Title: The Lies We Tell

Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS: LA or its characters and I make no profit from this. It's just for fun.

Spoilers: None

Pairing: Callen/Nell

Author's note: I was surprised, and immensely excited, to see this pairing had some other fans. I've been thinking about writing something for them for awhile, and all the other great writers of this pairing inspired me to do so.

Also, although it may take me awhile, I'll never leave a story unfinished.

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He hadn't been to work in days. Hetty said he was taking a short personal leave, and he'd be back once he found what he was looking for (though no one seemed to know what that was – and if they did, they weren't telling).

They started a new case without him, and it wasn't until Nell truly felt his absence that she realized how necessary he was, and not just to solving cases. He was necessary to all of them, and she was growing increasingly worried about his well-being. Hetty reported that he was fine, but on the sixth night, after a particularly excruciating day, Nell found herself driving to his home instead of her own. She told herself to turn around, to go home and wait for him to return on his own time, but it was as if her body wasn't listening to her.

She told herself that she had a legitimate reason for seeing him that had nothing to do with her or the team. Their case was getting increasingly worse, and Nell wanted to let him know. He had a right to know.

She knew Hetty hadn't told him anything, because their boss had been unmoving on that particular fact – do not try and inform Callen of anything they were working on. Hetty didn't want to guilt him into coming back early.

Maybe Nell should have listened, but she was feeling particularly selfish. What could it hurt, really, to let him know that things were rapidly deteriorating? He might be their only way to salvage things, and they would never know if she didn't take it upon herself to defy Hetty and visit him.

That, alone, should have told her that more was at stake than her worry for the team. To go against Hetty was a tremendous breach of protocol, a direct contradiction of her superior's orders – and a superior whom she immensely respected, at that. And trusted. Though a small part of her wondered…if she really trusted Hetty, she couldn't have defied her, could she?

Or maybe it was that her need to see Callen was the only thing that could force her into ignoring their boss's orders.

Whatever the reasons, conscious or subconscious, they led to her standing on Callen's doorstep and waiting for him to answer his door. She second guessed herself a few dozen times in that span of 22 seconds.

None of her thoughts could make her leave, though.

Again, it should have told her something.

"Nell?" Callen asked, his gaze immediately moving past her to scan the surrounding area, because if Nell Jones, of all people, was knocking on his door, something must be wrong.

"Hi, Callen..." she began, then realized that while she had repeatedly worried about visiting him, her thoughts had never strayed far enough to contemplate what she might say when he actually answered the door.

"What are you doing here?" He asked, and she was relieved he didn't sound angry. She only heard confusion, and the slightest bit of apprehension. It was to be expected, though, when you visited someone past midnight.

She might have chosen to do this at a more convenient time. Too late now.

"I'm…uh, how are you?"

He merely looked at her, his gaze narrowing as if he were starting to read her mind.

She held up her hands in what she hoped was a sufficiently innocent gesture and took the slightest step back. He never scared her before, but from the way his gaze was darkening, she was beginning to regret bothering him in the middle of the night solely because she had a strange feeling that couldn't be assuaged by any amount of logical explanations from Henriettia Lange. "I wanted to see if you were…okay."

He tilted his head, as if considering her words and how true they might be. She'd never lied to him (never had any reason to) and that was probably why he accepted her words at face value. "Alright. But why are you here?"

"I told you, I wanted to check on you." She was feeling more ridiculous by the second. The best case scenario was that he would think she was a crazy colleague who felt the need to check up on her co-worker. No, not just her co-worker, her boss. Worst case? He'd not only think she was crazy, but also a stalker.

"You could have called me," he said, a point that was frustrating due to its sheer rationality.

She nodded slowly; she had actually considered that. But she knew him, and she knew if something were really wrong, he might be able to hide it over the phone, but not in person. If she saw him face to face, she could much more easily detect his lies, see if something were truly hurting him, and what she could do to help. Plus, he wouldn't be able to rush her off the phone and ignore her update about the team. This way was best, she had decided. If he tried to shut the door, she could just reach out and force her way into his house and make him listen –

She inwardly winced, realizing she sounded like a stalker again, even in her thoughts. "I could have called," she acknowledged. "But I just wanted –"

She never got to finish her sentence, due to Callen tackling her in a move so rapid she didn't even realize what had happened until it was already over. She dimly registered the sound of a car backfiring (several times?), and the screech of tires.

No, she realized foggily as she sat up, not a car backfiring. Callen wouldn't have cared about that. Gunfire.

Someone had been shooting at them.

She ran her hands over her face and it jolted her to realize they were shaking crazily. "That was…" She couldn't say it, couldn't admit it was real.

The grim set of his mouth told her that her suspicions were correct.

She shook her head in denial. "No, no, Callen, we were not just shot at."

He was hardly listening to her, though, and she belatedly realized it was because he was studying her with intense focus – an agent doing his job after a life-threatening incident. He ran his hands down the sides of her face, to her arms, and then stopped abruptly. His face paled so quickly that she was afraid he was going into shock.

"Are you alright?" She asked, reaching out to – she didn't know what, and drew her hand back before it could reach him.

She looked over at her right arm, following his gaze, and her vision swam before her at the dark red spot spreading rapidly over the shirt covering her upper arm. That wasn't…it couldn't be…

She looked back at him desperately, hoping that he would explain it away. Like it was paint, or maybe she was hallucinating the stain that was just now beginning to feel warm, and strange.

Callen was saying something under his breath that she couldn't make out. No explanations were forthcoming, though. Instead he suddenly looked past her, as if just remembering they had been under attack. "Get up," he ordered, in a tone she had never heard before. Deadly. She didn't resist as he quickly pulled her to her feet and inside the house, watching numbly as he bolted the door behind him.

He directed her to his bathroom, and gave her a towel. "Press that as hard as you can against your arm and do not move," he ordered, then disappeared.

She wanted to ask where she would go. Instead, she listened as he talked to someone on his phone in the next room (Sam probably), explaining what had just happened.

He was back in less than a minute, and stopped short at seeing her. His expression, previously set on 'I-want-to-kill-someone,' softened slightly.

"You're okay," he said firmly, removing her hand from where it was pressing on the towel, and examining the wound.

She turned a bit to glance at the mirror she had been studiously avoiding. What she saw made her gasp slightly. Was that really her? She was so white that she could have passed for a ghost. No wonder he felt he had to treat her carefully. He probably thought she was going to pass out on him at any moment.

Well, maybe she was.

She wouldn't look at her arm as he cut the fabric of her sleeve away, instead focusing only on his face. His expression changed from furious to terrified to worried to relieved – and she honestly had no idea how she was able to process all of that in her current state.

"It's only a flesh wound," he told her, and it explained the relief.

"Oh, is that all? Give me a band-aid and I'll be on my way."

He smiled at that, the first one she'd seen on him in ages – since long before he'd taken his personal leave, in fact. It was so rare that she mentally took a picture to remind herself of how he looked this way. He never let people see it, and she was glad he'd allowed her. Though she had been shot, and that meant she'd more than earned it.

"It could have been much worse," he told her as he cleaned the wound. She winced and pulled her arm away as he applied alcohol.

"Much worse as in you or I, or both of us, could be dead right now."

He glanced at her, and then down again. "Yeah," he murmured.

"Then I have to thank you. If you hadn't gotten us both to the ground…"

"Don't think about that," he said, and the dark expression from earlier crossed his face again. He dabbed at the wound with some gauze, and she examined his open medicine cabinet. It was practically a triage center with the amount of bandages and medicines he had in there. She wondered how often he needed those supplies. Obviously enough to stay well-stocked. He didn't own any real furniture, but his bathroom was practically a makeshift ER.

Her heart turned over painfully at what that meant.

"I'm sorry, Nell," he said quietly as he taped a bandage securely over her arm. "You shouldn't have been hurt. If I had only –"

"Hey," she argued, "it's not your fault. You didn't shoot at me. You saved my life."

He shook his head, clearly furious with himself. "I've somehow put you in danger."

"It's our job that puts us in danger," she insisted. "And I know the risks. If I couldn't accept them then I wouldn't have taken the job. Tonight only reminds me of why I rarely, if ever, leave headquarters. It's dangerous out here." Her attempt at a joke fell flat, and he wouldn't meet her eyes.

"I think that's good for now. You'll still need to see a doctor, though."

She glanced down at the bandage on her arm, then back up at him. He was…she couldn't quite identify it, but the closest word was distraught. She fought back tears, and not because of her arm which was now throbbing in unrelenting pain.

"Hey," she whispered, waiting until he reluctantly met her eyes. "I'm okay."

He looked as if he were going to argue with her, so she beat him to the punch. "I'm okay," she insisted, a little louder, gathering just enough courage to reach up and place her hands on either side of his face in an attempt at reassurance. She wanted to convey without words that he was allowed to be okay because she was okay. She wanted to lean closer, to rest her forehead against his, to prove to him that she was fine. She couldn't though. She wasn't quite that brave.

He gave her a half-hearted smile, clearly not buying her protests completely. He turned his head so that he could kiss one of her hands, and she inhaled sharply.

She wanted to ask him why he'd done that, but distant banging on the front door broke her concentration, and she heard Sam shouting from the front of the house. Callen left to open the door before his partner broke it down.

"G! What's going on, are you alright?" Sam was storming through the house even as he interrogated Callen. He was apparently looking for possible security breaches.

She stepped to the bathroom door and waited for him to notice her.

"Nell! G told me you were shot, are you okay?" He reached her in two long strides, grasping her arm gently and examining the bandaged area. He looked back at Callen. "I didn't know you were a field medic."

"When it's called for," Callen shrugged. "It's a flesh wound, but she needs to see a doctor, get stitches, and definitely antibiotics."

"We can go right now," Sam said, and Nell noticed that both he and Callen tensed as they heard another speeding car pull up in front of the house. Within moments, Deeks had burst through the door with Kensi close behind. The two of them froze, guns half-raised, as they scanned the room and realized there was no immediate danger.

Nell pulled away from Sam. "I'm not going anywhere," she said firmly. Like hell she was going to go sit in a hospital waiting room for the rest of the night while they tried to figure out who had shot at her and Callen.

"You are going," Callen told her, in a tone that she never would have argued with before tonight. She felt differently now. She fully realized that it was ironic that she was defying him because she was worried about him, and that her behavior only worried him more. "You are," he repeated.

"I am not," she said, defiantly crossing her arms out of habit, and realizing a split second too late that damn, it hurt to do that now, because her left hand was essentially pressing on the exact spot of her injury. She was too stubborn to change positions, though. She tried to surreptitiously loosen her stance, but it had little effect, so she bit her lip and suffered.

He shook his head in disapproval, and then took hold of both her hands, pulling them so that she had to uncross her arms. He had obviously seen her discomfort, but didn't comment on it in front of the others. "You have to see a doctor."

"I will," she swore. "But I'm fine for the moment, I'll go later. I'm not going to leave you now when we don't even know who tried to shoot at us." She wondered if he heard the slight, accidental intonation she'd put on the word 'you.'

"You shouldn't be here," he told her, and his words hurt almost as much as her arm. He didn't want her there, and the fact that it was because he was worried about her did little to make her feel better.

She pulled her hands from his. "Too bad, I am here and it's too late to change that."

He sighed. "You'll be safer the further from me you are."

She knew he blamed himself, but the depth of it surprised her. She wanted, badly, to correct him of that wrong notion. But she had no idea how. She would figure it out, she promised herself. She had to.

"How do you know that?" She asked, feeling her anger start to grow. "For all you know, the shooter was after me and followed me to your house! If I go off by myself, maybe I'll be giving whoever it is an open shot to finish me off."

Callen looked stunned, then horrified. She hadn't meant to scare him, but if that's what it took to get him to see reason, then so be it. She didn't see what point separating served, except to make both of them easier targets. "You have a point," he said, after a minute.

"Short of locking me up, you are not going to keep me away from you," Nell said vehemently, then froze. That had come out wrong. The four of them were staring at her: Deeks and Kensi still unclear about what had happened, but too enthralled in her and Callen's argument to ask questions; Sam thinking way too hard and looking back and forth between then suspiciously; and Callen watching her strangely, like she'd just said something incredibly important, but he wasn't exactly sure what it meant.

"I mean, I'm not…the hospital…what?" She trailed off, hoping her lack of coherence would make them think she was suffering shock from blood loss. Anything was better than this strange scrutiny.

Callen shook himself out of a semi-haze and refocused on her arm; blood was now seeping through the bandages, creating a bright red spot in the middle. She really did need a doctor, and she probably couldn't deny it anymore.

"I'll drive you," he said, and from his tone, he might as well have told her she wasn't leaving his side until they figured this out. He went to the kitchen for his keys.

Deeks and Kensi had been hovering in the near background, waiting for her and Callen to finish their fight, or whatever the hell it was. As soon as he left her immediate vicinity (truth be told, they'd been too apprehensive to get within even 5 feet of her with the way he was hovering), they swooped in to smother her.

"Are you okay? My god, I can't believe you were shot!" Kensi exclaimed.

"Callen says it's a flesh wound. Are you sure? What if he misdiagnosed it?" Deeks was about to rip the bandage off in his hysteria when a firm hand on his arm caused him to freeze.

"Don't touch her," Callen ordered.

Deeks wondered how the hell he'd returned that fast, and ripped his arm out of Callen's grasp. "Look, I know you're capable, but what if it's deeper than you think? We should call an ambulance."

Nell was glad Deeks hadn't been the one to first see her injury; she had the feeling she'd have been med-flighted by now.

"We don't need an ambulance," Callen said calmly, though he was clearly irritated that he was having to reassure Deeks, who wasn't even the victim. "We're leaving now."

"She could develop necrotizing fasciitis!" Deeks argued, then turned to Nell. "That's when flesh-eating bacteria eats away at the tissue and –" he broke off at the increasingly horror-stricken look on the younger woman's face.

"I could have what? My arm could what?" She was about to pull the bandage off to see the injury with her own eyes and reassure herself her arm wasn't going to fall off, or whatever Deeks was trying to explain.

Callen grabbed her hand before she could touch the bandage. "You do not have – ignore Deeks. You are fine."'

"You idiot," Kensi was berating her partner. "Were you watching House last night? I told you to stop –"

"They don't just make that stuff up, Kensi," Deeks argued.

"Yeah they do, that's why it's called a TV show," she shook her head. "Next you're going to be diagnosing her with lupus."

"I am not – well, if she has the genetic markers then…hey Nell, have you ever been tested for –"

"I checked the perimeter," Sam said, unknowingly averting what could have turned into a violent altercation between Deeks and Callen. "No evidence of anyone watching the house, no suspicious vehicles in the vicinity. Whoever shot at you two is long gone. My guess is they were either lying in wait for Callen to emerge or they followed Nell here."

Nell realized she hadn't even noticed Sam was gone, apparently too caught up in Deeks' "diagnosis" of her injury.

"Nell," Deeks tried again, "I'm just saying you need a doctor." He glanced at Callen and added, "A real doctor."

Nell knew he was trying to be helpful, and that his fear for her safety was causing him to argue with Callen, but it wasn't doing any good. If she didn't stop him, Callen was going to – she didn't know exactly what, but she knew it'd be something drastic and that Deeks wouldn't appreciate it.

She glanced over at Callen and realized he was still leveling a death glare at Deeks, his entire body tense. She leaned into him slightly, and when he met her eyes, she tried to remind him without words that she was going to be fine. They had a quick and silent conversation, and he finally nodded.

She saw that Deeks was about to speak again and cut him off before he could. "I am perfectly fine," she insisted, emphasizing the point by spreading her arms. That was a bad decision on her part, as it pulled at the wound and her vision swam at the pain, causing her to slightly lose her balance.

When she managed to regain her head, Kensi was holding onto her good arm, as if to steady her. She must have looked really bad, then.

One glance at Callen's face confirmed it; he looked as if he were physically holding himself back from removing Kensi and stepping into her place. "I think 'perfectly fine' might be a bit of a stretch."

"Yeah," she breathed out, carefully. "It might." She shook her head. "I'm not getting out of going to the hospital now, am I?"

He simply shook his head in response and she almost smiled at him. Truthfully, she didn't care if she went, as long as he went with her. In fact, she knew she needed a doctor. It was simply the idea of being dropped off there to wait alone for hours, possibly vulnerable to a killer, that had caused her to argue.

"Do you want me to take her? I can bring her, then meet you at headquarters…" Sam said, trailing off at the end, recognizing too late that Callen would never go for that idea.

Nell took a step forward to thwart another potential fight that would get them nowhere. "I'm going with Callen," she said, taking hold of his right arm with her left. "I need to keep an eye on him," she added, to lighten the mood.

It had the effect she'd been hoping for, as Callen turned to her in surprise, then gave her a genuine smile – the second tonight. She grinned back at him without thinking, and then her gaze shifted over to Sam. The former Navy SEAL was watching her with a mixture of approval and…was that pride?

Her smile faded as she realized he was thanking her, in his own way. She couldn't take too much credit, though. It wasn't as if she had lots of experience with Callen, especially in this mood; in fact, she had virtually none. She'd simply recognized he was getting upset and done her best to distract him to let him calm down.

Apparently she'd made the right choice. She was fading though, and dimly realized he was tightening his hold on her arm because she was leaning against his side more heavily. She looked over at her arm, and was a bit frightened that the stain was spreading. She was in no mortal danger from the amount of blood lost so far, but it was making her tired and increasing the very real risk of shock.

Callen knew it, too. He'd probably known it was going to happen long before it actually did. "I'll meet you there," he told the others, wasting no more time in getting her out to his car. She had every intention of thanking him, but didn't stay conscious long enough to do so.

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