounders' was a book and movie about his life.
"Oh come on! Who dealt these cards?!" Deeks exclaimed, tossing another losing hand onto the table top. But seeing the small smile playing on Callen's lips, he reveled in the other man being alive to gloat. "I'm only humoring you because I thought you died today."
"Whatever you need to tell yourself," G returned but then a suspicion started to grow, especially in light of Deeks' earlier blatant worry for him. Sitting up straighter in his chair, eyeing the detective across the table, he demanded, "Wait, are you letting me win?" because, Deeks, he really wasn't a bad undercover operator. And wasn't a half bad guy to have around. Not at all.
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The End
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Well, I had fun writing this and I would love to know if someone out there enjoyed reading it.
Have a great day!
Cheryl W.