No profit garnered, all characters not mine. Title, quote, and chapter titles from the Leona Naess song "Heavy Like Sunday." The dress Hetty refers to: peopleparties/modelsearch/person4424/slideshow?iphoto=608
The Beyonce song is Ave Maria. Thanks to J, Tigs, Topaz and Pene for awesome beta action.

I wanna be your reason why
I'm heavy like Sunday
I wanna be your alibi

And friends make better lovers
'Cause they look you in the eye
And they'll put you in the middle
Of a thousand whys

Kensi is absolutely sure she can do this. She's also absolutely sure she'll be convinced she can't in half an hour. She'd better act now. She grins and the baby smiles back at her.

It's her first weekend morning with no help. No one is even scheduled to check up on her. She has to get everything done by herself. Which is harder than it sounds, she thinks. She just had a baby 12 weeks ago. "Not going to be so hard on myself," she says out loud. The baby looks up at her from the bed, smiling more at her voice. "You like it when I'm positive, I think. Good choice, kiddo."

No diaper change needed so she grabs the sling and starts putting the baby in it. "Okay, around here, and tighten here and thank you for cooperating," she says. The baby giggles. Or gurgles. Both.

"We got this," she says. "We are going outside to get the mail."

She hums the Battle Hymn of the Republic because it makes her smile. She does in fact make the entire short walk to the where the mail is without dropping the baby or tripping and she did remember the mailbox key and she does have mail. "It would have been pretty anticlimactic if there hadn't been something," she says.

She stands at the box and opens envelopes, waving paper at the baby. The baby follows things with her eyes.

Kensi opens the packet from Nell, mail to her aliases. The first letter she pulls out is addressed to Occupant. Her knees shake and she sits down on the sidewalk, the ground. She drops everything else and realizes she is hugging the poor baby tightly with her now free hand.

"Oh my god," she whispers. Her beautiful, smart, perfect little girl is crying, loudly.

One of her neighbors opens her door and looks out at hysterical Kensi and crying baby. Kensi takes three deep breaths and stands up. "Sorry," she says. "Crazy-just-had-a-baby lady gets teary about Hallmark cards." She forces herself to smile and walks back to her house.

Somehow, she makes it to the couch. She keeps looking at the letter and down at the baby. "Oh, God," she says. "Prairie-bug, I think your dad is alive."

It was a Thursday. She remembered that part. The case had wrapped up at 9 am: 30 hours of stakeout, 15 minutes of gunfire. Hetty let them go home and Kensi actually fell asleep before they were even undressed. When she woke up, Deeks was tracing tiny circles on her hip. She said, "We should have sex now."

"Absolutely," he said. He didn't actually move, though.

"Are you already tired of me?"

"Absolutely impossible," he said. "I am damn tired, though. Can you give me a minute, maybe three?"

"Sure," she said. "Maybe this is a good time for some of your professional development." She took off her shirt and rolled onto her back.

"Really?" He said. "We're still on that."

"You don't take one class and not really take it and be done with it. So, what would you do if you had to let someone know you were not dead?"

He laughed. "I'd call you."

"You can't just call me," she said. "Then the bad guys will know that I know you're not dead or the bad guys will know you're not dead. Think professional."

"I'd send you a postcard. 'dear fern, thinking of you.'" He sat up and took off his shirt, and shimmied out of his pants and underwear. He was awfully pretty in his way.

"Wrong again. Your postcard will stand out, you have to assume if people are watching you, they would be watching me. Calling me 'Fern' isn't exactly stealth." She sat up and hugged him from behind. "I am going to explain to you how to do this right, all the variations, and then you are going to repeat it back to me, and then -"

"We are going to have curl-your-toes, apologize-to-the-neighbors-for-the-noise sex."

She kissed his neck and said, "I believe we have a plan."

Kensi runs her fingers over the letter, stares at it, tries to breathe. It's everything she told him to do. Prairie is still crying so she folds up the letter and puts it down. First things first, she thinks. Prairie first. As she bounces the baby all she can think is he's alive, he's alive, Marty's alive.

XXXX

"To trust," Kensi said, raising her glass. Deeks smiled back at her and they clinked together, his bottle to her glass.

"We had a good day, for sure," he said. "Good day for partners." He sipped his beer and licked his lips. They'd been partners for five months and she was actually willing to acknowledge that he could be judged attractive. Maybe. Maybe she found him attractive. As long as he didn't say stupid things.

"You know what would be great for partner bonding? We should have sex," he said.

Like that, she thought. Stupid things like that. "Are you kidding?"

"Not at all," he said. He leaned forward. He really did have pretty eyes. Kensi thought she needed to stop drinking right now. Deeks did not have pretty eyes. They were a nice color, sure. But not actually pretty.

He said, "You strike me as a woman who actually has casual sex."

"You mean like a slut?" She almost laughed. Someone had refilled her whiskey. She took a tiny sip.

"Not in the slightest. I don't like that word, it's sexist."

She did laugh at that. "You object to things that are sexist?"

"Yes, I do. I bet that I have had sex with way more people than you. But no one calls me a slut. Even if you've only had sex with, like, 10 guys, people start throwing around that word with women. How come you're a slut and I'm not? Totally sexist."

"How many people have you had sex with? I trust," she said, emphasizing the word, "that you wouldn't lie to me or exaggerate. And I know you count."

"I don't have a black book or anything like that. But yes, I know the number."

"How are you counting sex?" She'd finished her whiskey. She turned the glass over so no one refilled it. She was already starting to feel stupid. Not drunk, just stupid. Like wondering what Deeks would look like naked stupid.

"Uh, I'm being a traditionalist. Since I've only had sex with women, I'm going with babymaking sex. Minus any babies, thank god."

"And," she said. "What's the number?"

"Will you tell me yours?"

"You first," she said.

"86," he said. He smiled. "And you?"

"Wow," she said. "You are a total slut."

He smiled at her. It was a stupid, smug smile. Like he knew she was going to cave, tell her his number, go home with him, sleep with him. She said, "48."

"You are not a slut. Are you lying to me? Shading up? Down?"

"Fine, it's 49."

He laughed. "You don't want me to be 50. I'm gonna be, though. I see it in your eyes. You have not said no, Kensi."

"I haven't said yes," she said. "You think I have casual sex, for real."

He said, "Some people say they do, male and female. But really, it's not actual casual. You seem like the sort of woman who really does just do it. Walk away. Not lying when they say they don't care if you call."

"But you are going to call, I mean, we'll still be partners. We'll see each other every day."

"And maybe we'll do it again, and maybe we won't," he said. "But it seems like a good idea."

"It really doesn't," she said.

"It's okay if we don't," he said. He smiled wider. "Seriously."

"That's good," she said. She stood up. "But let's do it anyway."

"You are so cute," he said. He held her at the waist and she didn't step on his toe.

She was going to tell him his place was too neat when they got inside but then he was kissing her, she was kissing him back. She was going to have to save her jokes for after.

She had been pretty convinced she would find his beard irritating and it wasn't. Somehow it was even maybe soft. His face, his lips were soft and she felt unprepared. She was totally, completely, absolutely turned on, like a wave about to hit and knock her over. Bad idea, bad idea. She'd had a friend in college who'd described every hot guy she saw as "making her toes and fingers tingle." Kensi had always thought that was so romance novel or the onset of some kind of disease but she was tugging at Deeks's belt and she didn't exactly trust her hands.

Deeks stopped kissing her. He said, "You still good?"

She knew if she said something, he'd stop and leave and never hold it against her or bring it up. She did trust him that much. So she said, "I'll be perfect once you get a condom." He stepped away, laughing, and she found his bed. It was nicely made. She pulled off her clothes. "Freak," she said.

"What?"

"Your apartment is so clean and your bed is made, you make me laugh," she said.

He looked down at her, his knees against the edge of bed. "I'll take it," he said. "We're going to talk later about why you find basic adult cleanliness so amusing." She opened her legs and leaned back on her elbows. "Later," he said, the tiniest wavering tone in his voice. She definitely loved that.

It was incredibly satisfying, totally fingers and toes tingling awesome sex. She fell asleep, happily exhausted. Good idea, she thought.

She woke up anxious and worried. She was on the wrong side of the bed. She'd slept with her incredibly irritating partner. She would basically die of embarrassment if Sam ever found out. She slipped out of bed and gathered her clothes without waking Deeks. She was getting dressed in the dark in his living room when something took a deep, rattling breath.

Deeks turned on the light in the kitchen. She said, "Did you hear that?"

"That's Monty," he said. "C'mere, Monty."

He had a dog. A very scruffy dog who moved very slowly towards Deeks. Who was naked. She blinked. She said, "How did I not know you had a dog? You talk about everything. You spent twenty minutes yesterday talking about how you pick out your wax for your surfboards or whatever."

He shrugged. "Monty just didn't come up." He clearly loved the mutt.

"You were hiding your dog from me?"

"We're not having sex again, are we?"

"No," she said. "Sorry, I mean, I just think it would be a bad idea. Also, what else are you hiding?"

He smiled and said, "I guess you'll find out eventually. I still think this was a good idea."

She had all her clothes back on. "I agree with that," she said. "One time, good idea. More than that, awful." She walked out.

And it was fine. Totally fine. She was able to just be partners with him, he didn't bring any of it up. He did start talking about Monty, way more than she ever wanted to know. As much as she appreciated Monty.

Sometimes, she thought about his body naked and the way he had made her feel when he went down on her (very very very very very good) and sometimes she just wanted to strangle him.

She really couldn't pin down exactly when she fell in love with him.