Kensi sighs into the fading darkness of the forest. The cold January air is seeping through the thin layers of her favorite purple sweatshirt. She shoves the hood up over her ponytail, and turns to look across the campfire at Sam and Callen, who have heads bent together in an attempt to quietly converse. She's hoping that they're talking about something interesting, she can still hear snippets of their conversation, and she's been staring at the flicker and flitting of the fire for close to three hours now. But words like fire and Russia and firepower drift through the smoke to reach her ears, and Kensi turns away in bored disappointment—they're just discussing the case again.
Deeks, on her left, bumps into her with his elbow. Kensi turns to look at him. She decides, after a lot of internal eye-rolling at her own thoughts, that he looks good outside.
His blonde hair is a tousled, and the setting sun in the West lights it up like wildfire. He's wearing a dark green jacket, denim and hiking boots. He looks less like a cop and more like one of the strangers Kensi and her dad used to run into when they went hiking in the mountains on the weekends.
Deeks grins at her.
"What?" She snaps at him.
He's unaffected by her tone, as he normally is. She sometimes wonders at what point he will realize that she hates that joking lit to his voice. Most of the time, the words he says mean more than their tone implies, and she hates that she can't figure that out. Mostly, Kensi just hates everything about him.
Especially his golden hair and his pretty-blue eyes.
"Kensi." Deeks says, with the annoyed air of one that has been forced to repeat himself multiple times. He waves his hand in front of her blurry eyes. "Are you listening to me at all?" He whines.
She grabs his hand to stop his waving, and hates the fact that his touch makes her breath catch for a second. She smirks at him. "I try not too."
Deeks fakes a wounded expression. "Ouch. That burns, sweetheart. And I thought we had become such good friends." He says, laughing again.
Kensi hates that he's always laughing. Before she can tell him to shut up, or to somehow, possibly more gently, express her sentiment on the matter, he stops his stupid grinning and meets her eyes. His hand, the hand she had just tossed out of her way, falls on top of hers. He squeezes her fingers gently.
"Are you okay?" Deeks asks. He's finally lowered his voice, and when Kensi glances over, she can see that Callen and Sam have not deflected from their argument.
Kensi tries to tug her hand out from under his, but he doesn't let her. "I'm fine." She insists. After noticing his warning expression, however, she changes her answer. "I'm great." Kensi smirks, trying his method of bringing humor into any situation. "At least, that's what many of my male references have told me."
Kensi thinks she's finally surprised him enough to render him speechless, because Deeks just rolls his eyes. But he still watches her out of the corner of his eye as she stands up and retreats to their tent, which is set up a few feet away from the campfire. She unzips the flap and crawls inside the cramped space. She has to press a few buttons on her phone to gather enough light to distinguish her sleeping bag from her partner's, but after locating her blankets, she crawls inside and revels in the warmth of the fleece against her skin.
She must have fallen asleep, because, the next thing she knows, everything is pitch black outside. She thinks it is oddly silent: there is no crackle of warm coals, there is no whisper of Callen and Sam, there is no snoring partner beside her.
Kensi pats the space beside her to double check. The sleeping bag is cold.
She grabs her gun and cocks it before she exits the tent. She was right—the campfire is completely cold, and when she checks her phone, it reads 4:53. The fabric door to the second tent is wide open, and even in the darkness of the rising dawn, Kensi can see that it's deserted.
She swears under her breath and turns on the flashlight on her phone to study the ground. She knows how to track, her father taught her years and years ago, back before the melody of a sinking ship and the squealing of tires began to echo in her mind like broken, haunting memories.
Kensi shakes her head in a desperate attempt to clear it, and studies the ground. The crackle of dead leaves serenades her as she begins to walk, following the barest hints of a trail north. Her own breath is coming out in puffs that fog the air and cloud her vision, but she does her best to ignore it as she tracks.
After nearly a mile, she begins to hear voices ahead of her. She shuts off the flashlight and stashes her phone in her pocket as she creeps closer. The gun in her hand is still cocked and loaded and ready-to-go; she keeps it pressed close to her denim-clad leg as she advances.
When she can see shadows moving in the dark, she ducks behind a nearby tree and breathes in the smell of the wood as she watches. As far as she can tell, with her eyes unadjusted to the darkness due to the glare of her flashlight, there are only two shadows darting back and forth beside what looks like a lake.
It is only now, in the silence of her stillness, that she notices the quiet lapping of waves on the sandy shore. In the back of her mind, she can hear Nell telling her about the landscape of the cold wilderness that surrounds the tiny town in Upstate New York. She remembers Nell's quiet voice speaking of the thousands of acres of abandoned wilderness, and the relatively small lake that also adorned the landscape. She's sure the computer tech spoke a name, but if Kensi recalls correctly, that was the exact moment that Deeks found it appropriately to loudly snap the strap of her bra.
Retaliating violence quickly ensued and Kensi never heard the rest of Nell's debrief. Either way, she supposes someone on their team found it. Assuming that it's not two of the Russian mercenaries they're supposed to be tracking in Kensi's view right now, she supposes the shadows must belong to at least half of her team.
She sends a warning whistle into the air without departing from her hiding spot.
The shadows pause in their movements by the lake shore, and since in the dim light, Kensi can't quite see, she assumes again that they're looking at her.
"Kensi?" She hears Callen's low voice. "Come here."
Kensi listens without argument, stepping out from behind the tree immediately, shoving her gun into the back of her jeans and rushing towards the lake. "What the hell are you guys doing out here?" She very nearly yells. She wraps her arms around her middle, realizing for the first time since she left the warmth of her tent, that its freezing out here.
Sam is standing right beside Callen and he's wringing his hands together somewhat nervously.
"Where's Deeks?" Kensi demands.
Sam and Callen step aside simultaneously, revealing a very-wet Deeks. Kensi drops down to his side, and settles two fingers into the crook of his neck, searching for a pulse while her eyes scan his body up and down searching for a wound.
"What happened?" When they don't immediately respond, she asks again, with a somewhat meaner tone to her voice. "What. Happened."
They continue to ignore her. Instead they move her out of the way, each moving on either side of her to grab his arms and legs in a hurried version of the fireman's carry. Callen grunts under his weight, but otherwise neither makes a noise as they start to carry him back into the forest, the way Kensi just came.
Kensi's hands are trembling with worry as she chases after them. She clenches and unclenches her fists, trying to restore some semblance of feeling to her frozen digits. The worry is crippling her breathing; she takes several gasping breaths that make even Sam look sideways at her to make sure she's okay.
"Please tell me what happened." She begs.
"He fell through the ice." Callen says, his voice slightly raspy, degraded under the weight of her partner. She wants to help, but she doesn't know what to do, so she settles for resting a hand on his rib cage.
"I didn't think it was frozen over." Kensi says, remembering the sound of the waves on the sand. She doesn't recall ever actually looking at the lake to see if the sub-freezing temperatures had their effect on the water like they had on her.
"It was." Sam confirms. "Mostly, anyway."
Kensi doesn't like the sound of that: mostly. "So he fell through?"
Sam nods and Callen grunts. Kensi curses their lack of desires to provide details. Her partner, if he was awake, would detail the entire event with such a perfect clarity Kensi would be able to picture it, all the while adding movie references and a few innuendos. She wishes he wasn't unconscious so she could find out if his injuries were life threatening.
"Why was he out on the ice?"
"He shot a rabbit, and it fell onto the ice when it died." Sam replies. He seems kind of apologetic, as he should be. Why would they shoot rabbits in the dark anyway?
She voices this querie.
"We were hunting." Sam replies. "Callen was hungry."
Kensi groans out a loud noise she is sure Callen and Sam recognize. It seems like every other day she finds herself in need of saving his ass, or else being so thoroughly annoyed at him that she can't even muster up the pity to save his ass. This is often when the legendary groan occurs.
"He needs to warm up or else he'll die." Sam says gravely. As far as Kensi can tell, they're nearing their campsite, she's been counting her steps to measure the mile she's sure she walked before, and she can tell that Sam realizes it too—his pace quickens.
"We're gonna have to put him in a sleeping bag with someone." Sam tells them both. It's clear by the shadow of his stiff posture that it's not going to be him that curls up close to Deeks to share body heat.
Callen looks sideways at her. "I can do it." He offers; Kensi knows it's just Callen being Callen. She knows there is no way in hell that he wants to cuddle with Deeks, but he would never put her in a position that would make her uncomfortable, hence his offer.
"It's fine, Callen. I got this." Kensi says. She needs this; his body is trembling beneath the faint glance of her fingertips, and she needs to do something to save him.
"Good." Sam says. "Because we're here." He announces, he barely even pauses as they step into the circle that composes of the tents and the campfire. He takes Deeks' limp body from Callen's grasp and carries him into Kensi and Deeks tent, laying him gently on Kensi's sleeping bag. He unzips the other bag, and then he pulls out a knife, and before Kensi has time to panic at the unknowns here, he slices open Deeks' t-shirt. Callen drags her partner's jeans off by the hems, leaving Deeks clad only in his plaid blue boxers.
Without being asked, Kensi strips off her jacket, slides her t-shirt over her head, and takes off her jeans. She doesn't glance at Sam or Callen as she crawls into the tent beside Sam, just slides into the sleeping bag and helps Sam tug Deeks in beside her.
Sam crawls awkwardly from the tent and stands beside Callen. They're pale in the dawning morning, and, standing side-by-side, Kensi thinks they look a little bit like guardian angels.
Kensi tucks Deeks down until his head is resting under her chin. She clasps her arms around his middle, tangles their legs together. She's so worried, she doesn't even wince at the cold feel of his toes against her leg.
"Go, guys." She whispers. "I got this."
Sam nods, and turns to leave, probably to restart the fire, but Callen just watches her for a moment. She can barely see him, his face is hidden by shadows but she can feel the weight of his gaze on her—its heavy.
Kensi nods to let him that she's okay, and after another hesitant moment, he follows his partner to the fire pit. She's left alone in the darkened tent with Deeks. It's quiet, so she focuses on his heartbeats and the way they beat against hers. She rubs the wet skin on his back, trying to smooth it out until she can feel warmth underneath her hands.
"You can't leave me." Kensi murmurs into the open air above his head. "You promised you wouldn't." She reminds him.
Sam ducks inside the tent a few moments later, ducking half of his body inside in order to hand her hot-water bottles they must have boiled over the fire. "Here." He whispers, sliding them one at a time into the one hand she could sacrifice to receive them. The other hand was still working on rubbing the heat back in the skin on his left arm.
"Put them under his arms, and between his thighs." Sam whispers.
Kensi nods, and puts them in place carefully. She continues her constant rubbing motion across his skin, and prays to any god she can think of that he lives.
It doesn't take long after that, maybe two thousand heartbeats later that his violent shivering seems to slow beneath her touch. The tenseness of her muscles seems to relieve some of its grasp, and the worry that is ringing through her veins seems to slow a bit more. She's calm enough now, that she slowly falls back asleep.
When she awakes for the second time, its to the sound of Callen's retreating footsteps. She wakes up enough to watch him as he stomps away from the tent. She murmurs another one of her choice swear words when she realizes that Callen saw her and Deeks completely wrapped up together—completely and utterly entangled with each other. Kensi shifts, the awkwardness of the situation finally setting in.
"Are you leaving me?" Deeks whispers softly, voice breaking from mis-use. Kensi can feel the vibrations of the sound in the hollow of her neck. Deeks warm breath makes goose bumps erupt on her skin.
Kensi closes her eyes. She wraps her arms tighter around his middle. "No." She whispers, not knowing what else to say to him. What else is there to say, now? After all this? "It's warm in here."
Deeks grumbles a laugh that she feels through her chest. "Good." He says.
"Unless of course—" She can't help but add. "You're gonna kick me out."
Deeks reaches up with unsteady fingers and traces the curve of her jaw, the rise of her cheekbones, her fluttering eyelashes. Kensi's frozen beneath his touch, but her mind is running at a speed of a million miles per hour. She wonders if this bravery was born from nearly dying tonight, or just from the fact that he finally got her in bed with him, even if it is a tent in the middle of an abandoned forest and she's only there to save him from dying and leaving her to search for a new partner in the hordes or rookies that apply from the Police Academy each year.
"No." He whispers. "I like the company."
Kensi didn't bother to notice before, in the surprise of him being awake, but he's not shivering anymore, and his skin is nearly as warm as hers. She shifts closer to him, to feel the warmth that's radiating off his skin, and drops her head until its buried in his chest. She wants to hide from his piercing blue gaze, and just for a moment, just one moment, pretend that this could go on forever.
Kensi doesn't want to remember that Callen and Sam are right outside the fragile walls of their sanctuary. Or the tracking of the Russian mercenaries secret hideout needs to continue tomorrow. Or the fact that, despite the evidence of tonight's events, Deeks and Kensi doesn't exist in the daytime. They don't exist in the day-to-day events of real life.
They are impulsive and completely random and they only occur in the moments like these—the moments where time seems to stop and slow down for the two of them. Kensi can't predict it, and she's not sure she wants to. Most days she hates him, but she likes to know that she will always have the memories of nights like this, to remind her what they could be—should be—if they lived a different life.
For now though, Kensi just revels in the feel of Deeks' left hand tangled in her hair, and tries to breathe normally against his skin. In the darkness of their tent, Deeks slides his fingers between hers, and grabs her hand.
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