Disclaim: NCIS: Los Angeles is not mine . . . if it were there would be more Nell/Callen interaction, because 'she admires him' ('2x04, Special Delivery') and he 'attracts the intellectual sort' ('2x04, Special Delivery').

Note: Same experimental writing style that was used in Certainty is used in this one. I intended on this to be a drabble or snippet like Certainty, but Tiptoes decided it wanted a oneshot instead. Hope you enjoy.

Tiptoes

It frustrates her that he is so much taller than she.

Even standing on her tiptoes he is still taller than her.

And, what frustrates her even more is that he is still as oblivious to her admiration as he's ever been.

Sometimes, she thinks he knows, but pretends to not, because he doesn't feel quite the same.

And, that would be quite awkward and change the team dynamic.

Then something happens, a bad case, or simply a bad day and she catches him watching her.

And, she can feel the heat of his gaze to her tiptoes.

The possibility of them ever together is something that she considers, but doesn't put much thought in it, only dreams of it.

Because, after all, he's not the relationship sort of guy; he's not been in a relationship the entire time she's been with the team, almost three years.

Then again, just as much as he isn't a relationship sort of guy, he isn't the kiss-and-tell type either.

But something happens, the stars align, and they find themselves at a bar during one of those team bonding sessions that Hetty insists on every month or so.

And, Nell has just a tad too much to drink, causing her to confess her deepest secrets.

That she's just a little bit in love with him and she so very much wants him.

Which prompts him cutting her alcohol off and dares the bartender to slip her another as she so eloquently tries to bribe the poor sucker.

And, she gets angry at him for trying to control her, control her alcohol intake.

But, as she makes an unnecessary scene that borders on childish, he guides her to the back of the bar away from the prying eyes and the amused all-knowing brown that belong to his best friend.

And, him guiding her away angers her even more.

He kisses her to silence her.

Then, he kisses her, because he wants to kiss her, no, needs to kiss her again.

And, she tastes like Tequila and lime; he tastes like imported beer and Scotch.

The kiss becomes heated and before long they find themselves in a taxi-cab then in her condominium.

And, in her inebriated haze, she feels their mutual admiration to her curled tiptoes, several times over.

Then when she sobers up the next morning, she is disappointed, because she thinks that it was a dream, a very realistic one.

But then, she feels the heat of his gaze from across the room; she simply knows belongs to him and not some random joe, because no one had ever held that much intensity in his eyes while looking at her.

And, she sheepishly looks up through her glazed over hazel eyes at him while he leans against the doorframe of her master bath with his arms crossed, studying her.

She rearranges the thin sheet across her as if the thin sheet is a shield that will ease the pain of what is inevitable; when he tells her that last night was a mistake, that it was the alcohol, that they have to forget it happened, that they have to go back to how it was before.

But, she is wrong, the inevitable never comes, because it wasn't a mistake.

And, it wasn't simply the alcohol.

They don't go back to how it was before, because they can't.

And, because of a future without her scares him more than having a future with her, he confesses what she had only ever dreamed of hearing him say; that he loves her.

But, he goes and does something stupid.

He answers his phone in mid-declaration, mid-kiss; it's a case.

And, just her luck, it isn't their typical case.

She feels the dread all the way to her tiptoes when she hears that it has something to do with the Comescu Family.

And, he goes off-the-grid; days go by before she hears his voice and months before she sees him again.

Frustrating not only herself, but the entire team.

And, not even Sam knows where he is and Sam always knows where his partner is.

So, Sam understands exactly why she is a basket-case, even though no one else does.

When she and Eric are finally able to track his movements in Romania, she fears that it's too late, because she knows it to her tiptoes that they had only found him, because either he wanted to be found or that he knew that by the time they got to him, that it wouldn't matter, because it would be too late.

And, they are too late.

Almost.

He is as near death as his ever been.

Not even that awful day in May a few years ago was he as close to the veil as when Kensi and Deeks found him during the last stand of the Comescu family.

And, it was indeed their last stand.

Because, the only surviving Comescu was the grandson of the little Roma girl who was disowned in the nineteen-forties from the close-knit crime family, because she fell in love with and married her father's killer, an OSS Agent, then they had a little girl named Clara, who would one day have two children of her own, a daughter and son.

After several months of rehabilitation at a military hospital in Germany, he returns to Los Angeles with the answers to his past that he had for so long wanted, needed.

But, when he sees her for the first time in almost a year, he feels it to his tiptoes, and it should scare him, but it doesn't.

The only answer that mattered to him was the one that is squealed in delight after a question asked on bended knee.

And, her answer is, "Yes, G, I'll marry you."

But, after the wedding, they don't live happily ever after.

Instead, they live for the other, love the other, cherish the other, and honor the other.

They live forever in love.

And, that is better than some fairy tale that eventually ends with the veiled, almost silent threat of the villain, or the next generation of the villain's family exacting their revenge.

They know it to their tiptoes.

Thank you for reading. :)