Set anytime in the series after Deeks joins the fun. Deeks has a secret.

Disclaimer: I own nothing and no one. I'm just writing them as I want to see them.

Thank you to those of you that have read or will read this story and an EXTRA BIG THANK YOU to those that reviewed, followed and favorite this story. I've enjoyed writing it.

I know almost nothing about MMA fighting. I've seen it a few times and it looks to me like just the training would leave bruises. If I've gotten something wrong about MMA or the UFC such as the training or fight scheduling, please remember this is just a story. Don't hunt me down, I wouldn't survive a fight.

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The first three weeks of training with Neil went by in a blur for several reasons: NCIS has several ongoing cases, LAPD had wanted him back for an extended undercover op and his new trainer was beating him to death every night. Fortunately with the NCIS team working together, they cleared some of their cases and Hetty intervened on his behalf with the LAPD, explaining that he was already involved with several other cases that he couldn't just drop at a moment's notice. Sadly, Hetty couldn't intervene on his behalf with Neil, not that he would've asked her to anyway. Deeks had a fight in three weeks and then he could decide to continue with Neil or not. Neil or as Deeks had come to call him, if only in his head, 'the devil's spawn' was a tough but good trainer. He had to admit that his fighting was vastly better but at what cost? He was exhausted and his body looked like he had been beaten with a baseball bat.

It really wasn't a surprise to him that he over-slept. He decided he really needed a day off and called into Hetty. Hetty didn't let him off as they had another case and Kensi was on her way to pick him up. Just after he got off the phone with Hetty, Kensi walked into his apartment not even bothering to knock. "Deeks! Where are you? You're late, again." She walked into his bedroom and saw him sitting on the edge of his bed, phone dangling from his fingers practically asleep again. She took in his more than usually messy hair, his unkempt hair and the t-shirt & boxers he was wearing looked to be loose on him. "God, you look like crap."

"Thanks. I didn't realize."

"Come on, we got a case. We'll get coffee on the way. Go take a quick shower and get dressed. I'll give you 10 minutes then I'm pouring you into the car, dressed or not." She left him to pull himself together and waited in the kitchen.

After giving Deeks 15 minutes rathen than 10, Kensi was banging on his bedroom door. "Dressed or not, here I come," Kensi let him know. He quickly opened the door before she could come in. He was dressed, mostly. He was carrying his socks and boots in one hand and his shirt was almost closed. Actually it was only closed by the bottom two buttons revealing a good portion of his chest and unfortunately a few bruises. "Deeks! What the hell!" She pulled his shirt farther open to look at his chest to see how many bruises he actually had and unfortunately there were more than a few.

"Princess, if you just wanted to see my manly and very hot body, you should have come in the room 5 minutes ago." Deeks deflected.

"Deeks, your covered in bruises! What the hell are they from?" She demanded.

Deeks wasn't prepared for her questions and was too tired to come up with a reasonable lie so he pulled a trick from her book: he changed the topic. "What's the case?" He asked while sitting on the sofa to put his socks & boots on.

She huffed and tried to think of a way to bring the subject back to him. When he looked up at her, she saw the glare he was trying to send her way through the exhaustion that was evident on his face and in his eyes. She relented and accepted the subject changed. "It's a PO suspected of selling classified info. She was caught by her CO while trying to access the information. Callen & Sam are talking to her in the boat shed, Eric & Nell are working her background and tracking her electronic trail. We're headed out to talk to her parents."

He looked at her with a 'oh come on, really?' look on his face. He had to pull himself together enough to talk to a suspect's parents? "I'm going to need coffee, a lot of coffee before we get there." Deeks informed her as he stood up and finished buttoning his shirt.

"Come on. It's going to take about 2 hours to get to their farm," she said as she headed toward the door. She turned to look at him as she opened the door, "We'll get you some coffee and then you can sleep on the way there and back."

He looked at her with such gratitude that she could only smile at him. He followed her out the door and shuffled his way over to her car, opening the door and falling into his seat he asked her, "You know I love you right, Fern?" He put his sunglasses on, buckled his seatbelt just before he leaned the seat back and promptly fell asleep.

His words hit her with a little shock before she realized that he was already sound asleep. She shook her head discounting his comment knowing that he said it only because he was completely out of it, "Yea, Shaggy, I know." She sighed and pulled away from the curb and into traffic.

Two hours later, Deeks was awoken by Kensi saying his name as they entered the small town their suspect's family lived in. He sat up, rubbed his eyes awake and looked out the window to see what was around them. "Where are we?" He asked not recognizing anything.

"We're almost there. How did you sleep?" She tried to glance at his face while still keep an eye on the road.

"Like the dead. Wait, we're almost there?"

"Yea, you were really out of it. I stopped about an hour ago and got you coffee. It's obviously cold at this point but I figured you could use it either way." She waited while he drank most of the coffee without stopping before speaking again. "You wanna tell me what's going on now? The exhaustion, the bruises?" She didn't want to go there, but her mind had taken her directly to abuse. Was someone hurting him? Who would do that? Why would he let someone hit him?

"Kens, I'll tell you about it some other time but not right now. We need to focus. I need to focus. Do we have a case file I can read before we get there?"

She was going to argue again but realized he was right and they both needed to focus. "File's in the back seat."

He found the file and started to read.