toblameforit | (no subject)

"They have thick skulls in the Stark family," Obadiah confides.

Cal has about a second to be pleased with himself - it actually worked! - before Stane speaks up.

"Good thing I wasn't trying to kill him with it, then," he can't help saying, a bit dryly.

"You spend too much time around Sherry, anybody ever tell you that?"

Obadiah chuckles. At Tony's remark, of course, not Cal's.

"My mother," Cal says. "All the time."

Just because she's resigned to that friendship doesn't mean she has to like it.

"She's usually pretty sharp about who I shouldn't be spending time with" - he doesn't have to glance at Stane to get his point across there, does he? Because he doesn't - "but no one's right all the time."

"I don't blame her," he says cheerfully. "Sherry kinda sounds like a joke to most people."

"He's a joke to you, too, Tony. The only difference is, you know the punchline."

For the first time since he started playing, Tony looks up from his Tetris game.

"Would you fucking lay off him for once? He's not even here."

Cal is all too glad to take the chance to openly give Stane a little shit himself. Tony will just think he's sticking up for Sherlock.

Which - he is.

"Seriously," he says. "Do you even know how it sounds to listen to a grown man go after a seventeen-year-old?"

He doesn't actually say "pathetic," but he doesn't think he has to.

"I'm sorry," he says humbly. "That was out of line."

Tony's expression softens. "It's okay, man. It's just—I don't know what it is about him that turns you into a raging asshole."

Cal has his theories.

He doesn't share any of them.

Cal is such a helpful and generous young man.

And Tony just lost at Tetris.

Cal decides not to take credit for that. He is not about to set up an opportunity to Stane to evoke some sort of fake alliance that bonds them together or anything like that.

Instead, he ignores Stane'a apology to ask Tony,

"Did he tell you when he'd be coming back?"

"Nope. It was pretty much, 'bye, I'm fucking off to New York,' and out the door."

Cal snorts a little.

"Yeah, that's what I figured. Thought I'd ask anyway."

"I don't think he even knows. He'll probably just show up back here in a few days and complain about what I did to his poor kitchen."

"Serves him right."

Cal thinks about Sherlock examining that stretch of road, and hopes that complaints about the kitchen are the only thing he'll have to upset Tony with when he comes back.

He wouldn't bet on it, though.

"Yep. I mean, what's he doing flying across the country and leaving me to make my own breakfast?"

"Is he your brother or your wife?" Obadiah asks dryly.

Tony makes a face, but he can't help snickering.

Again, a reasonably funny comment, but this time Cal doesn't react, instead saying to Tony,

"Maybe he's testing me. Maybe part of fake Watson's job is to make sure you don't starve after you destroy all the Pop Tarts."

"You know, that actually does sound like Sherry."

Unfortunately, Cal is still not familiar enough with the Holmes mythos to be able to make a crack about Mycroft Holmes being able to take of himself just fine, thanks, so instead he settles for laughing and saying,

"Okay, fine. But just breakfast. I know you're capable of ordering a pizza all by yourself."