TITLE: Blurred
AUTHOR: Mel
RATING: T
SPOILERS: Through "Plan B." I also took some liberties with possible character history for story purposes.
DISCLAIMER: Definitely not mine. Also, just being up front, no beta and my high school English teacher called me the Comma Splice Queen. Apologies in advance!
The morning after and he's still trying to shed Max Gentry. He can feel the guy loose inside his head like toothpaste once it's out of the tube. Impossible to put back in once it's free. Max is like that, always was. Excising himself from his first long undercover as Max had taken months. Deeks knew he shouldn't have expected that this time would be any different. But more than anything he wanted it to be different.
His life was in a different place then it had been last time. He'd also been Max for much longer than the one day this time around. But sitting on the beach, watching the waves rolling in on the tide with his surfboard in the sand next to him, Deeks was having a hard time shaking the alias he most wished he could forget.
Usually the beach and waves calmed him. He might have seemed like the typical southern California beach bum but truth was that surfing was one of the few things that could completely distract him. It'd been that way ever since he was a kid. First surfing got him away from the fighting in the house. Then it got him away from the fighting on the streets. It helped relieve the pressures of law school and then it helped him forget about difficult cases and undercover aliases.
In the back of his mind it worried him that he couldn't muster the same sense that surfing would do it this time. He couldn't admit it to anyone but his short day as Max had been harder to endure than the previous five years he originally spent as the guy, even when it had only been off and on as his undercover assignment required.
Thing was he wished he could admit it to someone. Specifically he wished he could admit it to Kensi. When the mission had been complete and he was able to shed the clothes that defined Max and stow them in a box hopefully never to be opened again he'd thought about calling her.
Something told him she wouldn't judge him, wouldn't think badly of him for his struggling to cope with past demons. He'd kept his struggles as much to himself as possible during the case. He thought he'd mostly succeeded, though he was pretty sure Kensi had seen through him every step of the way. She was sharply perceptive and in tune to him that way. Any other given day he would have been pleased at their connection. Not that day.
It had surprised him how she hadn't pushed back, pushed him, when he'd pushed her away during the mission. He wasn't sure he would have given her the same consideration had their positions been reversed. But he didn't miss the fact that while their tactics with dealing with a resistant partner were quite different, they reacted nearly the same when personally bothered by an undercover mission.
Push away. Isolate. Put up a front.
Deeks picked up a handful of sand, watching as the grains slipped through his fingers and drifted sideways in the wind. He wasn't proud of his behavior, of his pushing Kensi away and trying to go it alone. Part of it was wanting to protect himself, not wanting her to see an alias that was all too telling. Another part was that he wasn't proud of how he'd behaved as Max, how he'd behaved with Nicole. Most of the time he could move on from mistakes fairly easily, call them learning experiences and be on his way. But some of them, well, they stuck. He didn't like to admit those mistakes and tended to internalize them. Allowing Kensi to see the mistakes associated with Max made him more uncomfortable than he wanted to think about.
And so when she sat down next to him on the sand he tensed immediately, wishing for the first time since they'd become partners that she would leave him alone. And he forced himself to relax, reasoning that it was the remnant of Max doing the thinking. He was a difficult guy to stop thinking like. And Max would have hated Kensi. Not nearly submissive enough and much too sure of herself. No, Max liked girls with low self-esteem. That was what made them easy pickings for guys like him.
Deeks took a deep breath, trying to will the dark and twisted thoughts away. He couldn't allow an alias to take him over, to make him think about Kensi different than he knew was true.
"What, are you afraid the alligators are going to get you in the water?" Kensi asked, her tone light and teasing while seeming to gauge his mood. Still looking out at the ocean, he smiled slightly.
"I have it on good authority that alligators don't eat humans, crocodiles do. And I'm guessing there aren't any crocodiles in Malibu."
"Doubtful."
Kensi's reply was soft and her tone affectionate. Any other time he would be taking advantage of this gentler side of her. It was a side she rarely let anyone see, though over the last year he'd been fortunate to catch a glimpse here and there. But after years of dealing with the aftermath of his undercover operations alone it was difficult to accept help, even when it came from the only person he really wanted help from.
She seemed to sense his inner turmoil and they sat next to each other in silence on the sand for what seemed like hours. But even Kensi couldn't leave it alone forever and he had to admit he was surprised she didn't push him for as long as she did. And when she finally did speak, her words floored him.
"Your alias as Max. He's your father, isn't he?"
He was so surprised by her question that he couldn't stop his reaction, which was a quick intake of breath and meeting her eyes with his. And seeing her soft eyes fixed on his face then he knew she could see the answer all over his face.
And just as quickly Deeks felt exhausted under the weight of the emotions crashing through him. He never talked about his past with anyone. The people who knew, like Ray and Hetty, they knew pieces and he didn't have to explain the details. And the people who didn't know, which was pretty much everyone else, he could pretend they would never find out. He'd never voluntarily told anyone about his father, about that part of his life.
But he suddenly wanted to tell Kensi.
Not wanting to question the impulse he nodded slowly, keeping his eyes on Kensi's face, looking for the telltale signs of pity or disgust that would justify keeping silent and not telling her. He should have known there was no way Kensi would fail him that way.
"How did you know?" he asked quietly. Kensi shrugged as she turned towards him and leaned a little closer.
"Just some of the things Ray said. I got the feeling you guys grew up kind of rough and usually that has something to do with difficult home situations. And what you have said about your father hasn't been too complimentary."
Deeks nodded, finding himself a bit amazed at what she'd pieced together from the veiled conversations she'd overheard him have with Ray.
"Where is he now?"
"Dead. He's been dead for 13 years, though I didn't even know about it until recently, when I was shot. Hetty found out and told me. When I was 11 I shot my father to stop him from hurting my mom."
Once the words were out he felt oddly lighter. Kensi's quick breath of surprise had him looking at her again, and her touch on his arm gave him something to focus on.
"Your father was the man you shot when you were a kid? Deeks, I'm so sorry—"
"Don't worry about it Kensi, it probably ranks in the top five best things I ever did. He deserved it and it got him out of our lives. I never saw the man again."
"Deeks, don't do that," her tone was firm and surprisingly not the sympathetic tone he was expecting. "Don't pretend it didn't, that it doesn't, affect you. And even though he deserved it that doesn't change the fact that you had to do something so hard and so brave that no kid should ever have to think about doing."
He was surprised to find his throat tightening at Kensi's words. He was used to feeling like he'd been justified in shooting his father. No one had ever questioned it as an act of self-defense. But he wasn't used to someone else seeing it as Kensi had.
"She was wrong, you know."
Confused, he glanced at Kensi, noticing how suddenly she was even closer than before. Her bent knee rested against his hip, her other leg crossed underneath her met his knee.
"Nicole. She was wrong. You're not a coward."
He resisted reeling back from her, wanting to put distance between them and his life as his alias. He really didn't want any part of Max near Kensi. And somehow knowing that she'd heard what he'd said to Nicole and what Nicole had said in response made it seem too close. The lines between the different factions of his life were getting uncomfortably blurred.
Sensing his resistance, Kensi squeezed her hand on his arm, her hand warm against his bare skin before she moved her hand away, leaving his skin cool.
"I've met all kinds of men. This job gives you the chance to see the very best and the very worst in people. And I've had enough men come and go from my life that you could say my views are a bit, well, jaded," Kensi's words were a struggle to get out but she seemed to be forcing herself to continue. "I expect the worst of people, of men. I don't trust easily. It took me years to trust Sam and Callen. I knew they were good guys but trust took awhile."
Deeks was stunned to silence, straining to hear her words over his pounding heart. His eyes were riveted on Kensi's face, which was turned down to stare at her fingers in her lap, restlessly laced together. Missing her touch on his arm and needing that physical connection between them as she told him something difficult for her to say, he reached towards her and caught her hand in his, stilling her nervous movements and pulling another sharp breath from her.
"But I knew almost instantly that you were a good person, Deeks. And though it did take me longer to trust you as I do now, I have known for a very long time that I could trust you. You are one of the bravest people I've ever known and it makes me furious that anyone could make you doubt that," Kensi's voice was full of anger, her words clipped towards the end.
He didn't know what to say. It had been a long time since anyone had known him well enough or even cared enough to defend him and be on his side.
Looking up to meet her eyes he tried to ignore the way his heart beat faster seeing the barely simmering outrage in the depths of her dark eyes. He'd seen Kensi turn determined and badass to defend a person or a cause. He just hadn't thought it would ever be because of him. He threw her a lopsided grin.
"Even though I annoy the hell out of you 98% of the time?"
His words had the desired affect and she smiled, some of the fury leaving her face. And then she shook her head, seemingly arguing with herself before she spoke.
"If you tell anyone this I will deny it until my dying day. But the fact that you annoy me and yet I wouldn't have any other partner but you tells me all I need to know. That and the couple of hours I spent surrounded by lasers. There was never any doubt in my mind that you would come for me. Not for a second."
The vehemence in her tone sucked the air from his lungs. The idea that someone else, that Kensi Blye with her armadillo shell protecting her and keeping people away, could possibly count on him and believe in him left him breathless. It's a scary thought, to have someone depend on him so much. But the idea that he'd earned that from her was better than anything he'd ever accomplished in his life. Because he knew Kensi would never give him that kind of trust and power over her unwarranted. And even when he doubted himself, he believed her. Always and without question.
"I will. I'll always come after you. No matter what."
Offering up his words in a feeble attempt to be worthy of her trust he was rewarded with a warm smile from Kensi.
"I know. And that's why you shouldn't let anyone try and tell you you're less than you are. Because I know different."
His mind drifting back to Nicole and her hurt words, he could examine them a bit more objectively with Kensi's words ringing in his head and her fingers still laced with his.
"She hasn't exactly had a great life. Not since she met Ray and not since she met Max. Nicole wasn't a good person but she was a kind person," Deeks trailed off, thinking back to times when as Max, and as Max with a little too much of Marty mixed in, that he'd allowed the lines to get blurred.
"I'd been undercover as Max for a month when I got into the inner circle on a group of weapons dealers and ran into Ray. He recognized me instantly and knew I was using a fake name but he covered for me. We lost touch after we were teenagers but that history was enough to buy me a little credit with him."
"It was two years later that Ray met and married Nicole. It happened fast and I don't know that either one of them knew what they were getting into. Ray's mom was an alcoholic and he spent his childhood taking care of her. Old habits die hard and he took on Nicole the same way. It worked for them for a while. She hadn't had an easy life growing up and Ray was the first person to want to take care of her. She used drinking to try and forget what she didn't want to remember."
Kensi was quiet as he spoke but a quick glance at her face told him that she was fighting the urge to speak. Her earlier defense of him against Nicole's accusations still rang through his head. As difficult as it was to reveal his past mistakes to Kensi, to admit to weaknesses he'd never voiced to another human being, he knew that she was the one person he could tell.
"Ray and I both led double lives around Nicole. Ray was the arms broker and police informant and I was lowlife Max Gentry and LAPD undercover. Neither of us could be honest enough to even attempt to give her what she was looking for. It was just circles of lies overlapping and tangling. And I couldn't see a way to fix it so I just retreated. I let Nicole care for me, I left her with Ray when he couldn't care for her and I didn't try to help her. I tried to tell myself that I was helping Ray and in that I was doing all I could. But I took the easy way out and Nicole was right, that does make me a coward."
"No."
Deeks wanted to argue with Kensi's firm voice but when he looked at her, every inch of her from her straightened spine to her tense jaw resolutely refusing to allow him to accept the blame he'd already been shouldering for years, he could begin to wonder if maybe she was right.
"Deeks, I'm only going to say this one more time. You are not a coward. You know I would be the first person in line to point out your deficiencies—"
At that Deeks chuckled, shaking his head as Kensi's lips lifted in a slight smile, then the determined look returned to her face.
"But that is not one of them. And we both know I'm always right. So do you believe me about this?"
Deeks was surprised to realize he did, nodding slowly in response to Kensi's words. Because he trusted her and believed her and because she extended the same trust and belief in him he found that for the first time in years he could allow the weight of guilt to begin to lift. But he wanted to tell Kensi everything, reasoned she should have the whole story.
"When I came across Ray five years ago he was already frayed at the seams. He'd basically become his father and he hated himself for it. I offered him a way out. We used to talk about how we basically became our fathers. He would always tell me at least I was just pretending. But sometimes I wasn't so sure," Deeks trailed off, thinking back to when being in Max's head, when being in his father's head, was a way of life.
"It was a little too easy being Max," Kensi's voice was a clear statement of understanding, no question underlying her gentle tone. Deeks nodded tiredly.
"I think that's what was hardest. I didn't have a problem thinking like him. It felt as easy as breathing. And I hated my father, never wanted to be like him. But realizing how easy it was makes me wonder if that's not who I really am."
Kensi squeezed his hand hard against the worried tone of his voice. He found her eyes with his, using the strength in her gaze to anchor him.
"No, Deeks, that isn't who you are. I didn't know your father, I didn't know you as Max and I didn't see you with Ray and Nicole when you were undercover. But I know who you are now. We are not only products of where we come from and our parents. We're also products of the choices we make and who we choose to be."
Deeks looked at her, still not completely convinced. "How do you know that? What makes you so sure?"
"I know you. And I just know. I don't know everything about you but I know you could have just as easily chosen to be a criminal. I'm sure it would have been easier. But you chose to be a cop. I know you could be angry and cruel all the time but you choose to see humor in situations that I could never see. And you treat people with kindness and consideration. You care about people you don't even know. Would your father have been anything like that?" Kensi asked, her voice openly curious. Deeks shook his head, not trusting himself to speak after Kensi's impassioned words.
Kensi was silent again, her eyes drifting out to the ocean waves lapping against the beach. When she finally trained her gaze back on him it was with a chagrined smile.
"You know, sometimes I think we're more alike than I ever would have thought possible," she said, a hint of amused exasperation in her voice. Deeks stared at her dumbfounded, not sure how she could have come to that conclusion considering how dissimilar their personalities were.
His laughter came short and quick and more than a little harsh. "How do you figure?"
Kensi tried not to startle at the almost callous pitch of Deeks' voice. He'd never directed that kind of severe tone towards her and she was a little surprised at how it stung. But she knew that Deeks was still warring with Max Gentry in his head and his alias was still boiling in the background. Not to mention that as much as Deeks might hate it, Max was a part of him.
And being partners, being friends, with someone meant you took the good and the bad, the flaws and the admirable qualities. And ultimately Kensi wanted nothing more than for Deeks to have the partner and friend that he so clearly and desperately needed. And she wanted it to be her that he came to during moments like these.
Deeks didn't miss the color that rose to Kensi's cheeks, or how she shrugged and began to bury her toes in the sand, measuring her words carefully when she did finally speak.
"You were going to law school to become a lawyer before you decided to be a cop, right?" At his quick nod she ploughed on. "Well, what made you want to do that?"
Deeks was silent, thinking back to a time when he'd been much younger, aged by years of growing up in a tough Los Angeles neighborhood, but also incredibly naïve about how the world worked. "I thought that maybe I could change things, that I could make it so other kids, other moms, didn't have to go through what my mom and I did. Or at the very least I thought maybe I could put away some of the men who did what my father did."
"What changed your mind?" Kensi asked softly, in a tone so incredibly inviting that Deeks couldn't help but look into her eyes, wishing he could just drown in the warm darkness he saw there.
"I finished law school, I passed the bar, got hired by the DA. And immediately saw people getting away with committing crimes, getting set free right back on the streets. You know how they say justice is blind? It might be blind, but it's also incredible incompetent at times. I tried to stop it from happening but no matter how hard I tried it wasn't enough. Either they had too good of a defense attorney, got off on a technicality, the evidence was bad, I was overworked with too many cases, witnesses were too scared to testify, whatever. I couldn't be effective as a lawyer. It was too late at that point."
"So you became a cop. Why?"
"I've told you this before." He answered impatiently. "I wanted to help people."
Kensi shook her head stubbornly. "You could have done that as a lawyer. What made you think being a cop would be better?"
Deeks took a deep breath, struggling to put words to the decisions that had made him who he was.
"I thought maybe if I started earlier on, did the best job I could at collecting evidence to lock people away, then maybe that would make it easier to prosecute them. And I felt, no, I feel, like as a cop I can be there first. And maybe if I work hard enough I can stop some lowlife before they hurt someone else."
Deeks felt his voice growing stronger as he spoke, the conviction of his tone matching what he knew to be true. He looked to Kensi for confirmation, not realizing until that moment that he needed her understanding, needed her to understand him. When he saw her eyes, shining with unshed tears, he felt his heart stall. Realizing something he'd said had brought such an unexpected response; he silently waited, squeezing her hands in his.
And he waited. Something told him that if he said a word to try and draw Kensi out that she would pull away and close herself off from him. And this felt like something she needed to voice and something he needed to hear.
Kensi turned her face away from Deeks, her eyes drifting out to the ocean and the lightening sky.
"After I finished college I only applied to one place for a job. NCIS. When I tested for my entrance exam and skills assessment almost immediately I got calls from the NSA, CIA, FBI, Secret Service, even ATF and a bunch of other DOJ agencies."
Stunned, Deeks stared at Kensi, sputtering a laugh in amazement. "So on top of being Wonder Woman you were headhunted by every law enforcement agency out there?"
Kensi shrugged, looking uncomfortable at the compliment to her skills for the first time since he'd known her. "I guess I tested really well. But I turned them all down. I only wanted one job."
"NCIS?" At her nod he shook his head. "Why NCIS? What's so special about NCIS above all those others?"
"NCIS, and specifically OSP, investigates threats to our national security and crimes involving active Navy and Marine soldiers." Kensi took a deep breath, forcing her gaze back to Deeks', needing to see his face as she told him something she'd told so few people that she could count them on the fingers of one hand. "My father was a Marine and he was murdered when I was fifteen. NCIS never found who killed him and the case remains unsolved."
For a moment Deeks saw the raw and naked pain in Kensi's eyes that had followed her like an unwelcome shadow since she was a teenager. And his heart felt heavy at her words. The proud sadness that had always tinged her voice when she spoke about her father made sense now. Deeks had sensed early on that as much as Kensi obviously loved and adored her father, except for the rare occasion she didn't want to talk about him. He'd occasionally wondered why but figured she would one day tell him.
"I can't imagine what that must have felt like. What that still must feel like," Deeks whispered, his hands fully enfolding Kensi's within his own, applying light and comforting pressure with his thumbs rubbing the steady pulse on the inside of her wrists. He watched her silently for a few minutes as she stared out at the horizon, seemingly lost in her thoughts. Then she turned her head to look at him, her face splitting into a brilliant smile so full of love and memory that it actually hurt to look at her.
Not because she was so beautiful when she smiled that way, in a way he was sure he'd never seen before, so unfiltered and open. Because she was beautiful, there was no question there. But because she was so open, letting him see a side of herself she'd never revealed before. He could see that through the pain of her loss, the love for her father still shined bright. And he couldn't help but feel a lonely pang at witnessing that. He was positive that no one in his life had ever felt that strongly for him.
"He was my best friend. He encouraged me in anything I wanted to do. He took care of me but he didn't coddle me. After my mom left I was both the son he hadn't had the chance to have and the only woman in his life." Kensi sighed deeply and a little sadly, her voice whispering to a murmur. "He used to say that, even when I was a little girl. That he didn't need another girl as long as he had me."
Kensi bowed her head and before he thought about it his hand had reached up to cup the nape of her neck, threading through the curling strands of hair falling over her shoulders. She didn't pull away so he kept his hand there, stroking the warm length of her neck until she cleared her throat and lifted her head to look at him again.
"And that's why I only wanted to work at NCIS. If I can help other people get the closure I never got, then that's what I want to do. They deserve that and they need that. I may never get to solve my father's murder." Kensi paused, her unwavering gaze meeting his. "But we can do everything in our power to help people get what I never got. What you never got."
Deeks stared into Kensi's eyes, stunned to silence. He was so used to going it alone, even after almost a year as Kensi's partner he had moments where he was still adjusting to having someone watching his back. And this connection with Kensi, rooted in life experiences so different and yet resulting in their personalities so unexpectedly similar, went even beyond that.
It was a heavy burden and responsibility to willingly share with Kensi. But as he felt the grin forming his lips and Kensi's answering smile the weight didn't seem heavy, it just seemed right. And that was in no small part due to the absolute certainty that this was another way in which he was nothing like his father or Max Gentry. Neither of those men, either real or invented, would have ever taken on such responsibility. And Deeks shouldered it gratefully, welcoming the responsibility as he felt the shadow of his father and Max beginning to fade.
It didn't bother him as Kensi's smile widened and her eyes softened as if she could discern the internal change her words had brought. Maybe it should have scared him, that she knew him so well that she could pick up on the shifting thoughts in his head. But at that moment, sitting on the beach and feeling more connected with her than anyone else he'd ever encountered in his entire life, he couldn't think of a reason why it should.
"My dad used to say something that has always stuck with me. 'Never, never, never give up. As long as you keep trying you haven't failed.' That's something you and I share too. Neither of us gives up at all easily," Kensi said softly. "He would have liked you for that, your dogged unwillingness to ever give up."
Her voice hesitated at the last part; seemingly worried she might have said too much. But Deeks just grinned, pleased beyond belief.
"Even when I'm looking for your snacks in the car, challenging you on the gun range and trying to steal the keys away from you so I can drive?"
"Especially then. And don't forget when you try and beat your Plants vs. Zombies high score, when you try and buy my coffee at Starbucks or you think you can outrun or outmaneuver me," Kensi shook her head in mock annoyance but Deeks just laughed softly, knowing he was experiencing a rare moment when the things that usually annoyed her about him were things she could be fond of.
Deeks watched Kensi as she smiled at him, then returned her gaze back to the ocean. Her eyes were watching the waves but he knew she was thinking of her father, could recognize it by the slight furrow of her eyebrows and the tilt of her head.
But it was the saddened hunch of her shoulders that got to him. Despite her good memories and the things she'd shared with him he knew the memories of her father would always be a little tinged with pain. Not wanting to break the precarious mood, but feeling as though he might be able to lift a small margin of that pain, he took a deep breath.
"I only know what you've told me about your dad, Kensi, but I think he would be so incredibly proud to see what you've become. Any father would be awestruck by you, that he had any kind of a hand in making you who you are."
When Kensi's shining eyes met his he didn't flinch away but met her gaze straight on and unblinking. He was watching her so closely and yet he still didn't have time to react when she leaned forward, kissing his cheek, turning her face in and towards his neck as her soft lips touched his jaw briefly before she pulled back slightly, leaving her face pressed against his for the most fleeting of seconds. It all happened so quickly that he couldn't even attempt to suppress the shudder that chased down his spine.
"Thanks, Deeks," Kensi whispered in his ear before she put marginal distance between them, settling back down next to him on the sand, sitting closer than before. His mind whirled at first, then seemed to quiet on its own, calmed by the presence of his partner next to him, the lapping of the waves on the sand and the blowing of the wind through his hair. He decided not to dwell too much on how Kensi seemed to have the unique ability to make his heart beat faster in one second, and calm the riot in his chest in the next.
The sun was finally beginning to rise behind them; golden light looking like liquid metal tendrils on the ocean waves and Deeks was toying with the idea of surfing. He actually felt that restless impulse in his chest to be out in the water and he glanced from the surf to Kensi and their hands, hands still joined and fingers laced, between them.
"You feel like surfing now?" Kensi asked, her voice colored with knowing amusement. He shrugged, reluctantly releasing her hands.
"I didn't before. Wasn't sure I would for a long time. But yeah, I think I do."
Kensi's smile was almost a smirk, like she was in on a joke he wasn't aware of. He nudged her shoulder with his, feeling a little self conscious of her scrutiny.
"Why do I feel like you know something I don't?"
"I knew there was no way you'd be able to stay away from the waves for very long. Go, you've got 30 minutes and then you're taking me to get waffles."
Deeks threw back his head and laughed. "I am? Since when?"
Kensi smiled triumphantly. "Since now. I'll even let you buy my coffee at Starbucks. Get going, now you've only got 29 minutes."
Deeks mock grumbled as he stood and pulled his shirt off over his head, trying unsuccessfully to keep the grin from his face. It felt too good to have their easy give and take back. He'd been worried that Max and his father might have changed him irrevocably. But as he tossed his shirt and flip-flops in a pile by Kensi and scooped up his board to head towards the ocean he gave Kensi one last look before he reached the shoreline.
And looking at her, with that determined set of her face, her smile knowing and slightly exasperated at the same time, he realized he should have known all along.
Kensi never gave up on anything or anyone she really cared about.
Including him.
END