Glad to see you're all enjoying the start of this one. It did begin as a one shot idea but then imagination took over a bit.
Some things might seems a bit OOC moving forward bu hey, I do my best.
Eteri; I enjoyed writing that moment between Cal and Torres, it seemed really funny in my head.
Tori; that is such a great compliment, thank you! I must say, I do have a lot of fun imagining all of this down the smallest detail
The morning after they went about it pretty much as discussed, feeling a whole new thrill of anticipation running through them as they both got ready to get to work. Neither of them were the kind of person to go back on their word, or to dwell too much on a decision already made, and quite frankly the prospect of walking in the office showing off their relationship was kind of exciting and liberating.
The small preparatory gestures, little variations in their still very new morning routine, were already a sign of things to come. They could sleep in and mull around in bed a little longer, have breakfast together without keeping an eye on the clock of shoving food in their mouths, and they didn't have to worry about taking different cars and staggering their arrivals.
They took Cal's car, who grumbled and puffed all the way through stating they should find a compromise between her penchant for being too early and his tendency to show up elegantly late. They got out of the car and stopped to look at each other from across the vehicle, smiling and looking for signs of hesitation they couldn't spot. Cal walked around the car stretching his hand to her, which she took with a wide smile, then they went for the elevator and got in. They made small talk on the way up, going through the respective schedule of the day and making arrangements for dinner with Emily that night, and only when the elevator stopped, in that second before the door opened, they squeezed each other's hand and took a deep breath before going forward.
Anna was at her place behind the desk when they walked in, busy juggling phone calls and the computer in front of her, and she did nothing more than acknowledge their arrival and pass on messages. To say that they were disappointed to go unnoticed would have been an understatement, part of them really thought the whole office would have come to a sudden halt by seeing them walking hand in hand, but they had agreed not to force the issue and let things unfold as naturally as possible. So they picked up their messages and moved along, still walking joined to the hips and with Cal's hand firmly around hers.
"Lightman!"
Here we go! Cal grinned at Foster when they heard Torres call out his name, both of them feeling a little charge of excitement going through them.
"Yes, Torres?" He quipped, his hand still where he had put it in the conviction that was the cause of the light confusion on her face.
"You're in early."
Torres observed instead, puzzled in that way she had of noticing things despite herself she was probably never going to grow out of. Cal clenched his jaw, visibly annoyed although Torres didn't know about what, but next to him Gillian had to stifle a laugh as his hurt reaction.
"Unwanted consequences of carpooling," he responded then, and Gillian could tell he was angling his body so that there would be nothing obstructing Ria's view of his claiming hand on her hip. "What is it?"
"I finished going through the Dean's file. Nothing of note popped out with regards to his current position but I dug a little deeper, and it turns out he used to work for the same students' recruitment agency Young is complaining about."
It was hilarious, probably not for Cal but certainly for Gillian who found beyond amusing how he kept trying to give them away while Torres was laser focused on reporting on her findings, probably trying to compensate for the way she had been told off the day before. She thought it was sweet, but was also a bit taken aback because with all the talk about coming clean they had done in the past hours he had never come across as that eager for people to know.
"That wasn't in his file?"
Then again, Cal was a professional and he liked a good puzzle. The information brought up by Torres was clearly a remarkable break in the case and Gillian could see the cogs inside his head spinning, and she wasn't surprised when he finally let go of her to take the file from the young woman's hands.
"Nope. It was way back then, I think he conveniently left it out of the resume he provided us thinking he could put it down to that being a long time ago."
"Alright, let's get him in then. Soon as possible."
"I'll call his office," Torres nodded then started to walk away, only to stop and turn around briefly. "Since when are you two carpooling?"
For all the in-your-face behaviour Cal had shown since then, Gillias was shocked he didn't just straightforwardly tell Torres they were coming from his house where they had spent the night together. Instead, Cal puffed up his chest a little and grinned at Torres, wiggling his eyebrows at Foster too for good measure. Then he switched to his more professional self, only just, and took the folder back from Torres.
"Do we have a number for this agency?"
"It should be in there, yeah." Torres mumbled, feeling the strange vibe but not knowing what to do with it. "Why?"
"Well, Emily is going to college soon. I wonder if they might help her get into her first choice," he teased, hinting he was up for some covert actions to find out more about the case.
"If you call them they will probably recognise the name. After all, we are investigating them."
"Zoe can call," Gillian jumped in then, feeling the thrill of knowing exactly what he had been thinking.
"Your- your ex-wife?"
"The mother of my child, yes."
"Would she do it?"
"Get on the dark side to get her daughter into a top university?" Cal asked, and Torres could not tell if he was insulted she might think that or that she wouldn't think a mother could be capable of taking extreme measures for a child's education.
"No, I-" The young woman was confused, not sure what he expected her to respond and even less confident since her question had not been about that at all. "I mean, help us out. Play along and put in the call?"
"Why wouldn't she? She had to fight to get to the school she wanted, she hates people making an easy buck on others' dreams." He chuckled loudly. "I think she's gonna have fun with it!"
"Well, you better go ahead and call her if you want to speak to the Dean sooner rather than later," Gillian instructed, and he suddenly grinned from ear to ear.
"Now isn't that something? You, urging me to call my ex-wife?"
"Wonders never cease…" Gillian muttered back at him, her too seeing the paradox.
The one who wasn't seeing much, or at least failing to understand what she was seeing, was Torres. She kept looking at them wondering what the hell was going on, asking herself why Lightman was smiling so damn much and why all of the sudden Foster was not talking about Zoe as a monster to be slayed for his safety. Then she looked past it and focused on the way they were looking at each other, complicit as they often were but with a different spark in their eyes that looked natural and yet new.
What the f-
"I'll better get going then," Cal said then all of the sudden, already going to the phone in his pocket and taking a few steps away from her. Then he stopped and turned around, his mind clearly keeping track of two things at once: calling his ex-wife to get the ball rolling and making plans with his girlfriend. "Lunch later, love?"
"Sure, so you can tell me about your call with Zoe."
He grinned stupidly at her, enjoying the verbal sparring and wondering why they hadn't done anything like that before. Yes, they weren't in the closet anymore but they could have certainly had conversations like that, hiding in plain sight, just for the fun of messing with their clueless employees.
And then he went for it, somewhat going against their agreement of acting normal without being too much in your face about it. He simply couldn't resist, not after the hours spent talking about it with Gillian and then some more thinking about how it would feel, certainly not with the way she was looking at him on the back of their entertaining interaction with a not so subtle double entendre. So he smiled, not the kind of mischievous grin he had when he was the only one having fun about something, and without thinking too much about it took a step closer to her.
"It's a date then," he said, then kissed her cheek and pulled back with the same unwavering smile. "See you later, love."
That said he walked away, leaving Gillian with the same pleased smile on her lips and a touch of red on her cheeks.
And Torres nearly floored on the spot with confusion, curiosity and a pinch of nausea.
A couple of hours later, after she had tried hard to shake off what she had witnessed in the morning and get on with her job, Torres walked into the lab where Loker was manning the dashboard while Lightman was inside the cube with the Dean. Zoe had played along, gladly as Cal had anticipated, and put in an exploring call for her daughter, Emily Landau. The call had set a few interesting things in motion, especially when Zoe had not too subtly explained she would do anything to secure top notch education for her daughter, and Lightman was now in the cube ready to find out how many degrees of separation there were between that call and Dean Russell.
"How is it going?" She asked as she sat down.
"He's taking his time with it," Loker chuckled, honestly entertained by the prospect. "You've got to give it to Lightman, he does have his sense of justice."
Torres nodded, although lost in different kinds of thoughts, then tried to focus on the interrogation going on inside the cube. Lightman was sitting down in front of the Dean, uncharacteristically going through notes and information from his file and cross checking them with him.
"Looks more like a job interview than an interrogation," the woman muttered after a while, fighting back a yawn.
"Told you, he's taking his time."
"I get that but at his rate…" She huffed, checking the time on her watch and oddly thinking the boss better get cracking if he wanted to make it for his lunch with Foster. Oh my God! She thought then. What am I saying?!
"You know Lightman. He always has a plan."
"And what would it be? Bore him to death and then switch it up when he's about to fall asleep."
"Something like that." Foster came into the room then, speaking softly but assertively as they turned around to look at her. "Minus the switching it up part."
Loker nodded knowingly, probably catching up on what she meant better than Torres who seemed somewhat distracted. She was indeed, mostly because she couldn't help but keep seeing in Foster more of those strange signs she had caught in her and Lightman earlier in the day.
The three of them followed the less than entertaining interview for a while longer without saying much, although Torres would have liked to know what the plan was. Then Cal, who had been going down the list of Dean Russell's professional career, came to the oldest item on it and casually asked what had he done before that.
"What do you mean?" The Dean asked.
"Oh Lightman is going to swallow him whole!" Loker muttered, seeing how the older man was immediately on edge at the seemingly casual question.
"No, he won't," Gillian informed him, a small smile on her lips.
"Well, this one here is from almost 25 years ago, quite the gap since you got your degree," Cal went on, seemingly struggling to make the calculator. "Hard to believe someone with such an impeccable academic record had to wait so long to find a job."
"Putting together a CV is an art, Dr Lightman." Outside the cube, they all felt the contempt in his voice. "When you accumulate experience like mine you have to learn to focus on what matters the most."
"Play the hits, am I right?" Cal smirked, then waved his hands in the air and slouched back on the chair. "I mean, I get it. Half of the staff on my CV would have to be redacted for security reasons!" Gillian rolled her eyes, of course he would find a way to get into a pissing contest about qualifications if he had the chance. "But humour me, would you? My staff didn't do a thorough enough job on this."
"Oh c'mon!" Torres moaned, annoyed.
"It was an intern position I think. It was such a long time ago… Dr Lightman, is that why you called me here? To answer questions about my CV?"
"He's pissed," Loker observed, and Foster nodded.
"Getting there," she agreed. "But that's not the point."
"I just think it's important to look back at how far we've come sometimes," Cal was carrying on, now with some of his proverbial swagger. "You know, put things into perspective. See, I think it's remarkable that you started as a simple intern for a students' recruitment agency and ended up in a much bigger job still dedicated to helping young people achieve their dreams."
"That's my cue," Gillian muttered then, abandoning the position to make her way to the entrance of the cube.
Loker and Torres watched her enter the cube with perfect timing, seemingly distracting Dean Russell by the sudden panic Cal's remark had brought upon him, but really only piling up on it with the folder she was holding in her hand. There was nothing in there, the oldest trick in the book, but Russell didn't know it and he was already on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
And she hadn' even started yet.
"This is my partner, Dr Foster. She has some questions about Emily Landau."
Cal made the introduction as she entered the room, a proud look all over his face as he could almost see the shiver running down her spine. He knew what it was; using the word partner to describe their relationship as more than business partners for the first time, in front of witnesses no less, albeit without yet making a proper statement about it.
"Holy crap!" Torres burst out then, leaning forward to look at the scene inside the cube more closely. "Did you see that?"
"Yeah, Russell is all over the place. They got him."
"No, no that," she huffed. "Look at Lightman."
Loker did, he had been for the past hour or so, and saw the boss relaxed in his chair, leaned back as to reinforce with his body language that Foster was now the one leading the dance.
"What about him?" He shrugged.
Torres gave a shocked wide-eyed look, contorting her mouth in frustration. Then she pushed him away from the dashboard and took control of it, punching in with one of the cameras on Lightman's face.
"Look at his eyes," she instructed.
Loker did as told, although not thrilled about being bossed around like that knowing if he had focused on the wrong thing then it would have been Lightman's wrath for him to deal with. He looked, watching Lightman reacting to the way Foster was slowly and painfully peeling the truth away from Russell, not surprised by how he seemed to be enjoying the show.
"He's having a blast, nothing new there."
"Look at his pupils, they're fully dilated."
"That's 'cause he's looking at Foster," Loker shrugged and chuckled. "Not the first time he gives her one of those looks. He is a man after all."
"Yeah, but she usually doesn't look back at him the same way."
He was about to tell her that she was probably imagining things, why that kind of things of all he wouldn't know, but then he caught a quick glance that Foster threw Lightman's way while the Dean scrambled to think of a good explanation as to why a lot of students accepted by his college seemed to come from the same recruitment agency. He saw it immediately but had to do a double take, no matter how clear it was. Lightman had jumped in, leaning forward on the table to drop the bomb that Russel had been set up, while Foster still stood and looked down at him.
With the same pleased expression and wide open pupils that he had.
"That's new," Loker muttered.
"I know right?!" Torres sighed, dropping back on her seat as if she was suddenly exhausted. "You know they arrived together this morning? As in driving here together. And yesterday," she leaned in on him to whisper, after a quick look around the room to make sure nobody else would hear her, "yesterday she called him babe."
Loker stared at her silent for a while, a mixture of surprise and confusion on his face, then eventually stifled a laugh and threw his head back.
"I know, she said it to me too this morning," he chuckled, then seemed to remember he hadn't thought it was that funny before and stopped. "It was weird. Some kind of stupid point they are trying to prove to each other I think."
"That's what he said to me yesterday. I bought it, I mean…wouldn't even be the weirdest thing for them to come up with. But I don't know man, something's off."
"I think you're imagining things," Loker still chuckled and shook his head, then straightened up on the chair and gave his attention back to the cube. "And that we better pay attention because they're about to wrap it up."
Torres did not want to let go, she had moved on from the day before but hadn't been able to shake the weird sensation she had felt since the morning. But Loker was right, the bosses were closing in on Russell like sharks and it was a show they couldn't miss. Inside the cube, Lightman and Foster were only a few questions away from nailing Russell and his scheme and to Torres that was not the only reason why the atmosphere seemed to be getting electric in there.
By the time it was over, with Russell bowing his head down in shame while Foster announced the police were on their way to pick him up and Lightman seemingly enthralled by her assertive demeanour, Torres just about felt like she needed a cigarette.
So, was this what you were expecting?