Thank you so much for all the wonderful reviews- I'm completely blown away by them.
In answer to your questions about music, yes I am a classically trained pianist, and still play for enjoyment. Whether the neighbours enjoy the results is debateable. But music has always been a big part of my life.

And now for Kensi's take on things...

Second Movement: Adagio

"I grew up playing the violin," Deeks says, and suddenly it all makes sense. One of the first things I noticed about Deeks was his hands – these incredible mobile hands, with long, sensitive fingers. You look at Deeks, with his long shaggy hair and think 'surfer' and then you see those hands and you think 'surgeon'. Or violinist, as it turns out. I want to say something, only I'm not sure what I can say. Deeks never gives anything away about his childhood or his family, you see, not unless it is carefully designed to be humorous. It's reached the stage where he even makes joking remarks about his father to me and I laugh, because he's a genuinely funny guy.

Deeks doesn't know that I was there at the hospital the night Hetty broke the news that Gordon John Brandel had died years ago. Deeks wasn't laughing then, but of course he was sick and in pain and all his defences were down. I stood just outside the doorway, carefully positioned out of his sightline, and as I watched, he began to cry. I watched my partner lying there in that hospital bed, his head leaning back on the pillow, eyes tight shut as he held onto the file folder like he would never let it go. I've never felt quite so helpless in my whole life. I wanted to comfort Deeks, I wanted so very much to go in there and just take him in my arms – but I didn't. Because I know Deeks too well. The last thing Deeks would want is for someone – anyone – to see him like that. So he lay there, silently weeping for a father he had neither seen nor heard from since he was eleven, a man who was long dead, and I stood outside and wept for Deeks. Some injuries are not just physical: they scar you mentally too.

"I'm not a complete Neanderthal, you know." The smile on Deeks' face goes nowhere near his eyes. It's a hollow mockery of his normal smile and I can sense that he is hurting.

"I know."

Again, I want to say something; to tell him that I don't think Deeks is uncivilised, that I've never thought that, because he is so damned smart it sometimes takes my breath away. It makes perfect sense that he plays the violin. I just wonder why he had to hide it, that's all. But it's too late, he's already left the room, walking out with his posture just a little to upright for comfort, which is his standard defensive position. I know too much about my partner, you see. I know all these things about him that he thinks he's managed to hide away. He can't hide anything from me, because I won't let him. For some reason, I find Detective Marty Deeks strangely fascinating. It's not like I'm obsessed with him, or that I'm about to start stalking him, it's just that some days I find myself walking down a street and seeing the tall guy with fair hair in the distance, and I find myself smiling involuntarily, at the thought it might be Deeks and I walk just that little bit faster to catch up with him, only to find myself confronting this total stranger. Or sometimes I'll be watching TV or talking to a friend and something will come up and I'll think 'I must tell Deeks that'. There are a thousand times when I have found myself thinking about Deeks and all that he is and all that he means to me.

I have never told Deeks any of this and I never will. I can't let him so how much I care about him, because that would be giving the game away, the game we play so carefully. We both know the unwritten rules of our game, and it is as carefully choreographed as any ballet. We are both so very deliberate in the boundaries we have delineated, and on the rare occasions these are breached, it's awkward-almost as if the key has changed from major to minor, so that while the song remains the same, everything else has subtly altered. It is the same tune, and yet it is completely different. Today is one of these days. It's like standing on a raked stage for the first time in your life, and feeling unbalanced and suddenly vulnerable because the world has suddenly changed perspective, the familiar has become strange.

So Deeks plays the violin? Wow, that's interesting and yet it makes perfect sense at the same time. I always knew there was more to him than he lets on, that there are parts of his life he keeps hidden away. The clues are all there, after all: the law degree; those Japanese phrases he just throws casually into conversation; the dysfunctional childhood he steadfastly refuses to talk about. Only that one doesn't quite square, does it? The idea of a young kid playing the violin while all hell breaks loose around him at home just seems too far-out, even for Deeks. But I push that out of my mind, because I'm too busy thinking about the man I know, and trying to imagine him playing the violin. This picture comes into my mind of Deeks standing in his apartment, staring out of the window at the ocean as he plays his violin, bright gold head bent down in concentration, and those fingers creating music, sweet, sweet music. That image nearly takes my breath away.

According to my mother, I loved music right from the start. When I was a baby I would dance in her arms whenever the radio was playing, and then she would start dancing too, and we'd just dance around the living room together until she was so giddy that she would just collapse onto the sofa and we'd lie there, consumed with laughter. It would be nice to remember those times, the good times before life got so complicated, but I repressed my memories of her for a long time and now I'm struggling to recall them. I'm also struggling to rebuild my relationship with my Mom, because I spent half my life without her, so it's hard work, but we both want to try and save whatever there still is between us. I might have thought I hated her for a long time, but I never stopped loving her-not really. I don't want to mess up again like that, not with Deeks. I don't want to leave things like this, because I'm frightened that if I do, our relationship might be fractured beyond repair. I got lucky with Mom, but I'm not about to push my luck twice. I am not about to gamble my relationship with Deeks.

Relationship – did I really say that? It was a slip of the tongue. We're partners, but we don't really have a relationship, do we? We have a 'thing' instead. If I could only work out if that is something, or nothing, then my life would be so much easier. There was a time when I nearly told Deeks how I felt about him, but that was last year, and we've avoided the subject ever since. I guess that we are what we are. Which is confusing, no doubt about it. He's Deeks: the only man I've let get close to me in a very long time. The man who literally pulled me out of an exploding building and held me so close I felt our bodies could just melt into each other. He's the one man I trusted to look after my mom. He's something alright. I've got this feeling that he might just be everything to me – if we ever get around to really talking about how we feel.

Clearly, playing the violin is important to Deeks, really important and that means he is going to talk about it, because I think he needs to. Today I've seen this tiny chink in the dark vacuum my partner has created around his early life, and he's going to let me in, whether he wants to or not. Eventually, after a lot of persuasion, I manage to wheedle a few facts out of Deeks. It's like coaxing a hermit crab out of its shell, which is strange, as I normally can't get him to shut up. This morning I took Callen's advice and gave Deeks a good smack on the back of the head, in the manner of the infamous Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and maybe it actually knocked some sense into him, because reluctantly Deeks gives me the bare facts.

"I used to play. Classical music mainly. I started when I was seven and I took lessons for years. I got to the stage where I was quite good, but that was a long time ago. I don't have the time anymore."

And he sounds so sad about that. Like a part of him is missing. I want to tell him that he should definitely start to play again, that there is nothing quite as sexy as a handsome man coaxing music out of thin air, but I don't, of course. I just offer a suggestion, in a casual manner.

"Maybe you should make the time?"

It would be a tragedy to throw away all those years of studying and practising. Deeks hasn't given much away, but I get the impression he was more than 'quite good'. I know from personal experience just how much you have to practice. You see, I love music, although I can't play a single instrument. My talent was dancing, and it's still my refuge, my way of letting go. It's like a safety valve that releases all the pent-up tensions this job induces.

I was the quintessential tom-boy, tagging around after my dad and I think my mom must have despaired of ever getting me into a dress. I wonder now if she was maybe a bit jealous about how close dad and I were? The dancing lessons were her idea, and I loved them, right from the start. In the dance studio I was a different person and I learned to be endlessly patient, to never be satisfied with 'good enough'. Oh no - I had to be perfect. So I spend hours doing plies and jettes and stretching my body so that pain became an old friend. I learnt how to accept criticism without flinching and I put up with the pain because when I was dancing, nothing else mattered. I could escape into another world and forget about all my sorrow. I know about the discipline and the dedication, about keeping going when your body is begging you to stop. I know what it feels like when all the hours of practice come together in one brief moment of supreme triumph, when you transcend above the earthly bounds to hang floating in the air, defying gravity. I've felt that dizzy exultation from a perfectly executed series of fouettes en tournant and I know what it is like to hear the rapturous applause of an audience. The fact that my audience comprised mainly of Marine families and my moment of glory was usually in some draughty hall on a Marine base is irrelevant.

By the time I was fourteen, I was already too tall for ballet. I wasn't exactly heart-broken about that, because ballet reminded me of my mom, and by that stage I was nursing this huge grudge against her. So I stopped my formal training and swapped my pointe shoes for a pair of army boots and started hanging out with my dad, going hunting and camping instead of holding onto a barre and staring into a mirror, wondering if I would ever be good enough, and knowing deep down that the answer was 'no'. In the end it was easier to give up ballet than actively face failure and my height was a convenient excuse to hang it on. I've never been good at accepting the fact that I cannot excel at everything. Those years weren't wasted though, far from it. When I start to dance in a nightclub, I know that people watch me with a fair bit of envy, and once again I feel that rush every performer gets, that immediate feedback from an audience. Ballet is great training: it makes you physically strong, you develop an inner toughness through endlessly comparing yourself against almost impossible ideals and it gives you a deep appreciation of the essential beauty of the human of the human body and what it can achieve through sheer slog.

"That's an idea."

Could Deeks sound any more reluctant to embrace my suggestion? The look on his face when he says that is so similar to the look on Monty's face when you say 'bath' that under other circumstances I would laugh out loud. Only I don't. For the very good reason that I can see this matters to Deeks. It really matters and that means that it matters to me too.

"And then maybe you could play for me?" I don't care how reluctant Deeks is, I really want to hear him play the violin and see if he looks anything like the picture I have in my head. But mainly I want Deeks to play again, because I think he needs to. If I understand him at all, then I think there is a void in his life that only music can fill.

"We'll see."

"Is that a 'yes', a 'no' or a 'maybe'?" I am not letting him wriggle out of this.

"Would you settle for a definite 'maybe'?" Deeks knows how persistent I can be and I can sense his resistance is weakening.

"If that's as good as it gets right now, then I guess I will. I'll give you a rain-check –but just so you can practise. One week from today." I'm throwing down the gauntlet here and we both know it. I am issuing Deeks with a challenge he'll find hard to resist.

"Aw, come on Kensi-that's not fair."

"Life's not fair, Deeks." And he's not protesting too much. I think that secretly he really wants to pick up that violin again. Which reminds me. "You do still have a violin, don't you?"

"Of course I do." He says that automatically, as if it is nonsense to even suggest otherwise. Which just goes to prove how important it actually is to him. I still have a pair of pointe shoes, right at the back of my closet - just because. There are parts of your past you simply cannot let go of, after all.

"Then we'd better get this case wrapped up, so you can go home and start practising. You want to stop and get some dubbin on the way back to the Mission?"

"That's rosin, Kensi. Dubbin's what you use on army boots. You put rosin on your bow."

"Of course you do. I knew that." Of course I know that. How many times did I rub my ballet shoes into powdered rosin? Too many to count. The moment I walked into Mia's apartment I smelt the rosin and the memories came flooding back.

"It's just that it's been a long time since I played for anyone. A really long time." The shields fall down from his face and the anguish is there, clear and naked, just staring out at me and I think back to watching him in that hospital room, unable to hide his emotions.

"How long?"

Deeks shrugs and refuses to meet my eyes as he begins to speak in disjointed sentences. "Since my mother's funeral? I couldn't make a speech. Wouldn't have known where to begin. But I wanted to do something for her. Kind of like it was the last thing I could do for her, you know? My way of saying goodbye."

"I know." I know exactly what he means. Except that I didn't have the courage to do or say anything at my Dad's funeral, except sit in the front pew and concentrate on not falling apart into a million tiny pieces. "So what did you play?" I take hold of both of Deeks' hands in look up into his eyes, desperately trying to make him realise that this is okay, he is safe with me. I don't think he's ever spoken about this before, not to anybody. I didn't even know his mother was dead until right now. Deeks and his secrets…

"The Londonderry Air - Danny Boy?"

"That's beautiful." And I can see it so clearly: Deeks standing in the chancel of a church wearing a dark suit, his golden head bent to one side as he concentrates on playing for his mom one last time; standing before her coffin and playing his heart out for her. Now, that takes guts. Once again, I find myself wanting to weep for the man and all he holds so tightly bottled up inside himself.

"It was her favourite song." He's holding onto my fingers so tightly, like he's afraid to let go and we just stand there for the longest time. I don't want to let go either.

"You don't have to play for me, Deeks. Not if you don't want to."

"Who said I didn't want to?" His eyes are sparkling, but the light inside Mia's apartment is kind of dim, so it could just be the familiar glint of teasing I'm seeing, nothing more. Only I don't think so. "I just don't want to disappoint you, that's all," he says.

"Don't worry about that. You're never going to disappoint me Deeks. You never have and you never will. Not ever."

And then I leave the apartment quickly, before I say something I'm going to regret, before I do something that pushes us both down that path we've been avoiding for so long, right since that stilted conversation we had in the bullpen when I thought he was leaving NCIS for good. I nearly ruined everything back there-and I'm not going to take that chance ever again. We are what we are, you see. Am I completely mad to hope that what will be, will be and that it will be good? Or am I just fooling myself?