TITLE: No Words for These Emotions
GENRE: Drama/romance
CHARACTERS: Gillian, Cal
PAIRING: Cal/Gillian
RATING: PG-13
SPOILERS: None
WORDS: 1,300
SUMMARY: She carries a weight and seeks out him to have it lifted off her shoulders.
[ Late evening; dim light on the floors of the Lightman Group, Washington D.C.;
Gillian Foster walking ]
The ocean carries water that gets picked up by the sun. The poppies carry seeds that get disseminated by the wind. She carries a weight and seeks out him to have it lifted off her shoulders.
It's a never-ending story; a circle of old life going and new life growing. Something that has happened before and will inevitably happen again—barring any earth-shattering disasters nobody is hoping for. And yet she is afraid that their circle will break. Now or any time soon.
She carefully opens the door, breathes her way into his kingdom. Everything feels strange and fragile, but if she's honest, then it has for a while. Longer than she wants to admit, but shorter than having forced them to put it into words.
The air in his office carries the familiar scent of gravity; a combination of the more somber parts of him and the darkness of the furniture. There's no light expect for what reaches the windows from the streets of the city below and the screen of his laptop illuminating his face.
She enters and is afraid of what's to come. Of destroying the little peace of mind this place has to offer at that time of the night. She sits down on the couch as well, not far from where he is sprawled with the computer on his lap.
He looks happy in his own twisted way—but the darkness may conceal all the other things he might be feeling.
Sometimes she thinks she utterly fails at understanding him. And sometimes she thinks she is the only one who does at all. In between she never is sure about anything. He remains a mystery to her—not even a riddle, because that could be solved and he just couldn't be.
He wouldn't let her anyway, because he knows it is part of what draws her to him—and he could never severe this mysterious bond for fear of seeing her leave over who he is on the outside.
Clearing her throat is really just a gentle introduction to this conversation. "We need to start discussing our options, Cal."
He looks at her; his eyes eerie in the harsh light from the screen. "That sounds awfully grave. Like Jiūjié."
Her eyebrows raise slightly. "Excuse me?"
"Chinese. Worried, feeling uneasy, don't know what to do." He reads it off the screen and with a voice that gives almost no meaning to it. But there is all the meaning in the world.
"Sounds about right. What is this?" She points to the laptop and he signals her to come closer and see. The screen shows an infographic with bubbles and words being connected to each other.
"A design student in London collected foreign words describing emotions for which there are no English equivalents. Then she placed them on a map of words we have."
Her eyes roam over the themes of joy and sadness, of love and fear, and all the nuances in between. As a scientist she know the linguistics model it is based on, but she never thought about all the things that might be hidden somewhere there. Unspeakable words, nameless emotions.
"It's interesting," she muses. "We have about 3,000 English-language words available to describe our emotions, yet they don't seem enough."
He looks at her with a poignancy that almost makes her shy away from him. But at the same time it's the mystery again that keeps her close. For a few seconds they breathe the same air, until he looks back to the screen.
"I also like Litost. Czech for a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery."
It pierces her heart in entirely the wrong place and for a moment she has to close her eyes. She feels his warm hand on hers a little while later, a breathy Sorry close to her ear.
"We have about two months to go if nothing changes. Then it's over."
His hand remains where it is. "I figured."
"Did you look at the numbers?"
"No, I look at your face every day. Tells me everything I need to know."
She smiles at him, because this is truly them. Twisted and never quite straight-forward, as there is too much to cover on the grounds in between. It's where they live and breathe and where they founded their science and this company on. It's also where nothing can truly move on. Where lines are drawn, erased, and redrawn.
She knows they are failing—not even some creative accounting can help circumvent that—but at least they are failing together, as much as it hurts. Still, she is afraid of the big black hole that will come afterwards.
He watches her; probably reading her mind at the same time. "If it's the end, then we'll figure out a way to make it into a new beginning."
She nods; not quite believing, but always grateful for his ability to lift the weights off her shoulders. It's what she came here for after all.
For a moment she gets even closer to him, taking in some more words with her eyes, but wondering all the same. "Why do we need to put every feeling into words anyway? It seems like losing the magic of it."
He shrugs. "Sometimes words are the only things that matter. Nobody will know what you're truly feeling unless you say it out loud. Put it out there."
She looks at him surprised. "Since when are you arguing against your own science?"
"You know it's true."
"So how are you feeling then?"
"Awful. Like everything is going down the drain." He grins, but she knows there's a truth to it.
She leaves the warmth of him behind her and gets up. Darkness still all around her, but less heavy than it seemed before.
He looks up to her. "Go home, get some sleep, find some huòdá."
"What is this?"
"A rather relaxed emotion and attitude towards everything, accepting the facts instead of worrying about it."
"I'll try that one." She walks back to the door, as unsure about him as always. A mystery in the darkness with no hopes for daylight ever solving it. No hopes for words ever capturing him.
She throws him one last glace before she leaves. "Is there a word for feeling somewhat hopeful despite everything looking grim?"
"Idiotic."
[ Next morning; a quiet office inside the Lightman Group, Washington D.C.;
Gillian Foster arriving ]
She leaves her desk clean every night. Clean from papers and anything else related to her day-to-day duties. So when there's actually something on her desk in the morning, it causes her surprise.
For a moment she thinks it's just more bad numbers and disheartening news. But it's not at all.
The infographic she studied on Cal's screen last night is printed out on a large piece of paper. A red circle is drawn around the emotions somewhere in the middle. There where love, affection, longing, and lust meet. Fear being not far away.
There's an explanation as well—a post-it note stuck to the corner of the printout.
'You asked me how I was feeling. To be honest, I'm somewhere around here. With you. Seems there are actually words for it, but sometimes I feel that love would be too easy of a word to use.'
She smiles and thinks of ends and new beginnings. Only then she begins walking to his office, now flooded with daylight.
THE END