Chapter 11
The next day Nell arrived first at OPS, after she had shortly greeted her colleagues at the bullpen in a very happy mood she stepped through the sliding doors and stopped in her tracks, as she saw a nice looking vase with some red roses standing beside her workstation. She admired the flowers for quite a while, brightly smiled as she took the little card out of the red roses bouquet and silently read through the card: *Last night's date was great, it actually was my best first date ever. I loved your dress; I couldn't stop looking at it the whole evening. You looked totally amazing; in my sleep I wished that you would have lied next to me.
Lots of Love Eric*
When she finally wanted to sat down at her workstation at OPS, Eric came through the sliding doors behind her and she turned around to face him, tightly hugged his muscular body and gave him a short kiss on one cheek. "Thanks for the flowers, they are wonderful." Nell said after she had drawn away from Eric, she really loved flowers and she loved receiving them from Eric. "I'm glad you liked them Rockstar." Eric answered, but their little intimate time together was soon interrupted as Hetty came through the doors of OPS and announced: "We've got a new case, please summon the team Mister Beale." Eric then left the room to summon the team upstairs and discreetly smiled at Nell before stepping through the sliding doors. "Nice flowers Miss Jones." Hetty shortly commented after Eric had summoned the team in the room what made Nell a little bit uncomfortable, because deep down the little mighty Operations Manager knew who the flowers where from. Before Eric and Nell could start the briefing for the new case Kensi then also recognized the flowers on Nell's desk: "Nell you've got a secret admirer we don't know about yet? Those are some really nice looking flowers!" Nell shared short glance with Eric, searching for little help in his eyes but as she didn't found any she quickly said: "I sent those flowers to myself, because I love them so much. I have no "thing" going with a man right now." Kensi looked a little surprised about this answer but then just shortly answered to put the topic to rest now: "Oh ok, that's cool I think."
With that problem out of the way, Eric was happy to finally start the briefing for their newest case by putting one personal file of a woman in her twenties on the big screen: "This is Sandra Paulson, Marine Sargent who had recently returned from a special assignment in Afghanistan with her unit home to Los Angeles. She was shot yesterday morning, getting in the cross fire at bank robbery between the robbers and the police. Metro Police identified one of the robbers as former Marine Captain Justin Black, he had escaped from prison two weeks ago and had gone dark since that." Eric finished his part of the briefing and Nell then put the photo of Black on the screen and contributed her part to the mission briefing: "Black has been discharged from active duty and sent to prison after the Marine Corps had found out that he had sold secret information to Russians. Since Paulson's security keycard is missing, this case has a high priority because when this sensitive data gets into the wrong hands we have a big national security problem on our hands." After the briefing was finally finished also Deeks, Callen and even Sam complimented her on the nice looking flowers standing in the middle of the two workstations, Nell had to do her very best to hide her discomfort about this whole situation since her colleagues would be now probably gossip about this for a while.
Later the two were glad to have some intimate time alone, Eric had pulled Nell in his lap, practically sensing the discomfort because of the whole situation right now. But their private moment was soon interrupted as Callen called with an assignment for Nell, she quickly got back to her workstation and got right to task at hand.
The two worked side by side on a very stressful case, she cheered him up and helped him as they were stuck in the current case. After the case was finally wrapped , a big heavy weight fell off Nell's shoulder's, she also had to watch a video of another kidnapped Marine, that had worked in the same unit with the victim being cruelly tortured. That had really shook her up, but she didn't want to show her vulnerability to anyone in the team and did her very best to help saving the kidnapped marine. But now as she sat here alone in OPS with Eric, with the stressful case finally finished all the tears broke out of her at once. Eric quickly went by Nell's side, wrapped his arms around her body and she cried continuously into Eric's chest. She was so thankful for him being always there at the right time. A few minutes passed by in the now dimly lit Ops Center, the two truly thought that they were the last ones at OSP but that proved to be wrong when Deeks suddenly came through the door and the two were in the middle of kissing each other.
Deeks finally made himself felt by loudly clearing his breath and said as the two finally had drawn away from each other: "Sorry to interrupt you guys but Callen asked me to ask you Eric, if you're are coming to our poker evening tonight." Both of them were clearly embarrassed by the whole situation and for a while there was an uncomfortable silence between them. Eric finally said: "Yeah sure I'm definitely coming to our Poker Night."
After Deeks had finally left the room, Nell only said to Eric: "That was awkward."
"It surely was, they definitely have something to gossip about now." Eric shortly replied after that they said goodbye to each other and Eric thought: *How do I get myself out of this mess?*
AN: Please read and review, I hope this chapter is a little more interesting than the last one. I enjoy writing this story but right now, I have a kind of writers block, maybe anyone has good suggestions how to continue and improve this story.