if_inconvenient | (no subject)

"Do let me know how it goes."

"I'll report in right away," Cal promises.

"You can call me through Jarvis."

"I'll tell him you said that."

Jarvis, that is. Not Tony.

"How do you think I managed to call you from a New York hotel and yet appear to be speaking from home?"

There is a longish pause.

"I hadn't really thought about that," Cal admits. "I keep forgetting you don't actually have a cellphone."

"I will probably get around to obtaining one someday."

"They are pretty convenient," Cal says. "For everyone."

What if he wants to call Sherlock while Sherlock is nowhere near a phone? What happens then?

Then Sherlock probably does not want to be called.

"I make no promises about how often I would carry it."

What, it's all about Sherlock now?

"I think that would be kinda missing the point."

"It is a matter of priorities. I would not like to be interrupted by a phone call while breaking into your house, for example."

"There's this cool new thing now where you can put your phone on silent," Cal says. Helpfully.

"An egregious misnomer. They are still audible from twenty feet away."

"I said silent," Cal says, "not vibrate."

He will concede that vibrating phones are still loud.

"At which point I may as well leave it at home."

"Not if you're only turning it off for a little while," Cal says, with great patience.

"With conversations like this to look forward to, I am beginning to wonder why I would ever turn it back on," he teases.

"Hey," Cal says, "you called me."

"Apparently so that we could spend half an hour annoying each other."

"That's what friends do," Cal says solemnly.

Then he laughs.

So does Sherlock.

Which is when Peter Beardsley steps out onto the porch.

"Oh," Cal says into the phone, "hang on a sec."

He moves it down to his shoulder and gives Peter an expectant look.

"I've been informed," Peter says, "that Obadiah Stane is readying a flight to Sunnydale. It should land early tomorrow morning."

Technically, the order to track Stane was given by Mrs Chandler, and a month ago, she would have been the one he'd be taking the information to. But things are different now, and he's known from the start that it's really Cal Chandler to whom Obadiah Stane's presence in Sunnydale is relevant, anyway.

Cal frowns.

"Sherlock's in New York," he tells Peter. "He just left today. That's a hell of a coincidence."

(Indeed it is.)