Switched Places

"I know you hate me right now and maybe you will hate me forever, but I won't apologise for what I did. I won't apologise for getting you out of that room, from that chair and from them horrible men. Even if it costs us our partnership, even if it costs me everything I have. I won't apologise for it."

Kensi had looked better, her face was all battered and bruised from the amateur dentistry Sidorov and his goons had been using on her for hours.

When Deeks had entered the room that they had kept her in, when he had seen what these men had done to her, he knew instantly that he couldn't continue with the mission.

Granger had tried to order him, tried to reason with him about nukes and other life and death issues and when that had failed he had tried to reason that the two agents lives weren't worth the thousands in danger.

He hadn't even gotten to finish the sentence before Deeks had cold cocked him and sent him to the floor.

"Maybe you'd have done differently if it was me tied to that chair. Maybe you really believe that the ends justify the means. Maybe you honestly think that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. To me they are just a number, a statistic. Numbers don't keep you company, they don't make you laugh and smile and they don't hold you when you are feeling down and having a bad day. I won't ever feel sorry for putting you ahead of projected casualty numbers from an event that hasn't even occurred yet."

She wouldn't look him in the eye, her mismatched orbs always skirting around the edges never lingering too long on anywhere in this antiseptic filled room of the hospital.

He didn't have long before they'd escort him to the boat shed for questioning. The cuffs on his hands were chafing a bit and he rubbed under the left one absent-mindedly as he looked down at his partner.

"So maybe you won't ever forgive me and I accept that fully. You're my partner and no matter what I will always put your life ahead of anybody else's. That's probably why I've always been a one man show. A psychiatrist would probably call it an attachment disorder. Though I really doubt that it would be the same with just anybody, because I'm pretty sure I've never felt the same way about anybody as I do about you."

Kensi took a deep breath and almost groaned from the pain it caused.

"Our partnership is definitely over now and I've only got myself to blame for that. That doesn't mean we are over though."

He grabbed her left hand in between his cuffed ones and stroked softly across the back of it with his thumb.

"I'm not asking you for anything right now. I don't want you to panic, I don't want you to feel pressured or scared about anything that's between us. We're still the same as we always were, we're still Kensi and Deeks."

He brings his lips to the back of her hand and gently kisses where his thumb had been stroking before letting her hand slide back to her side.

"I know what you've been through was horrible. All I want from you is a phone call at any time of day if you need anything."

Callen's solemn face appeared at the door to Kensi's room and nodded once in Deeks' direction. Deeks brought his hand up and stroked it through his hair roughly before shaking his head and smiling slightly.

"Time for me to go princess. Wish me luck"

As he ambled slowly towards the door he heard a whisper of her voice.

"Good luck"

Weeks passed by, his liaison position was pretty much done for. Granger had seen to that of course after been so roughly treated by the Detective he had already taken a disliking to even before the incident.

Deeks had been sent back to the LAPD and because of the sensitivity of the case that they had been working at NCIS, no one there was any the wiser. Before he had worked at NCIS he had been an undercover prodigy, he had been an expert at fitting himself into covers and into the criminal under belly of the city.

Now however he had chosen to separate himself from his past life, instead opting for something more mundane. So Detective Deeks found himself working at a desk in the homicide department and while it was a world away from anything he was used to it did allow him time to reflect on his time spent with the NCIS team.

He missed them, he missed the job but most of all he missed her.

Kensi had been released from hospital a week previously, he knew because he got updates from quite a few members of his ex-team. He always knew that she was struggling, she was in pain and if the others could see it then he knew that spoke volumes about how badly she had been effected.

He struggled with his inner-self daily on whether he should call her, visit her or even just send her a text. It had to come from her though, he knew that. He knew that what he'd left her with was a confusing life both personally and professionally and an even more confusing set of emotions.

His phone buzzed in his pocked and he absent-mindedly thumbed the answer button and lifted it to his ear.

"Go for Deeks."

"I need you"