milliways_bar | (no subject)

"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.

Oh, good: Cal doesn't know German. Not that Sam thought for a minute he would, but it's still a relief to be sure.

"Yeah. Mostly I stay in the same country for a few decades at a time, sometimes more, sometimes less. I stayed in Britain for quite a lot of the late Middle Ages - it was interesting. But just about anything would have been better than the Dark Ages."

He pulls a face. "Hideous few centuries. I don't think I spent more than a few minutes a century free of bloody mud. Mind you, the Middle Ages was when burning magic-users hit high popularity, so."

Sometimes Cal's ignorance is indeed bliss.

Cal pauses over that, not sure that the combination of immortality and execution by burning is in fact a more desirable topic after all.

"What year is it in your world now?" he asks instead. It's entirely possible he's heard the answer already, but it all tends to blur together. He remembers the more unusual ones like Esfir's and Teja's, but there have been so many dates all grouped together that he doesn't even try to keep track of those.

It doesn't usually matter: at worst, a German will pause and comment about what a funny name Sam has. But usually they're not aware he's also immortal and related to a bunch of gods.

"2004," he answers. Grin. "Too much technology for my liking. I preferred it when stuff was simpler. Interesting, though."

Edited 2008-09-23 21:31 (UTC)

"That's where everyone is from," Cal says. "Early 2000s. Everyone in this entire place, I swear. British and from the next millennium. I haven't met anyone from my decade yet."

He laughs. "Nah. You're just pitifully under-socialised. There's plenty of people around here who aren't even from Earth. Me included, strictly speaking."

Moving swiftly on... "You're from the nineties, right?"

He considers. "Mark Cohen was from the nineties, and American to boot - but I haven't seen him about for a long time. So was April - I think she was from his world, actually. There's Jack Harkness, maybe - he time-travelled, I'm not sure when he usually came in from - but he hasn't been around for over a year, maybe more. You're right, the nineties are woefully under-represented. Plenty of people not from the early twenty-first century, though."

Now there's a name that'll get Cal's attention and take his mind entirely off his woes.

"Time travel, huh? I thought so." Swallow of coffee. "You know, two other people have mistaken me for Jack Harkness since you did? And they work for him, they see him every day. He must be like my long-lost twin or something if even people who spend a lot of time around him think I'm him. Too bad he can't come in anymore, I would've liked to meet him."

"Two others? I take it one of them's Ianto, but I didn't know anyone else he worked with in was in the bar. But yes, you two really are damn near identical."

It's fair to say that Sam's managed the odd daydream of a Cal/Jack sandwich with himself in the middle.

"You would've liked him, yeah. Everybody did."

Sam totally doesn't miss him, and it totally doesn't show. Much.

Cal nods. "Yeah, Ianto," he says, and his pronunciation of the name is about as good as it's gonna get. "Other guy's Owen Harper. He's a doctor there."

Something about Sam's tone on that last makes him glance over. "Kinda got that impression from Ianto, yeah. Just my luck, I've got a twin out there somewhere and I'll probably never meet him."

"Oh. I've not met Owen."

He knows Ianto, though. If you know what I mean, etc.

"I hope you will. Jack and I... really got on."

Translation: it's a matter of continual surprise to both muns that they ever left the bedroom.

(But they were friends too.)

Right.

Cal's not the most perceptive guy in the multiverse, but he's not stupid, either.

"I see," he says neutrally, sipping his coffee while the inexpressive politician's mask slips into place. He's had less cause to use it recently than one might think, but it's one of those things that isn't easily forgotten.

Eyebrow.

He hates that goddamned expression. Hates it hard.

"Did you like Ianto?"

Blink of surprise through the mask at the change of topics.

"Yeah, he's a good guy." Wary pause. "Why?"

Cal has this feeling he doesn't really want to know the answer to this.

Sam laughs a little. "We're friends, that's all."

Hot sex? What hot sex?

Cal decides he is going to take this at face value. He can be very good at Not Thinking about things.

"Oh," he says, relaxing a little. "Yeah. I consider him a friend." His friendship with Ianto is, it occurs to him, the least complicated relationship he has here. There's definitely a lot of value in that.