Lists
Oneshots are safer, time-wise haha.
A Densi Angst/Hurt/Comfort-fic. Highlighting Kensi's process of dealing with Deeks's torture.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
In the dead of night, she lies awake thinking. No matter how hard she tries to nod off – and she does – she just can't. Without fail, every night, she just stares up at the ceiling, mind reeling.
She makes lists of everything he said that day.
The number of jokes: I haven't wet the bed in over a week and the voices in my head are all but gone away. Shut up. No, you shut up! Most ladies buy me a couple of drinks first.
The number of smirks, of off-hand comments, or the number of times he calls her Fern (Seven).
She knows she should be sleeping. There are terrorists and killers waiting in the morning to be caught and reprimanded; there will be interrogations and shootouts and she needs to be awake, fresh, in a good state of mind. On top of that, she has to look out for Deeks. She has to have his back. She can't do that when she's lying up at night, but nothing is working. Not warm beverages; not evening work-out sessions, or counting sheep or even sleeping pills. She's already getting pressure from Callen that she's not on the top of her game, and looks from Hetty every time she yawns. She lies and avoids the questions.
Every night, she lies staring at the ceiling, and analyses everything he did and said. He doesn't take the shot. He doesn't jump out of the car's way. He buys a bloody motorcycle.
She analyses her own behaviour towards him as well. Like about the bike. When she saw that helmet on his desk, she felt the blood run cold in her veins. She saw the stats from all those PTSD websites in front of her eyes, and the thought of Deeks becoming another statistic… He did make some fair comments in his struggle against the team vs. the bike – she does own a motorcycle herself, she rides it for fun as well. A year ago if he had bought it, she wouldn't have had the slightest of a problem. Now it seems like he's crying out for help with this purchase – like he's making death wishes left and right.
But the picture in her mind spoke louder than any of his arguments; an image of him riding the motorcycle late at night, along an empty highway, and his helmet is off and she can see his face - set and angry and streaming with tears. And then the motorcycle swerves, and…
He says he's fine. He doesn't have PTSD. He's fine.
But she created that line. She knows what "fine" means. And damnit, he should know better, he used to call her out on that line!
Compulsively, she makes these lists, and compares them to one she's had stored in her brain for years. What Jack used to say, do.
Given, Jack never bought a motorcycle. (He bought a jet ski.)
Kensi knows Deeks isn't Jack; honestly, she could not possibly think of two more different people. They are practically polar opposites, from their appearance, to the way they dressed, to the way they spoke, to the way they reacted to situations…. That's why it was so strange and unbelievable to Kensi when she first realized she was falling in love with her partner. But (if her fear was correct about Deeks' condition) there was one very scary similarity between the two men. And she knew that there was no way she could take it if Deeks ended up doing the same thing Jack did. Given, she and Deeks weren't together. Technically. But they had their "thing". Their unresolved, somehow unspeakably meaningful (though they never ever spoke about it) "thing".
Kensi had to scrunch her eyes closed to dispel the frustration from building up within her, because whenever she let her mind wander to the state of their "thing"...
So many years of pent-up sexual tension, of slightly-too-serious innuendos, of getting way too close for comfort… so many years of denying it all in favour of their partnership and friendship, living this strange limbo… finally all discharged on the top of that hill with one earth-shattering, wall-breaking, mind-changing kiss. And now… now they still hadn't talked about it, at all, in all this time. She was scared they might have missed their chance to talk. Scared that maybe they had missed their chance to go towards… whatever it was they were heading towards when he kissed her on that hill. A relationship, or whatever.
Whatever the case, despite the tension or frustration surrounding their "thing", Kensi could not imagine going on if Deeks wasn't there anymore.
Because in all their time being partners, she had grown to trust him. Not only to have her back in the field… But to be there, always, with pizza and beer on a Friday night after a long week. To lighten the mood with a joke that only he found funny when she got too intense. To make fun of her driving, or taste of music, or cooking, or eating habits…
She had let him into her life. And now she couldn't imagine a version with him out of it.
One of the distinct dangers of doing that. Letting someone in.
And now all of her greatest fears have come true.
She had let this man get close to her, the firsts in a long, long time. She had fallen, irrevocably it seems, in love with him. And because this was life, and life never did go for the happy ending, the absolute worst happened the moment she realized this.
In the dead of night, when she really, really should be sleeping (there will be terrorists and killers, again, tomorrow), she lies awake thinking.
She thinks, and makes lists, about him, about them.
She's tried everything, but nothing can bring sleep to her; nothing can keep her brain from buzzing, and nothing can keep the tears from falling.
Please review and let me know what you guys think
Much love, Zanny