Disclaimer/Author's Note: Bren Gail does not own NCIS or NCIS: Los Angeles, or the lyrics used within. This 500 word drabble was inspired by Bones Bird's Facebook Fanfiction Drabble Challenge.
May 14th Challenge Lyrics:
And I've always lived like this
Keeping a comfortable distance
And up until now I had sworn to myself that I'm content with loneliness
Because none of it was ever worth the risk
You are the only exception
-The Only Exception by Paramore
He could not pinpoint the moment when she had infiltrated his barriers and heart, but he recognized that she had. He was not a man that let people know the real him, after all, how can someone know you, when you do not know yourself? He was ever changing, always masquerading as someone or something else. She understood it, because she was an Intelligence Analyst, his Intelligence Analyst, she'd analyzed and consulted on each one of his cases since she had joined the Office of Special Projects, and he knew she had since researched several of his past cases. If anyone would know who he was and why he did the things he did, it was she. He often wondered if she knew him better than he himself did, other times he doubted that, because if she truly did, then why had she freely given him her heart, body, and soul?
For a long time, he did not do any sort of relationships. He had serious issues; abandonment, control, trust, and commitment. It was much easier to act alone, be alone; after all, he was used to it. He had been a broken child whom had grown into a resilient man. Slowly he had formed platonic relationships, then familiar ones with friends, his team. Yet romantic relationships always ended before they began. The only romantic relationships that he had were as an alias, which was not surprising as his life was alias after alias.
Even Hetty, occasionally shook her head in disbelief at him, but not Nell. Nell stood firm in her support of him, always had, from day one, when she had finished his sentence about missing jewels. That was perhaps the first thing that he had grown to respect about her, her fierceness of her resolve. Her first week, she had proved she would not be teetered from what she wanted to accomplish be it interrupting her superiors, throwing a birthday party for the unapproachable, or insinuating that she had a crush on two of those superiors. There were times when she was timid and uncertain, but he felt as if those feelings of inadequacy made her fiercer, because she did it regardless of the intimidation.
He now felt regretful that he had questioned her crush, eventually her love for him. He had accused her of being like every other woman he had been involved with; from one-night-stand, a means to an ends for a case, and yes; he had even compared her to his quasi-ex-wife. He had not made it easy for her to love him, but just as she had stood firm in her support and respect for him as her boss, she stood firmer in her love for him, for them, as his lover, and soul mate. He was wrong; she was not like the women that came before her. He loved her; not an alias loving another alias, but he, G. Callen loved her, Nell Jones. Rule 12 be damned.
She was his exception.