SENSORY OVERLOAD
by MioneAlterEgo
DISCLAIMER: One does not simply own any part of NCIS:LA.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I'm going to apologize in advance if this one grosses anybody out. It's harmless and there's nothing offensive or anything, but sometimes the Plot Bunnies have a sick sense of humor. I think we've all been here at some point though, so hopefully Deeks' plight will elicit more sympathy and less nausea. THANK YOU to all who've read, followed, favorited, and especially reviewed! Every alert puts a smile on my wee face. And thanks as always to imahistorian for her ongoing emotional and technical support! Everyone needs a buddy like her. Only one to go after this! Hope you enjoy!
Tossing your cookies. Talking on the big white telephone. Performing a Technicolor yawn. For something that had such long list of funny nicknames, Marty Deeks didn't think there was anything funny at all about throwing up.
Particularly not when he was the one praying to the porcelain god. And especially not when he'd been doing so for the past four hours.
Food poisoning made the most sense, since no one at OSP (that he knew of) had been sick in the last couple of days. He didn't know what he'd eaten that had caused this, but it had to have tasted better in his mouth the first time.
Deeks hated throwing up.
He hated the way it made his throat burn, and the way it made his eyes water, and how it made his teeth hurt, and he especially hated the way that he couldn't get the putrid taste out of his mouth. Anything more than a quick swish with room temperature water was enough to upset his apparently delicate constitution, so he couldn't even eat or drink anything to make that acidic, sour taste go away.
It was difficult to keep track of time in a bathroom with no windows, and Deeks wasn't completely sure how long he'd been lying on the cold tile floor when he heard the unmistakable sound of the lock being turned in his front door, followed by his partner's hesitant voice. He tried to answer, but taking too big a breath made his stomach turn another somersault and he gave it up. She'd find him eventually.
"Deeks?" Kensi called. "Are you here?"
An incoherent grumble greeted her from the general direction of Deeks' bathroom, and Kensi was instantly on edge. If he was injured or incapacitated somehow… Her hand clutched her gun and she edged cautiously around the corner.
The sight of her partner curled in the fetal position on his bathroom floor simultaneously relieved and confounded her.
"Are you serious? I've been waiting downstairs for fifteen minutes, and you're up here nursing a hangover? And why the hell haven't you answered your phone?"
"Not a hangover," he grumbled, forcing himself into a more upright and hopefully dignified position. "Food poisoning. Or a stomach virus. Or the black plague. Pretty sure I'm dying. Promise me no Josh Groban at my funeral," he groaned.
Despite Deeks' usual attempts at humor, the greenish tint on his normally sunny features told Kensi that he was not exaggerating. Deeks looked as bad as she'd ever seen him, including the time he'd been shot and spent a week in the hospital. She sighed as another wave of nausea sent him leaning over the toilet and casting up his accounts once again, and she ran a wash rag under cool water before wringing it out and placing it on the back of his neck.
"Big baby," she murmured, rubbing lightly up and down his back in slow, soothing strokes. She waited until the wave of illness passed, then stepped quietly out of the room to phone Hetty.
Deeks sat heavily back against the edge of the bathtub. He could hear Kensi's muted tones as she phoned OSP, no doubt letting them know that Deeks was alive but was almost surely at death's door step. He hoped Nell would be the one to plan his funeral service; she'd done a nice enough job with Hetty's impromptu birthday party that he felt sure she could pull together a decent shin-dig in his honor. He had a passing thought to tell Kensi he wanted his ashes scattered at sea, and as if on cue he spotted the toes of her boots in the bathroom doorway. He dragged his eyes up to meet her strangely sympathetic gaze.
"You're obviously in no condition to go to work, but Hetty says I need to come in. I'm going to run to the drug store first and pick up a couple of things for you. I'll be back in twenty minutes. Any special requests?"
"A new stomach. And a new throat. And a new mouth while you're at it," he muttered, smacking his lips distastefully.
"Been a while since the last time you were sick enough to puke?"
"I hate it. I hate feeling my esophagus dissolve."
"Ugh. Thanks for the visual. You gonna be okay till I get back?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I should be good here for a while."
When Kensi returned a short time later, she spread out her purchases on Deeks' coffee table and carefully helped him get situated on the couch, making sure a trash bin and a few extra plastic grocery bags were waiting nearby, just in case. The worst of the active sickness seemed to have passed, but neither of them wanted to take chances with the difficult-to-clean upholstery fabric.
Deeks surveyed the lineup before him: saltines, chicken noodle soup, a bottle of water, ginger ale, Gatorade, and some sort of anti-throwing-up syrup with a rainbow on the bottle.
"Shouting a rainbow." Nice to know the marketing team has a sense of humor, he thought to himself. Kensi noticed him inspecting the bottle.
"That one goes first," she instructed. "It's gross, but hopefully it'll help the rest of this stuff stay where it's supposed to."
Deeks pulled off the cap, raised the bottle in salute to Kensi (who only arched an eyebrow in reply), and took a swig.
Cherry. Not the slightly-tart flavor that occurred in nature, but the artificial, chemical, overly sweet variation that was found only in children's pharmaceutical products. His face twisted in disgust, but he managed to choke it down and, through some miracle of nature, keep it down despite his rioting internal organs' protests to the contrary. Kensi nodded in approval before indicating the rest of the items.
"Give the medicine twenty or thirty minutes just to make sure it's going to work. You can re-take it again in four hours if needed. If you feel up to it, you can start with the water and saltines and work your way up from there. But go slowly. If you slam too much down you'll be back to square one."
"No slamming of anything. Got it."
"Do you have your cell phone?"
Deeks nodded and patted the pocket of his sweat pants.
"Good," Kensi continued. "Call or text me if you need anything. I'll swing by later and make sure you're not dead." She gave him a quick squeeze on the shoulder before closing the door and locking up behind herself.
He couldn't tell if it was the medicine or simply the illness working its way out of his system, but by mid-afternoon Deeks was beginning to feel vaguely human-ish again. He stared intently at the package of crackers, and when the thought didn't send him reaching for the nearby trash bin he thought he might be able to give it a try.
Mild. Not too salty. The first cracker seemed to be playing nicely with his volatile digestive tract, so he chanced a second and reached for the bottle of ginger ale.
Sweet, a bit tart, bubbly. He'd read somewhere that ginger flavor could help with upset stomach, so even though he'd never been a fan he paced himself and managed to drink about a third of the bottle before passing out asleep on the sofa.
He woke up to the feeling of cool, slender fingers stroking his hair off his face. He slowly peeled his eyelids open to find himself staring into Kensi's deep, brown, slightly mismatched eyes.
"How ya feeling?"
"Less like Death. Vegetative State maybe, but not actual Death."
"Good place to start. Have you eaten anything?"
"A few crackers. Never knew saltines could be so satisfying."
Kensi chuckled. "Well, do you feel like being brave?"
Deeks gave his best effort at leering. "What did you have in mind?"
"Something hot… and steamy…" she purred, leaning toward him. Deeks' face lit up for just a moment before Kensi smiled innocently. "Want me to heat up that chicken noodle soup?"
"Hilarious. But yeah, sure. I guess I can give it a try."
As Kensi picked up the can of soup and made her way to the kitchen, Deeks slowly pulled himself up from the couch and shuffled back to his bathroom.
His toothbrush eyed him mockingly from the plastic tumbler on the edge of the sink. He hadn't brushed his teeth all day and wasn't sure testing his gag reflex seemed like such a good idea, but after swiping his tongue across his teeth he decided it couldn't possibly get worse. He wet the toothbrush and applied a conservative amount of paste to the bristles.
Mint. Really strong mint. The overpowering flavor nearly sent him lunging for the toilet again, but he managed to finish the job and even swirl a little mouthwash without matters getting worse. Relieved, he made his way back to the sofa where Kensi was already waiting with a bowl of lightly steaming chicken soup. Kensi was busy flipping through the usual variety of horrid TV offerings, so he carefully lifted the bowl and took a cautious sip from the side.
The first sip tasted a bit strange, but as the toothpaste flavor wore off the rest of the flavors came through, and a slow smile spread across his face. The meaty flavor of the chicken, the slight tang of the celery, the saltiness of the broth—in his nutrition-deprived mind it was the best soup he'd ever had, and he had to remind himself not too slurp it too quickly for fear of undoing all the day's hard-won victories against his mutinous system. He slowly managed to consume about half the bowl's contents, and when Kensi nodded approvingly he set the bowl back on the coffee table and slouched into the cushions.
Despite the fact that he felt better than he'd felt since about four o'clock that morning, he felt himself getting sleepy again. Taking his life into his own hands (but reasoning that she probably wouldn't kill an already dying man), Deeks leaned his head over to rest on Kensi's shoulder. He felt her shoulder rise with a single puff of amused laughter before she wiggled farther into the cushion and laid her head to rest against his.
Kensi dozed off some time during Top Shot, only waking again after the sun had set and Deeks' small living area was lit by the bluish glow of the television. She carefully lifted her head to glance down at her partner's sleeping form. Even in the distorted lighting she could tell that his color had improved, and though not quite snoring he was breathing heavily against her shoulder. But the illuminated numbers on the cable box indicated the hour was far later than she'd planned, so despite being cozy and unexpectedly comfortable, she slowly tilted Deeks' head back to rest fully against the couch cushions and pulled herself to standing. She stretched languidly and glanced back down at her sleeping companion.
He could be annoying, and he could be a pain, and on the odd occasion when he took the last donut she might actually contemplate bodily harm. But tonight, when he'd been honestly ill all day and was finally dozing peacefully, Kensi felt a soft smile lift the corners of her mouth. He looked more like a sleeping child than a trained undercover operative, one of the strongest and bravest men she knew. A few locks of smooth blond hair had fallen forward into his eyes, and his lips were parted just slightly as he breathed. He looked sleepy and innocent, and it tugged at her heart in a way she couldn't articulate. And without giving it much thought or fully being able to explain why she did so, Kensi slowly leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss at the corner of his lips. He neither stirred nor blinked at the action, and it may have been a trick of the light in the dim room, but she thought she saw one corner of his mouth tug ever-so-slightly upward. Finally satisfied she hadn't woken him, she gathered her things and quietly let herself out of the apartment, shutting of the TV and locking the door behind her.
The next morning's alarm clock woke Deeks at the usual time. He was relieved to discover that the previous day's illness had passed, and he was more than eager to get back to his regularly-scheduled life and dietary preferences. As he pulled himself off the sofa and ran his tongue across his lips, however, he froze.
Slightly sweet. A little tangy. It reminded him of summertime... Raspberry Lemonade. The exact flavor of Kensi's preferred brand of lip balm. A hesitant hand reached up to touch his lip before a wide, Cheshire-cat grin split his face and a hoot of laughter burst forth. The unmistakable flavor was, without a doubt, the absolute best thing that had hit his mouth in weeks.