Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS: LA. I'd love a boyfriend with Deeks' hair though...
Warning: Angst abounds in this one, people. There are a couple of harsh words, and significant references to child-death.
AN: And I've ventured into a new fandom. It took me a while to get into NCIS: LA, I confess, but I love it now. Deeks is awesome, I love Kensi, and Sam and Callen are just so much fun. And Deeks is awesome. So, here we go: My first NCIS: LA fic.
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Not For Nothing
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She almost doesn't see him.
All the lights are off and everyone else left hours ago; the only reason she's still here is because she had to get her backlog of paperwork done or Hetty would have sent her out as a Pizza Delivery Girl in every case they worked for the next six months.
She doesn't even know what catches her eye – his shoe, maybe, hanging off the side of the couch and making a strange silhouette? – but she approaches silently and flicks the light on warily.
"Deeks?" she says, startled, and he jumps a little at his name and rolls over, blinking sleepily.
"Oh, hey Kens," he says when he recognises her, without any of his usual enthusiasm, and then his gaze falls away and he turns to face the back of the couch again.
"What, uh..." Kensi starts, and then clears her throat a little. "What are you still doing here? Everyone else when home ages ago."
Deeks shrugs, still facing away from her.
"Just didn't feel like going home," he says, a hollowness to his voice.
She hesitates, wondering if she should press or not. But then she sees his shoulders slump a little as he breathes out a sigh and she takes a step forward.
"Is this about what happened today?" she asks, her voice gentle.
Deeks averts his gaze from the patterns on the couch to look instead at the crease where the back and the arm of the furniture join, and that's confirmation enough.
"Deeks," she says, a light of protest in her voice as she moves forward swiftly and perches on the edge of the couch, his legs pressing against her back. "You know that wasn't your fault. Tell me you're not blaming yourself for this."
She sees his jaw clench and unclench before he speaks.
"Five minutes," he says, his voice hoarse. "If I'd worked it out just five minutes earlier than I did, then we would have gotten there in time. Five freakin' minutes."
His hand is fisting and unfisting in the material over his stomach as he speaks, and Kensi reaches out firmly to wrap her fingers gently around his wrist.
"Be grateful that you worked it out at all," she says, her tone a blend between comforting and stern. "None of us saw it until you pointed it out – I don't know if we would ever have made the connection. And even if we had it would have been too late – at least thanks to you we got there in time to catch him."
Deeks snorts a little but doesn't pull away from her touch.
"Jailing the bastard isn't going to bring those kids back," he says softly, his voice venomous. "It's not gonna give those parents their children back."
Kensi can't think what to say to that, so she stays silent, and for a long while nothing is said.
"She loved Transformers, you know?" Deeks says out of the blue, his gaze still firmly fixed on the swirly patterns in the couch. "Their daughter, Hailey. Huge fan. We talked about it when you were interviewing her parents, when I was out the back distracting the kids. Jazz was her favourite. Nine years old and into her Mom's makeup and high heels, but she loved Transformers."
Kensi listens silently, and reaches out her free hand to stroke his arm comfortingly.
"And the twins – Ben and Alex. They loved it too - their favourite was 'Bee. Told me they had their room painted in yellow and black for their last birthday. Alex said he wanted a 'tiny dog to call Mojo' for Christmas. Ben wanted a blue remote control car. Hailey took the opportunity to tell them that six-year-olds who break into their sister's room to steal her favourite skirt don't get dogs or toy cars for Christmas."
She shifts her grip on his wrist and he twists his hand up to twine his fingers with hers, but he doesn't look up. Her thumb strokes the back of his hand absently.
"Hailey was going to be ten in a month," he says, despondent. "Double digits. She was so excited – she was going horse riding for the first time with a bunch of her friends from school. She's never gonna get to ride a horse now."
"Deeks," Kensi interrupts, sounding both comforting and protesting. "Look, I know how you're feeling right now – I get it. We've all lost people on cases – no one's ever going to claim they've had a hundred percent success rate. But you can't blame yourself every time someone dies. You're not the one to blame here, ok, you didn't pull the trigger. You tried, and that counts for something."
He doesn't say anything, and the hand that's been stroking his arm travels up to his head, and she cards her fingers through his hair gently.
"And we got the guy," she adds, his blonde curls smooth underneath her fingers. "We got Fuller. He's going to rot for a long time because of what he did."
That was the wrong thing to say, apparently, because Deeks suddenly pulls his hand free from hers and hunkers down into the couch angrily, pulling his head away from her gentle fingers.
"What the hell does it matter if we got him?" he practically snarls. "It won't bring them back. And if the asshole plays it right with the whole 'I'm sorry for what I did' crap he could be out of there in twenty five years, and then what the hell was the point? He gets to go on with his life, alive and carefree, and Donna and Andrew Hayes get to spent the rest of their lives mourning the children they never got to see grow up, and everything we tried to do was for nothing."
Kensi hesitates for a long moment before tentatively reaching back out to him and taking his hand again.
"No," she says softly when he doesn't pull away. "Not for nothing."
His eyes flicker briefly in her direction, but he still doesn't look at her and she tightens her hand around his.
"If it were all for nothing, then Donna and Andrew would have been killed too. If it were all for nothing, Fuller would have gotten away, and no one would have ever found out who killed the Hayes' and you would have quit a long time ago to take up a job at a convenience store, where no one ever dies but no one ever gets saved either. We don't always win, Deeks. Sometimes we just catch the bad guy and make sure he can never do anything evil ever again. Sometimes, that's all we can do. And that's got to be enough."
He's blinking rapidly by the time she finishes speaking, and he swallows roughly more than once.
She sighs sadly, and her free hand reaches out almost of its own accord and smooths his hair back, tucking some curls gently behind his ear. His eyes flutter closed at the contact and he leans into her touch.
"Come on," she says softly, half standing and tugging half-heartedly at his hand. "You should head home."
He resists her pull but keeps his fingers tangled with hers, and she pauses.
"I don't..." he says, eyes still closed and sounding far younger than he actually is. "...I just wanna stay here."
Ah, she thinks, sits back down again, his legs solid against her back and his hand warm in hers.
She gets it.
She and the rest of the team all tend to lead pretty solitary lives. There's no one for them to come home to at night; no home-cooked meal ready as they walk in the door. Just an empty apartment and the promise of another day on the job. And most days that's enough.
But sometimes... sometimes she just wants to go home – home, not to her lonely apartment; home – and curl up on her couch surrounded by her family and feel warm and safe and loved, and feel like all is right with the world despite the fact that so very much is wrong.
It's on those nights that she waits until everyone else has headed off for the evening, and she pulls a blanket off a shelf and curls up on one of the couches, and she makes sure to set her phone to wake her up early enough that she can be showered and changed before Callen and Sam and Hetty and everyone get in the next morning, and she sleeps at work.
"Alright," she says on a sigh, disentangling her hand from his and standing up.
His eyes blink open and he looks lost for a moment, his hand still hovering where she's just let it go and looking decidedly lonely without her fingers folded with his, but then the light clicks off and couch dips as she lies down alongside him and shadows his arm with hers to wrap him in a loose embrace.
He's still for a moment, apparently processing her surprising action, but when she tightens her hold on him a little he takes a shuddering breath and rolls over so that he's facing her. His arms snake out around her waist to pull her in closer and he tucks his face into her neck, grounding himself with her presence as she shifts and adjusts her hold on him, one of her arms draped around him and her other hand carding through his hair.
It's not an action based off any romantic notions (then again, it's not like either of them would do this with Sam or Callen, so maybe that's not entirely correct); it's more a need for comfort in the form of human contact and a willingness to give it.
It takes them a few moments to get settled, both of them shifting around a little until they're comfortable, but finally they're still, stretched out along the couch with their arms around each other and their legs tangled together. Deeks' face is pressed into her neck, her pulse beating out a rhythm against his forehead and his lips mere millimetres from the hollow of her throat, and Kensi's cheek is resting against his curls, her lips lost in the tangle of his hair.
They say nothing for a long while, simply drawing or giving comfort after a hard case that didn't end well, and they're both practically asleep before Kensi realises something and rouses herself enough to speak.
"We've gotta make sure we're up early in the morning," she says, her voice sleepy and slightly muffled by Deeks' hair. "If Callen or Sam find us like this we'll never hear the end of it."
She feels his breathy chuckle against the skin of her throat, and then she drifts off to sleep feeling warm and – despite the fact that she's the one doling out the comfort – safe in her partner's embrace.
...end...
AN: There we have it! Initially I intended for it to be able to be read either as romance or simply platonic-but-very-close-partners, but it totally ended up more romance-y. Meh – I like it. Please review and let me know what you thought of it!
Bundi