What the fuck is he doing?
It's a question he asks himself almost constantly now, because somehow he has strayed so very far from the man he has been his entire life. When did G Callen start waking up to someone beside him? Start missing her presence on the nights they spent apart? Start waiting for someone after long days at OSP, start making breakfast and dinner for someone, start sleeping through the night?
He can't remember the last time he was just himself around a woman. No aliases or lies built upon lies, just himself and Kensi and a comfortable sureness. Her head fits with a graceful familiarity against the crook of his neck and his arms come around her easily, and there are no words that have to be said on the nights either one of them comes back late from a stakeout or assignment, exhausted and worn, to find the other up waiting; no explanations needed when their phones go off shrilly at 4 a.m., calling them into OSP, and they groggily climb out of bed in tandem.
The unsettling thing about it is that it happens so effortlessly, so inconspicuously, that he's hardly even registered how entwined into his life Kensi has become. Every so often he has to check himself, make sure he's not stuck in some surreal dream, because a part of him still can't believe that someone like Kensi – someone as radiant, intelligent, fearless, kind – could still want to be with him, want to put up with all his fucked-up baggage. He's been a lone wolf all his life, someone who worked better on his own than in a team, until he had met Sam, who had reined him in, steadied him, shown him what it was like to have a partner you could trust. Until he had met Eric, Nell, Deeks. Kensi. Somehow they had integrated themselves inextricably into the fabric of his life, become an odd sort of family. He didn't really realize it until it just sort of happened.
He's spent decades learning to shut people out, believing he was better off solitary. The last few years have taught him that he might be wrong; the last few months alone, with Kensi, have taught him that there was an unexpected part of him that savored companionship, a part of him that curled into her embraces and that might actually be content with staying in on a Friday night to a girl falling asleep on his shoulder. It's sobering, and terrifying. With Kensi, he's terrified that he's forgetting how to be alone again. He's terrified of tainting her with his darkness. Of breaking her.
He knows that he and Kensi are playing with fire, weaving a dangerous web that could fall out from under their feet at any time. Yet he can't pull himself away from her, away from this bizarre, strangely contented place he finds himself in, despite the insistent foreboding that tails him on restless nights or during private moments when he sees her brown eyes soften at his proximity, reads the promise reflected in them.
He should have known it wouldn't last.
Isaak Sidorov shows up on their radar, and suddenly all the weight of doubt he's carrying, lurking just beneath the surface, crawls out of the hole he shoved it in and finally rears its head. Before he knows it, Sam's wife Michelle is back in the game, dusting off her Quinn alias and returning to a life she hasn't lived in years, and all of the fear and misgiving, the uncertainty and unease Callen's been holding at bay knocks him square over the head.
Michelle goes under, and Callen feels the first stirrings start to build when he stays up all night at OSP with Sam, watching him pound the life out of a punching bag for hours on end while waiting for word from her.
Waiting, waiting, waiting.
Callen has seen his partner angry, has seen him troubled and disturbed, but he has never seen him lose his shit quite like this before, and the effect is nothing short of unnerving.
It starts to build when he sees his partner, frantic and petrified, rush under the police tape on a beach in Santa Monica, sees his composure crack when he lifts the body bag to glimpse the woman lying prone beneath. When he sees Sam nearly drown Agent Snyder in the Pacific, all his rage and fear bubbling to the surface. When he is a front-row observer to his ex-Navy SEAL partner, a man who has withstood torture, kidnapping, bullet holes and Hell Week, come physically and mentally unglued after a single night of terror over the whereabouts of his wife.
It's the moment he realizes that he and Kensi have been living under an illusion, a bubble of their own creation. They are the ones who have been playing house, pretending everything was sunshine and gunpowder; pretending it was sustainable and they could keep going down this road, keep sweeping the shadows beneath the rug. Pretending that the bad guys would never win, that they could keep the darkness at bay with nothing but bullets and bravado.
Who is he kidding? He asks himself – if it had been Kensi in Michelle's place? He would have held Synder under the water and drowned him. He would have called off the op, shot Sidorov in the head the first chance he got, and pulled her out of there, nukes be damned, millions of lives at stake be damned, potential world war be damned, because there was only one life he cared about.
And it's that comprehension that stuns him, slams him to his knees and overwhelms him, sucks all the air out of his ribcage.
Sam Hanna is a stronger man than he is. Because he can't do this if the op no longer takes precedence. Because at the end of the day he's a commander, a leader, a solider. He carries an obligation, a responsibility, and he can't do his job if he's becoming someone he doesn't recognize.
Because the deeper he and Kensi get, the more he puts them, everything, on the line. The more they splinter and shatter.
"This is insane. What the hell is going on?" Deeks demands as they watch Sam stalk away up the beach, a dripping cyclone in black, Synder left sputtering in the Pacific behind him.
Callen glances at Kensi and her partner, their expressions of alarm and concern. He tries to slow the frenetic beating of his heart, the sudden spike of dread and premonition choking his throat, and he swallows hard.
"Wasn't supposed to happen this way. Working on the same task force, side by side, seven days a week, months on end – they fell in love." His gaze flickers across Kensi, and he sees the understanding bloom in her eyes.
There's a sinking feeling in his stomach.
That evening, he makes quick work of her lock and slides into her apartment. She's waiting for him on her couch, a glass of wine dangling from her fingertips, and she sets it down as he enters.
"I wish we had known about Quinn – Michelle – sooner. How's Sam doing?"
"He's okay. He's back home with his family."
Callen stands in front of her, struggling to find the adequate words, to untie his tongue, yet unsure how to proceed now, facing her.
"How about you?" Kensi looks at him shrewdly.
There was no point in pretending. Sugarcoating was never his thing.
"We can't do this anymore. I can't give you what you need," he states candidly, objectively, cutting to the chase.
Kensi freezes, then stares at him incredulously. "What did you just say?"
He shifts on his feet in unease. "There's no white picket fence in this scenario, no happy ending here. I can't give you that. I'm not the guy, Kens. You deserve someone who can give you everything."
It's as close to the truth as he can afford.
"Who says I want one?" Kensi retorts, skin flushing, two bright points of color blossoming in her cheeks. "Who are you to tell me what I do or don't want? How do you even know what that is? You never want to talk about this, you shut down faster than Deeks after a heavy meal anytime we even approach the subject."
Kensi stands up and takes a step towards him but Callen instinctively backs away a few paces. He sees the hurt, written starkly across her face, before she can conceal it.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Kens, we're undercover agents," he explains patiently, keeping his voice level. "We chose this profession, we're good at what we do, for a reason. People like us don't get happy endings. "
"No, people like us are the ones who need happy endings the most." Kensi crosses her arms defensively across her chest, glowering defiantly at him. "What are you really afraid of here, G? Because believe me, whatever it is, I'm just as scared as you are. Of an op gone wrong? Of going undercover and not being able to see each other for weeks at a time? Of finding me in a body bag? Or are you scared of waking up one day and realizing you might actually love someone?"
Her words hit home. He flinches, throat tightening, fists clenching by his sides. "I'm not going to put us through that."
"Because those possibilities are there, whether we're with each other or not. They're always going to be there, hanging over us, as long as we continue to do this," Kensi continues on, voice pitching. "You're not the only one here who gets to make a call. You're not the only one who gets to make a choice."
He makes himself hold her gaze, buttressing himself against the vehemence, the unsettling intensity he finds there.
"I choose not to have to do this alone. I choose to care, I choose to live, I choose to feel. When are you going to realize that you're allowed to be happy, G?"
"I don't get to be happy, I get to save lives," he says quietly, and she stares at him in disbelief.
"Don't do this. What we have – you and I – it isn't a game. It hurts too much, there's too much at stake." Her words are earnest, beseeching. A rare moment of complete unguardedness.
"I know. Why do you think I'm doing this, Kens?" he asks her, helplessly.
She slumps forward slightly, suddenly seeming small and vulnerable, and he wants nothing more than to close the distance between them, wrap his arms around her and make her forget, like he did that first night when she wore her tattoos, so long ago now. Like he did when he and Kensi first leapt into this tangled maze, tripped the ticking bomb.
He wills himself to stand still, tonight, watching her in silence.
"If you're going to turn your back on everything we've built the last months, there's nothing more for me to say." Kensi glares at him, her fury and frustration blazing incandescent. It's the glint of wetness in her eyes that momentarily paralyzes him, however. Because Kensi doesn't cry, not for something like this.
She slides slowly back down onto her couch, averting her face. "You should probably go."
He nods curtly, and takes one last, lingering look at her before he closes the door, silently pleading with her to understand, to forget, to be okay. She doesn't look up.
Outside, he takes deep gulps of brisk, night air, bracing himself against the hood of his car, registering with a dull surprise that he is unable to stop his hands from shaking.
This is heartbreak, he thinks. He's forgotten what it feels like.