The funny thing about time is that it tends to get the better of you, especially when you keep putting something off.
He keeps intending to find a moment to pull Kensi aside, speak to her about that night, clear the air, but as the weeks roll past the more awkward the conversation seems, and he immerses himself in the steady rhythm of their days. The cases come in and the cases close, they leave to follow suspects and uncover leads, and the wheels continue to turn flawlessly; his team remains a functional unit, fluid, effortless.
Callen can almost believe that night so many weeks ago was a memory, but then he'll brush against Kensi as they cross paths in the hallway of the hacienda, or catch her gaze across the ops center during a briefing, and there'll be the briefest flicker of something in her eyes he can't quite decipher. His heart will do an odd double tap in his chest, and he'll glance away quickly, perturbed.
He lies awake at night in his quiet, spartan room, listens to the creaks and hums of the empty corners of his house, and thinks of her. For so long he has been extra careful around Kensi – first as the rookie of the team and then as the only woman – he has been careful to train her, careful not to treat her any differently, yet careful to watch her all the more closely because of those things. He has treated her like a sister, as just another teammate; teased and bantered with her as one of the boys. Except – one single night has turned all those things irrevocably upside down, thrown all those pieces in play up in the air, and Callen is unsure how to piece the fallen fragments back together again. Too many times over the past weeks has he berated himself for putting himself in a situation to fuck things up, not simply between him and Kensi but with the rest of his team, although to his immense relief the cogs still seem to be turning smoothly. He takes quiet note of the fact that Kensi hasn't brought up that night they spent together either, and maybe they didn't need to, after all. Kensi and he are consummate professionals and if she could put it behind her, so could he.
Still, he wonders if she ever thinks back to that night, and if he finds himself watching her that much more closely now, finds himself more acutely sensitive to her presence and whereabouts, he tells himself it's simply to make sure she's holding up okay after everything she's gone through.
It's a rare day when all four of them are in the bullpen together, no pressing cases to attend to, just time to ponder whether it was worth the effort to make a dent in stacks of paperwork and backlogged reports, and amuse themselves by listening to Deeks annoy the shit out of Sam.
"I know I saw that report like twenty minutes ago on your desk. If you're gonna steal a man's half-finished report, big guy, at least have the courtesy of finishing it up for me – I won't even tell Hetty!" Deeks grins cheekily at Sam and shuffles animatedly through a precariously balanced heap of files on his desk.
Sam glances at his watch and glares distastefully at Deek's side of the table, strewn haphazardly with papers and miscellaneous junk, brazenly encroaching on Sam's immaculately organized workspace.
"You call me big guy again and you'll be missing more than that report," Sam growls at Deeks. "I wouldn't write your reports if you paid me. Do your own damn work. How you've lasted this long without Hetty murdering you is a mystery to me."
Sam shakes his head as he looks across to Callen. "I'm out. Haven't eaten dinner with my family in weeks. If I get home before the sun sets today, I'll call it my biggest accomplishment of the day."
He nods a curt goodbye to Callen and Kensi and strides exasperatedly out of the bullpen, and Callen hides a smirk as he settles down over his own unfinished report. Kensi and Deeks' continuing banter fades into the background as he finally gets down to business, realizing belatedly that he's got nine cases to close up and submit to Hetty, otherwise his head would be on the chopping block long before Deeks'. It's a few hours later before he's aware of how quiet OSP has gotten. He glances up and rolls a crick out of his neck, noticing the darkness outside the windows and the lights of the hacienda bathing their desks in a golden glow. Deeks' chair is empty, but Kensi is still beside him, typing steadily on her laptop. She looks up at him and smiles.
"I ordered some Chinese," she says. "You looked like you were in a good groove."
He raises an eyebrow at her. "Ms. Kensi Blye, staying late at the office. To what do I owe this honor?"
She rolls her eyes. "Thought you could use the company. Besides, I'm pretty sure I have to rewrite most of my partner reports with Mr. Chuckles over there." She nods her head in the direction of Deeks' chair. "Though I suspect it might be too late, Hetty already thinks I've been paying a 10-year old to write them."
They share a smile, her eyes lingering on his, and Callen forces himself to glance away, just as Eric saunters through the bullpen and plops a large takeout bag onto their desks.
"Dinner is served, lady and gent. If you'll excuse me, I've got some serious twitter, reddit, tumblr and instagram catching up to do!" Eric winks at them, reaching into the bag and helping himself to two takeout containers before skipping back up to the ops center.
"Half the time I don't understand the words coming out of his mouth," Callen remarks, distributing containers to Kensi.
"And yet we'd probably all be long dead if it weren't for the boy," she chuckles. Her hands brush his as she accepts a pair of chopsticks, and Callen busies himself with unwrapping his own pair. The eat in companionable silence for a while, each bent over their own work, but Callen can feel the silence stretch and lengthen, prodding him to bring up the subject that has been close to the forefront of his mind for weeks on end. He shifts uneasily in his chair, debating internally whether to broach it, uncomfortable with re-crossing some invisible divide he's not sure they've built up again, part of him wary of what her response might be.
Then Kensi reaches across him to the beef and broccoli container he's holding in his left hand and spears a piece with her chopsticks, and the absolute ease and absentmindedness in which she does it has him blurting her name.
"Kens– " he manages to utter.
She turns to him, brown eyes questioning.
"There's something I've been meaning to talk to you about," he begins. "I'm sorry I haven't done it sooner. That night with the Kallstrom op– "
He can sense Kensi tense up and then fall still, and he hesitates for a beat before deciding to plunge forward.
"I'm sorry that I put us in that situation – it shouldn't have happened. That night was a mistake. I should have known better, it was irresponsible and reckless of me and I wasn't thinking – I just want to make sure you were good – that we were good– " Callen trails off lamely, disturbed at the uncharacteristic babble coming out of his mouth.
Kensi remains still for a few agonizingly long seconds before she says softly, "Yes, it probably shouldn't have happened, and yes, we both probably knew better. But you weren't the only one calling the shots that night, in case you've forgotten. I'm not sorry it did happen, and it wasn't a mistake." She meets his gaze fully, boldly, and there's an undecipherable emotion in her eyes before something shifts and he can almost see the walls come hurtling back up.
"I'm good if you're good, G." Kensi's jaw tightens, and she shrugs. "Don't worry – it was a long night, got caught up in the heat of the moment, whatever you want to chalk it up to. You haven't fucked anything up, if that's what you're worried about." She flips the screen of her laptop down and begins shoving papers into folders. "Look, it's getting late and I think I'm going to call it a night– "
"Kens," Callen says gently, "I didn't mean– "
She places a hand on his arm to cut him off and shoots him a tentative smile. "I'm fine. We're fine. Really. We don't need to talk about this anymore."
He looks at her, gauging, weighing her words, unsure how to proceed. "Okay," he finally says.
Kensi shuffles her laptop and folders into her shoulder bag and stands, gives his shoulder a brief squeeze. "See you tomorrow."
Callen watches her walk out.
He's always known he has a bit of a masochistic streak. Likes to push his limits, toe the boundary and see how much resistance he comes up against, then jump over anyway. Likes to torture himself with the what-if's and the why's. It's part of the reason he's so good at what he does, blending in, cloaking himself in other lives like a second skin; for the length of time it takes he is that persona he takes on, fully believing in whatever doctrine or creed needed to accomplish the goal, no matter how warped or self-destructive. It's why he oftentimes finds it difficult to come back to himself after an undercover op, shaking off the cobwebs of rehearsed habits and practiced thoughts for weeks afterwards, peeling back the layers to try to find the pieces of G Callen underneath.
So he understands more than anyone the sacrifices needed to do this job. The things they all give up, the desires and personal yearnings they all conceal underneath flippant facades in order to get up every morning and continue on. So deep down he acknowledges why he signed off on this particular op, why he was the one who planned and executed it.
Still, watching Kensi and Deeks play the happily married suburban couple strikes at a level of masochism he didn't even know he had, like watching an oncoming train wreck and being transfixed by the glare of its headlights, unable to dive away from the path of destruction.
They're on the hunt for Russian sleeper agents in the neighborhood and they've set up minimal cameras around the house, but after the first few days of watching Kensi cook and do laundry and make coffee for Deeks in the mornings, he hands over monitoring duties to Eric and occupies himself with catching up on other cases. Even so, he finds himself staying late at Ops, combing through video from the day's feeds. He studies Kensi as she sleeps, her partner beside her in the queen-sized bed, watches Deeks roll closer and his hand stray across Kensi's hip, watches as Kensi slumbers on. Snatches of their one night together pass fleetingly through his head: he remembers the arc of her spine, the inflection of her sighs, the warmth of her body beside his, and he tries so very hard to forget.
Callen watches Kensi and her partner grow closer, grow into their roles, playing house and make-believe, and he feels the twist inside his gut, the throb and pulse of an indiscernible ache buried deep beneath layers he long thought impenetrable. Yet he can't tear himself away.
He knows better than anyone how talented Kensi is at her job, how effortlessly she can slip into a role and live in it. He of all people fully comprehends exactly what that entails. But he sees the way Deeks looks at her, the way she responds in kind, and he finds himself wondering just how skilled an operator she really is.
Sam walks in on him one night on his way out, and raises an inquisitive eyebrow at his partner sprawled across a couch in a corner of the hacienda, laptop open to Kensi and Deeks enjoying a simple, intimate dinner.
Callen glances up. "Just keeping an eye on our happy couple," he says lightly.
Sam looks at him for a long moment, silently appraising, until Callen snaps irritability, "Weren't you on your way out?"
"G, maybe you should head home tonight. Been pulling a lot of late nights recently. Eric will let us know if something comes up."
Callen shrugs. "I've still got a lot of work to get through. Probably end up crashing here." He smirks at Sam. "Thanks, mom. I'm good here."
Sam gives him one last look and shakes his head slightly. "See you tomorrow, G."
Kensi does a pretty effective job of avoiding eye contact – or any sort of contact, really – with him upon her return after the completion of the operation. Callen's not sure if it's intentional or if he's imagining things, but he always seems to be catching the tail end of her as he moves around OSP: a glimpse of her ponytail as she exits the training room, a cursory greeting as she brushes quickly past him on her way out of the firing range when he walks in. For nearly a week, she's barely at her desk, and he tries not to notice the empty space beside him, does his best to keep his own head down and bury himself in work.
But then, of course, the shit hits the fan. He should have been expecting it.
One minute he catches sight of Kensi smiling, mouth open in laughter, Mike Renko mid-gesture next to her in the parking lot they cleared minutes ago, and the next second Renko is down on the ground, his blood all over Kensi's hands.
Hours later, he watches a visibly shaken Hetty forcibly compose herself after she hangs up with Kensi before turning around to deliver the news.
"Agent Renko had a cardiac arrest right after surgery. There was nothing they could do for him."
The announcement is a bombshell dropped in their midst, sucking the oxygen right out of the room. He can see Eric and Nell stunned, Deeks uneasy, Sam somber in thought, processing the implications and ramifications of the news. Callen doesn't stop to think. Wordlessly, he turns and heads straight out the door, doesn't stop until he's in his car and pulling up to the hospital, sprinting through the double doors, up a flight of stairs and into the surgical waiting area.
Kensi is crumpled in a corner chair, arms curled tight around her knees, and the vise that has gripped his stomach, his chest, for the past 12 hours clenches that much tighter.
"G?" Kensi looks up at his approach, eyes red-rimmed and face ashen, and she swipes angrily at her cheeks, moves to stand up. "We need to bring them in for questioning – they fucking did this, we need to – "
"Kens," Callen says, crouching down in front of her, laying a hand firmly on her shoulder. "Take a minute."
He meets her eyes, sees the tumult of emotions swimming through them, fury and despair and a slow, dawning resignation, and Kensi sits back heavily in her chair.
He's worked with Mike Renko for years, and they had all grown used to the man flitting in and out of OSP, cropping up and then disappearing for a few months on another assignment. Renko had been a more present fixture in their lives before Deeks had arrived, and Callen has carefree memories of the five of them – himself, Sam, Kensi, Dom and Renko – going out for burgers and beers after a long day at the office. Simpler days, he regards them as now. He knew Renko as a solid, dependable, decent man; someone who could be trusted to have his back and his team's. But he knows Renko's relationship with Kensi ran deeper – they had been friends, had built an easy camaraderie that could be picked up wherever it had been left off.
Renko's death shakes him, angers and horrifies him, but he thinks how it must affect Kensi on a different level. Callen pushes back his own anger, files it away to be dealt with and unleashed later on, and he can feel Kensi's pain seeping into the space between them, tangible and pungent.
"Renko," she whispers.
"Yeah."
He grips her hands and she heaves out a choked sob at his touch. Something inside her dissolves away, and Kensi leans forward and cries noiselessly, fiercely, silent sobs wracking her body, and she tightens her fingers around his, clutching on with startling strength.
Callen holds on.