She didn't know who the hell they thought they were kidding. She wasn't an idiot.
In fact, she'd been raised by three of the most observant and intelligent people she'd ever met.
"Since when do you drink Chai?"
First off, her father hadn't had Chai tea in the house in the entire history of her existence on the planet – even when he and Gill were running things out of the kitchen he'd refused to keep it in his house and demanded she just drink what he had available. There'd been plenty of snitty little supposed fights over it, actually - usually leading him to making Gill an entire pot of the Jasmine tea he'd kept in the cupboard above the microwave while they argued over accounts – usually verging on flirtatious and usually the type of "fight" that had her mother throwing things around elsewhere in the house.
"Y'want some?"
Yeah, so okay, dad was a black tea sorta guy, but sure as hell not black Bombay Chai.
Absolutely not one that looked this elegantly (rather, expensively) packaged.
"I'm good."
"Coffee?" Gill offered as she kissed at the back of Emily's head, hands catching along her shoulders and squeezing lovingly. "You seem a little jet-lagged."
Gillian's softness, her intuition, was the exact puzzle-piece-match to her father's rough edging. As always.
"Yes, please." She unconsciously leaned back into Gill's touch but let herself relax when she realized the movement. She stretched into how warmly Gillian just rubbed against her shoulders before tugging her farther back and pressing their heads together in a half awkward hugging. "I'd kill for a latte."
"Get that from your mother."
He was twitchy, probably knew she was on to him. Paranoid and twitchy and neurotic, as per usual, as per Lightman. Emily watched him judiciously, studying the color of his eyes as though she hadn't grown up watching them watch her. There was a flinch right into the happy wrinkles that lived in the corners of his eyes and the barely perceptible movement lifted her head up. In response he just blinked and a smirk touched one corner of his mouth. He did realize she was catching on. So, of course, he was getting defensive. But also proud of her it seemed?
"Would you leave her alone for five minutes?" The older woman's voice whispered tenderness against the side of her head before Gill drew away to get their coffee. "Let her relax, Cal."
"Just makin' an observation, darling. Don't get tetchy."
That was it. Right there. Right in the unchecked heat of his voice.
She didn't need any other evidence.
The intimate twist of a tease in his words, the way he shot it in Gill's direction like they'd had this same conversation a million times before (because, admittedly, they'd had variations of the same over and again).
But that was it. Last straw, fractured dromedary.
She couldn't ignore it anymore.
"Are you two sleeping together?"
It wasn't often that time stood still in the middle of the Lightman home. She figured that probably the last time the air had sucked outta the kitchen so quickly and sharply and dry? Well, it'd probably been when she'd told him that she wasn't actually a virgin anymore. And she was getting exceedingly proud of the fact that, of anyone, she was usually the person who could best shut Cal Lightman up on his own turf.
But, to her credit, Gillian was a better liar than he was – at least, when it came to matters involving Ms Emily Lightman. Because her smile was unchanged, unmoving, not even a twitch of a hint of a lie or even an attempt of a cover story. "Why would you think that?"
Not even a denial, nothing which could be over-turned.
Rather, a little fact-finding of her own. Just exactly as Emily had expected.
Exactly why she'd been mentally compiling evidence since she'd gotten Gill's text on the ride home.
"Bombay Chai, Twizzlers on top of the microwave and the fridge actually has fresh vegetables in it."
Cal snorted and turned toward the way Gill was casually pouring creamer into two mugs, intentionally facing only his profile toward his daughter while he fumbled up an attempt at arguing her point. "Em, don't be offensive. Y'can't jump to a conclusion like that just by - "
"Double dishes in the sink and the bathroom smells like lavender."
Gillian just calmly and smoothly poured the coffee, her breathing perfectly even through parted lips, "Emily - "
"Hydrangea in the living room and at least two novels dad would never buy on the coffee table." She tried to keep her voice just as quietly calm as Gillian's but there wasn't a chance. Not really. Not when it was this subject in particular. Not when it was the realization of something she'd seen coming for, literally, years. "Do I need to take stock of the laundry contents?"
Gill smoothly set the pot back into the coffee maker. "I told you to do the dishes this morning."
"Toldja not to stink up my toilet," Cal sniped back, not missing a breath and letting a snap of humor into his tone. "Or read trash."
"Hey," Emily tossed between them, pointing at her father as she tried to smother and swallow down an inevitable smile, "they're both pretty good. Don't be a snob."
"The O'Brien one - "
"It's the one I told you about," she answered into Gill's excitement, nodding as she took the mug the older woman handed over to her. She let her hip lean into the island, catching she way her dad just blinked a quieted confusion from behind Gillian's shoulder, the wind taken out of him and his shoulders lowering.
"Yes," Gill agreed, her own cup tucked up between her palms and warming there. "The language he uses? It's heartbreaking."
His eyes went bemused but confused all at once, the look on his face jumbled somewhere between adoration and utter frustration. The whole of him just momentarily deflated and Emily did her absolute best to not too obviously notice how much it changed his features, stripped his cockiness from him. He was weakness incarnate in the face of the two women he loved most in the world. Hadn't that always been the case?
"But not melodramatic, right? It's the same in - "
"Oi! Ladies? My loves?" There was a higher and more confused pitch to his voice than usual, one of his hands flailing between them in annoyance and confusion. "So... we're just not gonna discuss this then? The... y'know?"
"Sleeping together thing?" Emily gave him an unmatched grin, watched his eyes widen a bit in response to it. "Like, sex?"
"Right. That," he confirmed with an uncomfortable and staccato response.
"I like that we can talk about things, dad – but that's really not the sorta thing I'm interested in hearing about. Keep the sordid details to yourself."
Stunned. He was actually a little shocked back and quiet. For a moment, at least.
Long enough for Gill to have a laugh at him and poke on his hip to draw his attention. "You want coffee, babe?"
"M'good," he mumbled, waving away the offer gently even as he watched his daughter. "This is... it's all good?"
"Dad," she cocked her head into humor, nodding a couple times as a smile hijacked her mouth once again, "it's all good."
"No questions or anythin'?"
Adorable. Really. Seriously. They were the cutest thing she'd seen in a hot damn minute. How could she possibly actually be mad at either of them? Because her father was so nervously watching her, concern and fear brightening the colors of his eyes even as the rest of his face remained stone still. And Gillian? Half watching with a supposed dearth of interest when, in reality, her ears were perked for any particular clue that might twist through Emily's tones.
"Just one." Em shrugged after answering.
"Go ahead."
She put on the sweetest face she could muster, blinked slowly into her father's watching even as Gillian took a strong swallow of coffee. "So, two condoms is better than one, right? I mean, double the pleasure and double the fun?"
His exhalation was hard as Gill sputtered a quiet laugh off the lip of her cup, both his palms flush to the table as he grunted the air out of his lungs. He just shook his head a fraction back and forth, utter happiness in and around his eyes even as his mouth stayed pursed still. It was another long moment before he took a deep breath in, turned his head away from his daughter's humor and toward Gillian's cocked glance. Her brow was lifted, teeth nipped onto her bottom lip to partially hide her amusement. Emily watched that smile grow in size and affection as he caught the woman's glance and shrugged thin shoulders at her, supposedly helpless to the both of them.
"Help me," he pleaded quietly.
Gill's jaw inched up in amusement as she turned her head from her fingers, proud heat in her eyes as she caught Emily's grinning and matched it freely. "You deserve whatever it is that she's become."
"You," Cal snorted as a hand flicked between the two of them, his body stretching into the island so that he could angle farther into the conversation and more between them even at a distance, "you helped create this monstrosity, my love."
More pride flicked over Gill's features and even Emily saw the quick evidence of its existence. Though she realized fairly quickly that she likely only saw it because Gillian wanted her to see the emotion. Display of anything between her parents, whether the biological ones or not, was always intentional. It was more calculated than emotions were meant to be. But then, she saw emotion differently than most, and because of them. And they showed her very specific emotions and always purposefully, at very specific times.
"Yeah." Gill lifted a hand and cupped up Emily's chin, grinning harder into the fact the girl mugged right into the movement, head lifted into it like they made an inextricable pair. "I like to think that I did."
Emily smiled, the amusement in it softening toward loving as she studied Gill's face, glance trailing over the older woman's features, "Why didn't you guys just tell me?"
Gill's lashes fluttered briefly in surprise, the blue in her eyes going near on to crystalline as she rubbed her thumb against the girl's jaw line. After a breath she tapped the pad of her thumb against Emily's bottom lip, nodding once and sharply as she smiled unfettered adoration between them.
"Does it matter either way, Em? We're no different than we were before, not really." Her voice was quiet and familial, so much like it was a secret being shared between the three of them. Something they could carry out into the world with themselves, something only their form of family had to arm itself. "I take care of him. He takes care of me. Sort of."
"Oi! Do my best," Cal jutted over Gill's shoulder, his chin pressing down against her as he tucked an arm around her waist and leaned forward from behind her.
Emily just shrugged at them with honest innocence. "I want you both to be happy."
"Meanwhile, we worry about you, worry about how you'll take it. Worry that maybe you won't like the idea. Or maybe you'll like it too much, get too attached to the idea."
"I'm pretty attached to the idea." It was a loving whisper from Gill, her lips brushing the interruption onto him rather than her voice really saying it. Emily just barely heard the sounds of the syllables as they laid onto his short-trimmed beard.
"Well, so am I, darling. In theory and in practice," he responded nearly as quietly, kissing against her chastely before he turned his glance back on his daughter. "But I mean to say, well, what if it doesn't work? Say I screw up and you end up hurt? Eh? Either of you."
And that was the perennial problem, wasn't it?
When it came to Cal Lightman, his daughter's safety was tantamount, and Gillian's was a necessary requirement as well.
It's why they'd all taken this long to get where they were, really.
"I'm a big girl now, dad."
"No, not possible." Gill waved the argument off, the backs of her fingers brushing her hair from her face even as she shook her head. "You're still eleven years old and crying in my office."
"Hiding behind your desk because I was fightin' with her mother." She'd always loved it when her father's face did that thing – that doting dad half smile and the crinkling at the corners of his eyes thing. It's always been tailored specifically for her. It had always been a movement made specifically for her and nobody else.
"Yes, she was." Gill's voice sighed agreement, quietly reminiscent. "Broke my heart to find her there."
"I'm an adult now, guys."
Cal just snorted derisively, "But still my daughter, yeah?"
"And the closest facsimile I've got." Gill added perfunctorily.
Emily took a slow drink of her coffee, sighing into the perfect balance of sweet creamer to the bitterness, "And you were both protecting me. I get it."
"As parents would, eh?" That was that, yeah? Right. She knew that was the last bit of discussion on the matter just from his tone and the shrug to his one shoulder, the dismissal of any other information. They were her parents and they were protecting her and, therefore, tough shit for her. Whether she liked it or not. "Think I might take some of that coffee after all, Gill."
Tough shit for her. Because whether she liked it or not...
"Yeah?" Like it or not, Gillian was still perfect and gentle in response to his abrupt change of subject.
"Mmm." And he was still perfectly adept at putting himself into the woman's space, tying them up together whether by touch or even just the way he looked so longingly at her. "Wanna order in?"
"No, I was gonna make - "
"Right." Right. They were no different, even as he half grinned and teased his fingers against her hip, the both of them now entirely ignoring Emily's presence. "And I forgot the paprika."
They were no different than they'd been before she'd left, not really. Gillian was right.
They were her parents - concerned for her, protecting her, loving her. Even if that meant keeping secrets to themselves.
"I'd rather you remembered the daughter and forgot the paprika than the other way around."
And Emily left them to their favorite past-time, their playful sparring bouncing around behind her as she left the room.
"Coulda named her 'Paprika'." His voice chipped through the kitchen with a clang of a pan against another and she moved deeper into the living room even as she listened to them. "Then I'da been the bloody hero of tonight. Oh, that I'd known twenty years ago, yeah?"
"Maybe I'll give you a hero's 'welcome home' later." Gillian's response was absolutely blasé but patient and bemused at once. Emily just grinned into how second hand and homey the sound of it was as she nabbed up one of the novels Gill had mentioned and the throw from the back of her dad's chair.
"Aye-aye. Will ya, then?"
She snorted a laugh, flipping to the first page when a crash of pans and a pained male grunt came from the kitchen. She'd barely taken in the words on the first page when the chatter in the kitchen quieted and Gillian stepped into the room. It was a gentled intrusion, so innocuous that it wasn't actually an intrusion at all. And especially not when the woman lowered a steaming coffee cup with one hand and a cocked head. Emily smiled her appreciation as she reached to take the cup.
"Think you forgot something," Gill murmured, leaning the other hand against the back of Emily's head and pressing full-palmed heat into her hair. "We missed you."
She just smiled to the comfort of the woman's hand, the scent of coffee, and the weight of the book in her lap.
Emily leaned purposely into the touch, "I missed you guys too."