December 22, 2012

It's Christmas morning. He's been up for hours, if he's honest, but it's the laughter that finally jolts him. It's his youngest foster sister and she's been excited, loud. It's a happier home than he's ever been to.

Laura is bright and happy, She's five and he'd long ago figured out that there's nothing actually 'foster' about her. She's a surprise biological daughter of those he's currently calling parents. He likes them. He likes all of them. But he hasn't stayed long at any of the foster homes, so he's trying hard not to get attached. It's too bad Laura doesn't seem to get that.

And the privacy of a closed door certainly doesn't seem to stop her either.

"G! It's Christmas!"

He buries his head back into his pillows, biding his time. One of Laura's favourite games is to startle the teenagers awake when they're trying to sleep in.

"Christmas!"

He grins, tasting cotton. It is a comfortable bed, but even that can't seem to help his insomnia.

"G!" She's whining now. He knows these steps. Whining, then jumping. He needs the jumping.

He feels her climb onto the bed. He waits. He's patient. He always has been. He can easily and definitely wait out a five-year-old. He feels her steady her tiny feet on either side of his body.

Then he attacks.

Laura squeals, a loud happy sound as he yanks her tiny body down and rolls it beneath him. He starts tickling in earnest and her body jerks and writhes beneath his, His own chuckles spill over. She has that effect on people. Eventually, she yells for mercy and he drops beside her.

"No. G, no. There's presents."

"It's Christmas, Laur. Presents are kind of mandatory."

She rolls her eyes. It's a shock to see her do it. She's too young to have attitude and he crawls his fingers up her side. It makes her giggle. She flips to her stomach, dropping her head to his chest. His eyes slam shut. Who is he kidding? He's already attached.

There's a knock on the doorframe that catches their attention.

"You coming?" Portia asks, moody as all anything.

He rolls his eyes – and gets a shocking glimpse as to where Laura may have gotten it from – then yanks himself from bed. He gets Laura's ankle on the way up until he can lift her into his arms. When they make it to the living room, the whole 'family' is there. There's seven of them in total, and they're spread over every available surface. Even Portia finds a place to sit.

They don't actually get presents. As a teen, he's a little more aware of the financial strains the family's under with five kids. It doesn't matter though. They've done what they can. Each child has a stocking. Packed tight.

It takes them an hour to get through it all, but they all end up with a small pile of gifts. It's so pleasant and content that he doesn't even argue when Laura loops her cheap feather boa around his neck. It's bright pink, stereotypical, but he doesn't care. Laura's grinning and laughing and there's general holiday cheer.

It's a good Christmas.


OSP does Secret Santa different than most. They don't sit around in a happy family circle. On the contrary, like everything else they tend to do as undercover agents, they make it into a game of skill.

It starts with Deeks, ripping into a holly-patterned package in the bullpen following their morning briefing. He's like a kid as he tears the paper and breaks the tape on the box. It's a smile that falls off his face, however, the minute he starts pulling everything out of that box. It turns out, it's a desert survival kit.

Kensi's in stitches before he pulls everything from the box.

Eric's next, and he comes racing down the stairs with the latest edition of a first person shooter game, gleefully showing it to Deeks. Kensi rolls her eyes at the childishness this time, glancing up the stairs and finding Nell looking on with an almost-disturbing affection on her face. When the petite woman meets Kensi's gaze there's a little blush that spreads across the analyst's face.

The next gift, it turns out, is Nell's. Kensi's there for it, both women having just returned from lunch. Kensi's the one that catches sight of the snowflake-embossed paper and she grins as she heads over to it. She's been a bit anxious to know what on earth Deeks managed to find for Nell.

Nell grins unrepentantly as she lifts the box. Like Kensi, Nell's not a shaker and instead, she runs her fingers along the edges.

"Nell," Kensi prompts. She wants to see.

Nell's blushing though and it kind of takes Kensi off-guard. There's no reason for Nell to be blushing with Deeks as her Secret Santa. Not when she has a Thing with Eric.

"What aren't you telling me?"

Instead, Nell glances around. Ops is empty, a rarity, but not unheard of. There are plenty of other places that analysts do their work around the rather massive OSP HQ. So Nell slips her fingers carefully and delicately under the tape keeping her gift hidden until she can pull it away in one piece. The box inside is plain, much like Deeks' and Kensi finds her heart sinking. She'd been hoping for something infinitely more creative.

But Nell breathes out heavily and Kensi's even more sure she's missing something. In fact, Nell's fingers are shaking as she slides them into the flap keeping the box closed. What she withdraws is exactly not what Kensi's anticipating.

It's a ball. A Christmas ball. It's glass, she thinks, clear, anyway, and she can make out something inside. Nell holds it up. It's a picture, she realizes, a picture of them. A picture of the team. It's from the previous year, she thinks, in front of Bertha the Palm. They look happy and rosy-cheeked, probably more than a little intoxicated but from the entirely mushy look on Nell's face, it doesn't matter.

"Nell?" Kensi prompts quietly again.

"Eric and Deeks switched names," she says and shakes her head when Kensi quite obviously goes to ask the clear follow up question. "Eric and I were talking, you know, back and forth here and I didn't realize until after everything I'd told him."

"Everything you'd told him," Kensi echoes dubiously.

Nell nods. "Like that my parents have sent me a photo ornament every year. It's not usually big, actually because my family's so big the picture turns out totally tiny, but it's something since I can't get back and see them anymore. Since I don't really see them anymore."

They all work. Constantly. Even Sam, who is really the only one of them with real family that he sees regularly. Kensi's been trying with Julia, but even she knows that it's not the same. "And you told Eric?"

Of all the people Kensi expects Nell to spill too, hilariously Eric isn't the first person she'd think of. Nell is almost especially tight-lipped around him, maybe, Kensi's starting to think, because she has this blurting habit.

"It's like surfer voodoo. There were elf costumes and mistletoe kisses and then non-mistletoe kisses and-"

"You've been holding out on me!"

Nell's eyes widen. "No. Kensi, no, it's not-"

"Non-mistletoe kisses?"

"No, stop," Nell says. "It's not- It's not a Thing. You and Callen have a Thing."

"Yes," Kensi replies, dragging out the word. There's no use in denying it, for one thing, and for another, it feels damn good to say. She and Callen have a Thing. A Good Thing.

"Eric and I don't have a Thing. Capital or lower case."

She's inches from making a Shakespeare reference, knows that if Deeks were beside her, that's exactly what he'd do. Nell is in denial, serious, full-on-protesting denial. "Hence the non-mistletoe kisses."

"Exactly." Her eyes widen. "Wait, no."

Oh. Oh this is good.

"You and Callen have a Thing," Nell says again. "A Christmas thing. With mistletoe kisses."

Kensi blushes. She hadn't thought anyone had been privy to that. When she and Nell had first talked about the Thing she has with Callen, Kensi had just assumed her friend had seen something. It wouldn't be far from the truth, the way Nell is shockingly and terrifyingly good with people.

"Eric and I don't have a Thing. A mistletoe kiss, yes, maybe some lapses in judgment but not-"

"Why not?"

Nell blinks. "What?"

"Why not have a thing with Eric? Weren't you just encouraging me to take a chance on my Really Good Thing, by the way, with Callen?"

"It's not the same."

"Um, what?"

"I- It's different."

Kensi looks significantly to the ornament that's still spinning, reflecting some interesting patterns onto the floor. "Don't think so."

"It's just a present."

"A really good present," Kensi retorts. "A really good, really thoughtful present." She even reaches for it and Nell turns it over easily. "Nell, this is us."

The analyst turns redder. "Yeah. That's the other thing."

"Other thing?"

Nell looks away, tucks the ornament back into the box after she gets it back from Kensi's reverent fingers. "I don't get to see my family. Which is why I take Christmas with you guys so seriously."

It doesn't take a genius to fill in all the blanks. They are Nell's family, the only family she has. But it inexplicably sticks with her well through Sam's discovery of a very expensive gift card to an exclusive LA restaurant and an afternoon of extremely boring paperwork. It isn't until much later in the afternoon – she is very distracted by Nell's little bombshell as well as the little hiccup of her and Eric and their Thing – that she realizes she hasn't seen Callen all day.

Granted, it's not really new. Hell, it's not even new for the last month. It does put her back up, a little. It has historically meant that there's something afoot.

Sure enough, her phone chimes half an hour before she's set to log off.

Upstairs. Past ops. Sixth door on the left.

It's Callen's number, so she really doesn't think much of it. Instead, she grabs the envelope she's been hiding in her bag – neither of the boxes he'd shaken when they'd wrapped presents had been his, she'd made sure of that – and follows the directions she's given. It's a closed room, abandoned. The hacienda is massive so there are plenty of empty rooms and abandoned corridors. She knocks, maybe out of habit, before she pushes open the door.

And walks into a veritable winter wonderland.

She gasps as she looks around, steps further in. She misses the string tied maybe six inches above the floor but she's so deep in wonder that she's moving too slow for it to trip her. What it does do is tips a bucket over her head. A bucket of fake snow. She's laughing before she realizes it, kicking at the stuff and watching it settle over the trees and makeshift nature that's been moved into the room.

"Good present?"

She spins to find Callen leaning against the doorframe, a soft look in his eyes she never sees. "It's- Callen, what did you do?"

"Called in a couple of favours," he says.

"A couple of favours? You made it snow. In LA." She is absolutely flabbergasted.

Now he looks anxious. Not nervous, but definitely like there's something he's more than embarrassed to admit. "I made you a promise."

"A promise?" Her voice is utterly breathless. "What promise?"

"Your snow memory," he says, stepping into the room. He closes the door behind him, locks it too.

She searches her brain. She's been searing plenty of what they've been doing into her memory, but she's coming up empty handed. She must look as confused as she feels because he steps towards her again, reaching out to shake some of the fake flakes from her hair.

"You got engaged to Jack in the snow."

She's surprised by two things simultaneously: the easy way he says it, and the lack of stabbing pain when she hears it. Okay, three things, because she sure as hell didn't expect that to come out of his mouth. And it does hurt, of course, as Jack-related things are wont to do, but it doesn't make her double over. Instead, she merely blinks as his fingers brush over the shell of her ear.

"So you brought me snow?"

He shrugs again, and gone is the tenderness now. His eyes are shuttered again. "You had a bad memory. Didn't we start all of this to make new memories? Good memories?"

She jumps to reassure him, even as her heart leaps at the implication. "It's- Callen, I don't- I can't-" She huffs, frustrated with her inability to find the words. "My present feels so-"

"You are my Secret Santa."

She laughs, the ice cracked, though not broken. There are still a million things, a million emotions stuck in her throat.

He gave her snow.

She feels entirely inadequate as she reaches into her bag and withdraws the green envelope.

"Not a box." He shakes the envelope anyway and makes her laugh again. He reaches inside and extracts his gift, his mouth splitting into a wide grin as he reads them. "Tickets! Lakers and Clippers."

"You and Sam," she says, because she doesn't for an instant think he'd want to take her. She can't say she's the biggest basketball fan anyway.

"Good tickets."

She blushes and reaches out without her conscious permission, picking at the sleeve of the t-shirt he wears. "You gave me snow."

There aren't words, not for this. A bad memory made good when she sure as hell could not have believed it possible. They're in LA, and he still made it snow.

So she reaches over and she kisses him, slow and long and deep and totally not caring that they're still in OSP. The door is locked and he gave her snow. More than that, he gave her a good memory.

Again.


First and foremost: errors. Mine. Always. Kthxbai.

This one turned out weird. It was supposed to be originally about stockings, and then TwilightPony21 suggested the gift for Kensi and then Nell wanted her say – I'm honestly not sure what happened in there – so this is how it turned out.

Here's to hoping Callen doesn't come across as too mushy in all this. I don't think so, but the idea of him presenting Kensi with such a sentimental gift can very easily be a tipping point. Hopefully I've got him playing it off well enough that he doesn't seem like he's gone too soft.

AND! IT'S ANOTHER CHAPTER! I cannot tell you how excited I am, because number one, we're inching closer to my all-time favourite traditions and two, I'M ALMOST DONE!

Massive thanks to all of you who are reviewing and continue to do so. And for your patience. It makes me so happy to know that you guys would much rather me do justice to the story and the characters than worry about timing. It is a massive pressure off my shoulders and it's allowed me to continue to enjoy writing these two together. You guys are making this a worth-while ride.

TP – I owe you the damn world. Once and forever.

PS: TUMBLR AND TWITTER FOLLOWERS. You got a special excerpt post today. Kind of more of a missing scene. Between last chapter and this one. Go find it. Like an Easter egg. Except totally not.