Are We Bonding Or Something?

It was that special time of day at the OSP headquarters when Agent Sam Hanna could finally relax and process a few of the reports and other bits of paper that passed across his desk. Meaning of course, that it was the time of day that Kensi and Callen decided their paper bag lunches looked boring, and took off to spice them up with something a mite unhealthier. If Deeks hadn't fallen asleep by this point, he usually trailed after them like a lost puppy, begging for leftovers, leaving Sam Hanna to work in a more sane environment, like the completely sane person he was.

Today had been particularly trying to his mental health. So in the brief respite from his colleagues Sam was finding a great deal of satisfaction in slowly reducing the pile of forms in his inbox, and watching the outgoing reports stack up.

With a small smile of self-satisfaction, Sam swiped his signature across the bottom of another requisition form, and dropped it onto the finished pile. This was what real work looked liked, and he even had Hetty's word on the fact that his reports were the most legible of the team.

"Hey, Sam? I have a question."

Sam jumped, shocked to realise Deeks had been sitting beside him at his desk this entire half-hour. Silently. Not talking. Or humming. Or talking.

That in itself was upsetting. The large black man hated being startled, and hated being thrown off guard. Then Deeks opened his mouth and made things more upsetting.

"Have you tried to be a good father?"

For a moment Sam was stumped.

He could threaten to punch the cop, or sic Kensi on him, or make him drive with Callen on the next case they got... but despite the many options he couldn't be sure any single intimidation tactic would stop Deeks from ever asking him a personal question again.

"Saaaaaaam?"

The sound came out in a long whine.

It had become more and more clear as they got to know Deeks better, that he didn't have enough brains to be properly frightened by things that would have sent wiser men running. Even Hetty couldn't frighten him for more than a few hours before the scruffy cop bounced back to repeat offend.

Callen had enough guts to borrow Hetty's Segway once.

Deeks? He did it twice. Not because he was trying to be gutsy, but because he had thought of something else he wanted to try with it the second time.

Whenever Sam was tempted to think Deeks was maturing, he just had to remind himself that less than a year into his career with NCIS, he already held the record for most-number-of-times-pepper-sprayed.

Deeks let out a puff of air, and Sam turned his head very slowly to consider the scruffy cop, hoping that silent treatment would be enough this time.

But Deeks wasn't looking at him. He had his chin cupped in his hands and was leaning forward on his desk, elbows obscuring his un-touched paperwork. As much as Sam just wanted to pound the kid, the investigator in him had already started picking up his coworkers' body language and decoding it.

This particular body language was the very rarely seen 'thinking Deeks' pose. Sam didn't deny that the cop's instincts were pretty good as a whole, and he had somehow managed to survive to adulthood apparently by just talking off the top of his head, so perhaps 'thinking Deeks' hadn't gotten much use so far.

But it did happen occasionally. Deeks would stop cracking his knuckles or drumming on the table or mumbling along to the radio, and actually stay still for a few moments at a time. He would stop moving and stop talking, and then say something that had required real brain power.

Damn 'thinking Deeks'.

He supposed he ought to encourage this type of thing.

Sam ran the question over in his mind again. Had he tried to be a good father? At least it wasn't phrased to be very specific.

"Yes. I have tried to be a good father."

Deeks slid his head down to the table, lying with his cheek to the wood as he kept staring at Sam. "What does being a good father mean to you?"

Sam's brows inched a little closer together. "A good father is responsible. He looks after his kids. He protects them from harm and provides for them, he tries to spend time with his kids to show them that they're loved, and teach them the right way to grow up in this world."

Deeks blinked, blue eyes still steady on Sam's face. "What if he only did some of those things, and not all of them? Could he still be a good father?"

Definitely frowning now, Sam wondered where this was going. "Nobody's perfect, Deeks. A man's just gotta do the best that he can. The most important thing is to do everything to show your kid that you love them, you're proud of them, and you're trying to do the best thing for them."

There was silence at this.

Sam stared at scruffy cop draped out on the desk beside him. Was this some sort of bizarre bonding thing that Hetty had come up with? It didn't really seem like it.

"You didn't go get some girl pregnant, did you?" Sam demanded.

Deeks let out a bark of laughter and pushed off the desk, "No. I didn't. Not yet at least." He got to his feet and stretched, yawning before he turned back to Sam. "Just thinking about family and stuff. Do you think a bad father could still be a good man?"

"I guess so. You're kind of talking in generalizations, Deeks." Sam looked around the dividers of their workspace carefully, "If you think about G's family, his father might have been a wonderful man, but he certainly wasn't a good dad. Either because he couldn't be there, or didn't want to be there, he was a 'bad' father."

Deeks nodded, and gripped the back of his chair, still watching Sam.

"But - you hear about a man who beats his kids," Sam said, "and I don't care if he's a philanthropist to top Mother Teresa: a man who hurts a child, any child, but especially his own... they're no good in any way. That is a rotten, worthless man."

Finally a light seemed to go on in the young cop's eyes, and he turned his gaze away to Hetty's office. "Huh. I guess that makes sense."

Sam waited patiently, now resigned to plodding through this odd conversation.

For two and one-third more minutes, Deeks continued to lean on the back of his chair. Then he snapped upright, grinning at Sam.

"Hey! Do you think Hetty ever replaced that radio-controlled hovercraft that I broke last month?"

Sam opened his mouth to object, but Deeks had already abandoned his chair and was heading out of their little office space. "I wonder if she'd let me borrow it to try using the pincers again... that could be a really useful skill in the field," he muttered.

The older NCIS agent was left sitting at his desk, staring at the spot that had held a hyperactive LAPD detective only moments before.

Was that the end of the conversation?

Were you allowed to call half-a-dozen barely connected sentences a conversation?