The next few days at the office were what passed as 'routine' days for the NCIS team; preparing paperwork and following up on leads, but no new cases crossed their desks. As they went about their daily activities, Sam felt Callen's behavior continued to be slightly off kilter. The big guy couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong, though he did note that his partner was more aloof than normal and that he kept disappearing during the day for indeterminate amounts of time. Neither of these behaviors were atypical for Callen but still something about his partner was making Sam uneasy. In fact, Sam felt the vibe of the whole team was off; they were subconsciously being effected by their team-lead's negative chi. Sam kept trying to corner his wayward partner, to have a heart-to-heart, one-on-one chat, but Callen kept playing the role of the slippery eel and slithering away.
Sam walked through the shooting range looking for his errant partner, who had once again disappeared from his desk in the middle of the day. While Sam did not find the actual man, he did find evidence that Callen had been there; a number of used targets littered the room, many which displayed peculiar shooting patterns. Some of the silhouette-targets showed a motif of holes that indicated they were laid down by a precision marksman while others were total disasters with bullet holes scattered randomly about the paper. The patterns from target to target were so erratic, Sam found it hard to believe the papers were all shot by a single person, yet his instincts screamed they were all the work of Callen's hand. What in the world was going on with his secretive partner to cause him to be so dysfunctional?
A couple of times when the concerned agent had gone searching for his lone-wolf partner, Sam had found Callen in the gym, exercising on various pieces of equipment, to the point of physical exhaustion. The first day Sam had caught G hanging on the punching bag from sheer fatigue, barely able to stand on his own two feet. His hands, while wrapped, showed a faint blush of red, indicating that the wrappings weren't enough protection from the punishing blows that were rained upon the bag.
A day later, Sam found Callen on the stationary bicycle so drenched in sweat, it looked as if he'd been caught in a monsoon. The concentration level on Callen's face had been incredibly intense, as if he was racing the devil in the last 100 meters of the Tour de France. Callen had practically fallen off the bike, barely able to stagger into the locker room, when he was done.
However, the final straw was when Sam walked into the gym and saw his partner uncontrollably topple from the top of the rock wall. Callen had hit the ground so hard, it knocked the wind out of him and left the blond agent lying dazed on the protective matting. When Sam hurried over and asked Callen if he was alright, the partially stunned agent had clumsily brushed him off with platitudes and excuses of sweaty hands and loose rocks. Sam knew that wasn't the truth but since there were a number of other people in the gym, Sam hadn't pursued the issue; he decided to wait until they had more privacy to get the truth out of his partner.
Friday night, Sam unexpectedly returned to the office because he'd forgotten the bottle of wine he'd purchased earlier and planned to serve at dinner that night. He hurried back into the bullpen fully expecting it to be empty and was surprised to find G sitting at his desk. Earlier in the day, Sam had specifically sought out Callen and invited him to dinner, but Callen had declined saying he had plans that couldn't be changed. When Callen had disappeared later in the day, Sam figured his partner had taken off the for the night. The fact that Callen hadn't said goodbye was somewhat the norm for the way his partner had acted recently, so Sam hadn't given it a second thought. Therefore, he was now surprised to find his partner, who supposedly had important plans for the evening, still at work doing the oddest thing; building a house out of playing cards on his desk. The first layer was complete and Callen was working on a second level.
When Callen realized Sam was in the room, he quickly knocked over his creation, reassembled the deck into a neat pile, wrapped a rubber band around it, threw the deck on Deeks desk and walked away without a word of explanation. Sam was left standing in the bullpen alone, once again confused by Callen's actions. However, he was already late getting home for dinner with out-of-town relatives so he let the odd behavior go unchallenged. Michelle's wrath verses Callen's odd behavior was a no brainer; Michelle scared him more. Sam vowed he'd seek out Callen on the weekend.
Over the weekend, Sam invited Callen to breakfast, lunch, and dinner respectively, but the agent had politely declined each invitation. Sam even made an unannounced visit to Callen's house Sunday afternoon only to find his partner absent. On Monday and Tuesday, Sam graciously offered to pick up Callen in the morning but each day the man had an excuse why they couldn't car pool. While the reasons were seemingly valid, to Sam it confirmed his partner was going to great lengths trying to avoid him in a one-on-one scenario. If Sam had learned one thing from his years as G's partner, he knew that when the man went into avoidance mode, something bad soon followed.
Tuesday night, after Sam once again drove his wife to distraction with his silent brooding, Michelle had basically thrown him out of the house and told him to go pay a visit to his wayward partner and straighten out whatever was going on between them. The unspoken subtext was don't come home until you work it out. She was ready to kill both of them; Callen for being so damned secretive and Sam for being driven to distraction by his partner's antics. While Michelle loved them both, enough was enough. So at 0530 Wednesday morning, Sam found himself standing on Callen's front porch, knocking on the door.
Sam knew as a highly trained and paranoid agent, Callen knew who was standing outside his front door. Therefore, it was no surprise when Callen casually opened the door, turned his back on Sam and went back into his house. "Good morning to you too, Sunshine," Sam called after his silent, retreating partner as he shut the door.
Callen knew there was no sense in standing in the entry hallway talking to his partner and trying to persuade him to go away; Sam wouldn't and Callen didn't feel like wasting the energy. Instead, he wandered into his sparsely furnished living room and flopped in his favorite chair like he hadn't a care in the world. Sam trailed behind him scanning the room as he entered and quickly spotted the deck of cards on the room's one and only table.
Plopping down on the couch that Hetty had 'bought' for Callen by raiding his bank account, Sam called his partner out on the deck of cards. "Since when did you become such a card aficionado?" he inquired gesturing to the deck.
Callen stretched and yawned lazily. "Solitaire. Helps pass the time when I can't sleep and there aren't toasters."
"Huh. Well you better Google the rules cause the other day, when I caught you at your desk, it seemed more like you were building a house out of the cards not playing solitaire," Sam said in an accusatory tone.
Callen's eyes narrowed, annoyed at his partner's detailed observance of his behavior. "What do you want Sam? It's kind of early for a social call. What if I was sleeping in?"
Sam snorted in a derogatory manner. "You have to sleep first before you can sleep late."
"Michelle finally get wise and kick you out?" Callen stretched again, relieving a more few kinks.
"Yeah, over you. You're disturbing my marriage," Sam griped.
Callen ignored the jibe. "Look, I was about to go for a jog so can we speed this conversation up. How about you get to the point."
Now it was Sam's turn to stonewall his partner. His face suddenly brightened. "A run? Great idea. I'll join you. Let me get my stuff out of the car."
"I don't recall inviting you," Callen protested, hoping to get Sam to change his mind. He didn't want company.
Sam ignored his partner's death glare as he rose from the sofa and headed for his car to get his gym clothes. "Get over it," he flung back over his shoulder as he disappeared out the front door.
After Sam had left the room, Callen scrubbed his face with his two hands in frustration. Knowing he had no chance persuading Sam not to go running with him, the smaller agent rose from his chair and headed upstairs to change. When he came back down, Sam was suited up in shorts and a matching tight, black, sleeveless shirt. Callen was wearing his usual sale-rack shorts and was carrying a cotton tee in his hand; blue of course.
Sam frowned at his partner's attire. "Nice fashion statement."
"Coming from the man who wears Henley's night and day. What's a matter, they don't make a sleeveless version for jogging?" Callen shot back.
"That from the man who thinks 'formal' means black jeans. By the way, do you own anything else but blue shirts?"
Callen cocked an eyebrow at Sam. "Blue shirts match blue jeans, therefore I never have to worry."
"Lot of chopsticks in your kitchen," Sam commented changing the subject as he stretched his hamstrings against the wall.
Callen shrugged nonchalantly as he pulled the blue t-shirt over his head. "Ran out of forks."
Sam switched from his legs to his upper body, stretching and rotating his torso and arms. "You even own a fork?"
Callen started his own stretching routine. "Sure. Plastic. I think it came along with some takeout."
"Uh-huh. What about all the broken chopsticks?" Sam jerked his head towards the kitchen bringing the conversation back on point.
Callen shot an irritated look at his partner. "You going thru my trash now?"
Sam stopped stretching for a moment to look at Callen. "Didn't have too. Your kitchen counter is littered with broken ones. There is a barely touched container of shrimp with broccoli, which by the way you should trash if you don't want food poisoning, sitting on your counter surrounded by a sea of broken chopsticks. Looks like you had a temper tantrum in there."
Sam was right though Callen made sure his face did not display that fact. He had tried to eat his Chinese takeout with chopsticks when his right hand had started trembling. Angered and disturbed, Callen had persevered even though his shaking fingers kept snapping the eating utensils. Finally, after he ran out of chopsticks and his fingers were injected with embedded splinters, he had given up leaving the mess behind on the kitchen counter. But he certainly wasn't admitting any of that to Sam. "Cheap chopsticks" was all he offered his suspicious partner.
Sam knew Callen was withholding information a.k.a lying. Callen stared at Sam with his slightly sardonic smirk and Sam stared back with his 'don't bullshit me' face. Both men knew which party was lying, but Callen had no intentions of confessing.
They ran the stare-down contest for a few minutes before Sam finally decided Callen wasn't going to relent so he'd let him have this round. Winning a war wasn't about a single victory; it is all about the prep, laying the ground work and the skirmishes leading up to that final decisive battle. Sam backed down at this point not in defeat, but in a strategic regrouping effort. He had put his partner on notice, shown Callen his behavior was marked. Callen was on his radar, being tracked and eventually would be brought down by Sam.
Patience is a virtue and Sam exercised it now breaking eye contact. "Ready to run? How far? I'm thinking five."
Callen's eyes momentarily registered his surprise that Sam had backed down though he knew this was only a temporary retreat by his partner. However, he took the win and brusquely brushed past his co-worker heading for his front door. "Five? That's all? What's the matter? Didn't get a goodnight sleep?"
After the duo had started running and settled into a mutually agreeable pace, Sam let his mind wander into a watchful, yet Zen, place. The shorter man had taken point for a while before falling back to jog at Sam's side. Sam let his partner set the course and pace though he swore Callen was seeking out every hill in the area. Intellectually, Sam knew what went up, must come down but he swore that Callen was mapping a route that somehow only jogged up the hills. Not one to let himself be shown up in the area of physical fitness, Sam dug in and kept pace with his partner.
When they were in a narrow locale of the trail that ran along the ocean that required the men to jog one behind the other, Sam had an opportunity to study his partner's form. Sam noted that Callen was heavily sweating and his shirt was saturated. Sam was fairly good at estimating distance and he thought they were around the four mile mark in their jog. At this point he fully expected his partner should be sweating, but this seemed a bit excessive. Switching his gaze to Callen's stride, he decided it was off. Having run enough with his partner, Sam knew what Callen looked like when he was relaxed, in stride, running easy. That was not what he was observing now. Callen's gait was choppy, not fluent, and the man was straining to keep up the pace.
Knowing his stubborn partner would never admit he needed a rest break, Sam initiated one when they came to a scenic area that overlooked the ocean. Sam slowed his pace to a walk and Callen, who always instinctively knew where his partner was located, slowed too. Both men walked side-by-side to keep their muscles from tightening up, while they looked out over the calm blue sea. "Not like the sunrises back East," Sam noted. "Sometimes, I'd head over to Coney Island just to watch the sun rise."
"But West coast beats East coast on sunsets," Callen countered philosophically.
Sam shrugged indifferently. "You might be surprised."
By this point Sam's breathing had recovered. Callen's had not and he was still trying to suck in a lot of air but in a stealthy fashion which didn't go unnoticed by Sam.
"So it's been, what, about 10 days since you drank the Kool-Aid?" Sam asked conversationally.
"About that," Callen acknowledged with a slight sideways glance.
Again, Sam noted the eye shift and knew it for what it was, a sign of avoidance. "Any residual side-effects?"
Sam knew he'd touched a nerve when Callen suddenly went full-out on the defensive. "Do you see any?" the the team-lead snapped in a sarcastic tone.
"Matter-of-fact I do," Sam replied calmly. "Either all those doughnuts and bacon are finally catching up with you or your body has not quite recovered because you shouldn't be this winded. I may get on your case about exercise and eating, but I know you are in way better shape than it seems at the moment."
Sam could actually see a little air go out of Callen's sails. "You're right. That stuff really wiped me." It was the first half-truth Callen had admitted to his partner in a very long time.
"Uh-huh. Maybe if you would take it easy for a while instead of punishing your body. Hell, maybe if you'd stayed in Ops to run that mission instead of pushing yourself to get back out there, you'd be in better shape now. I know you think you are physically invincible but you are not my friend. One day all this shit is going to catch up with you."
"Not today," Callen said bitterly as he took off at a run again. Sam quickly caught up with him and jogged slightly to the left of Callen's six. It took no detective skills to figure out Callen was pissed and Sam silently contemplated on that during the rest of their journey.
He knew it had something to do with what he'd said while they had walked. Callen was always touchy about comments on the way he took care of himself, telling Sam to stop mothering him. But this was a pretty extreme reaction by his partner to an oft-discussed topic. Maybe his comment about staying in Ops to run the mission had been over the line; it made it seem like Sam was questioning Callen's abilities.
The man in front of him was running like the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels. Sam couldn't help wondering if this was going to end in some sort of accident where he'd have carry Callen home and then explain to Hetty what had happened to her senior agent; neither thought made Sam very happy.
The big guy was relieved when they finally arrived back at Callen's house in one piece. He had to admit even he was tired from the grueling pace Callen had set which meant his partner must be exhausted. They walked into the house and Callen made for the fridge where he grabbed two bottles of water, left one on the counter for Sam and took the other one upstairs.
Sam heard the bathroom door shut and then silence reigned. Picking up the bottle and unscrewing the lid, he took a few sips as he wandered to the base of the stairs. "Wanna ride to work?" he yelled up the stairs.
"Nope," came the curt reply followed by the sound of the shower.
Sam knew that tone of voice; Callen wasn't changing his mind about a ride. Seeing no sense in hanging around, Sam decided to head into the office to shower and change. When Callen was in this mood it was best to back off and give him his space. If Sam pushed too hard without knowing the root cause of Callen's behavior, he could force his partner over the edge into a pure lone-wolf mode which always led to a long-term disaster. Backing off for the moment was the smart tactical move.
"See ya back at the ranch," he yelled up the stairs expecting no answer and getting none, before he turned away to head out to the Challenger. This hadn't been a very illuminating visit.