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waldos_writingsTitle: (Little Puppet Made of Pine, Awake) The Gift of Life Is Thine
Fandom: NCIS: LA
Pairing: G/Sam
Rating: PG-13
Length: 7855
Written for: Yuletide 2011, for Meri
Summary: With so many people not telling Callen the things he needs to hear, Sam realizes there's something he needs to say. (Tag to Familia/Lange, H.)
Warnings: none
ARGH! The formatting on this is making me crazy - all my paragraph breaks disappeared and when I went to put them back in the editor wouldn't let me scroll through the story without jumping all over the place every time I hit 'return'. I'll argue with it later, but for the moment, please read the story - properly formatted and all - at AO3.
There was some kind of kerfluffle that Sam still didn’t understand when they got Hetty to the hospital. He and Callen had strong-armed their way into riding in the ambulance with Hetty leaving Deeks and Kensi to do the mop up at the Comescu house and deal with Hunter. The trauma doctor had met them at the hospital door, looked quickly at Hetty and made some remark that had Callen slamming the doctor into the wall, an arm against his throat. Callen spoke quietly and clearly in Romanian then shoved whatever leus he had in his pocket in the doctor’s white coat and stepped back.
The doctor barked orders to the ambulance attendants and they rolled Hetty into the hospital, leaving Sam and G waiting in the bay. Feeling a little out of his depth, Sam waited until G, who’d sagged against the wall, pushed himself up and went inside. Sam followed silently as Callen led them to the emergency department waiting room.
Sam looked in doorways and studied the people as they passed, trying to figure out what kind of care they could expect for Hetty. The place was reasonably clean, there were computers at the nurses’ stations and while the rooms seemed to be more high-occupancy wards than he was used to seeing, he felt more and more comfortable with leaving Hetty in their care as they walked. He’d seen enough hospitals in other parts of the world that could scarcely bear the name that he felt the caution was warranted.
When they reached their destination, Callen threw himself onto one of the old, uncomfortable sofas in the waiting area. Sam figured Callen was as relieved at the fact that they had the room to themselves, at least for the moment, as he felt himself.
Sam leaned on the wall, arms crossed. “What the hell happened out there?”
G rolled his eyes. “I shouldn’t have shoved him. I knew exactly what was happening… I didn’t need to shove him, I know.” He gave Sam an exasperated look that clearly said he was expecting a lecture, but didn’t have the patience for it.
Sam took a deep breath. There was so much going on that he didn’t quite understand. There were still a dozens upon hundreds of questions about what Hetty was actually doing out here in the first place, how Callen and his mysterious family fit in to it all, how much information had been lost with the death of the old woman in that beach house and how much more could be lost if they lost Hetty. “So why’d you do it? What did he say?”
“Basically that she was awfully old and that since she didn’t have much time left anyway, it might not be worth it for them to… exert themselves over her.” Callen scrubbed his fingers through his hair.
“Wait the doctor said – he said that?” Sam had heard the doctor speaking, even as far away as he’d been, even if he hadn’t understood. To say something like that, out loud… The doctor better be thanking his lucky stars he couldn't understand him, Sam thought even as Callen was explaining.
“He saw us, knew we were worried…” Callen sighed. “The Romanian medical system runs on bribes. If you want the best care you… pay for it. I knew that’s what he was doing.”
Sam finally crossed the small room and dropped down in the folding chair next to the wall near G’s sofa. “How the hell do you know that? I mean… you remember that from when you were five too?”
G glared at him. “I’ve worked Eastern Europe for half-a-dozen U.S. federal agencies for almost twenty years. Poland, Russia, Romania, Hungary, Serbia… and I’ve seen hospitals in every one of them. You pick up a few things after a while.”
Sam nodded. “I suppose you would.”
“In ninety-nine I was part of a team that was chasing down some arms dealers with Gibbs, our old director Jenny Sheppard and a guy named Petrov. Petrov was shot in Bucharest and Gibbs and I apparently made the mistake of talking to him in English. The doctor realized we were American, decided he didn’t like us very much and… shook us down. And then let Petrov die anyway.” G slumped back against the couch, arms crossed tight against his chest and went silent.
Sam gave him a minute before he reached over and squeezed his partner’s wrist. “Hetty’s not gonna die. She’s too crafty to be taken out by some old soup-making witch.”
G gave a small smile. “Gypsy.”
“Huh?”
“’Mama Comescu’ was a Gypsy – Romani – not a witch. A lot of people think they’re the same, but they aren’t.”
“Ah,” Sam said, not sure if or what kind of reaction he was supposed to have. After another long silence he shook his head. “Will I get hit if I point out that it makes so much sense that you’re Romani? I mean, we couldn’t get you to live in one place for longer than three months. Hell for a while there last year we were doing good if we could nail you down to somewhere for a week.”
Callen smiled and shook his head, but didn’t argue with Sam. Maybe it was inborn, his inability to stay in one place, one job, one relationship for very long.
One look at Sam and Callen knew he needed to change the subject before Sam could start with the questions he wasn’t ready to hear yet, let alone answer. Questions he couldn’t answer until he could get Hetty to answer some questions for him first.
He pulled his satphone out of his jacket and spun it between his fingers. “Vance should make arrangements to get Hetty to Ramstein as soon as she’s stable enough to make the trip,” he told Sam, refusing to believe that Hetty would die before he could force her to explain to him everything she knew, everything she’d done with regards to his past. Before she could explain why the hell she’d lied to him over and over and over again. He didn’t make eye contact with Sam before he started dialing the NCIS switchboard in D.C. He suspected Vance would wait in L.A. until they came back, but he wasn’t sure, and he didn’t want to dial OSP directly from a burn phone. But he was sure he didn’t want to give Sam the chance to start in on him, not in public. He couldn’t be sure that some kind of epic meltdown wasn’t hot on the heels of him thinking of the way Hetty had apparently betrayed him.
Hetty was out of surgery six hours later. Vance, true to his word, had her on a medical evac plane four hours after that. Callen and his team followed her to Germany, smuggled out of the country by a CIA operative who arranged for a private plane that could make the trip to Frankfurt without calling attention to itself or its passengers or tie them to the carnage in the beach house. Once there, Vance had told them to take three or four days to make sure Hetty was stable and then make their way home. Hetty would come home when the Air Force doctors at Landstuhl determined that she was ready to make the trip and finish her recovery at home.
All said, it was nearing forty-eight hours since any of them had had any sleep when they stumbled into a local hotel that catered to military families near Ramstein. Deeks was continuing the nonsensical monologue he’d started in the taxi as Kensi got their rooms.
“…but since we were in France, and apparently they don’t actually have a drinking age –“
“For the love of God, Deeks, shut the hell up!” Callen snapped. Deeks had been carrying on for ages about some trip to France his high school French club had taken and Callen’s patience with his blathering had ended rather abruptly.
Everyone in the upscale hotel lobby stopped and looked at Callen who either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Deeks had stopped talking, which was all that was important.
G felt Sam’s hand between his shoulder blades, steering him into a quiet corner while they waited for their room keys. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell.”
Sam shrugged. “If you hadn’t, I would’a.”
“You know he rambled about that trip for at least half an hour and I still can’t figure out if he was actually on the trip or just heard about it when the French Club came back,” Callen said, feeling his eyelids droop even as he stood and spoke.
“I don’t know either, but I couldn’t care less,” Sam said. “It’s been, what, two – two and a half? – days since any of us have slept. I’m highly unlikely to care about much of anything until something gets done about that.”
“I hear you,” Callen replied calmly, but inwardly, his natural predilection towards not sleeping was starting to kick in with a vengeance. By default, the team had deferred to him and he’d ended up as Hetty’s emergency contact and he was just then realizing that he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
A few minutes later Kensi came over and handed them keycards. “Four-fourteen and four-sixteen. Deeks and I are across the hall.”
Sam took both cards as they shouldered their rucksacks and headed for the elevators. He sent a silent ‘thank you’ to Kensi when Deeks’ back was turned as Kensi steered him towards the stairs. He wasn’t sure who he was protecting at that point – most days he’d be happy to let Deeks work Callen’s nerve and then get his ass handed to him – but today he wasn’t sure G had a nerve left to be worked.
Once alone in the elevator, Sam pocketed the key cards and caught G’s eye. “Stay with me?”
Callen sighed and rubbed his eyes with the side of his hand. Sam knew he was looking for an excuse to say ‘no’, even if it wasn’t particularly what he wanted. They kept their extra-curricular relationship strictly off the clock and away from the job. Sam wasn’t particularly sure how ‘on the job’ they were that night, but G would use that as an excuse if given the chance. Even if he really just wanted to say ‘no’ because he was used to fighting his internal battles alone and didn’t quite know how to say ‘yes.’
Before Callen could drum up something, Sam put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Even you are going to sleep for a while after the last few days. Come crash with me.”
G slowly shook his head as if he was still working up the nerve to say no. “I need some space. I’m sorry, Sam. I –“
“It’s okay,” Sam cut in quickly. He wasn’t at all surprised that G was pulling back; he’d seen it coming after all. G had been burned by one of the very small handful of people he trusted. He was going to need a little space to pull himself together. Sam had been around long enough to know this and to no longer take it personally. That didn’t mean he had to like it or that he thought it was a good idea.
“It’s not that – I don’t mean –“ G was spluttering as the elevator doors open.
“You know where to find me. You know you’re welcome to come crash with me. Maybe once you take a shower and relax for a few, you’ll unwind enough to come in and sleep with me.”
Callen gave him half a smile, wishing he were more able to express his gratitude that Sam actually got him and got that when Callen said he needed to be alone, it wasn’t that he didn’t want Sam hovering over him. It was that he didn’t want anyone trying to talk to him or worse, trying to get him to talk to them. “Maybe,” he said, not willing to promise anything more at that point.
Sam handed over one of the keys as they approached their rooms, checking the little paper envelope for which key went to which. As Callen fit the card into the reader for his door, Sam put his hand back on his shoulder. “Just tell me you’re okay.”
G sighed as the door beeped and the green light came on. He pushed the handle before the door would relock itself. “I don’t know what I am,” G said quietly as he went in, leaving Sam standing in the hall.
Sam knew there were at least four different ways for him to interpret that statement and very possibly dozens more he couldn’t even see yet.
The first door he opened almost led him to smack into the door closed immediately opposite it. He raised an eyebrow. Kensi was clever. Not that he’d ever thought otherwise, but getting him and G adjoining rooms was a pretty brilliant idea. He wasn’t sure if she was intimating that she knew about their personal relationship or just that she knew that G would be mess and need the support of his partner. It would look completely on the up and up in the books, but give them the privacy they might need to be together in whatever way G needed.
He wondered if her room connected to Deeks’. He wondered if she’d threaten to shoot him if he tried to convince her to open her side of the door for ‘security’ reasons or some other dumbass excuse.
He turned back and found the other closed door did, in fact, lead to the bathroom. He tossed his clean clothes on the sink before heading back to the adjoining doors. He raised his hand to knock on G’s side of the door, but realized that in Callen’s current state of mind Sam was as likely as not to be greeted with one of those guns they’d secured in Romania and that G wasn’t willing to surrender quite yet. He grabbed his burn phone out of his jacket and dialed G’s number.
When Callen picked up Sam said without preamble, “Unlock the door between our rooms.”
There was a long silence and at first Sam was starting to wonder if G was going to blow him off, but after another few seconds he heard the bolt slide. The door didn’t open and Callen didn’t reply on the phone.
Sam snapped the phone shut and turned the knob to Callen’s door and cracked it open just enough to make sure he wouldn’t smack his partner in the face with it. G was nowhere to be seen. Sam opened the door and found G sitting on the desk leaning on the window. “You okay with leaving these unlocked tonight?”
“Sure,” G said without even looking at him.
“You need anything?” Sam asked, not wanting to leave even though he knew that was exactly what G wanted.
“I’m good.”
Sam didn’t believe him, but he said, “Okay,” and shut the doors between them again anyway, twisting the knobs to make sure neither of them automatically locked.
Sam woke up to the distinct feeling that he was being watched. He was turned towards the door to the hall, and it was closed. Only a thin strip of light leaked in from the hall from the bottom. That left G and the adjoining doors.
There had been a thousand nights back in L.A. when Sam had told G that he was welcome to come over and crash with him after a hard day. Days G had declined and Sam had reminded him that he had a key to Sam’s place in case he changed his mind.
Since being shot G was more inclined to accept the initial invitation, but to this day he still hadn’t used the key unless he was watching the place while Sam was out of town.
Opening those doors was as close as G would ever come to admitting that there was so much going on in his head that he couldn’t handle it alone.
Sam wasn’t sure that showing any sign that he knew G was there wasn’t going to scare him right back into his room with the doors locked between them. He shifted, trying to make it look like he was just rolling over in his sleep, but pretty sure that G would be too alert to buy the ruse. When he didn’t hear G move in response, he risked opening his eyes. The light coming through Callen’s window was at enough of an angle to let him see that the doors were wide open, but that G wasn’t standing in the doorway.
Sam lay still for a few more minutes wondering if the doors were open as an invitation. Maybe G wanted him to ask him in again. Maybe he just wanted to be sure Sam was still in there. Maybe he was just starting to feel claustrophobic in his own small room.
Finally deciding that if this was some bizarre game of emotional chicken he had a lot less to lose by losing, he tossed the blankets aside and rolled out of bed. He crossed the carpeted room to the door and found G right where he’d left him when he’d gone to take his shower and go to bed; sitting on the desk with his head pressed against the cool glass of the window. His head turned to watch the darkness of Sam’s room through the doors.
When G didn’t do more than shift his eyes to acknowledge Sam, Sam came in and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Did you get any sleep at all?” Like him, G was in his boxers and a t-shirt, so Sam assumed he’d at least tried to lie down for a while.
“Couple hours.”
They both sat silently for a long stretch of minutes. Sam could see G’s breath hitch every once in a while as he wrestled with the thousand and two thoughts in his head and the emotions that went along with them.
“G,” Sam finally whispered, “Come here.” It was a risk. G could and would just as easily tell him to get the hell out, but Sam was pretty sure that the open doors was as close as G would be able to get for a long time to saying, “I need you to hold me and tell me this will all be okay.”
Sam wasn’t prepared for the way G launched himself off the edge of the desk and nearly tackled Sam to the bed. He caught him, pulling him in tight and maneuvering them both so that G was able to sit close and rest his head on Sam’s shoulder. “One of these days you’ll believe me when I say that you can come to me,” Sam whispered. “Really, I want you to.”
“I don’t know if I can talk about this yet,” G answered, his face half-buried in Sam’s t-shirt.
“You don’t have to. Not yet at any rate. You can’t keep this bottled up forever, but I know you need time to sort at least some of it out for yourself first.” Sam hadn’t yet found a good time to tell G about the phone call he’d taken from Vance while G was handling the paperwork for Hetty’s transfer from Romania to Germany.
The call where Vance had asked if it was time to recall Nate to California for a few weeks. The call Sam had had to make on behalf of his partner. He’d probably never tell Callen that he’d only needed about three seconds to tell Vance to put Nate’s butt on a plane ASAP.
There was another long silence before Callen took a deep breath and sat up, crawling off the bed and looking just a little sheepish at his own emotionalism. He went back to the desk and Sam thought, at first, that he was going to sit back up and stare out the window for a while longer, but instead, G grabbed the telephone pad ubiquitous to every hotel in the western world and tossed it to Sam.
G leaned on the desk while Sam read, but after two or three pages, Sam got the gist and set the pad down on the bed. “Come here,” he said again.
This time G moved more slowly, sitting on the edge of the bed next to Sam, not touching, except where Sam and taken his hand and woven their fingers together. “Why show this to me?” Sam asked quietly.
G chuckled under his breath. “Lesser of two evils?”
“Pardon?” Sam asked, faking affrontery.
G shook his head. “The deal always was that if I could convince Nate that I was talking to you, he didn’t ride my ass quite so hard.”
“When did Nate enter this conversation?” Sam asked, wondering if G was picking up on some of Hetty’s tricks of omnipotence.
“Oh please, like you, Vance, or possibly Kensi hasn’t already called him.”
“Well…” Sam, conceded.
“Thanks a fucking lot,” G muttered, but there wasn’t a lot of malice in the remark, more resignation than anything.
“I didn’t do it. I just… didn’t tell Vance it would be a bad idea.”
G lay back on the bed, his feet still on the floor, his fingers still laced between Sam’s. “I’ve spent my entire life in front of social workers and shrinks. As a person, Nate’s a dork, but as a shrink, he’s not the worst I’ve dealt with by far.”
There was something very normal in the gesture and Sam could feel just a little of the tension in G drain out as he made himself comfortable.
“Tell me what bothers you the most,” Sam asked quietly. G had said he didn’t want to talk about it, but Sam couldn’t see any other way to take G handing him that notepad. “That she lied?”
“You know what I’ve been thinking of all night?” G asked suddenly.
Sam couldn’t tell if he was going to answer the question or if this was a dodge of some sort, but he asked, “Hm?” anyway.
“Remember my friend Gibbs?”
“Sure. I was the one who had to call him and tell him you’d taken five to the chest and damn near bled out on a Venice sidewalk.”
It was Sam’s usual reply whenever Gibbs came up. He didn’t mention the case they’d worked together, or the fact that G and Gibbs had been partners working Eastern Europe the first time G had worked for NCIS in the nineties. No, he commented on being stuck having to call Hetty and Vance and Gibbs from a surgical waiting room. “Yeah. Anyway, he had this case half a dozen years ago or so where these cartel guys grabbed this high school kid and strapped a bomb to him and made him take a high school hostage.”
“You’re thinking of taking a high school hostage?” Sam asked, knowing that that wasn’t the point, but not sure where this was going.
G just glared at him for that ridiculous question. “Gibbs figured out that the kid was being manipulated. Abby had figured out a way to get visual communication to Gibbs while he was locked in this classroom with the kid and the bomb. Gibbs signed ‘puppet’ to her. That was all he needed to say for them to not only figure out that the kid wasn’t the one who started any of it, but for them to trace the earwig signal back to the bastards and take them down, because absolutely none of it was the kid’s idea.”
“You feel like a puppet? Like someone’s been pulling your strings?”
G threw his arm across the bed theatrically, jerking his foot at the same time. “Just call me Pinnochio.”
Sam thought about that analogy for a few minutes. It was frighteningly easy to start drawing out the parallels. “So is Hetty Geppetto: the one who made you? Or is she Stromboli: the one who used you?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” G said without looking at him. After a second he said, “You know who you are, right?”
“You call me Jiminy Cricket and I’ll kick your ass,” Sam said, grateful for the slight break in the tension.
“I mean it as a compliment,” G said, also grinning a bit.
“At least I wasn’t the goldfish. Deeks would be the dumb cat, right? Stromboli’s cat – I can’t remember his name.” Sam continued, hoping to get G to smile a little more.
“Sure. But I think if we call Kensi the Blue Fairy, she’ll shove a wand somewhere extremely unpleasant. Star first.” G played along before covering his eyes with one hand. He started to say something several times before cutting himself off and remaining silent. Sam waited him out. Finally he said, “I guess I just wonder who I’d be if I’d ever had a chance to turn into a real boy.”
Sam began gently rubbing G’s shoulders, well aware that they were back to being serious. “What d’you mean?”
“If Hetty wanted to hide me from the Comescus, why bounce me around so damn many foster families? Why not just change my name – give me a damn name – and drop me into some placement facility? Why keep moving me? Why not screen some of those asshole foster parents better? I just… I don’t get it. She cared enough to make sure the Comescus couldn’t find me, but didn’t care enough to see that I was actually… safe?”
“Happy?” Sam put in. He knew G would never say his own happiness was important to anyone, least of all himself, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t.
“Whatever,” G said predictably. “In thirteen years of bouncing around I really only thought I was wanted twice. And even then those placements didn’t last. At the time, as a kid, I thought it was just crap luck, just the way thing went for kids in the system. Now I find out that there was this … other force in my life – someone pulling my strings -- and I just can’t help thinking that maybe things should have gone just a little bit better.”
“Not unreasonable thinking,” Sam responded. He wanted G to talk. He liked the idea that even someone who’d spend his whole life running circles around shrinks, would prefer to talk to him – really talk to him – than bullshit the shrinks. But the more he listened, the more he was becoming incensed on Callen’s behalf. When Hetty came out of the damn coma she was in if she didn’t answer to G, she was damn well going to answer to him.
G didn’t do self-pity too often. There had been a few moments here and there over the course of their partnership that Sam had realized that G really did grasp how crappy his childhood had been and Sam knew that once in a while he would get a painful reminder on the things he’d missed out on having. Simple things. Things that every kid wants: predictability, stability, support. Love.
It was the one thing that led to the remaining awkwardness in their personal relationship. They’d been having sex for over a year. They’d been best friends on a deeply, intimately, personal level almost three times that. And yet Sam had always felt instinctively that if he ever actually told Callen that he loved him that G would be out the door before Sam could finish the sentence.
But now it was under Sam’s skin, a pressing need to make sure that even though G had rarely if ever been told he was loved as a child, that he should know that he was now. Sam could read between the lines of what G was saying. If Hetty had been concerned enough to make sure he wasn’t killed as a pre-schooler, concerned enough, apparently, to move him to California where she could keep an eye on him, why wasn’t she concerned enough to make sure he was put somewhere that he’d be loved and cared for? How could she work with him for three years at OSP, fuss over him after he’d fallen into a fountain and bring him tea and cookies while he was recovering at Sam’s after he’d been shot, and never once, from all the evidence available, done anything to prevent the abuse and neglect he’d suffered all the years she’d known him before? How had she allowed him to develop a sense of himself that left him feeling like he was unwanted and unlovable?
Sam squashed the building rage he was feeling towards someone who he’d never thought of as anything less than an ally and guardian and, to some degree, a friend before. It wasn’t a feeling he liked nursing when it was aimed at complete strangers who he knew had done awful, evil things. Having that red-hot anger boiling up at Hetty was not something he wanted to dwell on.
He tempered his emotions by reaching up and gently stroking Callen’s hair. “I’m gonna say something and I don’t want you to say anything back, okay?”
Callen stiffened under Sam’s hands. And even in the dim light, Sam could see G’s face close off. “This ought to be spectacular.”
“I know you don’t want anyone’s pity and I’ve never once offered it. But we both know that a lot of the issues you have with relationships come from the way you grew up. I’ve tried to be… sensitive to what you need from me and what you don’t. And I’ve always kind of felt that certain little things make you skittish as hell, so I’ve just avoided them. And one of those things is that I’ve never actually told you that I love you. I was always worried that you’d panic and disappear if I ever did, but maybe that was a mistake. Maybe I made the same mistake a million other people in your life did and never said the words because we – because I – was afraid it would scare you off because we’ve bought your tough-guy-who-doesn’t-need-anyone routine. So, I’m saying it now because I think you need to hear it, even if you aren’t ready to believe it. I do love you. You are someone who can be loved. And whatever Hetty had to do with all of this, well, all of this made you who you are and you are the guy I wanted to absolutely kill with my own bare hands the first two months we worked together and then slowly fell in love with. So whatever Hetty did or didn’t do that led to you being who you are… I guess I can’t hate her for it too much. Don’t get me wrong – right now I’m pissed as hell at her for this insanity – but you are who you are and that’s who I love.”
G’s mouth opened and closed and opened again. Sam put his finger over G’s lips. “Seriously. Don’t say anything. I just wanted you to hear that from me. I dunno, I thought maybe it might make you feel a little better.”
G sighed and closed his eyes. “Sam… I can’t – I… can we please talk about this later. Right now… I just… I can’t do this right now.” There was a growing look of panic in his eyes. Exactly the look Sam had been afraid of putting there.
Sam scowled hoping G couldn’t see him in the dark. “G, you don’t have to talk about it at all. If I misjudged and you don’t feel the same, that’s okay. I just thought –“
“I do –“ G jumped in before Sam could make things any more awkward. “I do feel the same, I just… I can’t get into what that means right now. I can’t have that discussion with any kind of coherence while my head is so full of…” Callen waved one hand in the air, “all this other crap.”
“Okay, okay,” Sam said, not sure exactly what G was admitting to. “Like I said, you don’t have to say anything. I just didn’t like the idea that you may have been thinking that no one’s ever really cared about you. ‘Cause it’s not true.”
G snuggled into Sam’s t-shirt, wiggling until he could get an arm around Sam’s chest. “Thanks.”
Sam knew when to leave well enough alone, at least for the moment. He wrapped his arms around G’s back. “Think you can sleep a little more?” he asked, his hand trailing up and down G’s spine.
“I don’t know. My head’s still spinning pretty fast,” G admitted, even as he seemed to make himself comfortable stretched out next to Sam, his head on Sam’s chest.
“How about you lay here with me for a while and give it a shot?”
“No promises,” G said and then, with comic timing, yawned loudly.
“Okay, G,” Sam laughed. “No promises.”
“Maybe I’ll sleep a little more,” Callen muttered.
Sam wiggled until he had an arm tucked around Callen in such a way that G would be able to get up if he needed to without disturbing him, but holding him tight enough to remind him that he’d meant what he’d said earlier.
Callen did manage to get another few hours sleep before he was wide awake again, playing the scene of Hunter shooting ‘Mama Comescu’ over and over again in his head. He had wanted so badly to drag that psychotic woman into an interrogation cell and get his life story out of her one way or another. He knew that Hunter had no choice but to shoot her – he’d rather be a living mystery than a dead identity – but damn if it didn’t rankle. The two women who knew who he was, where he came from, what people could claim him, were both shot. One of them unable to tell him who he is, the other unwilling.
Nate had told him he had made an identity out of not having an identity. And it made G wonder who he’d be if he suddenly had a regular name and a real birthday and all the details that came with having a family – even one that he didn’t grow up with and possibly would never meet. Even if most of them were dead, there’d be details about them in databases and files and he could start putting together his history from them. But if he did that, who would he be?
He glanced over at Sam as he carefully slid out of bed, knowing that Sam would wake half-way up, ascertain that it was just G getting up that had woken him, and then go back to sleep. Just like always with them. G pulled on the black jeans he’d been in for the last few days, scowling when he realized Hetty’s blood was still noticeable on his left leg. He grabbed his phone to Google where the nearest place to the hotel to get clothes was. They’d all need something new, something less black and ‘We’re here to carry out a covert mission’ before they headed back to the US.
As he passed the room door, he noticed an envelope had been slid under it during the night. Kensi’s handwriting on the front made him less inclined to check it for poison powder or some kind of explosive trip wire.
He went into Sam’s room where he could type on the phone and go through the papers with less risk of waking Sam. Sitting on the bed, he dumped the envelope out. A note on the top indicated that Kensi had emailed Vance. He’d told her that they were to stay in Germany until they were certain Hetty was stable and then come home sometime in the next few days. Under the note were two KLM tickets, Frankfurt to New York to L.A.
G could hear Sam start to stir and stretch in the other room as he looked through the other papers that had been delivered to the hotel – more stuff to sign for Hetty mostly.
He thought back to the night before. Sam actually saying that he loved him. G knew he had been in no frame of mind to have that conversation at that point. He probably still wasn’t there, though the few extra hours of sleep made it much more likely he’d manage to get through it without making a complete and total ass of himself if push came to shove.
He wasn’t sure he’d be able to say the words back any time soon. They just weren’t part of his vocabulary. He’d seen them said without being meant too many times. A few times, even to him. There had been too many times when he’d wanted to hear them but there’d been no one there to say them. But there was something about Sam, about the way he said it, about the timing, that made G think that he might actually mean it, that it might be safe to believe him. G couldn’t say that that didn’t scare the shit out of him, but it was the kind of fear he felt he could deal with. It was more the nervous anxiousness he approached a big undercover op with than the kind of dread he’d felt when he’d seen his social worker pull up to the house or school with That Look that said wherever he’d been had reached the end of their rope with him and that he was about to be dumped on his ass.
He wasn’t sure that he’d never screw it up. History certainly wasn’t on his side with that one, but Sam had been amazingly tolerant of his mistakes thus far.
As he began scanning Hetty’s paperwork he started wondering if there was some truth to the stereotype that some guys just weren’t the ‘talking about it’ sort – they were more the ‘doing something about it’ sort. He wanted to do something for Sam that might, in some small way show that he’d meant it when he’d basically pulled a ‘ditto’ on him the previous night.
One of flight tickets slid out from the stack of papers as he reorganized them and he suddenly had an idea. He grabbed his phone and texted Sam. “I’m in the business center. If you go out, I need jeans and a shirt. 3 days in these is just gross.” He left out the bit where he could still see Hetty’s blood on his pants as he pulled them on one last time so he could use the computer downstairs.
After finishing what he needed in the business center – a call to D.C. and then rearranging the flights Kensi had booked for him and Sam -- Callen took a walk. He needed to get out and think for a while. Sam hadn’t called or texted to find out where he was, so he figured Sam had slept in; or failing that, Sam had decided that last night had been as intense as they could handle for a while and was giving him some space.
He was suddenly hit with the understanding that so much of the turmoil in his head was from feeling like he’d never know who he was and if he couldn’t know who he was, then how could anyone else? But he was starting to really, really feel like Sam did. Sam just took him for who he was, the way he was, and didn’t give a damn where he’d come from or how many quirks G had that were due to the way he’d grown up.
And that was what Sam had been telling him the previous night. That for all that G wanted to know whatever it was Hetty knew and Mama Comescu knew, Sam didn’t really give a damn, other than it would make G happy to know. Sam was okay with him just being him.
G couldn’t say he wasn’t still a little pissed at Hetty for holding out on him, but he had a strong suspicion that at least now he’d be able to sit in a room with her, when she was able, and listen to her explain why she’d done it. Somehow it made all the difference that he knew Sam would be there for him no matter what Hetty said. Or didn’t.
He ended up getting coffee and strudel in a little out-of-the-way café for breakfast and was just paying the tab when his phone beeped with a text message. “I have your clothes. Kensi wants to know where the hell you went.”
G laughed. “’Kensi wants to know’, my ass,” he muttered as he left the café. Though the comment served as fair warning that wherever G found Sam, he’d find Kensi and as likely as not Deeks.
He headed back to the hotel. A shower and clean clothes awaited.
“Hey, I don’t suppose you grabbed me a t-shirt too,” G hollered as he passed from his room into Sam’s. He was hit square in the chest with a bag from a local all-in-one shop.
“Jeans, socks, underwear, t-shirt and tacky tourist sweatshirt,” Sam said as G pawed through it.
“You know what kind of underwear he wears?” Kensi asked Sam from her perch on the bed. He ignored her.
“Thanks,” G said, turning and tossing it on his bed. Kensi was giving him a truly disturbing look of pity. “What do you want?” G asked, trying not to make the question sound as obnoxious as it could have been.
“You doin’ okay?”
“I’m fine, Kens. Really. The hospital said I could call around noon to get an update on Hetty.” He didn’t particularly want to talk about Hetty at the moment, but he needed to get that look off Kensi’s face.
Kensi made a face and started to press the issue, but Sam cut her off. “He doesn’t want to talk about it, Kensi.”
“Oookay,” Kensi drawled, realizing that she really didn’t want to push it with Sam in over-protective over-drive.
G noticed it to, quietly saying, “I’m fine, Sam,” to get his partner to back down a little. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the support, but at the moment he actually felt like he had both feet on the ground for the first time in a week.
Kensi turned back to G. “Did you get the folder I put under your door last night?”
“Yeah, thanks for making the travel plans, but Sam and I have to make a stop before we head back to L.A., so I’ve rebooked our flights.”
“You have to what?” Kensi looked at Sam, who looked equally confused.
“Remember hearing about that naval pilot who died during the last Viking Air Defense Exercises?” G asked Sam.
“Yeah, but I thought they ruled it natural causes.”
“Well, apparently the autopsy was done on-site and Doctor Mallard wants the original file, x-rays and all that before he signs off on the death benefits forms… or something. I stopped listening after a while. Anyway, you and I are going to stop in Reykjavik, grab the file, talk to a few people who knew the guy and then stop in D.C. to drop off the file and then head back to L.A. We leave tomorrow night at six, local time, as long as Hetty stays stable.”
Why do you need to ferry a case file –“ Kensi started to ask before she realized that G’s eyes had never left Sam. There was a point to this little detour.
“We’re working a case in Iceland?” Sam asked.
G looked a little sheepish as he turned and headed back for his room and clean clothes and the shower. “I couldn’t find an excuse to go to the moon,” he hollered over his shoulder.
Resigning herself to the fact that the conversation going on around her was not meant to include her, Kensi simply asked Sam, “I suppose that makes sense to you?”
“Oh yeah. Lots of sense,” Sam answered smiling.
Fandom: NCIS: LA
Pairing: G/Sam
Rating: PG-13
Length: 7855
Written for: Yuletide 2011, for Meri
Summary: With so many people not telling Callen the things he needs to hear, Sam realizes there's something he needs to say. (Tag to Familia/Lange, H.)
Warnings: none
ARGH! The formatting on this is making me crazy - all my paragraph breaks disappeared and when I went to put them back in the editor wouldn't let me scroll through the story without jumping all over the place every time I hit 'return'. I'll argue with it later, but for the moment, please read the story - properly formatted and all - at AO3.
There was some kind of kerfluffle that Sam still didn’t understand when they got Hetty to the hospital. He and Callen had strong-armed their way into riding in the ambulance with Hetty leaving Deeks and Kensi to do the mop up at the Comescu house and deal with Hunter. The trauma doctor had met them at the hospital door, looked quickly at Hetty and made some remark that had Callen slamming the doctor into the wall, an arm against his throat. Callen spoke quietly and clearly in Romanian then shoved whatever leus he had in his pocket in the doctor’s white coat and stepped back.
The doctor barked orders to the ambulance attendants and they rolled Hetty into the hospital, leaving Sam and G waiting in the bay. Feeling a little out of his depth, Sam waited until G, who’d sagged against the wall, pushed himself up and went inside. Sam followed silently as Callen led them to the emergency department waiting room.
Sam looked in doorways and studied the people as they passed, trying to figure out what kind of care they could expect for Hetty. The place was reasonably clean, there were computers at the nurses’ stations and while the rooms seemed to be more high-occupancy wards than he was used to seeing, he felt more and more comfortable with leaving Hetty in their care as they walked. He’d seen enough hospitals in other parts of the world that could scarcely bear the name that he felt the caution was warranted.
When they reached their destination, Callen threw himself onto one of the old, uncomfortable sofas in the waiting area. Sam figured Callen was as relieved at the fact that they had the room to themselves, at least for the moment, as he felt himself.
Sam leaned on the wall, arms crossed. “What the hell happened out there?”
G rolled his eyes. “I shouldn’t have shoved him. I knew exactly what was happening… I didn’t need to shove him, I know.” He gave Sam an exasperated look that clearly said he was expecting a lecture, but didn’t have the patience for it.
Sam took a deep breath. There was so much going on that he didn’t quite understand. There were still a dozens upon hundreds of questions about what Hetty was actually doing out here in the first place, how Callen and his mysterious family fit in to it all, how much information had been lost with the death of the old woman in that beach house and how much more could be lost if they lost Hetty. “So why’d you do it? What did he say?”
“Basically that she was awfully old and that since she didn’t have much time left anyway, it might not be worth it for them to… exert themselves over her.” Callen scrubbed his fingers through his hair.
“Wait the doctor said – he said that?” Sam had heard the doctor speaking, even as far away as he’d been, even if he hadn’t understood. To say something like that, out loud… The doctor better be thanking his lucky stars he couldn't understand him, Sam thought even as Callen was explaining.
“He saw us, knew we were worried…” Callen sighed. “The Romanian medical system runs on bribes. If you want the best care you… pay for it. I knew that’s what he was doing.”
Sam finally crossed the small room and dropped down in the folding chair next to the wall near G’s sofa. “How the hell do you know that? I mean… you remember that from when you were five too?”
G glared at him. “I’ve worked Eastern Europe for half-a-dozen U.S. federal agencies for almost twenty years. Poland, Russia, Romania, Hungary, Serbia… and I’ve seen hospitals in every one of them. You pick up a few things after a while.”
Sam nodded. “I suppose you would.”
“In ninety-nine I was part of a team that was chasing down some arms dealers with Gibbs, our old director Jenny Sheppard and a guy named Petrov. Petrov was shot in Bucharest and Gibbs and I apparently made the mistake of talking to him in English. The doctor realized we were American, decided he didn’t like us very much and… shook us down. And then let Petrov die anyway.” G slumped back against the couch, arms crossed tight against his chest and went silent.
Sam gave him a minute before he reached over and squeezed his partner’s wrist. “Hetty’s not gonna die. She’s too crafty to be taken out by some old soup-making witch.”
G gave a small smile. “Gypsy.”
“Huh?”
“’Mama Comescu’ was a Gypsy – Romani – not a witch. A lot of people think they’re the same, but they aren’t.”
“Ah,” Sam said, not sure if or what kind of reaction he was supposed to have. After another long silence he shook his head. “Will I get hit if I point out that it makes so much sense that you’re Romani? I mean, we couldn’t get you to live in one place for longer than three months. Hell for a while there last year we were doing good if we could nail you down to somewhere for a week.”
Callen smiled and shook his head, but didn’t argue with Sam. Maybe it was inborn, his inability to stay in one place, one job, one relationship for very long.
One look at Sam and Callen knew he needed to change the subject before Sam could start with the questions he wasn’t ready to hear yet, let alone answer. Questions he couldn’t answer until he could get Hetty to answer some questions for him first.
He pulled his satphone out of his jacket and spun it between his fingers. “Vance should make arrangements to get Hetty to Ramstein as soon as she’s stable enough to make the trip,” he told Sam, refusing to believe that Hetty would die before he could force her to explain to him everything she knew, everything she’d done with regards to his past. Before she could explain why the hell she’d lied to him over and over and over again. He didn’t make eye contact with Sam before he started dialing the NCIS switchboard in D.C. He suspected Vance would wait in L.A. until they came back, but he wasn’t sure, and he didn’t want to dial OSP directly from a burn phone. But he was sure he didn’t want to give Sam the chance to start in on him, not in public. He couldn’t be sure that some kind of epic meltdown wasn’t hot on the heels of him thinking of the way Hetty had apparently betrayed him.
*^*^*^*
Hetty was out of surgery six hours later. Vance, true to his word, had her on a medical evac plane four hours after that. Callen and his team followed her to Germany, smuggled out of the country by a CIA operative who arranged for a private plane that could make the trip to Frankfurt without calling attention to itself or its passengers or tie them to the carnage in the beach house. Once there, Vance had told them to take three or four days to make sure Hetty was stable and then make their way home. Hetty would come home when the Air Force doctors at Landstuhl determined that she was ready to make the trip and finish her recovery at home.
All said, it was nearing forty-eight hours since any of them had had any sleep when they stumbled into a local hotel that catered to military families near Ramstein. Deeks was continuing the nonsensical monologue he’d started in the taxi as Kensi got their rooms.
“…but since we were in France, and apparently they don’t actually have a drinking age –“
“For the love of God, Deeks, shut the hell up!” Callen snapped. Deeks had been carrying on for ages about some trip to France his high school French club had taken and Callen’s patience with his blathering had ended rather abruptly.
Everyone in the upscale hotel lobby stopped and looked at Callen who either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Deeks had stopped talking, which was all that was important.
G felt Sam’s hand between his shoulder blades, steering him into a quiet corner while they waited for their room keys. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell.”
Sam shrugged. “If you hadn’t, I would’a.”
“You know he rambled about that trip for at least half an hour and I still can’t figure out if he was actually on the trip or just heard about it when the French Club came back,” Callen said, feeling his eyelids droop even as he stood and spoke.
“I don’t know either, but I couldn’t care less,” Sam said. “It’s been, what, two – two and a half? – days since any of us have slept. I’m highly unlikely to care about much of anything until something gets done about that.”
“I hear you,” Callen replied calmly, but inwardly, his natural predilection towards not sleeping was starting to kick in with a vengeance. By default, the team had deferred to him and he’d ended up as Hetty’s emergency contact and he was just then realizing that he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
A few minutes later Kensi came over and handed them keycards. “Four-fourteen and four-sixteen. Deeks and I are across the hall.”
Sam took both cards as they shouldered their rucksacks and headed for the elevators. He sent a silent ‘thank you’ to Kensi when Deeks’ back was turned as Kensi steered him towards the stairs. He wasn’t sure who he was protecting at that point – most days he’d be happy to let Deeks work Callen’s nerve and then get his ass handed to him – but today he wasn’t sure G had a nerve left to be worked.
Once alone in the elevator, Sam pocketed the key cards and caught G’s eye. “Stay with me?”
Callen sighed and rubbed his eyes with the side of his hand. Sam knew he was looking for an excuse to say ‘no’, even if it wasn’t particularly what he wanted. They kept their extra-curricular relationship strictly off the clock and away from the job. Sam wasn’t particularly sure how ‘on the job’ they were that night, but G would use that as an excuse if given the chance. Even if he really just wanted to say ‘no’ because he was used to fighting his internal battles alone and didn’t quite know how to say ‘yes.’
Before Callen could drum up something, Sam put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Even you are going to sleep for a while after the last few days. Come crash with me.”
G slowly shook his head as if he was still working up the nerve to say no. “I need some space. I’m sorry, Sam. I –“
“It’s okay,” Sam cut in quickly. He wasn’t at all surprised that G was pulling back; he’d seen it coming after all. G had been burned by one of the very small handful of people he trusted. He was going to need a little space to pull himself together. Sam had been around long enough to know this and to no longer take it personally. That didn’t mean he had to like it or that he thought it was a good idea.
“It’s not that – I don’t mean –“ G was spluttering as the elevator doors open.
“You know where to find me. You know you’re welcome to come crash with me. Maybe once you take a shower and relax for a few, you’ll unwind enough to come in and sleep with me.”
Callen gave him half a smile, wishing he were more able to express his gratitude that Sam actually got him and got that when Callen said he needed to be alone, it wasn’t that he didn’t want Sam hovering over him. It was that he didn’t want anyone trying to talk to him or worse, trying to get him to talk to them. “Maybe,” he said, not willing to promise anything more at that point.
Sam handed over one of the keys as they approached their rooms, checking the little paper envelope for which key went to which. As Callen fit the card into the reader for his door, Sam put his hand back on his shoulder. “Just tell me you’re okay.”
G sighed as the door beeped and the green light came on. He pushed the handle before the door would relock itself. “I don’t know what I am,” G said quietly as he went in, leaving Sam standing in the hall.
Sam knew there were at least four different ways for him to interpret that statement and very possibly dozens more he couldn’t even see yet.
*^*^*^*
The first door he opened almost led him to smack into the door closed immediately opposite it. He raised an eyebrow. Kensi was clever. Not that he’d ever thought otherwise, but getting him and G adjoining rooms was a pretty brilliant idea. He wasn’t sure if she was intimating that she knew about their personal relationship or just that she knew that G would be mess and need the support of his partner. It would look completely on the up and up in the books, but give them the privacy they might need to be together in whatever way G needed.
He wondered if her room connected to Deeks’. He wondered if she’d threaten to shoot him if he tried to convince her to open her side of the door for ‘security’ reasons or some other dumbass excuse.
He turned back and found the other closed door did, in fact, lead to the bathroom. He tossed his clean clothes on the sink before heading back to the adjoining doors. He raised his hand to knock on G’s side of the door, but realized that in Callen’s current state of mind Sam was as likely as not to be greeted with one of those guns they’d secured in Romania and that G wasn’t willing to surrender quite yet. He grabbed his burn phone out of his jacket and dialed G’s number.
When Callen picked up Sam said without preamble, “Unlock the door between our rooms.”
There was a long silence and at first Sam was starting to wonder if G was going to blow him off, but after another few seconds he heard the bolt slide. The door didn’t open and Callen didn’t reply on the phone.
Sam snapped the phone shut and turned the knob to Callen’s door and cracked it open just enough to make sure he wouldn’t smack his partner in the face with it. G was nowhere to be seen. Sam opened the door and found G sitting on the desk leaning on the window. “You okay with leaving these unlocked tonight?”
“Sure,” G said without even looking at him.
“You need anything?” Sam asked, not wanting to leave even though he knew that was exactly what G wanted.
“I’m good.”
Sam didn’t believe him, but he said, “Okay,” and shut the doors between them again anyway, twisting the knobs to make sure neither of them automatically locked.
*^*^*^*
Sam woke up to the distinct feeling that he was being watched. He was turned towards the door to the hall, and it was closed. Only a thin strip of light leaked in from the hall from the bottom. That left G and the adjoining doors.
There had been a thousand nights back in L.A. when Sam had told G that he was welcome to come over and crash with him after a hard day. Days G had declined and Sam had reminded him that he had a key to Sam’s place in case he changed his mind.
Since being shot G was more inclined to accept the initial invitation, but to this day he still hadn’t used the key unless he was watching the place while Sam was out of town.
Opening those doors was as close as G would ever come to admitting that there was so much going on in his head that he couldn’t handle it alone.
Sam wasn’t sure that showing any sign that he knew G was there wasn’t going to scare him right back into his room with the doors locked between them. He shifted, trying to make it look like he was just rolling over in his sleep, but pretty sure that G would be too alert to buy the ruse. When he didn’t hear G move in response, he risked opening his eyes. The light coming through Callen’s window was at enough of an angle to let him see that the doors were wide open, but that G wasn’t standing in the doorway.
Sam lay still for a few more minutes wondering if the doors were open as an invitation. Maybe G wanted him to ask him in again. Maybe he just wanted to be sure Sam was still in there. Maybe he was just starting to feel claustrophobic in his own small room.
Finally deciding that if this was some bizarre game of emotional chicken he had a lot less to lose by losing, he tossed the blankets aside and rolled out of bed. He crossed the carpeted room to the door and found G right where he’d left him when he’d gone to take his shower and go to bed; sitting on the desk with his head pressed against the cool glass of the window. His head turned to watch the darkness of Sam’s room through the doors.
When G didn’t do more than shift his eyes to acknowledge Sam, Sam came in and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Did you get any sleep at all?” Like him, G was in his boxers and a t-shirt, so Sam assumed he’d at least tried to lie down for a while.
“Couple hours.”
They both sat silently for a long stretch of minutes. Sam could see G’s breath hitch every once in a while as he wrestled with the thousand and two thoughts in his head and the emotions that went along with them.
“G,” Sam finally whispered, “Come here.” It was a risk. G could and would just as easily tell him to get the hell out, but Sam was pretty sure that the open doors was as close as G would be able to get for a long time to saying, “I need you to hold me and tell me this will all be okay.”
Sam wasn’t prepared for the way G launched himself off the edge of the desk and nearly tackled Sam to the bed. He caught him, pulling him in tight and maneuvering them both so that G was able to sit close and rest his head on Sam’s shoulder. “One of these days you’ll believe me when I say that you can come to me,” Sam whispered. “Really, I want you to.”
“I don’t know if I can talk about this yet,” G answered, his face half-buried in Sam’s t-shirt.
“You don’t have to. Not yet at any rate. You can’t keep this bottled up forever, but I know you need time to sort at least some of it out for yourself first.” Sam hadn’t yet found a good time to tell G about the phone call he’d taken from Vance while G was handling the paperwork for Hetty’s transfer from Romania to Germany.
The call where Vance had asked if it was time to recall Nate to California for a few weeks. The call Sam had had to make on behalf of his partner. He’d probably never tell Callen that he’d only needed about three seconds to tell Vance to put Nate’s butt on a plane ASAP.
There was another long silence before Callen took a deep breath and sat up, crawling off the bed and looking just a little sheepish at his own emotionalism. He went back to the desk and Sam thought, at first, that he was going to sit back up and stare out the window for a while longer, but instead, G grabbed the telephone pad ubiquitous to every hotel in the western world and tossed it to Sam.
“I thought maybe if I wrote out what I knew, what questions I have…” He petered off and shrugged.
Sam flipped through the pad. Seven pages were filled with G’s chicken scratch, front and back. He shifted to see the writing by the pale moonlight and yellow streetlamps coming in the window.How did I end up in California?
How is it that there are records of my sister and her name, but not mine?
Hetty kept that notebook. She lied to me about it and she lied to Nate.
If she gave enough of a damn to track me, why didn’t she do anything about how often I moved?
Did she orchestrate that? Want to keep me from making connections to people or places?
If I was five when I moved to California, why don’t I remember ever speaking Romanian? Why did I have to learn it again? And why didn’t I have any memories of knowing any of the words? Did my sister speak Romanian to me before she died?
Do I have a Romanian birth certificate?
Is that what Keelson had? What else did he have that would fill up a BOX?
Is my birthday actually when I’ve always thought it was?
Did Hetty keep the social services people from just giving me a name?
Why did she wait until now to try to convince the Comsescus that I was dead? Why not use the fact that I was shot five times in broad daylight as her opportunity?
Did Hetty make them move me so often to keep the Comescus from finding me?
Were they even looking for a five year old kid?
WHY DOES SHE GIVE A DAMN?
Why is that I still can’t hate her as much as I think I should for lying to me? Is it just that I think she may have more information or am I so screwed up that I still actually trust her?
Did Hetty send those CIA recruiters to talk to me in high school?
Was this some plan to ‘build a perfect operative’? No family, no home, no history, no connections, nothing but the mission?
Who am I now?
Who could I have been?
Who should I have been?
The list went on and on. Several questions and comments had embedded commentary on G’s concern for his own value as a person and not just as an operative and his emotional state.
G leaned on the desk while Sam read, but after two or three pages, Sam got the gist and set the pad down on the bed. “Come here,” he said again.
This time G moved more slowly, sitting on the edge of the bed next to Sam, not touching, except where Sam and taken his hand and woven their fingers together. “Why show this to me?” Sam asked quietly.
G chuckled under his breath. “Lesser of two evils?”
“Pardon?” Sam asked, faking affrontery.
G shook his head. “The deal always was that if I could convince Nate that I was talking to you, he didn’t ride my ass quite so hard.”
“When did Nate enter this conversation?” Sam asked, wondering if G was picking up on some of Hetty’s tricks of omnipotence.
“Oh please, like you, Vance, or possibly Kensi hasn’t already called him.”
“Well…” Sam, conceded.
“Thanks a fucking lot,” G muttered, but there wasn’t a lot of malice in the remark, more resignation than anything.
“I didn’t do it. I just… didn’t tell Vance it would be a bad idea.”
G lay back on the bed, his feet still on the floor, his fingers still laced between Sam’s. “I’ve spent my entire life in front of social workers and shrinks. As a person, Nate’s a dork, but as a shrink, he’s not the worst I’ve dealt with by far.”
There was something very normal in the gesture and Sam could feel just a little of the tension in G drain out as he made himself comfortable.
“Tell me what bothers you the most,” Sam asked quietly. G had said he didn’t want to talk about it, but Sam couldn’t see any other way to take G handing him that notepad. “That she lied?”
“You know what I’ve been thinking of all night?” G asked suddenly.
Sam couldn’t tell if he was going to answer the question or if this was a dodge of some sort, but he asked, “Hm?” anyway.
“Remember my friend Gibbs?”
“Sure. I was the one who had to call him and tell him you’d taken five to the chest and damn near bled out on a Venice sidewalk.”
It was Sam’s usual reply whenever Gibbs came up. He didn’t mention the case they’d worked together, or the fact that G and Gibbs had been partners working Eastern Europe the first time G had worked for NCIS in the nineties. No, he commented on being stuck having to call Hetty and Vance and Gibbs from a surgical waiting room. “Yeah. Anyway, he had this case half a dozen years ago or so where these cartel guys grabbed this high school kid and strapped a bomb to him and made him take a high school hostage.”
“You’re thinking of taking a high school hostage?” Sam asked, knowing that that wasn’t the point, but not sure where this was going.
G just glared at him for that ridiculous question. “Gibbs figured out that the kid was being manipulated. Abby had figured out a way to get visual communication to Gibbs while he was locked in this classroom with the kid and the bomb. Gibbs signed ‘puppet’ to her. That was all he needed to say for them to not only figure out that the kid wasn’t the one who started any of it, but for them to trace the earwig signal back to the bastards and take them down, because absolutely none of it was the kid’s idea.”
“You feel like a puppet? Like someone’s been pulling your strings?”
G threw his arm across the bed theatrically, jerking his foot at the same time. “Just call me Pinnochio.”
Sam thought about that analogy for a few minutes. It was frighteningly easy to start drawing out the parallels. “So is Hetty Geppetto: the one who made you? Or is she Stromboli: the one who used you?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” G said without looking at him. After a second he said, “You know who you are, right?”
“You call me Jiminy Cricket and I’ll kick your ass,” Sam said, grateful for the slight break in the tension.
“I mean it as a compliment,” G said, also grinning a bit.
“At least I wasn’t the goldfish. Deeks would be the dumb cat, right? Stromboli’s cat – I can’t remember his name.” Sam continued, hoping to get G to smile a little more.
“Sure. But I think if we call Kensi the Blue Fairy, she’ll shove a wand somewhere extremely unpleasant. Star first.” G played along before covering his eyes with one hand. He started to say something several times before cutting himself off and remaining silent. Sam waited him out. Finally he said, “I guess I just wonder who I’d be if I’d ever had a chance to turn into a real boy.”
Sam began gently rubbing G’s shoulders, well aware that they were back to being serious. “What d’you mean?”
“If Hetty wanted to hide me from the Comescus, why bounce me around so damn many foster families? Why not just change my name – give me a damn name – and drop me into some placement facility? Why keep moving me? Why not screen some of those asshole foster parents better? I just… I don’t get it. She cared enough to make sure the Comescus couldn’t find me, but didn’t care enough to see that I was actually… safe?”
“Happy?” Sam put in. He knew G would never say his own happiness was important to anyone, least of all himself, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t.
“Whatever,” G said predictably. “In thirteen years of bouncing around I really only thought I was wanted twice. And even then those placements didn’t last. At the time, as a kid, I thought it was just crap luck, just the way thing went for kids in the system. Now I find out that there was this … other force in my life – someone pulling my strings -- and I just can’t help thinking that maybe things should have gone just a little bit better.”
“Not unreasonable thinking,” Sam responded. He wanted G to talk. He liked the idea that even someone who’d spend his whole life running circles around shrinks, would prefer to talk to him – really talk to him – than bullshit the shrinks. But the more he listened, the more he was becoming incensed on Callen’s behalf. When Hetty came out of the damn coma she was in if she didn’t answer to G, she was damn well going to answer to him.
G didn’t do self-pity too often. There had been a few moments here and there over the course of their partnership that Sam had realized that G really did grasp how crappy his childhood had been and Sam knew that once in a while he would get a painful reminder on the things he’d missed out on having. Simple things. Things that every kid wants: predictability, stability, support. Love.
It was the one thing that led to the remaining awkwardness in their personal relationship. They’d been having sex for over a year. They’d been best friends on a deeply, intimately, personal level almost three times that. And yet Sam had always felt instinctively that if he ever actually told Callen that he loved him that G would be out the door before Sam could finish the sentence.
But now it was under Sam’s skin, a pressing need to make sure that even though G had rarely if ever been told he was loved as a child, that he should know that he was now. Sam could read between the lines of what G was saying. If Hetty had been concerned enough to make sure he wasn’t killed as a pre-schooler, concerned enough, apparently, to move him to California where she could keep an eye on him, why wasn’t she concerned enough to make sure he was put somewhere that he’d be loved and cared for? How could she work with him for three years at OSP, fuss over him after he’d fallen into a fountain and bring him tea and cookies while he was recovering at Sam’s after he’d been shot, and never once, from all the evidence available, done anything to prevent the abuse and neglect he’d suffered all the years she’d known him before? How had she allowed him to develop a sense of himself that left him feeling like he was unwanted and unlovable?
Sam squashed the building rage he was feeling towards someone who he’d never thought of as anything less than an ally and guardian and, to some degree, a friend before. It wasn’t a feeling he liked nursing when it was aimed at complete strangers who he knew had done awful, evil things. Having that red-hot anger boiling up at Hetty was not something he wanted to dwell on.
He tempered his emotions by reaching up and gently stroking Callen’s hair. “I’m gonna say something and I don’t want you to say anything back, okay?”
Callen stiffened under Sam’s hands. And even in the dim light, Sam could see G’s face close off. “This ought to be spectacular.”
“I know you don’t want anyone’s pity and I’ve never once offered it. But we both know that a lot of the issues you have with relationships come from the way you grew up. I’ve tried to be… sensitive to what you need from me and what you don’t. And I’ve always kind of felt that certain little things make you skittish as hell, so I’ve just avoided them. And one of those things is that I’ve never actually told you that I love you. I was always worried that you’d panic and disappear if I ever did, but maybe that was a mistake. Maybe I made the same mistake a million other people in your life did and never said the words because we – because I – was afraid it would scare you off because we’ve bought your tough-guy-who-doesn’t-need-anyone routine. So, I’m saying it now because I think you need to hear it, even if you aren’t ready to believe it. I do love you. You are someone who can be loved. And whatever Hetty had to do with all of this, well, all of this made you who you are and you are the guy I wanted to absolutely kill with my own bare hands the first two months we worked together and then slowly fell in love with. So whatever Hetty did or didn’t do that led to you being who you are… I guess I can’t hate her for it too much. Don’t get me wrong – right now I’m pissed as hell at her for this insanity – but you are who you are and that’s who I love.”
G’s mouth opened and closed and opened again. Sam put his finger over G’s lips. “Seriously. Don’t say anything. I just wanted you to hear that from me. I dunno, I thought maybe it might make you feel a little better.”
G sighed and closed his eyes. “Sam… I can’t – I… can we please talk about this later. Right now… I just… I can’t do this right now.” There was a growing look of panic in his eyes. Exactly the look Sam had been afraid of putting there.
Sam scowled hoping G couldn’t see him in the dark. “G, you don’t have to talk about it at all. If I misjudged and you don’t feel the same, that’s okay. I just thought –“
“I do –“ G jumped in before Sam could make things any more awkward. “I do feel the same, I just… I can’t get into what that means right now. I can’t have that discussion with any kind of coherence while my head is so full of…” Callen waved one hand in the air, “all this other crap.”
“Okay, okay,” Sam said, not sure exactly what G was admitting to. “Like I said, you don’t have to say anything. I just didn’t like the idea that you may have been thinking that no one’s ever really cared about you. ‘Cause it’s not true.”
G snuggled into Sam’s t-shirt, wiggling until he could get an arm around Sam’s chest. “Thanks.”
Sam knew when to leave well enough alone, at least for the moment. He wrapped his arms around G’s back. “Think you can sleep a little more?” he asked, his hand trailing up and down G’s spine.
“I don’t know. My head’s still spinning pretty fast,” G admitted, even as he seemed to make himself comfortable stretched out next to Sam, his head on Sam’s chest.
“How about you lay here with me for a while and give it a shot?”
“No promises,” G said and then, with comic timing, yawned loudly.
“Okay, G,” Sam laughed. “No promises.”
“Maybe I’ll sleep a little more,” Callen muttered.
Sam wiggled until he had an arm tucked around Callen in such a way that G would be able to get up if he needed to without disturbing him, but holding him tight enough to remind him that he’d meant what he’d said earlier.
*^*^*^*
Callen did manage to get another few hours sleep before he was wide awake again, playing the scene of Hunter shooting ‘Mama Comescu’ over and over again in his head. He had wanted so badly to drag that psychotic woman into an interrogation cell and get his life story out of her one way or another. He knew that Hunter had no choice but to shoot her – he’d rather be a living mystery than a dead identity – but damn if it didn’t rankle. The two women who knew who he was, where he came from, what people could claim him, were both shot. One of them unable to tell him who he is, the other unwilling.
Nate had told him he had made an identity out of not having an identity. And it made G wonder who he’d be if he suddenly had a regular name and a real birthday and all the details that came with having a family – even one that he didn’t grow up with and possibly would never meet. Even if most of them were dead, there’d be details about them in databases and files and he could start putting together his history from them. But if he did that, who would he be?
He glanced over at Sam as he carefully slid out of bed, knowing that Sam would wake half-way up, ascertain that it was just G getting up that had woken him, and then go back to sleep. Just like always with them. G pulled on the black jeans he’d been in for the last few days, scowling when he realized Hetty’s blood was still noticeable on his left leg. He grabbed his phone to Google where the nearest place to the hotel to get clothes was. They’d all need something new, something less black and ‘We’re here to carry out a covert mission’ before they headed back to the US.
As he passed the room door, he noticed an envelope had been slid under it during the night. Kensi’s handwriting on the front made him less inclined to check it for poison powder or some kind of explosive trip wire.
He went into Sam’s room where he could type on the phone and go through the papers with less risk of waking Sam. Sitting on the bed, he dumped the envelope out. A note on the top indicated that Kensi had emailed Vance. He’d told her that they were to stay in Germany until they were certain Hetty was stable and then come home sometime in the next few days. Under the note were two KLM tickets, Frankfurt to New York to L.A.
G could hear Sam start to stir and stretch in the other room as he looked through the other papers that had been delivered to the hotel – more stuff to sign for Hetty mostly.
He thought back to the night before. Sam actually saying that he loved him. G knew he had been in no frame of mind to have that conversation at that point. He probably still wasn’t there, though the few extra hours of sleep made it much more likely he’d manage to get through it without making a complete and total ass of himself if push came to shove.
He wasn’t sure he’d be able to say the words back any time soon. They just weren’t part of his vocabulary. He’d seen them said without being meant too many times. A few times, even to him. There had been too many times when he’d wanted to hear them but there’d been no one there to say them. But there was something about Sam, about the way he said it, about the timing, that made G think that he might actually mean it, that it might be safe to believe him. G couldn’t say that that didn’t scare the shit out of him, but it was the kind of fear he felt he could deal with. It was more the nervous anxiousness he approached a big undercover op with than the kind of dread he’d felt when he’d seen his social worker pull up to the house or school with That Look that said wherever he’d been had reached the end of their rope with him and that he was about to be dumped on his ass.
He wasn’t sure that he’d never screw it up. History certainly wasn’t on his side with that one, but Sam had been amazingly tolerant of his mistakes thus far.
As he began scanning Hetty’s paperwork he started wondering if there was some truth to the stereotype that some guys just weren’t the ‘talking about it’ sort – they were more the ‘doing something about it’ sort. He wanted to do something for Sam that might, in some small way show that he’d meant it when he’d basically pulled a ‘ditto’ on him the previous night.
One of flight tickets slid out from the stack of papers as he reorganized them and he suddenly had an idea. He grabbed his phone and texted Sam. “I’m in the business center. If you go out, I need jeans and a shirt. 3 days in these is just gross.” He left out the bit where he could still see Hetty’s blood on his pants as he pulled them on one last time so he could use the computer downstairs.
*^*^*^*
After finishing what he needed in the business center – a call to D.C. and then rearranging the flights Kensi had booked for him and Sam -- Callen took a walk. He needed to get out and think for a while. Sam hadn’t called or texted to find out where he was, so he figured Sam had slept in; or failing that, Sam had decided that last night had been as intense as they could handle for a while and was giving him some space.
He was suddenly hit with the understanding that so much of the turmoil in his head was from feeling like he’d never know who he was and if he couldn’t know who he was, then how could anyone else? But he was starting to really, really feel like Sam did. Sam just took him for who he was, the way he was, and didn’t give a damn where he’d come from or how many quirks G had that were due to the way he’d grown up.
And that was what Sam had been telling him the previous night. That for all that G wanted to know whatever it was Hetty knew and Mama Comescu knew, Sam didn’t really give a damn, other than it would make G happy to know. Sam was okay with him just being him.
G couldn’t say he wasn’t still a little pissed at Hetty for holding out on him, but he had a strong suspicion that at least now he’d be able to sit in a room with her, when she was able, and listen to her explain why she’d done it. Somehow it made all the difference that he knew Sam would be there for him no matter what Hetty said. Or didn’t.
He ended up getting coffee and strudel in a little out-of-the-way café for breakfast and was just paying the tab when his phone beeped with a text message. “I have your clothes. Kensi wants to know where the hell you went.”
G laughed. “’Kensi wants to know’, my ass,” he muttered as he left the café. Though the comment served as fair warning that wherever G found Sam, he’d find Kensi and as likely as not Deeks.
He headed back to the hotel. A shower and clean clothes awaited.
“Hey, I don’t suppose you grabbed me a t-shirt too,” G hollered as he passed from his room into Sam’s. He was hit square in the chest with a bag from a local all-in-one shop.
“Jeans, socks, underwear, t-shirt and tacky tourist sweatshirt,” Sam said as G pawed through it.
“You know what kind of underwear he wears?” Kensi asked Sam from her perch on the bed. He ignored her.
“Thanks,” G said, turning and tossing it on his bed. Kensi was giving him a truly disturbing look of pity. “What do you want?” G asked, trying not to make the question sound as obnoxious as it could have been.
“You doin’ okay?”
“I’m fine, Kens. Really. The hospital said I could call around noon to get an update on Hetty.” He didn’t particularly want to talk about Hetty at the moment, but he needed to get that look off Kensi’s face.
Kensi made a face and started to press the issue, but Sam cut her off. “He doesn’t want to talk about it, Kensi.”
“Oookay,” Kensi drawled, realizing that she really didn’t want to push it with Sam in over-protective over-drive.
G noticed it to, quietly saying, “I’m fine, Sam,” to get his partner to back down a little. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the support, but at the moment he actually felt like he had both feet on the ground for the first time in a week.
Kensi turned back to G. “Did you get the folder I put under your door last night?”
“Yeah, thanks for making the travel plans, but Sam and I have to make a stop before we head back to L.A., so I’ve rebooked our flights.”
“You have to what?” Kensi looked at Sam, who looked equally confused.
“Remember hearing about that naval pilot who died during the last Viking Air Defense Exercises?” G asked Sam.
“Yeah, but I thought they ruled it natural causes.”
“Well, apparently the autopsy was done on-site and Doctor Mallard wants the original file, x-rays and all that before he signs off on the death benefits forms… or something. I stopped listening after a while. Anyway, you and I are going to stop in Reykjavik, grab the file, talk to a few people who knew the guy and then stop in D.C. to drop off the file and then head back to L.A. We leave tomorrow night at six, local time, as long as Hetty stays stable.”
Why do you need to ferry a case file –“ Kensi started to ask before she realized that G’s eyes had never left Sam. There was a point to this little detour.
“We’re working a case in Iceland?” Sam asked.
G looked a little sheepish as he turned and headed back for his room and clean clothes and the shower. “I couldn’t find an excuse to go to the moon,” he hollered over his shoulder.
Resigning herself to the fact that the conversation going on around her was not meant to include her, Kensi simply asked Sam, “I suppose that makes sense to you?”
“Oh yeah. Lots of sense,” Sam answered smiling.