Bonjour, bonjour! I'm desperately dying here. Tonight, at 11.30 at night, I finally got some semblance of free time! OH WHAT A GLORIOUS NIGHT IT IS. Anyway... I realized I had Lie To Me taped on my DVR... ALL of season 3. Yay for no waiting? This entire one-shot is based off like, two lines in the episode 'The Royal We'. TWO LINES. So I took some creative liberties with it, and now that I've given you fair warning... ONWARDS AND UPWARDS.
Disclaimer: Lie To Me does not belong to me, because if it did, oh, the changes you would see.
"Loker?"
He freezes for a moment, holds still in a snapshot of time, and she catches her breath involuntarily. She wants to reach out to him, give him a quiet kiss on his nose like she's envisioned so many times, but she cannot, because this is The Lightman Group and somehow her boss would find out and hold it against her.
"What do you want, Torres?" And he resumes angrily shoving his belongings into a cardboard box. "Lightman send you to spy on me again?"
She feels the stinging accusation caress her on her cheek before its full weight crashes down on her, like a lover's tender embrace before the inevitable goodbye. "What?" she finally croaks.
Loker snorts before turning to face her for a moment, his eyes scrutinizing her face before turning abruptly around to resume packing. "Nothing. Forget I said anything. I believe you."
She lets it go, because she doesn't have the energy right now to pick a fight. Not right now. "Lightman says you were really valuable in cracking the case today," she ventures, leaning against the wall. She wants to ask him where he is going, why he is leaving their space- their space, she thinks again, and somehow the words fit together so well in her mind- but she cannot bring herself to do so because it is Loker and they've never communicated well anyway.
Instead she hides herself in shadows, cloaks herself in her job, and both of them know the game they play.
Loker is cynical, his tone distrusting, jagged like the edge of discord in his and Lightman's relationship. "Reeeeeeally," he drawls, slamming yet another book into the bulging box. "He said that? Used those exact words?" And everything he is saying screams betrayal, screams anger, screams dissent, and Torres hates it. She hates that both he and Lightman have become this way, that neither one of them can compromise, that somehow she always gets sucked into the middle of the conflict. Foster can ride it out on a wave of grace, hold her own with Lightman, but who is Torres? Nobody but an assistant. Lightman gives her a job, but Loker gives her a life, makes her feel loved again.
She doesn't even know what she's doing now, but she feels compelled to keep talking, as though somehow the wedge between her employer and her friend can be removed, as though by talking she can ignore all the major negative emotions radiating out from Loker's body language. "What are you doing?" she asks, partly out of curiosity, and partly because she needs to say something- anything- to say nothing would be to admit defeat, and Torres hates defeat.
"Hey, he removed my desk." Loker scowls as he glances around at her, but something in his face softens when his eyes finally meet hers.
Torres may have been trained to read emotions at a snap of the fingers, but only emotions that pose a threat. Loker poses no threat- she dares to hope she sees warmth and perhaps love?- but then she hates it when her emotions cloud her judgments, and so she doesn't analyze Loker's expression. "And this is how you handle it?" she asks instead, choosing a practical question because that's what Loker expects from her, level-headed scientific rational thought.
He snorts in reply, and slams what seems to be a psychology book down into the box. "I applied for a job in the Pentagon," he says grimly, reaching over for a roll of tape.
Her heart jumps for a second, fear skittering down her spine like marbles. "The Pentagon?" she asks in disbelief. Could it be any farther from me? She chooses a different question, asking, "Cal's old workplace?"
Loker grimaces, but nods decisively anyway. "If they call me back for an interview, I'm gone," he says with a touch of pride in his tone. Torres has no doubts about him getting selected; there is a reason why she was attracted to him in the first place- but now she is genuinely fearful of losing Loker. The words fly to her tongue, but she is unable to stipulate, unable to clarify, unable to organize coherent thoughts, and all she can do is stare at the back of Loker's head as he sets about methodically destroying their workplace.
It is then that she feels it- the heavy weight of disappointment weigh down on her shoulders. Should have known, she thinks to herself as Loker begins to squish the box shut. They all leave. They always do.
Loker misses his cue to comfort her, as always, even though he turns around and sees her grappling with his news. "Yeah," he says absently, even though Torres hasn't said anything, "I guess I'll be gone in a few months."
She cannot handle that fact, and she feels like leaving to go get some drinks and somehow forget this conversation ever happened. She begins to back away as Loker turns back to his work, seemingly absorbed in packaging fifty books into a tiny crate- and utters her final, disappointed line-
"Yeah. Lightman did actually use those words."
She wants to make him stay, but she also knows that nothing really will hold him to the company, not even her.
…
She misses the long look he casts at the door as it swings shut behind her, and he misses the tears that sparkle in her eyes as she brushes past an occupied Foster. Maybe they could have talked it out, loved each other, defied their boss to new extremes- but they are Ria Torres and Eli Loker, and they were never very good at communicating anyhow.
Read. Review. Return those library books... Oh, that's my job.