Work Text:
How to Torture Cal Lightman
He finds Gill in a conference room, and her eyes light up when she sees him. "Hello, you."
Cal grins in greeting as he sits down beside her. They've had back to back cases sending them in opposite directions, and while things are getting back to some variation on 'normal' now, he hasn't seen her nearly enough the last few days. It's nice just to spend a few minutes with her as she finishes her lunch. "All right, love?"
She nods. "Really long morning, but I think we're finally getting to the truth. Bringing Gibbs on board helped a lot." She laughs merrily. "He didn't have to do anything, just stood there looking all serious and deadly, and none of them could talk fast enough. We have a meeting with SecNav and at least we'll have something to report. Kate's been running interference from the Navy Yard, but I don't think it would've worked for much longer."
He nods. "You like working with them, don't you?"
Gill shrugs. "What's not to like? They're funny and clever and good at their jobs. And I'm never going to complain about having a six-foot former Marine lounging around the place looking all-" she sighs, in a way he just knows is totally deliberate "-delicious."
He narrows his eyes at her.
They both long since worked out that Gibbs and his agent only have eyes for each other, even if neither of the individuals concerned seems to have come to terms with it yet, but it hasn't stopped Foster constantly needling him about Mr Tall, Rugged and Brooding.
(If he didn't like Gibbs so much, he'd really sulk about it.)
"I s'pose he could be considered handsome," he grumbles, "if you're into grey hair and monosyllables."
Not that he feels in any way inferior, because what's a few inches here and there (height! he means height, not length, he feels very secure in that department, thank you so much), and anyway, what's special about going grey prematurely?
But he might - might - slouch less when Gibbs is in the building. Might.
"Or if you're into piercing blue eyes and a chiselled jaw," she points out.
He grunts. He's so not winning this one. Not least because he has to admit the facts are all on her side where Gibbs is concerned. (He still catches himself staring.)
"Besides, I've seen you looking at Kate." She gives him a look which says 'I see your double standard, Doctor Lightman, don't you dare think I won't call you on it.' "You're lucky Gibbs is so distracted by her he doesn't notice, otherwise you'd be a small puddle of pain and regret on the floor by now."
Cal leers a little, wondering if he can get some kind of revenge, get a rise out of her. (And besides, appreciation of Kate's attractiveness? Much more in his comfort zone.) "Well, she is very beautiful."
She nods around her spoonful of chocolate pudding, then licks it clean. "You think she's beautiful, Cal, you should see her naked."
She lets out a long, appreciative noise, widens her eyes to emphasise her point, and he swallows. Hard. And wonders if he heard that right, or if maybe he's having a stroke. "Naked?"
"Oh, yes." She smiles brightly at him. "Stunning. Gibbs does not know what he's missing."
Cal gawks, and surreptitiously presses the heel of his hand into his crotch, because his dick is suddenly enjoying this conversation way too much.
"And-" his voice is cracking like he's turned back into a teenaged boy, and he's leaning closer with, probably, an expression of braindead lust on his face. "-and you know this because...?"
She shoots him a 'well, duh' look, as if it should somehow be obvious. "Because I've seen her naked, of course."
Of course. When? How? Why? And is her interest in naked women purely aesthetic or more recreational? He has so many questions... "Oh."
She sets about sucking pudding from her spoon again, and Cal wonders if he can hide his rapidly growing erection long enough to go crack a window. He's suddenly feeling oddly lightheaded and in need of some fresh air. The images...
Gillian leans back in her chair.
"She tastes good, too. Tangy but sort of... sweet..." Her forehead creases in thought. "Almost like... pineapple juice."
"Oh."
Okay, he's got a rise all right.
Not the kind he was expecting, though. At all.
Now granted, he was mentally pursuing a lot of extremely x-rated thoughts about how Gillian might have seen Kate naked, because he's a man and he has a pulse, all right? The idea of two beautiful women getting it on is part of the male collective consciousness, and he's no more immune to it than the next heterosexual guy who's not dead.
But he'd assumed the actual explanation would be something far more prosaic. They're friends, and women who are friends, in his experience, generally see more of one another's bodies than men who are friends do.
Knowing how Kate tastes, though... his brain is stunned into near immobility, because no matter how he tries, there's no interpretation he can come up with to explain this away except the kind of scenarios he can barely think about without needing to excuse himself for a quick wank.
"Cal?"
Gillian is looking at him with apparently innocent concern, as if she didn't just splinter his mind into teeny tiny little pieces. Then jump on them.
He whimpers. Nope, he can't work it out. About as family friendly as he can manage is Gillian licking some kind of chocolate or similar confection off Kate's fingers - because she does hate to waste good chocolate - and even that image sends his mind into overdrive.
And 'tangy'... really, it's not a word he associates with skin... or even with mouths. Holy. Fuck. She has to be teasing him, doesn't she? She can't possibly have just implied, all casual-like, as if it's no big deal, that she knows how Kate... tastes. Can she?
"Cal? Are you all right?"
Her hand comes to rest on his forearm, and he jumps at the contact, looking up at her wide-eyed.
He's sure it says something fairly terrible about him how his near constant urge to push her up against a flat surface and kiss her stupid, something he's been trying to ignore since they were both still married and definitely not available, has suddenly increased tenfold.
Is he really this shallow? She's Gillian, his Gillian, who he has loved, with whom he has been in love for such a long time now, and who she has or hasn't slept with at any point in her life has nothing whatsoever to do with his feelings towards her. The idea of her (oh, God) going down on another woman shouldn't-
"Bloody hell, Foster."
"What?"
She absolutely has to be fucking with him, right? Trying (successfully) to screw with his mind. He can't deal with this at all.
He opens his mouth to beg her to put him out of his misery, tell him she's deliberately torturing him, but all that comes out is some kind of squeaky noise even Gillian, with all her experience in making sense of him, has no hope of deciphering.
"I-" How does he ask this question without sounding like a total creep, like a man who needs to get out more and should stop fantasising about his friends? "How do you-?"
She regards him steadily for a few seconds, then smiles, slow and mysterious, like some kind of Mona Lisa-Sphinx hybrid. "How do I what?"
There's no mistake now. All doubt has vanished - there's no way that smile allows for the possibility of her innocence. He still has no idea if she's pulling his leg or if she actually has first hand, intimate experience of Kate (he gulps), but she's very definitely teasing him.
Quite besides the whole Gill-plus-another-woman image, which he really can't excise from his brain and doesn't want to, he's now also wondering exactly why she's teasing him, why she let the information (whether it's true or false) slip.
Gillian wanting to have her fun and turn his brain to cottage cheese? Makes complete sense. Gillian doing so by putting this in his head? If it were any other woman, he'd absolutely be forced to assume she was hitting on him, shamelessly appealing to his baser nature by playing the lesbian experimentation card. He doesn't quite dare hope for that here.
And then, if she's implying what he thinks she's implying, and maybe she really has (he gulps again) been with Kate, and it's not just some intentionally tantalising mind game she's using to get in his trousers, then maybe it isn't a phase. Because he can't see her as the kind of woman who'd do it purely for the purposes of saying she'd done it. So.
He's really not sure Gillian as a woman who likes women as well as men is actually any better for his mental health. (Oh please God let it be 'as well as', because he needs to believe there's some hope for him - surely the guys he's seen come and go in her life haven't all just been for show?) He's sort of self-consciously hoping it's both, that she's flirting with him and she also likes to sleep with women, which is possibly creepy as fuck but he can't help it. 'Gillian who likes women and also Cal Lightman' is an idea he could really get behind.
Overall, the number of questions piling up in his head is so huge, so multifarious, so very full of potential landmines and reasons for her to slap him round the face, he's really not sure where to start.
Gill's down to the bottom of her cup of pudding, and it does not help his thought processes how she's wiping up the last drops by hand, sucking them off her fingers whilst making noises that are practically pornographic.
"Gillian?"
She licks her index finger clean with an almost obscene thoroughness. Cal more or less suppresses the urge to whimper.
"Yes?"
He really could do with her answering the question without him having to ask it, but it's quite obviously not going to happen. She's slipped the mask of innocent enquiry back over her features, and unless he mans up, she's not about to confess.
He lets out a sigh even he thinks is borderline pathetic.
She sit back in her chair, still looking like butter wouldn't melt, then glances at her watch. "Oh, shoot. My meeting."
"What?!"
She's already standing up and shoving her things into her bag, and all he can manage is another squeak, this time of protest.
"I have to go or I'm going to be late," she says, leaning down to drop a peck on his cheek with absent-minded affection. "See you later."
She disappears in a cloud of Gillian-scented air, and Cal groans and lets his head drop to the table with a thud. He has an erection he could use to hang his coat on, and his planned activity for this afternoon includes a couple of what promise to be exceedingly boring meetings and to check galley proofs for his book. Yeah, right.
It's not going to be a productive day.
~ fin ~