A/N: I read the quote below, and this just came to me. It's set a few weeks after Beat The Devil.

"Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength". St. Francis de Sales

Disclaimer in bio

CHAPTER 1

As he watched her walk away with just a simple "good night," he felt the anger well up inside himself. She had been getting distant for the past two weeks, ever since the Martin Walker case. she probably got a new guy in her life.. doesn't have time for you anymore. This made him even angrier than he'd been at the thought of her staying away from him. Well its your own fault, you shoved Helen in her face, maybe she finally decided to get back out into the dating field.

He ended up at a bar close to her house, ordering drink after drink, not even slowing down until the bartender cut him off some hours later.

"you want me to call someone for you, or a cab maybe?" the nice bartender asked.

"Naw, s'okay, I'm walking." And he didn't correct the bartender's assumption that he himself lived nearby.

As soon as he arrived at Gillian's house, he began pounding on the door, ignoring, or not caring that it was two in the morning, and her neighbors wouldn't appreciate the noise. She opened the door in under thirty seconds, apparently trying to keep the disruption to a minimum.

As soon as he was in the house, he slammed his hands into the wall on either side of her head, forcing her against it, and leaving only an inch or two between them. "you got a new man? A new bloke?" he slurred. "he been keeping you busy eh?" she glared up at him, a look of surprise on her face. "Cal, you're drunk, and you're not making sense." she softly put a hand on his arm. "Look, how about you stay here tonight, and we can talk-"

"We can talk now, I'm bloody tired of you avoiding me!" Gillian tried to get out from his arms. "I'm not having this discussion now, Cal, either leave or stay, but I'm not talking about this with you until you're sober."

This time she pushed against his arm hard enough to get free for a second. He saw the relief on her face from that freedom, then the fear when he grabbed her arm to keep her from escaping. "here's the deal love, we can stay here all night, or you can tell me the truth about why you've been avoiding me, and we can both go to sleep at a somewhat reasonable time." He saw the anger flash across her face, and the slight fear that was mixed in.

"just let it go Cal, please? I really don't want to talk about this while you're drunk, you will blow everything out of proportion." She hoped he would drop it. She didn't want him thinking that she wanted him, and she was sure that was what he would read into her attempts to distance herself if he had all the facts.

Her last words cemented his suspicion in his mind. She WAS seeing somebody.

A small part of him in the back of his mind was warning him. If he kept treating her as he was, he would lose her for good. It stood back disgusted as he slammed her back into the wall with a little more force than was necessary when she tried to get away from him again. It watched in repulsion as the fear overtook the anger, then as she smoothed out the emotions on her face so he was left staring into the blank eyes that used to be endless depths of caring and compassion.

A/N: AHHH, I love angst...