Author's Note: I don't know what sort of funk was in this weekend, but I'm sure glad it's over. Before you is my first attempt at Lie To Me. It's just a small piece, as I can't pull anything too large from just four episodes, but I thought I'd share it with you.
Relative
Happiness is relative.
A five-year-old denied the basic right of ice cream will not turn away with a smile plastered sloppily across his face. A man sucker-punched in the jaw doesn't clasp his foe's hand with a jovial guffaw. The mind does not allow this, it categorizes the mistreatment as a disadvantage or harmful and triggers emotional responses similar to anger or sadness.
Gillian Foster was the behavioral psychologist, she should know this. Yet, he detected no hesitation in her genuine smiles or self-proclaimed giddiness. Six years ago he had promised himself he would catch her in the lie, that he would detect a source of unhappiness that made her ready grins a mere front. After all, catching others in lies is what he did.
But now, with the greater part of the decade witnessing her affinity for junk food blossom and her tolerance for him solidify, Cal Lightman only wanted to see his partner happy. He wanted there to be no source of grief in her life to cause an eyeless smile, wanted her lectures on accepting others' flaws to carry her through a field that had only made him bitter. He wanted to be able to overlook her husband's lies as well as she seemed to be.
But he'd lied when he told her she was a terrible liar.
It was ghastly, wasn't it? Gillian Foster was his foil, and yet, as she spoke of marital duties and explained that it was her responsibility to apologize to her husband, he caught the downward cast of her gaze and saw the first signs of himself radiating from distinctly unhappy eyes.
Unhappy eyes that crinkled in an honest-to-God real smile no more than five seconds later.
"I don't think you're the good girl." This apology she spoke of, she shouldn't be the one making it.
"Liar."
No.
She was.
A wonderful one, considering the targeted audience was herself.
Gillian was no happier than he was, and Cal only hoped that when she chose to break the news to herself, she did it lightly.