(no subject)

[americas_son]

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.

Comments

and then it was later, and Tony was unconscious from epic booze consumption.

[bitofafiction]

[americas_son]

Eventually, Cal did decide it was best to leave Tony and Sherlock to themselves; he got up, touched Tony's shoulder, muttered something about being downstairs, and went.

He's still there. He called Tina at one point, to have a vague conversation where she tried to console him despite the fact that he couldn't tell her what he was upset about - it wasn't his place to say anything, he explained, and she understood.

After that, he raided the kitchen.

But mostly, he's been in the living room, flipping silently and pointlessly through the TV channels and waiting to see if he would be needed.

[bitofafiction]

For a moment, in the doorway, he almost looks like the other Sherlock.

He's that tired.

[americas_son]

Cal looks up, putting the remote down on the table.

"Hey."

He doesn't ask how Tony's doing. That would be an incredibly stupid question.

[bitofafiction]

"He is asleep, debatably."

Sherlock comes forward to take a seat on the couch, moving with less than his usual precision.

[americas_son]

Cal shifts a little, to make space and to face Sherlock as he sits.

"The kind of sleep that involves a lot of whiskey, I'm guessing."

It's not much of a guess.

[bitofafiction]

"Correct."

He leans back and regards the ceiling.

"All in all, I think that went much better than it could have."

[americas_son]

Cal nods.

"I thought he'd do a lot more yelling and denying things."

That might still be to come, once Tony gets it together enough to realize just how long Cal and Sherlock have been lying to him.

[bitofafiction]

"I had also prepared for that possibility. It seems he trusts me too much for that. If I say it is so, it must be so."

There was a time in Sherlock's life when that certainty went the other way around. He knows how it works.

[americas_son]

Cal unconsciously looks wry for a moment.

"Yeah, you kinda have that knack."

[bitofafiction]

"Comvincing people of things they never wanted to know? I suppose I do, at that."

[americas_son]

"Yeah, that too."

Cal rests his head against his hand.

"How are you doing?"

[bitofafiction]

"Better than I could be," he answers after a moment's deliberation. "And you?"

[americas_son]

"I'm okay."

It's mostly true. Dragging up all the shit with Stane has left him feeling unsettled and restless, but he'll manage. It hasn't been bad enough to make him wish that he could go out and get some pot, anyway. At least, not any more than he usually does when things are stressful.

[bitofafiction]

"Thank you," he murmurs. "For telling him."

[americas_son]

Cal shrugs a little with one shoulder.

"Had to be done," he says. "I was - I didn't really love having to lie to him all the time like that, anyway."

[bitofafiction]

"Nor did I."

[americas_son]

"When Stane visited last time, I was just lying the whole time. I wasn't there to make sure Tony got breakfast, I didn't just want to hang out, Connolly wasn't just trailing me because Peter'd decided to be paranoid for some reason."

Cal sighs.

"And I know I'm good, but it was depressing how easy it was. I thought I'd have to try harder, you know? To convince him."

[bitofafiction]

"He wanted to believe," Sherlock says quietly.

[americas_son]

"That we were better friends than we were?"

He knows that's not it, or at least not entirely it, and he knows it was a series of lies told for all the right reasons. If he had it to do over again, he'd do it all the same, without any guilt.

But that aspect of the lies had been . . . uncomfortable.

[bitofafiction]

"That you wouldn't lie to him. That nothing was wrong."

[americas_son]

Another sigh.

"That too."

A brief pause, then,

"You're the only one I'd never lie to and that's only because I'd never get away with it."

And even then, sometimes he forgets and tries anyway, if only with small things.

"But no more lying to Tony about important shit anymore."

[bitofafiction]

He smiles slightly.

"Agreed."

[americas_son]

"You think this'll change things?"

Vampire things, he means.

[bitofafiction]

"I think that if and when Obadiah Stane shows his face again, Tony will support whatever measures we take. Not gladly, but he will."

That's a yes.