Notes: title and open quote from Tegan and Sara's Call It Off. (I changed the tenses in the title.) Nothing is mine. No profit garnered. Thanks to sfa for beta. Written for the awesome furies in Femslash12.
iMaybe you would have been Something I'd be good at/i
In which there was no official report because Callen did mean what he said and he was, she realized, much kinder than you might expect.
There was a report about the start of it. Kensi had been an agent for a very short time. She'd ended up at LA very early in her young career. Hetty, she realized later. Even though Hetty wasn't in charge, Macy was. Hetty was off somewhere, offstage, talked about, to the left. It was confusing, like bureaucracy and lots of things relating to the military. Kensi didn't mind. People called her driven to her face and to her that meant she was going all right.
They sent her to a club popular with lesbians. It wasn't a DADT kind of sting. Macy would never do those, and Hetty considered it a mark against you if you ever reported on that sort of thing. Sam thought it was just plain wrong. Kensi sometimes thought that it was harder for Macy and Hetty to take that stand (it wasn't a stand, it was a request never filled, a job never assigned, but that's the way things worked, so it was a stand, because everyone knew). Hetty and Macy were unmarried women who had people whispering about them as they rose in the ranks.
But the lesbian Kensi was supposed to seduce was the sister of an ex-Marine who was maybe using his friendships to supply weapons to a cult. Survivalist, sexist, white supremacist, all that, Kensi assumed. Her partner at the time was more experienced than she was but distinctly not Macy's or Hetty's choice. He was stupid, she thought. He never screwed up an op, so he was just deadweight. Someone they dragged along. He made jokes about Kensi's assignment and they weren't very funny.
Kensi's cover was Kate, the lesbian who was only a little out, but was a chipper person. "Happy," Callen said. "You're not going to seduce her by being -"
"Myself," Kensi said. She smiled at him.
So Kate seduced the lesbian sister by smiling and laughing at her jokes and having fairly decent sex in the back of the sister's car. Then they went back to the sister's place for more sex and while the sister slept, Kensi found everything she needed to trace the brother. She drove away after eggs and pancakes at some local cafe. Kensi didn't have to have sex on assignment, she chose, she told herself, only if she wanted to. She was glad it was one of those undercover jobs where the nice person she lied to didn't know Kensi had lied to her and used her. For all the sister knew, it was another pleasant one night stand.
Her dumb partner tried to make a few jokes about how far things went and Sam ripped him to shreds without even raising his voice. Deadweight dumbo got transferred shortly after.
Kate was a viable alias and Kensi kept the driver's license in her desk. For a good time call, she thought. One Friday she was tired to her toenails so she put Kate's id in her wallet and smiled. She was someone else. For no purpose.
No one remembered her at the club. She got hit on by a few women, she went home with the shy one sitting at a table, watching her friends all go home with someone else. Friday night shy at the bar woman liked to spank (after asking if it was okay) and had some impressive toys Kensi wasn't sure she'd ever seen before. Best sex ever, Kensi thought. She woke up sore and smiling.
Kensi brought out Kate on Saturday, then the next Friday and Saturday. It was her weekend cover. Kate was happy. Kate had a job that wasn't very engaging, but kept her very busy. She didn't know anyone in the military. One of those aliens, Kensi thought. But that was Kate. Kate had roommates and couldn't bring anyone home to her place.
Kate slept around. Kensi revised her view of her own self. Threesomes and other performative acts in college, she'd never thought that counted. Performative was a word she'd learned listening to the women she'd slept with. Sometimes they wanted to tell her coming out stories. Kensi never talked about that, it seemed like a very wrong lie to claim that as hers. She was very sure she was bisexual, but Kensi wasn't going to give Kate any sort of sad stories. Or stories like that, even if they weren't sad.
She met Minnie at a threesome. The woman that introduced them was very drunk. She bowed out after an hour. She rolled to the side of the bed and started snoring. Kensi laughed and scooted to the end of the bed, with Minnie following her. "Short for Melinda," she said. "Don't even ask me why my family decided Minnie was the way to go, instead of Mindy or Linda or even Mel. I might have liked Mel."
It was Minnie's tiny house, the snoring lady was a friend. "Sort of ex," Minnie said, making coffee naked. Minnie was all curves, soft dimpled thighs, perfect skin with no stretch marks or scars. She had two tattoos, one right above her unshaved pussy. It was a flowering vine that traced around her hips. The other one was on the back of her neck and that first night, Kensi only saw parts of it as her hair moved. They drank coffee standing up and Kensi didn't have to remember she was Kate to keep laughing.
They made a date of all things. Sunday brunch. They ate and talked and had sex over and over again. Kate was a great second date. She didn't have any sad stories, her parents were both alive. She never got shot at. She didn't have to fit a gun in her bikini or pee in the back of the car.
Friday nights Kensi would braid her hair at the red lights as she drove to Minnie's. Kate wore her hair in braids. Kensi started smiling as soon as her fingers twined up. They had weekends. Sometimes they didn't even leave Minnie's house.
Minnie used lots of canvass bags instead of paper bags when she went shopping for groceries. They all had different things printed on them, mostly from conferences for librarians. "Ex-girlfriend," Minnie said. Minnie had a job in an office where she never had to see other people. She wore jeans to work. She bought a lot of frozen dinners and wasn't really into cooking. She read a lot of books and kept most of them, double stacked on bookshelves all over the living room and bedroom. Minnie hated pets. "I'm not that much of a cliche," she said. No dogs, no cats, no rats, no bats.
Kensi would come over and just be. She liked to listen. She had stored up all these stories, she realized after eight weekends, she couldn't tell Sam or Callen. Kensi didn't have friends she could tell about how Kate's girlfriend had the funniest imitation of Kate Winslet. It was really a perfect imitation.
They had sex everywhere. Kensi would get wet just watching Minnie's ass in her jeans.
One Saturday night, Minnie said, "I keep thinking you're married. I mean, to a guy. But you're young and you've clearly never had a baby."
"I'm not," Kensi said. "My week's just really busy. Tiny apartment, roommates. I'm not."
Minnie stared at her, smiling. "It's okay, I get it, you are who you are. I just, you know, I don't want to invest, if, you know. Invest more."
"No," Kensi said. She was guilty and overwhelmed. She was no one to invest in. Who she was, wasn't Kate who was comfortable and happy. She felt tears in her throat but she couldn't cry. She stood up and started getting dressed. She never left anything here. No wonder poor Minnie knew better than to like her, get to know her.
"I, you're right," Kensi said. "I am married. I miscarried. But I can't let my, my mom down." She couldn't use her dad just then, her dad was not going to be used to make Kensi look good. She said, "When you tell your friends, I mean."
She had everything in her hands. Minnie looked shocked. "Sorry," Kensi said. "Sorry I wasted your time. It was all me. You're great." She walked out quickly. Minnie didn't follow her out.
She didn't have her car. She walked two blocks deciding what to do, feeling like shit, when Callen pulled up next to her. She got in.
"You were following me," she said.
"It wasn't that hard," Callen said. "You were due, anyway." Due, she thought. Due to be wrong and wasteful. "All the good agents do it. You find a cover you don't want to leave. You get to be someone with a family and friends and the people you meet are good people."
Kensi reorganized the clothes and books in her backpack. She'd accidentally taken a book from Minnie, one of her literary fiction things Kensi never even pretended to read.
Callen said, "And you can't. You can't stay. It's okay, Kensi," he said. When she looked at his profile, he looked miserable. She probably did, too.
It was the last time they ever talked about it. She never found out how many weekends he waited outside for her to fall down.