milliways_bar | (no subject)

"Very funny," Cal says sourly. This is clearly a massive unfairness. He's been keeping a closer eye on the mirror since Esfir told him, so bluntly, that he looked like shit, and there's been a slight improvement since he started dragging himself out to run with her every morning. There's a little more color in his face, and he doesn't look quite so tired. Turns out that actually expending energy makes it a little bit easier to sleep. He's still not getting eight hours, but the deficit isn't as bad as it has been. And that, in turn, is making it easier to eat.

So, all in all, Cal determined just this morning that he could be upgraded to looking like shit to merely looking like crap, and found this very encouraging.

Finding himself stuck in this excuse for an outfit, looking like a gay pirate? Not so encouraging. At least, in her fucking insanity, the Bar didn't put him in some of the other outfits he's seen around, but that's not much of a consolation.

(Of course she didn't. Bar knows very well precisely how far she can push Cal before he just loses his temper completely and storms back upstairs.)

Eyebrow.

"Oh, quit feeling sorry for yourself. There are worse costumes, and that was a perfectly sincere compliment."

Storms are not conducive to pettings: a wise Shreddie leaps neatly off Sam's shoulder and onto the bar, patting off towards a destination unknown.

"Fine," says Cal, who mostly believes that last point. Mostly. Because obviously he looks stupid, but it is possible that Sam just has questionable taste. "What the hell is going on, anyway?"

"Talk Like A Pirate Day. Happens every year, as far as I've been able to tell."

In the bar, 'every year' is relative.

He flicks idly at the feather on his hat. "Some people just get the clothes, some people get the speech as well. Most people old enough get a craving for rum, though, although that may well be just patrons taking advantage of the situation."

Cal looks baffled for a moment, because he hadn't really expected there to be an actual answer. It is not a helpful answer or anything like that, which just serves to trip him up a bit longer than it might otherwise.

"Oh," he says. Then, "This fucking place."

Sigh.

"Lighten up, Cal. As bar-wide celebrations go, this one's kind of fun."

"Yeah. Good times. Last time I checked, fun was voluntary." Cal takes a long swallow of coffee.

"Yeah, well, it could be a lot worse." Sam sips his drink - rum, naturally.

"Enjoy showing off your arse and get over it already."

Cal slumps in his chair on general principle.

That's about it, really. It's not that there's nothing to say to that. It's that there's too much to say, and he can't even find words for half of it. So he doesn't say anything.

Well, Sam's perched on a barstool. Certain features tend to be emphasised in that position. Although it's possible that he is purposely accentuating that right now, likewise on general principle.

(His own trousers aren't leather, but they are a little tighter than usual, tucking into appropriately piratey boots. His shirt is loose and red under a dark, battered overcoat, buttons not quite done up to the top nor quite done up to the bottom, showing a little pale skin at stomach and collarbone.)

"Aw, come on. If you can't handle a slight costume change you'll go nuts on April Fool's."

Cal shrugs. He hasn't thought that far ahead yet. One holiday at a time. That's the only way he's going to get through the upcoming season. One at a time.

"I'll just stay upstairs."

Sam sighs. It's not fair on Cal, he knows that, but sometimes he misses Jack.

"Why? What's so awful about it?"

Cal glances up at him. A lot of the problem is stuff he can only really talk about with Esfir, about how unimaginably hard and painful it can be to die and not be dead. Gone, but still here. Never being able to go home. No choices. He could talk about that to Sam, he thinks - Sam couldn't possibly understand, but he would at least listen - but some of it's . . . too private.

He doesn't want Sam to know that he thinks sometimes about following someone back to their world and finding a quiet place to just. fade away.

But some of it's safer, so he goes with that, using the time-honored tactic of not quite answering the question.

"I was talking with someone earlier about Halloween. You have any kids?"

"Fuck no. I'd make the worst father imaginable."

Beat.

"Well," with a wry downturn of his mouth, "maybe not the worst." Headtilt. "Why?"

"My son," Cal says simply. "I was too fucking useless last year to take him out for Halloween, and that was my last chance." He stops there, looking down into his coffee mug. It might be a safer topic, but it's not any easier.

...Okay, now Sam feels guilty. One of these days, he and Cal will hold an angst-free conversation, damnit.

Well, there's always hope.

"You weren't to know, Cal." Quietly, leaning forward to stroke his hair.

Cal hasn't let Sam touch him beyond holding hands since they went up to Cal's room; Sam hopes for at least a little more success this time.

Edited 2008-09-22 00:21 (UTC)

Cal leans into the touch instinctively. Contact is good.

"I was a shitty father most of his life," he says. "I'm lucky I got my head screwed on straight in time to be better with him before I, before I died. It's about the only thing I did get right in the end. Even if I did end up - leaving." May as well call it that. He knew what he was getting into when he made his choices in the last few days, after all.

Success! So Sam keeps doing it.

"There are shittier fathers." Quietly. "At least you cared. At least you tried."

La la la la NO ISSUES HERE NO la la la la.

Cal nods. "I didn't have the slightest fucking clue what I was doing, but it made Calvin happy. He's three, he's just glad Daddy has the time of day for him all of a sudden, you know? I didn't really have much to go by, but it seemed to be working out okay." Parenting was a novel concept in the Chandler home. Cal was making a lot of it up as he went along. Thank god for Marisa. Best nanny on the planet. She'd been thrilled to see Cal take an interest, and she'd done everything she could to help him learn how to be a dad.

"...You named him after you?"

It's a quirk that seems to be peculiar to Americans (in the modern Western world, at least), and it's one that Sam will never understand. He's just glad he was never on the receiving end of it.

Headshake. "Anyway." He shrugs. "I don't know much about kids. But I always got the impression that it was making the effort that counted."

"I didn't," Cal says. "I wanted to name him after Dad. But that wasn't fashionable enough. Reed is already an old-fashioned name, so how would it look in the papers twenty years from now?" His tone is deeply sardonic. He may always be bitter about this. "Of course, the real reason was probably that it was my idea. That was enough for Mother to shoot anything down."

He sighs. "Didn't matter, though. About the name. He's a good kid. Besides, I found this great tiger costume in a catalog and ordered it for him for Halloween. I ordered it big, I hope it'll fit. He's growing pretty fast." Pause. "Uh, anyway. Tiger. Wouldn't be the same if his name was Reed."

Long swallow of coffee. The costume will arrive a week before Halloween, with a note in the package so that Deborah and Mother will know where it came from. It will probably be Marisa who sees to it that Calvin gets to wear it, though. If it fits.

(Cal may not know much about most things academia, but he can spot an appropriate Calvin and Hobbes reference a mile away.)

Sam strokes Cal's hair again, unsure of what to say. Not least because Calvin and Hobbes aren't as well known outside the US, unless you're as geeky as Sam's player is.

"I usually wind up calling people about twenty different things anyway. Probably because I've never kept the same name myself for long."

"Yeah, the, uh." Cal clears his throat, trying to knock the hollowness out of his tone. "The same name must get boring after a while."

He is more than ready for the change in topic.

"More that people wonder why they've known Luc Satise or Sebastien Teufel or Sam Linnfer for thirty years and he hasn't aged a day. Passport people especially tend to get curious about that sort of thing."

"Yeah," Cal says. "That makes sense. So I guess you have to move around a lot, too?" He sounds a little bit steadier with something to grab onto and pull himself up into lighter talk and less punishing thoughts.