Nick and Ellie angst at the end of that episode hurts my soul, also I'm low key into it. This show might've messed me up.

For some background the general idea is that Nick knows he's full on in love with Ellie, whereas Ellie is just starting to realize she likes Nick. That's the vibe I get from them on the show which makes sense cause Ellie has a garbage track record.

The case wrapped without much fanfare. Gibbs left before everybody else, Nick knew it always stung when he had to arrest a marine. He glanced up from his desk at Ellie across the bullpen. They sat in silence signing the hundreds of forms that went along with every case. It was something he certainly missed about undercover work. Mostly he didn't do paperwork, it was handled by someone higher up the chain while he flew around by the seat of his pants.

He watched as Ellie's stack of papers grew shorter. He knew his own pile was not progressing well by comparison, but there would be time for that later. "Hey Charlie!" He yelled across the bullpen. He caught the corner of a smile peaking out from under her hair, before she shook it out of her face and met his eyes.

"Yeah Luis?" she said back closing the folder in front of her and moving it to the side.

"Hungry?" It was a rhetorical question and he knew it. Eleanor Bishop didn't do full, she did hungry and starving, and had zero additional settings.

She nodded at him rising to her feet and swinging her jacket over her shoulders. He watched her pull her hair out from under her collar tossing it behind her. Her blue eyes turning to meet his. If she found anything odd about him staring she was a good enough sport not to mention it. She might just be used to it, it wasn't an infrequent occurrence that her eyes caught him looking at her. It was even more frequent that she looked up at his desk and he was already standing beside her, treating her desk like one they shared.

He rose out of his chair, stack of files unfinished on his desk. The two of them made their way to the elevator and headed down to Ellie's car. Nick had taken his bike into work this morning, and there was a zero percent chance he was taking Ellie on it. If he felt her arms hold onto his waist he was going crash the bike into a ditch about half a second later. Despite the very open nature of his 'secret' thing for Ellie he preferred not to reveal it to her by way of catastrophic injury.

He threw his bag into her back seat in a well-choreographed routine they'd developed for their post-case meals. They rode to the diner in relative silence debating which one of them had guessed the guilty party first. Ellie laughed as Nick sat beside her insisting that he had called it mere minutes after arriving on the scene.

"You're full of it Luis, and you know it." She smiled at him. She liked when they slipped into this rhythm calling each other by their old cover names. There was something much more carefree about interacting in this way than being completely themselves.

She actively avoided giving the meaning behind that a deeper thought. Something about going through all of Zivas' old things while she cleared out the shed made Ellie notice things she would normally overlook.

And I knew that I could not live without him. That sentence rung around in her head on a daily basis. The thought of there being this one defining moment where all the sudden everything was different than it had been before. She pulled her car into a parking space at the diner. She slowing realized that the car had been silent too long and turned to find Nick looking at her questioningly.

"Sorry." She said hopping out of the car and making her way to the door Nick trailing a foot behind her. "I didn't hear you." They made their way to an empty booth, which wasn't hard to find at this time of night.

"That's alright it wasn't important." Nick said smiling at her over the menu. Nick had a nice smile, she thought to herself. Nope, don't go there. She admonished. "Are you doing alright?" He asked softly.

She smiled shyly at him.

10 days earlier she had shown up at his apartment at one in the morning. He opened the door clearly still half asleep. Ellie plodded into his living room before laying down on his couch. Nick lingered over her for a few moments before laying a nearby blanket over her and going back to bed.

They hadn't discussed it the next morning they got called in for a case. She had told him about the nightmares before then, so she imagined he had filled in the blanks on his own.

She nodded reassuringly at him. The nod was much more confident than she really felt, the nightmares hadn't let up much. She hoped that she had hidden that from him but when she looked up she could tell from the look on his face that he could see right through her. Her hands fiddled on the table unsure of what to fill the silence with.

Slowly as if giving her room to pull away he reached his hand out and gave hers a quick squeeze before returning to his own side of the table.

The silence was soon filled with the sounds of eating and idle chit chat as minutes ticked over to an hour and even the night owls were filing out of the diner to their homes.

They pulled up outside Nick's building 20 minutes later. Lit up by the lights shining in from the street. She felt him looking at her and turned to meet his eyes. Just for a minute she felt her heart beat jump as she saw the intensity with which he was looking at her. "If you need somebody around, I'm always here for you." His serious face gave way to a smile "Alright Charlie?"

She broke into a matching smile and nodded. "Alright Luis." She watched as he made his way into his building taking a deep breath before heading home.