americas_son | (no subject)

(no subject)

It's been an odd couple of days. Cal has kept his focus mainly on Tina, and hopefully that's helped keep the weirdness on his end at a minimum.

When she's ready to go home, though, he promises with a glance at Sherlock to come back once he's dropped her off. With any luck, Tony won't ask too many questions until then.

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"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.

"When I went to New York," Sherlock agrees, "and found out what happened to your parents. Tony, I swear if I had seen anything conclusive, I would have told you. I didn't. But from everything I can gather, the only logical choice for their murderer is Obadiah Stane."

He squeezes his eyes shut.

"That was why, yeah," Cal says quietly after a moment. "I didn't want to leave you alone with him. I didn't, either. Remember how Connolly was suddenly sticking with me even here? He doubled back after I left and spent the night here. Jarvis was all set to radio him in case something happened."

He pauses, then adds,

"It wasn't just because of that, either."

"Oh my fucking God," he mumbles into his hands.

"What else?"

"We think - we don't have any more proof than we do about your parents, but - we think it was Stane who was trying to have you killed."

He forgets about using Stane's first name instead, but that probably doesn't matter anymore.

"He had a considerable motive," Sherlock contributes.

Something clicks in the back of his mind—the words he was threatening Sherlock.

"Sherry. Sherry. Did he—if, if he was threatening you—"

He can't finish the question.

"No," Sherlock says, immediately and firmly. "I was lucky on that score. He never did anything worse than insult my humanity."

"It was just the easiest way to get to me," Cal puts in. "He could tell I'd - that I wouldn't think it through right."

He hadn't, either, until after Stane's death, when he'd finally realized that the way to get to Sherlock - by threatening Tony - would have resulted in Sherlock ripping Stane's heart out and eating it. Maybe literally.

"...Shit. Shit, yeah."

He can't quite stop himself from following that train of thought to its conclusion. Getting to Sherry by threatening Tony wouldn't work. But how would you get to Tony...?

The realization of how much worse it could have been is swift and undeniable.

Threaten Sherlock. And it would've worked like a charm.

Cal doesn't blame Tony for cycling back around to this. Awful as it is, it's got to be a little better than dealing with the idea that Stane wanted him dead.

"But nothing happened," he reminds Tony. "And nothing was going to. Mother stepped in at first, and then after, after everything with Dad I wasn't so afraid of him anymore and I let him know. We were ready for him."

It is not remotely better than dealing with the idea that Obie wanted him dead. That's bad, but it's bad in kind of an abstract way, the way attempts on your life are abstract when you're seventeen years old.

There is nothing abstract about the way Obie was looking at Cal in that video.

And now that he's on the subject he can't seem to get off it again. It seems like every memory of Obie he has is surfacing just long enough to be tainted by the new perspective.

"Nothing happened," he echoes softly. "Yeah. Okay. Yeah."

A few months ago, sooner after Grahame, Cal would have understood that more clearly; maybe once he's had more time to think about this conversation, that understanding will come back. It isn't that he's forgotten how it feels to have to reevaluate everything like that. He'll always remember. But he wasn't exaggerating about the incident with his father changing his perspective. There is nothing abstract, for him, about the only adult who occasionally seemed to like him wanting to kill him.

He glances uncertainly at Sherlock, not sure of where to go from here.

Sherlock gets up off the couch, crosses to Tony's armchair, and hugs him.

"Nothing happened," he reiterates, and—leaves it at that. There is very little else he can say.

...Yeah, he's just going to... cling for a while now.

Cal shifts in his chair, bringing his knees up to his chest. He wraps his arms around his legs and waits.

(While he waits, he thinks about the upcoming months, about preparing for Stane's possible return.

He hopes, with a cold calm that should probably worry him, that they end up having to kill Stane anyway.)

This is the point where it occurs to him that he forgot to get pissed off at them for not telling him sooner.

...He can, he decides, keep right on forgetting.

Maybe, Cal thinks, they've only increased the chances that they'll have to kill him. Stane is unlikely to respond well to Tony telling him to go fuck himself.

But at least Tony will know why.

He closes his eyes and presses his face into Sherry's stomach. Here is one thing in the world that is not completely fucked up, is still just the same as it was. He loves Sherlock and Sherlock loves him. That's a constant. He can hold onto that.

Cal half-watches them as he thinks, forgetting to keep his eyes averted as he probably should.

Is there anything else they should tell Tony? That he should tell Tony? Those were pretty much the highlights. He even remembered to be honest about Connolly. Maybe he should just leave it to Tony to ask, if there are details he wants.