Callen is an insomniac. He doesn't sleep long, much less well.

This time, Callen has the best sleep he's had in years and he sleeps a whole 4 hours. He thinks it's a minor miracle.

Maybe it's the bed, since it's a real one and not a bedroll on the floor. If so, Callen will have to concede Sam was right.

But he thinks it has more to do with the woman in his arms.

As if sensing his thoughts, Nell rolls, stretches, and curls into him.

Callen thinks he could get used to this.

He dozes for the next couple hours.


The next time Callen wakes, he knows something is wrong.

He's in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar bed. And it's empty.

Callen sits up just as Nell walks back in and his mouth goes dry.

In the ultimate cliché, she's wearing his dress shirt from the night before and he thinks it's unfair how much better it looks on her. She comes bearing food and his stomach rumbles at the sight, and smell, of what she's bringing.

Nell smiles at him and he can't help but grin. She has a waffle in her mouth. It's adorable and utterly absurd and he really, really wants to be that waffle.

He waits for her to put the food down before snatching her around the middle and tossing her on the bed. The waffle goes flying, but he manages to catch it and toss in on their plates before turning his attentions to Nell.

"Good morning," he murmurs, pressing her into the mattress with his body and trailing kisses down her jaw.

"Sorry if I woke you," she says with a sigh. "You looked like you were sleeping so soundly, but I was hungry."

"Well, we didn't exactly have dinner like we'd planned."

Nell giggles. "But we did have dessert."

Callen makes an assenting noise and kisses her, hands roaming. When she moves against him, his hands seem take on a life of their own and yanks open the dress shirt. They hear a button hit the wall.

Callen looks up. "Remember where that went. But right now, I think I want more dessert."

The coffee is way beyond cold by the time they get to drink it.


Callen and Nell are, unsurprisingly, late for work. The clothes are returned to wardrobe-the wardrobe manager merely raises an eyebrow when Callen drops three buttons into her hand-and Nell scurries up to Ops.

Since Callen keeps a go-bag in his car he's wearing fresh clothes. Sam still calls him on it.

"You doing the walk of shame?"

Callen merely raises an eyebrow.

"Those are the clothes you keep in your go-bag."

"Since when do you know what I keep in my go-bag, Sam?"

This time, Sam raises an eyebrow.

Callen just shakes his head. "Nothing shameful about it. And I thought you didn't want details?"

Sam laughs. "At least you look better than those two."

Callen looks across the bullpen and does a double take.

Deeks is half passed out on his desk, slightly drooling on a report.

Kensi's shoving as many aspirin in her mouth she can and has three bottles of water and two huge cups of coffee on her desk.

They're both wearing yesterday's clothes.

"No way," Callen muses. "That is most definitely a walk of shame."

"Different kind of shame," Kensi says in a whispered voice.

"I've always thought she'd either kiss him or kill him," Sam chimes in.

If looks could kill, Sam would be a smoldering pile of ash. Kensi winces before she can turn her gaze on Callen.

"The latter," Deeks mutters. "With lots and lots of tequila. If there was any of the former I can't remember."

Kensi smacks Deeks on the head, which leads to a lot more wincing and groaning of a displeasing nature from the both of them.

A few minutes later, when Eric whistles for their attention, Kensi and Deeks whine and crawl under their desks.

Sam just shakes his head. "We'll fill you in."

"Eric's just lucky they're too hung over to use their weapons," Callen muses as they make their way to Ops.

Behind them, under the tables, Kensi's voice hisses, "You'd remember it if I kissed you."

"Oh, trust me, I do," Deeks replies. "I was just putting on a show."

Callen chuckles all the way to Ops.


Nell is frantically typing at her station when Sam and Callen walk in. She spares Callen a quick smile before going back to what she's doing.

"What have we got?" Callen asks.

"The mother lode," she mutters.

There's a short silence but she's too absorbed to really take notice.

"Right," Eric continues. "The data we copied is, indeed, the stolen weapons intel."

"What's the next step?" Sam inquires.

The doors to Ops slide open and Hetty walks in. "I've just spoken with SECNAV and the data we've gathered will be shared with the South American section of NCIS. They can handle whatever groundwork we need there, so we can focus our efforts here."

"About that," Eric pipes up, clearly not wanting to be the bearer of bad news. "Seems last night's extravaganza was Hernandez's last hurrah."

Nell stops what she's doing and looks up in surprise. "What?"

"Luis Hernandez and his entourage have been conveniently called back to Venezuela," Eric finishes. "They're already gone."


The next week is a frantic mess of trying to find the Venezuelans, their connections, and barring them from making any progress into the advanced arms world. It doesn't help.

Alvarez never makes it out of the United States. He's found dead on the Hernandez compound, clearly no longer needed by his boss.

Hernandez and his family make it out of the country, although the NCIS crew isn't exactly surprised. Frustrated, but not surprised, what with diplomatic immunity.

Nell is buried in data mining activities, looking for any and all traces that the Venezuelans are acting on the intelligence they have.

"We should have found a way to get rid of that data," she says to Callen.

"We could spend days, or even years, debating the actions we took," he tries to console.

"It doesn't make me feel any better," she sighs.

Callen spends a lot of his time working the streets with Kensi. Their fluency in Spanish makes their work a little easier, but it's not as if they're getting any better information.

"No one's talking," Kensi says with a frustrated sigh, flinging a folder down on her desk.

"You have all been doing a superb job," Hetty announces, rounding the corner. "I know this is a frustrating time for all of us, but we should take measures to ensure the stresses of the job are not affecting our judgment or our performance."

The field agents just look at their diminutive manager.

"Take a break," she says simply.

Kensi grabs her bag and hastily exits. Deeks watches her, concern in his eyes.

"She's going to give herself an aneurysm one of these days," Sam muses.

Callen turns to Deeks. "Well?"

"Well what?" he replies, still looking in the direction Kensi went.

"You're her partner, aren't you going to go after her?"

Sam gives Callen a surprised look.

"Somehow, I don't think she'd like my company," Deeks answers, looking down and picking at his bag.

"Go," Callen says. "But avoid the tequila."

Deeks waits a beat and then he's off, too, pulling out his phone and dialing Kensi's number along the way.

Callen can feel Sam's eyes on him. He turns and raises an eyebrow at his partner.

"What was that?" Sam finally asks.

"What was what?" Callen counters.

"That."

"What?"

Sam sighs heavily. "Stop avoiding the subject. That. With Kensi and Deeks."

Callen shrugs. "Let's just say I've learned to appreciate the company of another person."

Sam mocks fainting. "She's changed you!"

Callen rolls his eyes. "You should try it sometime."

Their conversation is interrupted by Eric nearly falling down the stairs.

"Something wrong?" Sam asks.

Eric looks between the two men and settles his gaze on Callen.

"Your girlfriend's about to demolish thousands of dollars' worth of equipment."

Eric's statement is followed by a muffled, but audible, curse coming from the direction of Ops.

"Did you teach her that?" Sam accuses.

Callen rudely gestures at Sam before heading upstairs. Quickly. He slows as he approaches the door and stands just between them when they hiss open.

"Nell?" Callen calls in case some object does come flying in his direction.

All he hears is a groan, which he deems is as close as he's going to get to a, "Come in."

Nell's sitting at the main table, arms stretched in front of her, forehead lightly tapping on the surface.

"Hey," he says, coming up behind her and placing his hands on her shoulders. "Holy shit-you're tense."

"I've never been so frustrated when looking for information, even when going through legends!" she complains, head still bent. "Their lack of electronic communications is working way too well in their favor and- Oh. Ohhhhh."

Nell's words are reduced to happy sounds of contentment as Callen works out the knots in her shoulder muscles.

"C'mon," he says. "I'll take you home."

"But-"

"It can wait," he interrupts. "Hetty's orders. Besides, we never did have dinner at my place."

As he predicted, her curiosity over his home piques her interest.

"Can I-"

"And you can't bring work with you."

She raises an eyebrow at him.

"No, I can't read your mind."

Nell bursts out laughing.

"C'mon," he repeats, smiling broadly. "Eric fears for his electronics."


Nell has to admit that she's been pretty tightly wound the past couple days. Tracking down Hernandez's exact whereabouts proves to be way more time consuming and difficult than she'd ever thought it would be. Her liaison with the South American contingent of NCIS is running into similar roadblocks which makes the situation all the more frustrating.

She's looking forward to a little downtime with Callen and enjoys the car ride to his house.

When they pull up, Nell takes a moment to study its features. It's a nice size for a family. She knows it's one of the houses he stayed in as a foster child. They walk through the front door together and she's immediately struck by the acoustics that are amplified by the lack of furniture or anything, really.

"Wow, you weren't kidding," she muses when she walks in. "You really don't have anything here."

Callen shrugs, tossing his keys on the kitchen counter. "Never really saw a need. I did, at least, get a chair."

She looks into the front living room and sees a chair and a lamp, a small pile of newspapers and books on the floor beside it.

Nell wanders through the house and wonders what would drive a man to have almost no material possessions whatsoever. The master bedroom is the only other room that has signs of life and she feels a little sad to see his bedroll in one corner. The closet, at least, has a decent amount of clothes, but the house really has the bare minimum one person could need to live there.

"Told you," he calls from the doorway.

"How come you never got at least a bed?" she asks. "The floor can't be that comfortable."

Callen walks in and stands beside her. "I don't sleep much and, for a while, I moved around so much it was either a hassle to move a bed or expensive to keep buying new ones."

"You sleep at my place," she reasons.

"Sure. But you're there."

She walks over to the bedroll and sits down on it. It's comfortable enough, but there's barely enough padding for a seat, much less a bed. Callen sits next to her, back against the wall.

"Would you want me to stay here?" she asks.

Callen nods his head to the side, "Hmm, yeah. I think so. Guess I should buy a bed, huh? After all, this is my house, now."

"Maybe so," Nell replies.

Without another word, she changes position and straddles Callen's legs, sitting on his lap. Nell leans in and kisses him, sighing softly when his arms wrap around her. After a few moments, she shifts position and manages to tip them over so they're lying on the bedroll with her on top of him.

"You like to control situations, don't you?" Callen asks, running his hands up and down her back.

"Type A personality and all that," she answers, unbuttoning his shirt. "Let's see how this bedroll compares, shall we?"

Later, much later, she's lying in his arms and he's tracing abstract patterns on her hip with his fingers.

"I should really get a bed," he comments.

Nell can't help but laugh. "Yes, yes you should. I'm going to have bruises for all the wrong reasons."


The rest of the week goes much more smoothly. The Venezuelans have started to move on the intelligence they have, so Callen and Kensi hear rumors on the street they didn't have just a few days before.

Nell and Eric are also more successful in their hunt for information and the NCIS group in South America has a sizable chunk of information they can use to infiltrate Hernandez's group and shut him down.

Things look to be going well for the teams.

It doesn't last long.