Driving Lessons: Drabble 3/18/23

A/N: Since there wasn’t an episode this week, I decided to write another moment between Deeks and Rosa.

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Deeks took a sip from his coffee tumbler, setting it in one of the drink holders in his truck. “I can see my life flashing before my eyes already.” Rosa’s eyes widened, hand dropping from the steering wheel and he reached over to squeeze her shoulder. “Oh my god, I’m joking. You’re going to do fine,” he assured her.

“Really? What if I crash into something?” 

“You won’t.” Offering her a half-smile, he handed her the keys. “But just in case, make sure you put your seat belt on the right way.”

Rosa actually snorted at that, inserting the latch into the buckle with a click. 

“My mother talked about teaching me to drive… well, before she got so sick, but I think she kept putting it off because she was afraid,” she said, reminiscently but without sadness. She smiled softly. “A friend of mine let me drive his motorbike one time and she nearly fainted.”

“Sounds about right. You should have seen Mama Deeks the first time she took me out to drive. She made me stay under thirty miles per hour most the time, even though I’d been driving with Ray on the back roads and in parking lots since I was fourteen.”

“Did you tell her that?” 

“Have you met my mother?” He laughed sarcastically. “She would have had a stroke while confining me to my room until I was thirty if she ever found out.” 

“Roberta always seems so… relaxed,” Rosa commented, then added, “If a little chaotic.” 

“Chaos. That is an excellent word,” Deeks said. “You’ve never seen her in a real crisis. Roberta Deeks becomes a thousand times more ridiculous and completely unreasonable under stressful circumstances.” He smiled softly. “When mom took me driving, she freaked out every time I changed lanes and would only take me on the back roads for the first three weeks.” 

“That must have been really frustrating.”

“Sometimes. But I wouldn’t trade that time for anything. Even though I complained about it like crazy.” He shrugged, remembering how he’d huffed and groaned when Roberta refused to let him on the freeway. Yet he never turned down an offer to go driving.

“That sounds like every week at Sunday dinner,” Rosa teased, and he gave her a mock admonishing look.  

“Rude. But yeah, pretty much.” He tapped the ignition, then pointed to the keys still resting in Rosa’s hand. “OK, enough stalling. Start her up.”

“Alright.” Exhaling for several seconds, Rosa murmured something in Spanish, and looked heavenward before carefully inserting the key into the ignition. Just as carefully, she backed out of the driveway, her movements measured and sure.

“Perfect,” Deeks encouraged her, patting her shoulder. “Let the Rosa-Deeks inaugural driving lesson begin.”