AN: I'm back. My sincerest apologies for abandoning you for so long, my muse got forcibly detained by daily life and before I knew it, it was Easter! But I've finally had some time off so I'll do my best to try and get a tiny bit ahead. Thank you for all sticking with me & I hope this chapter isn't a disappointment after such a long wait. Happy Easter!

Disclaimer: Alas, my lack of worthy affiliations hasn't changed. Ownership is still, sadly, with CBS and the creators of NCIS and NCIS LA.


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Chapter 7: Ways & Means

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It's been a long time since she'd wanted to be invisible so that people would stop talking about her. The fact that the last time had also been in the grounds of a school was not helping. She hadn't realised the edgy feeling that made her want to run as fast and as far away as possible could come back after so much time and training. The irony was this time being noticed was all part of the game plan. Her game plan. She just hoped Bethany was quick grabbing her things, the sooner they got out of here the happier she would be.

Then maybe she could find a way to forget all the justifications she kept coming up with about why it would not just be okay but good for their cover if she was to slip her arm round Eric's waist and take that one step closer than the comfortable distance they were currently keeping. The fact that she wanted to close the distance should have set off muted alarm bells, but it didn't. She'd never been a hugger or a holder of hands in her relationships, always enjoying that one tiny element of being a separate entity. It wasn't like she made a big deal out of it if the other person was but she never initiated it. Then again it wasn't like this was the first of the walls she'd discovered didn't apply to Eric. Ever since they'd first sorted out their differences and begun to work as a real team in OPS she'd known she'd need a whole new set of rules to define their friendship by. One of them was not being surprised when she discovered he'd managed to slip past one of the walls that kept everyone else at arms length. She'd decided quickly it was because, for once, she was up against an intellectual equal and that was one label she wasn't about to review any time soon. Which still left her standing beside him, wanting to reach out to her equal and wishing she at least had a pocket she could put her hand in to deaden the temptation.

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It hadn't been until they were almost ready to go that they had considered the implications of almost certainly seeing all the women who they'd just recently ushered out of their house at the school to pick up their children at the same time as they were there picking up Bethany.

Nell had realised it only when Eric had been attempting to bring back a degree of respectability to the hair her fingers had unwittingly dishevelled. He'd turned partially away from her so that he could see the hall mirror better and was busy running his own, more systematic fingers through his hair.

"Wait. Let me." Nell stepped forward as he turned but instead of assessing his hair, her fingers reached for the tie around his neck. She was careful in avoiding his eyes but it was almost impossible to untie the silk knot without her fingers brushing against the warm cotton of his shirt.

"Sal - " Eric's words were closer to a groan than a question or warning, making her pause just as she was about to slide his tie out from under his collar.

Nell didn't dare look up. He might not have said her real name but that didn't stop her heart rate picking up or her fingers from fumbling at the implication in his tone. Knowing it wasn't the answer either of them wanted and realising too late that this idea might just be more than either of them could handle, Nell took a deep breath.

"They'll all be at the school." Nell winced; she always seemed to start difficult sentences in the middle when she was flustered. "The women who were here today, I mean, that saw - that think once they left -"

"I still don't -"

"They think we're trying to have another kid. Carte blanche and an hour before school pick up. Keeping those rumours alive - it starts now"

Nell felt as much as heard the breath rush out of Eric's lungs as the realisation hit that what had been a joke to break the tension an hour ago, had just become their new reality.

"And we need to look the part." Eric said softly, his hand coming to rest lightly on her waist.

"Like we've made an effort to look right but rushed and missed a couple of things." Nell agreed, trying to ignore the way her breath caught as his gentle tug on her shirt had it sitting just slightly off centre.

It wasn't just her shirt that was slightly off centre by the time they decided they'd doctored enough. Nell felt decidedly off balance by the time she had Eric's top button undone, the second only partly fastened and his collar slightly turned up at the back and that wasn't even counting the strands of hair he'd gently pulled out of her butterfly clip or the precarious angle one of her earrings had been eased into.

Glancing at her watch Nell was shocked to discover only a couple of minutes had past. They'd still make it in plenty of time if they walked quickly.

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Turned out it was one thing, in the quiet and privacy of your home, to set out to be noticed by a specific group of people. And quite another standing among the small crowd of waiting parents who had nothing better to do than gossip and zero intention of concealing that fact.

"...making up for lost time..."

"...could have been a coincidence but not after that kiss..."

"...earring, collar, both shirts..."

"...almost nine years..."

She tried not to listen.

It was all for show. All part of the plan. But it still felt like a serious invasion of privacy. She willed the bell to ring, willed the kids to start rushing out of their respective classrooms. Tried not to remember the gentleness with which Eric had figured out what angle he needed to balance the fishhook at so her earring would stay, as though knocked, partly out of her ear.

Nell kept sneaking glances at his profile, knowing his eyes were focused on the door Bethany would soon be exiting. It wasn't till her third look that she saw it. Just behind his ear there was there was a patch of hair that still looked tangled despite Eric's earlier attempts at smoothing it all down. A tiny section of reality in a mirage of carefully planned red herrings. Quickly she looked away, willing herself not to notice anything else. Silently she started to run through the 50 states in order of date of statehood. Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia-

"I know you said we want them to talk - I mean to, um, notice but - do they have to talk quite so loudly?" Eric whispered, successfully derailing her train of thought.

Nell wasn't sure how she managed listen to what Eric was whispering in her ear. His warm breath ghosted across the side of her face and he was so close she would have sworn his lips brushed the shell of her ear as they conveyed their barely audible message.

She was so distracted by it she almost missed the green door opening and the sight of Bethany weaving her way though the sudden rush of kids going in all directions.

'Saved by the bell,' Nell thought ruefully.

Nell wasn't quite sure if it was Eric who bent down or if Bethany took a flying leap. But either way suddenly Bethany, bag and all was, settled on Eric's left hip (no small feat when you considered that men's hips rose higher and didn't flare out to create a ledge like women's) and rather than being left out she found her self being tucked into his right side as he started to manoeuvre them through the growing crowed of four-foot dynamos towards the exit.

"I'm so glad you came. I knew you'd come. Did you know Ancient Egypt were some of the first to have maths and complex building techniques and modern medicine - well there was still a belief in magic too but they had their own system of gods and..."

Bethany managed to talk, without allowing so much as a breath's space for input from Nell or Eric the whole way home. They progressed from Ancient Egypt to her teachers, to kids called Stacey and Brian and half-a-dozen others, to the games she'd played at lunchtime, to what materials they had to use in art. Nell had always thought of herself as someone who could absorb any amount of information and put it into an orderly format quickly so she could remember it all and remember what questions she wanted to ask. But the speed and diversity of topics with no segways had even her Mensa quality brain struggling to keep up with the little girl who hadn't even paused for breath when she'd decided she wanted to walk between them rather than be carried, shortly after leaving the school gates.

There was something incredible endearing about Bethany's insatiability for knowledge. Her excitement bubbled over into skipping steps when she got too involved in what she was telling them. Eric and Nell got to be so attune with how her mind affected her little legs that they'd be lifting her gently off the ground and setting her down the step ahead before she had a chance to miss the step that would have put her behind them.

Nell couldn't help smiling; Bethany's enthusiasm really was infectious. It made Nell wonder when she'd last been that excited about anything. Somehow every single example she could come up with in the last few years revolved around Eric. Her first couple of weeks at NCIS when she'd nearly ruined it all by being unable to control her desire to finish sentences; the first case they'd worked as a real team - she may as well just admit now that seeing Eric each morning in OPS tended to bring out that endless enthusiasm to know and do more. The only difference was that somewhere along the track she'd managed to bottle it up, suppressing it even from herself and only letting it out in quick smiles and high-fives...and the occasional hug when things got really hairy. Most of the time she figured she was pretty good at hiding it now, even from her family who'd could usually see straight through her. That's not to say Eric couldn't still drive her up the wall and round the bend with some of his more annoying habits. But even his jealous and protective moods tended to bring out quiet smiles once she was finally alone and the initial annoyance passed.

"Cut fruit just tastes better. Can't I have that instead?"

The combination of Bethany's imploring tone and the sharp tug on her hand had Nell realising that somehow she'd gotten lost in her own thoughts between the front door and the kitchen and completely tuned out. Taking a second she replayed the last couple of seconds in her mind. She might not have been concentrating on it but she had heard it. Cut fruit. Right. She hadn't even thought about sorting out afternoon tea, after all she and Eric had just polished off the last of the selection the neighbourhood's finest had brought with them. It was going to take a lot of getting used to Nell decided if this is what it was going to be like every day after school. She'd never needed a 'Mom' mode before.

"You have a point Munchkin," Eric admitted, looking to Nell.

It wasn't that Eric was saying: you're female you cut the fruit. It was more that he looked to her for approval. They both knew he'd find a way to give Bethany a slice of the moon if she really wanted it. Within the first 24 hours of leaving LA they'd developed an unspoken system of checking neither of them were unnecessarily indulging or denying Bethany's wishes. They were charged with looking after her, not just making her happy and they'd had the 'we don't want to create a monster' conversation about horror children they'd been unfortunate enough to encounter before they'd even packed up the car for Bakersfield.

"Alright, you grab your lunch box and any homework out of your bag and go wash your hands and I'll get started on the fruit." Nell said, making a mental note to add fruit to the shopping list. At this point they were eating more fruit in a day than she'd gotten through in a week.

"I didn't mean you -" Eric said awkwardly as soon as Bethany had raced off for the bathroom.

"I know. But I've got this covered so you may as well grab any work you've brought home and wash your hands too," Nell winked at him as his expression went from awkward to bemused at being given the same instructions as a six-year-old. "We'll try and create a new routine. Make afternoon tea and homework a family thing."

"You're good at this you know."

Eric's soft words caught her by surprise. Looking up in time to see him smile with something akin to pride before he slipped out into the corridor to join Bethany in the bathroom.

Nell smiled as she heard Eric pretend to be An Inspector of Cleanliness, full of mock gruffness and the echoing laughter when Bethany then insisted on being allowed to inspect his hands once he'd washed them. Eric might have been the one to say it but really it was he who was good at this. Sure she had a big family and lots of memories to draw on of the tricks her mother had used to wrangle her brother and sisters but Eric was a true natural.

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She had no idea how they were going to just go back to their lives once this was over. It was making her think that maybe she'd been wrong when she'd replied to Hetty's 'The Talk' with the simple statement that they'd already decided there'd be no regrets. Attraction had always been a factor in their partnership. So had the possibility that one day they'd act on it. They'd been pretty confident they could make it through unscathed because their partnership meant so much to both of them and neither would pressure one into more than they were ready for.

The only thing they hadn't factored in was the idea that their partnership might not seem like it was complete any more without certain little person who couldn't sleep without a bedtime story.

Because she was pretty sure they could go back to their separate apartments, to seeing each other at work and on weekends. It would be different but not impossible. But never being anything more than an occasional visitor, an outsider in Bethany's life? That was getting harder to contemplate with every day that passed.

A tiny, treacherous part of her even wondered if maybe it was taking longer to solve this case because maybe she and Eric weren't ready to give it up. But even as that thought surfaced she knew it wasn't true. The danger was real and none of them ever lost sight of that. She'd make time tonight to start sorting out a plan of action with Eric.

But it could wait till Bethany was safely tucked up in bed and she'd gotten everything sorted for school tomorrow.


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