Don’t take me wrong, I love Densi, I fucking dig Neric, but nothing makes me happier than Calanna. Nothing makes me happier than two orphans with abandonment issues slowly building something solid without even noticing. And you know, I want it all. I want Callen to turn around, realize they’ve been seeing each other for a steady year, that Anna hasn’t betrayed him, hasn’t turned out to be using him, that she has not pushed him into anything he wasn’t comfortable with either, and you know what else ? I want him to freak out about it because Callen never gets nice things like that, people don’t stay, people usually don’t stay, Hetty did, and Sam, but even with them Callen is always a bit wary when they go missing without him, when Hetty hasn’t checked in in two weeks, when Sam and him are on different missions. So I want him to freak out the day he realizes all that, and I want him to start a fight with Anna, without even meaning to, his subconscious getting all worked up about the realization and trying to protect him. And I want Anna to walk away that night, not because she can’t take it but because she knows something’s wrong and she doesn’t know how to fix it yet, and she needs to think. And Callen, he tells himself that it’s okay, that it was bound to happen anyway, that everybody leaves eventually, better get it over with earlier than later. He wasn’t even that involved anyway, he certainly wasn’t having feelings, it was fun for the time it lasted.
It’s been a complicated year for Callen, between the mole debacle, his father coming to live in LA, his sister and nephew who barged in on his birthday with a homemade cake and gifts -he does not remember the last time he had homemade cake. It was too good, too much in too little time, something was gonna give, obviously.
And I want Anna to try and keep her chill because by now she knows him, okay, she knows when they’re actually having a fight and when he’s having a fight all by himself, all with himself. She knows because it happens to her too sometimes. She could practically hear the blaring alarm inside his head, by all means she could read the look in his eyes, like he was surrounded, like he was waiting for a punch or a bullet, bracing himself for impact. She doesn’t sleep much that night, because she thinks about what to tell him. It’s easy. She just has to wonder what she would tell herself.
The next morning Anna shows up with pastries like she does sometimes and Callen does not understand because obviously he was expecting her to come back for her stuff -the sweater she always forgets because it’s warmer in the morning when she leaves than in the evening when she arrives, her toothbrush, a book he borrowed from her, the pack of that special brand of coffee she likes... But she is here the very next morning, and with pastries, and she smiles at him, kisses his cheek good morning and bee lines to the kitchen and the coffee maker.
(He still doesn’t have any furniture except for a couch they actually picked together -he was wandering into Ikea like a lost soul, she just happened to text him while he was there and he called for help. He tried to bring up the subject of a bed, once. Whispered ‘I should probably buy a bed’ while they were falling asleep on his mattress, in each other’s arms. Perfectly remembers the sleepy whisper of ‘don’t’. ‘Why ?’ ‘I like your mattress.’ He ended up buying a bigger mattress, just because. First time he tried to make love to her on it she couldn’t stop giggling and it was so contagious he gave up, so they just laughed, and drank until they reached that point where she forgets how to English so they just speak Russian until they fall asleep in their underwear without having done anything apart from sloppy kisses.
He remembers telling her she was perfect that night, which was the closest to a love confession he’d ever been. She mumbled something along the line of ‘shut up, you’re perfect’ and then proceeded to fall asleep on him, which was good because he wasn’t sure he could have handled anything else, it was too much, too much at once, it’s dangerous, she’s not gonna stay, she’s gonna walk away, he can’t...)
He does not know what to say because he’s so damn happy to see her it feels like his heart is about to burst, but at the same time he has to hide his shaking hands in his pockets because he’s never been so confused in his life.
She makes them both coffee, and when they have mugs in their hands she starts doing that thing that always ends up with him helplessly kissing her, when she tries to explain and to apologize at the same time because she’s never sure if she’s not freaking him out. She tells him it’s okay to be freaked, everyone is freaked, she’s freaked, but that doesn’t mean they have to break up except if he actually wants to break up which would make the whole barging in with pastries kind of weird but they’ve been there, but just so he knows she’s not stupid, she knows the difference between a fight and a fake fight, she knows when he’s not okay and that’s fine, he doesn’t have to tell her anything if he doesn’t want to talk about it, although he must know that he can if he wants, but he doesn’t have to, but please, don’t push me away, and please, don’t think that pushing me away is gonna make me leave, Callen, I’m Russian, okay, I’m stubborn as fuck, and I like you, and I’m not going anywhere.
He kisses her because he’s afraid of what he’s gonna do if she says anything else.
They spend the morning making out on his mattress until they have to rush out and to work. And it’s not over, he’s still freaked, he knows he should talk to someone about it, Sam, or Nate, and probably Anna too because he can’t just keep setting the pace all by himself here, he knows it’s not fair, and what if she gets fed up with his shit and leaves him ? But he knows that he doesn’t want her to leave and he knows she doesn’t want to leave either, so there’s that. It’s more than he knew the day before.
I just really want to see them take that relationship one day at a time like the freaked out puppies they both are.
