"You ready to try that breakfast yet?" Kensi asked, nodding to the tray with the typical suspects for a liquid diet. He shrugged indifferently, but she seemed eager for something to do.
"I suppose."
Kensi almost tripped over herself to get it for him, and he wondered if she was normally like this, or if the situation made her nervous. He had no way of knowing for sure having only met her yesterday. Well, that he remembered.
Setting the tray on the rolling table and carefully positioning it over his bed, Kensi took the plastic lid covering a small plate, revealing a bowl of lime Jello and what he assumed was chicken broth.
"My favorite flavor. I guess it's my lucky day," he joked. To his surprise, Kensi smiled, almost looking relieved. "What?"
"Oh nothing, it's just…the first time you were in the hospital once we were partners, you made a big deal about the Jello," she explained, waving her hand through the air.
"So, what you're saying is I'm predictable."
"No. It's nice to know some things are still the same."
With that comment to occupy his thoughts, he grabbed a spoon and started in on the small cup of Jello. It didn't taste bad, but he wasn't particularly hungry. His thoughts drifted again.
He wondered if anyone had told his clients they would need new council. The district attorney would just love that. He'd been searching for an excuse to force Deeks out for months, and partial amnesia would be perfectly valid, unlike his frequent citations for Deeks' appearance.
A second too late, he recalled that wouldn't be necessary since he wasn't a public defender and didn't have clients anymore. Apparently he'd swapped out a briefcase and suit for a gun and a badge sometime along the way.
And wasn't that something to wrap his head around? Even though he'd considered leaving criminal law, it surprised him he actually made that jump and so far to the other side. A dark voice in his head murmured that he'd always been the violent type, but he brushed that away with a shake of his head.
"Is your headache getting worse?" Kensi asked unexpectedly, and he inhaled deeply, glancing up from his uneaten Jello.
"What, no I'm fine. Why?"
"Oh, you just do this thing with your eyebrows and your lips part a little bit." She gestured to her own eyebrows.
"Wow, you really do know me well," he murmured, and she flushed, which made him wonder just what their relationship was.
"One of the hazards of working together every day, I guess," she said, clearly embarrassed. "We're pretty good at noticing each other's quirks and judging moods.
It felt a little surreal every time Kensi made some reference to their partnership, work, or a detail of his life he couldn't remember sharing with her. Hell, she knew things about him he couldn't even remember experiencing at all. It left him with a strange sense of loss, an emptiness he couldn't quite verbalize.
He supposed at the very least it seemed he was happier as a LAPD liaison than he had as a public defender. The thought that left a very low bar for comparison since he'd been pretty miserable for most of his tenure with the county law department.
His musing was interrupted once again, but this time by a nurse with a wheelchair.
"Mr. Deeks, I'm here to take you for your test and physical therapy evaluation," she informed him. "Would you like any help washing up or any other tasks?"
"No, I think I can handle it," Deeks said, easily transferring himself into the wheelchair without any assistance. It gave him a moment of pause, because he'd never used one before, but he shook it off, accepting that there were certain things he just wouldn't understand for now.
He brushed his teeth and watched his face, attempting to use the plastic comb on the back of the sink to tame his hair before eventually giving it up. It looked like "styled by pillow" would be it until he could shower.
When he rolled back into the room, Kensi and the nurse were waiting for him.
"I'm going to get breakfast while you're gone," Kensi said, quickly adding, "but I'll be back here when I'm done."
He considered telling her again that she didn't need to stay with him day on and day out. He didn't think that would work any better than less time, so he just settled on a nod of appreciation.
"Ok. Sneak me back a donut, ok?" He winked as the nurse rolled him out of the room.
When Deeks returned from his CT scan and physical evaluation (he'd been deemed physically sound, but would need to use a wheelchair until he left since he was still a fall risk), he found a tiny brunette woman in his room in place of Kensi. She sat with a laptop propped on her folded legs, furiously typing away.
The moment she registered him, she set the laptop to the side as his nurse rolled him into the room. He assumed the mystery woman was either a friend or someone from the same agency as Kensi.
"This will be fine," he said, indicating the end of the bed. After laying down for so long, it was a relief to be upright and slightly more mobile. Even if the position did bring back a touch of nausea.
"Do you need anything else, Mr. Deeks?"
"No, I think I'm good. Thanks, Amanda."
"Of course." She offered him a smile and pat on the shoulder. "I'll come check on you in a little bit."
"Hi, I'm Nell Jones. I work with Kensi," she explained. Once she'd left the room, the new woman stood up, smoothing her hands down the skirt of her dress.
"Marty Deeks, nice to meet you," he replied, deciding to roll with it.
"Nice to me—" she started to say back before she caught herself with a sheepish laugh. "Sorry."
"Don't worry about it. So, are you my new keeper?"
"Only temporarily. Our boss, Hetty, ordered Kensi to home for a few hours, so here I am."
That was good.
"I see you drew the short straw."
"No, I offered," she corrected him seriously. "We've all been worried about you, so I jumped at an excuse to come." She shrugged, though she didn't look any less earnest. "I needed to see you were ok for myself."
"I am. If you count partial amnesia as ok," he said glibly.
"Yeah, that's something I've only seen in movies and tv before," Nell Jones admitted. "It must be weird."
That genuinely made him laugh. "Yeah, it kind of is. In my mind, a new "Pirates of the Caribbean" just came out, which was not as good as the first and I have a deposition in the morning."
"I guess the good news is that you no longer have a deposition," she pointed out, drawing another half-laugh from Deeks.
"That's very true." He grabbed the kid-size cup of grape juice still left on his breakfast tray, leaning back in the wheelchair, and gestured to the chair Nell Jones had previously occupied. "Make yourself comfortable." He cleared his throat before taking a sip of the very sweet juice. "So, Kensi told me all about 2012 me. What's your perspective, Ms. Jones?"
She made a face and held up a hand. "Oh, that sounds so wrong for some reason. It's just Nell. And do you mean who you are or our relationship?" she asked.
"Either. Everything is a revelation."
Taking a seat, Nell smoothed her dress down, regarding him with a tilted head.
"Well aside from colleagues, you're my friend, pseudo older brother." She smiled conspiratorially. "You're the kind of guy you can tease and joke with, but you're also always there to lend a shoulder or defend depending on the situation. You'd walk me to my car late at night and block a bullet for me. Or help move a couch up three flights of stairs."
"You make me sound like some kind of superhero," Deeks commented. Her open and enthusiastic admiration made him uncomfortable.
"You are in a way. The whole team is really. But you're you have a really special way of connecting with people that makes you different," she explained.
"I guess I've always been a people person. It's how I conned my way out of a lot of detentions. Or as the majority of supervisors have lamented, a trouble-maker."
"You still are sometimes, but only in the best way. Honestly, if we didn't joke around and act a little silly sometimes, we'd be miserable."
He noted the difference between her and Kensi's descriptions. Kensi had mentioned a rocky start while Nell presented a mostly positive version.
"You're also really good at giving nicknames," Nell added.
"Really? The prosecutors aren't so appreciative."
"They don't know what they're missing."
"What's one of nicknames for you?"
For the first time, she hesitated, then softly answered, "Sometimes you call me Nellosaurus. Or Velma and I call you Shaggy."
"Like—?"
She nodded. "Scooby-Doo."
"Gee, thanks," he drawled, and she made a noise of protest.
"It is said with love. I happen to think Shaggy is an amazing character," she insisted, trying to keep a straight face.
They broke into unexpected laughter, Nell nearly doubling over in an attempt to regain composure. Eventually, she sat up again, wiping under her eyes.
"Can I hug you?" she asked unexpectedly.
"What—yeah, I guess," Deeks said, a little throw off by the wide swings in mood. Coming towards him, she bent down, wrapping both arms around him. Her hands just met in the middle of his back, and she squeezed him gently, pressing her face into his shoulder, with a shaky inhale.
"I was really worried about you," she whispered.
A/N: I get to call Nell tiny, because I am also very short. I keep expecting to have this story finished up, but then there ends up being more to write
