A/N: And here we go again :) Little thing I've got to get off my chest - Daniela Ruah is pregnant from Eric Olsen's brother while Eric's wife just gave birth to their first child? What?! That is what I call perfect timing :)
Yeah okay, I'm done.
Disclaimer as usual... sigh...
Callen had just cuffed the last of Well's men and had brought them over to a waiting car when Eric's voice crackled in his ear.
"Callen, the other operation just ended. Thanks to the GPS device in Julio's shoes, we were able to locate the meeting point and arrest all of the men, including the ones in a high position. The cartel of Hernandez is now officially smashed."
Callen took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a second - that was exactly what they'd been hoping for.
"And the next shipments of the weapons? Some are still open."
"We found a laptop and encrypted data on it. Nell and I are still decoding them, but it looks promising; there are dates, number of the weapons, prices and the meeting points. We'll have to go to the rendezvous points and just wait for the buyers to walk into the trap," Callen could literally hear Eric's grin when he recounted the events of the other op.
"That sounds good," he commented and already wanted to shut down the conversation, when he remembered something, "Hey, Eric? What about the hacker? In the end he wasn't as good as you, was he?"
"We arrested him, too. Well…," before Eric could say anything else, Nell's voice could be heard in the background. "Who could possibly be better than Eric?"
When Kensi got out of the shower, she just changed into some shorts and a too large shirt that still somehow pleased her physique. She was one of the women who could wear anything and she often had to show just that to trick a suspect.
Nevertheless, or maybe that was the reason why, she felt more comfortable in jeans and a shirt than in a dress most of the time.
Her hair was not pulled into a ponytail, already starting to curl slightly and the last drops of cool water from her hair ran down her back.
It was quiet in her apartment and Kensi sneaked into the living room, expecting to find a sleeping Deeks on her couch. When she rounded the corner, the agent saw that her carefulness had been in vain, Deeks was nowhere to be seen.
Kensi stopped in the middle of the room and took a deep breath. At first she thought that he had sneaked away, maybe to the beach, but then she heard muffled sounds from her little garden.
The door that lead from the kitchen to the backyard was open and the sun touched every angle of her cool kitchen. Judging by the sounds, Deeks was beating the living daylights out of her punching bag standing in her garden. Kensi smiled to herself and stepped onto the little patio she had, seeing it as a positive sign that Deeks let his feelings out by hitting her punching bag instead of just locking them away. When he had reached the point of physical exhaustion, it would be easier to let the tears fall, the shock settle in.
All in all she expected a battered but calming view, but what she got to see had her hurrying to her partner in a few steps.
Deeks was with his back to her, dressed in a grey shirt and another pair of jeans. The grey shirt was soaked with blood at the back, the texture completely full of blood so that Kensi couldn't even tell if it was just one wound that was bleeding, or several.
When she was two meters away from him, Kensi noticed that Deeks didn't wear any hand protection, the skin around his knuckles was bleeding by now. The closer she came, the more alarming detail she saw – also on the height of his injured knee, there was a dark red spot that could be seen growing steadily larger.
"Deeks!"
He was still beating the punching bag, showing no sign that he had even heard her voice.
Shoving her fear for him in the far corner of her mind, Kensi gripped his shoulders determinedly, and stepped in front of him in order to stop his frantic boxing. She could tell from the look in is eyes that he was far away with his mind, anywhere but here.
Deeks had at least stopped trying to hit the punching bag, his arms hanging loosely by his sides as he stood in her garden, looking completely lost. Kensi could finally see how he slowly allowed his feelings to take over and slung her arms around him when he started to shake.
It was only now that Deeks realized that Kensi was with him, holding him in her arms. Almost at the same moment, his body began to shake, the fear and shock from the last few hours catching up with him, so intense that he had trouble to keep standing.
The third thing he noticed was the pain. His right knee was throbbing and the cuts from the whip on his back were burning like fire. Deeks tried to inhale deeply and found himself unable to do that, only then remembering his broken ribs.
He could not breathe properly and that together with the effort of the boxing was too much for his body to take, dark spots appeared in his vision.
Kensi felt the body of her partner starting to go slack and she helped him to sit down on the soft grass. He still hadn't spoken a word but that wasn't necessary. Kensi was there for him and he knew it.
There he sat shaking in front of Kensi, trying to breathe at a regular speed as tears streamed down his face. It was the first time he cried for a very, very long time. He let his walls down and broke in front of his partner, but he still knew that it made him stronger and not weaker. Kensi encircled him again, not letting go until he had calmed down.
"Feel better now?" she mumbled, her face buried in his locks.
When she felt him nodding slightly, she pulled away from him, her thumb unconsciously wiping the last trace of the tears away.
"Kensi, I'm sorry, I…" Deeks started but was cut off immediately.
"You don't have to be sorry for anything, okay, Deeks? Partners are there for each other. I'm there for you," Kensi said in a strong voice, knowing that he never had something alike. He'd never known what family felt like.
A tiny smile came over his lips, a smile that warmed her heart.
"Thanks."
"Can I take a look at your back?" Kensi really didn't want to destroy the moment, but she was not only concerned about the mental health of her partner, but also of his physical one.
"Please, don't get worried. I'm afraid it doesn't look too appealing," Deeks stated and got rid of his shirt, teeth clenched together, trying not to think of Kensi sitting behind him.
He heard her sharp intake of air and tried to imagine what she had to be seeing right now. At some point, Deeks had stopped counting the lashes of the whip.
"Before you ask, it was a whip," Deeks forced past his lips.
Kensi was spared of an answer when the doorbell rang.
"Sam and Callen wanted to come over. Is that alright with you?" Kensi could imagine that Deeks didn't want the two to see him like this.
"It's okay," Deeks said and then asked, "Help me over to the sun lounger over there?"
Kensi helped him up as gently as she could and then led him to the lounger that stood in the shadow of a sun umbrella, before she got to her front door and opened it.
Callen and Sam were standing outside, as she had expected, their Kevlar vests no longer on their bodies, but otherwise dressed just like before – they had just driven right from the warehouse to Kensi.
"Hey, guys," Kensi said and let them in.
"What happened to your hands? Everything okay?" Sam asked with a glance at Kensi's bloody hands.
"It's not my blood."
"Deeks'?" Callen asked concerned and looked around in the open living room. "Where is he?"
"We're in the garden. I took a quick shower and then found him in the backyard, beating the hell out of my punching bag. Deeks beat his hands bloody and I think there's a lot more damage than that," Kensi explained and noticed the confused looks of her colleagues, "I didn't have time to get a good look at him, yet. He completely broke down a couple of minutes ago."
"No surprise there. We found a bloody whip. I don't wanna know what they did to him," Callen hissed and wasn't able to suppress his anger.
Deeks was part of his team and no one had the right to hurt his team. It had taken Callen everything to arrest the guys and not kill them right away. He knew that Sam felt the same. Even if he was the one who took the longest to get to know Deeks and find a way to deal with his methods, he had grown on him. One glance at his partner's face told Callen that he had been right about the mixed feelings, he could see anger as well as concern in Sam's eyes.
"He didn't want to go to the hospital at all costs and when he isn't hurt too badly, I want him to stay here," Kensi said and got a nod as response.
They all could understand that Deeks didn't want to get back into an area that was under surveillance twenty-four hours, especially not now when the cartel could no longer harm him.
"Where do you keep your first aid kit?" Sam asked and made a mental list of all the things they might need.
"Bathroom. I guess we'll need some wet towels to get the blood from his back," Kensi answered and stared after the two men when they walked in direction of her bathroom.
The agent inhaled deeply before returning to the garden, where Deeks was still sitting on the lounge, exactly as she had left him there.
"Hey. Sam and Callen are here," she said and dared to take a look at the open cuts on his back. "We'll patch you up as well as possible, but when there's something serious, you go to the hospital, okay?"
"Yeah, I guess it's better that way. I just don't want be so…," Deeks was searching for the right words and Kensi found them for him, "Locked in? I can understand that."
She laid a hand on his shoulder and then walked around the lounge to see him from the front. His whole chest and the area around his kidneys were covered in colorful bruises. She crouched down in front of him at an instant and forced him to look into her eyes.
"What did they do to you?"
"I tried to fight the second time they came. It didn't end too well for me, they must have mistaken me for a punching bag," Deeks tried to joke but ended up gasping for air when his chest exploded in pain at his try to laugh.
It took all of his will to suppress a cough, he didn't want Kensi to worry even more than she already did.
A/N: Thoughts? I'd love to hear them :) What the heck it is with Deeks' cough...? *evil grin again*
And before I forget it, huge thanks to my amazing beta, for the fastest proof-reading in history!
