"How would you describe the way I smell?"

It was the last thing he ever expected to come out of Nell Jones' mouth, so he just stares at her instead of answering. Because in all the time they had worked together, he never gave it much thought. On some days, he would catch something that smelled like flowers; another time he was almost positive she smelled like chocolate chip cookies. But he had never stopped to think about it.

Her eyes scan down the rest of the pages, and then she's gone, taking the survey with her, her face set for murder.

And that's how it starts.

He doesn't mean to, but he starts noticing it.

Most of the time, it's nothing more than the slightest smell of flowers, which he assumes is her perfume. There was a time for a whole month she smelled faintly of vanilla, and the one time like burnt bread.

Her chap-stick smells like strawberries and sometimes when he hugs her, he can smell her laundry detergent.

Which, he totally gets, it weird. He hates himself for noticing it, but it just happened. He wishes he could stop his brain from connecting to his nose, but he can't.

He feels less bad about it one day, when she stops whatever she's doing and turns to him, eyes set in determination, cheeks tinged slightly pink.

"You smell nice today." She swivels back to her computer, refusing to look at him, and all the sensors in his brain are screaming. He doesn't recall what he did differently that day, and it bugs him, bugs him that she drives him slightly crazy, and how she can just say something offhand about the same shit that has been making him feel weird for months.

He finally, finally, gets it under control and can stop thinking about how sometimes she smells likes roses, when his birthday hits.

It's three a.m. when they finally get out of OPS, and he suddenly realizes he's 33. He stops for a minute, before he walks inside his apartment nearly dropping his keys, because he's 33 and it shouldn't feel like a lot has changed because nothing has, but it's that feeling that hits when it's your birthday. He finally gets inside and then he falls asleep before he can see the text from her.

"Beale, let me in." Someone pounds on his door, hours later, after he's woken up and the sun had gone down. He swings the door open, and then Kensi's attacking him in a hug and pulling outside simultaneously.

"Happy birthday." She grins at him, dangling his keys in his face before she slips them in her pocket and rushes down the stairs.

"Kensi wait!" He rushes after her, only in his socks.

"Didn't think I was going to let you spend your birthday alone did you?" She leans back against her car, smiling at him again, mischief dancing behind her eyes.

"I don't have shoes on."

She taps on the windows of the backseat, and the window rolls down, revealing Deeks and a pair of his sneakers.

"How-"

"Hetty keeps a stash of our shoes ever since Deeks had that incident with the dog. She says it's precautionary, but I just think she likes to spend the government's money." Kensi grabs the shoes and passes them to him, before opening the door. "In the car with you, birthday boy."

Deeks claps his shoulder from the back seat. "Happy birthday, man. We also brought you some extra clothes in case you were in those polar bear pajamas again."

He smiles at them, at both of them, because he had almost forgot it was his birthday, but his friends had planned to kidnap him so he wouldn't be alone.

They pull up to a bar, and almost before he gets out of the car Nell attacks him in a hug, and the first thing he smells are coconuts and mangos.

It's September 17, 2014, he's 33 years old, and he's pretty sure he's just discovered the most amazing scent in the entire world.

It has a lot to do with the person who the scent's attached to. Honestly, he's sure it has 100% to do with the person who smells like coconuts and mangos, and the fact that she's hugging him because it's his birthday.

Sam and Callen are there, too, and he loves the people he works with; he loves his friends.

"You smell nice." He says, after about three beers and way too much time terribly dancing to the shitty music they are playing.

Nell stops for a split second, her lower lip caught between her teeth. Her eyes light up, and he's thinking about kissing her, when the song changes, and she jumps, turning around, and ending the moment.

"Thanks! I'm trying out a new shampoo."

And that's it. He smiles at her, grabbing her hand and twirling her around the dance floor.

It only last for about four months, but that's all it takes. He forever associates the smell of coconuts and mangos with Nell Jones.

xXx

She climbs back into bed, her hair still wet from her shower. It's sometime between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., and he still can't fall asleep, still can't stop thinking about guns and explosions and dead bodies. He barely even notices Nell's return until she starts tapping a pattern on his chest.

"Hey," She moves in closer her hair tickling his nose, and suddenly, he's hit with coconuts and mangos, and it's three years later, but suddenly it's his birthday in 2014 again.

"You changed your shampoo."

She props her chin on his chest so she can look up at him. "Yeah."

His brain is still stuck on places he doesn't want to be, so he tries to focus on her hair instead, because it's something concrete, something he can hold onto.

"It's the coconut mango one, right?" He presses his face into her hair, pulling her closer.

"Yeah. How did you-"

He presses his lips to hers, because she helps make his brain quiet, helps him forget about everything that has happened in the past few months, even if it's only for a second.

Her hand moves to cup his face, and when she pulls back, she presses their foreheads together. He knows that to cope with stress and things he doesn't want to talk about, he focuses on a single thing, a single thing to keep him steady, and throughout all of this, he's been focusing on her. He's not sure it's the right way to go about things, but Nate is out of reach, and he's having a hard time putting his feelings into words.

"Eric…"

"On my 33rd birthday, you changed your shampoo to this one you have right now." He turns away from her, because he doesn't want to see how she's going to react. "Ever since then, it's been my favorite scent in the entire world."

He stares up at her ceiling, the one he's been learning to memorize over the past few weeks, since whatever it is they have going began.

"It's nice. I like it." He thinks he likes it even better now, because it takes him back to before the couples retreat, before the drone strike, before Kensi got kidnapped, before she nearly died, before Nell was nearly blown up by a bomb. It takes him back to before a lot of things, when life was just a little bit easier.

But he doesn't want to go back; back to when him and Nell were still barely more than work partners, before Kensi and Deeks admitted their feelings for each other, before Callen knew his full name, before Sam's family was safe. So much has happened in the past couple of years—in the past couple of months, even—some of it good and some of it bad. But he doesn't want to go back.

"Eric." She props herself up on her elbow and looks down at him.

"I know. It's weird. I'm sorry." He keeps staring at the ceiling.

"The fact that my shampoo is your favorite scent in the world is possibly the best thing you could have ever said." She kisses him, hard, so hard that she falls forward and onto his chest. She brushes her nose against his. "And, if you need to talk, I'm here."

xXx

Two weeks later, Nate is back from wherever Hetty sent him. A week after that, Eric walks up to Hetty and gives her back his gun.

He still gets the nightmares, he still sees the explosion nearly every time he closes his eyes, but it's getting better. He doesn't have to think about doing it ever again, at least not until he's ready. He's getting better at controlling it, at talking about it, at coping with it. He knows it's going to take time, but he has Nate, and Nell, and the rest of the team. So he's not 100% yet, and he knows he might not ever be, but he's moving toward something that's less shattered and more concrete.

Nell cleans out a drawer at her place for him. He cleans out an entire space in his closet for her. A few days later, she asks him to be her boyfriend, and suddenly what they have has labels, and he can kiss her in the parking lot at work when they are leaving, and she can grab his hand when they walk on the pier.

He jumps into the shower, sometime after 3 a.m., after he comes home from work, and there's a new collection of things sitting in his shower. There's a new bottle of soap and an entire bottle of conditioner. And sitting next to his shampoo, is an orange bottle, with coconuts and mangos on it.

He joins her on the couch after his shower, pressing a kiss into her hair as he does. She has the T.V on, and a bowl of ice cream in her lap, next to a magazine.

"How would you describe the way I smell?" she asks, and he can see the twinkle in her eye as she passes him a spoonful of ice cream.

He shakes his head at her and kisses her before he answers, "Wonderful."

Okay so a few things. First, shout out to lilcupcake03 on AO3 who requested this, and actually made me write it. Second, I found Eric's birthday in 5x18 "Zero Days". If you pause it at the right time, you can see it says 9/17/1981 on his arrest sheet. Third, this is my 10th published Neric fic, and I just want to say thank you to every single person who reviews and favorites and reads them. I'm relatively new to this fandom, and it really just means so much to me how nice everyone has been. So yeah, thank you, I love you, you are all amazing, and I hope you enjoy this.