Note: Unbeta-ed for the time being. I have 3 more chapters done.
Thanks for all the reviews and alerts :) 3
2: In the world of faded memories
A week later and he still had marks that needed covering.
As strange as it was to think about it now, the first day afterwards hadn t been as awkward as he had expected it to be; a dead marine had kept them apart most of the time and when it didn t words were few and far in between, and there had been knowing looks shared that the rest of the team seemingly missed, and a warm sensation in his gut he had associated with guilty pleasure.
He hadn t sat on the couch for days and he couldn t remember Kensi sprawled out on it either, as she so often was. Maybe the memories had been too raw for her like they had been to him.
The bobble head on Dom s desk seemed to glare at him every time his eyes had fallen on the doll; it was a little surreal a dead colleague s juvenile toy could chastise him like his mother would have done had he known her and for the first time the presence of the green head had made him fidgety.
The day had already been hard on its own without the help of an angry doll or the sight of Kensi; it had only become worse when someone insisted in sitting on the couch and made him remember yet again the things he had done. Everything made him drift back to the previous night; she had felt good straddling his lap and kissing him in a way nobody had ever done and if he had to pretend the mistake never happened he wouldn t want to forget the way her skin had felt under his fingers and the little noises she made and the way her perfume was intoxicating.
Sometimes he would brush a finger across little marks on his arms; scratch marks, red and thick, where she had dug her nails deeper and deeper with each thrust, a proof of how intimate it had been, fading within days, quicker than the marks on his neck; and would wish they would just go away already.
Sometimes he had wished they wouldn't disappear; an eternal reminder of what they had done, an eternal torture of what would never happen again.
She had been joking a little too much, enough for Eric to comment on her love life; Callen knew the behavior hadn t been because she was happy, but an attempt to fill the voids, to make up for something, with what she knew best: to be young and extroverted. She had always been a feisty one.
There were times he had felt she wanted to say something but didn t know how to get the words out (or even if she had the right words to say); he had been too much of a coward to approach her, so the talk had been avoided at maximum. If forced to, he d admit that it had been more to do with the fact he wanted to sleep with her again than lack of words; he had watched enough movies to know how the scene would go.
Maybe it had been for the best, maybe if they just pretended it never happened, it would finally go away; disappear into the back of their minds like faded childhood memories. Maybe they would even be able to joke about it later in life.
By the end of the week they had been more or less back to their natural syncrony; at least he had thought so during the few moments they had spent together (but never alone). Their partnership was smooth as always, so it should be all that mattered.
The roablock had hit the following tuesday, exactly a week later. In an attempt at another bonding session, Hetty suggested karaoke night again the following night, and while everybody jumped right in, Kensi had protested a little too much; not even her charm was able to get her out of it. Uncharacteristically, she had sulked two days straight and tried to come up with reasons she couldn't go, none of which had worked.
Callen had started to feel he was the reason she didn't want to go and felt slightly uncomfortable everytime someone mentioned their group date.
It had been almost as if she knew how the night would end and was trying to prevent it from happening.
tbc.