She exhaled hard as she laid back, eyes slipped closed and her half laced boots limp off the end of her bed.

Nothing had changed, really. The house was near exactly the same as it'd been when she'd left the last time. Right down to which books on the shelves still had dust and which had been affectionately pulled down and adored and placed back into their homes. Which mugs were the favorites and left strewn throughout the house. Emily kept her eyes happily shut into the hummed familiarity of the place, the subtle and nearly non-existent thrum of electronics, appliances, music and muted chatter. The sounds were the same, the smells. The way her father's voice pitched up into Gillian's laughter was sweetly comfortable.

Gill was downstairs now but getting closer to the stairs, she could hear that much. She could hear their voices mingling together in an echo of a memory that had lasted for years at a time. A sound that was, for her, nearest to a sort of permanence in regards to people. Gillian's voice had now been a responding harmony to her father's accent for longer than she remembered her own mother's being and she smiled broadly into the realization, that reminder of consistency. Gillian had been in her life for longer than she hadn't now, they'd long since passed that mark.

However, the woman hadn't actually been there when they'd arrived, despite the fact she'd been there earlier and had said she would be. Which meant she obviously didn't have any qualms about going in and out of the house on a whim, without permission or warning. That wasn't necessarily a new thing, not entirely. But it meant she had access and not a worry about how her presence would be received. The existence of that fact made Emily's smile deepen, regardless of any particular meaning.

"Em?!"

She felt the smile broaden out into a full grin but didn't move, just answered as she heard Gill take the stairs. "Yeah?!"

"Where are you, sweetheart?" There was an equal wealth of warmth and happiness in Gillian's voice, a depth of comfort that she hadn't realized she'd missed so strongly until faced with the reality of it once again. "I want hugs."

Emily pushed up from obviously freshly laundered sheets, the scent pluming pleasantly around her as she launched off the mattress and toward the door, "Coming!"

"Slight problem though, love."

What wasn't a problem was the way she hummed a little moan up under his lips, her jaw angling to easily give him more space for kissing and nuzzling. Her fingers went digging up the front of his jacket, tucking him closer as she exhaled and let her body relax into the way he was curling her up into his leaning. Gill let her head tip back and a simple moan came off her lips that damn near had him shoving her up against the hall wall.

"You forgot the - "

"Two slight problems," he interrupted quickly, wincing a shamefaced glance at her as the back of her head lolled into the door frame. It took a moment, the pretty coloring of her eyes brightening as she refocused on the conversation and blinked at him. Then she just gave him a lazy shrug that looked so nice on her he reflexively smiled in response to it, his glance darting to the brush of beard burn on her skin before he met her eyes again.

"I knew you'd forget so I ran out before you got back." She so nimbly implied that she knew him well enough to know that the last thing he'd remember to do was stop and get the spices she'd told him she needed a good fourteen times before he'd left the house. "What's the other problem?"

"Know how I said I'd tell 'er? About... y'know?"

"Cal." Her whole body went taut beneath his leaning, palms up and suddenly shoving lightly into his chest as one of her heels damn near stamped into the floor. Bloody damn adorable, she was.

He didn't know how often 'sheepish' would work in one night so he tried a little bit of 'cocky' in his voice, half a smile tipping his smile crooked as he watched her eyes go thin. "Didn't come up."

A growl came up the front of her throat as she gave him another half-hearted shove. "Damn it, Cal."

Right, so neither 'sheepish' nor 'cocky' and he wasn't at all in the mood for being repentant.

He was having far too much fun makin' a blush and flush mingle over her skin to just give in already.

"What? It didn't come up yet, is all," he hummed at her, lowering his words to a whisper that he laid on her skin rather than just speaking it. "I'll tell her."

He had her for a moment or three. Because his tongue tasted against her neck a brief breathe before he dropped his mouth against perfumed skin and his hands tucked her closer. She moaned under the way he sucked against skin and closed his hands up her waist at once, the groan in his throat matching the sweetly hushed moaning in hers.

Then she remembered how annoyed she was and she slapped him back a little again. "Well, considering it hasn't 'come up', you should probably move your hand."

"Why?" His fingers twitched against her hip, palm stretching out so that he could get a handful of her curves and clutch her tighter. "That'll certainly make it come up, eh?"

"Cal."

"C'mere." It was half a demand and half a begging, emotions split in his voice and catching her excellently discerning ear, catching her attention. "C'mon, Gill. This way we can tell her together, huh?"

"I didn't want to tell her together," she argued quietly, fingering against his shirt even as she shrugged into an explanation. Gill's voice went gentle, warm and pliant as she tried to compromise.
It was so subtly Gillian in the way she tried to soothe and smooth while being affectionate and loving. "I wanted her father to have a conversation with her so that she was mentally prepared and she had time to think about it before faced with it over the dinner table. Jesus, you can't just..."

She paused on a slowly gulping swallow. Mainly because he'd found a way to nuzzle back along her throat once again.

She hummed a damning sound into the hesitation, one that clutched him closer and urged him on. "Stop it."

"Stop what?" he asked with supposed complacence, ignoring the words and focusing on how hard it seemed to be for her to swallow as his fingers kept rhythmically rubbing on her hip. "M'not doin' anything."

Gillian made a noise of breath and utter frustration, annoyance darkening its sound. "Cal."

"Y'keep sayin' my name we're gonna have more than a 'slight' problem, darling."

"We aren't going to have a problem," she whispered dryly into the grumbling of his voice, the way it'd gone gritty and flush. "You're going to have a problem. And good luck solving it."

"I've two hands, darling." There was more than enough smug in his smile to have her shoving his hips off hers, shunting him back half a step to a chuckle and his hands lifting from her in supposed innocence. "Three of us've managed before."

Her face went pale and challenged, features suddenly stoic and sharply angled with reproach. "Oh, really?"

"Oi," he called up after her quickly, palms grabbing up her hips to keep her from ducking any farther away from him than she'd already gotten, his body slanting back into hers again, "don't. Don't go anywhere."

"Why couldn't you just - "

"Because we should tell her together," Cal demanded but softly, nodding into the assertion while keeping his voice gentle. "Honest truth from the both of us, huh? Face to face."

She looked at him just like she usually did when he was about to do something supremely noble and ridiculously stupid all at once, "I suppose."

The wink he gave her before growling his kisses against her cheek had her just rolling her eyes all over again.