Category Archives: #NellAppreciationWeek

Nell Appreciation Week — FanFic #2

Not far from the Tree
By: ncisnewbie

The tee-shirt’s picture showed a cartoon of a man on a surfboard, but two things distinguished this surfer from the traditional California surfer image. First, the waves measured, at most, six inches: wakes from the tourist boats passing under London’s Tower Bridge. Second, he wore the full red regalia and bearskin cap of a beefeater. Underneath, the caption read “Thames River Surf Association.”

The tee-shirt barely contained the paunch that had hunted down Eric Beale, now fifty years old. Eric grumbled as he vacuumed the large, formal living room of the Jones-Beale household. In one corner a music stand, overflowing with viola music, stood beside a baby grand piano. As he shut off the vacuum, he wiped the sweat from his brow, checked his phone and rolled his eyes. He took a deep breath, and then returned the call. “Hi, Sweetie. Sorry I missed your call.” He did not sound sorry.

“Right. I had time to vacuum before I had to get Barrett from Math Club. We’ll do…. You’re right, He’ll do homework ’til five-thirty five, then it’s off to fencing…. No, it’s Wednesday: it’s fencing. …We should be back by seven. During the homework, I should be able to get the lasagna in. And a couple bags of salad during fencing…Are you sure Renée doesn’t mind doing the Smithsonian ’til you’re done? We’ll hurry back. I’m sure she’ll be anxious to see her nephew.” As he talked, he grabbed a cloth lunch bag and filled it with a protein bar and banana.

Three hours later, dusk had come to a perfect Indian-summer day, complete with blue skies and crisp air perfumed by drying leaves. Eric pulled into the cul-de-sac and used the remote to open the garage. He parked his Dodge on his side of the driveway and plugged it in. Barrett roused from his near-sleep and uncoiled from his seat in the car. Tall and slender for his fourteen years, freckle-faced and tousle-haired like his father had been in Los Angeles, he had inherited auburn hair from his mother, the main physical feature he shared with her. Father and son negotiated their way between Nell’s Mercedes and his old Kia Soul. (“Better hang onto it. It’s big enough for projects, and for when I drive a bunch of kids.”)

Renée got hugs from each of the returnees, and Nell and Barrett shared a hug while Eric continued, “Hello, Renée. I’m so glad you could make it to Washington! Let me just pull the lasagna out, then we can eat in fifteen minutes, after it’s set.” As soon as he opened the oven, his face reddened. “What the Nell? Nell, I left a note to uncover it as soon as you got home so the top could brown!” He pulled the foil-shielded casserole from the oven. “Good grief, Nell! I bust my butt to get things set up so we can eat on time, get Barrett to bed at a decent hour and you can’t even do one thing?”

“As soon as I got in, I got a call from the embassy in Lithuania! Russia trouble again. Just uncover it now! Fifteen minutes ain’t gonna kill us, Beale!”

His shoulders slumped, he paused, and then he uncovered the lasagna and slid it back into the oven. Nell shook her head and steered her sister into the living room as Eric put on an apron and finished assembling the garlic bread. Once it was wrapped and in the oven, he poured himself a seltzer, took a breath, and went into the living room.

 
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Nell Appreciation Week — FanFic #1

Marquesa of Misdirection
By: Motsie of Atlantis

Temporary Operations Manager Owen Granger saw his number one political analyst, Nell Jones, on her way back to ops and asked her to come into his office. She had just finished washing her cup after having a tea break in the bullpen area of the mission.

“Jones, he asked, “do you know Hetty’s passwords for some of her encrypted files here in the computer?”

Nell screwed up her face and held her right hand with its index finger extended under her chin, as if she was trying to remember for just a moment or two, then shook her head slowly as she said to him “No, sir, I don’t.”

The answer she gave the Assistant Director was technically true – she hadn’t memorized the passwords, just so she could have plausible deniability in situations like this. But she knew where they were stored, and she knew how she could access them. But she was not going to volunteer that information to the Assistant Director, because that was not the question he asked her. And since he had made it abundantly clear to everyone that he wanted them to do everything “by the book” and not operate the way had operated under Hetty, until he asked the proper question, she would not give him the answers he was really seeking.

As she left and passed the agents sitting at their desks, she started to ascend the stairs up to her appointed station in ops. The young woman let out a long held breath that was so loud that even Deeks looked up at her with a question on his face. Nell shook her head in amazement as she breathed the words, “Dodged another one.”

LAPD Detective Marty Deeks smiled and nodded to the little redhead. He knew exactly what had happened in her encounter with Granger. He made reference to that very thing when the team psychologist, Nate Getz, asked him to describe how he felt about the other members of his team during his first psych evaluation. When he got to Nell Jones, all he said was, “If Hetty is the Duchess of Deception, then Nell Jones is the Marquesa of Misdirection”.

When Nate looked at him and asked him to explain, Deeks continued. “Our little Nell does not lie, because she can’t do it well. She never distorts the truth because it goes against her moral fiber. Whenever she comes out and lies deliberately, you can see the color rise in her cheeks, the bigger the lie, the deeper the blush. That is why she can never play poker – her face will give her away. But she is intelligent enough to have a complete mental list of answers, that technically are not lies, but do not disclose any type of answer a person expects. The easiest one that falls off her lips is, “…Could be…” throwing the ball back into the other person’s court without any confirmation or denial of the subject in question. So if Hetty is truly the Duchess of Deception, then our little Nell must be the Marquesa of Misdirection.

It was not just her exactitude with words and their definition that seemed to make Nell someone who shaded the truth. She also perfected the ability to blather so constantly, that those seeking information from her at the time would forget what they asked after trying to follow her thought patterns. She disguised it so well, always looking like the little girl that everyone dismissed because she was too young to really know anything, or blaming it on her ADD. She had worked on this defense mechanism throughout the years, and now she had it down so well it was almost an art form when one saw her put it into play.

 
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Appreciation Week – FanFic Calls

NCIS: LOS ANGELES
Tomorrow we’re going to start posting all the little FanFic gems that have been posted in the last weeks because of our FanFic Calls during our Character Appreciation Weeks.

Here are the calls again…

#HettyAppreciationWeek – FanFic Call
#GrangerAppreciationWeek – FanFic Call
#EricAppreciationWeek – FanFic Call
#NellAppreciationWeek – FanFic Call
#DeeksAppreciationWeek – FanFic Call
#KensiAppreciationWeek – FanFic Call
#SamAppreciationWeek – FanFic Call
#CallenAppreciationWeek – FanFic Call

Don’t mind the due dates… we will continue watching fanfiction.net and whenever a story with “#[Character]AppreciationWeek” shows up we’re going to share it with our readers as well…