A/N: This is a story I tried to write a long time ago, after I saw the season 3 finale which turned out to be the series finale. I hated it and never posted it. Then I tried writing another Callian story which I ended up abandoning. But I'm missing LTM so much now, and I need a break from another fic that I'm writing; so I decided to give another chance to this story.

I know it's not a great story. I can't get Cal right. I'm sorry about it, cause he's my favorite character. But hopefully it won't be awful. This will only be two chapters, by the way.

I have so much respect for the writers of the LTM fandom that I am sort of ashamed to post this little thing. Don't take this as fake modesty but as real, true admiration for most of the stories I've read and still read here. In any case, thanks, everybody who stops by and reads. If you leave a review, I will probably love you even if you're a little mean. LOL. If you don't, thank you for reading.

Settings: it takes places after the season 3 / series finale, approximate one month after Cal's and Emily's conversation at the end.

Rating: T for language and some very slight and probably too naive sexual references.

Disclaimer: I don't own Lie To Me, its characters and its storylines. I still remember them dearly, though.

So what are you waiting for?

The question continues repeating itself in his mind.

Gillian comes into Cal's office. She's radiant as she used to be before Claire was murdered almost in front of her. It appears she's finally regaining some of the humour and glee of past times.

"Thanks for the chocolate shake", she says from the door, timidly but with a conspiratorial wink.

"Yeah."

He had stopped at Starbucks on his way to the office to get that one for her. She had a thing for shakes. He never understood why, but it was her thing, not his.

"You're actually doing a good job of becoming a gentleman, you know", she teases him, trying to get him to do the little dance they usually have.

He used to start those, but lately he's not doing it as often as he was doing it before Claire's death. He's not dancing around her with his little silly jokes and his evil boy looks. She assumed he was respecting her grief over the loss of a friend. He can be serious like that. Sometimes, he can; and he actually understands a whole lot about losing people, people you care about. Besides, he was making a great effort to cheer her up: this morning he brought chocolate milk for her, last week he took her to that Thai restaurant she really loved at the other corner of the city. He was doing stuff like that. Cheering her up. Getting her mood up. Showing he cared. But, at the same time, he wasn't being exactly his usual self. It's not that he's not outrageous or directly unbearable at work; it's that he's not nearly as teasing and childish and crazy as before. It's like he's downplaying himself now. Or maybe not. But it feels as if he were trying to portray Cal instead of just being Cal, good or bad, whenever he was around her. For some reason, he's still doing it even though she's already feeling a little bit better.

Right now he seems to be in a dark mood, because he doesn't even answer and just looks at her for a moment with an absent-minded look.

"It looks like you could use the chocolate milk yourself."

Gillian's tone is cheerful, but she's trying too hard. And to reinforce the hard effort she steps into the office.

"Grumpy old man, now?"

This seems to actually get a response from him.

"I've come all the way from gentle to grumpy in a second, Foster?"

"Just saying."

She uses the opportunity of conversation to go sit in a chair in front of him. She looks him in the eye trying to get a connection, a reading. But it's blurry and it's difficult and he's never easy to get.

"What's worrying you?"

"Nothing is, luv."

She tilts her head, showing him she's trying to read him. There's something going on, that is clear. There's no use in trying to hide she's realizing it.

And, anyway, that's what she does best. She asks. She waits around. And then she asks again until he speaks, whenever he actually decides to speak or do something about it, which is not often.

"You can't fool me, Cal."

He seems a little annoyed now, and he gives her that look. The look that says she's being noisy and motherly and he doesn't like it.

But then he smiles, showing his teeth.

"I'm not fooling you, Foster. I don't like chocolate". He smirks cockily, preparing a joke. "That is, I only like it when you're having it and you get this brown mustache that makes everybody turn around because it's just so sexy."

He tries to make it sound devilish, but his smirk is not genuine. It's not his smile. It's not Cal.

"You don't want to tell me, fine."

Gillian shrugs her shoulders, and even though her tone is soft, she makes sure to shoot him a see-you-through stare. Of course, she can't totally see through him; just enough to know he doesn't want to talk.

"Tell you what?"

She pauses to observe him, expecting something from his eyes.

"Is it Emily? Is she okay after the break-up?"

Cal takes a moment to answer the question. It really is amazing how easy it is to lie to her. How easy it is to lie to everyone, except Emily; but, now, how easy it is to lie to her. He can do it in a second, with a single look, if he just wants to use Emily to get Gillian out of this thing, whatever the thing really is about. And she will buy it.

But he doesn't want to do that. Or he does. He's not sure, that's the problem with him.

"Emily's fine. She ditched him, I told you that much."

Gillian looks at him more intently now. There's worry in her face. He could even say she looks slightly alarmed, probably because she was expecting to reach out to him with the comment about Emily. She expected it would lead her somewhere. But he doesn't want her to go anywhere now, not yet.

Just not yet.

"I don't want to push you", she calmly says. "I know you don't like being pushed."

"Who does?", he interrupts her.

"What do you mean?"

She feels like she's touched a bone. She's not sure which one, but there is a reaction. She is a shrink, after all.

"Who likes being pushed?", he clarifies, knowing she understood perfectly. He seems annoyed again. "Don't shrink me, Gil. Not now, please."

The please at the end completely startles her, and the fact that he's called her Gil only reinforces her idea that something is not quite right with him and that she hasn't realized till now because she's been too busy trying to work herself out of the mourning over Claire. When she first entered the room and asked him what was worrying him, she only did so because he seemed a little too moody lately and she wondered if she might help him come out of his shadow, the same way he was helping her. But she realizes now that she was wrong. He doesn't want her help. Or, more precisely, he doesn't want her to act professionally about him. But now she can see that he's truly worried about something, and that he's not ready to tell her. And she wonders how she should act, if not professionally, since being a shrink is part of who she is when she is a friend. It's in her nature. Most people would reject that idea, especially other shrinks; but she knows it doesn't work like that. She has weapons that she knows how to use to help others. To help Cal, who is, by far, the truly difficult one to help sometimes. And, that way, she helps herself too. She wouldn't sign a paper in a Psychology Congress stating that, though. But she knows it works like that. And it works just fine for her, even now that she's acting as a lie detector and not as a therapist.

So - what are the facts?

Truth is he's been like this for about two weeks, maybe more (she can't really put herself to remember for how long, she's been that selfish), but he's been going on from exquisite gentleness to silent absentmindedness and even to dire irritability at almost everyone but her. That explains why she feels a little thrown aback now that she realizes he is annoyed also at her. But that is a lot like Cal… It's no big news at all. There are times when he is annoyed at everybody around him. She's usually another victim to his bad mood; well, mostly, she is a special victim because she's the only one who can both put up with him and scold him at the same time.

It's the fact that he's not joking or running away that is actually surprising. It's the fact that she can actually see that he's trying to hide something from her.

He's closing off, but not in the usual fashion. He's not being obnoxious and what he said can't even be considered a deflection of any sort. There's something sweet and sad in his plea, and she perfectly hears it. And she wonders what it means.

Please.

He knows he's made a mistake and he's got to do something to fix it.

You don't say please to a shrink. Especially when you never beg for anything. Especially when you're a jerk and a clown and a bloody winner at life.

"C'mon, Foster", he starts his retracting movement with a skeptical grin. "I'll buy you two hundred shakes if you let me get out of this room in time for dinner." He makes a pause to watch her reaction. "I'll even get you the two hundred shakes for dinner for that matter, if you leave me alone to work."

She's not buying it and he can tell. But, surprisingly, she accepts the truce.

She smiles softly.

"All right then. I'm buying you dinner in exchange for a chocolate shake."

She gets up, ready to leave. But her voice is admonishing, although terribly sweet. She wants to make a point here.

"And you better not leave the office without me tonight."

He can't refuse the plan now, since he proposed it, even if he did just to escape the end to which the conversation was heading.

He got trapped. She just won. She's a good shrink, after all.

And he said please. Please, someone come shoot him in the head for committing the most foolish mistake Cal Lightman has ever made.

Please, Gil. Just the two things he should never say. Not now. And he said that too.

But that is his problem. He's not sure. He can't make up his mind.

He knows she's just letting him go for the moment. He knows she's got something between her teeth, something that belongs to him, and that she won't give up now. She gets around the prey she pursues and she won't be satisfied until she gets a coherent response from him. And now he's got to think about it. Something that suits her idea of him. Emily, his mother, even his father would do. He doesn't really know what to say. Perhaps he could fool her – for sure he could – but what would be the purpose of that? He can always fool her. So what? And besides, he's never done it. Not like that. Sure, he's done other things to her, things that are certainly worse. He has pissed her off, he has pushed her away, he has hidden important information from her, he has tested her, he has come dangerously close just to feel it up and realize she was the one closing off, he has corrupted her loyalty to him, driving her nuts, making her wonder about where they really stood regarding each other. But all of those things he did for a purpose, right? He was trying to prove a point. But now there's no point in proving anything anymore. He knows a lot already, but he can't move in any direction. Can he just let it be and keep doing whatever he is doing right now, which is nothing? Can he just stay like this while he watches her, trying to reach a decision which might ruin every little thing they have finally, and big time? Can he really do that? Can't she, for god's sake, give him some bloody time?

But time - for what?

Time for waiting for something for which he doesn't have a name yet. Emily does have a name for it, though. But he doesn't like that name.

She does not leave the office yet, however. She's making time, waiting for some confirmation that he agrees on the truce. She's not going to quit, and she's making that clear, but she's just looking at him while she kind of leaves without leaving. She's gotten really good at this game; she can delay it or speed it up, keep it going for as long as she wishes to do it, and he can only sit there at her mercy. Tables have turned, or perhaps it is him who has taught her to be better at the game he initially started. Did he start it, really? Or was she always a master at that?

"I'll go get you at 7. That all right?", he asks just to finish it.

He's not the thinker, he's not a guy to take time to reflect on things. He's the one who makes her annoyed or uncomfortable, but it doesn't happen in reverse. He's not patient. He doesn't need time to act on things. And then, there lays the irony that is making him feel like a living joke: that is precisely what he's been doing all this time. He's been taking lots of time to act, or rather not act, on things. At first, it was easy. Everything seemed to fall right on its place. He was married and she was married. Then he stopped being married, but she was still and looked as if she would be forever, so he did not have to worry about it. Then, since who knows when, it started being a little bit more complicated. He tried to come closer to her when she got divorced, but he also tried to respect the distance she imposed on him. He tried to work his way to her, but he did it his way, not anybody else's: he allowed himself to shine at his best, messing things up, creating chaos and confusion all over, guided by the secret hope that made him believe that she would at some point do something which would show him... whatever there was to be shown.

He's been delaying things… trying to find a name and a solution.

His daughter found out the name. But he has no clue what the solution is.

"Perfect", she answers, striking him with a winning smile. She's accepting the offer to go for dinner.

God knows shrinks are competitive.

"Now go do some bloody finance so we don't go down."

Never mind the resort to finance, she doesn't take it badly. Her smile widens, juicy and open as a fruit, her gums showing in victory. It's lightning to him. It makes him feel almost dazzled to see that she's having fun again. She really does enjoy the game and there's a certain happiness he feels every time he realizes it.

"I'll pick you up here at 7", she warns, lifting her long index finger. "You keep working." She looks around, actually doubting he was working at all. "And don't you lose any of my money."

And there she goes: she finally leaves his office with a smirk in that glowing face of hers. And she's laughing about money, right there. She's making fun of the reason why she almost stepped out on him some months ago. She's mocking him for his crazyness, which almost got the company ruined and him killed, for that matter. He would find that delightful if it weren't because… well, because now there was nothing delightful in the emotions he was feeling about this whole partnership thing. It may have been a giant mistake if he can't manage to keep himself under control. If he can't manage to do what he does best: serve and protect, only on his own terms, and get away with it.

He's pretty sure she was on the verge of leaving the company then, when they were in the red. And yet – she didn't. She is here. And she's laughing at him.

A/N: Let me know if it's horrible, especially Cal's characterization. I do think this would've never been the way the LTM writers would have written Cal in season 4. But, for some reason, I wanted to try this angsty road where Gillian's actually the one who's got the upper hand once Cal has voiced his feelings to Emily.

Thanks for reading!