NCIS LA Fic: A Different Kind of Sanctuary (Callen/Hanna, Abby/Eric)

[waldos_writings]

Title: A Different Kind of Sanctuary
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1259
Summary: As an adult G had only gone into a church for two reasons.  Weddings and Funerals.
Written for: NCISDaily Prompt #15 - church
Notes: Ties in with "None Loves the Messenger" and "Thinking Inside the Box".

The only time he went to Church as a kid was when he got stuck with some Bible-banging religious nutjob for a foster parent who used God and Hell and The Bible to terrorize him into behaving. He didn't remember even once going to a family that just went to Church and lived by the Golden Rule and left it at that.

As an adult he'd only gone into a church for two reasons.

Weddings and Funerals.

There hadn't been too many of the former. Two of Jethro's three – four, he amended silently. Four. Jethro had finally confided in him about his first wife during that case they'd worked together right before he'd been shot.

Stephanie had struck him as okay, but he remembered meeting Diane at the rehearsal dinner and seriously thinking of dragging Jethro out into the parking lot and asking what the hell he was thinking. He'd sat in the church throughout the service wondering if anyone actually objected during that "if anyone here knows why these two should not wed…" bit outside of movies. Because he was seriously thinking about it. Later, after the divorce, he'd told Gibbs about that while they'd both gotten drunk as they sanded Gibbs' boat. Gibbs had told him that if G had actually said something, he might not have gone through with it. G still felt a bit guilty about that.

Without family there were a lot less weddings for him to endure than most people, he supposed, and yet, he still seemed to go to as many funerals – if not more – than normal folks.

He supposed it was inevitable with a career in law enforcement, and a habit of working in the more dangerous departments.

He'd buried three partners – two from the FBI and the fourth member of the team he'd been on with Gibbs and Jenny Sheppard in Moscow. And there was an escalating number of people he'd been acquainted with one way or another through work.

Which brought him to this church in South Carolina. It had been a week after his death before Dom's body had been discovered and another week before Ducky was sure the body could be released and shipped home, so it was closed casket. In a lot of ways G was glad. He always preferred it when the last time he saw someone was when they were alive and smiling. Or tearing him a new one. Or sleeping peacefully. At least then he remembered them and not their body. He had too many memories of too many bodies.

Kensi, Nate and Eric sat in the pew in front of him, Hetty and Abby Sciuto behind them. Kensi's arms were linked around the men on either side of her, and her head rested on Nate's shoulder. She'd had a bit of meltdown when Dom's five-year-old nephew asked if Dom had been shot by a bad guy. She wasn't sure what to say. How do you explain terrorism to a kid just figuring out how to share his milk and cookies and take turns on the swings at recess? Especially when they still had a lot to learn about what had caused Dom to be taken. There never had been a ransom demand and he wasn't sent back as any kind of warning. They'd searched his background meticulously and they couldn't find anything that would make his killing personal. So Kensi'd had no idea how to answer the kid and had needed to step away before she started him crying.

Sam sat ramrod straight next to him in his Navy dress blues. Unlike G, he didn't fidget, and it left G wondering how that collar didn't drive him nuts. His own tie was driving him insane. He kept loosening it a little, deciding it looked sloppy and retightening it. Only to get bothered by it being so damn restrictive and tight and annoying again.

After a while, Sam reached over and put his hand over G's. To an outsider it probably looked like he was trying to get G to quit fidgeting, but G could tell, by how tightly Sam was holding on to him, that Sam was close to coming a little unspooled himself and was trying to hold himself together before they had to get up and face everyone in the sanctuary. G knew it still ate at Sam that his protege had been killed and he hadn't been able to stop it and he hadn't been able to figure out why.

They were both going to be among the pallbearers. Apparently Dom had sent home emails that told as much unclassified information as he could, and that – according to his mother – could be summed up as "I want to be like Callen and Sam when I grow up."

G wanted out of the church. He couldn't actually say anything good ever came out of one. At least not the things that brought him into one.

He flipped his hand over and slid it over to capture Sam's in it. They held on until it was time to get up and remove the casket.

The graveside service was mercifully short, under gray skies. As soon as it was at all politic, they'd grabbed Kensi, stopped at the nearest liquor store and headed back for their motel. Everyone changed and by unspoken consensus ended up in G's room. A few minutes later Eric, Nate, Hetty and Abby joined them. Hetty stayed for a few drinks before heading back to her own room. Everyone else stayed where they were. Sam, G and Kensi were draped over the bed. Nate and Eric were on the small sofa, Abby was stretched out on the floor between them.

They didn't turn the t.v. on and no one seemed much for talking until they were down to their last bottle of scotch. Abby made the rounds with it, filling everyone's glasses. As she sat back down, her back against Eric's legs she finally broke the silence with a simple, "Today sucked."

And with that the floodgates were opened. Dom's family had opted not to have an actual wake and the funeral had been so damn solemn. But here, with the team piled up in a fairly crappy hotel room, they finally started to mourn. To tell stories. Sam explained how G had thought for a while that Dom's last name was Green. Eric told them about how Dom had rigged his game controller to actually process information even faster than it was supposed to – which, according to Eric, was the only reason Dom continually kicked his ass at various games.

They talked until almost three when exhaustion and alcohol caught up to them. Sam was stretched out across G's bed. G's head ended up on Sam's shoulder. Kensi's head was on G's lap.

Nate had, at some point moved to the floor and Eric and Abby managed to squeeze themselves onto the sofa – Abby more on Eric than the sofa itself.

G understood that one of the reasons so many people liked Church was because of the fellowship it afforded during the rough times. But as he looked around the room, at his team falling asleep in various awkward positions because it was just too much effort to leave this, he realized that stained glass and pipe organs had nothing on a cheap hotel room.