H I The Second Story Geeks

by Motsie of Atlantis

At the wake for the woman who changed his life as a child, Callen looked for the 'Dynamic Duo'. They were the forgotten members of the team who kept him and the other members safe. The eyes and brains of the team in Ops, they never stood out. They blended in and were only a voice in the ear, an address or mug shot on the phone. But without them, the job would be ten times as hard.

=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)

H I = The Second Story Geeks

At the wake for the woman who began to change his life as a child, Callen looked for the 'Dynamic Duo'. They were the forgotten members of the team who kept him and the other members of his team safe. The eyes and brains of the team in Ops, they never stood out. They blended in and were only a voice in the ear or an address and mug shot on the phone. But without them, the job would be ten times as hard. How did Callen see them direct the way he reacted in the field? Each of them was totally different, but their end results were the same.

Written as a response for 'ABC is for family', Gina Callen's entry in the Facebook Writers Challenge, the prompt being ABC, and expanding my storie is for Team' and 'G is for Callen' because I received requests to add to the alphabet and finish the team

A/N: Thanks Gina for letting me use parts of your great story for this one. I just hope I do justice to your work as I try to carry on the idea and expand the alphabet for those around our agent/hero and thanks Sue for being more than a beta – reading, suggesting, always improving the work that I post.

=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)

901 Bar and Grill, Los Angeles, California

Callen's agent senses started to tingle, and he immediately started to wonder what was wrong. He looked at the table they had commandeered and everything looked okay, Everyone was talking with the others, smiles on their faces, laughter in their voices, but something was wrong. There were two people missing. Callen swept his eyes over the rest of the room and finally found them at a small table off to the side where the noise was not as great. Both of them had their tablets out and were working them just as hard as they did the computers up in the Operations Center. Callen was certain that the two of them had pulled up one of their cold cases and were busy trying to find new information that they could pass on to the team.

H = Harassed

Of all the people in the OSP, Callen had worked with Eric longer than anyone. He was there when the agent was taken off Gibbs' Major Case Response Team, at the Navy Yard in Washington D.C., and was ordered to report to Los Angeles. Even back then the high-strung young man could be described as 'Harassed'. That was the best 'H' word that the lead agent could use to describe their technical analyst.

After the agent had taken the freight elevator to the third floor of the old factory building, that housed the Office of Special Operations, Eric was there to meet him. Callen had expected to deliver the paperwork that would transfer him from the MCRT to the OSP. Lara Macy was the operations manager of the newly developed unit to whom he was to report. The bundle of nerves that met him was obviously not her.

Callen did an instant assessment of the man in front of him and wondered what his job was in this unit. His handshake was firm, but the agent could tell that there was no real power in the muscles of Eric's arms. He also saw the thick glasses the young man wore and wondered how well he could see without them.

"Hi, I'm Eric Beale. I'm the tech operator here. Mace will be with you as soon as she's done with SECNAV."

"I'm Callen..."

"Yeah, I know, G. Callen, Ex-CIA, ex-DEA, ex-Senior Agent for Gibbs," the words came spilling out of his mouth almost as fast as they would appear on the page on a computer screen. "I found out all I could about you to pass it on to Mace. You can wait over there for her. I have to get back to work." and with that he quickly turned around, and disappeared into a different part of the building.

Callen had real reservations about this man knowing as much as he did about him, but over the years of working with him, he learned to rely upon the man's skills to dig up everything he could and share it with those who needed it.

. . . . .

Eric kept looking from his tablet to Nell's, then back to his own, as he worked the information that was displayed there. It almost looked like he was trying to catch up to his partner, like they were playing another game of Mario Cart and Eric was always one lap down. Whenever the young man turned to look at Nell's face, Callen could see an expression of uncertainty and doubt etched upon the face of the young man. It was as if the answers Nell was getting were nowhere near the ones that appeared on his screen, and he couldn't figure out why. More and more the young man demonstrated this type of behavior around his partner. Callen wondered if Eric was being plagued by some sort of problem.

. . . . .

Callen remembered an incident that had happened earlier in the week when he was eating a late lunch. Eric sat down at the snack area of the mission and had just brewed a pot of Rooibos tea, an African blend made from a fermented herb. It was a red tea, with a malty and slightly grassy flavor, but had absolutely no caffeine. As he poured himself a mug, he looked up to see where Hetty was. She frowned on tea that was not drunk from a cup.

Two fingers and thumb from his right hand were through the handle, two fingers and thumb of his left hand were on the other side to counterbalance and tip the mug, allowing him to savor the new tea before presenting a bag sample to his boss.

"BEALE!" His name went ringing throughout the condemned Water Reclamation Plant. This was not surprising, since most of the interior walls were ornamental wrought iron and could hardly have been expected to stop sound.

Eric reached up to turn on the Bluetooth in his ear. He forgot to put the mug down on the table and it overbalanced, sending the hot tea into his lap. Standing up and trying to salvage as much of the tea as he could, he turned on the device and asked.

"What do you need, Nell?" he asked pessimistically.

By this time Nell had left Ops and was leaning over the balcony railing looking down at her partner. "We need to get busy up here in Ops. You have quite a few cars to track with Kaleidoscope."

"Well, I spilled tea in my lap. I'm gonna have to take a shower and change."

Eric swore that he could hear her eyebrows rising in annoyance as she said. "Well, hurry up."

Eric shook his head and wondered about the quirks of fate who just didn't give out gifts to mortals without demanding payment in other areas of their lives.

Nell had been given a voice like a banshee, but her height left her vertically challenged. Eric must have wondered what the perps said when she challenged them with that voice in the field. Then, when they saw the diminutive little pixie yelling at them, did they laugh at her, or think it would be easy to escape?

Callen was aware that Eric said something like that to her once. And she filed it away in her memory. That afternoon, when they were sparring in the gym, Eric got the beating of his life. It was worse than any he had ever received from Sam, because Nell didn't pull any of her punches.

Dumping and rinsing his mug, Eric tried not to drip as he headed to the gym. Everyone at the mission knew that when Nell got into one of her workaholic moods, the easiest thing was for everyone to just go along with it.

. . . . .

Callen began to wonder exactly what was making Eric behave in this way around Nell. Was it because she was smarter than him? The agent had heard Hetty proclaim that the tiny political analyst had the highest IQ in all of NCIS. Nowhere in her files was the actual score listed, and Nell refused to talk about it. Callen didn't think it could be that much higher than Eric's although even he was never able to find out how high her IQ was.

The agent knew that it couldn't be because of her gender. Eric had no problems when he had to work with Kensi or any other female. Well, he avoided Hetty as much as he could, but that was because he was downright scared of her. But Callen knew of grizzled Marines who had spent years in combat that viewed her with apprehension, Gibbs included. So it wasn't because he couldn't handle that she was a female. Aha. Then it hit him square in the face. It was because she was THE female that he had such trouble with her.

When Callen looked back at it, he realized that ever since Eric figured out that Hetty didn't bring Nell on board to replace him, he started to develop a serious crush on her. But as far as the senior agent could see, she never reciprocated.

Eric didn't seem to understand that Nell saw him as a work partner, but nothing beyond that. He was a tech, granted the senior technician at the OSP. It was true that she was in the tech department here. Her title was political analyst. But while she was with the CIA before she joined NCIS, she had some field training. Like the rest of the agents, she was required to carry her weapon with her at all times. Like Hetty, the political analyst carried a Glock 26 as her personal weapon because it was better sized to her smaller hand. While up in Ops, she kept it in a drawer at her computer station. Her gun scores were higher than Deeks'. Ultimately, she wanted to be an agent and not be trapped up in the operational center watching everything that happened.

Several times she had gone out into the field and did well. And Eric was jealous of her experience. He really preferred to remain in his chair up in Ops with his board shorts, hoodies, and flip-flops rather than risk his life outside the confines of the mission. The first time he was dressed in long pants and went out on the mission, he was almost frozen and then nearly melted in a test chamber. What particularly galled him was that Nell was the one who remotely disabled the system and ultimately saved him from being 'frelted'.

Eric decided then and there that fieldwork was not for him, at least for a short time. But as he saw Nell being used more and more as a field agent, especially when Kensi was in Afghanistan, he began to fear that their partnership would be broken up.

. . . . .

It finally came to a head when he volunteered to go with Granger to get some technical information for a case. Everyone looked at him as if he were crazy. Granger chose Nell for the mission. She promised to have Granger's back. What Eric heard her tell the assistant director instead was 'at least I can protect you'.

He went to Hetty and asked if he could get some agent training. For weapons training, Hetty suggested Kensi. Eric knew that the agent talked with Nell a lot, so he asked for Sam instead.

Eric was practicing his moves on a mat in the gym one day when Nell showed up.

"Whatcha doing, Beale?"

"Practicing my jujitsu moves. I joined a gym for Martial Arts Training about a month ago."

"Okaaay, which one?"

""Function Five Fitness, over on South La Brea Avenue."

"They're good for that."

"I haven't actually had any actual lessons yet. I get winded by about the middle of the warm up."

Nell just chuckled.

"You're not laughing at me, are you?"

"No. I once dated one of their instructors, and I was just thinking how much bigger he was than you."

"Bigger? You mean muscular, athletic, burly?"

"No, taller," she said as she smiled and walked away.

. . . . .

People didn't understand about Eric. He was a surfer. He had good muscle tone, just like Deeks. But they didn't understand why he was uncoordinated away from the water. His surfer skills had been learned over time. He was born extremely farsighted and had to wear glasses ever since he was a very young child. Callen once tried Eric's glasses when he had laid them on the table at a bar. The lenses were so thick it looked like the young man was trying to look through the bottom of two Coke bottles.

His eye problems kept him out of sports as a kid. Without his glasses, he couldn't see a ball the last five feet. In baseball he always struck out, and couldn't catch out in the field. The first time he was in the batter's box, he did hit the ball. But it bounced off his glasses, breaking them. He was scolded for not taking better care of his things, so he just quit playing any type of sports. That's why he turned into a geek.

From Deeks, Callen learned that in high school one of Eric's friends took him to the beach and got him to try surfing. At first his attempts were just as bad as his baseball ones. He couldn't remember how many times he had wiped out, trying to ride the waves. But gradually, over time, he became better at it. He could see the waves he wanted to take, but had to depend on the feel of his feet's muscle memory to mount the wave.

But now he might even expand his surfing abilities. One weekend Eric was buying some board wax at Amelio's Surf Shop near the Santa Monica Beach. There was a young man there talking to Amelio about these new prescription goggles that he just bought, He claimed they worked great out on the waves and the difference in his surfing was so totally changed for the better. Eric got the name of the company and decided to send for a pair. After everything else he had tried, one more thing couldn't hurt. When they came and he tried them for the first time, the difference was like night and day. He finally felt that he was on the same wave as the other surfers.

. . . . .

Could he change the rest of his life around too? Outside of the water he was stuck with his glasses. He had tried using contacts a couple of times, but every time they didn't work. His ophthalmologist told him it was because he also suffered from dry eyes and that wearing the contact lenses just seemed to cause inflammation of the eye and lid, making them very uncomfortable. But he figured that if he would ever have to go out into the field, he could use a headband strap to keep his glasses on his head, the same way many of the sports figures did. He started wearing one around Ops just to get used to it on his head.

. . . . .

Eric could change as much as he wanted about his physical surroundings, but it was the mental changes that had to occur in him that were the biggest problems he needed to face. Callen remembered a conversation the two of them had in Ops shortly after Nell was forced to kill the gunman trying to take her out in Hetty's home.

Eric looked at the senior agent and asked him, "How do you do it?"

"Do what," Callen answered absentmindedly, then looked and saw that Eric had a very solemn look on his face. "I'm sorry, Eric. I didn't mean to be flippant. What is it you want to know how we do?"

"Every day you guys go out, knowing that just a few moments away, you might have to draw your weapons and kill someone. You and Sam, Kensi and Deeks, and now Nell."

"We don't go out looking for it. Most of the time it is really self-defense, kill or be killed. I would sooner prefer that one of them die rather than one of us."

"I know all that. I understand it. But doesn't there sometimes come a point when it all gets to be too much? I mean, even in my video games, after I have killed off a hundred, a thousand people, there comes a time when I have to take a break just to keep my sanity. And those are just video images, not real people."

"That's one of the reasons why Hetty demands we take our time off, and each of us tries to find some way where we can put it out of our minds. That's the reason why Nate Getz comes in to talk to the agents a lot more than he does to the tech staff. I know you guys watch what is going down as it happens, but it is a lot different when you are the one pulling the trigger."

"I know. That is one of the reasons that I'm just a tech. I refused to take the gun training that I know Nell has had. I just don't know what I would do with a real gun in my hand. I don't think I could actually really kill someone, even if I had to."

"Some people just are not cut out to handle a weapon. You do your damage to the criminals we face with your fingers on the computer. We rely on you for that, because you are the best in the business. So, don't say that you are 'just a tech'. You just use a different weapon than the rest of us."

"Sometimes I see myself as a coward. I'm afraid to handle a gun. I sit up here in the safety of Ops, tucked away from any real danger or risk."

Callen went over and put his hand on Eric's shoulder and squeezed gently. "Everyone of us has to face their own fears, Eric, each and every day. Just don't look at them as huge obstacles that keep you doing what you want to get done. Look at the little tiny pieces that can get moved and taken care of. Deal with the little things like that, and before you know it, that huge obstacle will be gone."

. . . . .

What Callen never saw was the ultimate reason for Eric wanting to make this transformation. If he ever wanted to have a chance with Nell, he would have to get his courage up. He would have to deal with all of his fears that he had allowed to become a barrier to the relationship with her that he so desperately craved. He might even have to put his 'big boy pants' on, ignoring any rash it caused his poor, delicate, sensitive legs and become the man that she wanted and needed. Somehow he had to prove to her that he could protect her and change how she looked at him when she once told him that he didn't have to worry because she would protect him.

=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)

I = Imp

Callen turned and looked at the other member of their dynamic duo from the operation center on the second floor of the mission. The little redhead had her tablet out, fingers flying over it as she tried to work out some problem. There was a look of concern on her face that quickly changed to a huge smile as she resolved the problem and showed the answer to her partner. Callen had seen that smile so often. It contained a whole volume of information about her feelings, satisfaction, accomplishment, sheer joy, with a slight hint of deviltry behind it. That is why the first 'I' word that the agent could think of to describe the political analyst was 'Imp'. She was one of the most dangerous combinations that could be found in a human being, an extremely intelligent, but mischievous person, wrapped up in the body of what appeared to be a small child.

The head agent remembered a time when Eric was telling everyone about his first meeting with each member of the team. Hetty had already gone home, otherwise he would never have had the courage to tell these stories. Finally, his partner's was the only story left to divulge.

Eric started out by saying that he picked Nell up at the airport and they had a silent ride back to the mission. Everyone looked at Nell with an expression of disbelief or inquiry coming across each of their faces. Nell just shrugged her shoulders and broke out in her elfin smile.

"We did a building tour and got up to Ops, where Nell was practically drooling over all the computers and other equipment that is up there."

Nell fake punched him in the shoulder and said emphatically, "I don't ever drool." Then she quickly looked at Callen and gave him the look that matched her thoughts, If you tell them how I drool at night they are gonna figure it out and then we are so busted. Callen just smirked and shook his head.

Eric continued his story, "Hetty looked at Nell and said something that I have not been able to figure out to this day. 'Ms. Jones, these are government computers and are to be used only for official purposes. Do I make myself clear?' It must have been something with her being over at the CIA before she came here, but she has never explained it."

He paused, and all eyes descended on the political analyst, who calmly took a swig of her beer and then boldly announced to Eric, "I have no idea of what you are talking about."

"Oh, no? Then why did you drop your eyes and tell Hetty 'I would be a good little girl?' And as soon as she left us alone whispered to me 'So the moral of the story is - don't get caught?'

Everyone broke out laughing because they could definitely see Nell doing this to poor Eric.

"I was so shocked," the young tech continued, I tried to warn you about Hetty's gorgon stare that causes people to give in to her."

Nell looked intently at her partner.

"It's the same look that you're giving me right now."

Nell threw her head back and laughed, and the rest of the team joined her. They all knew that the young woman had many of the old spymaster's moves and mannerisms down perfectly, and that fed a lot of the rumors that Hetty was training Nell to be her successor.

. . . . .

In the first month after Nell was hired, the biggest office betting pool was on how long she was going to last before Hetty fired her. Eric couldn't stand it that she hijacked his job of whistling the team up to Ops for a mission. Then, as he was briefing the team, she interrupted him and started to talk over him with her version of events and clues.

Callen snickered at how frustrated Eric was becoming at her antics. But then she did it to him, and all of a sudden it wasn't so funny anymore. But when Nell started to talk to Hetty about tea, everyone could see the writing on Hetty's face. Nell was done and gone. But then the miracle occurred. The next day had the little redhead up in Ops again, as if nothing had ever happened the day before. Callen swore it was because Hetty had the longest guess in the office pool, and he knew that his tiny boss liked to ensure the results of these wagers as much as she could.

The little pixie apologized and revealed that this is because she is a "type A personality with borderline ADD, and control issues with men she admires." Eric heard the last part of her explanation and took it to mean that she really admired him and started to develop a serious crush on her. She did admire Eric, as a technical operator, as a coworker, as a friend, but not in the romantic way that he would really like. She tried to tell him in so many different little ways, but he never seemed to get the message. How devastated would he be if she came right out and told him? Would it ruin their friendship? Could they ever work side by side as partners again? Callen knew that this was one of the reasons why they never mentioned that they had been dating for a while to the rest of the team.

. . . . .

About a month after Nell moved in to Callen's house, and started to live with him, the two of them found themselves finishing off the last of their Thai take out. They cleaned up the remains of their late supper and went over to the couch to unwind a bit before they headed to bed. Callen sat over in the corner and Nell lay down on the couch with her head in his lap. She cuddled up to him as close as she could and looked intently at him.

Then, closing her eyes, a very serious look came over her face. "I'm sorry I did it to you again," she confessed, the remorse clearly evident in her voice.

This was the last thing that Callen expected her to say. His brow wrinkled in confusion as he responded, "It must have been something so terrible that I didn't even realize you were doing it."

"When you were up in Ops today, and were setting out the tasks for the team, I interrupted you and tried to finish what you were saying. I gave in to my ADD and I should have fought it and let you finish."

"It's okay, Nell. I understand that is something you have to fight all the time. But you know, if it came to you fighting your ADD or you fighting to keep the rest of us safe, you can interrupt me as often as you want." He kept rubbing the fingers of one of his hands up and down her arm and with the other he kept brushing the hair out of her eyes as he expressed his care for the young woman.

Nell shook her head. "No. It's wrong. I can't do that," she blurted out as she tried to explain to him why she was that way.

"I was ten when I was convicted of killing my foster father and thrown into the Wexler Children's Center in Maryland. A lot of the other girls didn't know what to make of me there. I was smaller than most of them, but not many of them had killed a man. A few of them tried to pick on me, but my roommate, Danita Rosales helped take care of me. Dani was nine months older than me and took me under her wing. No one messed with me after that."

Callen pressed a soft kiss on the top of her head and whispered, "Shh. That's all in the past. You don't have to tell me about it."

She looked at him and said, "But you have opened up your life to me. I know all sorts of your secrets. Please let me share mine with you."

Callen closed his eyes and gave a little nod of his head. He didn't want her to go down any painful roads of the past, but he knew how cathartic it was to share the private memories that could burden the soul.

Nell closed her eyes and reminisced. "Dani taught me to be aggressive, in my own little way. The other girls shouted me down in class, and it seemed as if I never could get my answers heard. Dani showed me a trick that changed all that. She told me to wait until the other girls had part of their answer given to the teacher. Then, when they were starting to run out of breath, I should take a deep breath myself and just start talking over them. If I knew what words they were going to use I should use the same words myself, only say it louder and just continue giving my answer. This way I was sure to get noticed by my teachers. It worked. It worked so well it became second nature for me. I know that I still do it, but I'm trying hard to stop. My prison psychologist worked hard with me to try to overcome it in the last few years I was there, and Nate has given me a few exercises to try to fight it."

"It's okay, Nell. That's part of what makes you who you are and I wouldn't have you any other way."

"I know that, G, and I'm not ashamed of it. If it wouldn't have happened, I would never have met you and I wouldn't be right here, right now. There was some good that came out of it. Dani taught me how to speak Spanish. You know, not the Berlitz school of 'Where is the train station, now repeat after me' type of learning, but the down on the street way of talking."

"I noticed that your Spanish seemed just a little different than what I was used to hearing around here, more like what we would encounter when we pull in the hardcore Hispanic gang members for questioning and all we get from them is 'Yo no hablo Inglés'."

"That's because Dani's family came up here from a small town just outside of San Cristóbal in Venezuela. This was so close to the Columbian border that most of the people's Spanish there was tinged by the Columbian accent. It's something that you notice if you are looking for it, but otherwise it just goes by the board."

"I would have imagined that was one of the reasons why the CIA snapped you up after graduation."

"You read that in my file?" her eyes opened wide in amazement. "Of course you would have," she concluded after she spent a few seconds processing the information. "You need to know how to use the members of your team."

"Relax, Nell. It was just the standard CIA reports that only admitted that you may or may not have been out of the country as a political analyst once or twice while working for them."

"You know from your time with them that I'm really not supposed to talk about it. At least that's what they told me when they hired me."

"So what can they do to you now? You know if you tell me, I won't say a word about it to anyone else. Whenever you want to talk about it, I'll be there to listen."

"Thaaat'ss niiiccce," she said as her eyes closed and her body started to shut down into restful slumber.

. . . . .

Nell had grown up a lot in the years she had been in Los Angeles. She started working at Ops, an impulsive young woman who needed to prove her worth to the team. She gradually found her place once she realized she no longer had to compete against herself.

When she first arrived, she looked like the freshly scrubbed high school student and acted a lot like it. But the years she spent watching the agents on the monitors and the times that she had to go out in the field, put an edge on the young woman. She already had her first fieldwork kill, and while she debated it for quite a while, when push came to shove, she picked up her weapon once more, ready to defend her boss, even to the point of being ready to kill the intruder Mattias. The sweet, demure little girl, who walked around the mission with her body covered, almost prudishly, head to toe in layers of clothing, had gone undercover with Callen wearing absolutely the most scanty covering of her womanly assets.

But this had carried over into her personal life too. She put together her own outfit, never as lavish and luxurious as the one Hetty provided her for the undercover operation. But of course, since it was her own property and was less expensive to replace, she didn't mind when her dom for the evening ripped it off of her body. She even finagled Callen to take her dressed like that to a BDSM club, where the lead agent started to wonder what type of sexual beast they had unleashed in the diminutive pixie.

Her new-found sexual emancipation scared the crap out of her partner. Eric was surprised to find out that Nell regularly attended Califur, the yearly weekend convention where everyone dresses up as some sort of furry creature of literature or anime. She loved to wear a furry costume and Nell invited Eric to go with her to this year's convention, about a month and a half after her undercover mission with Callen. Eric was very hesitant about going with her, and wouldn't give her a commitment. The little analyst even promised to go with him to the next Renaissance Faire, Eric still hemmed and hawed about it. He would love to show up in medieval dress with a lovely Nell on his arm, but he still had qualms about actually going out with her on a 'date' dressed as an animal. She told him that if he would show up, she would be dressed as the fervid fox. He just shook his head, declining her invitation.

Nell decided not to push it and finally invited Callen to the Califur adult dance on the final night of the convention. Eric also showed up and tried to spot Nell, but without any success. He had expected her to be wearing a full costume, similar to a mascot of a college or professional sports team like he had on. All of a sudden he felt a tap on his shoulder. Turning around he saw a Nell he never expected to see. She was wearing a half-mask that gave her a fox-like snout with a black nose. The remainder of her outfit consisted of a furry, minuscule bikini, with a fox tail coming out of the back. The rest of her body was covered in body paint, reddish brown with streaks of auburn, rust, terra cotta, flame, and burgundy. The colors were so subtly overlaid that it looked like individual hairs covering her body.

"Hi, Mr. Cat," she said in welcome. "I didn't think that you were going to come."

"Well, I managed to find a costume that didn't irritate my legs," Eric moved back so she could see the full image of him in his cat costume. As he did this, he noticed a person in a full hunting dog costume move up and stand behind Nell. She felt the presence behind her and made the introductions.

"Mr. Cat, meet Mr. Hound." The man behind Nell just nodded his oversized costume head to him.

"I didn't know that you had a date. Nell. That's why I decided to show up."

"No, names, Mr. Cat. You know that a girl's got to have a partner to dance with. And you didn't seem to want to attend so I had to look elsewhere."

"Well, I guess that I will leave the two of you..."

"No, Mr. Cat," she said with a lilt in her voice. "I'll dance the next dance with you, but that's it. You know that the rules demand that I go home with the one who brought me, because the hound always captures the fox. "

Eric moved her out onto the dancefloor and held her close. He was staring at all of her scars on her upper arms and didn't even know it. Whoever had done her body paint had skillfully integrated all of them into the fur pattern that was so intricately done on her body. Callen wondered with whom Nell would feel comfortable enough to allow them to work like that on her scars. He knew it wasn't any of the makeup people at the mission, and he didn't think that she could afford to go to the Vicious Tattoo Art Gallery in downtown Los Angeles that gave her the temporary tattoos for her undercover assignment. The only other one that he could think of that she would allow to do that would be Mrs. Flores, the lady who lived down the hall from her. Callen made a mental note to ask her about it later in the evening.

. . . . .

Nell felt terrible about the disappointment she saw in Eric's face at the Califur dance. That next week she told her partner that she would go with him to the Renaissance Faire since he did show up at Califur, even though he said he wouldn't. Hetty overhead the two of them talking and told Nell that she would help dress her as a medieval wench that would be perfect for the Fair, which she continued to call by the name in which she still had membership, the Society for Creative Anachronism. She was a member of the Barony of Lyondemere and was known for her ability to put together an outfit that was proper for the Baron and Baroness. At one time, she also held the title of 'Thrown Weapons Champion' and 'Crossbow Champion'.

Eric first saw Nell in the outfit that Hetty was assembling for her the day that Agent DiNozzo first came to visit them. He was blown away at her beauty, executing a deep bow and greeting her with, "M'lady."

She responded to his greeting with a small curtsey and his hail with her own salutation, "M'lord."

Callen looked at the two of them and snickered, whispering to Sam beside him, "Hetty should have dressed Nell up as a huntress, This way she could protect Eric back then with her bow and arrows."

Unfortunately, Nell heard his whispered comment and was very hurt by his words. When she got home that night she punched him in the arm and refused to talk to him.

Only after the senior agent apologized both to her and Eric, did she start to speak to him again. And the first words she said to him was a lecture. "G. Callen, just because we are in a personal relationship does not mean that you can say or do anything you want to hurt my friends. Eric is a good friend of mine. I do not want him hurt, do you understand me?

At his silence she put her hands on her hips and asked again, a little louder and icier this time, "I said, do...you...understand...me?"

Callen bowed his head as he gave his answer, "Yes, dear."

She looked him straight in the eye and told him, "I don't want any of your 'yes, dear' shit. You know I love you, but it hurts me so much when you hurt other people who are my friends. Please do not do it again?" she said as the tears started to form in the corner of her eyes.

He went to her and wiped the tears from her eyes as he promised her, "Nell, I promise I will never try to hurt you. And if I do something stupid like this again, please call me on it, so I can make it up to you?"

She pulled his head down to hers and kissed him, as deep and as hard as she could.

. . . . .

Late one night, Callen rolled over and watched in fascination at the small woman sleeping next to him in their bed. She was just amazing and he again wondered how she, of all the people in the world, ended up here, with him. She had changed so much in the time that she had been working with the team. It wasn't all sweetness and light, in this business it was unusual if more days of the week turned out good than bad. And yet, through it all, this young woman kept a smile on her face and brought a real joy to their work environment.

He knew she wasn't naive. Her fresh-scrubbed schoolgirl face belied the fundamental determination and backbone that drove her constantly to overachieve at everything she did. She could have turned out so different. God knows, her past life was as tough as his was. She had called him out when they had gone underground to stop the Philippino sex slave trail. When she went and listed all the similarities in their lives, he was astonished. He knew that he was still dealing with the ramifications of his early life and expected Nell was doing the same. But somehow, while he allowed those consequences to eat away at him and keep him searching for answers, the little pixie had come to terms with hers. He was sure that if someone could provide her the answers to all the questions that she still had, she would jump to learn them. But she did not allow herself to become obsessed over them, the way he often did.

Maybe that was her secret gift to him and the reason why he sought out her company so often. With her beside him in the bed, he actually slept, and for more than the two-hour catnaps that were his limit in the past. Her upbeat outlook on life must have been rubbing off on him. The other day his partner stopped on the way to pick up a suspect and asked him, "Okay, G. What are you doing to yourself?"

"I have no idea what you are talking about, Sam."

"Come on, G. You can tell me. What are you doing? There ain't no other way to put it. You are happy. You don't do happy. So what ARE you doing?" Sam demanded.

Callen just smiled at his partner as he got into the Challenger. If I don't watch out, he thought, Sam was gonna find out about Nell and me. But how could I go back to the way I was living before, without her? How could it ever be possible for me not to see her and be with her anymore. You might as well ask me to stop breathing, because she has become my life. I will have to talk with her and find out if we could tell the others or if we would just have to try harder to hide it.

. . . . .

Callen had to remind himself to thank Hetty one more time for sending him with Nell on that sex slave trading operation. It gave the young woman another chance to prove how good she was out in the field. As he thought about it again and conjured up the image of Nell in her 'slave' outfit, a lustful, almost tawdry, grin appeared on his face as he remembered how damn good she looked. She made such great strides in her agent training in the week they were together, from almost being embarrassed to show him the outfit to proudly wearing it to show how much love she had for her master that she would do anything he would ask of her.

As they discussed the roles they were to play in the operation, Callen learned from her that it was not just a role that she was assuming. She finally confessed that she had some deep feelings for him but had put them aside because she couldn't see how she could ever be someone he could desire. She was just so honest and forthcoming, but of course, that was always the way Nell was, wearing her emotions out there where everyone could see them. In his world of lies, aliases, temporary relationships without any foundations to keep them going, this little pixie told him she had loved him, she loved him now, and she would continue to love him, even if he didn't return her affections.

How could she know that he felt exactly the same way? Somehow this little slip of a girl had found a tiny crack in the heartless and unemotional wall that he had so carefully constructed around himself to protect his inner feelings. Once she got inside she began to kick and pull all those blocks down that he had built up, so that she could flood her warmth and light into his heart, to show him the difference between truly living and just mere existence. She gave of herself, so fully and completely, and expected nothing in return. How could he not do everything that he possibly could, to show her how grateful he was to her that she saved him from himself? Even if his own feelings toward her had not been growing for years, this time that they had spent together was enough for him to finally realize how much he loved Nell Jones.

Callen had figured it out that Hetty knew about how the two of them felt for each other. The woman had forced the two of them to live together for a week, and not because they needed to practice their parts in the undercover operation to which they had been assigned. The operations manager knew that they were both intelligent and didn't need that time to get their parts down pat. She had been giving them a chance to sort out their feelings for each other and see if her matchmaking abilities were still as good as ever. The chief agent almost felt as if she was his mother, trying to make sure he made the right decision about which woman would be the best choice for him to go steady with. And of course, mama knew best.

Now he wished he could tell everyone on the team about it. He knew that she had a lot of issues that she needed to deal with with, some of which he could only begin to guess about. He knew that she wore clothes that covered her upper arms and legs, where her stepfather cut and tortured her as he abused her. But she didn't want others to know about it. She feared that even the members of the team would look upon her with pity, and that would change the compatibility she had with them in an adverse way. She was not a victim and refused to allow anyone to think of her in that way. She was a survivor. She was confronted with a problem that she had to face, and she faced it squarely, without help from anyone else. She paid the price for her actions and that made her the woman she now was.

. . . . .

It was their anniversary. Nine months ago the chief agent and the political analyst decided to give their relationship together a chance, and three months ago the lease on Nell's apartment was up and she decided to move in with Callen. Both of them had asked Hetty for a few hours of personal time that evening that they could have a nice, quiet romantic dinner together at home. Since there were no new cases pressing, their small boss granted their request.

Callen was looking forward to the evening. He had put some thought into the occasion and purchased a beautiful set of oval ruby and diamond accented earrings in a rose gold setting. Nell could wear them and no one would notice how elegant they were unless the pixie allowed them to inspect them up close. He was sure that Nell would really like them and was eager to present her with the gift. She had been bugging him for days, trying to get him to tell her what he was going to give her as a gift.

When he tried to turn the tables on her, she just gave him her elfin smile and said, "you'll see." If he had learned anything in his relationship with Nell Jones. it was that he should become worried, very, very worried, when she smiled like that.

Sam and Callen had to go down to San Diego that afternoon to clear up a few things with the paperwork on one of the cases they worked last month. The Marine that they had found dealing drugs was set to go to trial and the JAG officer prosecuting the case wanted everything to go as smooth as silk. It took longer than they expected, so Sam found that he had a nervous partner in his car, eager to get home as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway was normal for this time of day, which meant that they would not get anywhere fast.

Callen's phone buzzed for the fourth time since he got into the Challenger. He pulled it out, looked at who sent it, then put it back into his pocket.

"Aren't you gonna answer it, G?" Sam asked him.

"Nope." was the only reply Callen gave. Nell had been calling him all afternoon, sending him selfies of her in her sexiest lingerie, with messages like 'hurry home big guy, I'm waiting for you' and 'what you see is what you'll get". With him trapped in the car with Sam and the slow traffic, it was sheer torture for him.

"Who was it?" Sam inquired.

"Just Nell. She was sending us some further information on the case."

"Well, if you're not gonna answer it, give me the phone, and I'll talk to her. We aren't gonna be moving in this traffic for a little while."

"No." Callen quickly exclaimed. "I'll take it. He pulled out his phone and saw Nell in her black La Perla bustier that she had paid a small fortune to buy but looked sooo good in. The note she had accompanying it was "You like what you see?" Callen just was staring at his phone.

"G. G! What information was Nell sending to us?"

Callen quickly texted to her, Please stop, You're killing me here.

He turned to look at his partner. "It was nothing. She just wanted to know when we were getting back into the office," he lied, hoping that Sam would believe him and just let it rest. He hoped that he wasn't blushing as he looked at that steamy picture of Nell. "I told her we were stuck here in traffic on the PCH."

"Maybe you should call Michelle for me and give her the same message. It looks like we're gonna be late getting home."

"Right," the younger man said as he pulled out his phone. There ain't no way in the world that I would send that conversation to your wife, Callen thought as he keyed in the message his partner asked and then made sure that he turned his phone completely off.

It was over an hour later when Callen finally pulled into his driveway. Entering the house, he was surprised to see that Nell was dressed in the clothes she went to work in. She was lighting the candles on the dining room table and then turned out the overhead light.

"Sit down and I will bring you your appetizer," Nell said as she headed for the kitchen.

"Not funny what your were doing to me today," Callen said, trying to make his voice sound as angry as possible.

"Sorry, G.," she said with a twinkle in her eye and her devious elfin grin on her face. She placed a plate in front of Callen and lifted off the cover. Callen couldn't believe his eyes. Raw oysters, covered in chocolate sauce? What was she thinking of?

"Ah, what is this, Nell?"

"I figured that raw oysters and chocolate were both aphrodisiac foods. Why not put the two of them together?"

"Nell, do you even think that chocolate sauce on raw shellfish would taste good?"

Her face took on a little pout, as she tried to bring up counterfeit tears. "Aren't you even gonna try them, G?" She sniffed twice before she continued, "For meeee, Pleeeeeease?"

He knew he couldn't resist her, especially when she took on her little girl personality. He scrunched up his face, picked one of the oyster shells up with his right hand, pinched off his nose with the fingers of his left hand, and raised it to his mouth. Callen closed his eyes as he prepared to pour this vile concoction that she had made for him into his mouth. He swallowed it down as quickly as he could, but found that a tiny piece had caught on one of his teeth and remained there for his tongue to try to force down his throat. He touched his tongue to it, and...

'WHAT THE HELL! WHAT WAS THAT IN MY MOUTH?" he yelled at Nell who couldn't control her laughter. Her face had that diabolical grin on it as she tried to get the words out. "Gotcha."

"Why do those oysters taste like vanilla?" Callen bellowed.

"Because they are not oysters. They are crafted from vanilla jello and covered with chocolate sauce, and actually don't taste too bad. I tried one before I fed them to you," she giggled.

"Oh, I'm gonna get you," Callen vowed as he rose up, his chair falling over behind him,

"You're gonna have to catch me first," she said as she turned around and started to run away.

He finally cornered her in the kitchen where she turned around and ran toward him, jumping up and locking her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. "You caught me," she said, "Now what are you gonna do with me?"

Callen didn't say a word to her. His hands reached under her butt to keep her from falling. Pure lust and arousal were all she could see in his eyes as he turned and carried her off to their bedroom.

. . . . .

Three hours later, after they both were completely sated from their bedroom 'celebration' of their anniversary, Nell rolled over in bed and faced him. Callen opened one eye and looked at the pixie sleeping next to him. The satisfied smile that had been on his face dropped away as he continued to watch the woman he loved. Her face had changed. No longer did she suffer from the nightmares that his presence next to her had driven away.

No. Now it was something even worse. That impish grin again came over her face and she started giggling in her sleep. It was something that brought fear into the heart of the agent. He didn't know which he was going to lose first if he stayed with her, his life or his sanity. Oh well, it certainly was going to be an interesting ride.

=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)