Title: Sowing the Wind
Fandom: NCIS: Los Angeles
Rating: G
Genre: gen
Characters: Lara Macy, Hettie Lange, Nate Getz
Summary: Lara Macy works with some very talented people; unfortunately, they're all crazy. Or, how and why Sam and G were assigned as partners.
Author's note: in which Macy and Hettie aren't clear on who's running this place, but they are clear that Macy brings the cookies and Hettie makes the tea.

AO or below:

---

Running an undercover operations center was not like running a normal criminal investigations division. Lara Macy had been an investigator and an operations manager long enough and at enough different settings to know. The difference wasn't in the kind of work; at least, not directly. Running undercover operations wasn't much different than running other field operations in itself. Undercover specialists, though - those were plenty different.

It took a complicated skill set and a certain kind of a person to work undercover day in, day out. Undercover specialists needed the acting skills and acute social awareness of a con artist, without the sociopathic tendencies common to the type; they needed to be capable of being totally self-sufficient, but devoted to a shared common good; and their survival depended on being able to improvise on the fly as much as on following complicated plans to a T.

Managing undercover specialists was - to borrow a phrase from a friend - a right pain in the asset.

All of Macy's specialists were NCIS agents, which meant they had all passed the same psych eval battery as any other NCIS agent. They should all, in theory, possess a stable psychological matrix suitable for cooperation, and the in-house operational psychologist was supposed to pick up the rest. The resident shrink had a saying, though, and it was one Macy had heard from several HR managers in the past: nobody aces a psych eval like a psychopath.

Macy was beginning to wonder if G. Callen wasn't a literal example. Former DEA, former CIA, fluent in nearly a dozen languages and with fifteen years of experience under his belt, Macy had been duly impressed when her training supervisor informed her of their newest acquisition. Impressed, and promptly suspicious at the combination of an impressive resume and agency-hopping. A few phone calls revealed that both the DEA and the CIA would be delighted to have G. Callen back, and Macy reasoned that perhaps they wouldn't get a very long run out of him, but he was worth the hassle.

Trust Henrietta Lange to only bust out the guy's social record after he's been signed in. Macy would've been angrier with herself for that lapse in judgment, but she knew better than to think she could win a game of anything against Hettie. The woman was not a legend for nothing.

Callen wasn't brilliant as advertised; he was better. One month in, Macy strongly suspected that his past operations report had been carefully faked by his former supervisors to hide the sheer amount of daredevil improvisation Callen routinely employed. Problem was, none of said daredevil improvisation would be at all necessarily if the man had any capacity for working together or following directions at all.

Of course she tried talking to him. She's never spoken to a smoother hostile witness, and she doubted she ever would. Managing people required understanding what made them tick, and Callen could be a Martian for all that she managed to get rapport.

It wouldn't have been much of a problem if it was just Callen. There was always a problem agent, as spectacular a problem as Callen was, and one problem agent she could deal with. Macy's other problem was that Sam Hanna was trying to get himself killed. Well, he wasn't trying to get himself killed just yet, but he was getting there fast. You couldn't get attached to the subjects, on a job like this, and you couldn't get attached to the bystanders either. She'd never known Hanna to not be a soft touch, for an undercover specialist, but there was that and there was his string of increasingly frantic and life-endangering attempts to get people out of shitty situations. Hanna was a SEAL - no such thing as an ex-Marine and no such thing as an ex-SEAL - and SEALs were the closest thing to psychologically indestructibe. Macy didn't even try to scale his walls herself, but sicced their shrink at him; Nate came back a week later and admitted defeat.

Which was why Macy took an hour-long detour that morning to pass through a choice patisserie, and why she was presently knocking on Hettie's door, carrying the carefully-selected box of biscuits with the logo prominently displayed.

"Hm," Hettie said, surveying Macy over the rim of her glasses. Her eyes lingered on the biscuits. "Is somebody dead?"

"Not yet," Macy said, stepping in.

Hettie huffed and pushed herself up. "I'll put us some tea, then. Darjeeling?"

"Certainly."

They continued to chat about tea until after they were both settled with their cups and Hettie nibbled her way through half a biscuit. Then she delicately put the other half on her saucer and asked: "So, to what impending disaster do I owe this pleasure?"

Macy took another sip from her Darjeeling - no matter how she tried, she couldn't make tea like Hettie - before she put her cup down and said: "Make that two impending disasters."

Hettie mouthed a silent Ah, leaning back in her chair a little, and said: "Misters Callen and Hanna, then."

"Why do we pretend that I run this place?" Macy asked dryly.

Hettie spread her hands a little to the sides. "But you do run this place."

Macy deliberately let her expression turn particularly wry. Eventually, Hettie's lips twitched.

"Mr. Callen's last operation with the CIA had been... eventful," she said. The way she articulated the word eventful made it mean traumatic. "I would have been surprised if he did not have some trouble adjusting."

"You're not supposed to let me put them on missions until they're ready for it, Hettie."

"He's not a novice, Lara. Believe me, he would have been far more trouble if I held him back. Either that, or we would've lost him."

The first two sentences were a typical Hettie spiel. The third wasn't. "You really want him," Macy said. She's known Hettie for eight years and she's been looking for it, and she still nearly missed the flicker of emotion across her face. A little sharply, she said, "Sullivan's dead, Hettie."

"I know that," Hettie said, voice tight. Her eyes were tight. "I, of all people, know that." She lifted her cup to her lips. Rather than cover anything up, the motion betrayed how tense she was.

OSP used to be Hettie's, until Sullivan was killed. Tough and wily old bird that she was, Hettie had never lost a subordinate before. She stepped back from being operations manager, and it was all Director Morrow could do to talk her into remaining in charge of training. It wasn't a kind move on Macy's part, but she needed to know if Hettie's thing with Callen was about Sullivan. You couldn't afford guilt, in their line of work. Guilt was just another form of personal attachment, inappropriate and liable to result in people making the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons.

"Right now I don't know that he's field-ready," she said quietly. "If we were working in a partner system he would've already gotten his partner killed."

For some reason, that made Hettie's expression relax. "Killed, no," she said. "Come down with a nervous breakdown, perhaps."

Macy felt her own shoulders relax, and she allowed herself to wryly comment: "He's nearly made me come down with a nervous breakdown."

Hettie waved her head dismissively.

"Well, what do you suggest we do?" Macy asked. "Since you clearly anticipated this issue."

"Why, assign him a partner, of course," Hettie said. Macy choked on her biscuit. Hettie continued blithely. "Mr. Hanna, perhaps."

They both picked up their tea at the same time, Hettie to hide her smile behind the rim of her cup, and Macy to wash the burning of the cough from her throat.

"You suggest I assign an unstable SEAL together with an antisocial personality with serious trust issues," she said. "I thought you wanted both of them alive and with this office?"

Hettie's Mona Lisa smile was still on. "Precisely."

---

"I have to say, she might have a point," Nate said.

Macy stared at him.

"What?" he said.

"What Kool-Aid did you drink and where does Hettie keep it?"

"She puts it in the tea," he deadpanned, and added: "I mean it. Think about it."

"Callen just might kill Hanna on purpose."

"He's not actually a sociopath, Mace," Nate said, more softly.

She leaned back in her chair. "Could've fooled me."

Nate leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees and shoulders hunched in. Macy knew that posture: Nate used it when he wanted to make himself appear smaller, more harmless. "He has tremendous trust and abandonment issues, I don't say he doesn't," he said. "Okay, he has the worst trust and abandonment issues I have ever seen, and considering his early life it's a miracle he got as far as he did. But that's precisely it, Mace. He chose to become this, to become a federal agent. It's not a choice that a sociopath or a truly antisocial person would make, and it's one that has to be incredibly difficult on him. But he's still here."

"Okay," she said. "Still doesn't mean he can do this. Or can still do this. And pairing him up with Hanna? SEALs don't stop being SEALs, Nate, you know that. Hanna's not built for dealing with someone like Callen."

"To the contrary," Nate said. He straightened while she talked, and he dropped the softness. "If anyone's built for handling Callen, it's Hanna."

She considered the statement.

"It's a lone wolf job and Hanna is a team player," Nate continued. "He's self-sufficient in most respects, but he needs more stability than our usual mode of operations has. This is why he keeps getting involved with third parties."

"It's a solid argument for assigning him with a partner," she agreed. "And you think he needs this connection so much, that he'll put up with Callen."

"No, I think he won't give up on Callen," Nate said. "Macy, you're an expert on getting cagey suspicious loners to trust you -"

"- and I'd rather have a root canal than talk to him," she completed. "Thanks, Nate."

He winced. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Yes, you did." She swallowed back a smile. "The day I can't tell that you're playing me, one of us is no longer fit for the job."

He shrugged a little and smiled apologetically.

"I hate you," she told him. The playfulness was there, if he would listen closely enough.

He did, of course. "You didn't dare say that to Hettie, did you."

She smiled and shook her head. "Get out of my office, Nate."

Too innocently, he began: "I'm just saying -"

She raised her eyebrows. He seemingly scampered out the chair and towards the door but he did not actually hurry.

She added "And get out of my head!" when he was by the door, so he closed it behind him.

---

On their first assignment together, Callen and Hanna were both at their professional best and Macy made a note to get Hettie the fanciest chocolate cookies in town. After their third, Callen pitched a fit and disappeared so thoroughly off the radar that Beale took over a day to locate him.

The next day Callen and Hanna showed up together.

She waited until Callen went to the bathroom and then approached Hanna's desk. "How did you...?" she asked.

"Banged on his door and told him to drag his sorry ass out of bed," Hanna said, in that permanently irritated manner of his. "We would have been here half an hour before, but we had to stop for pancakes. Lots of pancakes," he grumbled.

She would have asked about that, but Callen was already heading back and was definitely displeased to see his boss at his partner's desk. "Carry on," she said in her best normal voice, and walked away.

---

A month later, Macy went down to Hettie's office with that box of cookies. Hettie got up to make tea without either of them saying a word.

Macy sat down. "Did you plan on that all along?" she asked.

"On what, your excellent taste in baked goods?" Hettie asked. She did not turn away from the kettle, but Macy could still see her smile.

Mutely, she took the red bow out of her pocket and stuck it on top of the cookie box.