A/N: Hello my amazing readers! As promised, I'm back with another story.
I would like to thank all the people who read, followed and reviewed "What I did for love''.
Special thanks to my beta Quen.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters. The only thing that I do own is my imagination. And my ideas.
Enjoy!
"You're lying."
"No I'm not. How would I know about it if I hadn't really found it?"
"You got a point there but I destroyed every last copy of that video."
The topic of their current argument is a video that Nell found on the internet, which portrays Eric's part in a musical play.
He had taken the role to impress a girl back in his college years and the only way to do so was by taking part in the play that she had organised, as his intelligence apparently was not that appealing to her. After he joined NCIS though, he deleted all copies of that play as well as any other online information about him.
"Apparently not. But I have to say, you do look good in a pair of golden boy shorts."
"Please don't tell the rest of the team, I'll never hear the end of it. Never."
Eric's voice is barely above a whisper as he doesn't wish for the few other NCIS employees who have cone into work this early in the morning.
"Ok, ok I won't. I'll only use it for my own amusement."
"I can live with that. How did you find it anyway?"
"Please, my hacking skills crush yours."
"No, your IQ crashes mine, but no one can top my hacking skills. I broke the Internet."
"Miss Jones might not posses your hacking skill, Mr Beale, but I'm sure that she is more than capable to handle our next case."
"Of course Hetty. Whad do we have?"
For the next 15 minutes Hetty briefed them of the current problem that they had to solve. An insurance company was suspected of being a front for an identity theft organisation. Hetty had sent some other agents to get all the employees out the building under the disguise of the evacuation being done due to a gas pipe leak.
Their mission was to copy all their data and documents so that they would have enough evidence to close the organisation and put the people running it behind bars for many years.
"Should I alert the rest of the team?"
"No, not yet. There's nothing for them to do right now."
"Ok. I'll go prepare our equipment."
"Good idea Miss Jones. Mr Beale, please follow me."
"I have a pair of jeans in my locker. You don't need to lend me any from wardrobe," he says as he follows Hetty to her desk.
"Good to know. But there's something else I need to give you."
She opened the bottom drawer of her desk and took something from it. Eric soon realised that it was a gun.
"Hetty you know how I feel about guns."
"I do Eric, but this time you have to."
"Why? Nell is packing, there's no need for me to do so."
"If afraid that Miss Jones hasn't recovered yet from her first shooting and she might not be able to protect both you and herself one hundred percent if something happens in the field today."
"I trust her to have my back."
"It's good that you trust your partner but this is an order," she says and extends her hand towards him. Eric knew that he had no other choice so he picked the holstered gun and began making his way to the locker room. He was ready to round the corner when he heard Hetty calling his name.
"Yes Hetty?" he asks as he turns around to face her.
"If anything happens, remember your training."
"What do you want for lunch?" Eric asks Nell as he closes the back door of the van which is parked in the street across from the building in question.
"After 8 hours of gathering data from every electronic device in that building I'm so hungry that I could eat a whole cow."
"And we haven't even processed the data yet. That's gonna take us ages." he tells her as she enters the NCIS issued van.
"Don't even remind me. Chinese sound good?"
"Sounds delicious."
Suddenly, Eric feels Nell's tiny hands grab at his right bicep and pull his body over the car's gear shift only to land on top of her. He barely has time to put his hands out, planting them on either side of her head to prevent his larger frame from crushing hers.
"Wha-"
"Shhh! I saw someone enter the building."
"Oh," is all he says because it's then that his brain registers their close proximity, their faces only a couple of inches apart.
He notices the way that her hazel eyes are set with concentration, her lips pressed in a thin line and the frown that is etched between her brows. He suppresses the urge to smooth it out.
He can feel her chest rise and fall with each breath she takes as well as the fingers that once gripped his upper arms, are now rubbing circles there, warming him through the materials of his clothes.
He can also feel his legs start to numb from the weird angle that they're at. He briefly wonders where Nells' legs are because he can't feel them at any of the places where their bodies are pressed together.
"Can you please get off of me so that I can get my tablet and see what he's doing?"
"Huh?"
"Get off of me please," she repeats and gently pushes at his chest.
"Oh, yeah sorry," he apologises and goes back to his seat, trying to make himself as small as possible so that he's isn't seen from the outside. In the meantime, she is typing on her tablet.
"I found him through the companies records. His name is John Curtis and he's the vise president. He copied a file from his computer and is now riding the elevator. I'm going to follow him, see who he meets."
"On your own?"
"Yes."
"On foot?" he asks as she opens the passenger's door.
"Yes."
"Why not follow him with the van?"
"Because he might get suspicious of being followed by a van. Plus, he came here on foot so he's probably leaving the same way."
"Are you sure about this?"
"Absolutely."
Eric knows that once Nell decides something, nothing can make her change her mind.
"Ok then. Be careful."
"I will."
One minute and twelve seconds. Exactly 72 seconds. That's how long it's been since Eric lost contact with Nell. He knows that he shouldn't be panicking because her phones' GPS shows that she's still on the move but that piece of information doesn't stop his heart from taking permanent residence at his stomach.
Next thing he knows, he's ripping the vans' door open and is running like the wind because according to the GPS, Nell isn't moving anymore.
"And the rest is in my report."
"You mean, you confronted Curtis," Nate asks him.
"Yes."
"And then you shot him."
"Is there a point to all of this? You already know what happened Nate. What more do you want?"
"I want you to tell me what happened after that. How you felt throughout the whole ordeal."
The rest of the day passes in a blur. He vaguely remembers the ambulance arriving and his argument with Callen who insisted that riding in the back of the ambulance wasn't a good idea.
Eric seemed to silence him when he asked him what would he had done had it been Sam instead of Nell.
He clearly remembers the the fear that consumed his heart and mind as he watched the paramedics working around Nell.
He also remembers the numbness and the ever present fear, his two sole companions, as he sat on some uncomfortable hospital chair, waiting for news of Nell's condition.
He can recall clearly all the 'what if' scenarios that his mind crafted while he waited: "what if I was too late?", "what if the brain damage is permanent?", "what if she doesn't make it?".
He then tried to imagine his life without Nell, but soon found out that it was impossible for him to do so because she had become such a big part of it that he wasn't even able remember how his life had been before she came into it, let alone imagine his future without her.
When the doctor came out of the operation room, he only caught two phrases from everything she had said: 'She's okay' and 'Medically induced coma'.
It was only when he was allowed to see her, her head wrapped up in bandages, her petite frame pale and seemingly more small that usual, hooked up to various machines and tubes, did it hit him how close to losing her he had come.
As he sat by her side, her left hand in both his hands, he swore to himself that when Nell woke up, he would admit his feelings. He would tell her how she was the most important person in his life, that he loved her so much more than a friend and how he couldn't possibly imagine his life without her.
And he did, two weeks later, when her brain had healed enough that it and the rest of her body could function on its own.
He didn't get the chance to be alone with her until three days after she woke up, with both doctors and nurses always getting blood and moving her to other parts of the hospital to run further tests and with their team members and members of her family who had came to see her being present all the time. Nell had also been forced to reveal her real job to her parents, an added worry.
He found a window of opportunity one night when all her family members had returned to their respective residences, even if that was for a few days, and he had declared that he would be the one spending the night watching over Nell while they got some rest and returned to their jobs, even though it was Eric the one who had only left Nell's side for only a few hours a day, even after her family arrived. Nobody argued with him.
Nell was still awake and in need of a discussion that had nothing to do with her condition or what happened. So they talked a bit about everything and anything until they fell into a comfortable silence. A silence that Eric broke with his confession about his feelings.
She replied with a bright smile and a whispered 'I know.'
Eric didn't know how to react to that until Nell beckoned him closer, to the point where their foreheads touched. She then placed the hand that he wasn't holding onto for dear life, to his cheek and stroked it for a few seconds, their eyes locked.
That moment brought them a sense of peace which gave its place to a spark a few seconds later when she brushed her lips briefly against his. It was a ghost of a kiss but it was enough for the spark to transform into an inferno which threatened to consume them both.
(The fire hasn't been extinguished yet. They both hope that it never does).
The road to Nell's recovery was long because not only did she have to heal physically but also mentally. The head injury had caused her a difficulty in saying and remembering words and names that used to be second nature to her.
Her high IQ helped her recover a lot more quickly than expected and in less than 9 months she was fully recovered and back to work.
(She still struggls to remember some words but such incidents have become few and far between.)
The long hours they spent playing numerous brain and word games, a part of Nell's therapy, were a perfect opportunity for them to work out the feelings between them as well as reveal all their new hopes, dreams and fears, most of which involved the other.
Eric almost falls off from the bed when he wakes up, breathing heavily, his mind still fuzzy from the last remains of the nightmare.
Technically, they're memories and not a twisted story that his mind came up with to fuel his fears of something happening to any of his teammates.
Next to him, Nell stirs, but there's no other indication that's she's awake. His heart slowly regains its usual rhythm now that he can see and feel that Nell is not in danger.
He plants a kiss on her forehead, lingering for a moment and gets up from the bed, making his way to the room next to theirs.
Moonlight is streaming through the only window, bathing the room with a silver glow. He takes the few steps that separate him from the crib and its little occupant. His son. His and Nell's eight month old son, Dylan. Eric looks at him for a moment, all ginger hair and chubby little fingers and round cheeks. He recalls the day Nell told him that they were going to be parents.
It was almost a year into their marriage and it was his birthday. After the party was over and everyone had gone home, Nell took him by the hand and led him to porch of their house. They sat on the porch swing and then took both his hands and placed them on her belly, her own hands folding over his. She smiled and whispered, "Your birthday present."
His mouth opened and closed a few times as he tried to find the meaning behind her words.
"I'm going to become a... father?" he asked, hope and glee evident in his voice.
"Yes."
That's all it took for his smile to grow even bigger as he gathered her into his arms, while simultaneously he covered her face with kisses.
"How? I mean I obviously know how, I was there after all but... when? How far along are you?"
"Eight weeks."
"Wow," he exclaimed. He really hadn't known what to say. He never thought that he would ever become a father and now that it was going to happen, he couldn't exactly voice every emotion and thought that he went through.
"Yeah, that was my reaction exactly. And then I freaked out because we only have 7 months until the baby is here and that's not enough time to figure everything out."
"Hey, we don't have to figure out everything right now. We'll do that slowly. Besides, we have 18 years to do that, okay?"
"Okay."
Eric spent the entire night talking to Nell's belly which held their unborn child.
He pulls away the canopy curtain and picks him up. He makes the same face that Nell does when he's trying to wake her up and Eric doesn't know how it is possible for him to love his son and wife more, but in this moment he finds out that somehow it is.
Kissing his forehead, he cradles his son's face against his chest with one arm while the other lays on his back, holding him protectively against his upper body.
He spends the next few minutes rocking from side to side, his son chasing away the fear and the panic that these dreams and memories bring, replacing them with love, happiness and baby smell.
He stops moving when he feels slim arms snaking around his waist as Nell kisses the space between his shoulder blades before pressing her right cheek there.
"He helps a lot with the nightmares. It's like his innocence and purity make all the horrors we face every day disappear," Nell says breaking the silence that had settled over them, like a warm blanket in a chilly night.
Eric hums in response and waits for the inevitable questions that he knows she's going to ask next. He does the exact same thing whenever she has a nightmare. She either wakes him up by holding into him just a little bit tighter or he wakes up on his own when her side of the bed has gone cold from her absence because she's in the next room, holding their son Dylan.
If the first one occurs, he holds onto her just as tight, whispering soothing words onto her hair until she has calmed down enough to tell him about the dream that she had. If the second situation occurs, it means that the dream was pretty bad so he hugs her from behind before asking her about the nightmare.
"What was it this time?" Nell asks after a few more moments of silence, her voice barely above a whisper as she doesn't want to wake their son up from his peaceful sleep.
"The third time we went out in the field together."
"Ah, I see. The one where I almost die and you shoot someone for the first time."
"The very same.'
"I'm here now."
"I know."
"I'm alive."
"I know."
"We're okay."
"I know."
"I love you."
That brings a small smile on Eric's face and he can also feel Nell's smile through the thin fabric of his T-shirt.
"I know. I love you too."
"Now come on, let's go to bed. We have to get to work tomorrow," Nell says as she releases Eric and steps in front of him to take their son, but not before Eric presses his lips one last time for tonight on his forehead. She does the same thing and lays Dylan inside his crib.
"We'll just call Hetty and tell her that we want to spend some family quality time," says Eric as he pulls the *thing that covers the crib like a curtain to keep the insects away I think* back. Then he pulls Nell to his right side and together they walk back to their bedroom.
"But who's going to save the world if we take a day off?"
"I think that they can manage on their own for a few hours."
"Do you remember what happened the last time we left OPS for a few days?"
"Sam tripped an alarm causing an immediate lock down and as a result our honeymoon was cut short."
"And I was really enjoying the hotel room."
"It was a very nice hotel room. With the bed being its best fixture."
"Definitely. Good night," Nell says as lays her haid on his chest, right over his beating heart.
"G'night," Eric replies as his hands tighten around her waist.
And in that moment, Eric knows that as long as he has Nell by his side, as long as they're together, they can face anything that life throws their way.
So, what do you guys think? Love it? Hate it? Did it make sense? Let me know!
Until next time
~F