December 16, 2012
He's seventeen.
A year shy of aging out.
A year shy of becoming his own person.
A year shy of being able to disappear like smoke.
He's excited, though no one knows. There isn't a soul that has any idea what he plans after graduating. There isn't a teacher, a guidance counselor, and certainly no one at his latest foster home.
But in early December, there's a girl.
It's six weeks until winter formal. He doesn't go to those things though. Hates them. Not his style. He's never been in a foster home or school long enough to make friends, so he barely blinks at the sparkling advertisements posted on bulletin boards and doors as he heads to biology.
Until the snowflakes start showing up.
He finds the first one in his textbook. He shrugs it off. They share textbooks, is the thing, and it's entirely possible that Jess, his bench partner, left it there the last time she took the book to study. Or it could be from years before, tucked away in the pages of a bored student. He's not even sure why he pulls it out and tucks it away in his things.
The second one pops up wedged into the corner of his locker. Probably a mistake, he thinks. Maybe someone caught on that he's a bit of a Grinch about this whole winter formal thing and is trying to change his mind. He very carefully hides it with the first.
There's a third in his backpack, a fourth in the pocket of his jeans after gym class. Five is in his math notebook, six tucked between pencils in his bag. It's driving him nuts and it's terribly intriguing at the same time. He's even kept a list at home, trying to work out who would have had access to all of these places. Some of them, like the locker, is public access. But places like his jeans, or his notebooks? Well, that requires a little more finesse.
By the time seven comes around, it's the last day to buy tickets for the winter formal. Two weeks, seven snowflakes, and he's no closer to figuring out who the culprit is. He hates it. He's always been good at puzzles, knew exactly who was stealing the milk and changing the television stations before his foster parents caught Charlie doing both (Magpie, they call him, 'cause he hides things. They're thinking it's an attention thing, him and Mike.) But this has him absolutely stumped.
And he doesn't like it.
He finds out on Friday, between third period math and his fourth period English. That's when Karen finds him.
"Hi," she says shyly.
He blinks a little. He knows Karen. They have classes together. They don't speak much – then again, he doesn't really speak to anyone – but he knows her. He watches, is the thing. Pays attention. He knows the head cheerleader is definitely not flouting convention and has half the football team wrapped around her finger. He also knows that the captain of the championship volleyball team isn't gay at all, he's just been seeing the biggest goody-two-shoes on the down low, as per her request.
And Karen? Well, she's average. She's pretty, in the way high school girls are, and she's pretty smart. She sticks to herself though, draws a lot. He's seen some of her artwork displayed around the school.
"Hi," he answers as they fall into step. English is across the school from his math class. It's a long walk. He doesn't think much of it though. Karen sits two seats behind him. Had some great insights on Romeo and Juliet last week.
She's biting her lip. He can see it out of the corner of his eye. He's got standoffish down to a science, can make even the most persistent people run, so he's not sure why he isn't pulling it out now. She looks nervous, and he knows it would be a simple snap of his fingers to send her running. Instead, he huffs out a sigh and tugs her into the very quiet home ec wing.
"Karen?"
She blinks. "You know my name."
Oh, the snarky responses.
"Did you need something?" he asks gently instead. Gently. Like he cares. Like he doesn't want to hurt her. Where is his 'bad boy' attitude when he really needs it?
She's shaking. He can see it. Vibrating as she reaches into her books. He knows his face is shocked when she pulls a snowflake from the pages of Shakespeare.
"Mindy said you didn't do these things, that I was stupid to even think about it or ask or whatever, and then there's the whole I'm a girl and it's totally not socially acceptable but-"
"Karen."
"Will you go to winter formal with me?"
He blinks. Shocked. Absolutely shocked. It is literally the last thing he expected. He takes the snowflake slowly, like he can't process what's going on. Which, unfortunately, is rather accurate. He doesn't know Karen, certainly can't say he likes her, but she's standing in front of him, in a deserted hallway, chewing a hole through her lip. He's not exactly sure why the next words come out of his mouth.
"Sure. I'll go."
Her whole face lights up and while he's certainly not looking for a girl, or even attachments when he's so damn close to aging out, objectively, she glows.
"Yeah?" she asks, voice suddenly so quietly soft.
"Yeah," he finds himself saying. "Yeah."
She's absolutely beaming as they walk to English.
Kensi doesn't expect anything the next day. She's known Callen for a stupidly long time in relation to others in her life, so she knows that after an intense evening, after the sharing that went on, he's going to need space. So when she doesn't see him when she gets into the hacienda, she really doesn't think anything of it. She's not even upset when there's no text, no acknowledgment.
She is surprised to find a snowflake tucked under the folder on her desk.
Sam and Callen are missing – not unique, they don't always work together, all four of them – but Deeks is at his desk and she holds up the white decoration accusingly.
"You?"
Deeks actually startles, like he had no idea she'd just walked in. Except she's not an idiot, and though she's started this Thing with Callen, she and Deeks have always had a weird connection. Actually, sometimes she wonders if it was always going to be one or the other. Then she firmly shuts down that line of thinking.
Deeks is shaking his head. "Nope."
She arches an eyebrow. He'd joke like this. He's been trying to get her to go to some ski cabin. She thinks maybe if she and Callen weren't so invested in what they're doing – because that's not a mind-boggling scenario in itself – she'd have said yes a long time ago. Hell, he'd invited her mother, aware she and Julia have been trying to mend some serious fences here.
His hands go up. "Not me. Tackiest Christmas decoration ever."
Her eyebrow wings higher. "There's a part of Christmas you don't like?"
"I don't like talking about it."
"Oh really?" And he had to know. He had to know she'd push. It makes her smile, sometimes. She's pretty sure he does it on purpose.
"I had a bad experience in kindergarten, okay?"
Kensi laughs.
Thing is though, it doesn't answer her question. It certainly doesn't explain the way she continues to find them all day. After the one on her desk, she finds one on the seat of her car and one in the glove box when she reaches in for her stash of Twinkies. Well, Deeks finds the one in the glove box because she gets cranky on a suspect mid-morning. He knows her car too well.
"Maybe you have a secret admirer," Nell says at lunch. She and Kensi try and make it out of the hacienda together at least once a week. A girl bonding thing, because Kensi sure doesn't have many girlfriends. Neither does Nell for that matter.
"We're not in high school," Kensi fires back stabbing her salad viciously. She brought it up, she really did, because there was one tucked in her bag when she went to get her wallet for lunch. Nell had gotten this mushy smile on her face. It had dropped fast when the analyst had caught sight of Kensi's confusion.
"No, but we're in an office of secret agents."
Kensi rolls her eyes. "That go elementary playground?" Then her face turns ashen. "You don't think it's Wong, do you?"
"The tech?" Nell shrugs when Kensi nods. "He is young."
"I know! This kind of thing would totally be his thing."
Nell snorts. Then she cocks her head to the side. "You don't think it's Callen?"
"Not his style," Kensi replies without thinking. "And we baked cookies together last night. Space day."
It takes a minute for Kensi to really realize what she's just spilled. Nell looks positively gleeful.
"Is that what the cool kids are calling it these days?" she murmurs.
To her utter horror, Kensi feels her cheeks flushing.
Nell laughs. "Come on. We knew. We all know."
It doesn't stem Kensi's blush. In fact, it makes it worse.
"Kensi-" Nell actually looks a little alarmed now, like this is entirely not the reaction she'd anticipated. Not that it's a far thought. Just, it's Callen and she's Kensi and-
God it's a mess.
"It's not," Nell says, startling Kensi. "It's not a mess. Kensi-"
She doesn't go on. Kensi chews her lip. Twenty minutes ago, hell, twenty seconds ago, she'd been happy. Excited even. Now that she's said something to Nell-
Well, she thinks maybe she just made things really, really real. It's no longer just her and Callen, sharing – hot – kisses and Christmas traditions. Now it's actually a Thing. A real, live, capital-T Thing because here she is, girl-talking about it. And she can feel it all clawing up her throat, all her worries, concerns, everything that she's been trying not to think about.
Nell huffs out a breath. "Okay, um. I have something that's going to scare you."
Kensi's already rapidly beating heart jumps again as Nell leans across the tiny bistro table.
"It was always going to be you."
"What?"
Nell rolls her eyes. "Okay. Maybe not always but, there was this choice?" She huffs at herself. "I always got the sense that Callen was deliberately choosing not to get involved with anyone. Like, he had options and just- just didn't."
Kensi rolls her eyes. "It's not exactly like the job is conducive to a healthy dating life."
"I don't think so," Nell says. "Look, there's- there's always something there. I mean, you and Deeks, it's kind of obvious, but you and Callen? It's subtle. You have to look for it." She swallows in this way Kensi knows means what's about to come out of her mouth may not be the nicest thing, or even something Kensi wants to hear. "Early on, I thought-" She shakes her head. "But then there was you, and, there was Eric. So."
Kensi's eyebrow climbs her forehead. "There was Eric?"
Nell's red now, as red as Kensi's pretty sure she was a few moments before. "Um. Nothing. Nothing. I have to go."
Kensi grins as the analyst scrambles away.
. . . . .
The fourth one pops up in her inbox while she plows through paperwork that afternoon. She finds one buried in an autopsy report from a different case, and Eric unwittingly passes one along in a list of suspects for her and Deeks to comb through while Sam pops undercover with Callen as backup.
She's got all six of them spread across her desk when Callen and Sam return, looking a little worse for wear. She wrinkles her nose. "He run?"
"Don't they always?" Callen asks, slapping Sam's shoulder. The bigger man glares and winces. Callen's grinning as they break away. "How many?"
"Snowflakes?" she asks, surprised. It's not exactly something she thought he'd ask, and definitely no in the open office. He doesn't even look curious so much as… Intrigued? "Um. Six."
He seems to nod, slipping around the desk behind her to his own seat. He shocks her when his hand skims her back. Her back arches, just a little. It's sensitive. He's smirking as he settles in his seat and reaches into his desk drawer. "How about seven?"
For a federal agent that does undercovers for a living, she knows the emotion is stupidly clear on her face. She's surprised and touched and so utterly and completely confused. It's intimate almost romantic, considering who she's talking about. She's not even sure she's processing the information. "You?"
He shrugs as she looks at the newest one, folded this time. She picks at the edges for a moment, folding them a little, then she opens it. There's a picture inside, a decorated tree. She looks up at him, confused.
"Thought maybe it was my turn to propose a tradition."
"Oh?" It's the best she can do. It's the closest she can get to a sentence.
"You need a tree, right?"
"I haven't had a tree in years," she murmurs absently. She doesn't know what to do, what to think, because this isn't-
"Let's get a tree."
He's leaning back in his seat, pretty far from her. His tone is carefree, like this doesn't matter, like if she laughs it off and says no there won't be a problem, there won't be fallout. They're two colleagues, having a discussion in the office.
She can't seem to make heads or tails of any of it.
"You know how to make these?" The words just come out, she's not even sure she's ready to say them. And she hadn't even known he could make snowflakes. Those were things taught in elementary schools, long before cynicism sets in.
Callen shrugs. "I got bored last night."
After she left. After the cookies were done. Her heart clenches in this weird way, part of her wishing she'd stayed to help him battle insomnia. And what the actual hell because they're not there. They're so far from there. There are a million other things to think of, obstacles and milestones before she can even think of a sleepover where there's –
"So. Tree hunting. Coming?"
Kensi looks down at the snowflake she's been worrying in her hands, thinks of the rest of them on her blotter.
"Yes."
My apologies to those who hate high school stereotypes. Any relations in the process of writing this piece of fiction are not meant to be offensive.
ERRORS ARE MINE. KAY THANKS BYE. Ugh. I'm actually sick of saying that.
Again, not sure when I'm going to get to the next one. Hopefully it'll be easier than this one, simply because it's kind of one of those chapters that doesn't generally take much to work at. But, with the way this whole fic has gone, who knows. It's so dependent on how much time I manage to get too. I'm hitting the cottage again next weekend and I tend to get a lot done while I'm up there.
Cross your fingers. 'Cause I'm sure as bananas crossing mine!
Did you know we're five months until Christmas?! AGAIN.
