A/N: Thank you so much for the reviews! They make me haaaaaaaaaaaappppppy. :D

Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS:LA or its characters. They belong to the marvellous Mr. Shane Brennan.

Summary of the drabble below: Sam has been shot and Deeks is over-protective in a floppy, annoying way. Sam is going to shoot him.

"Don't ask me to leave you and turn back. I will go where you go." -Bible

Prompt: 004- Puppy Love
Characters: Sam Hanna, Marty Deeks
Word Count: 985

Sam is going to kill him. He's going to shoot him and string his body up and dance on his motherfucking grave. He's going to do all of this and more if Deeks doesn't get out of his space in the next five seconds.

Oblivious to the rapidly approaching death-by-Sam looming over his head, Deeks grins widely, bouncing (bouncing!) at Sam's side like some sort of floppy way-too-energetic guard dog.

"Sam," he says, for probably the thousandth time that day. "You should probably sit down now."

"I'm fine," Sam hisses.

Deeks gives him that baleful look again. "You just got shot," he says. "You should be resting."

"I'm fine." There's enough venom in Sam's voice to make terrorists roll over and die. Deeks, however, grins widely. If he was a dog, his tail would be wagging, Sam just knows it.

"So if I punched you right now, you'd be totally okay?" There's a glint in those eyes that Sam does not like, not at all.

"If you punch me, I'll break your arm."

"Right." Deeks rolls his eyes dramatically. "What's Hetty gonna say? She told you to rest."

"What Hetty doesn't know won't hurt her." Sam grits his teeth, ignoring the determined twinge (okay, more than a twinge, but he's a fucking SEAL—bullet wounds are like paper cuts) in his side.

"Dude," says Deeks, his eyes going big and wide and he's still in Sam's space, dammit. "Hetty knows everything."

For a split second there, Sam actually expects the tiny little woman to appear in front of him and start scolding him with her finger-wagging and her thinly-veiled-shotgun-oriented threats. She doesn't, and the former SEAL thinks that maybe it's time for a career change, one that doesn't involve guns or super-powerful tiny women or floppy annoying coworkers who follow him around all the time.

Deeks starts to whistle something loud and grating that makes Sam want to curl up and die, snapping his fingers along rhythmically.

"Stop," Sam snaps.

Deeks doesn't, and Sam says something derogatory about his mother in Arabic.

"So where're we going?"

Sam actually stops walking and stares. "You don't know where we're going?"

"Nope," Deeks says cheerfully.

"You've followed me this whole time and you don't even know where we're going?"

"Does it matter?" The look on Deeks' face is firm and serious and loyal, unflinching. It's the kind of face that says I will follow you wherever you go, doesn't matter where we're going.

Sam, if he wasn't so annoyed, would be kind of touched.

"Yeah, it matters! What if I wanted to be alone, huh? What if I was running an op or something? You just don't do that."

Sam's angry, shaking, and the twinge of the wound (paper cut, dammit, paper cut) isn't much of a twinge any more.

Deeks blinks at him. "Sure you do," he disagrees. "You do it for Callen. Kensi does it for me. I'll do it for you, when Callen can't."

"I don't need anyone to do it," Sam snaps, because he's used to it, he's used to running blindly after a partner who, more often than not, these days, doesn't do the same thing for him. Callen takes care of him, sure, but lately he's been pulling away from all of them, the whole team, even Hetty, shrinking back into that little world of his, losing himself in little toy soldiers and half-remembered dreams.

Deeks gives him a look that clearly says I know you're bullshitting me, stop it now. "Right," he says. "And I'm Martha Stewart."

Sam stares a bit more.

"What?"

"You're not normal," Sam says slowly, absentmindedly running his fingers over the butterfly bandages and stitching that are currently holding his intestines in his body. Maybe he should sit down, high-profile terrorism case or not.

Deeks nods. "Nope," he agrees, and holy shit he's got that tone again, the one that makes him way too much like Hetty for Sam's comfort. "But when I got shot, I stayed in bed like a good boy."

(God, Sam can't help but think of some sort of shaggy mutt sitting on a bed, thumping its tail and panting happily.)

Sam feels like he should just keep staring.

"So," Deeks continues, and he's edging so close to Sam now that the ex-SEAL can feel it, feel the determination rolling of the other man in waves.

"So," Sam says, because he really doesn't know what else to say.

"How 'bout we take a break, huh?"

"But—" Sam wants to say, "terrorists."

"C'mon," Deeks wheedles, and dammit he's doing something suitably pathetic and funny with his face. "There's a nice strip of beach right here. We can sit, watch the waves, maybe play Frisbee, you can still throw with your other arm, that won't rip the stitches—"

The mental sight of Deeks bounding down the beach shouting "I got it!" at a bright pink Frisbee almost makes Sam rip his stitches laughing.

"Okay," Sam's saying before he even thinks about it. His side fucking hurts. "Okay."

Deeks fucking beams like it's Christmas and bounces, metaphorical tail wagging so hard Sam's afraid it'll metaphorically fall off. If that even makes sense.

"Ha," the floppy annoying man crows. "Kensi owes me dinner. She said you'd kill me after the first five minutes."

Sam closes his eyes. "I hate you," he says.

Deeks laughs and bounds off for just a second to swipe some random beachgoers Frisbee.

Sam shakes his head and sits carefully down in the sand.

After a good thirty minutes of sitting and Frisbee-ing and generally not hunting down terrorists, Deeks flops down besides Sam and pushes his floppy mop out of his eyes.

"Feeling better?" He asks, slightly winded. (Sam might have a hole in him, but he can throw.)

"I still hate you," Sam says. "Damn annoying puppy."

And they both laugh because they know he doesn't really mean it.

A/N: Thanks for reading! If you could review, that'd be awesome! Are there any characters you want to see done next?

-Blue