Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS: LA or its characters...

Author's Note: I wrote this while I was on vacation for Christmas, but never posted it. I think I wasn't happy with it for some reason…? Rereading it, I like it, but it seems sort of lacking/pointless. But it is just a one-shot, so… enjoy?

Warning: Language and allusions to mature subject matter.

Somewhere In A Diner… (In Oklahoma…)

Nell Jones is fidgeting in her seat, but G. Callen (of course) looks as confidently nonchalant as ever. He's even slouching slightly, his arm thrown over the back of his chair and a lazy smile on his lips. Damn the man, he somehow makes even poor posture sexy.

The waitress is watching them. Nell could swear the woman's giving her the eye. Well, she's giving Callen the eye, too, but it's an entirely different sort of look he's earning. Not that he had to work for it. Just a smile and those blue eyes of his, a kind word or two. As for Nell, she can practically read the middle-aged woman's thoughts. The curt waitress is considering calling the high school to report Nell's truancy. Because she had certainly given Nell the 'aren't you a little young for him?' look when taking their orders. Yet -damn the charming bastard- he hadn't seemed to garner any animosity for having breakfast with a woman the waitress clearly thought was just a girl, an underage girl. Where did she get off judging them? Or jumping to conclusions like that? Okay, so they had walked in together through the doorway joining the diner to the motel, but still...

It's severely tempting to confront the cynical blonde in daisy dukes (that appear practically nonexistent under the waitress' half apron) with the fact that they're actually federal agents on an assignment. In fact, Nell rather would like to draw her service weapon and threaten to shoot the woman right in the gimlet eye. Maybe both eyes. Anything to stop feeling the woman's stare searing into the side of her head from across the small restaurant.

But that would probably be bad.

Besides the fact that Nell isn't the murdering type, they're trying to run this little information retrieval mission quietly. It's not officially an undercover assignment. It's just that it would be big news in the small Oklahoman village and the entire community would know the feds were in town as soon as they let it slip to just one person. No, best Nell doesn't shoot the annoying woman. And other than that busybody waitress, nobody seems to have taken notice of the pair. Callen with his t-shirt, worn jeans and work boots blends perfectly into the dress code of the small mid-western community. Likewise, Nell's sporting one of her floral shirt dresses with a cardigan, practically screaming 'small town girl'. They by no means look the part of federal agents, but does she really appear so very young? Just because a person is petite and has genetics that make them look youthful, and wears cute clothes, doesn't... Well, maybe. But still, that bi-oh, and speak of the devil, here's the waitress with their food. And the woman doesn't have to speak aloud and Nell doesn't have to be psychic for her to get the message she sends her as she plops down a plate overflowing with syrup on the table in front of her.

Jailbait.

Really? Unnecessary.

Nell attacks her sodden pancakes viciously as Ms. Blonde Daisy Duke Busy Body waitress tells Callen that if he needs anything else, 'don't be shy, sugar'. The pancakes suddenly don't taste quite as heavenly as they initially did when he replies that he'll do precisely that and the slut lingers a moment before walking off. Ugh. Disgusting display.

It's got to be those blue eyes of his. And he just had to wear that blue shirt, the one that makes his eyes sparkle like the fricken Caribbean ocean. Or maybe it's that easy, disarming smile, which he's currently turning upon her unfortunate self.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

"That waitress has been staring ever since we came in," Nell says after swallowing her fifth bite of pancake. Her mother would be mortified (and rightly so) by the rate at which she was devouring the breakfast, but Nell's feeling famished after the long night.

"Jealous." He pops a rubbery strip of bacon into his mouth and chews, all the while giving her The Smile.

She puts her fork down on her plate with an unexpectedly loud clatter that has her quickly checking to see if anyone else notices her slip of temper. But the hubbub of a small town diner at breakfast effectively drowns out the noise.

"I am not," she says.

"Not you." He chuckles lightly, obviously of a mind to tease his breakfast companion. "Her."

"Oh," Nell says, for she's unwilling to let him have all the fun. "Because you're buying me breakfast."

"I am?"

"You are."

He laughs again. Nell has long ago decided she adores the way the special agent lights up when he laughs. The sort of sad darkness that sits at the core of him seems to dissipate in those moments.

He doesn't allow the conversation to drop, however.

"That's not why she's jealous," he says.

Nell rolls her eyes.

"I get it. You're such a prize, you are, G. Callen. I bet every woman in here wishes she were having breakfast with you."

"Probably," he says, obviously just trying to work her up a bit more. Then he takes a slightly more serious tone as he leans in conspiratorially. "But that's not why she's jealous of you."

"Oh, really?" Nell is curious despite the fact this might just be one large joke to the man. But she can't bite back her sarcasm. "Enlighten me, oh wise one."

"She's jealous of you yourself."

Nell gives him an incredulous look.

"You got that from the evil eye she's been giving me?" Nell asks. "Because all I got was 'you're a teenage skank with daddy issues.'"

Callen looks briefly taken aback by the comment, and then gives her a look she can't quite discern the meaning of... It's close to the disappointed one she receives sometimes when her sarcasm turns self-deprecating. It appears he's going to ignore her momentarily low self-esteem, however, because he continues making his point.

"You don't look like a little girl, Nell. She knows you're a woman, not much younger than she is," he says. Nell raises her eyebrow. How did he peg the waitress as near Nell's age? "You're young and fresh, whereas she's worn out and used up, and looks about a decade older than she is."

Oh, Nell didn't notice that the traits she attributed to age could simply be a result of fatigue, exhaustion, a rough life. But glancing over at the obviously overworked woman, Nell can see it now.

"She's jealous of you," Callen concludes. And Nell might just have to agree. But she's never been good with compliments, and he's blatantly just given her a large one.

She focuses on her pancakes once more. Delicious. Nell loves diners. The only business establishments that will serve you food cooked like your own mother might have made. And this one has that classic diner feel. Lots of chrome. Formica counters. Vinyl covered stool and chairs. And obviously an old, evolving assemblage of them, mismatched colours and shapes yet all in that classic style that provides a sense of unity amongst the chaos.

A shadow falls across her plate, large and ominous since she's sitting beside a door. Suddenly, she feels as if she's in the midst of an Alfred Hitchcock film, and she should probably do a slow turn to find the villain obscuring the sunlight from leaking through the glass door with his trench coat and unreadable expression. But she's pretty sure there's only one man in town who could block a doorway like that, because he's one that they brought with them.

After stuffing another bite full of pancake in her mouth, she does look up to see Agent Sam Hanna entering the diner from the street side. And unlike Nell and Callen, he does draw some attention. He's big, heavily muscled, and carries himself with lethal grace. Although, admittedly, it is probably the fact that he has dark skin that stands out the most in the rural mid-western community.

He takes an empty seat at their table and Nell combats a smile. She had guessed he'd take the chair to her left, placing some diners at his back, but keeping the door directly in his sights. Of course, he only does so after that quick evaluative glance around the space. Callen, naturally, took the prime seat with his back to the wall when they'd first sat down to breakfast.

"How's the coffee here?" Sam asks, sounding gruffer than normal. Nell looks at Callen who frowns slightly as his best friend continues to grumble. "Can't find a decent cup of coffee in this cracker town."

Wow. Nell's not sure she's ever seen Sam quite so grumpy. Annoyed by Deeks or even Callen, yes, but cranky... not so much.

"Someone's a grumpy bear this morning," Callen says and receives a glare. The glare threatens to continue on to Nell, so she avoids it by focusing on the last remaining quarter of her stack of pancakes as Callen flags down the Green-Eyed Monster Waitress to ask for a cup of coffee for the ex-seal.

"Someone didn't get a good night's sleep last night," Sam says. "They should invest in some thicker walls in that motel."

Nell looks up, her fork halfway to her mouth. This conversation could be headed in a very uncomfortable direction.

"Really?" Callen asks noncommittally. As if he's not quite listening to what his partner is saying, it's so irrelevant to him.

"Yeah. Or did you not hear that particularly amorous couple going at it last night?" Nell puts down her fork, because it's certainly not making it to her mouth now. And even if it did, she isn't feeling quite as hungry as she was a few minutes ago. She glances at Callen who is still wearing that lazy smile of his, but she tries to keep her head down as Sam continues. "Well, maybe you wouldn't, Mr. Poster Boy for Insomnia, since you obviously wandered off somewhere in the middle of the night. But how about you, Nell? You must have heard all that racket."

Her head jerks up sharply and she can feel the heat in her cheeks, but before it becomes noticeable that she's incapable of responding, Callen rescues her.

"I did hear it," Callen says, offering no further explanation as to his whereabouts.

"I heard it, too," Nell says, finally able to speak. Up close and personally, she thinks. Because she was the one making most of that noise. And she knows there's no way the two highly trained agents sitting before her don't notice how pink her cheeks are. But neither comments upon it. Instead, Sam turns his attention back to Callen.

"So, what did you get up to...?"

Callen doesn't respond. But he doesn't have to say a word to enlighten Nell. She knows exactly where Callen disappeared to when he woke up just a couple hours after they checked in at around 1am. Because just a few minutes later, Nell heard the lock release on her motel room door, obviously by someone in possession of the other key she was given. She could hear the light footsteps of someone who knew how to sneak around in the night. She felt the bed shift under his weight. And she also felt every single one of the butterfly kisses he placed on the back of her neck. Because she'd been lying awake, waiting for him.

Well, she hadn't realized until that very moment of his appearance that she'd been waiting for him to show up. She'd simply pegged her inability to fall asleep as nerves from being cooped up in a car for nearly 20 hours, of being in an unfamiliar bed. It took Callen's slipping into her room at night for her to realize that she'd gotten used to sleeping with another person. It wasn't every night they spent together since that first time a little over a month ago now. But it happened enough that she found herself missing the warmth of him, of curling her petite body up to his side, of waking up entangled in him, of simply having his presence there, safe and comforting.

'G...' She had whispered his name and it was precisely the invitation she had intended it to be. Everything that followed was, as it always was, mind-blowingly amazing.

So she had probably not been all that conscious of her volume...

"...besides keeping Nell up half the night?"

What?!

Nell's gaze jumps to Sam. His grumpy man routine has melted away and now he's got that deadly teasing look on his face, the one the cat wears right before it pounces on the canary. And she feels so utterly out of her depth that she looks to Callen for assistance, Hell! for the solution because it's his mess, too!

The man just shrugs, which makes Nell want to strangle him.

"That kept me pretty occupied," Callen says, and then proceeds to wink, to wink! at Nell. She's mortified. Her cheeks are on fire. This so isn't the way she wanted Sam to find out about them. Well, she didn't want anyone to find out about them, to be honest, because 'them' or 'us' or any sort of term defining whatever it is they are as an item isn't something Callen can handle. The man is as tough as they come in so many ways, but Nell's seen through him, knows he's got a fragile heart behind all of those walls. And she never wants to hurt him. She's never pushed him. But forget being pushed, this feels like the cliff has just crumbled beneath their feet. Yet he seems entirely, genuinely unconcerned.

"And it was all night, Sam."

Sam snorts at his partner's not subtle brag, shaking his head.

"You should have let her sleep, G," the ex-seal says. "We need her to be able to do her job."

"She's fine." Callen waves away his partner's concern, briefly glances at the subject under discussion. "Aren't you, Nell?"

Sam shakes his head, looking rather unhappy. "I knew we should've brought Eric. Just because you wanted something to do..."

"Excuse me?!" Nell finally interrupts, overcoming the shock of being discussed like she weren't even there by two men whom she thought respected her. In their favor, they both give her extremely guilty looks as soon as she directs their attention to the fact with a glare. She turns the full force of her fierce expression upon her supposed lover. (She's not feeling loved at the moment.)

"You only wanted me to come with you for..." Her voice is perhaps a little too loud for public decency. And the end of that sentence is definitely a little too personal and explicit for open announcement, so she just trails off and continues to give the man a hateful glare. And damn, just as always happens when she becomes emotionally overwhelmed, Nell can feel the tears beginning to threaten. She hates being so weak, so sensitive, but it's just who she is. And goddamn it, if she's about to make a scene, it's precisely what he deserves!

"Nell." He reaches out to take her hand in an uncharacteristically open gesture of affection, but she pulls it away sharply. She shoots a glance at Sam, but the ex-seal is wisely staying out of the confrontation, feigning extreme curiosity in the beat-up, old, yellowing breakfast menu. When she returns her attention to Callen, she's surprised to find an honest expression on his face. In public, and in stressful situations (which being in an argument with your... whatever the hell she is to him... booty call? Sounds ridiculous, but perhaps is the most apt, undeniably is), he shuts down completely. Usually, all of his barriers go up and he's entirely unreadable. But today, right this very moment, he's an open book to her, for her.

And it's enough to cause her to relent, not entirely, but enough to hear him out, whatever lame excuse he's going to give her.

"Maybe Eric could have done this job as well as you," Callen says, shooting a scathing look at Sam, before he locks his gorgeous blue eyes on Nell's hazel ones. "But you were the better choice. You have field training, you can handle several varieties of service weapons. If things go south, and it's always a possibility, there's only the three of us out here. And we need someone we can rely on to have our backs. Eric is a good guy and an outstanding technical operator, but he's not trained for this. He's not you."

Well, damn.

She wants to be mad still, feels like she should have the right to be, but Nell's anger has been entirely deflated by the charming agent's little speech. And it's not just that he's smooth as silk. No, it's the fact that she can see the sentiment is genuine. She's probably one of less than a handful that has the ability to tell when he's play-acting and when he's sincere. The hardened loner had probably never intended for her to develop the skill, but he's never been able to shut her out when they're making love. It's never been just sex between them, like she knows it's always been with other women (ever since Tracy broke his heart). They're not dating either. But there's this bond that's been there from the first time, and it's allowed her to see right through him. And lord, she doesn't want to be mad at him, especially for what they did the previous night. And that morning...

So she nods and smiles, reaches out to take his hand and squeezes it briefly before quickly releasing him. He doesn't like to be this emotionally exposed for long, she knows.

But still there's this niggling bit of fury wriggling around inside of her like a parasite, a burgeoning need to revenge herself upon someone, and Nell finds herself turning her attention on the big man sitting to her left.

"So, how long have you known, Sam?" she asks in an absently conversational tone.

He puts down the menu. He's grinning now despite Nell's (rather successful, if she says so herself) attempt to play it cool. Cold. Frigid even.

"Known what, Nell?" Sam asks, playing the game far better than she ever could. Ugh! Undercover agents, she swears! But she's going to get him. She waits until he nonchalantly takes a drink of the coffee that snippy waitress must have brought around when Nell was too busy fuming to notice.

Then she says (making sure her voice isn't loud enough to be plainly overheard in the din of the diner but keeping it smooth and confident), "Known that G and I have been fucking."

Sam chokes on the coffee. Win! Nell knew the unexpected profanity would break him. Callen slaps his coughing partner on the back a couple of times, asking, "You gonna make it big guy?"

And then he gives Nell an approving smile filled with amusement and a little pride as Sam continues to attempt to dislodge all of the fluid from his lungs.

Nell grins broadly.

She just knew this trip was going to be fun.

END

A/N: Maybe I made Callen too much of a jerk? Somehow I don't feel that his behaviour here was so very out of character, though. Well, I don't think I'm going to apologize for playing, at any rate. :-)