a/n: Originally, I wrote this thinking I would be putting it in a group of one shots called LA on Your Break (aka the only writing I've done lately...), which have been inspired by my adventures when visiting the beautiful city of Los Angeles. I had a similar elevator experience to what is written about here (not quite the same, obviously.) But when I got to this particular line, I knew where this ficlet really belonged.
I apologize any rough patches. It was written in really fragmented sections and if I had betas (thanks to those who have offered!) I'm sure it would improve the quality, but I would probably never post anything ever again because I'd take their constructive criticisms much too hard. I'd rather just throw things on paper productively, get things out of my head and move on from them.
Sorry for that random rant.
"We're just two people who really, really aren't good with words."
When there's something off with his partner, there's something off with him.
He noticed it this morning when they woke up. Usually, she's curled up against his chest with his arms wrapped tightly around her for at least a few minutes before they get up in the mornings, unless rudely awakened by Eric to get into OPS early. But when they awoke, she pulled away. And before he could process what was going on, she was already in the bathroom getting ready to take a shower.
There was nothing abnormal about the specific day, he'd already thought that through. No forgotten anniversaries of theirs or hers and it wasn't her birthday. Nothing really unordinary had happened the day before and he really didn't think he did anything wrong. But obviously something was very wrong and he didn't like it.
She was quiet on their way into the office, but as they walked into the room with Sam and Callen, the flip was switched and work Kensi was back. Work Kensi and Girlfriend Kensi were two different people who had slowly melted themselves into one person over time, but today was the apparent exception. She was diligently working on paperwork as it it weren't busy work and only interacted with Callen and Sam to dig a little bit deeper into Sam's ego when the mathlete topic somehow was brought back up.
She's still Work Kensi when the day's case sends them to a fancy downtown hotel to check out some potential activity on the 32nd floor.
The car ride to the hotel was uncomfortably quiet. She let him not only drive her Audi but also pick the radio station and he didn't know how he felt about that. It was almost a surrender of sorts, and confirmed to him that there was something really off. But he smiled at her anyway and despite her silent composure, he sang along to Adele in the car like he normally would. If she wasn't okay, he'd do his damndest to be as okay as he could be for her.
The traffic was horrendous as usual, and the hotel staff didn't like where they were trying to park and kept trying to push them in the direction of the valet. But the badges took care of their problems, as they can occasionally do.
There was a rush as they entered the hotel building, people were everywhere, the lobby packed. But Work Kensi had a radar like vision, scanning for the front registration desk. She glanced at Deeks with a gaze that told him to have her six and before even confirming that he was following her lead, she slipped away into the crowd of people. He jumped into action to keep up with her, her slender frame slipping seamlessly through the sea of bodies, eye on the final destination in front of her.
The hotel staff, eager to cooperate with them so that their name could be cleared of any wrongdoing, slipped Kensi a key.
She pulled a similar stunt again, twisting away into the crowd. He took off after her. He guessed it wasn't really too abnormal of a behavior for her, but he could sense the tension in her face, muscles and eyes and hated every bit of it.
As they approached the elevator, Kensi turned her head sharply toward Deeks, her eyes quizzically gazing into his. "Why the hell are we surrounded by teenagers?"
Deeks furrowed his brow at her, as if to question her sanity, but let his eye gaze around the lobby. There they were in the masses. Young people, high schoolers, all lined up for the elevators.
"There's gotta be hundreds of kids here," he said with a pause.
Work Kensi's radar eye scanned the room again. It was kind of alluring and really damn sexy to watch her calculate the situation. "Its a convention," she said slowly. Her eyes focused in on something far off in the distance, and he turned to look at it. The print was small and he didn't catch the details that she could. "National health occupations students," she said into the air. She looked down at her watch. "Almost noon. They're all on their lunch break."
He followed her thought train. "They're all trying to go up to their rooms or to the restaurants upstairs."
She turned to him, nodding her head slowly.
"So you're telling me there are like a thousand kids needing to go up about eight elevators right now?" Deeks asked her.
"Yep, that's exactly what I'm saying," she said in response
"Well, looks like we're taking the stairs," he said as she started to move. This time, he didn't allow her to get too far in front of him. "Which is good, actually, it'll give us some time to talk."
Her strides were long, and she stared ahead of him looking for any sign that would direct them toward a stairwell. "We don't need to talk," she replied sharply.
"Everything about how you just answered that says that we need to talk."
She huffed and stopped walking, spinning around as she did it. "We're going the wrong way."
"Kensi, what's wrong?"
"I don't know where the stairs are."
He cocked his head at her in dismay, but she had gained some sense of where she was, because she took off again.
Finally, she swung open the doorway to a stairwell and they slipped into it. "We might ought to tell these kids about this," he paused as he realized they were completely alone now. He was significantly less eager to share this information.
He turned to see that she was already halfway up the first flight of stairs and ran to join her. "Did I do something?"
He could feel how much she didn't want to talk about this, but begrudgingly, she replied, "No."
"Okay, I definitely did something. Was it in bed last night? Was that hickey from the other night too hard to cover u…" He doesn't get to finish that sentence before she interrupts him.
"Its nothing you did, okay?" she exclaimed, finally giving in and allowing him to sense her annoyance.
"So there is something wrong," he said, bouncing in front of her on the stairwell.
"Do we have to talk about this at work?"
"We're in an empty stairwell and we're only a handful of flights up these stairs. Darling, we've got plenty of time."
"Don't call me darling," she scrunched up her features at him.
"Then tell me." the teasing gone from his voice, erased suddenly. She needed to know his intent- he was serious. "Seriously Kens, all morning I have been replaying conversations and calendars in my head trying to figure out what I'm missing here. I can't help you with what you don't tell me about."
"Gee, don't you love what that feels like?" She stopped and looked at him, her eyes like daggers into his.
"Is that what this is about? God, he was not in the mood for a conversation about Internal Affairs right now, but if that was causing her ailments, he'd do whatever he needed to to assure her that she could trust him.
She let out a sigh. "It's not about IA, Deeks. But it is about something you said last night."
Though he'd already run last night through his head, he decided to do it again. Last night had been good. Really good. "I, I don't have any idea Kens."
She started to walk again, but with less purpose. Obviously they were still on the job and had places to be, but the drive and precision Work Kensi embodied had faded into the softer woman he'd fallen in love with.
"The kid. And the trains."
Her laugh was infecting him at an alarming rate. He was in love with the way her body shook in laughter as he tickled her sides walking behind her up the stairs.
Their combined laughter slipped into soft conversation. They were both tired after the day's case. It hadn't been too long or grueling, but it was enough to get to turn in early.
He slipped in the bathroom to brush his teeth. Sure enough, the moment his toothbrush bristles hit his teeth, Kensi began asking him questions. "You have mentoring this weekend?"
It was a valid question for once. Generally, they weren't. She loved to start talking to him when he was brushing his teeth. It annoyed him a lot. Usually he just kept rolling with it.
He flashed her his usual glare, but quickly polished his teeth and wiped his mouth. He's a little bit terrified of getting cavities these days, but one bad night of brushing shouldn't begin that nightmare for him.
"Yeah. Actually, I found out he's super into trainsets. I thought I'd show him what I have, you know? I still want to keep them in case we have kids and all, but I think he'd like to see them. Sorry, I didn't mean to bring kids up again. Not that you'd care if they had those trains to play with. But yeah." He walked back over toward her, the laughter of their evening completely faded into the quiet feeling of an evening spent next to the person you love the most. They'd decided that until they made more concrete plans about getting married, they'd postpone talking about the possibility of kids.
He was greeted with her lips against his cheekbone, pushing up as she went up on her tiptoes to reach him. She pushed his bangs out of his eyes with her finger and looked closely at his face for a moment. "I bet he'll love that."
His heart quickened a moment, his breath taken away from him the moment her body touched his. It shouldn't be that this far into their relationship that he's still turned on about everything about her. Or well, maybe it… should be?
His hands found her hips and he pulled her against him and once she was there, he went back to what was familiar to them, his hands cupping her face and leading his lips to her. There wasn't much more talking to have after that as she was pulling him down onto their bed, lips barely parting enough to take breaths.
She broke away, gazing at him a moment before tucking her head underneath his neck. They were really too exhausted for much more than a little make out and snuggle session, but she appreciated his hand's graze over her shoulder as he pulled the covers up over their cuddling limbs.
The trains. The boy he was mentoring. " I found out he's super into trainsets. I thought I'd show him what I have, you know? I still want to keep them in case we have kids and all, but I think he'd like to see them. Sorry, I didn't mean to bring kids up again. Not that you'd care if they had those trains to play with."
He quizzically looked at her once again, taking steady paced steps at her side, until she explained. "Not that you'd care," she said slowly. "Not that I'd care."
He was still highly confused. "This is about words?"
"No Deeks, its about what those words mean." The stairwell came to an abrupt end with a doorway that she wasn't sure lead where they wanted to be going so she paused so that this could at least get off her chest. "How can you not know that when something means something to you, it means something to me? That you have these really beautiful toy trains, a part of your history and your past that you want to share with any kids we may or may not have that I don't give a damn about that?" she was fuming, all of her pent up frustration was pouring out, condescending into the most harsh statement of all. "If you didn't know that meant something to me, then obviously I have failed in making sure that you know how much I love every part of who you are."
It took him a moment to realize the exact implications of this, that it wasn't him saying those words that upset her. She's not mad at you, she's mad at herself.
But he knew that she loved him, right? He did. Despite his own feelings about himself and the 'man' he was, she saw a part of him he wished he could see. When he's with her, she takes the air quotes away from the word man and feels like he is a real and valid existence, one of worth and assistance to the world. There was no doubt in his mind that he loved her, dating back years. But only in the last year or so did it become undeniable that she loved him back just as much.
"Kensi, I…" this was about to get real strange to say very rapidly. "I know that you love me."
But she wouldn't look at him. Her eyes were somewhere else, looking up down and around, as if she was looking for a place to hide from him. "You take a lot of my crap Deeks. You take the messy house, the lack of cooking skills, my inability to stay on my side of the bed, and I've made you feel like what's important to you isn't important to me."
He reached out to grab her hand, drawing his thumb over hers. "You're reading way too far into this. 98 percent of the times I bring up those trains its a joke at my expense. They are a part of my past, you're right. But you have never once made me feel like that part of who I am isn't okay with you. We're just two people who really, really aren't good with words. Oh and by the way, I don't really want you staying on your side of the bed."
She flashed him a half smile. He could sense the guilt radiating off of her in layers, almost relaxing for the first time all day. "After you'd fallen asleep, I just couldn't get the words out of my head. They just kept repeating over and over in my head," she sighed. "I'm sorry."
He smiled back at her, grasping her chin and pulling it up to meet his in a short, but gentle and sweet kiss. "It's okay. I'm sorry you've felt guilty about this for half of the day. I guess we're still not perfect communicators."
"But we're better than we were? I mean, we got this far. We're going to make it?" the crack in her voice was more vulnerable than he was used to.
"Of course we're going to make it," he glanced around, reading at the doorway they'd come to. A large sign read, "EMPLOYEES ONLY. NO ELEVATOR ACCESS. RETURN TO FLOOR 20 AND TAKE THE ELEVATOR."
"Apparently this hotel needs to work on its communication skills. What kind of hotel only has stairs to floor 20?" she remarked, voice still somber. A tear was pricking the corner of her dark eye, threatening to fall.
"Come on, partner," he looped his arm around her shoulder. Quickly, her fingers dashed up to her eyes to wipe any evidence of emotion from her face. He smiled at her, knowing the depth of what this kind of response from her meant. After descending one flight of stairs, she'd recovered. Before stepping out of the stairwell on the 20th floor he remarked, "You good? I mean, we'll have a 3 year wait for the elevator still, but we're not stepping out of this stairwell until you're mentally ready to kick ass."
She chuckled genuinely for the first time that day, swinging her foot up to lightly tap him on the ass. "I'm ready."
He grinned and opened the door. "I love you."
"Love you too."