AN: Thanks for the responses & encouragement!
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"What is this, Nell? You expect us to do that?" Eric looks in dismay at Kensi and Deeks who are lying on the nearby mat at odd angles, like maybe their limbs don't fit right on their bodies anymore.
"Well, not that," Nell mutters. She hadn't been watching them and has no idea what maneuver they were trying to pull off, only that it hadn't ended well.
Deeks lifts his head from the floor, takes in the sympathetic witnesses, then drops it again. "I think we're done."
"With life?" Callen asks.
"Sounds good," Kensi says, which at least means she's alive.
"Speaking of life ending," Sam interrupts, clearly unhappy with his partner, "you nearly ended mine two minutes ago. Don't think I've forgotten."
"My spin on the technique made it better," Callen argues, as if he hadn't nearly taken Sam's head off in a poorly thought-out, last minute addition to a spin kick.
"They look dead," Eric is saying to himself, eyes still focused on Deeks and Kensi. He bites his thumbnail and wonders if chewing off his whole thumb will grant him a reprieve from having to do anything else today.
Nell checks the clock. They've been there for two hours. That can't be right – it's been at least six months since the morning began.
She pulls Eric further away from everyone to try and regain his attention. "We're going to ignore them. Remember what was I saying before? I'm going to come up behind you and you're going to use my momentum to flip me over instead of letting me take you down. I repeat: if I take you down, you lose. If you take me down, you win. As extra incentive, if you get this right, I'll make up some 'emergency' you're needed for upstairs and Granger will have to let you take an extended break."
That's possibly the best thing Eric's ever heard. "Deal!"
She goes for him and he starts off perfectly, already congratulating himself when his ankle twists as he's flipping her (he's always had weak joints, okay?) and he loses his balance. He tries to save both of them and overcorrects, making it worse. She slips from his grasp and he has enough time to think she's going to kill him for this before he falls, too. She has the harder impact, made worse when he lands partly on top of her. She takes a moment to catch her breath, glad it wasn't her neck she'd landed on.
He silently prays for mercy on her part (his prayers go unanswered).
"What. The. Hell!" She's yelling by the last word, which has the effect of ensuring nearly everyone in the gym is staring at them. Humiliating on top of painful, fantastic.
"Nice takedown, Eric!" Deeks cheers sarcastically, apparently having witnessed the entire disaster. He's still lying on his own mat without having made any attempt to get up.
She checks to see if Callen saw that debacle. From the way he's watching them curiously, without yelling, she gathers that he didn't see how it happened, only the aftermath. From the relief written on Eric's face, she knows that he recognizes how lucky he's been.
Callen is forgiving of her getting taken down when it's deserved – if anything, he's more likely to become upset with her for not preventing it from happening – but if he knew Eric had almost injured her by accident, he probably would have tried to ban them from training together.
Considering the circumstances, Nell thinks she'd entirely support that.
"I'm sorry!" Eric exclaims, getting to his knees, hands hovering uselessly as if he knows touching her isn't the best idea. "The mat was…slippery. I tried to catch you."
"You did a great job of it."
"I told you this was a terrible idea," he tries to defend himself. Why are they acting as if he hadn't warned them repeatedly that he wasn't cut out for this? Then he catches her wince of pain as she rubs her elbow and feels guilty again. "Did you hit anything?"
"Yes," she glowers, "the floor."
"Technically, it was the mat –"
"And it hurt," she talks over him, "because I wasn't supposed to land like that." She's trying, she really is, though the pain is making her short with him.
Callen moves closer, hoping to stop the escalation between Eric and Nell.
"Let's reset," Callen suggests calmly. "Try again."
"Reset. Try again?" Nell can't keep her annoyance in check. "You're some instructor. Always doling out those helpful tips when needed."
Eric stands up. "I hate to interrupt this pleasant exchange, but at least I took her down. Mission accomplished. Can I leave now?"
Nell would be a lot more understanding if it weren't for his audacity. "Are you trying to take credit for falling down?" She can't let that stand…pun not intended.
Eric needs a way out of this. "I don't know if I 'fell', as much as 'gravity took hold of me' and –"
"You get no credit for dropping me and then falling on me!"
"You what?" Callen asks, fixing his eyes on Eric. Yeah, he definitely hadn't seen.
"I think there are a multitude of explanations for what happened here. Let's forget every single one of them and make a truce, shall we?" Eric holds out his hand to Nell, hoping to help her up, mostly because it will place her between him and Callen. She retaliates by yanking hard on his hand and pulling him down onto the mat next to her. He falls awkwardly and shoots her a look of betrayal. He should have expected it, though, since she did have a slight point. He wonders if he should fear Nell or Callen more.
Thankfully, Eric's saved when Agent Will Cameron walks through, heading across the gym. He mutters something Callen knows is directed at him.
"What was that, Cameron?" Callen asks as the other man strolls past. "My offer stands, I'm here whenever you want to lose."
Cameron comes to a halt six feet away. "I like being in one piece, thanks. I'm not taking a chance with your brand of lunacy." He glances at Nell on the mat. "It's never too late, Nell. You're always welcome to join my team. You know, if you feel like working with people who are actually sane?" He says it more to aggravate Callen than anything else, though it's no secret that he'd love for Nell to work with him.
"We've had this conversation," she reminds Cameron as she stands up. "More than once."
"Maybe you'll come to your senses one day," he suggests. Again, it's more to irritate Callen than to convince Nell to leave (she's never going to leave). He used to think she had questionable taste, and although he now knows why she makes the choices she does, part of him will never understand it. He looks between her and Callen, considering their potential instability, at times made worse if they're together. Nope, he'll never understand.
"You can admit you're afraid to go against me," Callen says, ignoring the topic of Nell completely. "It's okay. We'll continue to think less of you."
"Stay on your side of the gym and we won't have a problem," Cameron orders. "And if I did lose my mind and agree to fight you, we both know I'd win."
Nell shifts two feet to her left, making sure she's between the two of them.
Callen bristles at the empty words. It's easy for Cameron to claim he'd win when he'll never step up and prove it. "I was shot six times, Cameron, you know I can take you!"
"See? You're a crazy son of a bitch," Cameron fires back. "And you wonder why I keep my distance!"
Granger sharply announces that they aren't in middle school and the two men fall silent. Everyone else pretends as if they haven't been riveted (maybe even hoping for a fight).
Nell hates when Callen mentions being shot, hates being reminded of it. She presses her hand against his shirt, absently touching the scar nearest his heart. It was the one that should have killed him and didn't because of the way he moved or fell or a million other things that had led to him being positioned exactly as he was so that it hadn't actually touched his heart, but passed it by instead.
He places his hand over hers, sorry for having said it. He doesn't think about his old injuries much anymore. He can't stand her pained reaction whenever it comes up – the look on her face bothers him more now than his scars do.
"I hate that guy," he tells her, as if she doesn't know (what about him doesn't she know? Well, he could think of at least one thing). She's staring at his shirt and not seeing it.
"You only hate him because he hit me in the face," she says lightly, finally looking up. She probably shouldn't have said it, since his stance only gets more rigid, ready to fight a threat that doesn't exist. Has never existed. "By accident." She always has to stress that point, and it never seems to matter.
"I hated him long before then," he argues, though they both know it's a lie. He and Cameron had never been friends, the relationship between them coolly professional at best, but that had changed after Nell. He brushes his thumb over the left side of her jaw, and she knows he isn't seeing her at that moment. He's seeing her back then, after her ill-fated session with Cameron.
It had been about four months into their training sessions and Nell knew she was starting to excel. She saw it in the way Callen would smile after she easily completed a new move, in the way others had started complimenting her form and told her the practice was paying off. Not just her team, either. Others they rarely saw or worked with had noticed, too.
Cameron was among them. During their 59th session, he'd been using a punching bag in the gym, though his attention was more focused on her and Callen as they sparred.
When they took a break, he walked over and told her if she lowered her right shoulder a bit when she punched, she'd have better control.
"Thanks," she said breathlessly, taking a moment to admire him. Cameron was an attractive man, and he knew it. He was also confident, capable, and intelligent. They were friendly around work, and if he came across her training, he gave the occasional comment, both criticism and praise. She enjoyed working with him when occasions arose, and it seemed he'd taken a liking to her. She couldn't determine if he was serious or if he was similarly charming to most women he knew.
"You're looking better every time I see you," Cameron said, complimenting her skills on the surface, and more if she chose to acknowledge it. "I'm trying to mix up my sessions. Want a new challenger?"
Callen had gone very still behind her, though Nell was more impressed that he'd stopped himself from throwing his usual veiled insults Cameron's way. She considered Cameron's offer – it never hurt to sharpen her techniques against new people. "Sure," she smiled slowly, "I'd like that."
"Great, call me, we'll set it up." He'd watched Callen's face increasingly darken as he talked to Nell. He managed not to laugh as he sent the man a half, mocking salute before leaving them to resume their session.
Nell didn't know what she expected when they started sparring again, though she wasn't surprised to see Callen back to his easy manner.
"Looking better every time," he mimicked, raising a brow. "He likes you."
"He only wants to practice," she insisted.
"Oh yeah? He wants to practice alright."
She tried not to smile. "Am I supposed to be taking you seriously? We're friendly. Nothing more."
"I see how it is. Friendly."
She blocked a hit and pushed him away. "I know what you're doing. Stop saying words in that…insinuating tone."
"That is my seductive tone, Nell."
"Suddenly I understand why you're always single." She kicked at him harder than normal. "Do you subject women to that? Because I can't believe it's ever done more than send them running in the opposite direction."
"I am single by choice," he argued, "and you can deflect all you want. I know what's going on here."
"He doesn't like me," she insisted. She didn't quite believe that, she merely had to argue the point for the sake of being right and not letting Callen think he'd won.
"Of course he likes you," Callen scoffed. "Have you seen how he acts around you?"
She frowned at that. "What, he's nice to me so he must be interested in me? Otherwise, why would he bother?"
"I never said that!" He argued, and she took him down when he missed a step. She was growing increasingly annoyed, and she didn't know why. She'd initially been flattered at Cameron's attention, especially his praise. She took pride in what she'd achieved thus far, and she thought she was good at reading people. She wanted to believe that even if Cameron had ulterior motives, he wasn't lying to her to about the progress he saw in order to make her more amenable to going out with him.
She sat up, maybe to try and gain a mental advantage, and glanced down at where Callen was lying on the mat. "I can have friends, you know. Some people actually want to be friends with other people."
He didn't seem to care that she'd laid him out, and he hadn't moved. "Stop twisting my words. I'd love for you to be friends with the whole damn world. They'd be lucky to have you. I'm only saying…be careful with this guy. I think he wants more from you."
"There are plenty of examples of men and women becoming friends without expecting anything more from each other," she challenged, a bit harsher than she'd intended. "I mean, look at us."
Right. He abruptly got to his feet, forcing her to move back out of his way. She was about to complain when he offered her a hand up, and she bit back her admonishment as she took it.
Callen thought she was acting off about the whole thing, which made him wonder if there was more to it than he knew. Maybe she didn't mind that Cameron liked her.
Maybe she liked Cameron, too.
Nell thought about what he'd said, about Cameron maybe wanting more from her. "He has tried to get me to join his team," she admitted. "That doesn't mean anything, though, except that he knows how good I am."
As if Callen needed a reason to like Cameron less than he already did. "Go ahead and set it up, then. I guarantee you won't get through a half hour before he's asking you out."
She kicked at him without really thinking about it and he grabbed her foot; the move threw her off balance in a way she despised and was one of her least favorite positions to get stuck in. Callen knew it, too, so he only did it when he really wanted to piss her off. "Too slow," he noted and released her.
She angrily hit his shoulder. "You know I hate that."
"Then stop me from doing it."
"Hmm, maybe Cameron can teach me," she said, thoughtfully.
"That's how it is, huh?" He narrowed his eyes. "This I have to see."
She set up a sparring session with Cameron two mornings later, and Callen made it a point to attend. He claimed he was there to assess how she fought against someone else. Nell didn't believe him.
She absently pulled at her shirt while waiting for Cameron to appear, and caught Callen surreptitiously watching her. "What?"
He sent her an appraising look. "I don't know, Nell. It's a little risqué."
Nell crossed her arms over her tee shirt and glanced down at the work-out capris she was wearing. "You're right. I looked through my outfits for anything that screamed 'come have your way with me'."
"It shows," he said, disapprovingly. "Although I'm sure Cameron will appreciate it."
"It shows? This is almost exactly what I wear every time we're down here. Are you blind?"
"Huh." He looked her up and down again. "Are you sure?"
"Yes. I'm sure."
"You definitely look different," he insisted. Maybe he was blind.
"Different how?" She asked. "Oh wait, you think it's risqué, which basically means sluttier, right?"
Callen knew when to back away, and that was definitely a time for backing away – perhaps for denying he'd ever spoken in the first place. "Hey Cameron, hurry the hell up!" He yelled toward the locker rooms, as Cameron miraculously appeared that moment. "Can't you ever be on time? We've been waiting forever."
"I didn't know you'd be here," Cameron told him. "And I never thought you'd be eager to see me."
Callen slapped him on the shoulder and pushed him toward Nell. "First time for everything. You two get out there."
Callen's mind wandered as they began laying out ground rules. What if Cameron did ask her out and Nell accepted? From there it was a slippery slope…she'd probably start training with Cameron after deciding she liked his style better. And what if she fell in love with him? What if they got married and had kids? What if she left her job for her family, or moved away?
For the first time, he thought about how she had no obligation to him, no need to consult him over any life choice she made. It was easy to trick himself into thinking she did when they'd spent so much time together over the past few months, but their relationship was limited to (more or less) professional training sessions. Oh, he knew they'd gone beyond that – they'd become friends, closer than either had intended, for sure, but that meant nothing in terms of her personal life. Simply (terrifyingly) put, she could choose to leave and he'd never see her again.
When Cameron clapped as a signal they should get started, it snapped Callen out of that dark reality in an instant. He shook the nightmare scenario off as completely implausible – even as his mind started spinning potential ways to derail it if it ever came to pass.
Callen felt he did an admirable job of keeping his mouth shut as Nell and Cameron sparred. Cameron was excellent, Callen had to admit it, and more than that, he knew Nell had to work with other people aside from him. Not everyone in the real world was going to fight the way he did or the way he was teaching her.
And that was exactly the problem. She was having a hard time switching off the skills he'd taught her. She couldn't exactly go for the unfair hits when they had agreed to a regular, 'friendly' match. She'd become too comfortable with Callen, to the point that they hardly ever followed the rules. She'd been trying to switch back and forth more often, especially when she went against other people like Deeks or Kensi, but it was harder to play fair when not doing so gave her a distinct advantage that she was reluctant to give up.
On top of that, she was fighting a person she never had before, and she had no idea what to expect from him. Every time Nell started a move she shouldn't, something that would actually hurt Cameron if he didn't block her in time, she stopped and had to collect herself. Cameron picked up on it quickly, and he alternated between backing away to give her time to regroup and taking advantage. She couldn't resent him for it; it was exactly what she'd do, given the opportunity.
Her poor performance caused her to start questioning everything, which took her out of the fight and made things worse. She might have wondered if her old anxiety about sparring with more skilled individuals was returning, except she didn't feel anxious, only frustrated. Months of working with Callen had more or less eliminated her worry, and she had more confidence; she didn't get as easily intimidated and even if she recognized she couldn't beat someone, she knew she could put up a hell of a fight.
With the way she was struggling and the way Cameron alternated between going for her and randomly backing away, it was inevitable someone would get hurt. She stopped another move that could have injured him, and at the same time he advanced to strike out at her. Since she was already pulling her arms back, she couldn't block it – and she knew herself, knew that was one she would have easily blocked.
The hit glanced off the side of her jaw and she stumbled back a few steps as Cameron watched in absolute horror. They weren't wearing protective equipment since it was supposed to be a friendly sparring session, more a demonstration of moves against each other than anything else. It was how she and Callen usually practiced, as well, since he loved to tell her she wouldn't get protective gear in the real world.
Callen was at her side in an instant, checking her over and convincing himself she was still whole and in one piece.
Nell tasted blood and knew she'd bitten her tongue. Other than that, after her surprise wore off, she knew she'd be fine. Cameron had been holding back, and though it might leave a mark, she'd taken far worse in other situations.
Not that it mattered to Callen.
By the time she composed herself, Callen was facing the other agent. "What. Was. That?"
It rose Cameron's hackles; there was no doubt about the threat in Callen's posture or tone. He immediately became defensive, especially when Callen took a few steps toward him. "It was an easy block, I thought –" he broke off, frustrated. "I'm sorry, Nell. Are you okay?"
She nodded, waving at him as if to say it was alright and she forgave him. Callen zeroed in on the first thing Cameron had said. "It's her fault that you punched her in the face?"
Cameron looked between them, trying to figure it out. He felt like he was missing something. Or a lot of things. "That was hardly a punch! And it was an accident. Maybe you should have taught her better."
His words shook Nell out of her residual haze, alerting her to intervene if necessary. Cameron couldn't have picked a worse thing to say.
"It's my fault that you hit her?" Callen's voice was deadly in a way that sent chills up Nell's spine. "Why don't you take on someone who isn't still learning? Like me."
Cameron's first instinct was to accept – he felt bad about hitting Nell, but it had been an accident and she was fine. Callen was overreacting and it'd be more than satisfying to put him in his place. Then he looked at the senior agent and one of the things he was missing fell into place – Agent G. Callen wanted to hurt him.
There was an unsettling darkness in Callen's eyes that made Cameron involuntarily shudder. He'd never seen it before. And he didn't mean that he'd never seen it from Callen – he meant that he'd never seen it from anyone directed at him who was on their side of the law.
He knew Callen was tough, and not just from hearing about it; he'd seen it firsthand in how he fought and how he dealt with suspects. News spread fast around NCIS and he'd heard about his team's cases, especially the more dramatic ones. Some of the stories about him made him sound like a legend, but Cameron had done his research and he knew what was true. The man had been shot a half dozen times and pulled through. He'd been closer to death in dozens of situations than most people got a few times in their life. He had to begrudgingly admit that if anyone in the building deserved the kind of myth that had built around him, it was Agent Callen. And despite everything he'd ever heard about him – rumors or truth – Cameron had never heard of him losing it, not even with a suspect, not in the way Cameron knew he would if he agreed to fight him right then.
Personally, no matter what they accomplished, he'd always thought Callen and his team were reckless, bordering on dangerous to the public at large. They only got away with as much as they did because of the indulgence of Henrietta Lange and, to some extent, Owen Granger. He kept waiting for the day they screwed up beyond anything Lange or Granger could protect them from, and it never happened. He didn't know if it was a testament to their skills, or if they kept skating by on sheer luck (he suspected it was an odd combination of the two).
They were a strangely close group, more than any other team he'd seen. Their devotion to each other was hard to understand. Cameron (and everyone else) could see it, yet no one truly understood it. There was loyalty to one's team, and then there was putting them above everything else, and the latter seemed mostly true when it came to them. In fact, it was long-standing knowledge around work that they were so close it was nearly impossible for new members to join them. Cameron had seen many try and fail. He didn't know how Deeks managed, though from what he knew of the man, he'd probably badgered them until they had to accept him or kill him. Nell had been the other exception. Her first day, people had been placing bets on how long she'd last, and it seemed the very next day she was with them and no one questioned it. Ever.
If it was near impossible to join them, it was harder than that to separate them. Cameron knew because he'd been trying. He liked Nell a lot, and not only on a personal level. He would have accepted her onto his team in a second. He'd tried to recruit her several times, and she'd never been remotely interested.
Her steadfast insistence on staying with Callen's team had long mystified him. When she started training with Callen, Cameron had asked her if she was in a relationship with him and she'd become completely flustered, denying it up and down. Yet there was something off with the two of them. They didn't act like two normal co-workers, and he'd concluded that Callen was leading her on, not sure he wanted to be with her, but not wanting her to be with anyone else, either. Did he think she'd sit around waiting for him forever? It had cemented his view of Callen as incredibly selfish, and maybe manipulative. It was completely unfair to Nell, and he'd subtly tried to open her eyes. Infuriatingly, she chose to remain purposefully blind.
For the life of him, he hadn't been able to figure out why. Until that day.
Callen glanced back at Nell who had been hovering slightly behind him, unsure of where their argument would lead. Cameron didn't know what it was – the way Callen stared at her for too long, or the way he relaxed slightly when he did, or something else he couldn't put into words. And Nell…her eyes changed when she looked at Callen, almost like she lit up from the inside out. That was one of the strange things he'd never been able to put his finger on about them, at least not until it happened in front of him. He'd never seen her look at anyone else that way.
Cameron's confusion cleared away, the truth crystallizing before him: he'd unintentionally hurt the most important person in Callen's life. Callen had probably never told her – maybe he didn't even know – but it was obvious. At least to Cameron, and apparently not so much to Nell.
He'd be damned if he got into the middle of their personal life. Callen and Nell could work it out. Maybe. He saw the future going two possible ways: their pattern of denial and general lack of emotional awareness would blow up one day and they'd destroy each other, or they'd eventually come to their senses and be happy. His instinct for self-preservation meant he didn't want to be part of either scenario (however, that didn't mean he would stop hassling them – that was far too much fun to stop).
He decided there was no way he was going to fight Callen that morning, or probably ever again. When Callen finally turned back to him, Cameron held his hands up in silent apology and announced he'd had more than enough for the day. He left as quickly as he could without making it seem like he was running away.
Like any great story, it spread around their workplace, growing more fantastic with each retelling. Three days later, Deeks gleefully reported that he'd heard that during a friendly sparring session, Cameron had tripped and fallen into Nell, knocking her over, and Callen had attacked him in a rage while Nell cheered him on.
They tried their best to set things straight, and while they'd successfully convinced people they had not beaten Cameron half to death (come on, Kensi pointed out, the man was walking around as unmarred and beautiful as ever), the rumor of their craziness remained, and spread rapidly around the building.
It wasn't a hard thing to convince people of – in fact, the rumor circulated easily because people wanted to believe it. Anyone who'd seen them fight knew how good they were, and they were also aware of how much time Callen and Nell spent together. Apparently, it wasn't far-fetched for their co-workers to believe their dedication to each other led to them attacking anyone who threatened them. No one really knew what went on between them, although there were plenty of theories, each one more absurd than the next. (Callen's favorite was that he was training Nell to go on an undercover black operation with him where they would infiltrate a terrorist cell by posing as members.)
Nell found it more humorous than anything. The rumor wasn't that either of them individually was crazy, it had become Callen and Nell together are crazy – like they would have been fine on their own, but mixed together they ignited and became dangerous to anyone in their vicinity. As a result, Nell had a harder time than Callen finding new people to train with her. If she managed, they were hyper-aware of not harming her because they'd heard about how Callen attacked people for looking at her the wrong way.
Cameron's kept it up, too. He likes to remind everyone of the rumors whenever possible. He feels it's akin to a civic duty, reminding their co-workers what they're dealing with when it comes to Callen and Nell. Despite the silliness of the whole thing, Cameron knows he wouldn't have gotten out of a fight with Callen uninjured the day he'd hit Nell – not unless she'd stepped in to help him.
He's thinking about how happy he is to not be part of Granger's training when their boss approaches him. "Don't be too smug, Cameron," Granger says. "Your team goes next week."
Great. Maybe he'll come down with an imaginary case of the flu. He turns back to the mats, where Nell's trying to talk Callen out of his anger. It's been over three months, and he wonders how it's possible that they still don't know. Or do they simply pretend not to know? He never thought 'scared' would be a way to describe either of them, but maybe their relationship is too important to them. Maybe it's the one thing they can't afford to ruin and they'll permanently remain at their impasse where neither gets what they want. Damn, when he finds himself feeling bad for Callen, of all people, he knows he's losing it. He moves to the other side of the gym before he can say anything to Callen remotely in the vicinity of 'nice'. Or even neutral, for that matter.
Nell's relieved once Callen stops looking like he wants to kill someone, though she knows he's still upset. She finds his protectiveness sweet, but he and Cameron have this weird vibe between them that she doesn't like, mostly because she's afraid Cameron will one day provoke Callen into doing something that will cause him professional grief. As such, she's taken it upon herself to get between them whenever she fears their hostility might blow up in their faces.
"I think it's time to switch partners," Callen suggests. He knows Nell's reaching her limit with Eric, and he's sick of pretending his entire focus for the day hasn't been on her. He might as well work with her; it'll make it easier to watch her without arousing suspicion and getting continually beat by Sam.
Besides, he knows that being around her is the best way for him to calm down. It's been true for a few months now, and he has no idea when it began, only that it works.
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