AN: I've seen a bunch of these types of fics on here, and thought I'd try my hand on a few. And as Callen is my main squeeze right now, he seemed like a perfect guinea pig, not to mention the fact that we don't get to see him in too many successful relationships. I don't know about anyone else, but it leaves me a little...frustrated. He's so adorable, he needs some love, too!

The first and third stories (one-shots?) kind of introduce my OC Bethany Woods, who will be featured in a fic I'm still working on. I plan to start posting that one very soon, now that I have a good number of chapters written. With any luck it will be finished soon!

The Five Times Callen Got Kissed

(And the one time he didn't)

1.

Sam was on vacation with his family. This left his partner alone, though that was just fine with said partner. He had been alone a long time before joining NCIS, so he was used to doing things on his own. But when a case came up and Eric whistled for them to get up to OPS, Hetty broke the news that she had assigned Agent Bethany Woods to Sam's usual place beside the unshakable G. Callen.

Turns out, the prospect of having a female partner was all that was needed to shake him. He begged, he bargained, he even tried to guilt Hetty into letting him work alone, but she would hear none of it. Bethany was his partner until Sam returned, and that was the end.

Despite his initial misgivings, Beth was a good agent, and an even better partner for Callen. She read him easily, knowing when to step back and let him lead and when to speak up herself. She patiently allowed him his brooding silences, claiming that she understood the need for quiet reflection. She once told him that she also found her own times of deep thought refreshing, mourning the fact that she had precious little time to indulge in them.

Right now was one of those rare times, and they both sat in comfortable silence as they ran surveillance on a gun smuggler. Watching from the car as he met a colleague in the park, Callen sat in the driver's seat with a freshly-opened bottle of soda tucked between his knees as Beth's camera – complete with telephoto lens – snapped photos of the meeting. She made sure to get a few close-ups of a large wad of money changing hands, and when the other man walked away from the target and in the opposite direction from where they parked, she tucked the camera back in its bag and said, "Well, those should be fun to put in the album later."

Callen smirked. "Would've figured you for a scrapbooker."

She wrinkled her nose. "Too much work."

They turned back to the windshield then and noticed their target looking directly at them, a suspicious look creeping onto his face.

"Uh oh," Callen said.

Before he could move, Beth grabbed his face and planted her lips on his. He was so startled all he could do was sit there, but then soon rational thought returned and he played his part of the lovers-in-the-car ploy, wrapping his hands in her hair and kissing her back. With one eye on the smuggler, who had now decided to watch them in amusement, Callen tried to keep himself grounded, to distract himself from the fact that a beautiful brunette was currently devouring his lips and making it very hard to breathe. Just when he was finding coherent thought growing fuzzy, Beth's knee bumped his leg, and he felt his soda fall over and spill onto his lap. The cold liquid soaked into his pants and he gasped, jerking out of her grasp. Puzzled and a little embarrassed at how carried away she had gotten, she glanced down to see why he had pulled away and she blushed even harder.

"Oh, I'm so sorry! I was...I forgot you had that..."

He chuckled as he searched the glove box and found a stack of napkins to sop up the mess. "At least he took the bait. That was a close call."

Biting her lip, she dropped her gaze and then turned to look out the window. Softly, and a little sadly, she said, "Yeah. It sure was."