Sunnydale AU: interact with reality

Cal has been growing more and more restless since his encounter with Sherlock the other day. It's crept up on him a little at a time, something he can't shut out no matter how much he smokes.

("He promised."
"And do you believe him?")

Mother said he can't hide in his room forever.

("Reality hasn't got a whole lot going for it right now."
"But it is the only game in town.")

He hates Sherlock for a little while, for changing him just enough to make Mother right about that.

I just have to deal with it.

He emerges, eventually, for a few minutes a time here and there. Getting a snack, using the bathroom in the other wing. Going upstairs to his bedroom to get something. Making himself move around the house again, and face up to the fact that his room is not, in reality, any safer.

(When a person becomes a vampire, a demon takes up residence within the body. Something else to hate Sherlock for: the fact that he knows that at all.)

(But words on a screen isn't proof. Maybe Sherlock got that wrong.)

Cal doesn't run into his father on any of those little journeys. Cal can come to me when he's ready, he'd said. You know how he is, Violet, he always needs time. That promise is one he seems to be keeping; for a little while, maybe a day or so, it allows Cal to believe that this impossible equilibrium can hold. Maybe he has been overreacting. Maybe it's not as bad as it seems.

Then, for the first time since that surreal late-night family conference, he does see his father. Reed Chandler is stepping out of Uncle Grahame's study. He looks up as he does so, eyes meeting Cal's like he already knew Cal was there. Cal freezes, waiting, but his father just smiles down the hall at him -

- and just before he turns to walk in the other direction, away from Cal, he reaches up to wipe something away from the corner of his mouth.