Title : Cure for the soul.
By : GirlOfSpring
Pairing : Nell/Callen
Summary: It all started with a certain intelligence analyst who needed her music and a certain special agent who was disturbed by the noise. A Nallen story
Disclaimer : Don't own, don't own, don't own.
Note: Chapter 10 already!So, another update, already! I know this chapter doesn't have a lot of interaction and are actually three different parts but oh well. All are sort of important to what I have planned for the story.
And a big thank you to
Shestarsky: I totally agree, but most of all because G just doesn't know what he really wants. But he'll get there in the end!
Angelus 320: Thank you for the lovely update! I do apologize because this chapter doesn't have the intensity as the last one, but sometimes I have to build up a situation before I can let them get close again. And this was quite a quick update, if I do say so myself. And we might get a bit of a jealous Callen in the next chapter, but I am not promising anything!
Angelscatie: He's not too sure no, but I am blaming it partly on the fact that he has been stabbed and wasn't in the best of mindsets. To me, it swayed between not caring and not wanting to get too angry. But that was then, things will change again. Thank you for your review!
A and K: Haha, and if I have to be honest I am quite looking forward to writing that bit, but not just yet.. Thank you for the review!
Desnouer: I am glad you liked it and thank you for reviewing. In this chapter, nothing big really happens, but later on there will be more.
Sterling36: Thank you for the review and I hope you will keep enjoying the story!
Paul0108: And I am very sorry still it has taken this long for an update! I will try to not let this happen again, but I am getting down to how I am going to let this end. I have never had a talent for planning a story.
Jmlane1966: Thank you for your review, it really made my smile! I hope when you get further in the story, you will like it as much as the first chapter (I do sometimes think that a story can deteriorate after a first chapter..). English is more or less my second language, but some things I think I'll never get right. Practice, practice, practice I guess!
Shaz1: Thank you for your review, I hope you will like what is still to come!
So, I felt for once I wanted to reply to every review I got for this chapter. Now, enjoy the chapter!
~~~|G|O|S| ~~~
The light of the rising sun shone into her eyes while Nell was still fast asleep on the mattress in the living room.
She mumbled something in protest and turned around, trying to get away from the light that was taking away her rest.
A wool blanket was covering her, keeping her warm in the cold morning and surrounding her with the very strong scent of man.
She relaxed again and snuggled closer against the cushion.
It wasn't just a male scent, it was something she recognized. Musky and strong and dark.
Instinctively, she was searching for the warmth of another body next to her, but didn't find one.
This caused her to finally wake up, recognizing the feeling of waking up surrounded by everything that hinted the presence of a man but him not actually being there.
It had happened before, when a guy she had trusted had left her in the night and for a moment, her heart feared a repeat of the some event.
She opened her eyes, only to realize that she was still in G's living room, laying on a mattress on the floor where the rays of the sun just reached her through the open window.
The man himself was nowhere to be seen and she groaned while she let her head fall back on the pillow.
She must have drifted off somewhere during their talk last night and he, being the person he was, had put her on the mattress. At least, that's must have been what happened because she didn't remember a thing after she had fallen asleep.
But where had he slept then? Not in the chair, or had he?
Suddenly, her senses were attacked with a smell of fresh food and she jolted up again, only then noticing the feeling of hunger in her stomach.
Slowly, she got up and with her fingers she combed through her hair, knowing what it looked like after a night's sleep.
Usually, she would be able to tame it just right, but sometimes it would just stand up the next morning.
She really had the typical "pillow-head".
She did a last effort to straighten her hair and rubbed in her eyes, hoping that her mascara from yesterday hadn't gone and smudged her face.
She pushed herself on her feet and stretched once before going in search for the bathroom. In the mirror, she saw that her hair had become presentable and she thanked the heavens and every deity she knew for looking presentable.
Why?
Because even now, she didn't want G to see her in a bad state. She did have some pride in her and you didn't go looking like hell to say good morning to a very attractive man.
Then, she followed her nose back to the kitchen, where G was standing at the stove with his back to her and baking something.
He was humming a song, which she recognised from the CD she had bought him and a smile lifted her lips.
She did try to tone it down a bit, since she probably looked like an idiot.
"Good morning Nell." G said, interrupting her train of thoughts.
And she had thought she had been quiet enough for him not to hear her.
"Good morning G."
She stepped closer and tried to peek into the pan past his broad shoulders. He was just too tall for her to have a good view on the pans he was practically hiding, but it smelt like eggs.
He stepped aside for her to see what he was doing and she saw bacon and eggs, almost done for breakfast.
"Sleep well?"
He glanced sideways and she looked up in his eyes. Blue met hazel and she nodded in reply.
"Yes, I did. But you didn't have to put me on the mattress, I would have been perfectly fine sleeping in the chair as well."
And she was a lot smaller than he was, it would have been much more comfortable for her than it could ever be for him.
He shrugged in answer, but didn't say anything about her remark.
"You?"
"I slept alright. You ready for some breakfast?"
She nodded and started looking for some plates to help him.
~~~|G|O|S| ~~~
After he had put her on the mattress last night, G had gone outside to get some fresh air and realised one thing.
He would never be able to get the distance between them he thought he wanted.
She said she cared about him, and he realised he cared about her.
Pushing her away would only make her angry, as she had proven the evening before.
So, he would take care like a friend and they could go on living their lives like the friends they were.
That morning he had left the house early to go to a shop nearby and get some food for breakfast. He had ended up buying not only eggs and bacon, but also some fresh fruit, bread, yoghurt and even some orange juice they made locally.
He didn't want to end up, like the evening before, having nothing in his kitchen they could use to eat.
After Nell had put the plates ready for him to just put the food on them, she took some glasses for the juice and grabbed an apple from which she took a fresh bite.
Munching on the fruit, she waited for him to finish cooking and after a few more seconds he slid the eggs and bacon on the two plates which she had prepared with some bread.
He turned off the gas and picked up the two plates before walking outside, where in his garden he had a table and three chairs.
They had already been there when he had gotten the house and had never really bothered to remove them, most of all because he found he quite liked it to sit outside at night when he couldn't sleep.
He put the plates down and gestured to Nell, who had followed him with the glasses and the cutlery she should take a seat.
She did and he sat across from her.
"I guess you have to go to work later?"
He looked up while taking his knife and fork and cutting apart his eggs and bacon so he could eat.
She was doing the same while nodding in response to his question.
"Yes, although I don't have to be there as early as usual. We have been working quite hard lately so Hetty told us to take the morning off before coming back again."
"Hmm, she'll want her best people to work the best they can.." He said softly.
Nell looked up before shrugging slightly.
"It's a bit strange without you, you know. Sam has taken over the Senior Agent responsibilities until you get back, but everybody has to get used to it."
He chuckled slightly.
"Well, Sam isn't too bad. Imagine if, for some reason or strange mix-up, Deeks would be your team leader for a while."
Nell laughed at his words before picking up her glass of juice and sipping slightly.
"I can already see it happen. He would come up with these code names for everything, for one thing. And tease Kensi to death as well, I guess."
"It would open a whole new world."
They both laughed again.
~~~|G|O|S| ~~~
About a week later, Nell was running a background check in the operations centre on a corporal from the Navy who had been killed in a hit and run to find out any information she could.
When running through his phone records, she found something peculiar.
Scanning the lists of numbers that were still being conversed to names, she saw a number that looked familiar, yet she couldn't place it.
Cursing slightly, she squinted at it, trying to see if she could remember when she suddenly realized where she had seen it before.
"Aha! AHA!"
She jumped up from the chair she had been sitting in and transferred her information to the big screen, holding her tablet to make it easier for her to skim through the lists.
"Nell, what did you find?"
Eric was still sitting at his desk and looking at her while she kept going faster and faster searching for the information she needed.
She jumped from phone records to the history in the services and since she knew what she was looking for, she flew through the information so fast nobody except for her could follow what she was doing.
"AHA!"
"Are you just going to keep shouting 'Aha' or are you actually going to share the information you found?" Eric asked with a grin.
"This corporal, Thomas Kerry, he was in Iraq with the trio of brothers we had a run in with a while back. Jason O'Dowd and Nicholas and Russell Demay, right?"
"Yes?"
"Nicholas and Jason were in the same unit for quite a long time and he was their commanding officer. When Jason supposedly 'died', Russell got transferred to their unit. He knows all three brothers. But, and it's a very big but, in his phone records it shows that he has made calls with a burner phone that has been connected to Jason O'Dowd once he got back home."
"So he knew Jason wasn't dead?"
"Probably. I have to go and tell Hetty."
And, without uttering another word, she ran from the operations centre to tell her boss.
In her mind, she was already thinking of ways to connect to corporal to the missing brothers. A small voice came up, also mentioning it was quite the coincidence for his death to occur this close to the exposure the youngest brother not being dead at all.
It was a lead on something they had been trying to work on without having a lot of results.
~~~|G|O|S| ~~~
"At first, she wanted to throw a party, but I managed to convince her not to."
Sam groaned and lifted the weights he was working on for another go.
"So? What is going to happen now?"
G stopped the punching ball from swaying left and right and looked to his partner. It was the first day he had come back to the office. He was still not really allowed to do any work, so he had gone to the gym with his partner to do some works. He wasn't punching too hard and working on balancing his strength because his right arm wasn't as strong as the left, this being the side where he had been stabbed.
"She won't let it go easily this time."
"I know, which is exactly why this is a problem. My birthday is coming up in two weeks and she is almost obsessed with it. Suddenly, it is huge deal!"
"Alright. But what did she come up with then?"
The ball was hanging still so G stretched his fingers before he would go back to hitting the fabric. His side wasn't aching as much as a week ago, which was good news.
A sigh from his partner made him wait for another few seconds though.
"My dear wife has come up with the idea to invite my 'co-workers' to the opening of this new art show at some museum. She is organizing the event with her company, so she has some extra tickets and asked me to give them to some friends at work."
For a moment, G stared at his partner before laughing silently.
"That is what all the drama is about? You would think it was something much worse."
Well, it being something open might be a small problem.
"So, what is going to happen if you don't want to listen to your wife?"
"Har har, very funny. It doesn't even really matter. It has been quite a while ago that we did something together and she is really excited about this. And then, with my birthday coming up, it's like the best occasion. That, together with the fact that somebody –" at that, he glared even more at his partner "-has apparently been humming some song while she was standing next to that anonymous person. And that somebody somehow ended up telling her it was from a CD which had been a present from some woman from work. What the hell is going on here G?"
G blinked for a second in surprise at his partner, before shaking his head nonchalantly.
"Nothing is going on here. It was just some music."
Well, not entirely true. He had been at Sam's house some while ago and was helping Rachel, his wife, cleaning up after dinner when he had started humming one of the songs from the CD. Being the perceptive woman she was, Rachel had instantly picked up on it and started asking him questions about it.
It had felt like a third degree interview, where there were only few good answers.
But, she had been so happy when he told her the CD had been a gift from a friend who was a woman that he hadn't really thought about it much.
"What woman did you get a CD from, G?"
He shook his head slightly and pushed the ball away from him before punching it when it came back, swaying slightly.
"It's nothing special, alright? But now, what happened?"
He got another suspicious glare from his partner before he caved and started lifting the weights again.
"Somehow, she got into her mind she would like to meet some other co-workers, so I am to invite the others to this opening thing. But it won't be too direct and she is rooting for a night off for me.."
"Oh yes, because a night off would be the end of the world."
~~~|G|O|S| ~~~
So, I know it might be slightly out of character for Sam's wife to be this involved, but I feel it is needed for the story. It's obviously not completely canon (duh) and she will be introduced to you at the opening!
Please leave a review and until the next time!