Prompt: Deeks has a nightmare about Afghanistan and Kensi sees/hears it.
It happens every once in a while, and afterwards he thinks he's losing his mind.
He shoots somebody out of anger instead of necessity.
He punches somebody in the face and the pain in his hand feels really good to him.
He refuses to help a worthless bastard hanging on for dear life for a roof and walks away.
The nightmares have been a problem on and off for his entire life. Every kid has nightmares, but they usually wake up to a reassuring hug from a parent, not the smell of Jack Daniels and complete silence. So he learned to deal with them on his own, and for the next several years nightmares were nothing more than an excuse for a midnight snack of Doritos and Captain Morgan's. Anything but Jack Daniels.
Something about the nightmares change after he's tortured at the hands of the sociopathic Russians. Of course he expected the subject matter to change, and the degrees of fear he feels when he realizes he can't close his mouth, he can't swallow because all he can taste is blood, and he can't even beg them to stop anymore are much higher than any of his previous nightmares. What scares him the most though, is his reaction to his nightmares. It's not fear he's feeling anymore, it's anger.
The real life, awake Marty Deeks recovers well and becomes more like his old self again, save for the fancy dental work and occasional haunted look on his face. Everyone expects him to still struggle in day to day activities, but he's fine. He swears. But there's a small part of him that was thankful that Kensi completely ignored the fact that he kissed her in a moment of truth (not weakness) and made no attempt to establish anything other than a friendly, albeit more friendly than before, relationship with him. Because he didn't want her or anybody else to know that he is still a little afraid of his worst enemy: himself.
He's a good person, and he knows it. He saves lives. He helps people. He stops evil. That's why he's upset by the things he is capable of doing in his sleep, because he doesn't want to do anything to purposely hurt somebody and he doesn't want to enjoy the feeling of releasing his rage on somebody. Or so he thought.
Now his dreams, he can't even call some of them nightmares anymore because they're too close to the truth, remind him of the monster he's so afraid of becoming. He can blame his desire to kill a man in cold blood and his ability to torture him for information (because he knows torture is torture, and just because he stopped himself doesn't mean he didn't start it) on his feelings for Kensi. The fact that he loves her more than anyone else on the planet is why he crumbled and let his angry Marty come out when he believed she was dead. Maybe she was the reason he tried so hard to keep him hidden in the first place.
When she comes home, Kensi is a little broken but a whole lot of alive. That's all that matters, not whatever happened to her that she won't talk about or whatever he did in order to find her that he won't talk about. Nothing intimate happens between them, but she sleeps in his bed every night after she comes home. "Monty makes me feel better," she lies. Her presence is calming to him, and he goes for a couple of weeks without dreaming at all until the one night he's in the cleric's house again. And he's screaming at him and holding a gun to his chest and this time he pulls the trigger and watches the life drain out of the cleric's body, satisfied that somehow he has avenged the murder of his lover. He falls down to the floor and starts shaking uncontrollably, and he thinks it's weird because he's pretty sure he's awake now and this has never happened before.
It's Kensi, she's shaking him to wake him up and saying his name over and over again. He blinks his eyes as he tries to focus on her hovering over him in the dark. "What happened?"
"You," she sits back on her heels. "I think you were having a nightmare. You were screaming but I couldn't tell what you said."
"Oh." Deeks rubs the scruff of his jaw and rolls out of bed. "I'm thirsty, you want anything?"
She shakes her head no and he walks into the kitchen for his usual routine, goes to the bathroom to rinse his mouth out with Listerine, and comes back to bed. Kensi is still sitting up, a concerned look on her face. "Does it happen often?"
He shrugs and climbs back into bed. "Probably more than to a scientist but less than a school teacher."
"Have you talked to anybody about it?"
"I'm talking to you about it right now."
She growls at him, and he can't help but forget everything that happened in his dream that night or in his reality over the last year when he sees her beautiful face and messy hair. She's so fucked up and he's so fucked up and they're so perfectly wrong for each other that it has to be right.
"I'm thinking of doing it. Talking to somebody, I mean," she confesses. "I think I have some issues, and I have trouble dealing with them. Maybe you should come too."
He smiles weakly at her, and hates himself for loving her so much that he won't let himself take the steps to be with her in all the ways that he wants. It's hard to tell her no, and if she had asked him to touch her any of those nights they've shared a bed he couldn't have stopped himself. What they need is for him to be happy, and for her to be happy, and for them to be happy.
Her hand grabs his and she squeezes it, and it feels so good that he takes her into his arms and holds her as tight as he can manage. Messy strands of brown hair fall into his mouth when he starts to talk, but he doesn't care. "Maybe I should."