Complex Just Got Easy... [NCIS: LA FanFic]

Whole New Life

After almost 1 month in the hospital, Lexie was packing up her belongings, that her father and his team had brought in for her during the month. As well as her father's team, her 3 best friends - Logan Westfall, Brodie Alexander and Caleb Lansing - had frequently visited her.

As she put her laptop into her bag, there was a knock at the door, and Deeks poked his head around the glass, "Hey kid." he smiled.

"Hey Deeks," she said, warmly, gladly returning his smile, "Dad on a case?"

But he shook his head, "He's hardly left the office," he told her, "Not for a month. He's probably passed out at his desk."

Sighing, Lexie took out her cell phone, and scrolled through her contacts, searching for the recently added contact, that read 'dad'. She hit the green call button, and let it ring out for a moment, before Callen picked up, "Dad, did you forget that I can finally go home today?" she asked, as soon as the ringing stopped.

"Crap..." she heard him mutter, sleepily, on the other end of the line, "I'm sorry, Lexie... I'll be there in 20."

"No need," she told him, "Deeks is here." She passed her cell phone to Deeks, figuring that her father would want to talk to him.

As Deeks hung up on the call, he handed the phone back to Lexie, "You good?" he asked, "'cause you're coming to NCIS for a while." Lexie beamed at that. She'd wanted to go to NCIS since she knew that her father worked there. She'd met all the people, apart from the techies, Eric and Nell - even Hetty - and they were all awesome, but she really wanted to see NCIS. As she picked her bag up, to follow Deeks to the car, her still healing bullet wounds twinged, and she tried not to clutch her stomach in pain. But Deeks noticed, "You 'kay, Lexie?"

"Yeah..." she tried to assure him, "Yeah, I'm fine..."

He threw her a sceptical look, but let it slide, because he knew that she was enough like Callen to not say a word about anything that was bothering her. Even though everyone knew what had almost completely occupied Callen's mind over the past month, he never talked about it. On a couple of occasions he had confided in Sam, or asked Eric and Nell to run something for him. But the rest of the time, either struggled to concentrate on their current case, or just went completely off the reservation. For all his faults, though, Callen genuinely cared about his daughter, and he wouldn't rest easy until he knew who had tried to kill her.

As Deeks and Lexie drove back to NCIS, neither of them really said a word; Deeks found it to be a rather awkward situation, because of how much Lexie was like her father, and how few casual conversations they'd shared in the time that they'd worked together. It didn't help that Lexie had her ear-buds in, pumping music into her ears, which he could vaguely hear the bass line of. He tapped her arm, making her take an ear-bud out, so that she could hear him, "What are you listening to?" he asked.

"The Ballad of Mona Lisa." she answered. But she saw him raise an eyebrow in confusion, "It's by Panic! At The Disco."

"Fair enough." he shrugged, not really having a clue.

As they pulled up outside the NCIS offices, and stepped out of the car, Lexie read the warning notices that were pinned up all around the exterior of the building, "Condemned?!" she cried, "Are you trying to kill me, Deeks?!"

Deeks chuckled at her reaction, "It's not really, Lexie. It's just a deterrent." he told her as though it was obvious.

"Well, it works." She followed Deeks into the building, and looked the around the room, seeing the one main room as high as the roof of the building itself, but a first floor around the outside over looking the floor below, and the OSP team's bullpen. The bullpen was segregated from the rest of the room by old-style screens, while Hetty's office was at the opposite side of the room.