A/n MAJOR warning for substance abuse. Leave a review if this is something you would be interested in reading.
He's falling. And it feels like absolute shit.
His body doesn't want to move, but if he doesn't chuck up some of this sludge in his system, he's going to pass out. And that won't do. Even though his brain is on another level, his soul spazzed and everything in his line of sight fuzzy, all he can think about is Kensi. Because if this is him, sixty or so pounds heavier than she is, then she could be dead.
So he throws up for a good five minutes straight, slams his head against the toilet seat, and chews a handful of Tylenol. He doesn't know what the logic was in the medicine. It's not going to help him, or her for that matter.
He looks at her when he returns to their bedroom, and her eyes are cloudy. She's shaking like Sam did when he was electrified. "Stop. Stop it. Stop it. Stop." Her pupils move back and forth, rapid, dilated, paranoid.
He stumbles onto the bed. He grabs her. Doesn't know how forcefully. Can't feel much of anything. He says, "Baby," because for some reason that he can't recall at the moment, he's not supposed to use her name.
"Make it stop. Marty, I told them." She starts to vomit, then. Her mouth's full of the shit. He hoists her over his shoulder and heads for the bathroom, angling her over the toilet, holding her hair back.
She's shaking again. Probably ODing. She's probably dying. He says, "Shhh."
He carries her back to the bed when she's done heaving, and he listens to her talk nonsense for a long time, but all of his strength went into making sure she didn't choke to death. Now, he can't move. Coming down, coming down's like being in a coma after falling off of a cliff. He feels like he has the flu, like he's been hit by a semi, like a corpse. He can't imagine how she feels, considering they pressured her to take another hit after she was already gone, way gone. When she stills next to him, entering a state much like his, he numbly inches his hand across the mattress, finding her fingers. He looks over at her, and her eyes are glazed over, muddy, half open. Her mouth is parted. She looks dead. Maybe she is.
He pulls his eyes away from her and looks at the ceiling. He isn't conscious enough to be considered awake, but sleep is still so, so far away. He watches the light shift in the room, the angles of the shadows changing their positions, and wonders how long he's been lying there. Minutes. Hours. Weeks.
The edge of it all passes. He finds himself able to move enough to check and see if she has a pulse. She doesn't even look at him when his fingers find her throat, but the heartbeat threading under his hand is there. She moans as he wraps his arms around her.
"You're all right," he lies. He kisses her head. "You're gonna be fine, baby."
"I can't -" And then she remembers, and she drops her voice, so low he has to press his ear against her lips to hear. "I can't do this anymore."
He tightens his hold on her, trying to remember what she looked like before the op. Three months ago, her face had been fuller, the skin on her arms hadn't been covered in scabs and bruises from countless punctures, her complexion hadn't been the underlying color of granite, and when he held her hand, it was warm. It breaks his heart into a million pieces, looking at her. "I know."
"We need out."
"Rent a car. Ditch it a few blocks from the boat shed. I'll tell the guys you left me, pretend like I'm gonna track you down or something."
She grabs at his bicep, the one that encircles her waste. "You, too."
He traces the track marks on her arm, the red and the purple, the faded pink. "This can't be for nothing." He looks into her dulled, sad eyes. "I can't leave. We're so close. You go. Let me finish this."
"No." The prospect of one more day of this, for her, is absolute hell. She slumps against him. She can't leave him, not again. Not with the monsters they're trying to persecute. "No."
He sits up a little, but she still doesn't feel like she can move. He continues drawing little infinities up and down her forearm, up and down. Their symbol for forever and ever. "I need to tell you something, when we take a shower." That's code. When they need to discuss something, and the water's rushing out of the shower head, and they're flush against each other as the water splatters against them, they know they're safe to be Kensi and Deeks, not Mariah and Max. If they whisper, that is.
He guides her up, steadying her as she sways against his side. He half carries her to the bathroom, then helps her undress, holding her upright against him as they step into the shower. She's so weak. He kisses her head, holds her close to his chest.
"We're going to be out by the end of the week," he tells her.
She shakes her head. "How?"
"Don't worry about how, Kens. Not yet." She doesn't push. The Kensi that he fell in love with would've. He knows he's played a part in breaking her down, and he hates himself for it. "I need you to look at me."
She complies. She hasn't counteracted his requests for three months, because Mariah would never say no to him. Mariah knows what would come. And so Kensi plays the role of Mariah, Max's loyal, submissive, timid girlfriend. She does what he and the guys tell her to do, rather it be serving them food or shooting up next to Max.
When she looks at him, he barely sees his partner. She's so damn skinny, and her eyes are empty. She only looks about half alive. "Can you make it one more week, Kensi?"
She shudders, and he tightens his hold on her waist. "I need to know."
"I have to."
"No, that's not what I asked. Can you. Can you make it?"
"I will." She wraps her arms around his neck, presses her lips against his. He lifts her up, presses her against the glass door, kisses her neck. "I will."
"The cops, man. Fuckers out in full force. I'm telling you."
"You sure, Max? You sure you aren't being jumpy?"
"No. That's the word. My people, they've heard it everywhere. The fucking narks know when it's going down."
Olinger takes a long drag of his cigarette, double taps it, clenches his jaw. The bastard does that a lot. He's probably got TMJ. "Fucking narks," he says, finishing off his cigarette and rubbing the end on the bricks of his club before dropping it to the ground. Olinger isn't exactly the type of guy to kill himself looking for a trashcan or an ashtray for his buds.
It's dangerous, what Deeks is doing. But the shipment of drugs they're waiting for isn't scheduled for a little over a month, and he knows Kensi won't make it. If he's honest with himself, he doesn't think he can, either. Playing a misogynistic drug addict is bad enough when he doesn't have the most important person in his world to look out for.
"How the hell did they know?" Olinger's a gaunt-faced thirty something with scabbed skin and protruding cheek bones. He's skinny but tall as hell, and the combination of his blank eyes and fixed jaw make him seem taller, bigger. Truly a chilling mother fucker.
"Eye in the sky? They're everywhere, Tom."
"Could've been Big Brother," Olinger agrees, looking out over the marina. "Could've been some dumb ass with a big mouth." There's a beat of silence that passes between them, and then Thomas Olinger's eyes move from the water to look Deeks dead in the eye. "Could've been a fed."
Deeks doesn't miss a beat. "What do you mean? In our operation?"
"I don't know. I really don't fucking know anymore." Deeks tries hard not to react, but Tom really is a scary bastard when he wants to be, and his hard eyes, the color of steel, are staring right at him. The man hasn't blinked once. "I'll move it up. We'll get this shit done by Saturday. And you're going to fix the leak, aren't you?"
"Absolutely." All of a sudden, an awful wave of foreboding washes over Deeks. Under the terrible gaze of Olinger, Deeks feels trapped. It takes everything he has not to try and run, to find Kensi and hide her away until everybody's forgotten they exist. But he knows in that instant that there's no escape for either of them.
The feeling's gone as soon as it comes. Tom grabs his shoulder, pushes him toward the warehouse. "Call Mariah. I'll call Ang. Don't want them to feel left out."
"We hitting it tonight?"
"Until we can't. Or until Mariah can't. You treat her like a kid."
"She's impulsive. Shoots up five times in a row, freaks out, wonders why." Deeks doesn't remind him that the only reason she does that is because they make her. He thinks it gets Olinger off, watching Kensi spiral like she does. But one of the good things, about the only good thing, of Kensi's character being so resigned means he gets to be possessive. Because of Max's obsession with Mariah (and not because Olinger has a wife of his own), Tom hasn't touched her.
"It's a good thing she's a hot piece of ass."
"Watch it, Tommy."
"Oh, and her charming personality, of course." Deeks laughs, but Tom's eyes only slightly soften at his "joke". He never laughs.
Deeks reaches for his phone, wishing that Kensi would screen his call, but he knows that she would never, not when she doesn't know what situation he's in. She answers on the second ring, saying, "Max?"
"Hey baby. Wanna meet us at the shop?"
She sounds chipper, probably in case his phone's bugged or he has her on speaker phone, but he knows it's the last thing she wants to do. "Sure! Let me just finish, uh, picking up-"
Deeks rolls his eyes. "That can wait. Get down here."
"You miss me?"
"Always," he says, for real. Always and forever, that's Kensi and Deeks, not Max and Mariah. "Bye, babe." He makes kissy noises into the phone for show before disconnecting the call. "She's worried about cleaning the damn house," he explains to Tom, shaking his head.
"She doesn't seem very bright," Tom says, knowing that Max wouldn't take serious offense. "That's good. She doesn't ask a lot of questions, does she?" It's only half a question.
"She gets her hits, she gets her head, she stays happy. And quiet."
Tom nods. "Angela took some breaking in. But now I've got her right where I want her. She'd kill herself if I told her to. I might have to, if she keeps fucking up the meatloaf." Deeks can't tell if he's kidding, but Olinger isn't much of a joker. He swallows down bile that he feels rising in the back of his throat. "You gonna marry Mariah?"
"Why? So she can get fat and I can spend a few thousand on a ring?"
"So she knows that she's yours," Olinger explains. The way he regards marriage as a business transaction over a piece of property is fucked up, to say the least. "Mariah's a very beautiful girl."
"She loves me."
"If she loves anything, it's the drugs, the money. Love's a fucking joke." He lights up another cigarette. "Come on. We gotta get together the bouncers for tonight. We're going to be packed." His shoulders are stiff when he reaches for the doorknob of the side entrance that they're standing next to. "Thank God Kojo's covering tonight. I'm ready for another hit."
Deeks's shaking hands tell him that he's ready for another hit, too.
He's reclined in the back room with Kensi against his side, watching the strobe lights change color. The heroin isn't too bad.
Kensi's hair's all did up, with curls falling around her face. Her dress has hiked up mid-thigh, and he rests his hand against the green hem, rubbing his thumb in mindless circles. The heroin makes him feel like he's floating a foot above the couch.
He smells his girlfriend's hair and says, "Sunshine." She seems okay. It's just heroin tonight. Deeks doesn't mind it. He really doesn't.
Meth is a nasty, addictive drug. It makes him dig at his own skin until he bleeds, scratching at imaginary bugs. Kensi tripped out one time and had herself convinced she was on a field full of mines, and she kept blowing herself up. That was maybe the worst.
Then again, that one cocaine trip was awful, where she kept screaming and screaming for her dad. He had to hold her until she lost her voice. She never told him exactly what happened, but it definitely messed with her. He tried to stay away from coke.
But after a line of heroin, the shitty mission doesn't seem too shitty at all. Everything's beautiful, euphoric in a way that can only be contributed to the drugs. He could go for some more, honestly. Kensi probably could, too.
Kensi's smile swims in front of him. She reaches out, traces his lips with her fingertips, like she's blind. He only feels a little nauseous this time, and Kensi's scent is making it better.
Through the haze, he sees Tom and Angela. Angela's blonde and pretty in a simple way that a man like Olinger probably doesn't appreciate. Kensi's exoticism is no doubt more enthralling to Tom, but Angela's too passive to be jealous. Olinger's broken her down so that it's hard for her to feel much of anything.
But even Angela seems to be feeling the almost soothing effects of the heroin. It's impossible not to feel good. Deeks's smile falls away as Kensi's does, which is when Tom has his guys roll in a line of coke. "Speedballs, for the ladies!" he says over the loud music.
Deeks gives her thigh a gentle squeeze. "Go, Mariah."
They cheer her on, make her take another, and then, five minutes later, he holds her hips and guides her to do another line again. He can tell she's trying really hard to keep it together, but with cocaine, it's impossible. Pretty soon he's holding her down, trying to make sure that she doesn't hurt herself. In his altered state, everything's harder, and stopping himself from saying her real name is a struggle.
Olinger has an awful twinkle in his eyes as he watches her lose herself. "She's nice and fucked up. You're gonna have fun with her."
He knows his place is bugged from top to bottom, he's scanned it every week since they started. He tried to cover the ones in the bedroom with clothes and whatnot, but he had to keep it inconspicuous. Meaning that Olinger is probably looking forward to whatever he thinks is coming later. When she's this messed up, he hates it, even if she reciprocates his advances.
Right now, she's pressing against her forehead. There's a fierceness in her eyes that reminds him of when she walks into a firefight at work, but there's something else. Something that isn't Kensi, something that isn't normal. He'd call it rage, but that's not it, either.
Deeks as Max laughs at her reaction, when all he really wants to do is cower. He finds the word he's looking for, as he watches her face contort into a pained expression. Possessed.
"Oh, shit. Here she goes. Better get her home before she rips somebody apart."
Doped up, Olinger doesn't bother to hide his desire as he watches Kensi grip the table, her eyes dark and damp. "You do that."
"Come on, Crazy." He grabs her by the waist, and she lets him lead her out of the back of the club. It isn't until they're halfway home that he realizes her nails have been digging into the same spot for the majority of the walk, and now there's blood making its way down her arm. "Stop," he tells her, trying to focus. The drugs are making everything blur together, though.
"What? Stop what?" Her eyes shoot back and forth, paranoia and tension drawing her shoulders back.
He doesn't know. He remembers later, when her nails are drawing blood from his back. Her breath's ragged, and he'd be concerned about her having a stroke or something if it isn't for the fact that he's completely unaware of what's going on. Everything's a buzzing haze, and angels are singing somewhere in the back of his mind.
They crash, as they always do, and he reminds her. "End of the week." Then he reminds himself, saying, "End of the week."