Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS: LA or its characters...

Author's Note: Just a little character exploration piece I had halfway-written awhile back. I'm trying to figure out how I want Eric to fit into the fanon world in my head. He's so awkward in the series, (and not in an adorable 'New Girl' Zooey Deschanel sort of way) that I sort of just mostly ignore the hell out of him in my fics. Also, not just awkward, but BORING. Yet, loving the character of Nell Jones, as I do, I can't just ignore the fact that so much of her Canon revolves around Eric (ew!). I always get the impression that she's made just as uncomfortable by Eric, as I am watching his stupid, sort of creepy crush on her (and he skirts the edge of jealous/controlling rather often, which dear Series Writers, is not funny, and in real life often ends in domestic violence, stalking and other horrible violent crimes). But at any rate, here's me trying to figure out Eric's head space (in which he's not so much a scary creeper), and a way for him to just move the f*** on.

WARNING: Language and Mature Content

It wouldn't be so piercing, so utterly heart-cleaving, if the man were simply screwing her. But that wasn't what was going on at all. And no amount of wishing otherwise on his part would make it so. For that image, that five second video, was seared into his visual cortex, would be for the rest of his life. Hell, the image would still remain imprinted in his dead brain tissue as it began to decay in his skull after his death.

Oh, why couldn't it have just been sex? Why couldn't the jerk have just been grinding her petite -oh, god, so gorgeously perfect, everything he'd ever imagined- body into the mattress? But what he'd seen them doing... even he, with all his biases and hopes, couldn't deny. It would be one thing if she'd just been lying naked on her back, her legs spread and the lucky bastard's just-as-bare buttocks pumping steadily between her thighs, his hands pinning her wrists to the bed beside her head as he screwed her mercilessly. But those lethal hands of his were also lying palm to palm with hers, her delicate fingers interlaced with his larger, rougher digits. And worst of all, the man's face hovered just a few inches above hers, and the pair were staring into one another's eyes. Human beings, as a rule, did not maintain eye contact but for the briefest of moments, and the significance of such a deep sustained connection was not lost on a socially awkward misfit who paid extra close attention to the rules of behavior. The way the rutting pair were staring into one another... They weren't just screwing around, which he could've forgiven, explained away as a moment of physical need and mutual weakness. But, oh, heartache of heartaches, they were making love.

Eric Beale sighed a sigh that originated from his very soul. Perhaps he'd never been the most observant person in the world, but had he really missed the signs in the woman he lo-his best friend that indicated her falling in love with another man? And he with her, as well? For it had been no stranger making love to Nell Jones, his Nell, in the rather nice hotel room half a world away. G Callen had been taking Eric's partner, was likely still in the process of taking the young woman in sweaty carnal bliss. Why couldn't she have had her eyes closed, her head thrown back, her nails digging bloody gashes into the superagent's back while he sucked on her neck and pounded her into the bed with hard, unyielding, impersonal thrusts? That would have been quite the disturbing image, one that Eric would likely never be able to shake, either, but not so destructive to his pathetic heart as accidentally catching the older man tenderly yet intensely loving the young woman.

Damn you, Hetty. The ancient spy had asked him to attempt to contact the undercover pair of agents, and when he found her laptop logged on if idle, he'd simply tapped into the camera. Without any thought whatsoever upon finding the space facing the screen vacant, he'd switched it to the exterior side's lens. Which had been the mistake. 'Oh my.' had been all that the wizened fearless leader of their little unit had to say, as Eric fumbled with his mouse to shut down the video-conferencing software. It had taken him, what, all of five seconds to close the feed. But that had been more than enough to leave his world, and heart, in absolute shreds.

He couldn't stop thinking about what he'd seen, about her. Voyeuristically speaking, the angle had been pretty damn good. He hadn't been subjected to witnessing the actual nitty-gritty of their coupling, but lord, the view of her slender yet shapely leg crooked around Callen's waist, the curve of her hip and buttocks, the round pert breasts jiggling softly atop her chest. How many times had he himself fantasized about having her in precisely that same position? But he had never imagined the look in her eyes as she stared into her lover's face. He'd personally never experienced anything of the sort, could barely maintain eye contact when he was with a woman, due to his perpetual shyness, he supposed.

Nope. Who was he kidding? She deserved a man who could look deeply into her big hazel eyes as they made love, who could make her gasp, moan and sigh. She deserved a man of action, or at least one who had the nerve to show her how he felt. And that wasn't him. In all of his vacillating, years of attempting to work up the nerve to approach her without wavering, without immediately withdrawing at the merest hint of potential rejection, he'd lost Nell Jones. For she had found someone willing to risk exposure and hurt, risk everything, just for the chance to love her.

Eric was jealous. He was heartbroken. But he was also… relieved. The perpetual, weighty burden of his crush upon his partner, the tension that was a constant knot in the muscle fibers at the base of his neck seemed to melt away. If he were completely honest with himself, every day was a torture, working with a woman he was thoroughly smitten for, yet cowed by her, worshipping her from a distance that was physically, professionally close but romantically as distant as the moon. He'd been an idiot. Why had he never realized the strain he'd placed on the both of them, letting his feelings become expansive to the ridiculous and unattainable? Now, he found that he was glad that she'd never pressed further, that she'd only briefly explored her own potential romantic feelings for him and then pulled back when she'd obviously found them lacking, and simultaneously, found his too intense, a relationship doomed from the beginning with one side so much more heavily laden than the other. It would've weighed them both down, trapped them. Although, he'd done a bang-up job at constructing his own cage over the past few years, comprised of dreams and desires so inflated that they could never be realized, and he would never seek them, knowing deep down their unattainability.

No.

Now he was free. Free to mend his heart. Free to find someone that made him want to risk everything to love her, to be loved by her.

He supposed it would sound a little pervy if he ever told anyone, but Eric knew that whenever that image came unbidden to him, of Nell and Callen, their naked bodies, their joined hands, intertwined fingers, eyes gazing into one another, making love, he'd smile. There was hope in possessing that secret knowledge of other human beings' hearts. The proof that happiness and love existed. That it was out there. That he, too, could find it, find her.

END

A/N: I'm aware the premise isn't likely/a little contrived. But on the other hand, Eric comes across kind of creepy and socially inept to me, to the degree where I could see him just turning on a camera without a second thought as to whether he was invading a person's privacy (until it was too late when he realized the faux pas).