WiP: Rope, 4 of ? (Lie To Me)
Chapter Three: Chiaroscuro
Gillian drums her fingers on her desk. A headache is beginning to grate at her temples, a sliver of glass pricking and stinging as it works its way to the surface. Not bad, not yet. But soon. Elsewhere in the building, people are wrapping things up for the evening, headed home to lovers and families and lives that have nothing to do with The Lightman Group. They file past her door in groups of twos and threes, more cautious about walking to their cars alone ever since the company cut its ties with the FBI. She smiles and waves when they manage to catch her eye. When no one’s looking, she doesn’t smile.
They’re going under. The latest report from their accountants doesn’t put it quite like that, of course, but the gist is the same. Whatever the formula is that transmutes ambition into success, it’s absent from their chemistry. Soon they won’t even be able to meet payroll. With the fingers of her left hand still telegraphing her distress, she uses her right hand to scroll through the figures again and again, desperate for a solution. All those people filing past her door, depending on her for their livelihoods…smiling and waving as they slide off the slope of financial solvency a little bit at a time. Her head throbs. She closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose, trying to hold off the worst of it.
Her office door opens with a soft, pneumatic hiss. No knock. No apology for the intrusion. Just the frisson of their connection snapping back and forth between them like a whip.
“Is there something I can do for you, Cal?” she sighs, squeezing her eyes tighter shut. The afterimage of the balance sheet burns white-hot in her retinas.
Nothing. But she can feel him there, hovering at her elbow. Close enough to touch.
She takes her hand from her face under the guise of returning to her work. Outside, the sky is dark and the yellow sodium vapor haze of the streetlights barely filters through the blinds. As a concession to her headache, the thin blue glow streaming from her computer is the only light in the room. Its watery flicker does fearsome things to his features, distorting their familiar lines into a cold, angry mask. His hazel eyes are too hooded to see.
“Thought I’d drop by,” he says, finally inclined to speak, “let you know I finished the Tharp interview.” The phrase implies that this is a spontaneous visit. But his voice is clipped, deliberate, as if it’s something he's thought about saying. A prepared statement.
Another glimpse of his face. Not a trick of the light, then.
“Oh,” he adds, as if the thought just occurred to him, “An’ I reviewed the footage with Loker and Torres.” Hands in his pockets, he uses his chin to gesture toward the half-empty bag of M&Ms taking up space next to her laptop. “Since you were busy with more important things.”
Gillian doesn’t allow herself the luxury of reaction. She knows Cal well enough to recognize when he’s provoking someone on purpose. She’s seen him do it hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. But always to others. Suspects, boyfriends of Emily’s, people who have disappointed him. Never her. Bitterness boils up in her throat, so hot and thick she can hardly swallow. It’s nothing, she tells herself. Just her pride.
“Now, I know you’d never let a disagreement between us interfere with a case. You’re better than that. So…” Allowing the word to trail off, he dips one shoulder toward her then leans out again, impatiently bouncing on the balls of his feet. All that aggressive physicality, held in check. A courtesy she’s never mistaken for control. “I’m all ears.”
Unable to concentrate on the intricacies of their financial statement, she opens her email program. Twenty-eight new messages since the last time she checked her inbox, less than an hour ago. “I don’t have time to argue with you, Cal. So if that’s what you came here for, you can just t-”
She jumps as the laptop slams shut, narrowly missing her fingers.
“What ‘bout now?” he snaps, looming over her with his hand on the closed computer.
“How dare you!” Anger propels her to her feet and suddenly they are chest to chest, aligned in a way that suggests an intimacy they don’t share. Starved for attention ever since Dave’s sudden desertion, her body reacts immediately. Shortening her breath, tightening her nipples. Betraying her worse than Cal ever could.
His gaze moves over her face, everywhere all at once. Blatantly reading her, even though that’s not allowed. Their line, like a lot of other things, doesn’t seem to matter to him lately. His breath is hot on her cheek.
“Just for the record,” he says, zeroing in on her mouth, staring at it far longer than seems strictly necessary, “what happened in The Cube wasn’t about you. I was tryin’ ta find out if that man’s a killer.”
She tries to come up with an appropriate response but he’s standing so close, she’s breathing in recycled air. Filling her lungs with the commingled scent of Scotch and aftershave and Cal. Before she can think about the implication, her tongue darts out to wet her lips, and his eyes trace its path like it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. Cal Lightman. The man who’s fucked so many women in that library of his, the staff has taken to calling it the Pornatorium. Somewhere in the back of Gillian’s mind, it occurs to her to wonder if he’d respond the same way to any woman sending out sexual cues. She wonders if she figures into the equation at all.
“I suppose you thought that was funny,” she accuses. But her voice comes out breathy and thick. All wrong.
“Got to you, did he?” Pitched low and soft, the question is a dreamy murmur that speaks straight to the needy ache between her thighs. Surprised, she tries to back away but her hip comes up hard against the edge of the desk.
“I knew what I was doing,” she claims, the result of a belated need to defend herself. Not against Tharp, but against him. Cal. Her partner.
One corner of his mouth lifts in a sad, bemused grin as he brings a hand up between them to brush the hair back from her eyes. So gentle. As unlike the Lightman who uses and threatens her as he is likely to return. Tucking the loose strands out of the way, he drags his fingertip over her skin, stroking the hidden crease where her ear meets her skull. “Sometimes you actually believe that, doncha, love?”
It’s such an intimate gesture that she cannot move, cannot speak. She just stands there feeling the leap in her blood as it rises to meet his fingers. Transfixed.
The knock at the door startles them both. They move apart quickly, smoothly, old pros at casual deception. Gillian glances at the floor while she works to assume an indifferent mask, trying to ignore the hollow crush of disappointment. A stray M&M, evidently knocked off during their exchange, nestles in the carpet next to her chair. She casually nudges it under her desk with the toe of her boot. She’s getting better at it, she realizes. Living a lie. Detective Wallowski scowls at them from the hallway.
Cal puts a few more steps between them and acknowledges the sloe-eyed brunette with a curt nod. By the time he turns to face Gillian again, he too has a mask firmly in place. If his was ever down. She isn’t so sure anymore.
“I’ve gotta take this, yeah?”
She nods, not trusting her voice quite yet. Wishing she could crawl up under her desk with the M&M. He’s already to the door before she calls out, “Cal?”
He pauses with his back to her, head tilted expectantly.
“Next time you want to do a favor for one of your friends, leave our company out of it.”
Typical Lightman-he pushes the door open and walks out without another word. But in the brightness of the fully lit corridor, just before he places his hand in the middle of Wallowski’s back, his stern expression seems to collapse in a microexpression of intense loneliness.
Sitting at her desk and reopening her computer, Gillian tells herself it was just another trick of the light.
Love is the coal that makes this train roll. Leave a comment if you want on the filter. :)
Gillian drums her fingers on her desk. A headache is beginning to grate at her temples, a sliver of glass pricking and stinging as it works its way to the surface. Not bad, not yet. But soon. Elsewhere in the building, people are wrapping things up for the evening, headed home to lovers and families and lives that have nothing to do with The Lightman Group. They file past her door in groups of twos and threes, more cautious about walking to their cars alone ever since the company cut its ties with the FBI. She smiles and waves when they manage to catch her eye. When no one’s looking, she doesn’t smile.
They’re going under. The latest report from their accountants doesn’t put it quite like that, of course, but the gist is the same. Whatever the formula is that transmutes ambition into success, it’s absent from their chemistry. Soon they won’t even be able to meet payroll. With the fingers of her left hand still telegraphing her distress, she uses her right hand to scroll through the figures again and again, desperate for a solution. All those people filing past her door, depending on her for their livelihoods…smiling and waving as they slide off the slope of financial solvency a little bit at a time. Her head throbs. She closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose, trying to hold off the worst of it.
Her office door opens with a soft, pneumatic hiss. No knock. No apology for the intrusion. Just the frisson of their connection snapping back and forth between them like a whip.
“Is there something I can do for you, Cal?” she sighs, squeezing her eyes tighter shut. The afterimage of the balance sheet burns white-hot in her retinas.
Nothing. But she can feel him there, hovering at her elbow. Close enough to touch.
She takes her hand from her face under the guise of returning to her work. Outside, the sky is dark and the yellow sodium vapor haze of the streetlights barely filters through the blinds. As a concession to her headache, the thin blue glow streaming from her computer is the only light in the room. Its watery flicker does fearsome things to his features, distorting their familiar lines into a cold, angry mask. His hazel eyes are too hooded to see.
“Thought I’d drop by,” he says, finally inclined to speak, “let you know I finished the Tharp interview.” The phrase implies that this is a spontaneous visit. But his voice is clipped, deliberate, as if it’s something he's thought about saying. A prepared statement.
Another glimpse of his face. Not a trick of the light, then.
“Oh,” he adds, as if the thought just occurred to him, “An’ I reviewed the footage with Loker and Torres.” Hands in his pockets, he uses his chin to gesture toward the half-empty bag of M&Ms taking up space next to her laptop. “Since you were busy with more important things.”
Gillian doesn’t allow herself the luxury of reaction. She knows Cal well enough to recognize when he’s provoking someone on purpose. She’s seen him do it hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. But always to others. Suspects, boyfriends of Emily’s, people who have disappointed him. Never her. Bitterness boils up in her throat, so hot and thick she can hardly swallow. It’s nothing, she tells herself. Just her pride.
“Now, I know you’d never let a disagreement between us interfere with a case. You’re better than that. So…” Allowing the word to trail off, he dips one shoulder toward her then leans out again, impatiently bouncing on the balls of his feet. All that aggressive physicality, held in check. A courtesy she’s never mistaken for control. “I’m all ears.”
Unable to concentrate on the intricacies of their financial statement, she opens her email program. Twenty-eight new messages since the last time she checked her inbox, less than an hour ago. “I don’t have time to argue with you, Cal. So if that’s what you came here for, you can just t-”
She jumps as the laptop slams shut, narrowly missing her fingers.
“What ‘bout now?” he snaps, looming over her with his hand on the closed computer.
“How dare you!” Anger propels her to her feet and suddenly they are chest to chest, aligned in a way that suggests an intimacy they don’t share. Starved for attention ever since Dave’s sudden desertion, her body reacts immediately. Shortening her breath, tightening her nipples. Betraying her worse than Cal ever could.
His gaze moves over her face, everywhere all at once. Blatantly reading her, even though that’s not allowed. Their line, like a lot of other things, doesn’t seem to matter to him lately. His breath is hot on her cheek.
“Just for the record,” he says, zeroing in on her mouth, staring at it far longer than seems strictly necessary, “what happened in The Cube wasn’t about you. I was tryin’ ta find out if that man’s a killer.”
She tries to come up with an appropriate response but he’s standing so close, she’s breathing in recycled air. Filling her lungs with the commingled scent of Scotch and aftershave and Cal. Before she can think about the implication, her tongue darts out to wet her lips, and his eyes trace its path like it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. Cal Lightman. The man who’s fucked so many women in that library of his, the staff has taken to calling it the Pornatorium. Somewhere in the back of Gillian’s mind, it occurs to her to wonder if he’d respond the same way to any woman sending out sexual cues. She wonders if she figures into the equation at all.
“I suppose you thought that was funny,” she accuses. But her voice comes out breathy and thick. All wrong.
“Got to you, did he?” Pitched low and soft, the question is a dreamy murmur that speaks straight to the needy ache between her thighs. Surprised, she tries to back away but her hip comes up hard against the edge of the desk.
“I knew what I was doing,” she claims, the result of a belated need to defend herself. Not against Tharp, but against him. Cal. Her partner.
One corner of his mouth lifts in a sad, bemused grin as he brings a hand up between them to brush the hair back from her eyes. So gentle. As unlike the Lightman who uses and threatens her as he is likely to return. Tucking the loose strands out of the way, he drags his fingertip over her skin, stroking the hidden crease where her ear meets her skull. “Sometimes you actually believe that, doncha, love?”
It’s such an intimate gesture that she cannot move, cannot speak. She just stands there feeling the leap in her blood as it rises to meet his fingers. Transfixed.
The knock at the door startles them both. They move apart quickly, smoothly, old pros at casual deception. Gillian glances at the floor while she works to assume an indifferent mask, trying to ignore the hollow crush of disappointment. A stray M&M, evidently knocked off during their exchange, nestles in the carpet next to her chair. She casually nudges it under her desk with the toe of her boot. She’s getting better at it, she realizes. Living a lie. Detective Wallowski scowls at them from the hallway.
Cal puts a few more steps between them and acknowledges the sloe-eyed brunette with a curt nod. By the time he turns to face Gillian again, he too has a mask firmly in place. If his was ever down. She isn’t so sure anymore.
“I’ve gotta take this, yeah?”
She nods, not trusting her voice quite yet. Wishing she could crawl up under her desk with the M&M. He’s already to the door before she calls out, “Cal?”
He pauses with his back to her, head tilted expectantly.
“Next time you want to do a favor for one of your friends, leave our company out of it.”
Typical Lightman-he pushes the door open and walks out without another word. But in the brightness of the fully lit corridor, just before he places his hand in the middle of Wallowski’s back, his stern expression seems to collapse in a microexpression of intense loneliness.
Sitting at her desk and reopening her computer, Gillian tells herself it was just another trick of the light.
Love is the coal that makes this train roll. Leave a comment if you want on the filter. :)