Young Geek Love 9- Neric Plus Two

A/N- So sorry that this took me forever to get this up, but I didn't have any ideas so please PM me ideas or leave them in your reviews. This will also be the last one-shot for a while becuase I'm really busy for the next month and I'm also starting a multi-chapter fanfic ( if you want to know more visit my profile) that will take some time to plan out more. I'm not abandoning my one-shots but just taking a break until my other story starts rolling.

Please R&R

TheAlphabetSong xx

00..

A soft tapping on Nell's arm awoke her from her already disturbed slumber. She rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, she was thankful when the tapping stopped, until it was replaced with a cry that quickly turned into a fully fledged scream. She sighed and rolled over looking at the three-year-old that stood before her. Getting out of their bed she noticed that Eric was also now awake.

"Don't worry," she said before another scream pierced the air, "I'll handle this you go back to sleep."

"I'm awake now, and it's time for Ellie's bottle so I have to get up anyway."

"Okay," Nell agreed picking up their three-year-old son Andrew. She walked into his room. You need to stop coming in and waking up mummy and daddy at night time," Nell explained.

"I have bad dream mummy," he said sitting on the side of his bed.

"It's okay, everybody has bad dreams."

"Even you and daddy?"

"Even Aunty Kensi. Bad dreams can't hurt you. Okay?" Nell said pressing a kiss into the strawberry blond mop of curls that lay atop his head, "you need to go back to sleep now."

"Okay," he said crawling back under the covers on his bed.

Nell stayed for a while stroking her hand through his hair watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. She'd almost fallen asleep herself when she heard Eric talking to her.

"Nelly, Ellie's back in her cot asleep," he said.

"Thank you, " she said standing up.

"Just doing my parental duties that includes not sleeping."

"You knew what you were signing on for," Nell argued.

"I don't think either of us did," Eric honestly admitted as they sleepily clambered back into their own bed.

"But the reason we get up at two-thirty in the morning is because we love them too much not to; enough to flip the world upside down to make sure they're safe and happy."

"Yeah," Eric agreed.

They fell back to sleep quickly, and slept like a log.

00..

They finally gave up on sleep when their alarm clock went off at quater to seven.

Nell, dealing with sleep deprivation better than Eric was the first up and in the shower. When Eric eventually dragged himself out of bed he heard the shower and knew that once again Nell had beaten him to it. So instead of laying back in bed and going back to sleep, he got up and put the kettle on. Whilst the kettle boiled he went to get Andrew up, he entered his room to find an empty bottle of baby powder on the floor and the contents scattered on every surface in the room.

Eric ran his hand through his hair, this was a complete mess. He went over to Andrew.

"Hey buddy, what's this?" Eric asked.

Andrew shrugged his shoulders, with all the innocence of a three-year-old.

Nell smelt the baby powder before she saw it, it was a strong chalky scent; but why was there so much of it. She walked down the hall from their room to Andrew's. She found Eric plugging the vacuum into a socket on the wall.

Seeing Nell standing in the doorway observing the situation and mess, he said.

"I've got this can you-"

"Go get the little menace and his sister breakfast?" She finished for him.

"Yeah."

"Come on buddy, let's go wake up your sister, Nell said taking Andrew's hand and leading him out of the room, leaving Eric to clean up the mess.

He put the empty bottle in the bin in the corner of the room, switching on the vacuum, he made a thorough job of it because Nell's parents were flying into see them later that day and were having dinner. They were staying for a week, luckily at a hotel not at their place. He was currently on great terms with Nell's parents and did not (for whatever reason) want that to change.

Satisfied with the floor he unplugged and returned the vacuum to its spot in the kitchen and grabbing a wet cloth from the sink to start on every other surface in the room. For the first time since they moved in and had Andrew he was glad that it was a small room, with it cleaned just after seven thirty, he had fifteen minutes before they had to leave.

He was showered, dressed and organised in 10 minutes; meeting Nell in the kitchen, who had left a coffee on the bench for him.

"Thanks," he said coming to stand with Nell who was nursing Ellie in the next room watching Andrew play with the duplo that he had got for Christmas. Eric put his arm around Nell and stared down at their beautiful daughter who was now with a full tummy of milk sleeping contentley in his mother's arms.

"What time does your parents flight land?" Eric asked.

"Two thirty-six," Nell answered, "they said that they'd get a taxi, but I want to pick them up."

"And you plan on getting out in the middle of the day how?" Eric questioned.

"I was going to ask Hetty," Nell stated simply.

"And let me know how that works out," Eric said.

"What makes you think that it won't?" Nell asked.

"Just becuase you're Hetty's favourite doesn't mean she'll let you leave in the middle of the day," Eric argued.

"Okay, firstly I'm not Hetty's favourite, and it's only half an hour; fourty-five minites at the most," Nell said pausing, "and that's factoring in LA traffic."

"Fingers crossed we don't have a case load from hell today then," Eric said.

"Let's go get the little ones into the car."

"Hey Andrew," Eric said waiting for him to turn around, "buddy, let's clean this up so that you can go to preschool."

Andrew nodded his head enthusiastically and started - with Eric's help- putting the pieces of large lego back into their container. Andrew started with the red and when Eric started to put a blue into the box before Andrew knocked it out of his hand and said,

"Silly daddy, are you wearing your spare eyes. Red first, then orange, yellow, green, blue, violent," he explained.

"Violet," Nell corrected.

When Eric and Andrew had finished putting the duplo away Nell was waiting in their car, which still had the new car smell. Which had always made Nell feel slightly nauseous which didn't help what so ever when she was pregnant with Ellie. Eric put Andrew into his car seat and double checked that he was buckled correctly before sliding into the passengers seat. Nell turned the keys in the car starting the ignition.

00..

"Did you see that?" Eric asked.

"See what?" Nell questioned.

"The giraffe in the front yard of the house back there," Eric replied.

"What? That's ridiculous. Why would there be a giraffe in someone's front yard?"

"Well I don't think it was a real giraffe, probably plastic," Eric said before Nell cut him off.

"If it's to scale it's more likely to be made out of fibre glass."

"Wat a giraffe?" Andrew asked.

"It's an animal with a really long neck and a blue tongue," Nell explained, "it is to protect their tongues from getting sun burnt when they reach to get leaves from the tall trees," Nell added - probably for Eric's benefit more than Andrew's.

Pulling into the parking lot of Andrew's preschool and Ellie's daycare they divided and conquered which was what they did every morning before getting back in the car and drove another 10 minutes; then racing into the office with full intentions of heading straight up to the Ops center until Hetty called them to her office as soon as they'd walked into the front doors.

When they made their way over to Hetty's office she was sitting at her desk with a steaming pot of tea. It was smelt strongly of lemon grass with a zesty tang, possibly- lime?

"That's a strongly scented tea," Nell noticed.

"Yes, it is. Lemon Myrtle black tea, an old friend sent it to me from their travels in Australia," Hetty informed.

"Okay," Nell said

"So, Hetty why did you call us here?" Eric asked.

"I just wanted to check in and see how things were going," Hetty stated getting straight to the point.

"Things are going good . I mean Andrew's not sleeping at night and Ellie is having trouble sleeping in the afternoon, but besides from that everything's good," Nell answered.

"I see," Hetty replied vaguely, "and as I understand that is why you turned up late this morning?"

"Well-" Eric started.

"That was partly our issue but, when Eric went to get Andrew up this morning his entire room was covered in baby powder."

"Okay," Hetty said slowly before Eric took over and continued.

"It took me forty five minutes to clean the mess and I had to be extra thorough because Nell's parents are flying in to see us this afternoon and we don't want the place looking like a mess."

"So we then left later than we normally did and then had to battle with LA traffic," Nell finished.

"Okay," Hetty started before pausing when everyone heard the bag that Eric had around his shoulders viabrate.

Eric swung the flap on his bag open and pulled out the offending device- his tablet- to see what all the fuss was over.

"It's Director Vance, there's an incoming call in Ops," Eric informed.

"Well let's go and see what he wants," Hetty said.

They all walked out of Hetty's office and just before they reached the landing on the stairs to Ops Eric whistled, him and Nell stopped on the landing waiting for the teams response and arrival. When they looked up Eric announced that they had an incoming call from Director Vance; Callen looked back at Sam who in turn looked at him, they shared a look of concern and slight confusion. The Director normally contacted Hetty first if they had a case, he rarely ever contacted them directly. Since he was something pretty serious must have been going on.

Eric and Nell took their tablets out of their bags, put in their ear pieces and connected the call.

Director Vance appeared on the screen in Ops.

"Good Morning, everybody," he greeted.

"Good morning, Leon," Hetty replied.

00..

It was six o'clock when Eric and Nell had got home and by six thirty they had been joined by Nell's parents. Nell and her mum were cooking Spaghetti bolognase and talking to Nell's father; whilist Eric put Ellie into her cot to try to get her to sleep because yet again she didn't have her afternoon sleep according to the day care staff.

"So honey, how's work at the news station going?" Nell's mum Lisa asked.

"Well, same as always, I edit the telecast before it's put on air," Nell replied.

"No, I know that. How is it going now that you've got Ellie and Andrew is a toddler?"

"I'm glad that I have Eric and I honeslty don't know how you guys managed to raise four kids that all turned out alright," Nell admitted.

"Well not all of you did, I mean look at your sister," she joked.

Nell laughed, it was an on going joke that she and her mum had; Susan, Nell's older sister had always been the troublemaker when she was younger and then the party animal when she was older, with countless boyfriends between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one, until a bad breakup. She got herself cleaned up and straightened out her life.

"That's one in four and it's not like she didn't figure everything out in the end," Nell's father Michael added.

Nell got a strainer from a cabinet and took the pot of boiling water and pasta to drain it over the sink. Whilst Nell was dealing with the pasta Lisa added bolognase sauce to the mince.

Once Eric had made sure that Ellie was asleep he went back into the kitchen to join Nell and her parents.

"Ellie's sleeping," Eric told Nell as she was serving the food into bowls.

"Thank you," Nell replied.

"Well you cooked," Eric said indicating at Nell grabbing two of the bowls before putting them down on the table, everyone followed in suit.

Nell put her bowl down before lifting Andrew into his high chair. Since they were in company she wasn't going to face Andrew whilst he ate to be on the look out for any airborne pieces of pasta.

Lisa and Michael told Nell of how they were planning a trip to Fiji for later that year and Eric cooked up some interesting but believable lies about what had been going on with work since they'd stopped in last. Andrew started getting restless and tired, so after dinner Nell and her mum went to supervise Andrew in his bath leaving Eric and her dad to do the washing up.

Eric had always been a little bit afraid of Nell's father even after they gave him their blessing when he asked them for permission to marry Nell; nevertheless Eric was- and probably would be for a long time- intimidated by the man. Which made doing the washing up a slightly awkward situation. Michael, on the other hand was glad that Nell had chosen a good man to settle down and make a family with.

"I've never liked the 'if you cook you don't clean' rule," Michael said breaking the silence, "but that's how Lisa was brought up, so when we got married it stuck."

"I guess Nell takes after her mother then," Eric said.

"Very much so," Michael agreed.

"Like mother, like daughter," Eric stated.

"Maybe the little one's got it in her."

"Wouldn't be a bad thing if Ellie inherited Nell's personality."

"Yes, although you must know that, a child with an IQ anywhere near Nell's can be quite a challenge."

"I would assume that a challenge, and umm, " Eric said before continuing with a question he couldn't hold back, " an IQ like what?" Eric finished hesitantly.

"Nice try Wolfram," he heard a voice say from behind him. Startled he turn around to see an amused looking Nell standing behind him.

"Mum's reading to Andrew but he's almost asleep now anyway," Nell explained.

"I think we might be leaving when he goes to sleep and the washing up is finished because we're tired from our long flight," Michael explained.

"Yeah, probably a good idea," Nell agreed.

The washing up was almost finished anyway; just a few glasses and pieces of cutlery left which all got washed cleaned and put away quickly with the three of them working as a team.

Soon after Lisa came out saying that Andrew was asleep.

"What about a girls day on the weekend?" Lisa asked Nell as they were leaving.

"Sounds like fun," Nell said.

"Goodnight," Michael said.

Later when they were watching TV Nell broke the silence.

"Why do you care about a bunch on numbers so much?"

"What do you mean?" Eric asked, clearly confused.

"Look, there are four people on this planet who know my IQ - myself, my parents and Hetty. I know you're my husband, but this is one thing I have to keep to myself becuase I don't want people to judge me differently based on a bunch of numbers."

"I think that it's something I can live with," Eric said with a smile on his face.

Maybe one day Nell would tell him, or Eric would figure it out, if that was the only thing she was going to keep to herself, he didn't mind.