Fic: Dead, But Not Forgotten 3/3, Kensi/Deeks, NC-17

Oct 01, 2011 11:19

Title: Dead, But Not Forgotten
Author(s): fringedweller
Fandom(s): NCIS:LA
Pairing(s): Kensi/Deeks
Word Count: 26,742
Rating/Warnings: NC-17, death of non-canon character
Beta: seren_ccd
Disclaimer: Not my characters, no money being made, blah blah blah
Summary: Kensi and Deeks have always had amazing chemistry, but when that chemistry bubbles over one night, what do they do next? And why do they have to deal with all this in the midde of a snowy National Park with a psychotic Marine trying to kill them? Sometimes, life just isn't fair!

Notes: I would like to thank Google for helping me write this fic; having no knowledge whatsoever of how the Marine Corps operates, I was very heavily reliant on various websites. The one glaring thing I did change was to shift the location of the female detention facility to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, from it’s actual home in California. That wasn’t laziness, but a necessary plot based decision. Needless to say, don’t read this fic for a factually correct look at how the Marine Corps or the real NCIS works. Just enjoy the porn.



The owners of the bed and breakfast had done themselves proud, and the two agents and the escaped convict practically rolled out of the front door towards their truck.

“Pity we won’t go there again,” Deeks said as he opened the door. “Great food.”

“You should know, you put away a ton of if,” Kensi sniped.

“Oh, and you’re known for your bird-like appetite,” he snorted, turning the engine over.

“I work out!” Kensi snapped, glaring at him. “A lot!”

“How long have you two been together?” Doyle asked suddenly, from the back seat.

“Two years,” Deeks said happily. “Two long, ballbusting - ah!”

Kensi jabbed him in the ribs with a sharp elbow.

“Two years,” she said, turning back to Doyle. “It’s longer than some jail sentences.”

“But you’re still together,” Doyle said quietly. “After all that time. It’s nice.”

“Yeah,” Deeks said, holding out one of his hands to Kensi. “It is nice.”

His voice held a trace of softness that did not fit the hardened career criminal that he was pretending to be, a trace that she knew was Marty Deeks, not Michael Summers.

“You’re so sappy,” she muttered, but the mutter hid a small smile as she placed her hand in his and was pulled across the bench seat of the truck to cuddle up against him.

The day was sharp and clear, bitterly cold but thankfully, not snowing despite the ominously heavy, dark clouds on the horizon. The ploughs had been out already clearing the roads that they took towards Mount Mitchell National Park, but the thick layer of snow sitting on the farmland to the side of the road told them just how deep it was.

“Do you know where he is, exactly?” Deeks called back to Doyle, who was staring out of the window in the back of the truck. “It’s a wilderness out here.”

Deeks was right. They had passed through some very small towns, but they had left any major population centres behind a long time ago. There was a lot of pasture land with some disgruntled looking cows, more trees than Kensi had ever seen in one place at one time and not much else except miles of road and the giant Mount Mitchell looming in the distance.

If somebody wanted to hide, this was the place to do it.

“I don’t have a map or anything,” Doyle said, turning her attention away from the window. “But he told me about this place up here, how his neighbour had owned it, a little hunting cabin. He left it to Eddie in his will, because Eddie liked guns. He thought he could use it. It’s not much, Eddie says, just four walls and a roof. But nobody else knows about it.”

“How’d you know about it?” Deeks asked, one eye on Doyle in the rear view mirror. “If he never told anybody else about it, how come he told you?”

Doyle stiffened, and a faint red blush spread on her cheeks.

“Sometimes he would tell me things,” she said delicately. “You know. After.”

“I got ya,” Kensi reassured her. “Your Eddie’s a talker? Michael’s a talker. Never shuts up usually. Except in bed.”

She elbowed Deeks in the ribs playfully.

“You like it when I talk then, don’t you baby?” she teased, and a hot red flush started on the back of Deeks’ neck that she thought was perfectly adorable.

“Not long before we enter the park,” he said gruffly. “Where do we go then?”

“He said it was on the eastern ridge,” Doyle told him. “You can only take the road so far though. The rest of the way’s on foot. That’s all I know.”

They all remained silent as they covered the last few miles to the entrance to the national park. During the summer it would be beautiful, Kensi could tell, but now in dark and dreary November the whole place was deserted. There were no park rangers in the booths at the entrance, and no cars in the car parks surrounding the closed visitors’ centre. Kensi hopped out to grab a map from one of the plastic tubs attached to the wall of the kiosk that would sell ice cream in the summer, and quickly got back in the truck again. She’d been a California girl for too long, the temperature was far too cold for her comfort.

Together they traced out a route on the trails for vehicles that would get them close to the eastern ridge. The map held a few vague locations of private cabins, and all they could do was hope that Brown’s cabin was one of those marked.

Twenty minutes of careful driving had got them to the end of their road, an old logging route that had tested the truck’s suspension to the limit. There the road simply stopped, and the dense forest started.

“He didn’t say anything about where the cabin was located?” Kensi asked as they piled out of the truck. She kept Doyle talking while Deeks dug about in their bags in the trunk. When he returned he silently handed Kensi her Sig, which she tucked into the back of her jeans. Doyle didn’t know about her gun, which was exactly the way they wanted it. If she tried to turn against them and inform Brown, there would be an extra gun in play that neither of them expected.

Doyle shrugged, turning back to Kensi from scanning the ridge line.

“He said that it was made of oak, because there were oak trees all around it,” she said, screwing up her face in an effort to think.

Kensi glanced around at the trees surrounding them.

“None of these are oaks,” she said decisively. “There’s a hunter’s trail marked on the map, let’s follow that until we see something.”

It was hard going through the snow on the ground; Kensi needed all of her tracking skills to follow the hidden trail through the covered ground. Her jeans immediately became soaking wet, and she spared a thought for Doyle, who was walking in sneakers. Her feet must be wet and frozen, while Kensi’s were warm and snug in her boots. Deeks was obviously thinking along the same lines, because he’d frequently look back over his shoulder and help Doyle over difficult terrain.

Doyle herself was scanning the horizon nervously, intent on spotting the cabin where she thought Brown would be hiding out.

If Brown wasn’t there, Kensi realised grimly, then the whole op was a bust and it was likely that Brown would be successful in escaping with at least part of the money he had stolen from Quantico.

They made slow, plodding progress, not even sure that they were heading in the right direction. Deeks had pulled his phone out at various points, but shook his head each time. Eric had been right; cell service this far into the national park was zero. They were well and truly cut off from backup.

After about an hour, Kensi began to pick out oak trees in the groves around them. On a hunch she followed them and was rewarded with more and more of them in great stands all around her. A little further along the trail and they began to smell the welcome, familiar smell of wood smoke.

“Fire means people,” Deeks said quietly, unholstering his gun.

“It had to be Eddie,” Doyle said, with the first proper smile on her face that Kensi had witnessed yet. “Nobody else would be around here right now.”

She was right; they were miles and miles from anywhere, and there had been no sight of any humans, either hunters, hikers or park rangers.

“You go ahead of us a little,” Deeks said to her. “He’ll be less likely to shoot first and ask questions later if his girl appears before the strangers do.”

“Okay,” Doyle said eagerly, and set off at a quickened pace towards the smell of smoke.

Five minutes later and they came into a clearing. A small hunting cabin sat nestled into a curved rock wall, protecting it from the worst of the weather. It was clearly basic in its provisions, but it was shelter. In front of the cabin was a large campfire, the source of the smoke. A tall man, dressed in a thick coat, jeans and good boots stood next to it, his shotgun raised and pointing in the direction of the intruders.

“Eddie!” Doyle shouted, her joy at seeing her beloved all too clear in her voice, which carried well across the clearing. “Eddie!”

Ignoring the shocked look on the man’s face, she ran across the packed snow and threw herself into his arms. He was forced to drop the shotgun down onto the snow with the force of her arrival.

“Jo?” he said, disbelief evident in his voice. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

He scowled, grabbing her wrist tight with one hand and squeezing.

“How did you find me?” he demanded. “Tell me, how did you know I was here?”

“You told me,” Doyle stammered, pulling slightly at his grip. “Eddie, do you remember, that time in the motel, the one with the red curtains, you said you had a hunting cabin here. When I found out you escaped, I knew you’d come here. It’s safe.”

“It’s very safe,” Deeks said loudly, announcing their presence. “Nobody around here for miles.”

Brown acted instinctively, shoving Doyle away from himself and producing a handgun from a pocket of his coat. Doyle landed awkwardly in the snow, further hurting the arm that her lover had just yanked so hard on.

“No, Eddie,” she said, scrambling to her feet. “They’re friends.”

Deeks had pulled his gun out, and had it levelled on Brown, whose gun was moving steadily between Deeks and Kensi.

“That’s right, buddy,” Deeks said coolly. “We’re all friends here.”

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” Brown demanded. His body language hadn’t changed; he was still tense, and Kensi easily read fear and anger in his eyes.

She shifted uncomfortably, wishing she had the comfort of her Sig in her hand. She could feel the reassuring weight of it at the small of her back, but she’d be happier with it trained on Brown, covering her partner.

“I’m Michael, and this is my girl, Kiki. We’re the ones who bust your girl out of a military transport, so maybe you want to take the gun out of my face, what do you say?” Deeks told Brown, a faint veneer of his usual charm over the steely composure that the Michael character would have in a situation like this.

Brown frowned, and his gun shifted position towards Kensi. He lifted an eyebrow at Deeks, challenging him to respond to this power play. Deeks responded by loudly clicking the safety off his gun, and keeping it firmly on Brown.

Kensi eyed the two men warily. This pissing competition was necessary for the cover, and to ensure that Brown respected Michael, but it put her in the role of damsel in distress, and that was one that she hated. She would much rather be the cause of distress, if given the option.

Keeping his attention firmly on Deeks, Brown addressed Doyle.

“That true, Jo?” he asked gruffly. “They break you out?”

Doyle nodded furiously. “He was gonna just break her out,” she told Brown. “He shot the guards, I saw him. He was gonna leave me there, but I couldn’t do twenty years, baby, I couldn’t. So I told them…”

Brown’s head whipped sideways. Kensi edged closer to Deeks, who reached out and pulled her behind him.

“You told them what?” he asked menacingly.

“I said…I said….” Doyle began.

“She said that you’d pay us if we got her back to you,” Deeks called out. “Said you’d come into some money recently and you could pay.”

“She did, did she?” Brown asked quietly.

“It’s not that much,” Doyle pleaded. “You got seven million, Eddie. You said we weren’t gonna take much, you said just enough to set us up in Mexico. We don’t need all that money, baby. Give some to them, then we can all just disappear.”

Brown’s face was expressionless, except for his eyes. Kensi knew as soon as she saw them that this was not going to end well. There was hatred there, and it was all aimed at Doyle.

“Go stand over there, Jo,” he said eventually. “Go stand next to the fire. You must be frozen.”

“I am,” she said, “Thanks, Eddie. You always take good care of me.”

He remained silent and stoic as she pressed a kiss to his lips, and went to stand next to the large campfire, warming her reddened hands at it. It started to snow, the heavy grey clouds overhead finally releasing their cargo. Large flakes landed on her hair and shoulders, but she paid them no attention. All of her focus was on her lover.

Gun still trained, unmoving, on Kensi and Deeks, Brown turned his attention back to them.

“I’m only going to say this once,” Brown told them, his voice hard and uncompromising. “I don’t share. That’s my money.”

“Come on, man,” Deeks said expansively. “We gave you your girl back! I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t imagine life without my little sugar plum. She’s gotta be worth something to you, right?”

Brown raised an eyebrow, and smiled. It was the nastiest smile Kensi had ever seen, and she’d been on the receiving end of many smirks from villains. She stiffened, and began to reach behind her slowly.

“You want to know what she means to me?” Brown asked.

Before either Deeks or Kensi could react, Brown spun around and fired his gun directly at Doyle. Kensi watched in horror as the bullet hit the centre of her forehead with precision. The force of the bullet knocked the small woman backwards, and her body fell, lifeless, into the campfire.

At the sound of the shot Kensi was already stumbling backwards, reaching for her gun. Deeks started firing at Brown, but he’d dived for cover behind a snow-covered boulder.

“Run!” Kensi ordered.

There was no cover for them in the clearing; the boulder was the only big rock around, and they were too far away from the shelter to make it there before they got shot. Both Kensi and Deeks let out shots to cover their retreat among the trees.

Their winter weather gear wasn’t camouflaged; their jeans and brightly coloured jackets stood out like sore thumbs against the white snow and dark brown of the trees. Climbing the trees wouldn’t help either; they had all lost their leaves for the winter, and their visibility would outweigh any tactical advantage height would give them.

Despite the snow that was falling more heavily now, they could still see their tracks ahead of them. They ran as fast as they could through the snow-covered ground, shots whistling overhead. They returned fire, trying to keep Brown at bay until they reached their truck.

“Well,” panted Deeks. “This plan has gone as well as they usually do.”

“Shut up and keep moving,” Kensi ordered, firing backwards at their unseen enemy.

Slipping and sliding over the snowy ground, they followed the trail backwards until they found the road again. The shots following them had tailed off, which worried Kensi. Either Brown had run out of ammo, which meant he was reloading in order to come after them again, or he had somehow got ahead of them, and was waiting for them. Brown would have a much better grasp of the terrain than they did, and had better camo gear. In their guise as fun loving criminals on the run, neither Deeks nor Kensi really fit into the landscape.

As the truck came in sight, Deeks heaved a sigh of relief and put on an extra burst of speed. Kensi’s gut instinct raged at her, and she caught up with him and tackled him to the floor behind the stand of trees that separated them from the road.

“What the hell…” he began , but Kensi clapped a hand over his mouth and hissed at him to be quiet.

“We’re not being followed,” she told him hurriedly.

She could see the understanding dawn on his face immediately. Marty Deeks was many things, but stupid just wasn’t one of them.

Deeks peered through the treeline at the truck and swore angrily.

“He’s been here,” he said grimly. “Check the truck.”

Kensi looked hard at the truck and swore as well. She could see two tyres with massive holes blown in them, and the bags containing their clothes and extra ammo had been strewn all over the floor. She’d bet any amount of money that all their ammo and tactical resources were gone.

“Ok,” she said, breathing out hard through her nose in a vain attempt to generate some calm. “Let’s think this through. What have we got?”

The answer was disheartening. Between them they had two handguns, each with less than half a clip of ammo left. They both had cell phones, but there was still no signal this far into the park. Deeks had a wallet with some petty cash and the Hetty-approved credit card in it, with a tiny limit. Kensi had a knife tucked into her boot and the map of the park from the tourist information centre folded in her pocket.

That was all.

“We need to get out of the park as soon as possible,” Kensi said decisively. “We need to get to a phone and call Lejeune to get search teams out here.”

“And call Hetty,” Deeks added. “Maybe Eric can hijack a satellite or two to help.”

“The quickest and easiest way out is by road,” Kensi said, staring at the map. “But he’ll expect us to do that.”

“He’s probably sitting in wait a couple of hundred feet down the road,” Deeks agreed. He traced a line on the map with the tip of his finger. “This river flows out of the park,” he pointed out. “It goes in the opposite direction to the road, and according to this, goes right through a couple of small towns.”

“It’s a lot longer,” Kensi agreed. “But it’s the better plan.”

“There are more buildings marked in that direction,” Deeks said, tapping the map. “Could make for shelter and cover if we need it.”

He looked up at the steel-grey, heavy sky above him, and shivered. “I don’t like the look of those clouds,” he said darkly.

“We should get moving,” Kensi said. “If we push, we can get a good amount of distance covered by nightfall.”

“If the scary psycho marine doesn’t shoot us first,” Deeks said, scrambling to his feet.

“Yeah,” Kensi sighed, the image of Doyle’s body crumpling gracelessly into the fire. She shook her head. Now was not the time to think about that.

They moved as quickly as they could over the snow-covered ground. The clouds above them released showers of fresh snow throughout the day. On one hand, that was helpful as it disguised their trail and would slow Brown down. On the other hand, it impeded their progress too. It was cold, they were in unfamiliar terrain without backup, and a highly trained and motivated killer was somewhere behind them.

Try as hard as she could, Kensi couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched by someone. She doubled back several times to check out their trail, but there was no sign of Brown anywhere. It didn’t reassure her, though and the beginnings of what promised to be a huge tension headache was sitting right behind her temples.

Any breaks they took were short, just long enough to catch their breath, check their trail, consult the map and check they were still on the right path. The river was on their right, and they had to keep it there. It moved quickly, despite the large chunks of ice bobbing along on the top of it; the water looked dark and dangerous and Kensi was in no hurry to go anywhere near it.

They had been walking for hours, and she knew that they weren’t going to make it out of the park by nightfall. Despite it being the late afternoon, it was incredibly dark. There were no lights in the forest, and the thick canopy of the trees blocked out most of the dim light available.

“We should be looking for somewhere to spend the night,” Kensi told Deeks.

They hadn’t talked much during their long trek through the park. Deeks’ natural exuberance was cut short by the stark reality of their situation, and his mouth had been a thin, grim line for most of the walk. Kensi knew he was thinking about Doyle; if they hadn’t used her as part of the plan, she would still be alive right now, sitting behind bars at Lejeune. Kensi knew Deeks would blame himself for her death. She knew it because she blamed herself, too.

It had been one of the contentious parts of the plan. Hetty had signed off on it, but it had never really sat well with Kensi. They had all assumed that Brown would have been delighted to see Doyle; they never really considered the possibility that Brown had already discarded her. They had brought her back to him so he could do the job permanently, and on realising that, Kensi felt sick to the stomach.

Joanna Doyle deserved a better life, and a better death, Kensi thought bitterly.

Deeks stopped and gestured for the map. After scrutinising it for a while, he pointed out two locations.

“There are some more hunting lodges marked here,” he said, pointing to a location fairly close to their current one. “Or there’s a camp site over on the other side of the river, a few miles in.”

Kensi looked at him, amused.

“I’m sorry Deeks, but I think I must have left my tent in my other jeans,” she said dryly.

Deeks shook his head. “Look at the back of the map,” he urged.

Kensi flipped it over and read the information for tourists printed there.

“So?” she said eventually. “It’s about the campsite. I still maintain we’re lacking a few important items.”

Deeks shook his head. “Right here,” he said pointing to one of the paragraphs. “Come on, Kensi, keep up.”

He grinned at her, and she rolled her eyes as she scanned the document again. That time, she spotted it.

“Staff live on site twenty four hours a day, seven days a week during high season to ensure the comfort of all our guests…they live there all summer? There must be staff cabins.”

“Any shelter is better than none, even if the cabins have been abandoned for the winter,” Deeks pointed out. “Brown will expect us to head for the hunting cabins. They’re nearer, and probably have better provisions.”

“We still have to cross the river,” Kensi said dubiously. “I don’t see a bridge marked anywhere on the map.”

“There must be something,” Deeks said stubbornly.

Kensi sighed. The camp site made more sense, tactically, but the river was wide and flowing strongly.

“You’d better be right about there being a bridge,” she warned, stuffing the map back in her pocket. “I don’t feel like swimming today.”

They trudged on through the snowy ground, keeping alert for both traces of Brown, and a bridge over the river. Neither were apparent, and the tense atmosphere was making Kensi’s head pound.

“It’s not too late to double back and head for the hunting cabins,” she pointed out. “There’s no bridge, Deeks.”

“What do you call that then?” he asked triumphantly, picking his way down the bank of the river valley towards a jumble of rotten wood that lay across the river.

“A death trap,” Kensi said flatly. “Deeks, that bridge is out.”

“We can still use it,” he said stubbornly. “It’s mostly intact.”

Kensi opened her mouth to argue, when a shot whistled past her head and burrowed itself into a nearby tree. Deeks reached for her hand and yanked her forwards and together they ran for the mass of wood that spanned the river.

“If I die crossing the river I swear to all that’s holy I am haunting your ass,” Kensi warned Deeks fiercely as they threw themselves behind the remains of a pylon and returned fire at where they thought Brown was taking cover.

“It’s a great ass,” Deeks assured her. “I can totally see why you’d want to do that.”

Kensi fired grimly at the stand of trees where Brown must be hiding and thought evil thoughts about her partner, who had apparently added mind reading to his repertoire, as he snickered quietly under his breath.

The combined fire of the agents was enough to drive Brown out of his hiding place and force him back further up the river valley. Kensi caught Brown squarely between the sights of her Sig, and couldn’t help but let out a happy exclamation when one of her shots got him in the shoulder, making him fall to the ground.

“Nice shooting,” Deeks told her. “Wanna go in for the kill?”

Kensi checked her ammo level and frowned.

“I’m out,” she said. “You?”

The empty click of his Beretta told her all she needed to know.

“He’s wounded, that should slow him down,” she said decisively. “We’re at a disadvantage with no ammo. He’s a Marine; even with a bullet in him he’d still pick us off if we tried to ambush him. We need to get over the river while we still can.”

Deeks nodded in agreement.

Keeping as low to the ground as possible, Deeks and Kensi made their way to the jumble of rotten logs that had once been a bridge over the river. There was still a semblance of a working bridge, but the supports had given way on one side. They were going to have to pick their way across the remaining bridge carefully as the whole thing was tilted at a crazy angle. It was doable, Kensi decided, but it would be far easier if the whole structure wasn’t covered in a layer of snow, and if there wasn’t an angry, wounded murderer on their tail.

Deeks insisted on going first, arguing that he was heavier and could test whether the boards of the bridge would hold their weight better. Kensi nodded impatiently, and let him move slowly across the boards ahead of her.

It seemed to take forever, but slowly they made their progress across the bridge. The ropes used to bind the footboards together were now angled above their heads, and they used them to steady themselves as they clambered over the remains of the bridge supports. Below them the river flowed quickly, its waters dark and deep, and the noise of the fast flowing water spurred them both on. Neither wanted to end up falling in.

They were about three quarters of the way across the bridge when shots began to ring out across the valley. A large chunk of wood inches from Kensi’s hand suddenly splintered and she jerked away from it instinctively. The sudden movement was enough to make her lose her footing, and no amount of desperate scrambling from her or Deeks was enough to stop her falling from the bridge and plunging into the dark water below.

Thirty seconds Kensi thought, her mind surprisingly calm. Once you’ve fallen into freezing cold water, you have thirty seconds before your body starts to shut down.

She was a good swimmer, but even the best of swimmer would be challenged by such freezing conditions and weighed down by clothes. She immediately began to strike out towards the shore, but the current of the river was strong, and before she knew it she was being swept around the bend and away from the bridge. She heard Deeks shout her name, and she spared a quick hope that he wouldn’t be stupid enough to jump in the river after her.

She heard a loud splash, the sort of splash that the sound of an adult male with more hair than sense would make if he decided to jump into a raging river, and she felt a bolt of pure anger run through her body.

How dare he risk his life in such a stupid manner? Didn’t he know how special he was? Didn’t he know how many people out there depended on his being alive? And now she not only had to rescue herself, she had to get him out of the water too! That was it, she was so ratting him out to Hetty when they got back to LA.

Her brain practically boiling with anger, she struck out with renewed vigour. A large log, one of the fallen bridge supports by the look of it, had become wedged between some boulders. The current helped her, and she grabbed onto the log. Using almost the very last of her energy, Kensi pulled herself up out of the water and onto the log. She gripped it between her thighs, and scanned the water anxiously. Deeks soon appeared, grimly fighting the current as he scanned the water around him.

“Over here!” she yelled, and the look of relief on his face when he saw her perched precariously on the log was almost enough to melt her heart a little towards him. Almost.

Deeks ploughed his way through the water towards her. Gripping the log even tighter with her thighs, Kensi leaned towards Deeks and extended her hands. She caught one of his icy-cold hands with hers, and pulled with all her might, dragging him towards the log. He too clambered up on it.

She gripped his face with her hands, scanning it anxiously.

“Are you hurt?” she shouted above the noise of the raging water. “Did he get you?”

“No,” Deeks shouted back. “Are you hurt?”

Her whole body ached with the force the water had used to batter her about, but she would never tell him that.

“I’m fine,” she yelled.

Then she slapped him. The red imprint of her hand lasted on his pale cheek as she yelled at him about his stupidity, and his casual disregard for his life, and how he wasn’t behaving like an NCIS agent should.

He just smiled, took her frozen hands in his, and kissed them.

“Oh Kiki,” he said happily. “You do love me, after all.”

Kensi shrieked, an angry, wordless noise of disbelief, affront and indignation, slapped his other cheek and kissed him, hard.

“We need to find shelter,” Deeks told her. “Before some very important parts of my anatomy drop off.”

“It’s not that important,” Kensi said darkly, shuddering with the cold as they splashed their way from the log to the bank of the river. The cold was turning painful now, ice needles of agony shooting through her limbs.

“I think you have a vested interest in it now,” Deeks said, his teasing apparently not even cowed by a dip in a freezing cold river.

“Shut up,” Kensi said through chattering teeth. “The camp site must be up there.”

Clinging to each other, they managed to drag themselves up the river bank and towards the camp site area. There were sturdy cabins built there, just as they hoped there would be, and it was the matter of seconds for them to break the padlock off the door of one of them with a rock from the ground. Although the cabin was chilly, it was still a lot warmer than the outside thanks to its strong construction.

“Strip,” Kensi ordered, pulling open doors of cupboards and sideboards until she found what she was looking for.

“Want to check if it’s still attached?” Deeks joked, but Kensi could see the blue tinge to his lips and the way his body was shaking.

“Take off your clothes, and wrap yourself in these,” she said, her own hands shaking. She threw a bundle of blankets at him.

She began to strip off her own clothes, her fingers having problems with some of the buttons as they were shaking so hard. She managed though, and immediately cocooned herself in the layers of light blankets she had found in the storage cupboards.

“Bed,” Deeks said, taking her by the elbow and guiding her towards the back of the cabin.

“Body heat,” Kensi agreed, stumbling after him.

At the back of the cabin were small, private bedrooms and in one of them was a heating unit that ran on bottled gas. Thanking whomever had left the unit behind, Kensi switched it on and watched the bars on the front of it glow red with heat. Together she and Deeks collapsed onto the bed, and with some quick rearranging they soon ended up clasped together, skin to skin. They lay huddled together, shaking with cold and adrenaline, under a mound of blankets.

Kensi couldn’t hold him tight enough. She was still angry with him for risking his own life, but what kept her arms folded around his neck and a leg wrapped around his waist wasn’t anger. At least, she amended, not totally anger. It was fear.

She wasn’t so much scared of Brown as she was scared that she could have died today without ever admitting to Deeks that what she felt for him went deeper than a need for sex. If she had ever needed a wake-up call, then the river was it. Kensi Blye was not a coward. She could do this.

“Deeks,” she said quietly, directly into his ear. “Deeks, are you listening to me?”

“I’m always listening to you,” he said blearily. “Even when you’re yelling at me.”

His hands were on her back, stroking softly. One hand moved down to cup her backside, the thumb tracing over the spot where her fake tattoo had been painted on. She didn’t think he had seen it, not back at the bed and breakfast, but he might have caught a glimpse when she had pulled off her wet clothes.

“Well, sometimes you need to be yelled at,” she grumbled, planting a kiss on his collarbone. “Like when you do stupid stunts like throw yourself into freezing cold rivers.”

“I saw bullets slam into the bridge either side of you, and then you fall into the river,” he said, an undertone of steel in his voice that wasn’t usually there.

His grip on her tightened, as if by remembering the incident he was moved to try and keep her close now. If Kensi wasn’t so tired, or cold, she would have found that sexy.

“I’m your partner, Kensi,” he went on. “If you think for one second that I’d let you get hurt when there’s a chance that I could stop it, you need to seriously rethink what you know about me, and what I’m capable of.”

They lay in silence for a while. Deeks continued to stroke and caress the skin on her back. Kensi laid small kisses down on the side of his neck.

“What would you have done?” he asked eventually.

“Hmm?” Kensi asked, lulled into a calm state by the gentle touches. She was beginning to warm up now, and Deeks’ skin was also starting to feel a little warmer.

“If it had been me who had fallen off the bridge,” he said, kissing her gently at her temple. “What would you have done?”

“NCIS protocols…,” Kensi began, but Deeks shook his head.

“I don’t want to know about what an NCIS agent would do in these circumstances,” he said, “although I think it’s highly unlikely that there is a scenario exactly like this in the training manual anyway. I want to know what you, Kensi Blye, would do.”

Kensi huffed a breath of warm air, annoyed. She knew damn well what she would have done.

“I’d have jumped into the river after you,” she admitted.

“Yeah?” he asked, grinning at her. “And why is that, Agent Blye? After all, the training manual says that…”

Kensi groaned, and kissed him to shut him up. He laughed around the kiss, and returned it.

“I’d have jumped in the river because…” she admitted after the kiss had finished.

“Because….” he prompted, his eyes twinkling with suppressed laughter.

Kensi sighed. “Because I’m in love with you, you giant jerk, and I was trying to tell you that nicely, and now I’m just yelling at you again!”

Deeks laughed and kissed her annoyance away.

“I love it when you yell at me,” he told her, rolling her underneath him. “Your eyes get full of fire and you stick your chest out…”

“I do not stick my chest out!” she interrupted.

“You stick your chest out,” Deeks went on calmly, as if she hadn’t spoken. “And you look alive, Kensi. And I love that I rattle your cage. I love that I’m the one that makes you lose control.”

“Yeah?” she asked, wrapping both of her legs around his waist. “You love that?”

“I love the way that you treat life as a challenge,” he continued, kissing the side of her neck. “I love the way you’re determined to be the best in the room, no matter who’s in there. I love the way you’re smarter than just about everybody I know.”

“What else do you love?” she asked, twining her fingers in his damp hair and tugging.

“I love your tits,” he said in a voice of complete honesty, and she lost all control and laughed out loud.

“Seriously, they’re awesome,” he said, his voice muffled as he bent his head to kiss them directly. “I could spend hours here. In fact, I’m spending my next vacation right here, with my head between them.”

Kensi laughed again, and swatted him on the shoulder.

“Oh, and I love you, I guess,” he added.

“Oh, you guess,” she scoffed.

He looked up from between her breasts and shrugged.

“I thought you knew that. Everyone else knows that.”

“You thought I…what do you mean, everybody else knows?”

Kensi tried to sit up but Deeks tugged her back down again.

“Kensi, I do everything but pull your pigtails. Sam and Callen have both come to have The Talk with me, separately, and if that wasn’t terrifying enough, Hetty said…”

Deeks trailed off, a distant look in his eyes, then he shuddered.

“No, I’m not telling you what she said,” he said before Kensi could open her mouth. “I’m trying really hard to repress that particular memory. Plus, there’s the book that Nell’s been running.”

“Nell’s been running a book on us? How much is it up to?”

“A couple of hundred dollars, I think.”

Kensi pulled a face. “There’s got to be a way to get in on that,” she said thoughtfully.

“You’re not angry that our colleagues have been betting on us?” he asked, amused.

“I’m angry that we haven’t thought of a way to benefit from it,” she admitted.

“I really, really love you,” he said solemnly.

They kissed for a while longer, but neither of them had the energy to do more than hold and caress.

“So far we’ve been so drunk we passed out before having sex, had to stop because we had a convicted felon in the bathroom, and now we’re naked but trying to stave off hypothermia,” Deeks muttered in her ear. “Do you think we’re ever going to have a normal sex life?”

“I don’t think we’re ever going to do anythingnormally,” Kensi replied, yawning, then fell asleep. Chuckling his agreement, Deeks followed soon afterwards.

They were woken later by the sound of helicopters buzzing loudly over the camp site.

“Wake up,” Kensi said, shaking him. The light from outside was different, brighter, not so dark. They must have slept through the night.

“No,” he groaned into her shoulder. “It’s cold.”

“Wake up,” hissed Kensi. “I think the Marines are here.”

“That’s a new one,” he said blearily. “Never heard that one before.”

She got out of bed and bundled herself up in blankets, leaving Deeks to do the same. The front door to the cabin burst open and Sam and Callen came in, guns ready and levelled. Kensi threw her hands up and prayed that the blankets would stay in place.

“Don’t shoot!” Deeks called from the other room. “I’m naked!”

Kensi sighed as Sam and Callen started to laugh.

“We fell into the river,” she stressed, putting her hands down and rearranging the blankets so they covered more skin. “It was body heat or hypothermia.”

“Sure,” Sam laughed, but Callen prodded the pile of wet clothes still on the floor with his foot and frowned.

“You two okay?” he asked seriously. “No frostbite?”

“We’re toasty warm,” Deeks said, coming out from the bedroom in a makeshift blanket toga. “Or at least, we were until somebody came along and let the cold air in.”

He draped another blanket around Kensi’s shoulders and glared at Sam and Callen.

“A change of clothes would be nice too,” he said meaningfully, and Sam disappeared to track down one of the squad of Marines they had brought with them and find something suitable. He arrived back with some spare combat utility uniforms as Callen was filling Kensi and Deeks in on what had happened.

“As soon as you missed your first check in, Hetty got straight on the phone to Lejeune. They’ve had dog teams out through the park, but until they found your truck all shot up, there was no way of finding you.”

“Did you find Brown?” Kensi asked.

“Got him an hour ago, sheltering in an empty hunting cabin the other side of the river,” Callen told them. He’s lost a lot of blood from a shoulder wound, and the combat medic thinks he’s going to lose a few extremities to frostbite.”

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” Deeks said, his tone harsh.

“We found Doyle’s body,” Sam said quietly. “Brown do that?”

Kensi left Deeks to fill in the team on what happened as she went back into the bedroom to change into the spare uniform. She still felt bad about what had happened to Doyle. Even with a sentence of twenty two years, she still would have had a long life ahead of her after she came out of prison. And if they had managed to catch Brown, there would have been a good case for having her sentence reduced once the real story was known.

There were always casualties, she knew; life wasn’t like the movies where everything always gets wrapped up neatly at the end. Joanna Doyle had been a victim for her entire life; she had died the way she had lived, at the mercy of somebody else’s whims. She felt her eyes tear up when she thought of her, and she wiped them away hurriedly. Now was not the time or the place to give in to these feelings of pity. Later, when she was back home and alone, she’d cry her tears for Joanna Doyle, before putting thoughts of her away. The dead could haunt you, in this job, and you couldn’t let them weigh you down.

“Hey,” Deeks said softly. “You okay?”

He stood at the doorway, watching her carefully.

“I’m good,” she assured him.

When he stared at her, a frown marring his handsome face, she sighed.

“I was thinking about Doyle,” she confessed. “And about what a shitty life she had.”

“And a shitty death,” he said, nodding his understanding. “We didn’t make her life any better, did we?”

“We made it shorter,” Kensi said, sitting on the bed to pull on the thick socks that Sam had produced from his own pack for her to wear. “She should be sitting safe in a cell in Lejeune, not on a slab somewhere.”

Deeks sat next to her, and draped his arm around her shoulders. He didn’t try to take her pain away with platitudes; he knew only too well what she was feeling, because he was feeling it too.

“All we can do is learn from this,” he said eventually. “Not fuck it up the next time.”

“Yeah,” Kensi said, sighing. “I think…”

She stopped, unsure.

“Go on,” he encouraged.

“I think the next time we’re undercover, I want to use her name.”

Deeks tightened his grip on her shoulder for an instant, and then kissed her on the cheek.

“I think that’s a good idea,” he said, breathing out heavily. “It’s…fitting.”

They sat there silently for a while, until Callen stuck his head around the door.

“You two ready to go?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Kensi said, standing. “Where are we going?”

“Back to Lejeune to check on Brown’s condition, and to report in to Hetty on a secure line. We’ll get you two seen by doctors there as well. Then Sam and I get to hang around and escort Brown to Leavenworth, and you two get to start your mandatory forty eight hours R and R on a flight back to LA.”

“We should get to start it when we touch down in LA,” Deeks complained as they made their way from the cabin to a waiting helicopter. “I don’t want to waste precious hours crammed like cattle into a commercial flight.”

“No commercial flights for you two,” Sam said, shaking his head as he strapped himself into the chopper. “Sec Nav’s private jet is waiting at the airfield after being overhauled, and is needed in LA to fly him back to a conference somewhere classified. Hetty’s got you two a ride on that, as it has to go to the West Coast anyway.”

“Seriously?” Deeks said, catching Kensi’s eye. “A private jet? Just for us?”

His grin was full of promise, and Kensi felt a shiver run down her back that had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with sex.

“Yeah,” Sam grumbled. “It’s not fair.”

“Hey, we got shot at!” Kensi yelled over the noise of the helicopter lifting off.

“Chased!” Deeks added.

“I fell into a freezing cold river!” Kensi went on.

“Alright, alright,” Sam said as the helicopter rose up and away into the air. “I still don’t see why Hetty’s making us deliver Brown to Leavenworth, though. We could have all have flown back together.”

“Callen shrugged. “She’s got her reasons,” he said. “You want to know so bad, you ask her.”

Sam looked at his partner in disbelief.

“Do I look stupid to you?” he demanded. “Do I?”

As their teammates settled into a comfortable bickering session, Deeks’ hand sought out Kensi’s and squeezed. She squeezed back, and counted down the minutes until they were alone. They may have been interrupted by alcohol, by the job and by the risk of frostbite, but she was willing to bet that at 30000 feet, there’d be nothing stopping them.

“…four hundred and sixty, four hundred and eighty, five hundred.”

Nell counted out the last of the crisp green banknotes into Hetty’s waiting palm.

“There we go, Hetty, that’s all of it.”

“Thank you, Miss Jones,” Hetty said, clearly pleased with her winnings.

“I still say that arranging for them to be alone in a private jet isn’t keeping to the spirit of the bet,” Nell complained.

“Do you want me to put the feed from the jet’s internal camera system back on the main board?” Hetty enquired.

“No, God, no,” Nell said hurriedly. “I’ve seen more of Deeks than I care to.”

“Then let’s hear no more about the bet, shall we?” Hetty said, with the very slightest edge to her voice.

“Let’s not,” Nell agreed, and left Hetty’s small office are to rejoin Eric in ops.

Hetty watched her go, before carefully putting the money in a small, white envelope and locking it in her desk. There were any number of things she could do with it, but an intriguing thought had her access the internal NCIS email system, carefully blocking Nell and Eric from receiving her latest communication.

After all, the Mission would need a new couple to focus on now that the book on Kensi and Deeks was closed. And a $500 bet would recoup a great deal more once everybody else was playing along. Her thoughts running to a beautiful diamond and sapphire pin she had seen in the window of Tiffany’s only the day before, Hetty sent her email and watched with a smile on her face as her inbox filled up almost immediately with bets on when the two techs would get together.

Hmm. Maybe there’d be enough for the pin and the matching bracelet…




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kensi/deeks, fic: ncis: la, fic: het, rating: nc-17

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