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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Instead of saying the worst thing he could possibly say right now, Sherlock grins and steps into the kitchen.

Yeah, that was - never mind.

Cal was telling the truth about not making a mess.

Unless the dishes still sitting in the sink count.

The worst thing he could possibly say right now is I love you. The second-worst might be you're a liar.

"Entirely salvageable," he declares, heading straight for the sink to clean up.

"If I'd tried to wash them, you'd only have to redo them," Cal defends. Even if a defense is not technically called for.

He opens the fridge to get a drink, bypassing the soda in favor of a beer. "You want anything?"

"Not out of the refrigerator, no. The kettle and I have a prior appointment."

"I don't even know why I ask."

Cal uses the bottle opener on the fridge (custom installation and design, of course) and takes a long drink of beer.

"Because you are a kind and generous soul," he suggests, reaching over to turn on the kettle.

"Aside from that."

Cal pulls out a chair at the kitchen table and drops into it.

"A kind and generous soul with a boundless wellspring of hope?"

Cal considers this, taking another swig of beer.

"Hope that you'll figure out that you don't have to drink a bunch of tea to be British?" he guesses. "Okay, I can go for that."

"I like tea. I do not like beer, unless I am being Tony."

"There's also soda," Cal says. "And - other things."

Things like water or juice that Cal ignores because they are not beer or soda.

"I do not like soda when I am being anyone, although I will remember the preference in case I ever have to impersonate you."

Cal eyes him. (His gaze doesn't linger, though, not the way it normally would.)

"I don't know," he says, "I'm pretty sure even you'd need more than a soda to pull that off." He'd have to get several inches taller just to start.

"I might need to resort to magic," he acknowledges, "but you would be astonished to discover what can be accomplished without it."

"By you?" Cal says. "I doubt it."

He would not have been overly astonished if Sherlock had managed to respond by morphing into him on the spot.

. . . mm, beer.

He laughs.

"I am flattered, I think."

"You were supposed to be," Cal says helpfully.

He gives Sherlock a brief glance, then turns back to his beer.

"Well done, then."

He sets the last dish on the rack to dry and heads for the cupboard where he keeps the mixing bowls.

Cal finishes his beer.

They don't usually go quite so fast when he drinks them.

He gets up for another.

Sherlock... decides not to comment. Pushing responsible alcohol consumption in this house is a lost cause.

Cal happens to think that a couple of beers, after the day they've had, is a completely responsible choice. Especially when what he really wants, with an intensity he'd managed to escape until now, is to smoke up.

He pauses in the act of taking the second beer out.

"I think I'm gonna go have a cigarette," he says. Sometimes the act of smoking helps soothe the cravings, even though he doesn't get high along with it.

Well. And perhaps he's a little too used to Tony, for whom drinking one beer a little too fast is a guarantee he'll do the same to the next five.

He nods.

Cal closes the refrigerator door and leaves the kitchen.

He goes to stand out back to smoke, as he always does; it just seems like the right place to do it. More discreet than standing out front. Usually he stands a few feet away from the building, leaving space for the door to open. Today, he closes the door and then slumps back against it with a long sigh as he pulls out his cigarettes.

"This day sucked, Jarvis," he mutters. He has no idea if Jarvis can answer when he's outside, but that's not the point. "Let me know when Tony invents a time machine, because I want a do-over."

"I'll be sure to," he says, dry but sympathetic.