Author's Notes: It's amazing how little NCIS: LA fans know, even now, about Eric's family and backstory. There's been some amazing fanfiction about it (my favorites are Clothes Maketh the Man by duskbutterfly, Fool's Gold by ChinVilla, and Sleeping Hunter by Gina Callen), but there's almost nothing in canon. Here's my contribution, based on the facts that as a kid, Eric was Oklahoma Jigsaw Puzzle champion and that Barrett Foa said in an NCIS: LA chat that he wants Meryl Streep to make a guest appearance as his mother.
The Saturday before Thanksgiving, Nell sipped coffee in bed and waited for Eric to emerge from the shower. After she'd taken three sips, he stepped into the bedroom with a towel wrapped carelessly 'round his waist. She watched him drop it and rummage in his drawer for a fresh pair of boxers.
"Eric, Sweetie? I'm starting to wonder what we could do for Christmas this year."
"I'm hoping for a nice, quiet Christmas. Maybe we can just stick around here."
"I don't want to keep you from your family, Eric. Last year, we danced for Toys for Tots, and the year before you met my family. Isn't it time for you to see your family?"
He walked to the bed and gave her a kiss. "I'm so happy right now, Nell, and I just want to keep you all for myself."
"But I'm sure your mom would like to see you, and I'd like to meet her. And I'll bet you'd like to visit your old haunts. Besides, I'd like to learn more about you."
"Nell, really there's nothing to see there. My hometown is as boring as they come: When I was growing up, so many people left that it's basically a ghost town. Besides, the weather's cold, at least by our standards."
"That didn't stop you from visiting my family, 'cause I hope there's nothing else going on." She stepped toward him and pulled him into a hug. "Please, sweetie? It'll make me happy and your mom, the two most important women in your life."
"Don't you think Hetty would argue with that? I mean I think I'd put her at number two."
"Careful, Eric!" She leaned back, mock-menace in her face.
"No! It's not like that! You're number one, and Hetty takes second place because she's my boss, and I see her every day. You haven't met my mom yet."
"Eric, I still think she'd like to see you. Please?"
Defeated, Eric returned to his dresser in search of a shirt. "I'll think about it. That okay?"
The next morning, Eric sipped his coffee and waited for Nell in his kitchen. When she emerged from his bedroom, he broke the companionable silence. "Hey, Nell. I had an idea about seeing my mom. Maybe we could spend the holidays in New Orleans. I'll invite Mom, and get us all tickets to the Sugar Bowl. I suspect Oklahoma will be playing there, and watching OU football is one of the few things Mom and I can agree on. Besides, It'll give us a chance to see Dwayne Pride and his team."
"Beale, you just want to go gaming with Sebastian!" As she gave Eric a friendly slug, Nell's voice had an accusing tone, but there was a hint of mockery underneath.
"That would be nice," he conceded, "but just imagine the fun we could have in the French Quarter. Not to mention the football game."
Nell stepped closer to Eric, and pulled his arms around her. "You don't want to go back to your old neighborhood?"
Eric leaned back. "Let me tell you a little bit about my 'old neighborhood,' Nell. The place I grew up in is in the 'suburbs' of the one-stoplight town of Sulphur, Oklahoma. In all the cell phone coverage maps, there's a little white spot that they actually named in honor of Sulphur. I couldn't get out of there fast enough, and I haven't looked back."
Ten minutes later, Eric was on the phone, pacing as he talked.
"Hi, mom. It's Eric." "Yes, it's really me." "No, Mom, I'm fine. In fact, I've got a girlfriend, now." He gave Nell a smile.
"Things have been good. No really. Really good. In fact, I'd like to take you to New Orleans for New Years. You could meet Nell, then we could go to the Sugar Bowl on January second." "Let me treat you. I think it would be a lot of fun."
He covered the phone and explained to Nell, "She's checking her calendar."
"Mom, it'd be just one Sunday. I'm sure they'd be okay with you going just one day." "Oh, and you're doing daycare at the church? Will they even be open the second?"
He covered the mouthpiece and whispered to Nell, "The Walmart is open, and the diner is open, so she needs to run the church daycare."
"Mo-om, in New Orleans they don't have too many hurricanes, and besides, hurricane season ends next week." "Oh, that kind. Well, you don't have to drink 'em." He rolled his eyes. "Yes, and I don't like 'em either." "'Drunken ruffians?' I'm sure you'll get drunken ruffians wherever you go." Another eye-roll for Nell. "Okay, except Sulphur. Sulphur's a dry town."
Another aside for Nell: "But it's not like that ever stopped Artie or Ralph, my ex-stepfathers."
"Okay, Mom, thanks for inviting us to your house. Hang on a sec. Let me check with Nell." "Yes, she's here right now." Eric's expression turned from nervous to sour. "Mom, that's not an appropriate question to ask your grown-up son! We'll think about your invitation, okay?" And with that, he ended the call, giving the 'end call' button far more energy than it needed.
"She wanted to know if you spent the night," Eric growled, still sour.
"Don't worry, sweetie. It sounds like she's got her reasons: I guess she does a lot of good for her church."
"Lot of good that did her. I'm sure they pay 'er peanuts for the teaching she does, then they take her tithe out before she even sees a penny. I know, 'cause that's what they did for my cousin, Mike, when he mowed their lawns one summer. But did her beloved church lift a finger when she tried to take out a restraining order against Ralph, the stepfather who took out his rifle and spent the night yelling at her every time he could afford a bottle o' Jack?"
"Eric, sweetie, it sounds like your mom could use some cheering up. Let's just go ahead and visit her, please?"
On December 23, Eric maneuvered the rental car down the freeway. A Lincoln was the smallest car the rental place had, so the couple got a free upgrade. He broke the companionable silence. "Hey, Nell. Would you like to see my old school? You said you wanted to see my 'old haunts,' and I spent a lot of time at school."
"Sure, we could go tomorrow, or maybe after Christmas."
"But it's coming up at the next exit, so it's easier now or on the way back to the airport."
Nell scowled in puzzlement. "I'm confused, Eric. We've only been on the road for fifteen minutes. Isn't it like an hour and a half from the airport to Sulphur?"
"Yeah, but the Oklahoma Academy is up here in Norman."
"Oklahoma Academy?"
"Yeah, when I was in third grade, they figured out why I was so distracted in class: basically, 'cause I was bored. They found a place for me at the lab school at Oklahoma State where they were training teachers and developing the gifted-and-talented program. From fourth through twelfth grade, I went to a school for GT kids from all over Oklahoma." He gave a smile. "Since it was the lab school, we called ourselves the Lab Rats."
Nell ran her hand across Eric's shoulder. "That must have been lonely for you."
He gave a shrug. "It was for a while, but once I got used to it, it was okay. The teachers from the previous grade were our counselors in the dorms: we had curfew and all that, but they were a nice bunch." His expression changed from smiley to sour. "Besides, you haven't seen my hometown yet. Once you do, let me know which you think would be more lonely."
After the stop, Nell played with the dial of the radio, listing off the plot for each of the songs as she found the next radio station. "She's got a broken heart….He's sleepin' in the doghouse tonight…. He done her wrong….She's goin' drinkin'….Oooh! Grandma got run over by a reindeer! Finally something with some novelty!" So, they sang along to country Christmas songs, and laughed as they drove until the radio reception gave out.
A few minutes later, they were driving past the Walmart on the west side of town, so Eric slowed to a crawl as they moved through the nearly-deserted streets. At every stop sign, Eric came to a full stop and counted to three. Finally, he explained "Speed traps: the cops can smell a rental car a mile away, and you can bet they're just itching to give a ticket to the next out-of-towner who even thinks about breaking the law."
A school bus stopped ahead of them, and disgorged three kids on their way home from school. As they moseyed across the street, they stared at the white Lincoln. Under her breath, Nell muttered, "C'mon, punks! Ain't 'cha ever seen a new car before? Now git on home!"
Eric put a calming hand on her leg. "Patience, Rockstar. Things move a little slower around here."
"I noticed. Like the guy at the rental-car place chatting you up when he found out you were a professional card shark, even tried to get you into his poker game."
"That's just bein' Oklahoma friendly."
A mile outside of town, they came to driveway with a cattle guard and a mailbox that said, "Mary Louise Stinson."
Nell looked at Eric. "Stinson?"
"Yup, when Mom got out of the marrying racket, she just went back to her maiden name, but she made me keep the name 'Beale,' 'cause that's my bio-dad. She said that's the order of things, and I was too young to argue."
When they opened the car doors to start carrying luggage into the weather-torn double-wide, the stench hit them. Nell gave a retching cough. "So, I'm guessing this smell is why they named the town 'Sulphur?'"
"Well, yes and no: part of what you're smelling comes from the mineral springs we drove past, but most of the rest comes from the oil wells out that way. It used to be I could tell what the weather would be just from the smell."
"Too much time on your hands for too much thinkin' there, Beale."
"Busted!" Eric agreed, smiling.
About that time, a woman came out of the trailer, drying her hands with a dish towel. She draped it across the rail for the steps, then struggled to bring a smile to her face as she continued to the car. As she walked, Nell had a chance to look her over. She had blue-gray eyes, dirty-blond hair, high cheekbones and a delicate nose. Her planar cheeks must have looked aristocratic in days gone by, but cares and the Oklahoma weather had taken their toll, and her cheap makeup stood no chance of disguising their now-sunken look. Finally, she reached them, and put her arms around Eric. "It's so nice to see you, again! Thank you for coming out here to see me."
When the hug ended, Eric caught his breath, then took the time to do the introductions. "Nell, may I introduce my mom, Miss Mary Louise Stinson? Mom, my girlfriend, Ms. Nell Jones."
Nell extended her hand, gingerly, for a shake, but Mary Louise took the hand and used it to pull her into a hug. "Oh, Nell! I'm so pleased to meet you."
Nell pulled back from the hug, smiling. "Just a minute, Miss Stinson."
"Please, call me Mary Louise!"
Nell opened the door to the cavernous back seat, and reached in to grab two small packages. "Here are some presents. This one's from Eric and me, and this one's from my mom. She wanted me to give it to you as soon as she found out I was coming here."
"Well, let's get inside where I can open them. It looks like it'll start raining soon." So, with a shooing motion almost duplicating Hetty's, she steered them inside.
Once she had bustled to the cozy kitchen, she turned up the heat on the kettle, and set three mismatched mugs onto a tray. She grabbed from the tea-tin three bags of Walmart's finest, filled the mugs, and carried the whole to the kitchen table, where Eric and Nell had found some seats.
Nell had placed the presents in front of one of the empty chairs, and so, when Mary Louise settled into her seat and had her tea seeping, she looked again at the presents. "This is just so nice. Thank God you're here," she said as she reached a hand out to each of her guests.
On Christmas eve, Nell looked out the window and asked "Hey, Eric, is that the storm cellar?"
"Yeah, c'mon. Let me show you." They put on jackets, and walked out to a little concrete slab holding hands. He lifted the door, and Nell climbed down the steps, then Eric followed and lit two candles stuck in old whiskey bottles. "Not much to it, Nellster, and we never had a tornado less than five miles away, but I sure remember spending a lot of time down here." He reached into a corner, and, from beneath a cushion set on a shelf, he extracted a deck of cards. "Wow! They're still here!" He looked up with a smile on his face. "When I was in sixth grade, Mom had to go to a church funeral while I was home on spring break, so my uncle Charlie came over to watch me. There was a big tornado outbreak, and we spent that Saturday afternoon down here playing cards: he taught me blackjack and proceeded to take me for $2.87 that day."
"Ouch!" Nell commented.
"When I got back to school, the guys were passing around a booklet on blackjack strategy, so I refined my game. Then I overheard two of the counselors talking about counting cards. I figured out how it worked, and practiced on my classmates 'til summer came. Over the summer, Uncle Charlie and I spent a lot of time down here: turned out he had a gambling addiction, so he couldn't stand the idea that he was running up that big a gambling debt to 'a little pencil-necked twerp.' Each time he tried to win his money back from me, the stakes got a little bit bigger.
"That fall, when I took the money back to school, I found out our teacher that year had a system she called 'shore leave.' If the class earned enough behavior points, she'd get a schoolbus and take us to the mall. I'd done all the research, so I was ready to buy a couple computers: An iMac and a Gateway running Windows 98."
Nell's eyes almost popped out. "And you just carried these back onto the schoolbus?"
Eric laughed. "No…. As I was coming out of the Gateway store, I saw David, one of my classmates. He was the closest thing we had to a 'jock' at the Oklahoma Academy, so I made a bet with him, that he couldn't carry the computer back to the bus. I lost the bet, but got his porterage service for five bucks: I called it a win."
When Nell stopped laughing, Eric continued. "When we got back to campus, I got both computers set up, and I thought I was hot tomatoes 'til I heard about the eighth grader who had a Gameboy. I stewed and grumbled 'til Thanksgiving break."
"Lemme guess," Nell interrupted. "Uncle Charlie's gambling habit bought you a Gameboy."
"And a Xeon processor I put in my Gateway, and some extra memory cards, and a copy of Star Wars Rebellion for Windows. Pretty soon, some guys started coming over to my dorm room to play Star Wars."
His look turned wistful. "Turns out there was a girl who said she was getting a Gameboy for Christmas, so I decided to give her a bootleg copy of Star Wars Rebellion for her Gameboy as well."
"What? I thought Star Wars came out only for Windows, and those two systems weren't compatible."
Eric shrugged. "True. Officially, they're not compatible, but that wasn't enough to stop a teenager with raging hormones and too much time on his hands."
"Did it work out for you?" Nell asked.
"Sure. It took some work," Subtly, Eric puffed out his chest. "But I was able to slip her a copy before Christmas."
"No, Beale. I meant 'Did you win her heart?'"
"Nah, she spent the rest of the year playing Star Wars with her boyfriend, David."
"Ouch!" Nell giggled. Eric just gave a grimace.
"Well, when Christmas came around, Mom thought it was kinda' suspicious when Charlie and I tried to disappear into the storm cellar in the middle of the morning in December. She put two and two together, and put a stop to my gambling. 'I won't have any sinning in this house,' she said."
"That must be her favorite saying, 'cause I overheard you getting the same spiel after dinner last night."
"She said it also applies to the storm cellar out back, unfortunately."
"Speaking of which, we better get back in, before your mom gets any ideas." She brushed her chest against his bicep, and ran her hand down to his belt buckle. Eric gave a groan, but then opened the door, blew out the candles, and helped Nell climb back into the daylight.
On the twenty-sixth, Nell watched through the kitchen window as she saw Eric disappear into the storm cellar again. She put on some perfume, gave her hair a quick brush-through, and then used a Walmart bag to protect it from the cold rain as she dashed out to join him.
As soon as she got the door open, she called down, "Thought you'd try for a little sinnin' after all, Bealster?"
"Nah, I don't think we could get away with it, Nelly. I just came out here for some quiet time. I guess I just wanted to mope for a little bit."
"Mope? It's Christmas time! Why so mopey?"
"You've probably been able to guess by now, that I just didn't want you to see this."
"This? This storm cellar? I think it's kinda cool that after three months, you were down here cleaning your uncle's clock at blackjack."
"That's not what I meant. I meant this side of me: the hot town of Sulphur, Oklahoma, and all the garbage that comes with it."
"This? This is who you are, Eric Beale."
"No, Nell. It's not: I hope like hell I'm not a gambling addict, a serial spouse, or, God forbid, an alcoholic SOB like the ones my mom kept dragging out from the oilfield and straight to the altar."
"That's not what I meant, Eric." She pulled him into a hug, as if to try to squeeze the disbelief out of him.
"I've worked so, so hard to grow out of this, but maybe being a tech operator in Los Angeles is actually the cover and this is actually who I am." He shook his head. "Maybe I'm just a modern-day Okie, and I don't deserve you, Nell."
"Stop, Eric. You have overcome it! All this just helps me understand how you became the sweet, understanding, good, good man that I get to save the world with every day. And what I've seen just makes me all the more proud that I get to share a bed with him every night, too."