Kensi squints against the light, frowning. Her eyes aren't adjusted and everything's a little blurry, but she can make out the shape of Deeks and hear him moving things around on top of her dresser.
"What are you doing?" she asks, voice deep and scratchy and ugh, it's way too early to be talking.
"Sorry, couldn't find my keys. I thought they might be drowning in one of your junk heaps." He flicks off the lamp and moves toward the bed, perching on the edge beside her. "Do I want to know how old that peanut butter sandwich is?"
She scowls even though it's too dark for him to see it. No, he definitely doesn't want to know. She doesn't even want to know. "Why are you up this early?"
"Court today, remember?" He brushes her hair out of her eyes before trailing his hand down her body, coming to rest on her hip.
"At," she glances at the digital clock, "five ten?"
"Gotta prep."
"It's not like you're the one being shot."
"You never know."
She makes a hrmph noise. He knows better than to joke about that. Not that it's ever stopped him from doing it.
"Don't worry, Kens. I'm going to be fine." He smiles and leans down to kiss her exposed shoulder.
Her eyes flutter closed. It's still dark outside and bed is warm and she doesn't have to get up for another hour, so she doesn't fight sleep as it starts to pull her back under.
"If you get in the shower now," he whispers, pressing more kisses into her skin, "I can help you undress."
It takes a lot of effort, but she pries her eyes open, pushes the comforter off, and allows him to pull her up and to her feet.
"You're going to tuck me back in after."
He tugs her toward the bathroom. "Deal."
Deeks steps into the LAPD bullpen and considers stepping right back out. Bates is standing next to Deeks' desk, which is never, ever a good thing.
"Lieutenant," Deeks says as he approaches. "Did I forget we had a lunch date? If you'll just let me fix my hair I can be ready in -"
"Cut the shit, Detective." Bates tosses a single sheet of paper onto Deeks' desk. "Your friend's gone."
"Well, that was the idea," Deeks says, snatching up the paper.
It's a wire report. A car rented to Charlie Mitchell, Ray's new alias, was involved in a chase and a shooting in downtown Los Angeles.
He reads it again but it doesn't make any more sense the second time. Ray should be flying over the midwest right now. "I put him on a plane."
"Then he got off."
Deeks looks at the words on the page, piecing together the scraps of information to try and create a visual. The car was found crashed two blocks from a shooting. No blood at the scene. "He's alive."
"Not for long unless you find him and fix this."
That's not all he'll do when he finds him, that's for damn sure.
"Yes, sir."
Callen steps into the range and watches as Kensi tears holes into an innocent sheet of paper. Her body's tightly coiled, shoulders locked, but she hits the target with apparent ease.
Great. Because this was already going to be an awful conversation.
Why Hetty insists on Callen handling any of the personal relations portions of the day-to-day management of their team is beyond him, but he'd rather face an angry, armed Kensi than go back to Hetty and tell her he hadn't done what she asked. Sometimes being a team leader sucks.
He steps into her peripheral vision. "You could have been a little easier on Andrews, you know."
Kensi's grip tightens at his words and she fires another shot. But for the bullet landing just left of center, he'd have considered the possibility that she hadn't heard him.
She fires again.
"Kensi."
She sets down her weapon and pulls off her ear protection and glasses. "We almost lost the suspect because of his incompetence. Why should I have been easy on him?"
"Because it was his first day in the field with our team."
"So I should give him a free pass?"
"You should cut him some slack."
She snorts. "Like you and Sam cut Deeks slack, right?"
It takes him a second to track her train of thought. "Deeks didn't need to be handled with kid-gloves."
"Exactly. So why should I settle for a partner that does?"
"You're not settling, Kensi. Andrews is a highly trained and vetted agent who Hetty thinks will be a good fit here."
"And yet I can't treat him like one of the team."
"That's not what I'm saying."
"If you'd have pulled that stupid move, Sam would have thrown you over his shoulder and tossed you into the trunk of his car."
He concedes the point, although he could have done without the visual. "Andrews isn't a born operator but that doesn't mean he can't serve a purpose on our team."
"I don't want a partner I have to go easy on."
"You had to go easy on Dom." He knows it was the wrong thing to say the moment the words leave his mouth. If she was tightly coiled before, she's ready to burst now.
"Yeah, and look where Dom is now, Callen."
His hand starts towards her of its own volition before he mentally wills it back down. It doesn't take a personal relations genius to see she's put up a brick wall that he shouldn't even try to cross. "Kensi -"
"I can't have a partner who isn't good enough. I can't have a partner who needs to be trained. I can't have a partner -"
"Kensi -"
"I can't lose another partner, Callen." She stays upright, defiant and angry, but tears are pooling in her eyes. "And I'm not going to settle."
She puts her headgear back on and turns her back to him, effectively ending the conversation. Callen sighs and turns to leave, knowing there's no point in pressing the issue. He'll trust her to be professional and know that she'll do what she has to to get the job done, even if she doesn't like it.
And he'll feel really, really sorry for Andrews.
Ray takes the duffle bag from Marty with sweaty palms. He's nervous and maybe sort of scared.
But he's ready. Definitely ready.
"I'm gonna be the best father in the world, I promise you."
Marty claps him on the back and says what he's supposed to. "I know you are, Ray."
"Shut up and listen to me." Ray's not interested in platitudes. Marty doesn't know it. But he should. "I'm not gonna screw everything up like my dad or your dad."
Marty nods and Ray thinks, not for the first time, it sucks how much Marty looks like his dad. It would be shitty to look in the mirror and know that under all that scruff and shag was the one person you wish you never had to see again.
But least he's different where it counts.
"Always knew we'd turn out so much better than them." Didn't take much, but enough that it was a battle. A daily battle that Ray lost a lot more than Marty ever did. But they both came out on top.
"We did, didn't we?"
"Damn right, brother."
Marty looks at Jenna. "Take care of him," he tells her.
"I will," she promises.
Ray reaches out and pulls Marty into a hug. He won't say they'll never meet again, because he knows that's not true. But it is going to be a while. "Marty, you tell that girl of yours that the honeymoon needs to be in Florida."
Deeks shakes his head and rolls his eyes as he steps out of the hug. "We're not getting married, Ray."
Ray doesn't believe that for a second. There are few people he's known better than Marty Deeks and he can guarantee the look in his best friend's eyes when he talks about his girl is telling a different story. It's telling a stupid, sappy story that Ray's finding a lot more appealing now that his life has taken it's own stupid, sappy turn. They're definitely getting married, just -
"Not yet." Ray wiggles his eyebrows and grins.
She opens her eyes to find Deeks standing in front of her, his figure silhouetted against the silenced television.
She pushes herself up to sitting and blinks things into focus. "Hey."
"Hey yourself."
"I didn't expect you."
"Yeah, sorry. I just," she sweeps her hair out of her face, "your DVR has better stuff."
He lets out a soft laugh. "I missed you too."
He drops down beside her with a sigh. She grabs the remote and clicks off the television, plunging the room into total darkness before she reaches over to turn on the light.
He's got a bandage wrapped loosely around his wrist and -
"Is that a black eye?" She brings her hand up to hover over the swollen, purple skin. "What the hell happened?"
"Rough day."
"Everyone okay?"
"Yeah, it worked out in the end, it just," he waves his hand, "it took a roundabout way of getting there. I knew this already, but I had forgotten - Ray is a dumb shit."
She pushes off the couch and walks to the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, "Your best friend Ray is a dumb shit?"
"That's being generous," he calls back.
She opens a drawer and grabs a plastic sandwich bag. She fills it with ice as Deeks continues to yell from the other room.
"He thought instead of actually telling me he has a pregnant girlfriend -"
"He has a -"
"Pregnant girlfriend, yes. He thought he'd try and skip out on the relocation and relocate with her himself."
She snags a dish towel from the drawer before returning to the couch. "The guy who's the key witness in a case against the biggest arms dealer in the world? You're right. Dumb shit is generous."
"So, yeah," he says, taking the towel-wrapped bag of ice she offers and pressing it to his eye. He winces and sucks air through his teeth. "I spent my day hunting him down, trying to catch him before someone else did."
Kensi drops back down beside him and reaches for his injured wrist, lifting it gently and placing it on her lap. She starts unwinding the bandage. "But you got him off safely."
"Eventually, yeah - he and Jenna and the fetus, who I hope inherits his mother's common sense. I don't actually know if she has any, but it's got to be more than Ray's."
She trails her fingertips softly over his slightly clammy skin. It's a little swollen, but not too bad.
"It's just a sprain," he answers her unasked question.
She nods and starts re-wrapping the bandage.
He relaxes against the couch, head dropping back with a sigh, ice still pressed against his face. "I had to go under as an old alias today. One I don't like very much."
She imagines he doesn't like many of his aliases at all, so the fact that he points that out means this one is significant. "Which one? Is this too tight?"
He shakes his head no and she clips the bandage into place.
"Max Gentry. He's like," he trips a little over the words, "he's a lot like my dad."
His dad. His dad that he's never spoken of, never even hinted at.
"Not a nice guy. Not a guy I want to remember."
She bites her tongue, stifling the questions that are scrambling for her lips, trying to make their way out. She knows Deeks is a lot like she is - that pushing doesn't gain you any ground - so she stays silent and waits for him to lead.
"I don't even know where he is now." He says it like he's both amused and pained - like he wants to make a joke of it but can't quite muster the energy. "The last time I saw him he was bleeding out from a bullet wound I gave him. That was more than twenty years ago."
Her heart constricts. Twenty years ago. "Deeks -"
"He could be dead for all I know, for all I care," he says, dropping his hand, ice still clutched in it. "But it doesn't matter because he's here. He's always here inside me - like a parasite I can't get rid of. And when I do things like I did today, when I have to become a violent, worthless piece of shit - it's like I'm feeding it."
"You weren't a violent, worthless piece of shit today, Deeks." She twists so she's facing him, makes sure he's looking her in the eyes. "You were a detective and a friend. You saved Ray the dumbshit and Jenna and the fetus and - I wasn't there, I don't know what happened - but knowing you I can guarantee you were the best version of you on the inside and that's what counts."
"Taking up motivational speaking?" he asks. There's a grin on his face but not in his eyes and she can tell the conversation is over.
"If you keep saying things like that, yeah."
He turns his injured hand over and laces his fingers with hers. "So how was your day?"
"Nice segue."
"I'll finesse the next one."
"Uh huh." She shifts, tucking into his side. She doesn't drop his hand, clasping it in front of her as his chin tests on the top of her head. "My day wasn't great."
"Andrews?"
"He's not..."
"Renko."
"No," she agrees, though that wasn't what she was thinking. Wasn't who she was thinking. "He's not Renko."
"He could be. You don't know him well enough yet. You've got to give him a chance."
She rolls her eyes. This is a speech she doesn't need twice in one day. "That's what I hear."
"Let people in, Kens." He squeezes her hand, his words soft but forceful.
"It's not that easy."
"You let me in and look how that worked out."
It did work out. It worked out better than she could have expected, better than she could have imagined or hoped. He's in now and he's become part of her. It doesn't even scare her anymore; it just warms her in a way she's never felt before.
"What about you?" she asks without thinking, without censoring. "Have you thought about maybe becoming an agent?"
"And giving up everything I am?" He presses a kiss into her hair before admitting, "I can't do that, Kens."
She wants to ask him what that means, what does he think that he is and why does he think he can only get it from a group of people who don't appreciate or support him, but she can't. She can't ask - not with the embarrassment and the disappointment that's bubbling inside her.
She knows she wouldn't want to give up being an NCIS agent, so she can't blame him. She pushes the thought into the back of her mind, boxing it up and tucking it away.
"Let's get you some ibuprofen," she says, putting her feet on the floor and standing, her hand slipping from his.
She'll go easier on Andrews tomorrow.