12. "Just Begun"
Summary: A little post "Humbug" holiday nonsense.
"Memories of the year that lays behind us
wishes for the year that's yet to come
and it stands to reason that good friends in season
make you feel that life has just begun."
- "Christmas Is the Time To Say I Love You"
December 24, 2014
Deeks walked into the bedroom with the just delivered Chinese food and a couple of beers. While they were being bold, he decided a little modesty was required when paying the delivery man so he was clad in a pair of sweatpants. The delivery man saw him topless before so it was hardly a holiday treat. The fifty dollar bill Deeks gave the man for $27 worth of food made the holiday topless show worthwhile.
Speaking of worthwhile and topless, Kensi was pulling up his bed sheet as walked into his bedroom. The WPIX Yule Log playing silently on the TV.
"Eat," he said as he handed her the bag with the take out cartons as well as one of his clean work out shirts. She tossed the sleeveless top over her head before grabbing the food.
"Starving."
"Stunner." Deeks watched Kensi tear through her General Tso chicken for a bit as he ate his Kong Bo shrimp. They both worked up a pretty good appetite what with the skating and the post-skate being bold.
"Can I ask you something?" Kensi looked at him before looking back at her food.
"You just did but go ahead."
"What did you do last Christmas?"
"Last Christmas?"
"Yeah, you know, when I was…"
"Away," he suggested.
"Yeah...away."
"Watched some of basketball, I think the Clips were the primetime game. I remember a fight broke out. Ordered the very same meal from Fei Ma I'm eating now. What did you do?"
"Interviewed some locals with Granger. Everyone else was sent off on a holiday break. No fun," Kensi said before she took a sip of her beer. "Did you go to Mammoth or Tahoe after that?" she asked.
"No," Deeks looked at her. "I didn't leave Los Angeles."
"The office was closed for a week."
"And you were gone. I didn't want to get a phone call saying you were back home and I was three or four hundred miles away."
"You really thought I'd be back for Christmas."
"I thought you'd be back every day," he sighed. With a forced cheerfulness he added, "And then you were."
"And then I was."
"My turn for a question. Did you celebrate Hanukkah with your Mom last week?"
"How did you….did you check my phone?"
"No, not this time…not that I ever do…except sometimes when it's important…and not that spending time with your Mom isn't important and I'm just going to shut up now." He looked down at his food. "No, I did not look at your phone, I just saw it was the start of Hanukkah on the calendar the day you left work early. I think it's nice that you spent the holiday with your Mom."
"She, we," Kensi shook her head and started again. "When she was married to my Dad, we always had a nice dinner for the first night of Hanukkah and she kept the menorah in the front window. It was beautiful at night." Kensi seemed lost in a memory. "After she left, Dad wanted to keep up the tradition but I wasn't really all that interested in Mom's traditions at that point."
"And now?"
"Well, Bruce had it catered, of course."
"Of course," Deeks sort of liked Bruce Feldman. He was a money guy and clueless in some ways but he adored Julia and if Julia was happy, Bruce was happy. Kensi was happy when her mother was happy. And if Kensi was happy, Deeks was happy.
"A lot of traditional food like doughnuts and potato latkes, I love potato latkes."
"And your affection for doughnuts is known worldwide."
"Says the cop in the room," Kensi snarked. "There was a cheese blintz soufflé, they made this remarkable thin crust veggie pizza. Bruce has a good caterer."
"I would expect nothing less from the man. That's a lot of food for the three of you."
"Well, Bruce was leaving for Zurich the following Thursday to finish some business before the end of the year - that's why he was sending Mom and her friends to Tahiti and some of the South Pacific Islands. He felt bad she'd be alone for the holidays. He wanted to do a little something besides the cruise so he invited me, his sister Barbara, Barbara's husband Dave and their two kids. It was nice. They were nice."
"Good," Deeks was genuinely glad Kensi had more good people in her life. "How old are the kids?"
"Jake is 16 and looking at colleges. Stacy is 13 and looking at One Direction on Tumblr."
"Did you share your New Kids love with young Stacy?"
"No, more got grilled by Barbara and Dave about Cornell. Jake is smart and he wants to go to school on the East Coast in a big city. So he's looking at Duke, Harvard, Yale and Columbia. I think he wants to go to Duke just to go to the basketball games. Barbara wants him to have a real college experience," she threw air quotes around the phrase without ever putting down her chopsticks. "No colleges in big cities, more places like Dartmouth and Cornell."
"I had a real college experience in a big town. The whole city is the campus. Plus, it was home."
"Barbara went to NYU undergrad and law school. She and Bruce grew up in New York. She's not thrilled with the idea of the city as a campus and Jake isn't thrilled with college on the West Coast. Dave is Bruce's number two at the firm and about as driven as Bruce. I think Jake just wants to be his own guy for a while."
"I was my own guy at home," Deeks said with some pride. Then again, there weren't too many highly successful, highly motivated people watching his every move.
"My turn again for a question." Kensi put her food down. "Serious question. Why did you invite me to Mammoth?"
"Do you not want to go?"
"Oh, I want to go. It's just…"
"Because if you want to do something else…"
"Deeks, I want to go away with you. I'm great with a week of snowboarding and skiing. I'm just not sure why you asked."
"Being bold in my own way, I guess," he said as he finished his shrimp. "I asked you a couple of years ago and we wound up spending the week with several hundred sailors, Hetty and Callen. Not the fun holiday I expected. We have fun when we're not working. We had fun skating today, we usually have fun."
"You don't have fun when we're working?"
"Sometimes. Getting shot at still hasn't quite cracked my top 10 of fun. Same with, you know, getting punched or running down some hit man trying to kill Callen and Jo."
"If I didn't push the issue today, What exactly was your plan for Mammoth. Did you have a plan?"
"Me? Plan?"
"I mean, you and Monty invited me. Did you think I'd say no?"
"You haven't been home for Christmas in what, four years? You went to Hawaii, we were sent to the Van Buren, you were in Afghanistan last year. I could see you wanting to stay home."
"Were you afraid I was going to say no?"
"After you didn't tell me about Hanukkah with your Mom, I thought maybe … I don't know. Kinda thought it would be harder to say no to Monty."
"It would have been hard to say no to you. After I school you on the half-pipe, maybe I'll work on your self-esteem."
"Oh, the evening's activities did wonders for my self-esteem. Nothing like hearing my name, 'Oh God' and 'yes' yelled around the same time. It makes a man's holidays happy and bright."
"I did not yell," Kensi said in a huff.
"Oh, you yelled. And gasped. And sighed. It was a virtual cornucopia of Kensi sounds. Then again, this is Hanukkah/Festivus/Christmas/New Year's - cornucopia is really more a Thanksgiving image."
Kensi looked at him and smiled before she pushed him back on the bed. As she straddled his hips, she pulled off his workout tee and threw it on the floor. "How's this for an image," she said, looking down at him.
"I believe it is time for the Festivus ending feats of strength," he said as he pulled her into a kiss. "Thank you for my Festivus miracle."
"I have no idea what that means but I'm all in for feats of strength."
"I'm just all in."
-30-
Happy Happy, Merry Merry and nothing but good things in 2016!
