'Freedom rushed over me like an ocean
As your loved ruined me to the core.
I've never died but if you forced me to guess,
This was me raised to life, dead no more.'

"Stay With Me" ~ Cody Fry

~OL~

The very first sensation to enter stage left is not a puckish voice chattering about cars or sunlight or the beeping of a machine. It is not lips touching his face.

No, the first thing to register are bees.

Callen's brow knits. He's not sure what this means at all, the swarming wings over his torso and mountain ridge of his spine.

It is odd, he thinks, that the bees congregate along his upper half but not his legs. They seem to stop just above belly button as if at an invisible line. They're not stinging and the feeling isn't unpleasant, but it's not quite right either.

He realizes why a minute later, the peaceful lack of sound that would be impossible if a hundred or so insects were working away along his skin.

For a while he just lays. Breathes. Listens to the low drone of voices and the sound of wind in the trees outside a window. The way a fresh breeze crests through the flap of curtains and…

And a long sigh.

Callen doesn't even need to open his eyes to identify the sound, though he does.

It takes two tries for the light, meager as it is, not to incinerate behind his lids. Callen makes no sound, though the crease between his brows is deep now, everything sharper and granier than it should be thanks to pain in his back.

"G? Buddy, you with me?"

On the third try, they stay open.

He shifts to looks out that window first, set in the opposite wall across from his feet, to a windy but cloudless morning. It brims with homely cheer, and he's clearly on a ground floor to be able to see individual birds in the dogwood tree outside. They flit around with open beaks, singing.

I can barely hear them. Callen's breath stops. His throat aches with this otherworldly loss, bereft of being able to see the universe's cogs.

"…You with me? Hey, tell the on-call doc I think he's awake for good this time."

"Are you sure? We've played this game a few times before."

"Positive. Thanks, Sharon."

Padded footsteps retreat into the hall.

All lights have been shut off in what Callen finally recognizes as a private hospital room, except for one cozy owl lamp by the door and a light over the machines surrounding his bed. So many machines.

Sunlight is more than enough to see, however, especially when his gaze roams over to a chair planted right in front of his bed.

It's pretty comfortable looking as hospital chairs go: more of a mini recliner, stuffing oozes out of a coffee brown leather arm rest. Someone even threw a fleece blanket over the back of it and a steaming mug of tea sits on the bedside table.

Its occupant isn't asleep. He's leaned on one elbow, staring straight at Callen. This puts them at perfect eye level.

Crutches lie on the floor by his feet, leg bandaged with so many layers and a half boot that he looks like a mummy. Callen's not much better, propped on his side and chest wound tightly to preserve whatever skin it has left. His right arm is in a sling to take pressure off that particular bullet wound.

Sam doesn't speak again, just letting Callen acclimatize to the unfamiliar space and how his own body feels…or doesn't feel.

But now that Callen has found those eyes, he can't look away.

Despite his mouth buzzing with those bees, he tries anyway. "S'm."

Sam's fingers thread through Callen's and he tears up, recognizing this instantly for the gift that it is when neither thought they'd get to do it again. The stars, the cosmos, are silent once more.

But he has Sam—and that's a trade he'd make every time, no questions asked.

Sam, too, keeps his unblinking gaze on Callen. "G."

That's all they say for a long time. They listen together, feeling each other's heartbeats, soaking it all in. Not long enough for Callen to doze off, but long enough for the pain to increase. Sam offers Callen some ice chips and they mute the bees for good. Gorgeous, arctic cold melts down his throat.

"Take it slow, G. Take it slow…"

Sam seems to be searching his face, for what Callen's not sure. Callen himself is having trouble adapting to the fact that he's not dead. That he's not dreaming. This is real.

"Agent Callen!" An older doctor enters and stops dead in the doorway, eyes wide. "I thought Agent Hanna here was pulling my leg about you being awake."

Then he and Sam wait, nervous, staring at Callen without blinking. He feels a bit like a science project.

Maybe they think my brain got scrambled instead of my lungs.

"Welcome to the land of the living and conscious, Agent Callen," says the doctor finally, after an incredulous shake of his head. "Can you hear me okay?"

Callen pops a frail thumbs up, weaker than a newborn kitten.

"He's coherent," Sam confirms. "Answered to his name and everything. Said mine too, so no larynx damage like you were worried about."

The doctor blows out a conspicuous breath of relief. "With the blood loss, we weren't sure…well, let's not dwell on that now. I'm going to do a vitals check, Agent Callen, if that's alright with you."

As if he has a choice. Callen nods.

When the doctor comes in and steps closer, Callen tries to pull away, preserve Sam's dignity if he doesn't want to be seen holding hands with his partner. But Sam's grip tightens into a vice and his eyes flare a warning.

Callen swallows. This must not be the first time Sam has held his hand, as the doctor doesn't even react to the sight, simply murmuring a 'good morning' to Sam.

"Can you feel this?" The doctor prods Callen's fingers inside their sling with a tongue depressor.

"Sure can." His rasp boasts a matching frailty, but the doctor and Sam still light up at the sound of it. His voice makes Sam's mouth go wobbly. "Ouch, by the way."

"Sorry." Then the doctor sees Callen's twinkle of amusement and rolls his eyes. "You secret op types are the worst to treat, you know that?"

"He wouldn't know," Sam snipes, "seeing as he never follows medical advice."

"Ahhh." The doctor quirks a knowing brow. "I've had my fair share of those patients. Though I have to say, I've never seen someone pull through a wound like yours."

"Thanks," says Callen. "I think."

He asks about Callen's pain levels, medication side effects, and explains that the swelling has gone down on both his back and skin, enough for an upcoming skin graft. Even the blisters have faded. A feeding tube in his stomach pumps him with nutrients to give his sensitive lungs and trachea time to heal, and when Callen looks down, even he can see that he's lost weight. A stronger dose of medication is injected into his IV.

The doctor is oddly flushed while he fiddles with the needle, and Callen gets the sense that he's in awe of being able to have this conversation with a very much alive Callen at all.

Callen can relate.

He promises to take the tube out and retrieve Callen's rehabilitation specialist later.

"You and your team are a miracle, Agent Callen," says the doctor, blunt, and then he's gone.

This declaration doesn't seem to surprise Sam. Callen has a lot of questions, about how long he's been here, Kensi and Deeks, how they ended up in what looks like a US hospital, how they survived at all

But something grey lingers in Sam's eyes, like the poisonous aftermath ash of a great fire, and Callen keeps his mouth shut. It's the same look his partner wore after Michelle died and he went after her killer, heedless of due process. Tragedy and sorrow follow in its wake.

"You're here," Callen whispers.

Sam's eyes pinch. "G…"

"We're both still here."

Callen isn't sleepy or groggy like other times he's been in hospital. Judging by an unhooked ventilator in the corner, Callen guesses that up until now, possibly for travel, they were keeping him sedated on purpose.

There are pieces…fragments…not clear enough to hold onto as actual memories of being visited.

He's not exactly wide awake either, alert enough to read the welling line in Sam's bloodshot eyes. None of the tears fall, but that's more of a knife twist in Callen's stomach than if he acted hysterical.

Callen squeezes Sam's hand.

At this tender pressure, a whisper of extra touch to the back of his knuckles, whatever Sam has weighed in his mind finally reaches a sum total—

"You gave up on me."

The words are soft, spoken into a gauzy hush. As if raising their voices will result in this all being a dream and they'll go back to Callen dead and Sam screaming at the world. That Callen remembers perfectly well. It's his last real memory of being on the dinghy.

Sam looks more devastated than disappointed. The ash falls in piles to create snowflake coffins.

At first Callen's instinct is to make a joke, that it wasn't his choice to get injured and sent adrift at sea.

The hurt laced through Sam's tone won't allow it.

"Sam…"

"You stopped fighting."

"I didn't want to, but we had nothing to fight for." Callen regrets the words instantly when Sam's face falls. "There was no statistical likelihood of our being rescued happening so I faced reality and prepared for it. That's my job. The fact we're here at all is a fluke, right?"

Sam stays silent.

"Right?" Whisper-talking is a scratchy endeavour on Callen's throat, but he forges ahead with brazen insistence.

It's toeing at a line Callen doesn't cross often, considering he doesn't have all the information about what Sam has been through in the last…however long he's been here.

But he won't let his partner wallow, refuse to understand this responsibility that Callen shoulders, every single time they get called out into the field.

Sam looks away. "That blue whale, the one who surfaced by our dinghy, was tagged with motion sensors for tracking. When it bumped into something on the surface, researchers got a notification. It was a long shot, but Hetty convinced the Navy to investigate anyway."

"The…" Callen's thoughts blank for a second. "The whale saved our lives?"

"I didn't believe it at first either. Talk about a one-in-a-zillion long shot."

And there's a story Callen would pay big money to hear in its entirety someday. It's so far fetched he almost laughs. Eric will love it.

Then the first of Sam's tears falls.

"You gave up on me."

Suddenly, Callen hears the real meaning behind these words.

He replaces the emphasis, not on 'gave up'…but on 'me.'

Callen's not sure what to do with all that it means, yet the boundaries of his heart creak in their attempt to hold this truth.

It won't last, and perhaps that's the point. Love is to be given away. To pretend he can hoard it for a rainy day is fallacy of the highest order and a disservice to Sam, no matter how much he pushed Callen away.

"That's my line," Callen says, barely a breath. Because they've broken each other's hearts, Sam in the months before this case, Callen on the dinghy.

"I'm sorry, G."

Callen shudders, a motion scraped from his soul. "So am I."

"Where you go, I go. Been doing some thinking and…from now on, I'm not leaving you on your own. No more trying to go it alone on either of our parts. You got that?"

Callen wants to jab at SEALs and their overextended sense of honour, but he just tugs Sam's hand closer to his face. It lightly bumps his chin.

Sam laughs, only it's a wet sound and Callen shakes Sam's hand to stop it at once.

"You meant it, what you said on the dinghy."

Sam squares his shoulders. "Of course I meant it. And everything about what I've been trying to do is wrong."

"We still need each other." Callen scratches at his chest. "And that's okay."

Sam is silent for a minute. He looks out the window, then the hallway, then at a plethora of monitors over the bed.

"You died, you know," he says.

Callen does know, for reasons he's not sure he'll ever be able to talk about. It's something sacred, shored up inside the barren rooms of his heart for him to examine later. When Sam does not look like the one thing getting him out of bed in the morning suddenly vanished.

"We're talking legally dead. Four times."

"I'm right here." Callen's still whispering, in deference to his busted throat, but it makes Sam smile anyway. This is much better than the not-laughing.

Callen hates to burst it, knowing he has to ask.

Sam reads his disquiet without him having to say a word. "I'm sorry, man. It's too soon to tell if the…the paralysis on your lower half is permanent."

"Fluid build up? From the bullet?"

Sighing again, Sam nods. "It applied pressure on your vertebrae nerve endings when spinal fluid built up into a balloon around your spinal column. Just draining that without killing you took over an hour of your five-hour surgery time, let alone fishing Torales' bullet out."

The delay is one that would normally smother Callen with a pillow of shame until he asphyxiates on his own selfishness, but it is only then that he dares to think about Kensi and Deeks.

"Did they…their bodies…" Callen struggles to ask. "Any remains?"

Sam leans forward and flashes him another smile. "They're alive, G."

Callen pants out a shocked sound. He's so dizzy he has to close his eyes for a minute. A rattled chuffing sound begins to fill the room and Callen realizes it's him. Trying not to lose it.

"Maybe we should wait to talk about this, G. You need rest—"

"No, please. I have to know."

Sam eyes him carefully. It's the assessing gaze Callen has felt a thousand times on cases, out in the field.

"They're both alive," he says again, quiet.

"How?" Callen demands, loud as he possibly can. Sam shushes him until the near-hyperventilating calms down. "I mean, we heard them get shot. And what about the explosions?"

"Both of those questions have the same answer—Kensi."

Callen stares at his partner, trying to process this. The privilege of being alive at all hits him like it's the very first time, a prisoner freed from a life sentence.

"She blew up Torales' compound," Sam declares proudly.

And Callen not-laughs too. "What a Kensi Blye move."

"Yep. Told us the whole story on the plane ride home." Sam adjusts the blanket where it's fallen off Callen's shoulder, a mother hen to the end. "She managed to overpower one of the guards by yanking her head forward, and with his hand still in her hair he fell head first down the staircase. Those two shots? That was her killing the guards with their own guns, G."

Callen's jaw drops. It's unfair surprise, for this is Kensi—if anyone can use a disadvantage like being dragged around to overpower someone, it's her.

"One of her bullets accidentally ricocheted off a barrel of gun powder hidden under tarps in the corner, a special kind used for making shrapnel bombs, and started a fire," Sam goes on. "She put it out in a frenzy before realizing she could use it to escape and take Torales down in one."

"W's a big fire."

Sam laughs, for real this time. "It was a lot of gunpowder. Turns out Torales had a nice little rainy-day stash of it in the storage-slash-execution wing."

"How much are we talking?"

"Somewhere in the ballpark of three hundred kilos."

Callen can't whistle but he huffs. "We didn't do very much, did we? She saved the day."

"No thanks to Kensi making homemade bombs with the stuff. After carrying Rhea and Deeks to safety far from the compound on a tarp—"

"Wait, wait, wait. They didn't kill Rhea Carson?" Callen is prepared for any number of insane details in this story, especially since it's Kensi they're talking about, but Rhea making it out alive is not one of them.

"She was being held in her old cell with a live camera feed, as a last ditch bargaining chip to draw Hetty out. The thirty minute delay between Kensi escaping and those explosions was her saving their lives. She tried to come for us…but by then all the stairwells were burned. The place went up in smoke faster than Kensi expected."

It sure did. Callen still can't get over the carnage those bombs wreaked.

"She thought we were dead," Callen realizes. "Just like we thought they were dead."

Sam runs a palm over his bare head. "Yeah, she did. Nearly tore her apart to walk away and run for our original exfil spot. Help was already on the way by that point."

"I'm glad she did. Deeks?"

Just his name is enough to sober Sam, chin dipped low. Eyes troubled.

The response makes Callen's heart monitor beep faster. "Sam."

"I told you, G. He's alive and chatty as ever."

"But…?"

Sam cants his head. "But they had to do reconstructive surgery on his face. His airways were completely closed over on one side and his brain wasn't getting enough air. He nearly suffocated in his own blood, like you. Doctors aren't sure…well, they're not sure he'll ever see out of his left eye again. The bone nicked his retina."

Oh. Callen blinks fast and something tickles his cheek. He absently wonders if there's a spider on his face. The want throbs along with his injuries, to see his team. We all went through surgery. And we all made it out of this ambush alive.

But only by a hair, and there is no swallowing this fact.

Sam says it for him—"Between Kensi's crushed hand that may never flex properly, my leg, Deeks' eye and processing delay, and your…well…"—then falters for a blinding second. Callen strokes a thumb over the back of Sam's hand to get him talking again. It's strange, hearing him do Callen's job of voicing ugly truths. "We might never work another day in our lives, though they want to award Kensi the Medal of Honour for what she did."

After this there is another drawn out silence, like an elastic band stretched too far. A dangerous silence. More tickles roll down Callen's cheeks, splatters that warm his skin where it has chilled over the course of this conversation.

A low noise rumbles at the back of Sam's throat before he reaches up to caress a hand over Callen's jaw. He's startled when Sam's dark fingers come away wet.

More spiders wind salty webs across the stitches in his lip and a thunderous heartbeat where it roils under his flesh.

"We're alive," says Callen. "All of us."

The words feel like a fairy tale. He half wonders if someone is going to waltz in and snatch it away, say "gotcha!" and reveal that Sam's an illusion of smoke who died long ago. That Callen is the only one left.

Sam just gazes at his partner. "Yeah, G. We are. And if Hetty has any say, we're going to stay that way for a long time yet."

"I heard you," Callen breathes, and though it makes zero sense to anyone but him, Sam still wells up right along with him. "I heard you."

There's no way to possibly convey what this means, the nuances of a near death experience that doctors would probably blame on his synapses firing all at once when his heart stopped. Maybe it wasn't real or maybe it was.

For Callen did not just hear Sam's voice, the one that stayed with him until it was all over—he heard who Sam is. He heard his clanging atoms and the music of his soul.

It's a soul he can trust, with every puzzle piece of himself.

Sam does a very strange thing in reply.

The touch itself isn't strange, for this is Sam and Callen has no secrets or mistrust around his partner anymore, but strange in that Sam has never done it before:

Starting from the wrist, Sam slides his other hand up Callen's cheek. Sam avoids the gauze taped around Callen's head, the matching concussion wound, to thumb at his ear, then the skin at the outside corner of his brow.

Callen stills. The slow touch circles across goosebumps forming along his temple.

"I had an epiphany," says Sam, his voice fragile but whole again, "when you stopped breathing the third time."

Callen's entire world comes down to that hand and brown eyes watching every twitch of his face. "Oh yeah?"

"I'm not losing you, G. Not for anything. And I realized…I've got a big boat, too much space for one person."

It's most certainly not, but Callen nods. "That thing is pretty big."

"Probably bigger than a ramshackle apartment over Deeks' bar."

"For sure. You've got more floor space than the average LA condo."

A smug look steals across Sam's face at this outright lie, a half grin that just reaches his eyes. "How do you feel about barbecues?"

Another warm tickle webs across Callen's face, but this one is on his lips and with it he feels like he could fly. The smile recharges his heart. "Only if I get to hog Eric's sushi."

"You're an animal."

"Takes one to know one."

"I have no idea what's going to happen next, what we'll be able to do…" Sam's face brims with affection. "But I don't want to do it without you. How does napping on the coast sound?"

These words are kind of ludicrous, is Callen's first thought. He just escaped dying in the middle of the ocean, so why on God's green earth would he ever want to spend his days trawling around the sea?

But Sam's eyes are a radiator of warmth and his fingers wrap around Callen's like a promise and he doesn't have to wonder if Sam wants him anymore, and that little half smile has at last stretched into the real thing, and this intentional callback to a life they didn't think they'd get to live is doing funny things to his heart.

And suddenly…

Suddenly Callen hears it. The music is faint, barely there, but after what they just lived through, he'd know it anywhere:

That trill of approaching hope.

It's Sam. It's been Sam all along.

They're in a hospital, both facing the very real possibility they may never walk again. They'll be lucky to get a desk job, let alone be out in the field, and that's not even counting the emotional wounds painted in lurid, dark shadows around their eyes.

Still, even still, Callen thinks that if it were night and all the lights of his room turned out, he'd still be able to see Sam. He is a light source, the bright star Callen has been navigating with from the day he began to realize Sam has no intention of leaving. That he will not walk away the second Callen becomes an inconvenience beyond salvaging.

The proposition, the offer Sam is extending here, rings around the room and Callen's thoughts.

He wants this. He wants me.

It finally clicks that he's crying, that Sam has followed these breadcrumbs too, faithful to the end. He wipes away a few more with a tender thumb under Callen's eye.

Callen makes one last penny fountain wish.

The words warble around the room in harmony with Sam's…

"I thought you'd never ask."