A/N: This little thing is an idea I've had percolating for ages. It's a notion several of us have touched on or out-right mentioned in some of our stories from time to time. I've mentioned it. I know a few others have. For absolute certain, solveariddle recently did overtly mention it because it was her overt mention of this concept in chapter 4 of At That Time of the Night that prompted me to get off my writerly, procrastinating backside and finally write the thing.
Part one was super-simple to write, mainly because the show writers gave us loads of material from which to pull, and I only had to fabricate some of the items.
Part two was considerably more difficult because of the dearth of material from which to pull. I was, therefore, required to fabricate more regarding Gillian; but it needed to be semi-believable fabrications, you know?
Rating is T simply for a little bit of sweariness.
Disclaimer: not mine, never mine, should be mine.
He doesn't celebrate his birthday but secretly likes having it acknowledged in subtle, indirect ways by the people closest to him. Only Emily can get away with direct acknowledgement, and even that has to be small-scale, private, and/or sardonic.
The scientist in him understands that he is not responsible for his mother's suicide and has made an uneasy peace with himself over it even while still looking for an answer that just isn't there. The confused, hurting little boy in him will never, ever stop laying the blame at his own feet.
He used to have three people he trusts completely. Then, there were two. Now there's only one, and it's me.
He really did moon the Queen of England. That was not a lie.
Most people see just the narcissistic, arrogant, megalomaniacal Lightman. That's the way he likes it. It keeps them from seeing the man behind the curtain, the man pulling all the levers. Not that he isn't narcissistic, arrogant and megalomaniacal. He is. But there's a lot more to him than that. A lot more.
Cal isn't just a good father. He is possibly the best father I've ever known. He's far from perfect; he makes mistakes. But he loves Emily with an unmatched ferocity and dedication. It's so cliche to say, "There's nothing he wouldn't do for her"; but in Cal's case, it's absolutely true. If I were going to choose a father for a child of my own, I'd choose Cal.
He doesn't hate sweets; he's just particular about them. He likes ice cream. He likes Turkish Delight. He likes shortbread cookies (biscuits, whatever), and he dunks them in his tea. He comes a little unhinged when he mis-times the dunking, and the shortbread breaks apart in his tea. He also likes crepes, though he will deny it to the death if anyone catches him eating them. I did, once. He was so embarrassed. Actual red-faced, flustered, legitimate embarrassment. For him, it was as horrifying a moment as it would've been for anyone else being caught watching porn. We never speak of it. To this day, if I even utter the word 'crepe' in his presence, he practically soils himself in fear that I'm about to out him.
He pretends to be oblivious to what it takes to keep the Group afloat, but I know he knows. He keeps close tabs on the finances though he doesn't have the head for numbers that I do. He gets it, though; and on a high level, he appreciates the beauty of a well-defined bottom line. He trusts that I know what I'm doing in that regard, and I think he kinda gets off on covertly watching me do it. He's twisted like that.
He isn't the commitment-phobe that most people imagine. Well, yes and no. He was married, remember; so he has committed before. It's kind of like with sweets. He doesn't dislike commitment per se; he's just very, very particular. And given the way his marriage ended, is it all that surprising that he's a little skittish now where relationships are concerned? So, yes, he's kind of afraid of commitment or rather of making the wrong commitment; but once he...commits to commit, he will be unwavering. Of this, I have absolutely no doubt.
Alec once came home with a black eye and told me he got it from walking into a low-hanging light fixture while texting with his boss. I knew he was lying, obviously. Even if I didn't see the telltale micro-expressions all over his face as he lied or hear it in his voice, the little fact that it happened within just a few hours of Cal finding me crying in my office because Alec and I had been fighting again - over losing Sophie (and Alec not wanting to talk about it and me needing to...and Alec blaming me) - was all the tip-off I needed. Cal thought he masked it well enough how angry he was when he left my office that night. I read him so much more easily sometimes than he realizes. Especially when it comes to me.
He loves me. Not just as his best friend, either. He is in love with me. He knows that I know, too; but it's just easier for him to believe that I don't know or that he isn't sure. He wants to be in a relationship with me, a long-term one. Maybe even a permanent one. Honestly, I'm not even sure how I feel about that. I mean, on the one hand, I do love him. Of course, I love him. He's my best friend, but he's been more than that for a long time. For all intents and purposes, we're practically married as it is. We do everything together except, well, the obvious. We have a mortgage together (the Group's building lease counts). We pay bills together (ok, that's mostly me, but they're in both our names). We've spent more time together than apart in the past ten years, more time with one another than we did with our spouses (that should shame me but somehow doesn't and likely accounts for, at least in part, what helped our respective marriages crumble). I like to think we've even sort of raised Emily through her tween and teen years together, in a manner of speaking. I know she isn't mine, but still. So, there's all this history between us. And it's Cal...it's comfortable even when it's uncomfortable because it's so familiar and safe. Even when he's being an ass, I know that - in the end - he'll never let me down. Not in the big ways. He will always have my back, and I'll always have his. Then, on the other hand...I just don't know. I don't know if I can...take him. I don't know if I can handle Lightman Unleashed. Right now, I get the guarded (semi-guarded) version. If we're together? If the mask comes off and the walls come down, am I strong enough for that? I honestly don't know. But I think I need to figure it out pretty soon, because I think he's pretty close to figuring it out. And once he does, he will come at me with all guns blazing, and that is something I know I'm not strong enough to stand against.
That pug he had called Isabel? Named it after his first girlfriend from when he was nine years old. He kind of liked her and so he kissed her (the girl, not the pug) behind the church rectory when a bunch of them were walking home from school one afternoon. She shoved him down and ran off, and he fell into a mud puddle. Everyone saw it and laughed at him. She felt bad about that, and gave him a shortbread cookie (biscuit, whatever) the next day at lunchtime. Came back AND gave him food. She had him hook, line and sinker after that.
He doesn't like boxers; says he can't stand the feeling of "the lads" doing a trapeze act. For this reason, he favors briefs. TMI.
He wet the bed at night until he was seven and a half years old. He was too afraid to get up and walk to the toilet because he was afraid of what he might see. The drunken shouts from his father and sharp cries from his mother and pleas of, "Stop, just please, stop" were enough to keep him rooted to the sodden sheets til morning.
The morning his father discovered Cal was still wetting the bed, he gave Cal a thumping he didn't soon forget. That day, Cal taught himself to do the washing and would get up very early in the morning to wash his sheets and pyjamas whenever the need arose.
He was not quite six years old when he learned to do laundry.
Cal cries. He doesn't do it often, and he doesn't do it when he knows there's anyone else around. He cried when Zoe left him. He cried when Emily left for college. I saw him crying once - just once - on the anniversary of his mother's suicide, as he watched that psych hospital interview of hers for the thousandth time.
He likes Loker. Cal agitates him and picks on him and pushes him and belittles him, but he likes him. All that meanness is his way of showing Loker how much he likes him. Loker only needs to worry if Cal ever stops doing those things, because that means he's lost Cal's interest and his regard.
Cal likes Torres even more. He likes her because she is so much like him, but that's also why they rub each other the wrong way. He also resents her a tiny bit. He resents that she has naturally what he spent years learning to do. That makes her not only not fully appreciate what she can do, he believes; it also makes her reckless with it. Kind of ironic, Lightman viewing anyone else as more reckless than himself. Like I said, she's so much like him.
He once gave Loker's "radical honesty" a try. It lasted 43 minutes. Not one of his more successful experiments.
He has a great sense of humor and a really wonderful laugh. Too bad he doesn't laugh more often.
He has an insanely ticklish spot behind his knee. Shrieks like a little girl if you can pin him and get him there. Also, his hips are ticklish; but that's a dangerous spot because the response is a lot different than the spot behind the knee. Let's just leave it at that.
When he has had an especially stressful day, he stops at the kennels on his way home and plays with the dogs. Emily told me this one. She says it's like he turns into Mowgli; he gets out there with the dogs and just becomes one of them. I'm not sure I could have ever envisioned it if it weren't for the video she showed me on her phone. Cal rolling around and fighting for a ball - that was weird and priceless.
He's a West Ham supporter. He hates Arsenal. HATES. I don't know why for sure. Something about them always trying to walk it in, whatever that means.
He doesn't like to watch the Olympics. He doesn't get what the big deal is and has no qualms about telling you so.
The number of scotches it takes before his walls crumble and the mask drops and his inhibitions around me go out the window: eight.
The number of scotches it takes before he loses consciousness after a few minutes: also eight.
He is an incredible kisser.
He doesn't snore unless he's sick.
He is a fantastic cook, but his repertoire is limited to curries mostly (unless you count beans on toast).
He sings in the shower. He's not bad. He's not going to win a Grammy but not bad.
The color yellow irritates him to an irrational degree.
He has seen Casablanca 27 times.
His mother made him take clarinet lessons when he was eight. He hated it. She let him quit after some older boys followed him after a lesson one day and decided to play cricket with him as the ball and his clarinet as the bat.
He likes to hold babies; he likes it nearly as much as any woman I've ever known. And if he thinks no one can hear him, he will talk babytalk at them.
He can't eat with chopsticks. I tried to teach him. He lost patience with it and just ended up spearing the food. Aggressively.
He's afraid I'll leave him. He keeps pushing to see if he will eventually find the tipping point. He can be such an idiot.
He hates bagels. He also hates raisins. Raisin bagels come straight from hell itself, he says.
After his run-in with Martin Walker - after being water-boarded more times than I care to think about - Cal wasn't able to shower or have a bath for two full months. He washed himself at his sink with a damp washcloth. He was furious with Emily for telling me. But after he stopped being pissed off and actually listened to me, he did take my recommendation that he talk to someone about his PTSD. That's what it was. So he did talk to someone about it. A therapist, not me. He eventually told me about the nightmares, though. Those, he said, went on way beyond two months. On the outside, at work, he carried on like everything was fine; but inside...it took him a long time to get over that one. That case left a mark on him.