3:17am. December 20, 2017

Deeks woke to the sound of a deluge. Cracking an eye open, he saw it was still dark outside and smiled to himself. He particularly liked overnight storms, so he could cuddle with Kensi and drift back to sleep listening to the pouring rain, happy he didn't have to be out in it.

When Deeks turned to spoon his fiancée, he found Kensi's side of the bed empty. Reaching out and running his hands over the sheets, he decided she'd been gone for a while. Hearing a rumble of thunder, Deeks knew where Kensi was.

He got out of bed and tugged on sweatpants, socks, a long-sleeved tee, and a hoodie. He traipsed across the living room and into the kitchen, where he pulled a huge mug from a cabinet and searched around for a couple of specific pods for the Keurig. He puttered around the kitchen quietly, not that it mattered since Kensi certainly couldn't hear him from where she was.

A few minutes later, Deeks opened the sliding door to the covered patio at the back of their house. Sure enough, his ladybird was huddled on a chaise lounge, a blanket from the spare bedroom wrapped around her like a cocoon.

Kensi turned her head at the sound of the door. "Hey," she greeted as she scooted further toward the foot of the lounge and started to untangle herself from the bedspread.

Deeks slid in behind her, legs straddling the chaise. He handed the cup to Kensi and rearranged the blanket so it enveloped both of them. Kissing Kensi's neck as he settled in and drew her back against him, Deeks observed, "You're cold."

"Mmm, but you're warm." Getting a whiff from the mug in her hand, Kensi was pleasantly surprised. "And you brought me hot cocoa."

"With marshmallows. Who's better than me?"

"Absolutely no one. And to thank you, I'm going to share my cocoa."

Deeks smiled against the side of Kensi's face. He rested his chin on her shoulder and tightened his arms around her. "So tell me," he whispered.

"What?"

"Why you're outside in an exceedingly rare December thunderstorm in the middle of the night."

"You know why."

"So tell me again. I like the story."

Kensi took a sip of the hot chocolate before letting out a deep breath. "We lived on base at Camp Lejeune for a while when I was a kid. Lots of thunderstorms in North Carolina. My dad was on deployment when I developed a fear of them."

"Hard to imagine little Kensi Blye afraid of anything."

"Yeah, Dad wasn't having any of it, either. When he saw my reaction the next time he was home and it stormed, he took me by the hand and sat me on his lap on the front stoop. We were barely kept dry by the overhang of the roof, but it was enough."

"And he told you all about the angels bowling up in heaven," Deeks prompted when Kensi was quiet for too long. He felt her grin at that.

"No, he told me you could see the individual drops of rain if you looked at the ground and saw them splash back up. And if you watched a puddle, you could see the rings get bigger as the energy from the drops traveled. By the time you could do that, the storm was nearing the end. Until then, we listened to the way the rain sounded when it fell on various surfaces. The roof, the sidewalk, the car, the lawn."

"And the thunder? How'd Daddy Blye make that less scary?"

"He'd have me listen for the different sounds of it, you know, depending on how far it was. When was still far away, he said it reminded him of my belly rumbling when I was hungry."

"Really?" Deeks' voice pitched higher in disbelief. "Far away? Cause I'm thinking your stomach sounds like a boomer that's really, really close."

"Ha. So not funny." Kensi turned her head to give Deeks a quick peck on the cheek. "But speaking of, Dad pointed out that when they were nearby, you could feel the thunder claps as well as hear them. And he explained that thunder is really the sound of lightning making a sonic shock wave, and that's why you can track how close the storm is by counting the seconds between thunder and lightning."

"You must have loved that." He knew she did.

Kensi nodded and took another sip of the cocoa before silently offering it to Deeks. He shook his head and she put it down on the patio. "When he made me pay attention to the lightning, how sometimes it's diffuse and lights up the whole sky like a sputtering lightbulb, while sometimes the bolts are so bright and discreet that they leave afterimages in the darkness, I was hooked."

Deeks loved picturing that scene: a five-year-old, pig-tailed Kensi cradled on her father's lap oohing and aahing over a thunderstorm while it raged right in front of them. Deeks also loved imagining Kensi sharing the experience with their own children one day.

He kissed the side of her head tenderly, "It's a beautiful memory, baby."

"Every storm after that when Dad was home, we'd sit and watch together. When he was deployed, I'd watch alone and hope he was somewhere he could see it too."

"I'm sure he's watching this one with you, Kens. In fact, I think he probably conjured it up just for you, so you'd know you're not alone, especially today."

She'd had a similar thought when the thunder woke her earlier. Today was the twentieth anniversary of her father's death and Kensi had been missing him acutely. She couldn't think of a better way to commemorate the occasion than sitting outside in the middle of the night, wrapped in Deeks' arms, enjoying a storm and sharing stories of her dad.

Kensi pulled him tighter around her and whispered, "Like you, I'm never alone, Deeks."

AN: It's a good thing I have a day job, because this one pays squat (though your reviews are priceless!). Oh, maybe that's because I don't own NCIS: LA or anything to do with it.

I have a post-ep for Unleashed (8x24) in the works, but I think it's too sad for me to write right now. While not exactly happy, I wrote the bulk of this a few weeks ago after being woken up in the middle of the night by an awesome thunderstorm. While not as talkative as Don Blye, my dad taught me to appreciate storms, and we used to sit at a window or the screen door and watch them blow through.