Thanks for all the positive feedback on the last chapter! I get so excited knowing that there are people out there who enjoy reading my stories, so THANK YOU! Moving on with the story now...
He sat next to the bed, watching the gentle rise and fall of the other man's chest. The steady beep of a machine next to the bed reassured him that Arkady was still alive. The older man's coloring was closer to normal, Callen noticed, and his face was peaceful. Callen's vigil was interrupted by the sound of the door opening.
"Still sleeping? I'm guessing he will be awake sometime later today. They had to sedate him pretty heavily for surgery," the friendly nurse explained to Callen, who just nodded. He was pretty tired, having spent all his time at the hospital since the shooting happened. Sleeping in a chair wasn't the best arrangement, but he didn't have the courage to leave. He felt responsible for the state Arkady was currently in and needed to see him all the way through this.
"He must be someone pretty special for you to be spending so much time here. Is he your dad? Your uncle?" the nurse asked as she fluffed pillows and tucked blankets.
Callen shook his head. How could he briefly explain the federal agent-informant relationship between them that had morphed over the years to the closest thing he had to a friendship outside of his team? How did he tell her that he should arrest the man in the bed for the things Callen knew he was guilty of, and yet he never did because Arkady was far more valuable outside helping gather information than he would be behind bars. Callen couldn't put all that into a neat package, so he kept it simple and almost the complete truth.
"Just a friend."
The nurse looked at the tired agent and shook her head. "He's lucky to have such a good friend. His wife sure thinks highly of you. She's the one who convinced us to let you stay with him this whole time."
Ah yes. Hetty. He should have known his boss would find a way to help him out in bending the visitation rules.
"She's a pretty amazing woman," Callen responded sleepily.
Nurse Andrea, as her name badge read, walked toward the door. "I'll be back later to check on you two again. If you need anything, just press the button."
"Thank you."
She left and Callen sunk back into his chair. If Arkady was still asleep, he might as well try to catch up on some rest as well.
"It's weird, isn't it? Or is it just me?"
"It is always you, Deeks, but specifically what are you talking about?" Jenny asked her current partner.
"Ha! You've noticed it, too?" Kensi said to Jenny while smiling. "Glad it's not just me." The women cast goofy glances toward the probationary agent.
"Not fair, ladies, and not nice." Deeks said. "Specifically I am talking about that," he continued, pointing to the pristine newspaper on Callen's desk. "It's just sitting there."
Sam looked up. "Afraid the paper is going to jump up and attack you, Deeks? It's too quiet, just sitting there. Is that it, probie?" Sam smiled.
"I know, right? It's just sitting there, taunting us with its crazy mishmash of large fonts, small fonts and graphics. Oh the horror!" Jenny laughed.
"It's probably plotting how many paper cuts it can give you at once," Sam deadpanned.
Deeks rolled his eyes and stood up. "You guys are hilarious. Kens, you going to join in, too? Take a shot?"
Kensi looked up from her laptop. "Nah. I want to stay on your good side. I may or may not need you to give my feet a massage later. I can't reach them anymore."
Deeks focused his attention back to Callen's empty desk and the newspaper. "It's just sitting there. I have never seen a neat and tidy newspaper on Callen's desk. Not ever."
"He does have a point," Sam conceded. "G always reads his paper first thing, and then leaves it in a wrinkled mess so no one else will want to pick it up."
"Do you think one of us should pick it up and read it? You know, for him?" Jenny asked timidly.
"I don't know," Kensi said slowly. "That might be weird. I haven't actually read a real newspaper since high school. I think it was for a current events class or something."
"No, we should leave it right there. That's his thing. G will be back," Sam replied in defense of his partner's routine.
It was quiet in the bullpen as each person thought about their team leader, who hadn't been in since the incident at Arkady's house. Callen stubbornly refused to leave the hospital until he was convinced his informant would be alright. They could all do their jobs just fine without Callen being there, but the atmosphere was certainly different when any one of them was gone.
Jenny broke the silence first. "So, what is it about this Arkady guy and Callen? I don't really get it."
"Yeah, I'm not sure either," Kensi agreed. "I've never worked with Arkady. Sam and Callen always meet with him. Sam, can you shed any light on this for us?"
Sam sat back in his chair. "I'm not sure how to describe it. The guy has done a lot of shady things. Some things we have no evidence for – just gut feelings, and some things we could certainly prosecute him for. G just looks the other way and says he is too valuable of an informant. I get it, but it's more than that. I think Callen considers him a friend in a way."
The team nodded in understanding. "I've had a lot of informants in my days," Deeks said. "Some I've gotten closer to than others, but there haven't been any I can think of that I would hang out in a hospital for non-stop. Once the ambulance had the injured person, I would go my own way. Eventually I would find out if they were ok or not."
"G hasn't left. I couldn't even convince him to go home and shower. He had me bring him his bag of clothes and some take out. I guess Hetty pulled some strings to allow him to stay there with Arkady," Sam explained. "I haven't seen my partner this committed to one person in a long time."
"I hope everything works out soon, because I have to admit it's weird without Callen. We can all do our jobs without him here, but it's different," Kensi admitted. "And not in a good way. I miss his smirky smiles and that thing where he raises one eyebrow at us when we start getting a little crazy." Everyone smiled thinking of Callen and his understated facial expressions.
"Maybe we should go check in on him tonight after work. I don't know much about Arkady, but I think our team leader could use a few friendly faces," Deeks stated. "What do you guys think?"
A chorus of "I'm in" was uttered from all the team members before they settled into their work for the day. Every so often, one team member or another would glance over at the neatly folded, untouched newspaper on their leader's desk.
It was fairly quiet up in ops that morning and no new cases had come in. Nell was researching various things for Hetty, and Eric was monitoring a variety of surveillance cameras, online chat groups, and news stations.
Eric looked over at his partner and girlfriend. She was completely engrossed in what she was reading on her computer screen, which made him smile. Nell was the best at what she did and had made herself an invaluable member of the team - and his life - in such a short time. After one more look over all the systems he was monitoring, he turned his chair to face Nell.
"So, ah… you never did tell me about your first time. How old were you?" Eric asked. "Just for curiosity's sake, of course," he added with a shrug of his shoulders.
Nell briefly looked up at him. "Really Eric? You want to talk about that now, here in ops?" She frowned and went back to her work.
"Why not? I don't think Hetty will mind. She probably already knows anyway – she knows everything."
"I don't know," she replied, slowly shaking her head.
"C'mon Nell. I know you must have done it before, you know, here… and us. So when did you do it for the first time?"
Nell sighed. She dragged her computer mouse to the side to highlight a line of text on the screen before looking at Eric once again. "Is it really that important? I've done it, I still do it occasionally. Does it matter when I started?"
Eric pretended to look hurt. "I just thought we could share things like this with each other, especially after the great talk we had last night. That's all." He swiveled his chair back to face his screen and began typing.
After a few moments of silence, she spoke up. "I was 10. And it was the local university's admissions office."
Eric's fingers froze over the keyboard. "10? Really? Wow. Although you are pretty amazing, so I shouldn't be that surprised."
Nell didn't respond.
"Still, 10? The first time you hacked into someone's system was when you were 10?" he asked again for clarification.
This time Nell turned to face him. "See, this is why I didn't want to tell you. Now you're thinking about me differently. And for the record, you, Mr. Computer Geek, hack. Those of us in the intelligence field prefer to think of it as an alternative means of gathering information."
"Right. So what did you need to know from a college admissions office when you were 10?"
Nell looked down in slight embarrassment. "Um, I wanted to see if my application to attend college part-time had been accepted. I had no patience when I was 10."
Eric couldn't help the big grin that spread across his face. "You still… no, never mind," he said. "So college classes at age 10? Cool." He was dating a genius.
"So I told you mine. How old were you the first time?" she asked, ready to turn the tables.
It was Eric's turn to avoid answering the question as he turned back to his work. "You know, it's not really important."
"Yes, yes it is. We're sharing things, remember? That's what couples do, as you reminded me."
"Fine," he reluctantly agreed. "I was 15, but don't laugh. I didn't really get into computers until I was 13, so I didn't even know what to do at age 10," he tried to explain.
Nell smiled. "Where?"
"The movie theater. I wanted to print out tickets for several shows without paying for them," Eric sheepishly admitted. "I don't do that anymore."
There was a long silence followed by a beep signaling an incoming message for one of them. Eric figured that she thought he was a complete dork now and didn't want to talk to him anymore. He typed away quietly. Maybe they would be back to normal by tonight at home.
Suddenly, Nell shouted out. "Oh my god!"
Eric jolted up out of his chair and was standing next to her in three seconds. Nell was sitting in her chair, staring at her computer screen with her jaw hanging open. Eric's eyes recognized lines of text on the screen but his gaze remained steady on Nell instead.
"What? What is it? Are you ok? What's wrong?" Eric's words fired out of his mouth rapidly.
Nell waved her hands. "No, it's not me. It's… this," she replied pointing to her screen. Eric read over her shoulder. It was a lab report from one of the team's active cases, with some very surprising results. Nell stood up and ran over to the printer on the other side of the room. She thrust the papers at Eric. "Here. You need to go tell Hetty right away!"
"Why me? Why do I have to do it? You got the report," Eric argued.
"I don't want to tell Hetty this. This is huge! You tell her – you've known her longer," Nell pointed out.
"That has no bearing on this at all," Eric told her. He shoved his hands in his pockets and shook his head. "Nuh-uh. I'm not doing it. Not even on a dare."
Nell huffed and grabbed the papers back from him. "Fine." She turned on her heels and disappeared through the sliding doors.
"I love you," Eric called out timidly after her. "But there is no way I am delivering that news to Hetty if I don't have to. Wow," he said to himself. He snapped his fingers and pointed to his computer screen. "Back to you."
Nell rushed down the stairs as quickly as her short legs would carry her, almost running into another staff member at the bottom. She arrived in front of Hetty's desk a little out of breath, clutching the print out in her hands.
"Hetty, you need to see this right now," she announced.
Hetty looked up at her intelligence analyst and smiled. "It's nice to see you down here, Ms. Jones. What do you have for me?"
"This. We got a match on some blood from our closed weapons case at Port Hueneme and from some blood in our current case." Nell handed her the papers and waited while Hetty perused them. After two pages, the OSP operations manager looked up with a straight face.
"Ah, yes. I see," she said with a slight nod of her head. "Did you call Mr. Callen yet to tell him?"
"No," Nell responded shaking her head. "I wasn't sure what to do with this information except to tell you."
"You did the right thing. Thank you." Hetty continued to look through the pages in her hands.
Nell stood there waiting for more: an explanation, directions, anything really. She wasn't sure what to do in this situation.
"So this is big, isn't it?" Nell asked, uncomfortable with the silence between her and her boss.
Hetty looked up, somewhat surprised that Nell was still standing there. "Hmmm? Oh yes, I suppose so."
Nell pondered her answer for a moment before a mental light bulb illuminated. "You knew this already, didn't you? This isn't new information to you."
"You are correct, Ms. Jones. I have known for quite some time, but I was not able to reveal anything. I believe the time has come, though, for this to finally come to light. It has been a secret far too long. Mr. Callen deserves to know the truth so he can move on in whichever way he chooses." Hetty shuffled the papers into a neat stack and placed them down in front of her.
"So, should I call him then? Callen, I mean. How should I – what should I - ?" Nell started ask.
Hetty interrupted her. "That won't be necessary dear. This is on me. I should be the one to tell Mr. Callen that his friend Arkady Kolcheck is really his biological father."