It wasn't new, the moment they'd found themselves in. In fact, there were barely any differences to be found from the last time – except this time there was another man's blood speckling the collar of his shirt and down his chest. There were more spots and spatters of blood than buttons on the formerly beautiful white of his (admittedly rumpled) shirt. The one she'd affectionately teased him about wearing earlier that morning.
"And to think," she roped him farther back gently, her hand a guarding pressure against the side of his head as his body flummoxed and dropped back into her side, "it's the first time you've worn white in forever."
"Course," there was a slur of pain marbling through his voice, garbling it up as he let his head tip back along her shoulder with eyes locked shut. "Y'can pay the dry cleaning."
Because she and Emily had mocked him mercilessly over dinner nights before about the recent drab daily repetition of black on denim blue.
And he'd shirked an uncharacteristically shy smile to the side at her teasing, brow arched up even as he'd avoided the way she had leaned over his dining room table with a wine glass lofted high. "I miss seeing you in a white shirt, Cal Lightman. I propose a homecoming."
"Seconded!" Emily had been just nearly as silly in her laughing agreement.
"S'ruined now, love." His whispered words drew her attention over the way the branching bits of spotty blood had gone muddied and russet against white. The fabric had taken the liquid in and let it swell out as fibrous and tiny crackling webs that had her squinting in annoyance. "Only wore it for you'n Em, anyhow."
She smiled indulgently into his grumped countering and shushed it with her fingers as she rubbed across his forehead, feeling the cautious wincing of muscles under her fingertips as she shifted. Gillian turned enough on the lush cushions of his couch that he reflexively sank into her chest, let his head bank on an angle along her collarbone and shoulder. They'd been here before, with his head shattered by a migraine, all his snapping adrenaline sapped out of his limbs and replaced with exhaustion. Saddled with a weakness that clawed into his skull at two in the morning and held on fanatically.
"Dizzy?" Gill questioned softly into the groan that came off him, let him press the break of his skull into her shoulder as his body went shifting farther over the couch.
"Yeah, a bit." His hand came up to rub at his face and she stalled his fingers gently. She pressed them away from his forehead before she took back to easing pressure at his temples and across his forehead repeatedly.
"How's your stomach holding up?"
A grunted noise came off him as his hand cradled into the center of his chest and she had to avoid studying the curl of his fingers laying over the blood splotched fabric. "Hasn't joined the party yet."
Gill turned her whispering into his hair, caught the scent of his sweat and a dampness on him. His skin beneath her fingers had gone clammy chilled, sweated but cooled. "So we have something to look forward to, then?"
"Répondez, s'il vous plaît." His attempt at humor bombed into vacancy, sank into how grating, deep and despondent his voice had become.
"Must I? Really?" she asked playfully, gently letting the words murmur out near his temple as she pried against the top button of his shirt. "I'm already in attendance."
He nearly chuckled at her weary response but the sound hushed into just rounded breathing as his head turned and his chest relaxed under her hand, face burying into the side of her neck. She felt him force down a hard and lumped swallow, the shifting of it throttling down past his throat as he nuzzled closer up under her jaw. She pulled at the lapels of the dress shirt, opening them farther from near his throat so that she could test a touch against the sweat on him. Gill muttered half annoyance at how frantically flushed but clammy cool he was at once, concern wiping her fingers up the stretch of his throat and the underside of his stubbled jaw.
He'd rushed and pushed and shredded his way through something so recklessly, so thoughtlessly laying his entire being into exposing truth. He'd rashly planted himself in front of an unstable man, a loaded gun, and the instantaneously horrifying manifestation of some of her very worst nightmares. He had, stupidly, cockily, thoughtlessly... selflessly... put himself between a lunatic with a loaded weapon and her.
And then he'd kept him talking, nearly talked him still and complacent.
And then he'd completely lost control of the situation.
Once, a very long time ago, she'd found that selflessness in him so shockingly noble but now it just served to remind her that he was fast becoming irreplaceable. Strike that – he already had.
He was irreplaceable already, long had been. Now it was just becoming a more nagging and insistent realization. There would never be another Cal Lightman in her life, she knew that for a fact.
Not having the one she had tucked up with her seemed impossible to imagine.
"I really wish you'd stop being so stupid." She murmured into sweat damped hair, lifting her fingers to stroke through it, rubbing them in soft circles along his scalp.
A choked noise paused her but the lifting nudge of his skull against her fingers had her continuing the movements but gentler.
"Can we do this when my head's not fallin' off, Gill?" Every word was stuck mumbled into her throat and even with its heavy accent muffled she felt his voice rumble against her own vocal chords. "Truly - m'not trying t'be an arse. It's just - "
"I know." She interrupted softly, palming along his head as she downed her jaw alongside his. "Eyes closed, even breathing."
"Tastes like a penny." His lips curled up against each other in disgusted frustration before he groaned into their pressing. "Blood copper but sick. Battery acid."
Her palm went flat still against the side of his head, lips shushed into his forehead. "Shhhh."
"Get out of the way."
Not possible. Not with Gillian two steps away.
"Can't do that, mate. She stays behind me, yeah?"
Gillian.
"Gillian?" The word seemed sticky from between his lips as he woke and he chewed into his bottom lip, heard her hushing and her breathing in the otherwise perfect silence of the room. One of her hands had laid along his head and the other was flat on his chest and he's wasn't completely sure how he'd managed to curl so sidelong into her breasts but waking up with a face full of Foster's cleavage was not something he'd ever complain about even if he had the full ability to speak.
"Just get out - "
He had to find a way to get them out. Her mostly. But them as a whole, yeah. Would be preferable.
"And this way I'm between you and the window, yeah? Can't get a clear pin on ya if their only possible negotiator's in the way, right?"
"Gill?" The dryness that coated his throat was familiar, gritted and clogging and something like sand filling up until he could barely manage to force it down.
Still felt like he was sinking somewhere, getting swallowed up, buried past nose and throat. But at least now there was a tether of some sort, something to hold onto and pull himself up and out by. Her fingertips traced on his cheek and he felt lighter in the head, in the chest, down to his feet as he rubbed his face farther between her breasts. The emptiness in his head seemed to clear somewhat just by the rub of her fingers into his temple, a sort of circular warding against the leftover ache, a motion that he managed to focus on as the last echoes of pain receded.
That's when nausea swung in, though. Swilled him farther forward into her as his own hand rose to scrub against his head, the heel of his hand roughing just above his ear.
Hello, old friend... Been a bit and a half since he'd gone full on migraine, all the works. Made sense after the day they'd had, though.
"Stop." Gillian had a voice that could make men forget the taste of bile in their throats, a sweet silvered tone of warmth that made sickness seem inconsequential. So he focused on that voice, held close to it even as she brushed his fingers away and returned to making that marked circle round and round on his temple. "You'll make yourself sick."
"Darling," he answered just to that voice, leaned closer to its acceptance, "I'm sick. Done made."
"Why are you doing this?"
Because she's worth more. Because she is worth a bullet or more.
"The truth? Tryin' to impress my girl back there."
His girl. His, goddamn it. Not sure how long he'd considered her so... in his head, anyhow. And it was easier to say it to a stranger, double easy to let it out when the man had a gun between them and his own life seemed remarkably pale in comparison.
Honestly, what problem did he have? With her so willingly close as his head made an assault on his body and his ability to even reason properly. What real problem did he have? Right now? Just the fact that the comfort of her hands was fighting the distracted and delirious fidgeting of his own.
Wasn't much of a 'problem' at all.
"Stop, Cal," she shushed on him, pressing his fingers away and replacing them with her own. "You're making it worse on yourself."
"Expert at that, I am. S'hot in here."
"It's not." She seemed to utterly ignore his self deprecation, her fingers soothing on him so softly that he wasn't sure how she managed such a pressure while barely touching him. "You're just clammy and sweaty."
"Just... get the fuck out."
"My girl's comin' with me, mate. Can't leave 'er."
"So fucking hot," he guttered out in frustration, groaning as he realized that she'd gotten his shirt most entirely undone and spread open from his chest. Her hand was plucking the sweated undershirt away from his skin and he could hear the noise she made when she realized how damp he was. "Undressin' me, Foster?"
"Complaints?" her voice sounded chippy but patient, even as she lifted his jaw and laid his head back completely into her collarbone.
"Only that I can't seem to lift my arms to reciprocate."
"Why are you doing this?"
Because she's worth more. More than me and the culmination of a bullet.
"See, b'cause you don't even know why you're doin' this."
"Coulda ended so different, Gill." He didn't feel the need to mask his disappointment with the situation, let her hear how despondently disgusted he was by its outcome as he let her trace against his forehead.
She just nodded slowly in acceptance of his frustration, voice dropping tired, "I know."
"Right, gimme the gun."
They'd shot him anyhow – and just as they had seemed to finally find a balance.
A sniper from God knew where and she'd screamed, assumed the blood was his.
That's when the migraine had started, really. When the sound of her fear had become a siren in his head.
He had no doubt, as he crawled himself away from how warm she was, that they'd been seen. That, more than likely, at least one of their employees had been seeking one of them out and found the sweaty tangled mess they'd made on his office couch. He smiled at the thought of it, felt the muscles in his face twinge in response before he gingerly wiped his hand down over them.
"Cal?"
Right, so no sharp stabbing pains. The echoing threat that any moment they could come roaring back but, so long as he moved slowly, quietly and tentatively...
"I'm okay, darling." He squeezed against the fingers that he realized he still had tangled up in his hand, her grip keeping him clutched close as she rubbed her cheek into one of his pillows. "Sleep. Get some rest."
"Feeling better?" she asked gently, the soft whispering of her voice the most prominent reminder of the migraine that had left his head feeling like an aftermath.
Her eyes were just as softly beautiful as her voice had been, lidded and sleepy and adorably slim. He smirked and leaned forward, unconscious of his own movement as he kissed at her knuckles and squeezed on her fingers once again. "Believe wakin' up with a face full of Foster is the official definition of 'better'."
"No damage to your ability to be crass in response to legitimate concern, then." Gill answered dryly as she tucked her hands both back into her chest.
He watched her snug onto her side, reflexively smiling at how easily she nuzzled down deeper into the cushions of his office couch as though they were her own. Something clenched up in his lungs as she curled up, head tucking lower into the throw pillow as her fingers curled up along the line of her sternum. Her body loosened perceptibly, obviously laxing comfortably farther into the cushions as a sigh breathed out her lungs.
"Hey," he murmured the words with the same tenderness as his fingers stroking uncontrolled against her hair, "thank you."
"You're welcome."
There was bemused and sleepy curiosity in the way she looked up at him after she'd spoken, blinking slowly under his quieted study of her. She looked near expectant, somewhat surprised but happily pleased. He knew he was staring, knew he was just looking at her with probably more written on his face than he'd actually want her to read any other time. But he didn't much care, not as the space in his head finally went dust settled and bare. It was time that'd taken the ache out but she'd been the consistency that held time in place, somehow.
Least that's what it usually felt like to have her so close.
He flexed his shoulders into a shrug as she blinked confusion into his prolonged watching. "Shoulda been different. I coulda - "
"Don't do this, Cal." Gill argued on a hush, her voice negating any possible argument from his stand point. "It's not your fault."
"Right." Cal scrubbed his hand up over his face and back through his hair, forcing himself to turn away from looking at her any more than he already had. "I know."
"You still look damn good in a white shirt, Lightman."
He continued toward his desk even as the words followed him, forced himself to keep stepping away from how safe a comfort she seemed as she watched him. "Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah," she hummed the word past her lips and another long sigh came audibly from her direction as he finally let himself turn and slack into the edge of his desk.
Cal looked down over the stripped open white shirt, winced past the remnants of blood even while noting that some of them had even soaked through and spotted his undershirt. "Remembered what you said and all."
"I figured."
"Could try again tomorrow," he offered gamely, lifting his head into watching her smile as he plucked at his shirt and lifted in example. "This one's had it, though."
"I'd like that." She slimmed her eyes shut, cheek pressed full into his pillow as she smiled. "The black looks nice too, though."
"So just shirts in general, yeah?" He grinned into teasing at her, letting all his residual aches slack relaxed as he sat onto the desk.
She made a noise that seemed to equal a blasé shrug, "Or the lack of. Shirtless is nice."
"You flirtin' with me, Foster?"
"No," the tone went completely contradicted by her sleepy grinning, eyes shut. "I'm napping."