Look! I wrote something. Aren't you proud?

(title from a song I heard on the radio...not sure what its called)


Kensi's day always begins the same. The alarm goes up off at six-o-three pm but she pushes the snooze button three times, until she can't avoid it any longer. She rises and downs a cup of coffee before turning on the shower and. Tights, a tank-top and scrubs overtop, and she's ready for work. Most of the doctors wear just scrubs, but Kensi always finds the air conditioning to be two degrees to cold, even in the sharp heat of august.

The nurse's station is always bustling with a mixture of twenty-something's with Starbucks and hair tied up in top-knots, bright colored scrubs and Converses; and the older, more experienced nurses: short gray hair and the pale purple scrubs, glasses balanced on noses, the cords hanging loose around their necks.

Kensi knows only a few of them. They usually assign her to the ER, and only a few of the nurses are well-equipped to handle the stress in the emergency room of their small-town hospital in the lower LA side.

Rose is a short brunette, curvy and friendly and always with something nice to say. Jasmine wants to be a vet somewhere North where its cold, but somehow landed here in LA, calming down burn victims and bandaging gunshot wounds. Kensi's favorite is probably Nell. She's got a head of vibrant red hair, and she's about as friendly as Kensi is: so not very much. She always has something sassy to say about the rest of the doctors, and she's an entertaining gossip.

Tonight however, will soon prove to be lonely. Nell's on leave for some bridal shower in North Dakota, and Jasmine's got the flu so she's been out for the last three days. Its busy in the ER: Kensi takes care of a stabbing, a seriously scary rash, and a broken leg before she sees him.

He doesn't come in by the ambulance, like most of her emergency patients, but comes in through the back door, hands clutched on his stomach over a bloody white t-shirt. He's gasping for air, and stumbling all over the place, and it takes two nurses to hold him upright.

He gasps. He meets her eyes and says something that she can't hear. Kensi rushes to his side and helps Rose lead him to one of the roll able gurneys. He's got a broken nose and two black eyes, a bleeding stomach and raw knuckles.

Kensi works in the dark part of city—most of her patients are covered in old bullet scars, black leather and some kind of tattoos, whether it be the gang or prison kind. Or both.

This man has shaggy blonde hair and blue eyes the color of the ocean when the sun hits it in early morning. He's in jeans and a plain white t-shirt. He looks like a surfer. He looks like a Hollister ad. He matches her gaze until Rose rolls him out of sight.

It leaves her a little bit rattled, so she heads to the break room to grab a drink of water before one of the nurses calls her in to take care of him. Seven minutes later, Rose finds her with a serious expression and with scrubs covered in blood. "He's ready for you, Dr. Blye." Then she winks. "He's a cutie-patootie—you should get his number."

Kensi feels the red heat flush across her cheekbones. She ignores the nurse's comment. "Thanks Rose. I'll go take a look at him."

They've moved him to one of the temporary beds in the ER, but he's sitting up and taking in the white-washed walls and even-whiter sheets. He's shirtless, which she doesn't let distract her, and he's got a thin white bandage across his rib cage that's already showing signs of bleeding through.

The man points to his broken nose; the double black eyes. "I broke it." He says, and then smirks up at her.

Stunningly broken, would be a more appropriate term, but Kensi can't seem to find her doctor voice, not when this man is joking through the pain of a broken nose and a what-appears to be a stab wound. "What's your name?" She finds herself saying, even though she thinks she meant to say, where did you get these injuries?

The man blinks up at her, and opens and closes his mouth in obvious surprise. Maybe he hadn't been expecting that question, maybe he hadn't been expecting her tone of voice. "Charlie." He says.

Kensi gathers herself, drops the accidental flirty smile, and slips into her professional doctor face. "Okay. Charlie. Let me take a look." She wipes her hands nervously on her jacket, before she reaches forward carefully and cradles his head in her hands. The ends of his long blonde hair tickles her wrists as she runs her fingers across his cheekbones to probe carefully. He doesn't flinch as she works, just keeps his gaze steadily on her. Charlie has long golden eyelashes bracketing those bright blue eyes. She catches herself staring for a moment, before returning her gaze to his nose. "I'm going to have to set it." She tells him apologetically.

Charlie doesn't say anything; just nods up to her. "It's probably going to hurt worse than the break." Kensi warns.

He tries to grin. "I promise I won't cry."

"I promise not to tell if you do." Kensi replies. She matches his smirk with one of her own.

Charlie laughs. "Thanks, doc." He laughs again, and turns abruptly serious. "What's your name?"

She holds out her hand. "Kensi." Charlie's grip is rough, callouses decorating his palms.

"Nice to meet you." Charlie says. He grips the edge of the hospital bed. His knuckles turn white. "I'm ready, doc. Give it to me."

She fixes him up bit by bit: sets his broken nose, and stitches up the stab wound; gives him pain meds she predicts he won't take, and lends him one of her spare t-shirts to send him home. Charlie looks just a bit silly as he leaves the clinic: a bit of white bandage hanging down under the lip of her too-small purple t-shirt.

She walks him out to the front hall, and he stops her with a hand on her wrist. He meets her eyes and very-seriously (with only a hint of that smirk) promises to return her t-shirt washed and dried and ironed. But he never asks for her number, so she's not sure how that's possible.

He limps out the hospital and doesn't turn around to wave goodbye. She's not sure why she expects him to—she treats hundreds of people a week, she's never wanted them to say goodbye before. She's never wanted them to come back and say hello.


Its two months before she sees him again. She's been at the hospital for thirteen hours and she's been counting down the minutes until she's allowed to go home. It's only seven in the morning, but she's looking forward to stripping down to her underwear and crawling into bed and possibly-sleeping for several days.

She's been here for so long that she's trying not to let Rose and Nell see her. They ordered her to leave four hours ago and Nell swore she would break into Kensi's house and steal her knife collection if she saw Kensi around the hospital again. Knowing Nell, she would probably do it too, so Kensi's sneaking out the back door of the emergency room when she hears her name.

"Kensi." The voice says, she doesn't recognize it, but she can sense the urgency in the tone, the utter need in his voice. "I need Kensi."

Kensi doesn't think, she just tosses her purse into one of the plastic chairs by the check-in desk, and rushes towards the circle of nurses that surround her about-to-be-patient. Nell sends her a split-second glare when she reaches the group, but Kensi just moves her aside gently to see what she's dealing with.

It's Charlie. He's leaning against Rose, and he's holding his right arm up in the air to slow down the blood that's dripping down his wrist and onto the blue plaid of his long-sleeve shirt.

"I know, I know." He murmurs when he sees her. He looks a bit unsteady. "We've really got to stop meeting like this." Charlie says in one giant breath of air. He uses his other hand to brush his bangs out of his eyes, and Kensi feels a moment of relief to see that his nose has healed straight. He leaves a smear of blood on his forehead.

She starts to ask when, or maybe what, when he answers her without a word on her part. "Four hours ago." His mouth slurs the words. There's a bruise blooming on his temple, she notices, as she helps him walk towards one of the exam rooms. Charlie leans heavily on her shoulder.

"Okay, Charlie. Sit here." She directs him to the bed when they reach Exam room 3. "I got him, Nell." She tells the short redhead. Nell nods and leaves; the girl always could take a hint.

"I'm not Charlie." He says, so quietly she almost can't hear him. He lays back against the bed and closes his eyes.

Kensi was in the process of washing up and putting on gloves, but at this comment, she pauses, hands dripping hot water on the linoleum floor. "What?"

"Not Charlie." He says without opening his eyes. "Today, I'm Marty."

She doesn't think too much of the comment. He's obviously concussed from the head wound, has lost to much blood from the gash in his arm, so Kensi just gets to work on his arm. She administers pain meds through an IV drip, and waits a few minutes for the drugs to set in.

She can tell when the medicine takes effect, because he opens his eyes wide and stares at her. "Why are you a doctor?" He reaches up and tugs on a lock of her hair, loosening it from the ponytail holder. "You should be a model."

Kensi breathes out a short laugh, and lays his hand back down on the bed. He closes his eyes again as soon as she lets go of his arm. She slips on her doctor's face—the professional one—and begins to rinse and dress his wound. The bullet went straight through his bicep, and there's an exit wound on the other side. She stitches him up and bandages it tightly, before she examines his head wound.

It's clear that it wasn't a fist that made the shadowy bruise beneath his hair line. She's seen the product of to many fistfights to know that. Kensi has to push his golden curls out of the way to see it clearly. It looks like someone slammed a baseball bat into his head, judging by the size of the wound.

Kensi winces just looking at. Her father was a soldier—a Marine—who taught her everything he knew about weapons and war. She was meant to go into the police force, or maybe enlist in the army. But when her father died at fifteen, she decided she wanted to save lives instead of taking them. Eight years and several degrees later, here she is—bandaging up gangbangers in South LA.

Except this one was different, Kensi knew. Charlie, or whatever the hell is name was, was probably a cop. She couldn't picture the blonde man in front of her doing anything dishonest, but perhaps it was just his baby-blues that drew her in.

Thanks to her father, Kensi knew about bullets and guns; it was no pistol that made the gaping wound in his bicep. Something more powerful—Kensi knew. She's bound by law to report all bullet wounds but there's so many that slip under the radar. So many crimes in this part of town that the cops will never ever solve. Kensi decides to wait until he wakes up before reporting the injury. She doesn't know why, but she wants to trust this man—which is unusual for her.

Kensi cleans the blood off his arm and chest, and throws away another one of his ruined shirts. She wonders if he still has her purple t-shirt. She wonders if he cares.

"Kensi." He whispers a sometime later. Judging by the brighter light streaming in through the tiny window above her head, she fell asleep in the chair beside his head. She rubs the sleep from her eyes and moves to his side to check the bandages and the IV.

The bandages are clean, there's no blood seeping through the dressing, and there's no heat around the wound. Good. He still smells like sweat and blood, and his skin is pale; dark circles marring the skin beneath his eyes. She wants to bury her face in his bright hair.

He sits up and spins so his bare feet dangle off the edge of the hospital bed.

She can tell she needs to catch him off guard to ask him questions, otherwise he'll just flash that smile and crack a joke. So she asks him outright. "Is your name really Charlie?"

He doesn't hesitate. "No."

Kensi was never one to give up, but she doesn't want to lie. She compromises. "Why would you lie to me?"

He looks down at his hands, and twists them together in a way, that Kensi would assume was nervousness, if he hadn't looked so steady when he looked back up to meet her gaze.

He doesn't look like he's going to answer her. "I don't want to see you hurt, Charlie." She says quietly.

He stands up, only a little bit unsteady, and rests a hand on her elbow. He presses more weight onto her that is strictly necessary, and so she reaches out to press gently on his shoulder until he sinks back down onto the bed.

He lets her. He sighs. "My name is Marty Deeks. I'm a cop with the LAPD."

Kensi doesn't say anything—just stares at him for a long moment. He doesn't say anything either, just waits until she's ready. This new information scares her.

He looks up at her from underneath those long gold eyelashes. "I was undercover the last time you saw me. Charlie Ingles is a reluctant gun runner. His shipment was late and so he got into a bit of trouble with his employers."

Kensi can't help the gasp that escapes from her lips. Charlie, now Marty, reaches forward to grab her hand. "Tonight, I was coming home for the office. A couple of ex-cons recognized me on my walk to the car. One of them decided to teach me a lesson."

"Did you learn it?" Kensi asks, even though that isn't what she meant to say.

Marty stands up again; this time Kensi doesn't try to sit him back down. "I'm a slow learner." He says, and then leans forward to catch her lips with his.


Nell and Rose are looking particularly angry when Kensi finally exits the exam room with Marty in tow. Nell has her hair tied back today in a small ponytail, and with her arms crossed across her chest, she is intimidating.

"Go home." Rose begs. "You've been here for a solid twenty-four hours now. You need sleep." She doesn't look at Marty, but the pair of them seem so disapproving that even he begins to nod in agreement.

She nods, sends them an apologetic grin that doesn't have much effect, and then leads Marty from the hospital and outside into the muggy August air. There's crickets chirping in the trees above their heads, and the streetlight outside of the backdoor is only flickering in the darkness.

Marty stops at a beat-up looking blue jeep and gestures with his good arm. "This is me." He says. "Which one's yours?" He looks at her so intensely, her lips burn with the memory of his kiss.

"I took the bus today." She says, staring at the ground with determination.

"Know how to drive?" Marty asks, already opening the passenger side door of his own car.

This offends her. "Of course." She assumes what he's asking and moves to the driver's side door without another word. He balls up a bloody towel and shoves it under the seat as she climbs inside.

Kensi's always been as tall as all the boys, and Marty isn't much of an exception. She doesn't adjust the seats—just puts it in reverse and gets them out of the parking lot. He gives her quiet directions to his apartment, but she ignores him. He should still be in a hospital bed right now: there's no way that she's leaving him alone tonight.

When they pull up outside her apartment, Kensi turns off the car and moves to get out, but Marty's hand on her wrist stops her. It's like an electric shock against her skin, it makes her cheeks flush.

"Good to know that you feel it too." Marty says with a teasing smile, as he removes the keys from her still-surprised hand.

Kensi can't tell if he's teasing or not. She's never been good at deciphering people with a sense of humor. "I kissed you back." She tells him with only a slight tremor in her voice that she prays he doesn't notice and immediately make fun of.

He doesn't, but she suspects he might of, had he been feeling better. He merely raises a goading eyebrow.

"What?" Kensi can't decide if she finds the leer on his face adorable or annoying. "Did you want me to lay you down on that hospital bed?" Her only response is another leer. She instantly regrets her forwardness. She tries to cover up her flirting. "You had an IV in your arm." She reminds him and then heads up the walk to her apartment before he can manage to find a comeback to that.

"Come inside." She says, once she has the door unlocked. Marty is looking unsteady on his feet, so she walks back to him and leads him gently inside. He stares around her apartment with blatant curiosity, if not slightly blurry eyes. She leads him through the messy living room and into her bedroom, setting him down on the edge of the bed and trusting her prayer that he stays upright.

The lights are blinding in the bathroom; it takes her eyes a minute to adjust. She turns on the shower as hot as it goes, and then gestures for Marty. He strips, slightly awkwardly, and then climbs in the shower without another word. She brushes her teeth while he showers, and then hands him a towel when she hears the water shut off.

He has no clothes, so she digs through the pile of clothes she's collected from her regular one-night-stands and finds a pair of sweatpants that look like they'll fit him. A pair of socks and an extra-large t-shirt later, and she leads him back to her bed. She planned to sleep on her couch, maybe catch up on some Next Top Model, but he looks so comfortable under her blankets, that she strips down to her underwear and climbs in beside him.

"You know what they say about messy girls?" Marty asks. His voice is muffled beneath the layers of covers; she has to listen closely to distinguish his words.

"What?" She whispers back.

"They say they're better in bed." He says. He coughs once, and then lies on his side to face her. He meets her eyes in the faint light from the moon outside.

Kensi's not sure where her bravery is coming from, (she's not normally this forward). She leans forward and captures his lips again, pressing her hand on the back of his neck and pressing her tongue inside his mouth. She releases him at his slight laugh. And then turns around so he can slide his good arm across her stomach and pull her closer.
"Pretty good, huh?" She laughs.

His laughter is quiet, and buried beneath layers, and maybe even muffled by her hair tucked beneath his chin. But his laughter shakes her too.


Don't judge me if this is bad.

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