This one was so cute. While the case was nail-biting, more critically it brought into view the idea that, in their line of work, there's no telling what tomorrow will bring and when or if they will get a chance to tell the people they love what they feel. Upstairs in Ops, Nell and Eric each took a green sticky note and wrote some feelings for one another, then exchanged them. Later, they left notes for the rest of the team. It was adorable.

Enjoy!

Season 5, Episode 23: Exposure

Hetty had watched her team's handling of the green sticky notes with warm affection. Even Owen, who insisted on ruining every precious moment in every day without fail, couldn't quite dim the glow of her pride in her team. They truly were the best, and working together, she felt certain that any challenge, no matter how dangerous, could be met and beaten.

And it wasn't just their skills, all of which were superb. It was their ability and willingness to work together, to find strengths in the collective where they might have been weighed down by individual weaknesses. It was their ability to approach every situation with a mix of humanity and professionalism, and to remain focused on both simultaneously even in trying moments. It was their innate trust, not just between partners, but across the whole.

For example, they might not trust Eric Beale with a gun, but they trusted him to guard their backs from Ops. And when he ordered them to run, or told them they were compromised, or explained a dangerous scenario, their trust in him was as solid as Callen's in Sam Hanna.

They had learned that trust and courage, as well as competence, took many forms. And among the six of them, Hetty knew they had many facets of each covered and covered well.

That had always been the plan, of course.

But, still. It was different, and utterly gratifying, to see it play out as she had hoped.

In the beginning, she had seen the potential for this much, but there was no guarantee it would ever arrive. G Callen, even partnered with Sam, tended to trust few and to share little of himself. Sam Hanna had been honorable and kind, but had hidden his family from all for most of his career. Kensi Blye had rarely given her feelings vent, let alone facts regarding her past. Marty Deeks had adapted himself to the role of an outsider, diffusing tension with a joke without ever opening himself to real harm. Eric Beale was eager, but tended towards self-consciousness. Nell Jones was used to having to battle for respect and coped with it by pushing back and pushing hard.

It could have been a firestorm in a bottle if the six of them hadn't learned to relax their barriers around one another, to put tiny bits of trust in the hands of the others and seen them held with care and respect. Like a chemical reaction, they could have proven volatile and unstable.

Instead, they were strengthened, centered, and more grounded than ever.

And not just because two of the three sets of partners were dancing around a different kind of partnership, either.

Hetty believed that this team would have coalesced regardless of possible romantic feelings. Those were just a bonus on top of the rest of it.

She considered the little green notes again.

Yes, after a case like this, many agents recalled how fragile and uncertain life in their life of work could be, and thus reaching out to affirm the unsaid feelings in the heart was perfectly natural. She had, of course, peeked at the four left by Miss Jones and Mister Beale for the others — purely as an exercise in oversight. And she was not surprised that either of the pair were so frank with their feelings and so willing to make them known, even in a non-romantic context.

She was pleased that the rest of the team, even those who hid their true emotions whenever possible, had accepted them with such grace.

But then, she also knew that those feelings were very firmly, if platonically, returned.

Unbeknownst to the others, Nell and Eric had left the stack of green sticky notes out while they made their rounds. Only Nell had dared offer the pile to Hetty, saying nothing but raising an eyebrow in invitation.

Hetty had declined. "They know already," was how she answered Nell's look.

Nell had smiled and nodded, and, interestingly, had not left one for Hetty for the exact same reason.

Yes, Hetty was fully aware that her team knew her feelings.

But as she passed the bullpen once more before packing up for the evening, she paused.

She did not need to affirm anything to them. Her team knew.

But.

She sighed at her own foolishness, but that did not stop her from lifting a single piece of the green, sticky paper from the stack of notes. She did not write on it. She simply placed it in her pocket and carried it with her. Hetty decided she would either talk herself out of it on the way over, or would see it through and be able to forget it.

She slipped the blank note into Callen's mailbox.

Her team was her family, and they all knew it. She loved them all, dearly. She would fight, kill, and die for any one of them, and she would protect them with all her power and all her strength and every favor she could curry the world over if needed. They knew that all too well.

But, even so, it was different with Callen. Like all the rest of her children, it was always different with those who were hers before they belonged to themselves.

She knew he knew that, too. But this, like so much else, was just another moment for the two of them. Another secret in the game they played with the world, the game she played with all her other children across every agency in this country and several others. The game of pretending their bond could be measured by an agency evaluation or timecard, not in the years prior.

So she left him a blank note. It could never have contained all the words, and so she did not attempt to write any of them. She knew he would hear her meaning anyway.

The following day, she found a newspaper balled up on her desk. Sensing a particular hand in such an odd and inelegant gift, she unwrapped it when no one else was about.

It was an entire stack of green sticky notes — every one of them blank but the top.

"Me, too."