At the risk of adding 'gambler' to the long list of attributes that most people blamed her dad for, she'd placed a bet with her more jaded self on the day before she'd left. He'd been sulky and grumpy and overly emotional that day, vacillating between acting like a complete shit and hugging so hard on her that he'd given her a neck cramp long before having to take an eight hour flight at seven the next morning.
And she'd decided, when he was clinging an arm around her neck and Gill was half sadly smirking at the two of them over dinner that... some bets were less about gambling and more about truth-finding.
Truth-finding. That's what he did most days, right?
That's what he'd taught her – chief among a slew of other useful things (like how to get out of a speeding ticket, or how to pick a lock, pick a fight, pick the right can of beans at the dingy little imports store on the corner).
Taught her that sometimes gambling was just, well, risking a supposedly secret truth for one that was right out in the open.
That risk wasn't always a physical danger. That sometimes... it was just a quiet heartbreak of truth.
She'd made the bet, knowing that if she'd told anyone about it... they'd just say (once again) that she was too much like her dad.
She was, again, just her father's daughter.
Only this time, the bet had paid off... and in spades if the way he was curled up into Gillian's space was any indication.
She searched over their sleep heavy stillness, feeling a smile pull on her lips regardless of whether or not she wanted it to show, her hand jacking the backpack she had all her carry on stuff in higher on her shoulder. Her father was nestled deeply into Gill, her body half leaned up into the headboard, curled and wrapped around how indecently he'd just buried his face into her breasts and obviously, beneath the covers, completely wrapped around her.
It didn't surprise her to find the two of them curled up and sharing some sort of warmth on a cold afternoon. And Gill didn't seem to mind how heavily he'd apparently crashed into her. In fact she... she wasn't asleep, actually.
Gill was obviously awake, her eyes lidded but still snow-sky-blue as while she wiped her fingers back and forth against his neck. The sleeve of a shirt Emily recognized as her father's paled the woman's skin even more than usual.
Emily caught the way Gillian just sighed off a smile and attempted a weak shrugging despite the fact he was knotted around her. "Hey, sweetheart."
"Hi." She gently settled her bag to the floor, feeling humor warm her cheeks as she searched over how much he crowded the older woman with every bit of his body and warm winter blankets. "He do this often?"
"Lately?" Gill just smiled, honestly and brightly and with her fingers curling long against the back of his head as she whispered, "Yeah."
"Can't you just get him a puppy or a hooker or something?" Emily was already shucking her shoes off onto the polished wood of the bedroom floor, stepping onto the lush carpet that skirted around his bed and digging socked toes into it as she leaned into the mattress.
"The puppy I wouldn't have a problem with. However," Gill's fingers rifled up the already mussed hair at the back of his head, her voice tipping over him as he grunted annoyance into her neck and his whole body jerked closer to her in denial of waking, "he's not allowed near hookers. Or strippers. Dancers of any sort, really."
"S'because she's jealous," his voice muttered sleepily up from a cocoon of heavy blankets. "Wanted to be a ballerina."
"Hey." Emily shot a bright glance over him, watching how blearily he blinked at her as his head tipped back into the headboard and thudded lightly there as Gill's fingers soothed on the back of his neck. "He wakes."
"What the hell you doin' here?"
A day earlier than expected, was what he meant. What was she doing in his bedroom, watching him snuggle a woman in his sleep when she wasn't even supposed to be in the District for another twenty four hours? To trip him up, actually. To surprise him, to tease him, to rile him, just for fun. And, well, it was just Gillian. It wasn't like she'd walked in on him getting handsy with the maid or something.
But he wasn't half as accusatory as he'd pretended anyhow.
And she just grinned victory at winning one over on him as she plopped down onto the bed and leaned over how elegantly curled Gill seemed under his thick blankets. "It's Christmas."
"Not yet." His obvious affection careened right past his supposed annoyance as he tugged at her jacket, pulled her close enough that he could kiss against her temple, her forehead, her cheek. "C'mere then."
She wasn't entirely sure the words had been meant as an invitation to join them but she took the chance anyhow, sighing into his embrace before flopping back and lounging into Gill's side. She felt the stillness of the woman, felt the surprised lack of motion and just snugged deeper against the thick comforter until one femininely slim and long fingered hand caught along the side of her head and cradled there for a minute.
Then the touch turned and fingertips sluiced through her hair and there was a lightness to it that seemed to just be a happy normalcy that had never existed before (at least, not in real life). That was the win, really. What the risk had really, ultimately, entailed. Because it hadn't been about whether or not they'd be together when she came home for each holiday. It'd been entirely more about whether or not they'd be happier in doing so.
And feeling Gill's fingers in her hair, more like another mother, more like something real than what she'd imagined could happen... it was the first time she could truly accept that she'd won that particular bet. The bet placed the day before she'd left for college, when she'd surreptitiously seen him look at Gillian with terror and legitimate agony all over his face. She wasn't supposed to have seen it, not while she was jokingly adding 'in bed' to the grammatically incorrect fortune he'd just untucked from a cookie he wasn't actually going to eat.
But hadn't he taught her to see exactly all the things she wasn't supposed to see?
So, his fault. That was that.
And she'd watched Gill just nod slowly and silently with an unspoken answer that told him it was gonna be all right, so just relax and enjoy time with your daughter. It was exactly what she'd expected Gillian to (not audibly) tell him. But it was gonna be all right, actually. Because Gillian wasn't usually wrong when she had that gentle a look on her face.
She'd made the gamble, while cracking open a fortune cookie and letting the crumbs scatter against the glass topped table, while he so blatantly put his other hand against the back of Foster's head and dug desperation into the hair at the nape of her neck. It was the unadulterated and so very real touch his hand made on her that had Emily wondering exactly how many chips to lay to the table. It was the ever loyal and shockingly loving look Gill had turned him in response that had her betting everything.
Maximum Bet Placed: Oddsmakers on her side: he just wouldn't be in an empty house for long.
Gill'd be there, even if it was just a night here and a morning there and and maybe one sun-cold December afternoon – she'd be in that house by Christmas. She'd own the rooms of their house, just by standing in them, by Boxing Day.
The woman's fingers, soft and catching against her hair, the light touch of them jolted her back into reality and she just unconsciously leaned into it in response.
"I made your dad buy hot chocolate if you're interested." Gillian offered softly, the warmth of her voice fending off the chill that had followed her since she'd gotten off the plane at Dulles.
"Tha's a lie." He groused and his voice sounded muffled, like he didn't have the energy to lift his head from somewhere on Gill and argue all at once. "My idea."
"I made him get the one with rainbow marshmallows. For Christmas Eve." He hadn't even really needed to speak because Foster's voice just continued on with the same tenderness, her fingers still gentle. "But we can start early. We can get more."
Emily just grinned widely at the ceiling as they fake bickered and Gillian mothered, feeling brilliant and young and adored and just wondering what they looked like piled up on his bed.
Maybe they looked like a family should two days before Christmas. Maybe, finally.
"Sorry to have to tell you both, but I've taken up gambling." She informed them quietly, lifting her hands up above her in a square as Gillian snorted a laugh, imagining re-focusing a camera lens toward the ceiling and hoping that there was enough reflective lighting from the afternoon sun on the snow to bounce the image back through roofing shingles and the attic and ceiling stuffs.
She wasn't entirely sure how lenses or microscopes and kaleidoscopes worked but she imagined it was something like this, it went a little something like family is an image reflected (refracted? if her dad was a scientist why didn't she know more about these things?) by sunlight on snow and mirrored by brightly cold winter afternoons. (In bed.)
"Yeah? Your mother's gonna blame that one on me."
Which mother...? she wondered quietly.
She silently decided likely both as Gill's fingers threaded through and silently pieced a tangle out of her hair.
"It's a lucrative business venture." Emily responded softly, letting her hands drop loosely onto her chest before tipping her head, letting the weight of it press into one while she glared down the other. "I'm pretty good at it, actually."
"Yeah?" he murmured disbelievingly but with amused eyes, chucking at her chin with an indulgent smile. "Five card and chocolate before dinner then?"
She made it seem as though she was weightily considering it. "What're the stakes?"
"Dish duty while you're home." He made a face after, one of his goofy little mocking and amusing faces that had made her giggle like an idiot when she was a kid and now just had her thinking that sometimes he was an endearing automated Dad Joke in motion.
She rolled her eyes and thrust her head into the stillness of Gillian's fingers, nudging at them until that slowly soft and reassuring stroking started again at her hairline and lingered back on her scalp. "Not sure that's risky enough for me."
"Big spender, are ya?" His accent swarmed the words, his breath catching them quiet while he took a proverbial step back from how grown up she'd supposedly become while away. "Ante up, then. Whatcha want?"
Poker faces were distinctly for people who needed to lie in order to win something they probably didn't actually deserve.
And what better way to beat her father (this father in particular), hand for hand, face to face, than just not needing one at all?
So she swayed him an utterly blank glance, not taking the time to consider the (second) bet before placing it, "If I win Gill stays through Boxing Day at least."
She was probably staying for most of it anyway. Not like she didn't realize that.
But saying it out loud had loose fingers stilling and pressing a subtle warmth against the top of her head and her father's face looked adorably speechless and mouth-hanging-open dumb. "Emily."
Her father's voice rode right over the curbing softness of Gillian's, "Not sporting, that. Gives me no reason t'wanna win."
She perked him a crime-partner smile and then looked back toward the ceiling, closing her eyes and seeing the sparkled reflection of light on snow, watching the way the bleak sun saw them from above, "Told you I was good."
She realized then, as she imagined how they looked, that she'd yet to even take off her coat or scarf.
"Do I get a say in this?" Gill demanded quietly, though not all that seriously.
She just snorted, nearly the same sound as the laughter that chuckled up his throat, feeling him tuck closer into the both of them as their voices combined. "No."
"Mmm." Gillian accepted, letting them momentarily outnumber her with a sound in her humming that echoed like a smile from above. "And what if I win?"
Emily mostly ignored the question, unsure of a suitable answer until her eyes opened and she turned her head enough to find her father looking at her with what he had once told her was an impossible expression, an emotion that had no physical manifestation. Gratitude wasn't found on the face (he'd said). At least not until all bets were placed, cards revealed, and the pot had become a windfall for an increasingly desperate man.
"Are they really rainbow marshmallows?" she asked him gently, childishly, finding half the spectrum of colors she was searching for in his eyes as he looked at her like he couldn't turn away. "Like through a prism?"
His brow half quirked the same as his smile and he freely laughed before drowning his face against Gill's throat, his hand lifting blindly in a loss of explanation for her oddity. "You're a very strange child, y'know that?"
"Father's daughter." she shrugged at the ceiling with a smile, feeling Gill's fingers tighten up into her hair at the words.
Might as well admit to it, really. They did have nearly one hundred percent scientific proof.
And there were worse things she could be accused of in life - there were riskier bets than being like him.
Especially in those little moments when going all in gave back more than it took.