"OI!" Call stumbled them both into the wall, his shoulder jarring hard as Loker's height crushed full into him. "On your own bloody feet, right?"
"Sorry." The younger man was grinning like a fool, his face flushed and blushed up red. "I got it." But he didn't. Far from it. Cal sighed and adjusted the death-gripped hold he had around the other man's torso. "Or not."
"Lightweight!" Torres' taunt followed them down the hallway. Gillian had one hand on her arm, steadying her not so straight passage towards the lobby. "You're a damn lightweight, Loker!"
"M'not!" The taller man tried to turn, slinging Cal around easily so that he could glare at his coworker. "That was just really, really good booze."
"Bloody hell." Cal huffed the words mostly under his breath as he grunted and shoved the taller man farther upright. "Focus, Loker."
"This was your idea, Cal." Gillian's smile was sharp and angled as she led Torres by them and he could read the slant of anger in her features. Not anger, exactly. Frustration. Aimed at his direction no doubt, regardless of the fact they'd all four spent the last two hours drinking and laughing in the middle of his office.
"Didn't figure they'd get piss drunk, did I?" Cal pinched hard at Loker's hip, turning him back towards the lobby when he just stood staring back towards their offices. "I read faces, not the bloody future, love." He wasn't full sober himself. He'd managed his shots in a matched pace to Gillian's, aware that the other two were past pissed and rounding for home. Aware that Gillian offered less and less to the conversation as her adrenaline faded.
"Easy, bossman. You're already in the doghouse." Loker's voice was a bit louder than he'd intended and it earned him a glare from Gillian. A glare that didn't even have a hint of alcohol in it. Cal narrowed his eyes and studied the line of her jaw, blind to her in a way he wasn't with anyone else. Maybe he hadn't paced his shots as well as he'd thought. Maybe he'd put too much stock in the fact that he'd picked a terrorist out of a demonstration and saved a farmer from the FBI's bomb. Maybe he'd missed a step somewhere in their dance. "I'm gonna be too busy puking to be on time tomorrow, Lightman."
"You." Gillian tagged him with a finger in the chest, her nail pressing harder than he expected through his mussed and rumpled shirt. Cal forced his eyes wide as he looked between her and the departing cab they'd poured the younger couple into. "You."
"What, me, eh?" His head turned at an angle and he looked up at her through his lashes.
"You can't not touch." Gillian dropped her hand and ignored his supposed innocent act as she stepped back.
"I think I do a bloody good job of not touchin', darling." His accent snapped even harder and he loomed into her space, aiming towards leering intimidation even though in heels she had the advantage of height. "Considering."
"You push and you push and you push. And one day, Cal..." Her voice trailed off but her eyes were firmly on his, the wash of them near enough to tears to have his chest tight and shoulders hunched. "One day you're gonna push it too far."
"I think I had a good day, I did." If he wasn't pushing he'd be stepping closer and stepping closer was a bad idea when it came to her. A horrible, wonderful idea, he thought, still in her space and half caught up in the smell of her perfume and the scent off her skin. "Stopped the terrorist, saved the farmer, I even sussed out who stole the bloody turtle!"
"You didn't need to open that trailer." And he didn't need micro expressions to see the disappointment on her face.
"It was bloody corn, love!" And he'd had to know, had to check his math, equal out the percentages. "I told that FBI ponce-"
"What if it hadn't been corn? What if it had been a bomb?" He tried to offer up an argument but she overrode him, her entire body drawing up and over him. Tall, goddamn all legs and blazing, bloody fury. "What if you'd opened that door and gotten yourself killed, Cal?" Her lips were what tipped him, leading him to search, really search her face. Even in his blindness he read fear on her, and it made him ache. Made him step back and crash down from giddy whiskey heights, his body tightening as he drew his arms across his chest.
"You're not mad, darling." Gillian winced when he blanked his face, dropped his jaw and shuttered his eyes into the flat, slightly moronic look he hid all his own tells behind. "You're afraid."
"Brilliant deduction, Dr. Lightman." She didn't know if that look made her want to slap him, kiss him, or both. Instead of thinking about it she turned on her heels and strode away, her longer legs carrying her back towards their mostly darkened offices before he'd even managed to blink.
"I'm sorry, love." Tentative. Careful. Soft. Everything he usually wasn't. Cal chewed at his bottom lip, his body caged mostly still even though she could tell he wanted to bounce on his feet. He'd buried all his frenetic energy away and worry lightened his eyes towards a truer blue greened amber than usual.
"Sorry that it scared me, or sorry that you did it?" Somewhere between the hallway and the secure fortress of her desk she'd modulated her voice.
"Gillian." Both. Neither.
"Life has sharp edges, Cal." She sounded done. Done with the day, the argument, and him. Not necessarily in that order. "You don't need to make it worse by reaching for them every day."
"I was doing my job, darling." Paying his penance. For his mother. For a bullet riddled sniper in oversized clothes. For the dead wife and daughter of a man he loathed. A lifetime of penance to serve. "It's what we do, Foster."
"We both know that's not all you were doing. You can't help yourself, Cal. And most of the time I love you for it." He was sure she'd left the light off on purpose, cast him into shadows to blind him farther than his emotions already did when it came to her. Annoyance heated in his chest and he stepped even closer to the desk, squinting and ducking his head to try and see her. "You wouldn't be you if you didn't try to help, try to fix things, but Cal..."
The way she kept trailing off on his name was starting to intrigue him, make him wish he could read voices and intents as well as he could primitive muscle movements. Maybe it was the whiskey. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe she'd always said his name like that and he'd been so busy pretending not to notice that he'd actually missed it. Cal sighed, the events of the day finally dropping onto his shoulders like a world weight of lead. Maybe he'd just been awake too bloody long.
"I'm fine, I am." Cal wiped his hands down his chest, fingers tugging at the fabric of his shirt. "One Lightman, slightly rumpled but fully intact, right?" Her sigh caught in his chest, an impossibility that was all too common when it came to her. He was forced to hitch his breath even as she turned the chair slightly so that the dim light from the hallway slanted across her face.
"This time." And bloody hell, he could read her like a book if he just trusted himself, if he let himself. From the paleness of her skin to the slight furrows of her brow. Sadness was far easier to piece out than a lie. Especially when he was the cause.
"This time is all there is, love." She was shaking when he reached for her, temperature or emotion, either way, he'd chilled her to the bone. Call wrapped her tightly to his chest, that smell, pure Foster, ratcheted up in his head and flushed heat to places that had no right flushing, instigating years worth of push and pull and flirt and distance. But she was shaking. And he was suddenly far too hot for the temperature, bloody well scorching. A flaming, exposed nerve. "If I didn't do what I do, I'd disappear." Truth. Like his mother had disappeared a month before his birthday. Like his father had disappeared into a bottle and behind raised fists. Like his marriage and like Emily's childhood.
"It's going to take you from me anyway. Eventually, Cal, you're going to be gone." Bloody fucking hell. This was a minefield. And he was sure they'd both be mangled and bomb torn by morning.
"Not this time. I'm right here. You're not a bloody fortune teller either, love." He was already too close, too drunk on the scent of her, the length of her, that he couldn't focus on her words, couldn't even think about the fact that she saw him as something life would deem worthy of taking from her. Because if he thought about it too much he'd do something stupid. Well, something more stupid than pulling a breath of her hair and turning his jaw so that his lips were against her throat, a breath away from tasting her. And that was monumentally stupid. A realm of stupid that mankind had yet to reach. Cal's face furrowed into a pained wince, the barest hint of a sound thudding from his chest to his throat as he forced himself to lift his head. To heed the line. The Foster Line. The goddamn line that had held them in separate holding patterns for years. Too many years. Alec years and Zoe years and we're partners years and I'll lose my best friend years. I can't live without you so I'll live without you years.
"You're reckless, Cal." How could she not feel the thunder of his heart, the push and pull of his muscles, sexual instinct warring with his rusty instinct for self preservation. Fight or flight. No. Cal tried to steady his breath and failed. Fuck or flight. Over the goddamn line, Lightman.
"No more so than usual, love." It hurt, physically hurt to put her at any kind of distance. Beyond the obvious, it shattered in his chest and clenched at his jaw as he angled his hips back and put her at arm's length. The opened space between them felt like a raw wound. Like he was bleeding out. "Not a bruise in sight."
"It's not funny!" Gillian's hand slapped into his cheek. Cal ducked his head into the hit, eyes wide and fixed on hers, the golden flecks that drowned in blued green catching her attention. "You have responsibilities, damn it. You don't get to laugh off your stupidity."
"Easy, darling." No. Not easy. Hard. Fast and furious. Against the wall. Cal shook his head to clear it. How the hell had she gotten right back up against his chest? "Foster."
"You have responsibilities. To Emily. To this company."
"To you?" She hadn't said it but he knew she'd wanted to. How had he ever thought he was blind to her? Maybe it was just proximity. Because he was inhaling her exhales and her entire body, for the bleeding love of all that was holy, was pressed against his. "That it, love?" Cal jutted his jaw, letting his chin graze across her cheek. One hand had found a home on the rise of her hip, fingers curled possessively tight to warmed fabric.
"You're a bastard." And damned if her hand wasn't digging up under the hem of his shirt, nails scratching into his skin. The edges of his vision flared out red and in a rush of heat he turned her into the wall, watching her steadily the entire time. Arousal. Fear. Surprise. She licked her lips and, subconsciously, he mirrored her, tongue swiping full on his bottom lip, teeth catching against the saliva slick skin. "You, you can't control yourself." Mary, mother of god, her voice was thick and throaty, book-ended by shallow breaths that lifted her breasts.
"Doin' a right admirable job of it now, I am." Every word was grit and growl, accent crisped up and bitten off clearly. Every nerve ending in his body was screaming at him to move. Into her, away from her, it didn't matter as long as he moved. And that was a lie. But it was a lie he'd told himself a million times before, but maybe never while so swaddled in her scent. And definitely not with his fingers stroking frenetic circles into the fabric of her dress. Which was damn near lifted to her waist. One movement had his leg angling between hers, knee pressing back into the wall as he nudged her thighs apart. "For the moment."
"Cal." Her eyes were blown wide, dilated dark. Just his name on her lips, on her breath and he was already half gone, heat turned to hardness turned to throbbing under suddenly far too constricting denim. Cal tipped his head in close, his lips a breath away from hers. Liquor and chocolate, a bloody beautiful combination on her. Probably'd taste even better than it smelled. Instantly it was harder to breathe, harder to swallow. He was the one shaking now, but he stilled himself just short of the kiss, doubt flashing feeble strobes of hesitation through his lust muddled brain. Because this was Foster. Not some random woman he could lose himself in for an hour and forget by sun up.
"Tell me no." There was a beg in the whispered words, but the way he held his jaw, blinked his eyes, and slid the roughened flat of one palm onto her bare thigh disregarded his last gasp attempt at reminding her that it was her line they were trampling all to hell. Reminding her that this was him. That odds were high he'd screw something up before the sweat had even dried between their bodies. "Gillian, tell me no." Reminding himself that he could live without her in his bed as long as he didn't have to live without her by his side. Realizing that he was far enough in that it was going to have to be her that pulled them back.
"I'm tired of telling you no, Cal." Gillian licked the words into his lips. He tasted like scotch and coffee and illicit cigarette smoke. He let her lead the kiss deeper and longer and rougher, fully concentrated on the unique mix of her scent and her touch and her taste. Drowning in Foster. Her familiar touch something completely new as she scratched full lines up his chest, the spread of her hands easily popping the buttons from his rumpled and wash worn shirt and sliding it back farther on his shoulders.
"Fucking bleeding hell." Cal hissed, jaw clenching, teeth barely missing his tongue. "I'm dying." But what a way to go. Every muscle in his body was clenched and there was sweat at his hairline, as he fought for control.
"I doubt that." Laughing, she was. The sound warmed and comforting in his ear the instant before she bit against his earlobe, spiking pained pleasure through his body that numbed at his limbs. "You feel lively enough to me." His body was obviously paying more attention than his brain because even as he tried to muddle up actual words to warn her how exquisitely close he was to coming in his pants, he lifted his knee to keep her from touching him.
"Hands off, love." Cal nudged his knee even higher, a smirk flitting across his tensed features at the sounds she made. Lovely, they were. "Or this'll be over quick, yeah?" As an added precaution he dropped the hand at her hip and gripped his fingers into her wrist.
"It's been years, Cal. I don't want to wait anymore." Wanton. Sounded good on her. Looked even better. Cal dipped his head close and licked at the line of her bottom lip, unable to deny the urge to taste her, to let his tongue run the delicate arch that he'd wanted to trace for years. "Don't make me wait, Cal." As much as he liked her in jeans he was blessedly thankful she was wearing a dress.
"No, darling." The edge of her panties rubbed at his wrist as he slid two fingers into her warmth, teasing at her wetness before dipping inside her. Her moan almost undid him, physically, emotionally, in every way he could be unspooled, the sound he'd imagined and dreamed about muffled up against his lips. Gillian bit at him, worrying her teeth into his skin in a matched motion to the way he moved between her legs, his fingers slicking from teasing to driving on a heartbeat. Cal's forearm flexed hard, thumb pushing straight friction onto her clit as he folded his fingers and worked them deeper. "No waiting, I promise." He knew her. Knew how she liked her coffee, knew that she spent far too much time reading romance novels while listening to Cole Porter or Louis Armstrong. Knew the exact topography of her face in any given moment. He had no idea that she'd be so warm, hot really, burning him up to nothing hot, scorching. No idea that she'd be even more vocal than he'd imagined in his dirtiest, most self punishing fantasies. "Gillian." He needed to see her eyes, to have some kind of familiar touchstone in the heated whirl of new stimuli. He needed to see her, to know that she was seeing him. "Open your eyes, love."
"Faster." Cal swallowed a groan and quickened his movements before she'd even gotten the full word off her lips, shifting them harder into the wall when his own balance wavered. He studied her face, eyes tracing the flush that spread down her bared neck as she rolled her skull into the flat surface at her back. "More, Cal."
"Look at me, Foster, eh?" That pretty flush went straight down her neck and bloomed at the top of her breasts and he couldn't resist letting her hand go so that he could press her dress lower, working it off her shoulders and down between them. "Give us a look, darling." God only knew what she was hearing in his voice, but the words tasted like desperation on his tongue. "Please, love." His fingers ghosted over her bra covered breasts, bitten nails rasping on silk as he teased her nipples harder. Cal bent and kissed at her neck. He'd mapped a lustful little line from her jaw to the delicate turn of her clavicle over the years and now he let himself follow it, scruffed jaw flashing beard burn on pale skin as he felt her pulse fluttered fast against his lips.
Elevated, the scientist in him whispered, unable to hold silence even now. Racing pulse, shallow respiration. Sweat lending salt to her perfumed taste. Her body warm and wet and responsive, so fucking responsive, around his fingers and under his palm and under his tongue. And the scent of her, musked and clean and bloody well blowing circuits in his brain, slaughtering brain cells by the hundreds as he breathed her in with near gasped breaths. "Please." He barely even felt the numbness in his legs or the way his balls were drawing up tight to his body, his hips already wreaking him towards a finish that he, suddenly, had absolutely no control over. Her fingers tangling into his hair pitched him off the sharp edge of control and he staggered himself harder into her, a guttural moan slinging off his chest. "Fuck."
"I'm looking at you, Cal." His fingers curled inside her as he came, teeth grazing at the rise of her breast before he tagged tight to his own bottom lip, forehead rolling pressure into her chest. The sound he made was somewhere between relief and regret. "It's okay. It's fine." He could feel her kissing at the top of his skull, feel the way she stroked the sweat damp length of his hair. Hear the smile in her voice. "I've been looking at you." And he was completely unguarded, his truth starkly written on his face instead of hidden behind forced and learned miscues. He let them all fall still, face hidden against the swell of her breasts Shuddering, he forced his hand to keep moving against her, brushing her g spot over and over, thumb rough against her clit.
"I'm sorry." He lifted his head from her breasts and blinked her face into focus. Her eyes were open, the blue of them hazy and still predominately pupil. She was still smiling at him, a smile that would usually have him stuffing his hands in his pockets and dropping his eyes or leering suggestively at her until she pushed him away. She was smiling at him like she loved him. His lungs, already damn near breathless, stilled as he studied her features, head cocking over to one side, eyes squinting.
"You kind of deserved it, Cal." She tapped a finger into his nose. "Years of foreplay. Do you have any idea how tactile you are? All the time, touching and looking and growling." Cal sucked at her finger when she led it into his lips, pulling it deep into his mouth. "Teasing." The line of her teeth whitened at her lip as she arched her hips into his hand, forcing him to continue the thrusts he was leading into her body. But her eyes stayed steady on his and if he hadn't already come, the look on her face would have finished him. Wanton. He'd thought it before but now there was a sheen of sweat on her pale skin and fired up lust in her eyes, blazing them sky blue as she read everything, every little goddamn thing, off his face. "It was just as much your line as mine." Gillian pulled her finger free, his cheeks hallowing out slightly as he held a suction as long as he could.
"Blasted all to hell now, it is." She rubbed at his hair, nails scratching at the nape of his neck. He hoped she was leaving marks. Obvious reminders of her touch that he could feel later, when he wasn't sure if this had been a dream. Because it half felt like one.
"Good." She shuddered, her hips pitching off rhythm and more erratic, a moan rushing her lungs that he matched without thinking as she cocked her hips harder, using the grip of her hand at his shoulder to press off the wall.
"Then come for me, love." Cal rushed his movements, watching her face as he pushed deeper into her body. He watched her rise, noted the way her nostrils flared and the quick gulp of air she took just before she came, her body tightening warm and wet around his fingers. He watched her jaw tighten and then relax, tighten and relax. He watched as her eyes closed and his name breathed across her lips. He'd been watching her for years and there was no way, short of a heart attack or a stroke, that he was stopping now. "You're gorgeous, you are." Her body shivered as he slowly continued to run his fingers through her wetness, reveling in the motion. He saw the pause when he pushed her to another, lesser orgasm. The way she clenched and relaxed almost on the same breath, the flutter of her eyelashes. "I saw that." His fingers ghosted on her thigh and then rubbed warmth up to her hip, resting just below the wadded bunch her dress had become.
"You see everything." Gillian murmured. "You always have." She stroked at his hair, nearly petting him, palming against his skull.
"Not you. You're my blind spot, love."
"Only because you taught yourself to not see me, Cal." He flinched lightly when she lazily wiped down the side of his face, tracing the lines that bracketed his mouth. He let her draw his head down to rest on her breasts. Even on short intimate acquaintance head on breast was definitely high on his new list of favorite positions, the beat of her heart and the rush of her lungs solid and sure in his ear. Cal smirked into the thought, his tongue lapping into her cleavage, sucking at silk. Her other hand was on his chest, fingers spread over the thundering of his heart and somehow she'd gotten a leg hooked up at his hip. Flexible, she was.
"When'd you get so smart, huh?" His voice was hushed and blurred, muffled by the way he rubbed his cheek into her skin. He was so tired, nerves ragged and raw, and she was so warm. The spent adrenaline of the day and the too soon rush of his orgasm lulled and lagged on him.
"I've always been smarter than you, Cal." Cal was sure that too much of his weight was leaning into her but she just rubbed at his shoulders, one hand dipping lower every third or forth stroke to traced the tattooed band that circled his bicep. And just where the hell had his shirt gotten to? Cal forced his breathing to taper to match hers, focusing on the beat and pull of her, of Gillian, so close to him. Who needed a shirt when you had all that warm, soft skin? "Where are you?" She kissed the words into his hair as his breathing lengthened and deepened.
"I dunno." Cal shook his head, blinking in confusion. "Right here." Half asleep. Closer to comfort than he'd been in as long as he could remember. Holding her half naked and more than likely uncomfortable against the wall her of her office. And far, far, far too tired to explain that even though he'd gone off in his pants like a sodding virgin he was too old and not nearly virgin enough to be able to rise to the occasion, the wonderful, amazing, still half unbelieved occasion, again without a nap and at least two bottles of water.
Cal lifted his head with a sigh and straightened his shoulders, leaning his weight back on his heels so that he could look her up and down. The dress was a disaster, the purple fabric shoved and pressed together at her waist "Sorry, love." One palm pressed the angled plane of her cheek and the other wiped back into his own hair, nails scraping at his scalp. She was damn near smirking at him, eying him up and down like, well, like he usually did her, actually. "Not exactly the magical first time, eh?"
"No." Gillian laughed, stretching her body under his heavy look, sliding the dress off in a motion he knew he never could have managed. Naked "But it was perfectly you, Cal." She palmed into his jaw and moved around him all in one motion. Stalking across her office, gloriously naked. That was an image he was going to keep right near the forefront of his memory for the next little while. "Over your head before you even realize you're going swimming." Embarrassment reddened at his cheeks and the tips of his ears and he refused to acknowledge the fact that she was staring at the wet spot on the front of his jeans. Bloody humiliating, that was. "But somehow you always manage to flounder your way back to shore."