She can feel his presence at the door before he announces himself. She lifts a tiny smile into the bathroom mirror, so she doesn't have to distract from her task to greet him.
"Almost ready, love?" he asks.
She grunts in the negative as she lays out her makeup on the countertop, then goes digging around to find where she'd left her brushes.
"Patience is a virtue," she answers, half-turning her head in his direction even as she locates the brushes and lines them up on the table.
He shrugs into the response, anxiously moving from one foot to the other.
She chooses to ignore him, instead rubbing moisturiser into her skin. She smirks when she realises he's watching her intently even as he feigns disinterest. Pouring a small pool of foundation on the back of her hand, she addresses him.
"You gonna be good, Lightman? Best behaviour and all that?" she muses.
"'Course, Gill. Always am," he replies.
She scoffs, buffing the pale beige makeup onto her face with a foundation brush.
"What? Not like you're a good girl," he teases.
She laughs out loud before responding.
"Your fault," she declares. "You don't always have to be so sexy, you know?"
His face is lit with mirth as he watches her bring depth to her face with bronzer.
"Can't help what I am," he shrugs at her.
Then he stares at how beautiful it is to watch her make precise and practiced movements as she moves from blush to eyeshadow; snaps open a palette of neutral colours and uses a little brush to sweep pigment into the crease of her eyelid.
"You look... Just gorgeous," he says. "Remind me of my mum, you do."
Her eyebrow quirks in surprise, even as she tries to suppress its movement.
"Yeah?"
"Oh yeah," he affirms. "She'd say she was almost ready and then spend ages in the bathroom, doing her makeup."
He moves into the room, past Gillian to perch on the edge of the bathtub, gaining a better view of his favourite girl and the complete mess she'd made around the bathroom sink.
"She let me watch sometimes, made a mess like you, too. I guess it's where I picked up the habit," he smiles sheepishly at the memory of Gillian's gentle scolding about his dirty laundry in places it didn't belong.
Gillian smiles in good humour, a sort of forgiveness hiding in the creases.
"Hush a moment, I have to focus," she says as she lifts the eyeliner pencil to her eye, hoping the words won't discourage him from talking about his mother when he hardly ever did so.
He watches intently as she draws a dark line against the curving of her lashline, even as she shoots him a look that says he's making her nervous. When both eyes are finished, perfectly, he purposefully lets out a long breath.
"She'd do that, too," he laughs. "She'd love you. Wish you could meet her."
Gillian smiles at him, empathetic but not pitiful as she nods.
"I wish I could meet her, too."
The agreement is carefully made, so as not to press against half-healed wounds. He's lucky, so lucky, to have a woman who loves him enough to do that.
With a couple coats of mascara and a layer of lipstick, Gillian's finishing and packing up.
"Love you, Gill," he tells her as he follows her from the bathroom into the bedroom.
She's at the dresser, searching for some piece of jewellery to complete her look.
"Love you back," she replies, holding out her wrist to him with a silver bracelet hanging open over it.
He does the catch, then squeezes his palm against her skin. She feels the sadness in the movement, leans in to offer him some semblance of comfort. He winds his arms around her, burying his face in the slope of her neck as he inhales the scent of her perfume. The embrace turns playful as he leads the two of them to the door in overly large steps, stopping only to grab her clutch.
"She'd love you," he repeats near-inaudibly, breath soft against her ear.
"And now, you've made us late," he grouses at her, despite the fact that he doesn't even want to go to this networking event, not when it means wearing a tie and making polite conversation full of white lies, not when he could be with Gillian in their lounge clothes and curled up together instead.
"Have not!" she insists, pushing playfully at his shoulder.
He laughs into the moment, a glint in his eye.
"Want to?" he asks, raising his eyebrows suggestively.
"You're incorrigible," she laughs, shaking her head, but her eyes hold promise.
"Oh, really," he answers, not at all surprised though he makes the expression.
"We really will be late if you don't get your ass moving," she says, tugging once on his sleeve, then blithely slipping by him in the doorway and making her way down the stairs.
He grins wildly, lumbering down after her as he calls out.
"You have the keys!"
A/N: I wrote this instead of studying for my trig quiz because I know I'm hopeless! Anyway, I never really write any silly Callian stories, so I thought I'd give it a go. It's still kind of sad... Sorry. There might be more like this coming, I feel inspired.