Nate decided to take pity on the trainer Hetty had decided to hire, Nadine. It had been a tough twenty minutes for her. He was quite impressed that she only looked defeated and not psychologically damaged. The team was losing their touch.
So, squaring his shoulders and giving himself a pep talk, he tapped her on the arm.
"Why don't we get started on those trust exercises?" Nate suggested gently.
Nadine's hands twitched towards her braids like she wanted to pull at them and responded in a frustrated tone, "They need to pair up first."
Nate frowned at the stubborn looks on both sets of people. They were going to get nowhere at this rate.
"Why don't we do one or two simple ones in their regular partnerships and then g on from there?" he recommended.
Immediately he received grateful looks from LAPD, his own team just looked at him suspiciously. Typical. At least it got a smile back on Nadine's face.
"Yes, perfect idea Chattering Squirrel," she declared happily, standing straighter.
His smile became a bit more fixed. 'Chattering Squirrel', really? Callen and Sam were chuckling at him while Kensi had her face buried in Deeks' neck, both of their shoulders shaking from their repressed mirth. Nell was glaring at the LAPD who looked far too amused at his assigned nickname.
"Ok, pair with your normal partners," Nadine instructed with yet another hand clap.
Obviously, his team's partners went without saying. Nate was more interested in how the LAPD paired up. Jorsten and McHughes partnered up, nothing too surprising there, almost boring. Whiting had pounced on a particularly unobtrusive LAPD Officer who had introduced himself as Wyatt McBride. Nate was impressed that the man didn't look intimidated by the woman, just resigned. It implied that they had worked together before somewhat successfully. That left Officer Athena Grant and Detective Cooper.
"You guys too," she said, indicating himself and Granger.
"We're not partners," Granger grunted, Nate nodding rapidly.
"I could partner with Bates," Nate suggested hopefully. "We've worked together before."
Ok, that was stretching it a bit but Nate really didn't want to do the fall exercise Nadine had planned with Granger. He had a feeling he'd come away with a head injury.
Bate gave them both the side-eye, which heavily insinuated that he was looking a bit crazy, and said far too smugly, "I'm helping demonstrate."
Granger said something particularly foul under his breath that made Nate decide to stand next to Sam. Maybe his bulk would protect him…
Nadine smiled and linked arms with Bates. "No stealing my demonstration," she said teasingly.
"Never fear," coughed Whiting.
Ignoring the comment, Nadine continued in a perky teacher voice, "Is everyone paired up?"
"Yes," came various mutters.
"Ok, the first thing I want you to do is face each other. Come on, hurry up!"
Grumbling, they all did as they were told. They had all instinctively lined up in two lines. Nate hesitantly slipped to the end of the line, next to Eric, eyeing Granger nervously. With a deep, pained sigh, the Assistant Director stood next to Nell with a dark scowl. Was it really wise to be within shooting range?
Nate glanced around, looking for possible escape routes. Nadine was blocking the way to door and he supposed using the windows would be a bit overdramatic. Oh, why did he jump at the chance to do this? Hetty knew he was a real sucker for any chance to analyse the team in action.
"So, what do we do?" asked McBride, sounding reluctantly interested.
"This first one is simple yet deceptive," she said slowly, trying to turn up the tension. It wasn't working. "You need to maintain eye contact."
There was silence for a couple of seconds before all hell broke loose. There was laughter, guffaws and honest-to-God giggles.
"Eye contact?"
"That's your big idea?"
Nadine sniffed indignantly at them, "Eye contact is extremely important for any basis of trust. How can you trust someone who won't meet your eyes?"
"Seriously?" demanded Callen.
"You do realise we all work together, day in and day out?" McHughes questioned. "Obviously we make eye contact with each other."
For once NCIS and LAPD was in agreement. Fascinating.
"But can you maintain it?" Nadine challenged.
Everyone exchanged looks and smirked at their respective partners.
"Bet we can do it for longer," Deeks declared, Kensi nodding with a familiar competitive look in her eye.
"Ha! Not a chance," bragged Callen.
"Not with our impressive partnership," added Sam with a smug grin.
"I think we'd be better," piped up Eric.
The field agents looked at him and Nell and chuckled.
"You spend more time looking at your screen," teased Kensi.
"We don't have issues with repressed emotions," retorted Nell.
"Oh, fighting talk!" taunted Callen.
"You'll have nothing on us," bragged Jorsten.
"Yeah right," Kensi said dismissively.
"Wanna bet?" Grant said dangerously, standing toe to toe with her.
Nate was very impressed. Nadine had figured out that the best way to get them to do anything was to make it a competition. Only their competitive spirit beat out their emotional avoidance techniques.
"Someone get us a stopwatch!"
