Disclaimer: The characters and situations herein do not belong to me. This story is meant solely for entertainment purposes. No infringement is intended. Title taken from the Lady Antebellum song of the same name.
Notes: Heartfelt newbie greetings to you all. This piece has been rattling around in my head since seeing the "Personal" promo, and since space in my brain is at a premium, I finally decided to write it down. This is my first foray into both "NCIS: LA" fandom and fic, so all comments are sincerely appreciated.
For Kris, who has no idea who Kensi and Deeks are, but pretends to be interested when I go on endlessly about them.
So much of her job is duty wrapped in words; things people say. The boathouse is an unholy confessional that morphs beams of gentle sunshine into unrelenting and trained suspicion as it passes through slatted walls splintering from the truth and consequences it has seen.
She's trained herself not to become caught in its crosshairs; only once has she unburdened herself there and it had nearly been her undoing. She is careful with words in general, for to her they bely too much of what she keeps hidden firmly beneath both a Kevlar vest and handmade armor of self-preservation. She's rendered herself mute on most things personal; deemed it "need to know" information.
But as she stands in a hospital hallway that sings her a symphony of life-affirming heartbeats and malevolent warnings as death draws near, she holds a shield similar to the one she hides behind and realizes someone else needs to know all the secrets she's ensconced within plaid sleeves. She needs words more than ever now, to tell him that in spite of – or perhaps because of – his antics, he is the one she trusts above all others (herself included sometimes); that his proven ability to dust disorder off her without mentioning the many chinks in her armor is a gift seldom received but nonetheless cherished.
That she knows her reticence to accept him as her partner in the beginning was because he'd seen right through her the first time he'd seen her and that makes him more dangerous than any felon she'll ever chase. That he makes her want to believe all the ironclad lies time and experience have forged: I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. You're safe with me. You can fall, because I'll be right there to catch you.
It's not that she doesn't want him – them – it's that she just doesn't know how.
He deserves to know; she understands that. The idea that he might never hear things she didn't realize she needed to say so desperately tears a hole in her heart almost as devastating as the two in his chest. At the same time, though, she knows of the hellfire and damnation such an admission would spark; if taken at work, those confessions would smolder the boathouse to cinders.
Taken at his bedside would singe her beyond all recognition.
It's a weighty choice, an unbalanced pendulum swinging in indecision, so unlike the scales of blind justice on which she so fervently relies. But it proves beyond the shadow of unreasonable doubt that he is her blind spot, the one chain reaction she never saw coming.
She stares at her reflection in a window overlooking the hospital grounds and asks herself what event outside of a near death experience would motivate her to demolish the walls time and scars have built; whether it is worth the risk to face her own emotional death and lay everything to bear in the shadow of his gunman.
She has no answer. She also has no place to start.
She clasps his badge and prays to a god she hasn't believed in without the counterbalance of monsters that it's not all she has left of him.
They let her see him after surgery; he is bloodied and bruised, and she breaks a bit beneath the weight of it. Pieces of her start to fall, hitting the floor as a mismatched cacophony of "too late," "no more last chances" and "what if."
But his heartbeat is strong and she grasps onto it with something she thinks is fleeting hope, trying to steady herself.
She thinks back to him responding only to her voice in his darkest hour, staring down the murderer of his partner; thinks back to liar's lives she sometimes wishes held just an ounce of truth: the undeniable chemistry club walls could not hold, the hope of an engagement, the innocence of playing video games with a little boy.
She thinks back to how she hadn't needed ice cream, beer or "Miracle on 34th Street" to find a moment of elusive but nonetheless heavenly peace. She'd needed only him: the company that crashed into her existence so sharply it had rocked the foundation on which she'd stood for so long; the laugh that occasionally lifts her from a rabbit hole that scrapes along the vestiges of hell; the eyes that, when she lets them, are an restorative salve to her splintered soul.
She thinks back to how his order not to move should have propelled her into motion; how she's been teetering on a precipice of one more last chance for far too long.
She thinks back to a tiny room with barriers more explosive than the one she's facing now; how he reached out and helped her through it with no regard for his own safety.
She thinks back to all he's given and all she's never been quite prepared to take.
She thinks it's time for her to reach back.
She pulls the hospital chair to his bedside, its seat uncomfortable from cracked vinyl and the weight of what she is about to do, and leans over to whisper in his ear.
fin