Chapter 15: Threat
"We both have war inside us. Sometimes it keeps us alive. Sometimes it threatens to destroy us." - Veronica Roth
It's the hardest thing Deeks has ever done in his life to leave his partner behind and chase after their AWOL team leader. He wants to rage and scream, and just maybe punch Callen directly in the face. He wants to jump on a plane back home to LA with Kensi and never let her out of his sight again. He wants to rewind time to a week ago when he'd challenged his partner to a Top Model themed drinking game and done way too many vodka shots. He wants Thapa to be alive and Sam not to be shot because then they wouldn't be here to begin with. He wants that tantalizing week off with Kensi and his surfboard. But we rarely get what we want, he thinks bitterly, and so he takes the rickety old truck that Callen had first picked them up in and drives across the city.
It's nearly an hour and a half later before he pulls the rattletrap of a truck to a stop along the side of the road and kills the engine. Patel-Kumar Industrial sits half a block down in his rearview mirror and the building is surprisingly innocuous for what he's sure hides inside. And then Deeks chuckles hollowly to himself because what was he expecting, a neon sign announcing horrible CIA things happening here?
There's a single row of windows on this side of the building, but they're more than thirty feet up and Deeks doesn't see any other windows or ways to see inside. He's going to have to go in there blind and he wonders then what exactly Hetty will do to him if he just drives away and takes his Kensalina for that week off. Nothing good he decides, because no matter what Hetty claims he's not blind, thank you very much, and he's known since their run across the globe chasing after Hetty in Romania that there's not much Hetty won't do for Clara's son.
Deeks drops his head onto the steering wheel and thumps his fist into it a handful of times. He curses Ella and her whole double agent poly, curses Sam for getting shot, and Callen for dragging them on this scavenger hunt from hell, and then for good measure he curses the whole damn country of India.
He looks up from his tantrum and then has an honest to God cardiac event because Callen's standing beside the truck, arms crossed, and one eyebrow quirked at him in a look as though he hasn't just cost Deeks ten years of this life. He yanks the back door open and slides into the middle of the back seat to stare at Deeks in the rearview mirror. "You done?"
Marty squints back at him, caught flat footed and all the more annoyed for it, "Maybe."
Callen rolls his eyes, open and blatant and uncontrolled, and it takes Deeks a moment to figure out what exactly here is throwing him off so much because there's nothing of Yuri, the Ghost, Bhutan in the man in his backseat right now. And then G turns away and reaches for the door handle, "Go home, Deeks."
Marty scrambles to punch the lock button on the truck door beside him and thanks Shiva, the flying spaghetti monster, and Jesus H. Christ that the electric locks on this rattletrap of a pickup still work.
There's a long moment where Callen sucks a noisy breath between his teeth and Deeks wonders what on earth he was thinking because he's sure there's a million and one ways that Callen can stop him breathing without moving from the backseat. Callen looks back to meet his reflected gaze in the mirror and there's no small amount of rage reflected in his ice blue eyes. There's more there now than just Callen's normal amount of annoyance, he's poked the bear good and thoroughly, and G breathes deep and slow like he's reigning in the urge to stab Deeks in the ear.
Callen's still there though, even though Deeks is sure he could pop the lock or break a window and be long gone. Deeks sits in the silence and studies him for a moment, trying to figure out exactly how dead he is and how to ask what all Callen's been up to in the last twelve hours. He buries the urge to shift in his seat as the silence stretches, he refuses to break first, but Deeks feels a bit like he's playing chicken with a great white. It works eventually, because just as the staring contest becomes well and truly uncomfortable, Callen huffs a sigh that comes all the way up from the base of his soul and then looks away. "Why are you here, Deeks? Go home."
There's something broken open and desperate in Callen's eyes, he looks like a drowning man who's lost track of which way is up, and then he blinks, and it's all gone, shuttered behind Callen's careful control and the cold detachment that Deeks is more used to. Part of Deeks wants to ask why exactly he's talking to Callen in this moment and not the Ghost, but a much larger part of him thinks that maybe it works like Slenderman or Beetlejuice and he's going to summon that inhuman rage back to Callen's eyes if he talks about it. So instead, he scoffs at G's words and tries to meet his gaze again in the mirror, "You want to explain that one to Hetty? Besides we're a team."
The words turn to ash on Deeks' tongue and an inside voice that sounds surprisingly like Max whispers hypocrite. Something uncomfortable that he doesn't want to name sits on his chest and constricts his lungs because he hasn't been able to look Callen in the eye without an unhealthy amount of distrust since he'd woken up to Callen sipping coffee in his kitchen a week ago.
But Callen flinches, violently, like he's grabbed a live wire at the same moment someone stepped on his grave.
There's something broken open and alive that writhes in the space between them. It's guilt and pain and regret. It's the look in Kensi's eyes every time someone mentions Dominic Vail, it's Callen when Kensi was missing in Afghanistan telling him I know how far you'll go and I've been there before, and it's the tone of Callen's voice over the coms saying Sam's down. Callen doesn't look at him, just stares past him like he's memorizing the pattern of stains on the truck's dashboard. He's too still, barely breathing, unmoving, but a hurricane worth of emotion rolls through his eyes and bleeds tension into his shoulders and the tick in his jaw. "It can't be my fault again, Deeks."
And Deeks blinks, dumbfounded at him for a moment before – Oh. Oh no. He blinks again and sees Callen sitting across from him on a plane, cleaning a rifle and saying that he hadn't used it since he'd hunted down his last partner's murderer. He blinks a third time and sees Callen walking back into the mission alone with his partner's blood still staining his clothes. Shit. And Deeks can't look away because he thinks he finally understands what's happening here. He finally sees Callen and not Yuri, the Ghost, Bhutan, for who he really is in this moment – a dangerous, terrifyingly scary, desperate man who will do anything to protect the only people he cares about. Fuck.
"Ok," Deeks breathes, startling them both, and he remembers Sam back in LA telling him that the line might not be in the same place for him as it is for G. It's not, he realizes, because he's shot his own father, and lied and scraped and stolen to survive, but it's only ever been in self-defense, not revenge.
"Ok," he repeats again, stronger. Because he's defined the terms of the deal into something he can live with and the thing constricting his chest loosens its grip just a little. "But I'm sticking around until Hetty's back up gets here."
Callen blinks startled and relieved and not entirely sure why Deeks is suddenly willing to listen to him, but also not entirely willing to question it. He shuts his eyes for a split second, a barely longer than normal blink, and tucks every shattered little bit of panic and rage and desperation behind Callen's careful control and Yuri's cold apathy. Then he squints at Deeks for a long moment, searching for the trick hiding in his words or the distrust from even half a day ago.
"Alright," he says finally, "then drive because my friend inside gave up who's bank rolling this whole little mess."