This is probably not your conventional Kensi + Deeks = Baby story. And obviously this is set pretty far in the future, with established married Densiness. Shout-out to ifiknowyouatall for this one. She knows why.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, Shane Brennan does. Lucky bastard.
Kensi stretched her legs out in bed, trying to find a comfortable position. She thought getting comfortable would be easier after giving birth to her son, but now she had a new set of discomforts plaguing her sleep. She was sweating like crazy, her breasts were on fire, and her entire pelvis felt like she'd been hit with a sledgehammer. Sighing, she turned her head towards her husband. He was sleeping peacefully on his side, hand stretched across their king size bed towards her. Just the sight of him relaxed her and allowed her to drift back to sleep.
The sound of whimpering a few minutes later roused her awake again, though. She lay perfectly still, waiting to see what her newborn son was going to do. Go back to sleep, go back to sleep, she thought. But soon the whimpers turned into tiny cries, and she groaned. It had only been one hour since the last time he woke up for a feeding, and Kensi was still in pain from it. She sat up in her bed and picked him up out of his bassinet, carrying him over to his changing table to give him a fresh diaper. Millie, their Husky/Labrador mix, snorted in her sleep and kicked a leg off of her dog bed on the floor.
They settled back into her bed together. She winced as she let him latch on to her breast, and he relaxed immediately. Kensi sighed and grabbed her phone. Breastfeeding was more exhausting than she ever anticipated. She ran 3 miles a day and kicked ass for a living, after all. But somehow her lack of sleep and the rush of hormones made her feel like she was going to pass out at any moment. So in order to stay awake, she played on her phone. Angry Birds, Twitter, Facebook, and Google were keeping her going.
She hung her head and forced back tears of pure exhaustion, opening her Safari app. I think I hate being a mom, she typed into the search bar.
"Seriously, how long does it take you to pee?" Deeks asked through the bathroom door anxiously.
Kensi grunted at him. "You have to wait three minutes for it to work, genius!"
She was still sitting on the toilet seat, staring at the home pregnancy test on the floor in front of her. She was watching it so closely that she could follow the liquid passing through it. That's kinda gross, she thought. The oval window of destiny was starting to turn a pinkish color. She looked at the instructions again: one line negative, 2 lines positive. The first pink line appeared quickly and was very dark. Kensi squinted at the test, trying to see if there was a second line forming. It was much lighter, but it was definitely there.
"Two lines!" She hollered through the door.
"What does that even mean?" Deeks responded. "Screw it, I'm coming in." He barged into the bathroom and Kensi threw the pregnancy test at him.
"Two lines, that's positive," she said, eyes gleaming.
"Oh my God," was all he could say. "This is real, isn't it?"
She nodded and smiled at him. "Sure is, Daddy."
Deeks raised an eyebrow. "Okay, that still sounds vaguely dirty when you say that. I think I'm going to have to reprogram my brain for this." He fingered the test in his hand, looking at the two lines on it. "Wow."
"Wow," she responded.
Then he shuddered and threw it on the ground. "Ugh, you peed on this thing!"
Kensi laughed and hugged him.
Deeks was cradling his son in his arms, bouncing his legs slightly. They were waiting in an exam room of the pediatrician's office for his "after coming home" checkup. "He really is perfect, isn't he Kens?"
Kensi nodded sleepily and glanced at the baby. He really was beautiful. His skin was pink, his head was round and bald, and his eyes were a smoky gray color. The nurses in the nursery had gushed over him constantly during their hospital stay. She didn't want to admit it yet, but he looked like his father. She reached out and rubbed Deeks' back, offering a small smile to him.
The door opened and the doctor came in, an older man with very little hair and a friendly smile. "So how is your little man doing today?"
"He eats a lot," Kensi responded.
The doctor smiled. "Well, they do that." He looked down at his chart, flipping through the three pages in it. "It looks like he has lost quite a bit of weight since he was born. That's pretty normal, but we'll just keep an eye on it in the future in case there is a problem." Deeks laid the baby on the table and the doctor examined him closely, feeling and looking everywhere. He nodded to Deeks that he could pick him back up, and Deeks started getting him dressed again.
Kensi looked concerned. "I mean, he really eats a lot. Like every hour. Is that normal?"
The doctor shrugged. "Some babies do that. Everybody is different. He'll start to settle into a routine soon, and things will seem easier."
Kensi smiled weakly. "Okay."
Kensi smiled and rubbed a finger over the black and white picture she was holding. "This is so cool, isn't it?"
Deeks snatched the picture from her and pointed to the middle of it. "No, what's cool is that they have an arrow pointing to his little junk labeled 'boy'."
"Junk? Is that what we're really going to call it?"
Deeks shrugged. "Junk, wanker, penis, johnson…" He paused, noticing his wife was glaring at him. "Third leg?"
Kensi rolled her eyes. "Speaking of naming things, do you have any decent contributions to the name list today?"
Deeks stood tall and proud. "I think I like Arturius."
"Seriously Deeks."
"What, we could call him Arty! Arty and Marty, the men of the house of Deeks." Kensi glared at him again. "Well, okay, what's your suggestion? And it needs to be something you'll actually call him so you don't resort to calling HIM by his last name too. That would be even more confusing than our current situation, Mrs. Deeks."
Kensi smiled and threw a pillow at him playfully. "I was kinda thinking about Donald."
Deeks nodded slowly. "For your dad."
"It's a strong name. It means leader."
He sat down by her on the couch and placed a hand gently on her stomach. "I like it. We can call him Double D."
Kensi sighed and pushed him away from her, but she couldn't resist laughing.
"Kens? Are you out here?" Deeks stepped out onto their back porch holding his son, peering his head around the corner. Kensi was sitting on the ground next to Millie, rubbing the dog's head. "Is everything okay?"
"Fine," she responded, not looking at him.
Deeks cocked his head curiously. "Uh, I think Donnie is hungry. He was crying and I gave him his pacifier, but he keeps doing that little head-bobbing thing like he does when he's hungry."
Kensi nodded. "Can you get this one?"
"As much as I love a challenge, I really don't think that's going to work Kens."
"There's some milk in the fridge that I pumped earlier today," she stated matter-of-factly. "I uh, I think I'm about to go to work."
Deeks stared at her incredulously, bouncing baby Donald up and down in his arms. "What are you talking about? You can't go to work, you just had a baby. You're not supposed to go back for another 10 weeks!"
Kensi stood up and faced him. "Don't tell me what I can and can't do. I'll be back in about an hour."
"That's not what I meant…" Deeks sighed and Kensi walked away from. "Kensi, just talk to me!" But she had already walked into their house.
He contemplated letting her go, but remembered when a long time ago, he too had pushed everyone away. Kensi was the one that finally broke through to him. He followed her into the house. "Kensi please wait," he said pleadingly. She slowed down but continued gathering her things. "You aren't alone in this, babe."
Kensi threw her purse over her shoulder and looked at him. Her face was pale and her eyes were red. "That's the problem Deeks."
"I'm not sure I follow…"
"I am NEVER alone anymore, and I never will be again. Between you, and the baby always needing me, and my mother coming over to help and making it all look so easy, I…" she shook her head and looked down at the floor. "I don't know what I am."
He approached her cautiously and ran a hand through her hair. "You're the bravest, strongest, most kick ass woman in the world."
"Not right now I'm not," she replied. "I feel like I'm not even in my body, like a ghost, and I'm watching myself suffocating and I can't do anything about it." She met his eyes. "Please just let me go."
Kensi winced and grabbed the sheet on the bed in front of her. "Okay really, how far along am I now? Cause I feel like there is like," she gasped, "Like no time in between these things." Deeks tried rubbing her back for her but she swatted his hand away.
She had been in the hospital for sixteen hours. When she woke up that morning, she climbed out of bed and felt a weird 'pop.' She'd started yelling at Deeks to "wake up feed the dog grab the bags we gotta go oh my God." She still wasn't having any contractions by the time she'd been admitted into her delivery room, but the on-call doctor said they would start at any time. Two hours later there was still nothing, so they started pushing Pitocin to make her body go into labor. Fourteen hours later, Kensi felt like her insides were about to catch on fire and explode. She had refused an epidural, stating that she was sure she had experienced worse pain in her life before this and would probably in the future too.
Her doctor checked under the sheet and examined her. "Looks like we're finally at ten centimeters. We're ready."
Deeks brushed a stray hair from the side of her face and gave her a kiss on her forehead. "You still good?" She nodded. He pulled one of her legs up and the nurse grabbed another while Kensi leaned forward.
"Okay, when I tell you to push, I need you to push for 10 seconds, okay?" the doctor instructed. "Okay, push!"
Deeks counted for her, "One, two, you're doing awesome, five, six, you can do this, it's just like that time you got shot in the butt, ten!" Kensi would have laughed if she weren't so tired and in so much pain. "Okay, again, one, two, buckle my shoe, five, six, I love it when you deliver awesome kicks, nine, ten…"
"I'm never doing this again, argh!" Kensi finished his sentence and screamed. Thirty minutes of pushing later, Kensi screamed so loudly that it just became silence, and she heard a small squeaking sound that turned into loud wails. The doctor placed her son on her chest, bloody and covered in fluids and wrapped in a towel. She tried to wrap him in her arms but they felt like jello, so instead she ran her hands over his crying face. He opened his eyes and looked right at her, stopping his wailing. All Kensi could do was burst into tears.
When Kensi returned home two hours later, she found Deeks asleep in his recliner with Donald asleep on his chest. Kensi tried to be quiet when she closed the door but the click of the lock was enough to startle Deeks awake.
"Hey," he said, sitting up. He laid the baby down in his swing, covered him with a blanket, and turned it on. "Where have you been?"
Kensi shrugged. "I went to the mission; beat the hell out of the punching bag and emptied several clips."
"Feel better?"
"No," she said. "Look, about earlier…" but Deeks waved her apology off. She looked at her sleeping son and smiled. "Wow, you're good. I can't believe he's not screaming his head off for the boob."
Deeks looked at her guiltily. "Please don't be mad but…he got hungry, and I'd already fed him everything you left for him, so…I gave him some of the formula they sent home from the hospital."
"I'm not mad," she said, wrapping her arms around his waist. "If anything I might be relieved. "
Deeks hugged her back briefly but pulled away. "Wait here for a second." He went into their bedroom for a minute and returned with a smile on his face.
"What?" Kensi asked curiously.
"I'm drawing you a bubble bath, with candles, and your iPod full of god-awful techno music. And after that if you want, take a nap or do whatever it is you want to do." He grabbed her hands. "Seeing you like this is the hardest thing I've ever had to do. And I've been shot and tortured and well, you know. You've always been there for me. Please let me be there for you."
Kensi's eyes welled up with tears. "Okay, but you know that with all this," she pointed all over her body "going on I'm going to leave the bathroom a disaster."
"I don't care."
"You know as soon as I hit that hot water my boobs are going to shoot everywhere…"
"Ceiling needs cleaning anyway," he said, pulling her into their bathroom. He gave her a smile and a chaste kiss before leaving her alone.
Kensi stripped down and slipped into the warm bath, leaning back against the side of the tub with a satisfied moan. She felt a nudge on her hand and looked over to see Millie giving her sad puppy-dog eyes. Kensi rubbed one of Millie's ears. "I know Millie-girl, things have changed for you too." The dog licked Kensi's hand and laid down on the bathmat next to her.
She almost fell asleep in the tub when she heard crying and was startled awake. Instead of rushing up, she stayed in the tub and let Deeks handle their son. She could hear him talking in baby talk and singing a silly song about poop, so she relaxed again.
"Oh! Oh my God, that just happened," Deeks shouted.
Kensi sat up, alarmed. "What's wrong?!" she yelled back.
"Oh man, he totally just pissed in my face, uuugggghhhh," Deeks groaned.
For the first time in two weeks, Kensi burst out laughing. Millie stood up and smiled, wagging her tail. Deeks was still complaining in the other room.
Kensi petted Millie on the head and the dog barked happily at her. "Yeah I know girl." She slid low into her bubble bath. "We're all going to be okay."
