So, I've recently gotten into NCIS: LA because I LOVE Eric Christian Olsen and his character. Love him so much in fact, that when I found this table of 346 writing prompts (at www dot creativewritingprompts dot com, in case you wanna check it out), I found I kept relating them back to Deeks and lovely partner Kensi. Thus, I decided that for as long as I can will be filling out these prompts with a Deeks theme. I'm not promising to do all of them (in fact I KNOW I won't :P) but I'm hoping to do 5-7 a week (hopefully one a night), and to post them every Wednesday. Most will be about Deeks or Kensi or Deeks/Kensi, so uh, if that's not your cup of tea, terribly sorry. Also, they were originally intended to be short drabbles, somehow they turned into short one-shots, mostly because I couldn't make Marty shut up… I'm going to work on that, so one day these chapters will probably end up being shorter. haha
So! Um, here it is! :D
The number and basic point of the prompt is in bold.
Spoilers for Personal
#172: Random Stimuli: "Blue ribbon fading hysterically":
When she finally gets to him, she already knows it's too late; knows that no matter how hard she pushes down on the gaping wound, no matter how much she pleads with him, or how much she screams, Marty Deeks will still die.
Those deep blue orbs will fade and glaze over, the wispy smirk he currently has on his face will slacken to a relaxed frown, and the soft "Kensi…"s he's muttering will echo away until she never hears that voice say her name again.
As his breathing gets more ragged, and the intense red that flows out of him covers her more and more, she can feel the always-tenuous string that had linked the partners together begin to slacken. Its previously taught pressure ebbs away and its frayed edges relax as Deeks' body does the same.
She vaguely registers the hysterical screaming echoing through the building and thinks somewhere inside herself that that hideous sound must be coming from her. All she can really hear though is the deafening last murmurs of her partner as the blue that had so often lit up her life faded away.
"Kensi."
888
#260: A Chest of Childhood:
She doesn't know what she's expecting when he says he "spent some time there". She vaguely pictures a house rented out by slacker college students, with toga parties every weekend and conspicuously covered holes in the walls. When they arrive at the modest suburban home she's in no way surprised by the overgrown lawn or chipped paint; those sorts of details seem to come naturally with a man who looks like Marty Deeks.
What does surprise her is the "MARTY" childishly scrawled into the once-wet cement of the curb and left to dry, permanently marking the territory in front of them as his own. Despite Deeks' admittedly horrible handwriting, it's easy to see that the writing must have been done by a small child.
As is often her reaction in regards to her partner, Kensi Blye scrunches her brow together and sends a sidelong glance to him, letting out a keening "Deeks?"
Her partner ignores her, though by the look in his eyes, she can see it's not intentional. They make their way to the front door, Deeks in the lead with Kensi trailing hesitantly behind him. The house's entrance is unlocked, allowing the two agents to smoothly enter the small abode. Kensi is struck by how understated and quaint the place is. The living room and kitchen are practically one room, separated only halfway by a thin wall, and the spacious living room is sliced in half by a 'partition' made of bookshelves obviously put in by the current residents to create the illusion of a 'dining room'. A small hallway to the right of the kitchen leads to what she can see is a bathroom and seemingly two small bedrooms.
Deeks' eyes are no clearer than they had been on the sidewalk, so Kensi makes no further attempt to reach him, only watches him docilely and follows closely behind him as he makes his way through the small house. He glides through the living/dining room, and hardly even glances at the kitchen, walking purposefully toward the short-lived hallway. He pauses momentarily to stare at the bedroom on the left side of the hallway. The door is closed, but she assumes from the keyhole in the doorknob that it is the master bedroom of the house. Deeks makes no move toward the door, only stares ineffectually at it before letting out a small puff of air and turning to the right and opening the keyhole-less door. The room is revealed to be a smaller, nearly cave-like place. It's concaved and enclosed, with only a small window in the back of the room, hidden behind a bunk-bed and colorful curtains.
Kensi can tell the small twin sons of Lt. Barstow inhabit the room based solely on the dirty clothes littering the floor and the questionable amount of pieces of action figures strewn about the room. Besides cartoon themed comforters and gaudy posters, there isn't much to the room at first glance. Following Deeks' distracted gaze, her eyes land on a far wall with faded markings clearly written on the paint. Some of the lower marks seem to be fresh, and with a start she realizes the marks are measurements. Besides the lowest one (which is marked "1986: Batman! 5 enchs"), the lower, newer markings must be of the Barstow twins, she realizes. Moving closer she reads the dates of the older markings closely.
The markings start at 1983, where one "M.D." is marked as being two feet nine inches and three years old. Every year for eight years, M.D.'s height and age were marked down on the wall. The only difference between the measurements, she notices, is the hand writing. Where it started out smooth and curly, clearly written by a woman, it soon becomes the same chicken scratch scrawl seen on the curb outside.
The last marking on the wall is simply the date May 9, 1991. Doing the math quickly in her head, she realizes with a heavy heart that that would make little Marty eleven. She thinks about Gordon John Brandel. She thinks about the stories Deeks told while they were in the desert.
Oh Marty…
Turning a sympathetic eye to the last place she'd seen her partner, she's surprised to instead see the tall man bent over near the closet in the room, feeling his fingers around the edge of the wall. She wants to inquire about what exactly he's doing, but she's too concerned about that far away look in his eye, and Gordon John Brandel, and "spent some time there?" to ask.
Soon enough his fingers seem to catch on something, and with a triumphant huff he uses the tips of his fingers to pull up a plank of the wood flooring. Looking down into the small hole now visible in the floor boarding, he lets out another huff of air, this time with a seeming reluctant acceptance. He reaches down into the abyss and slowly lifts out a dusty tin box. Like with the master bedroom, he freezes completely as he contemplates the item. Kensi pauses with as much trepidation as Deeks seems to, waiting with baited breath for his signal to move again. When he finally relaxes and starts to move into a seated position on the floor, Kensi slowly makes her way over to him, first leaning over his shoulder, than moving into a similar, cross-legged sitting position next to the LAPD liaison.
The tin in his hands is a Transformers lunchbox.
She wants to giggle or tease him- to tell him how much she loved that cartoon as a kid, how she remembers waking up early to watch it with her dad- but she knows that right now isn't the time. Deeks isn't really here right now, just like to him, she's not even a distant thought in his subconscious; right now she's simply an observer. Instead she sits quietly as he first runs a finger around the side of the lunchbox, than blows away the top layer of dust with a single breath.
The unclasping of the metal hinge and the lifting of the lid seem to take forever in Kensi's mind.
The box is filled mostly with toys that a little boy would keep hidden safely away—a little C-3PO figurine, a bouncy ball, a few wayward Legos, some Power Ranger trading cards, a box of matches. He pulls them out one by one staring at them and running a finger along them, sometimes smiling at them, other times simply contemplating them. He sets them neatly in a row next to his leg as if presenting them for Kensi to look at.
At the bottom of the box, once all the toys are removed, are two pictures. The one on top Deeks hardly looks at. He pulls it out, quickly glances it over with shining eyes, and puts it on the ground next to C-3PO. It's a beautiful young blonde woman, wearing a dark blue dress with white polka dots on it and a clearly pregnant belly under it.
The next picture he pulls out slowly, staring at it with a mixture of awe and hatred. In the picture, a small boy stands on a wooden pier with his father, both dark haired and smiling at the camera. The date on the picture is 1986, and from the different dates between the pictures, she figures little Marty Deeks to be no more than six. He's adorable with his wide blue eyes and his brown hair, but she can't get over the fact that five years from then, those wide, innocent eyes would shoot a man.
"This loose floorboard was the coolest when I was kid." His far away gaze doesn't break from the picture he's holding. "Was pretty cool in high school too, though I was hiding more than action figures and cards then."
She smiles sadly, but doesn't say anything in response. She doesn't want him to have to force humor on this moment for her sake, even though she's not sure exactly what this moment is. She just sits quietly and lets him stew in whatever it is that's going through his mind.
Soon enough he lets out another one of his huffs of air that can't quite be described as sighs, and puts the picture back in the bottom of the tin lunchbox. He assembles almost all the items back into the tin before shutting it and putting it back into its hidden resting spot, closing the dark maw over with the loose floorboard.
As he stands he carefully pockets the picture of his mother and the small C-3PO figurine. He takes a deep breath and looks down at his still seated partner. He smiles at her brightly before offering her a hand.
"Let's get down to work."
She can't help but think that she can see something in his smile this time that she wasn't allowed to see before.
888
#42: Choose one of your physical features and write about how you can change or disguise that feature:
Marty's hair was a big part of how people saw him. Thinking back on his childhood, he can remember when his mom still cut is hair at home, when bowl cuts were still kind of cool, and when his crisp, short locks had been the chestnut brown of his father. That look- the nerdy, helmet-head- will always remind him of innocence and safety; of a time when Mom and Dad loved each other; of a time when he could come home with an "A" on his spelling test and his father would look him in the eye and smile.
Those times did not last long.
The older Marty got, the more his parents yelled, the more his father saw a useless bane of his existence where his son used to be, and the longer Marty's hair got. Still the innocent brown of his childhood, Marty's hair grew out, wild and unkempt from neglect since his mom was usually too drunk to be safe around scissors and his father hardly even looked in his direction, let alone long enough to notice his hair. Marty clearly remembers the first time he cut his own hair. Nine and a half years old, putting his mom to bed on the couch after her latest three-day bender and vaguely wondering whether his dad would come home or not today (something Marty can also clearly remember "wondering" every day of his childhood). He remembers the annoying itch of the too-long hair, hair that had gone at least a year without a cut, with bangs past his cheekbones and hair brushing his shoulders he decides that cutting his hair is just another one of those things he's going to have to do himself now. It ends up jagged and unruly, some strands longer than others and some way too short. It wasn't dissimilar to his usual cut nowadays.
Marty bleached his hair three months after his father aimed a shotgun at him. It made him sick to look at the deep brown hair that shined back at him in reflections, so one day he decides to get rid of it, and does. His hair is only brown again once in his life, and only for the sake of a deep cover operation.
As an adult, Marty appreciates the flexibility of his hair more than anything else. As an undercover agent, he needs to be able to pull off a multitude of looks. From down-and-out bum, to slacker college student, to upper-crust yuppie; if there's one thing Marty Deeks can do it's change his looks (change himself) with a simple flick of his hair.
He keeps his hair unkempt and longish for a number of reasons. He's sure a psychiatrist would say he does it as a call-back to those times when he had to look after himself, sort of a badge saying "I did this myself and I'm proud of it", but Marty knows it's not that simple. The Shaggy look has many benefits to it. It not only gets the criminals to trust him easier (after all: no self-respecting cop would look like that) but it gives other cops a reason to hate him. The rest of the force takes his haircut as a declaration that he's not a real cop; hell, he's just barely one step above the criminals they put away. His hair compounded with his casual attitude make him into the sort of guy the rest of the LAPD would rather handcuff than work with. For Marty, his hair keeps him from being taken seriously, protects him from it really.
Somehow though, Henrietta Lang saw through his haircut. She saw past the purposefully-tussled, sun-bleached locks that have evolved as a self-preservation mechanism.
Whether that was a good thing or not—well, he's still figuring that one out.
888
#161: Write a mini-story that begins with "They had nothing to say to each other:"
They had nothing to say to each other. Needless to say, the nearly 40 minute drive back to NCIS OSP headquarters was less than pleasant with the impeding silence.
He played nervously with the frayed seams of his too-tight, classic blue jeans as they started entering the familiar territory around the NCIS HQ. He made to open his mouth, as if to hesitantly say something, but was cut off prematurely by the threatening glare she shot him at his attempt. Snapping his mouth closed he resigned himself to the uncomfortable silence as they completed their drive. The cut of the engine as they parked and the slamming of the car doors was nearly deafening to the two agents who'd been incased in awkward silence since-…
Well, since the incident.
Walking side-by-side, they made their way swiftly into the building and split to take their seats at their cattycorner desks, neither speaking a word to the other.
Had they been alone the matter would have been dropped then, neither being willing to ever bring the topic up again. Unfortunately for the two agents, the other members of their team, agents Sam Hanna and G. Callen, felt no similar need to sweep the awkwardness under the carpet. Giving each other matching suspicious stares, the two senior agents turned to their respective desk partners before starting in on their so-well-timed- it-was-practically-scripted questioning without breaking their stares.
"Hey, Sam?"
"Yeah, G?"
"D'you hear about the incident at that storage locker Kensi and Deeks went to check out a little while ago?"
"Why no, G, I did not. Do tell."
"Well, turns out some pretty radioactive chemicals were being stored there. Apparently Agent Blye and Detective Deeks were exposed to said radiation, and had to be quarantined by the hazmat guys."
"Oh really? That sounds pretty serious."
"Nah, it wasn't so bad. The radiation levels weren't too harmful, but turns out high levels of exposure to it could lead to pretty bad skin lesions. An immediate chemical shower's the only thing that'll help with that."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yep. Unfortunately the hazmat guys only had one available chemical shower."
"So, I guess that means Agent Blye and Detective Deeks must have-"
"We don't want to talk about it!"
The brief silence after the in-unison-outburst of both younger agents was nearly as thick as the one left behind in the car.
But not nearly long enough in their opinions.
"Say, G?"
"Yes, Sam?"
"Wasn't Detective Deeks wearing black jeans this morning?"
888
#67: In 300 words, write about "deceit":
It'd been a little over a month since he'd seen his partner.
This fact unsettles him a great deal. For a long time he can't place why it upsets him so.
He thinks maybe it's because he's worried she could've been hurt by now, after all she doesn't have a partner to back her up and Kensi Blye can find so much trouble in four weeks he starts to sweat nervously just thinking about it. But at the same time, he realizes she can take care of herself, and had been doing so long before he met her.
He also considers that maybe it's because he's worried she'll think he's leaving for good. It seemed the men in Kensi's life had a track record of leaving her behind, though he can't for the life of him ever imagine why. That train of thought brings up too many risky (emotional) questions though, so he aborts that explanation as well.
It isn't until the second week of that month that he realizes why it bothers him so much: never before had he been so very conscious of how long he'd been under. Days, weeks, months; they all run together when undercover, all there is to concentrate on is the mission and your part. He never knows how long he's really been under until after the bad guys are behind bars and he's finally at his apartment sorting through weeks' worth of TiVo recordings.
But this time—this time he could tell you to the very hour how long he'd been under. Exactly an hour and twenty two minutes after he said goodbye to his partner and told her he'd "see her soon."
The acute awareness of time is killing him.
As he pulls up to the coffee house a few blocks down from her apartment, he reasons with himself that if he doesn't do this, if he doesn't at least see her- sees that she's okay- he will literally explode, and that will be even more harmful to his cover than possibly being seen with a cop by one of the drug dealers he's currently trying to bust.
Not until he's practically standing right in front of her in that damn coffee shop, however, does he realize he's still sufficiently undercover. With his hair bleached a lighter blonde and chopped off shorter than it's been in years, the front upswept while the rest lay flat to his head- not to mention his scruff shaved off his face- he knows he looks completely different from what she usually sees. He looks like a completely different person- which is sort of the point of undercover work, he muses.
He changes his course subtly, walking by her instead of straight at her.
He buys a muffin and takes a seat at a table a few down from her, watching her out of the corner of his eye as he pretends to read the funnies. She's drinking coffee with a woman he's never seen before, but by the way they're laughing and the few snippets he manages to hear usually starting with "Do you remember when…" he assumes she's an old friend, college maybe. They're both dressed in somewhat professional clothing, as if they're both heading off to a board meeting afterward. Looking down at himself he's glad that for once, he's not just the grungy street dealer who works his way up the ladder, but a legitimate businessman- okay, a businessman in the business of drugs, but still, he's glad he got to wear a blazer that flatters the expanse of his shoulders and a dark blue button up instead of his usual beach wear or hobo get-up.
When he sees them start to show signs of leaving, he makes a quick decision and puts the ink of a pen from his pocket against a napkin on the table. Scribbling out his note, he stands and makes his leave discreetly, making sure not to attract any undue attention to himself.
He stands quietly around the corner of the coffee shop, waiting for the two women to make their appearance. When he hears the jangle of the shop door's bell he starts back around the corner at a fast pace.
3, 2, 1- Blam!
Just like he planned it.
"Oh geez!" She breathes out when they collide.
He reaches out quickly and steadies her with a hand on her mid-back. He can feel her tense up under his hand and for a second he worries that she'll pull some kung-fu move and rip his arm off or something, but when she moves her eyes up to meet his, he feels her breath hitch quickly and feels her start to relax.
"Sorry," She starts softly, "I didn't see you there."
Her forehead is furrowed slightly and she's looking at his face intently as if she's trying to place where she'd seen him before- maybe on the street, or maybe they went to high school together, hell maybe he's some two-bit actor she'd seen on TV one time- after all, it is LA.
Deeks realizes his limited time and distracts her train of thought with a small pat on the back and a warm smirk before consciously making his voice slightly deeper than usual , putting a different cadence to his speech, and saying "That's alright; seems I missed you, too." He kicks himself when he slips up and hesitates before adding on the 'too'.
He realizes and accepts that he misses his partner- though not happily. He also realizes and accepts that the feeling is undoubtedly not mutual. He knows from previous experience that people don't miss Marty Deeks.
Now's not the time, he thinks to himself. He slides his hand from her back to her waist, quietly dropping the scribbled napkin-note into her pocket under the guise of righting her into a proper standing position.
"Well, you ladies have a good day," he makes a quick exit before the too-bright mind of his partner figures him out. As he strolls in the opposite direction, he hears the excited whispers of two women who liked what they saw.
Smirking, he relaxes as the stressed stopwatch in his head calms down and stops reminding him how long it's been since he'd last seen his partner, apparently satisfied with the limited interaction.
Still- he'd love to see the look on her face when she realizes it was him.
In case you can't picture that last image of Deeks, google Eric Christian Olsen and Not Another Teen Movie. It's a trip that's for sure. :P
Please review if you can, I'd really enjoy some feedback on characterization especially. How should I change it to make it seem more like the characters? Right now it's pretty dark, hopefully with more light pieces, it'll sound more like them.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!