She's wearing the skirt again. He knows, that at this point, he should be desensitized to it, but every time she shows up to work in it, he knows it's going to be a long day.
It's going to be a day of forcing himself to focus on whatever case they are working on instead of how the skirt changes length as she walks or sits or stands. It's going to be a day of him making a fool of himself, which he already does anyway, but this skirt makes it even worse.
"You look nice today." He says when she walks into OPs. She blinks at him, the skirt settling from walking, and he has to spin his chair around so he doesn't stare.
"Not that you don't always look nice, I mean, you-"
"Stop." Nell sits and turns to her computer. "Catch me up to speed."
"Face rec found our bad guys. I told Sam and Callen."
Nell shifts, crossing her legs as she does, and all his intelligent thoughts disappear into thin air.
"What's going on with you today?" She waves her hand in front of his face, and he jumps, trying to shake himself out of it.
"Nothing, I just, you know, didn't get enough-" He doesn't realize it, but his eyes fall to her legs again, and he hates himself. He's better than this. She's his friend and they're at work, so he should be professional. She's his friend, and he likes her way more than he should, but he should not be staring at how good her legs look in her skirt.
Eric knows he's been more than obvious with how he feels about her. If he was any more obvious, it would be tattooed on his forehead. He knows she knows. But they don't talk about it. And it's fine with him, he just needs to get himself together.
"Oh." Her tone is curious, and he wants to throw himself down the stairs.
He hears her get up, but he refuses to open his eyes. She can report him to HR. She should report him to HR. He tries to turn his mind to focusing on the case, to focus on anything else, and it works, for 10 minutes, until she walks back into OPs, a look of determination settled on her face, and a rubber band in her hand.
"Here." She drops it in his hand. "Every time you think of something that isn't relevant to the case, snap it."
"Are you trying to train me?" He asks, slipping the rubber band over his wrist anyway.
"No, Beale. I'm trying to help you." She sits in the chair on the other side of the room and spins away from him. "Now, focus."
xXx
Nell wears her favorite skirt on special occasions. Like, when the weather is particularly nice, or when she needs an extra confidence boost, or when she has the feeling that work is going to be especially tough. It's something she can control, and sometimes, when LA seems to crashing to the ground, controlling how she looks is all she needs to stay on top of things.
The fact that the skirt makes Eric a little more flustered than usual doesn't hurt either.
She knows he likes her. It's her job to know people, to understand them, to predict their behavior. And on the days she stops lying to herself, she likes him too. She likes that he can make her laugh, and how he's completely ridiculous sometimes. She likes that he's always there for her when she needs him, always there to listen, or not listen because she can't talk, but no matter what, he's there.
That's what makes her scared. She liked having him there and likes knowing nearly everything about him. Nell likes what they have. A friendship that sometimes borderlines on something else. A friendship that is safe.
She doesn't like the world of ifs, sos or maybes.
But teasing, that she can deal with.
Nell realizes too late that maybe the rubber band was a bad idea. Now she has to deal with thinking about what he's thinking, and wonder if it's always about her.
Eric tries to be inconspicuous at first.
The first time he flicks the rubber band is when she comes back to her spot next to him. He barely moves, but she sees the band jump on his skin.
She keeps her eye open after that.
"Did you look through his bank statement yet?" She asks, leaning on her elbow so she's closer to his computer. She bites her bottom lip subconsciously, reaching across him to point at something on his screen.
"Let's see," He makes a whole display with pointing and typing and moving his hands, that she almost doesn't see his hand fall to his wrist. She catches it out of the corner of her eye, and a stupid, stupid idea forms in her head.
She wants to know why.
She wants to know what it is that she does that distracts him, what takes his brain off the case.
"There." She points at a discrepancy in the dead officer's bank accounts, and Eric is already on the phone with Callen before she can start to test anything. Nell pushes herself away tucking her leg under herself as she gets back to work. She needs to focus.
Teasing Eric has to wait.
xXx
She bites her lip nearly every twenty minutes.
It's not something he would have noticed before the rubber band, but he does now. It's almost like clockwork, and he has a small timer in his head that goes off and informs him to look, see, and snap the rubber band.
He knows he can just stop, stop letting her know every time she does something that distracts him, but her reaction keep him going.
Every time she catches him, she stops and thinks for a moment too long, probably trying to understand what made him snap his wrist.
It's almost like a game. A very dangerous game that he knows could have very disastrous consequences. There's a reason he keeps most of his thoughts to himself. There's a reason he doesn't tattoo that he likes her on his forehead.
Friendship with Nell Jones is a very delicate and sacred thing that he doesn't want to lose. It's taken him nearly 7 years to know when he pushes her too far, to know that she has smiles reserved for special circumstances, to know that she likes her tea with 3 sugars if she neglected to drink coffee that morning.
He knows a lot of things about his best friend.
But he doesn't know how this little experiment is going to work out.
"Really?" Her head snaps up and she glares at his wrist. "Are you really that distracted?"
Eric had been so far inside his own thoughts, he hadn't realized he was snapping the rubber band repeatedly.
"What? No, sorry. I zoned out." He stands and grabs his tablet, meeting her at the island. "Did Kensi and Deeks get to the house yet?"
"Yeah. If you were paying attention, you would have noticed." She gestures toward the screen.
He takes the rubber band and stuffs it in his pocket.
He doesn't want to play the game anymore.
xXx
Her skirt.
Her lips.
Brushes against skin.
Occasionally when she smiles.
She starts a catalogue of every time he touches the rubber band. She bites her lip twice as much as she usually does. She plays with the hem of her skirt, she accidentally touches her arm when she's typing.
Nell is walking on a fragile line, and she isn't sure whether or not she wants to break it.
She's not exactly sure when but the rubber band had disappeared. She's not sure when but that doesn't make her stop.
She's dancing along the boundaries she had set up herself, for the sake of knowing. She likes knowing. She wants to know what flusters her partner, what makes him take his mind off the case, what makes him flush.
"I have a confession to make." Eric tosses his ear piece on the island and scrubs his hands through his hair. Kensi has taken the bad guy out with one well-placed kick and they were done for the night. "You are driving me crazy."
She opens her mouth to say something, but he holds up a hand.
"I personally believe that skirt was designed to torment me. Because of this rubber band," he drops it on the table and glares at it. "I now have a stupid part of my brain that is completely dedicated to studying how often you bite your lip throughout the day. It was bad idea. And you are driving me crazy."
"Eric." She grabs the rubber band and tears it in half. She licks her lips.
She does it on purpose.
"What were you thinking about?" She's pushing the line farther than she should, but she needs to know.
"What do you mean?"
"Every time you snapped the rubber band?" She takes a step closer to him.
He looks around OPs, looks everywhere but at her. They are the only two people left, and it's oddly quiet. Quiet enough for her to hear the sound of her own heart.
She's teasing him. She's flustering him.
She wants to hear him say it.
"Nell."
"What were you thinking about?"
He finally looks at her, eyes hard and pupils blown wide.
"You."
Her lips crash into his and the delicate, fragile line she had been dancing over all day shatters. She drags her hands through his hair and pulls him closer to her height. His hands fall to her waist, and when he bites her lip, her world is thrown off course, but she's okay with it.
She doesn't like ifs, sos, or maybes. She doesn't like the unknown.
But she does like Eric Beale.
xXx
He tells himself he should be desensitized by the skirt at this point.
But every time she wears it, he thinks of rubber bands. He thinks of rubber bands and her hands in his hair and her lips on his neck in the back of her car.
He thinks of it in a pile of clothes next to his bed.
Every time she wears it, he thinks of the day everything changed.
"You look nice today." He says.
Nell turns to him, narrowing her eyes. She settles back down into his couch and presses her lips into his cheek.
"I look nice every day."