A/N: I'm thoroughly enjoying all the "Spoils of War" reactions and speculations, but at some point I just needed something lighter. XoxMountainGirlxoXhinted at the content of this chapter in her review, and it kind of grew from there.

I also wanted to say thank you for the reviews on chapter one; as a writer, I love feedback of any kind.

Sam goes instantly on alert as he walks into the bullpen.

By all appearances, it's a normal Monday morning; the sun is shining through the old mission windows, OSP is gradually filling up with people, the sounds of the normal hustle and bustle of the office are beginning their slow crescendo to full strength. Everything is as normal and peaceful as it can be in a building that routinely deals with terrorists, smuggling, trafficking, and violence of all kinds.

But twenty years in the Special Forces and law enforcement have left Sam Hanna in a permanent state of high alert, and his eyes quickly pick up on the fact that something about his desk is different than when he left it on Friday. His papers are in the same neat piles, laptop closed precisely where he left it, the drawers are closed and locked.

Lying in front of his keyboard is a small brown object that definitely wasn't there when he left. A quick glance at Callen's desk shows the same object on the more chaotic surface. There is no corresponding delivery on Kensi and Deeks'.

It's not unusual for Hetty or Nell to leave a note or a file on a desk over the weekend. Sometimes Callen drops things there just to mess up the precise organization and annoy Sam. Deeks is known to leave coffee on the rare occasions when he arrives earlier than the others. None of those scenarios seem to fit today.

He's still paused thirty feet from their desks when Callen rounds the corner behind him. Half a second's glance is enough to alert Callen that something is up with his partner. They've been partners long enough that he knows the minutiae of Sam's posture; he knows his movements, and he knows his stillnesses. Right now, he's not relaxed but he's not tense either. He's just... aware. He's observing and analyzing the situation before he moves in.

"What's up, big guy? Somebody leave a tack in your chair? I'd blame Deeks for that one."

Sam turns, unsurprised by his approach, and nods his head toward their desks.

"Check it out."

Callen approaches Sam's desk and observes the object without touching it.

"A cigar? Did you take up smoking over the weekend? Cuz last I heard you were still bewailing carcinogens and addictions and the dangers of secondhand smoke."

"Somebody else left it there. Yours too."

Callen leans in for a better look, sniffs it, nudges it with a pencil, and finally picks it up and examines in carefully, turning it over and looking for some kind of note, or at the very least a clue of where it came from and why. There is nothing.

Eric and Nell appear as he stares at it.

"Did you guys get—"

"Cigars?" Sam and Callen finish together and all four of them nod. Eric and Nell are holding identical individually wrapped cigars.

"Deeks and Kensi didn't get them. Or they've already taken them off their desks." Callen observes.

"Not that you'd ever find it on Kensi's," Sam adds.

"You don't know who left them?"

Four heads indicate the negative.

"We could fingerprint them," Callen suggests, "or, Eric run through the security footage starting earlier today and see who put them there."

"That won't be necessary, Mr. Callen," comes a voice that seems to simultaneously be behind all four of them.

"Hetty, you know what this is about?" The team leader asks her, noticing the same cigar in her small hands.

"I do, indeed, Mr. Callen." Hetty turns to Deeks and Kensi as they join the group.

"Mr. and Mrs. Deeks, you will join me in my office when you are finished here?" Her face betrays just a wisp of a smile as she looks at them.

Deeks and Kensi confirm that they will, their expressions showing just a hint of the mandatory nervousness that usually accompanies a call to Hetty's office. Sam watches the interaction carefully, studying Hetty's face, then Deeks', then Kensi's. The pieces start to fall together.

With a second glance at Deeks, a far-off memory resurfaces. He's received cigars before, all on the same kind of occasion. He'd given them away once, too, ten years ago, long before he'd known any of the people now surrounding him. One side of his mouth tips up into a half smile, and he raises his eyebrows slightly at Deeks and taps the cigar twice against the palm of his hand.

"Yeah?"

Deeks' smile is carefully controlled, but his eyes confirm everything.

"Yeah."

"Little early, aren't you? I'm pretty sure you're supposed to hand them out at the end."

"Well, we kinda figured that by the end you'd have figured it out on your own, so we just kinda modified the timeline."

Nell is the next one to figure it out. She watches Sam and Deeks' interaction and her mind rapidly shuffles through the vast stores of information cataloged there, looking for the final piece that makes all these variables make sense.

Deeks.

Kensi.

Beginnings.

Endings.

Happy.

Meeting with Hetty.

Cigars.

Those parameters limit the list of possibilities, and Nell has a large family fond of traditions, so she stumbles across the truth fairly quickly.

"Really?!" She all but squeals at Kensi.

Kensi just nods and braces herself as Nell launches herself at Kensi and hugs first her and then Deeks.

Callen watches the commotion. Sam follows Nell in, warmly shaking Deeks' hand and then pulling him in for a hug. When Nell releases Kensi, they swap places and Kensi disappears into Sam's arms and the tiny analyst throws her arms around Deeks. The clues start coming together quickly, and there's really only one possible conclusion once the pieces are all lined up.

It's got something to do with Kensi and Deeks.

Kensi and Deeks have been married over a year now, so there's no surprising personal relationship announcement option.

Whatever it is, Hetty is happy but needs to talk to them about it.

Nell is ecstatic, and the look that Sam and Deeks are sharing speaks of some kind of newfound brotherhood that Callen feels oddly left out of.

"Work pretty fast, don't you?" He addresses Deeks. It's not that he hadn't expected this day to come; it's just that he'd thought it would be a while, five years maybe. That seemed like a reasonable timeframe.

Deeks grins cockily.

"What can I say? I'm just that—" He doesn't get to finish that sentence; Kensi elbows him in the stomach and then smiles sweetly down at him as he doubles over in mock pain. Callen takes his turn shaking Deeks' hand and hugging Kensi, murmuring congratulations to them as he does so.

It feels good, he realizes, to get a glimpse of something fresh and new and good in the middle of all the chaos and darkness they face every day. It's a part of the reason why they fight though every day, so that life has the opportunity to flourish in the midst of all the violence.

Eric waits, bewildered, while one by one the others figure out the riddle and keep the answer to themselves.

"Hey guys?" He tries, but Nell is beaming at Kensi, and Sam is beaming at Deeks, Hetty has mysteriously disappeared, and Callen is sitting at his desk with a smirk on his face, already starting his computer and tuning out the commotion.

"Um, guys?" He tries again with the same result. Giving up, he turns to the tablet that is practically a third appendage.

When do you give friends a cigar?

Google is the ultimate detective. He certainly can't say it's never failed him before- there was that once when... No. He has sworn to permanently delete that memory. Google is good. Usually.

The first few results are all about smoking etiquette and the dangers of nicotine, but then-there halfway down the page-the heading starts:

When your wife has a baby...

His head pops up and he squeaks just a little bit.

Deeks looks up and... really? They weren't paying him a bit of attention, and they have to pick up on that?

"What?!"

"Did you just Google our kid? Kens, I think he just Googled our kid."

"Well what did you expect me to do? You weren't telling me anything!"

Deeks just grins at him and Kensi shakes her head. Eric leans in toward them, still a little bit stunned, but smiling. Their OSP family is slowly growing, Callen's got a serious girlfriend now, the rest of the Hannas have continued growing closer to the team in recent years, and Deeks is the only one who knows that there's a ring burning a hole in Eric's pocket, just waiting for the perfect moment.

"Congrats, guys."

Callen has been watching everything out of the corner of his eye since he sat down, quietly sharing in the joy of the expansion of the only family he's ever known. He glances down again at the cigar on his desk and cocks his head.

"Deeks. I get the news, but what's with the cigar?"

Deeks has never really had traditions. As a child, there was never time or energy for them. Expecting or planning for things just made it harder when they inevitably fell apart, so it didn't take long before he and his mother both just quit trying. Probably somewhere back in his family history there were happy families steeped in traditions, but he knew nothing of them. In Kensi's house, they had tried, but their frequent moves, her father's long deployments and unpredictable schedule, and eventually her mother's leaving had made it hard to be consistent, and then the turmoil of her teen years had wiped out most of the traditions that had survived childhood.

As adults, he and Kensi have started making their own traditions. They're starting from scratch and building beautiful things out of the brokenness. There are things they will pass on to their kids that are unique to just them. Their family. Still, it feels good, he realizes as he contemplates how to answer Callen's question, to have traditions that are bigger than just the two of them. It feels good to carry on something special from the generation before them.

In the end, he just smiles a little and winds and arm around Kensi's waist, tucking her more firmly into his side.

"It's tradition."