americas_son | (no subject)

Tony decides not to ask Jarvis. Whatever's gotten into Sherlock this time, it'll get out again eventually. He can wait.

Despite Cal's best efforts, Tina can tell something's up; she knows him too well by now to not be able to see it. She doesn't ask, though, and he gives her an extra kiss as he drops her off to try to show his gratitude.

Then, as promised, he turns around and goes back.

He can hear the violin as soon as he gets inside.

And Tony is just coming out of the basement.

He looks at Cal, looks up at where Sherlock's workroom would be if it were visible through the intervening architecture, looks at Cal again, and seems to have trouble deciding what if anything to say.

The music stops.

Cal glances up in the direction of the workshop as well, then nods his head toward the stairs and says to Tony,

"C'mon."

Then he starts upstairs himself.

"...okay."

Tony follows.

Cal has spent the last twenty minutes (and a considerable chunk of the time Tina spent werewolfed, when there was nothing much else for him to do) thinking about what to say and how this is going to go.

His answers are: no fucking idea and not well.

He opens the door to the workshop without knocking.

"Hey."

The violin is lying on the end of the table in its open case. Sherlock is tucked into the corner of his couch, facing the door, leaning back with his fingers steepled in his lap.

He stops three steps into the room and looks between the two of them again.

"Would somebody," he asks, "like to tell me what the fuck?"

Okay. This is officially the point of no return. Cal takes a breath.

"You might wanna sit," he tells Tony. "This is gonna take a while."

He takes his own advice, picking a chair not quite across from Sherlock, so they can both face Tony without (he hopes) seeming too confrontational.

"There are some things that - we've been trying not to have to tell you. But." He glances at Sherlock. "We don't - have any better choices anymore."

Tony sits, in the armchair that got kicked out of his bedroom in New York because he set a hot glass jar in it and scorched the seat to hell.

He's watching Sherry, because he knows Sherry, and what he's seeing is that something really bad is going on. He's almost afraid to find out what.

What is the best angle of attack here?

"At Milliways," he starts, "there is an alternate of me—of me, mind you—who was turned into a vampire."

Oh.

Shit.

"According to him, the person responsible was Obadiah Stane."

He opens his mouth.

Vampires lie. But Sherry doesn't—Sherry wouldn't say that unless he believed it himself, he's not that fucking cruel.

What's that have to do with—? He can't even finish the sentence in his head; he's terrified of finding out.

How did he...? Get out of hell? Not go there in the first place? Pull it off?

Why? Just about the stupidest fucking question Tony can think of.

He closes his mouth.

Cal picks up the thread.

"I ran into him a couple days ago," he says. "He - there was a spell, to put his soul back. His world is mostly like ours, a couple differences, but - it happened next March, for him. St - Obadiah got out of hell and sent a bunch of vampires after him a week later.

"I came back and talked to Sherlock, and we talked about ways to keep it from happening here, and - Tony, there are reasons why we believe it without . . . without any problems. It's not just because we didn't like the guy. He - did things."

"Did what things."

Cal glances at Sherlock. (They should have talked about this again, maybe figured out how to coordinate it. It'd probably get blown all to hell pretty fast, but it would have been a start.)

"You remember," he says, looking back at Tony, "I told you Obadiah reminded me of my uncle I hated."

He swallows. He'd had to be almost too drunk to talk before he could tell Sherlock about this, and even though it doesn't get to him like it used to, that doesn't make it any easier to talk about.

But he knew he'd have to.

He forces the words out.

"A few months before I made friends with Sherlock, I found out that Grahame was - sexually interested in me. He never - I mean it's not really the point right now but he never did anything about it, but it made me a lot more sensitive to it, and I definitely picked up on it the first time I met met Obadiah."

Another glance at Sherlock. "I thought I was overreacting, but I told Sherlock anyway in case I wasn't, and once I had he started seeing it too. That was why we didn't want to have dinner with you guys that night."

One moment of stunned silence.

One moment of looking at Sherry.

One moment of closing his eyes and remembering that conversation, and the conversation after it, and how he never brought it up again.

"Jesus," he mutters, rubbing his face with both hands.

Cal lets it sit for a moment, lets Tony think, does some thinking of his own about how to tell the next part.

"There was this party in New York a little while after that - Jess mentioned it at my birthday party, said I'd kind of ditched her after? We usually hook up after parties we're both at, and -"

He cuts himself off. Not important.

"Anyway. Obadiah was there. Senator Scott must have wanted some funding from Stark Industries. He, uh, caught up with me at the bar and . . ." Cal falters.

"It wasn't - if, if you just read a transcript or something it wouldn't seem like a big deal. He was really good at that. He didn't say anything I could use as an excuse to leave, and I couldn't piss him off or it might hurt my dad's alliance with Senator Scott -" He cuts himself off again. He can hear the tension in his voice from remembering how trapped he'd been and how badly he'd blown it by letting Stane see how much he was getting to him. He takes a breath.

"It was more about - double meanings and body language, and uh. Jarvis has some footage, I think, from the security cameras, if you wanted to - but I know he was threatening Sherlock, and I know what, what would have happened if I hadn't been there with my parents." It would have been easy, just something quiet while they were shaking hands. Let's meet up to talk more after this thing. I'd like to get to know Sherlock's friend a little better. And he wouldn't have had a choice.

But Cal's parents were there, and for all Stane knew they expected him right back at their hotel suite after the party. So a handshake was all it had been.

"Sherry—"

He looks at Sherlock again, desperately. Make this not have happened.

Sherlock meets Tony's eyes and shakes his head.

"I saw it," he says quietly.

"Oh my God."

He doesn't even have to say it; he just has to glance up. Jarvis starts the video playing in the air right in front of him.

Like a really horrifying Magic Eye, he doesn't see it and doesn't see it and then all of a sudden he does.

Softer: "Oh my God."

. . . Cal can't watch. He feels like he should try, like if Tony has to see it he should too, but - he can't.

He sits in silence, looking up somewhere near the ceiling, as it plays through.

"Jarvis, turn that off."

He buries his face in his hands for a long moment, chasing his thoughts in circles.

Then: "Shit, that was why—God, I'm sorry—when Sherry went to New York, that was why you were hanging around, wasn't it? That—"

When Sherry went to New York.

His head snaps up and he stares at Sherlock.