"Tell me you don't see it," he says as he walks into the room unannounced, unwilling to bother with the formality of a greeting when the issue is so pressing.
"What am I looking for?" She responds, clicking a key on her keyboard and slowly shutting her laptop in the space of her office.
"The truth," he says.
She hears something in his words, something she'd long ago stopped listening for out of fear she wouldn't find it. But it's there, that something, or at least she thinks it is. Suddenly perplexed, her eyes shoot up to meet his.
"Cal?" she asks, her voice coming out much closer to desperate and strained than she'd like.
He merely gives a small, lopsided smile. Her heartbeat doubles, triples in speed, skips and flips over the possibility.
"What am I looking for?" she repeats, her tongue starting to feel a lot heavier in her mouth.
"Can't tell you, love. The words aren't there," he admits, shrugging. "Need you to look."
She lets out a breath and stands, moving around her desk to get nearer to the absolute vulnerability that encapsulates her focus. She tries to see it, tries to find the words on his body as her eyes make a slow pass over his face, his figure.
"C'mon, tell me you see it," he practically begs.
"I'm trying," she says, stepping even closer to his nearness.
She closes her eyes, hoping that a moment's reprieve will give her the clarity that she needs to do what he's asking of her. His hand comes up to cup her jaw, thumb stroking a gentle caress over the high point of her cheek.
Her eyes fly open, met with mingling shades of jade and amber, luminous as the stones themselves. She watches his eyes soften that bit more when they meet hers, watches his mouth twitch and his body sway just a touch closer, so near she can practically feel him against her.
"Is that..." she starts the question, but can't bring herself to say the word, not when she's not sure, not when it wouldn't seem like enough even if she was.
"More than," is his reply. She can hear the truth in it, the surety of his belief in the words, in her, in the two of them together.
"Cal," her voice hushes over him, breath so close he can feel it fanning warm against his chin. "Why didn't you say?"
He sighs, honest distress coming over his features as he shrugs his shoulders up and takes a half step back from her radiance.
"I didn't know how."
It seems to him like it's not enough of a reason. He should have found the words. He should have done better. She deserves better, the best. Watching his saddened retreat, Gillian reaches out and presses her palm against his chest, just shy of his heart.
"No, I understand," Gillian says, swaying forward just close enough that he takes the hint and steps up near to her again, only a breath of space between them.
She slides her hand up slowly, trailing a path up over his shoulder to hold him even closer, matching the movement with her opposite hand to complete the embrace. She closes the entirety of the space that separates them, her cheek coming to rest against the length of his neck.
"I couldn't tell you, either," is her shaky whisper, coupled with an increased pressure of her fingers against the bunched muscles of his shoulders. "At least not with words."
In just seconds, he has her held just far enough away to see her features, desperation in the grip of his fingers around her waist.
"Gill?" he's asking with a look of so much surprise on his face that she can't refuse a reply.
"I love you, Cal," she manages to say, voice raw with emotion and tears beginning to pool in her eyes.
He was right. He was so right. The words mean almost too much when paired with her tone, her expression, the way her body can't help but bend nearer to his obvious affection.
"You..."
"I love you. I do," she affirms, smiling as the tears spill over and run down her cheeks to collect under her trembling chin.
His movements are gentler than she expects with the speed in which he makes them. He pulls her flush against his body, one hand digging even harder into the softness of her flesh and the other back to cupping her face. His lips cover hers like a gentle blanket of snow over smooth earth, bringing her to life in a way she didn't know possible. Her mouth parts for him on its own accord, accepting of his tongue before it can even ask for entrance.
His taste awakens her desire and her hands tangle up in his hair, tugging him even closer. She sighs a breath into the cavern of his mouth, near desperate for air, but unwilling to end the kiss.
"Gill," he mumbles against her mouth, moving just a millimetre from the warmth of her lips to inhale more deeply. It's not just made of breath as if part of a sigh, but actual substance that suggests more words to follow.
"Shh," she replies, cutting off the opportunity to protest with a deep, wet kiss that sloughs a groan off of him.
"Let me just say it," he tries to convince her in the space of another breath.
She grunts a noise of negation with another gentle kiss against his lips, brief and chaste this time.
"You don't have to. I can hear it now."
He smiles brightly and fuses his lips to hers again, eager now for her to hear the rest, for her to know everything that words would never be enough to tell her. After all, fluency in a language is best achieved through full immersion.