villagelogs | 026 》sweet troubled man are you giving or taking?

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026 》sweet troubled man are you giving or taking?

characters: Malcolm, Neal, Negan, Raylan, Doc
location: 1306 Phillips Dr
date/time: day 26 morning
content: the reset Playstation button was pressed
warnings: tbd

After the strangeness of the past two nights they were likely fully expecting to awaken in the same strange, different, not-so-new anymore places they found themselves in in the past two days.

Instead everything seems to have reset, again. The three permanent residents and two guests are back in 1306, exactly where they had been two nights ago. Malcolm was in his own room, Neal was in Doc's and Negan in Raylan's master bedroom. The two displaced cowboys are downstairs sharing one too-small couch, a night of drinking culminating in fighting over couch space and who gets to be the bigger spoon.

The fire in the fireplace had gone out and their Winter 2020 Collection of bespoke lanterns have vanished, but nothing else seems to be awry.

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"Maybe not. Maybe others will volunteer. But if it comes to him... forcing it.... Raylan and Doc won't stand for that," Malcolm told him. "He might have to be... isolated from everyone else, maybe."

"So he can starve?" The thought makes Neal sick, but so does the idea of the town playing ring-around-the-blood-bank. He sets his coffee down and leans forward, digging his hands into his hair. He finds himself breathing the way he had in the Gull, in-two-three, hold, slow exhale.

He hasn't felt this way since after the explosion that killed Kate. This wrung out, this overwhelmed. And he keeps showing it. It's so much worse than the moments where he would lose control in the white collar offices after Kate died, those brief stints of shaking hands and anxiety that swept through him and forced out anything but the memory of heat against his skin. He should be able to perform better than this. He should be better than this.

"At least this place gave us options."

"It didn't give me options," Malcolm said soberly. His medication was - arguably - at least as important as food to his ability to function. "Aren't vampires technically already dead?"

That's right. This place screwed Malcolm at least as much as it has Elijah. Neal closes his eyes.

"I guess. Hard to remember that when you're talking to one."

Quietly, he says, "I forgot. For a second. About..." He crosses his arms on the countertop, forces one more long, steady breath. Neal makes himself look at Malcolm, blue eyes meeting blue. "You have to be one of the strongest people I've ever met. I wouldn't be able to handle it. I'm barely handling it now."

It's a wrench to admit it, but Malcolm knows already that he's lying about being fine. There's no way to pretend when he's on the verge of falling apart already.

Malcolm reaches out, hesitates, then puts his hand over Neal's again and gave it a squeeze before withdrawing it.

He knew exactly how hard that was to admit. He knew what the 'I'm fine' defence mechanism was for and how bad things had to be to let it fall, even when everyone knew you were lying.

"I wasn't handling it either. There was a day, early on, when Raylan and I woke up in the lighthouse. Kind of... kind of like the way we woke up somewhere else the other day. I'd only just met him once, right after I arrived. For about ten minutes. He was tearing copper pipe out of one of the rundown houses. I asked him some questions. I wasn't... off my meds yet. I didn't realize what I was in for. Then, a few days later... suddenly we were in the lighthouse together and you couldn't reach it from here at that time. There was no door out. We went up."

He paused, shifting his weight, starting to unconsciously wring his hands.

"There was a moment when we were climbing the stairs up and up and up and I looked over the railing and I considered just.... falling. What if I just fell? It was just a thought. Maybe. But. Raylan noticed... something. He sort of... snapped me out of it. He wouldn't let me walk on the outside after that." He frowned faintly. "I think maybe he saved my life that day."

He thought about it, after Kate's death. The possibility of just not existing. It wasn't that he wanted to die, really. It was just that there didn't feel like a point to living. It was the same question, or a variation thereon: What if I just stopped?

This time Neal's the one who reaches out, putting his hand over Malcolm's. He doesn't draw away. "We're all getting home. And we're taking care of each other until we do it."

He draws in a breath, opens his mouth to speak. Stops. Tries again. This is hard. "You asked about my dad. Whether I'd looked for him. I have. Off and on. I thought he was dead. My mom told me he died like a hero, went out in a hail of bullets saving the day. My aunt told me the truth when I turned eighteen. That he wasn't a hero, and that he wasn't dead, as far as she knew."

It's not the whole truth, but Neal isn't remotely ready to share that.

"So... I've looked. I've tried to stop looking. But I always end up trying again."

Malcolm managed a small but genuine smile at Neal’s reassurance. He didn’t know if he believed it, but he was still buoyed by the sentiment and Neal’s earnest commitment to it.

His expression sobered as Neal continued, his eyes focused on the other man’s face.

“It’s hard to let go of that connection, even if you want to,” Malcolm acknowledged softly. “Even if he’s despicable. Even if he’s evil. Even if what he did makes you physically ill.” He pressed his lips together. “He’s still part of what you are.”

His grip on Malcolm's hands tightens a little, unintentionally, as the man speaks. His throat feels squeezed. It's hard to breathe, but not, ironically, because Neal can't stand what Malcolm's saying.

It's because Malcolm gets it.

"I tried to explain that to Peter. My partner at the FBI. He said he didn't believe it. That I wasn't my father." Neal makes a soft sound. Not a laugh. The bastard stepchild of a laugh, maybe. "I was my father's son before I even knew who he really was."

"You don't have to be like him to want to understand who you are," Malcolm told him. "Remember how I said I visited my father regularly after his trial? It wasn't because..." He frowned. "The first time I went, I told him that everyone said he was a monster. I asked him why he did those things. He said he didn't know, but we could figure it out together." He breathed out a rueful smile. "He knew how to hook me. I wanted to understand what he was and whether... whether I had to be that too. After he got arrested, the kids at school started calling me 'psycho'. Was I? Was I going to be? I had some concerns and he milked them." He leveled his gaze at Neal again. "It's normal to want to know."

"I don't. Know, I mean. What he did. I know he killed someone, that he was dirty, but I didn't want to hear the rest of it. Not then. I was a kid."

He was a kid, and Ellen had wanted to keep him from walking in to the police academy and immediately taking it from all sides. He clears his throat. "Lost the opportunity to find out, after that."

Again, not the whole truth, but a part of it. Neal gives Malcolm's hands a little squeeze and finally lets go. "And you're proving my point. About your own strength. Just saying."

Malcolm breathed out a laugh at himself, ducking his head as he smiled.

“I think I might just be stubborn,” he allowed. He looked at Neal again. “I wish I could help you get your answers,” he said earnestly. “I know what it’s like to want to know and just... be stymied at every turn.”

"A friend told me once that I had too much mystery in my life." Neal's smile is both fond and ironic. "I was stupid enough to disagree at the time, but. Mozzie's almost always right in the long run."

Well.

"Almost."

"Maybe that's not a bad thing, though. Some people love a mystery," he points out lightly.

He shifted to wrap his arms around Neal's shoulders and give him a squeeze before pulling back to where he'd been standing.

"Whoever wants to stick together with us is welcome," he said, gesturing around the house. "And we look after each other. The other day, I was in the clinic looking... around..." To no avail, sadly. "Snow fell off the roof and blocked the exit and trapped me in there. The cowboys found me after... I don't know. A few hours or so. They came looking. If something happens, we'd look for you too."

Neal lifts a hand in surprise, fingertips brushing Malcolm's arm, not shrugging out of the quick embrace or trying to fight it. Hanging on to Daisy is a lot of what got him through the past two days. That closeness, that touch. It's not normally what he does, real physical intimacy without the expectation of sex, but it's... maybe not so bad a thing. Every so often, anyway.

He tries to clear his throat around the knot forming there. "I'd like to stay." Neal hooks a smile at Malcolm. "Don't have to be a kumbaya kind of person to think the buddy system is worth a shot, I guess."

"Good," Malcolm says decisively. "Good; there's safety in numbers. And there's a lot to recommend fellowship for mental health concerns, too."

"It's funny. Before I joined the FBI I never would have agreed. About safety in numbers, I mean. The more people you have on a job, the bigger the risk. The bigger the take, probably, but that's the trade off." He makes a soft, amused sound. "The more you let people in, the more you have at stake."

Edited 2021-01-16 04:08 (UTC)

"That's always true," Malcolm conceded. "But the bigger risk always yields the possibility for the bigger benefit." Not just in dollars. He laughed self-consciously. "Not that I'm a risk-taker in that respect. When I tell you that you can trust the cowboys, you need to know that I barely trust anyone. I've been burned a lot. And I worry about them... not wanting to deal with..." He gestured to himself. "All these problems anymore and asking me to leave. I worry about it every day."

“When you’re a con, trust is the first thing to go. You lie, you cheat, you double-cross, and you expect it in return. Anything else, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, and you’re either looking down the barrel of a gun or taking a perp walk. It’s not personal.”

Neal shrugged almost helplessly. “It’s just what we are.”

He smiled faintly. “For what it’s worth... they don’t seem like the type to give up on a person. They’re like Peter that way.”

"They've said they won't. Give up on me." He flexed his right hand, open, closed, open, closed. "But I wonder if they really understand what they've gotten into. My bad days will be bad. And I don't know what will make them better or worse. This place creates... situations. Like the last couple of days. Isolation from support, no restraints. Still no meds. I don't think I even know what they're getting into."

Neal couldn’t help noticing the tic. Did Malcolm know he was doing it? Neal wasn’t sure if it was a good idea or a bad one, but he reached out, wrapping one of his hands around Malcolm’s. The guy seemed to take comfort in being touched. A lot more than Neal himself, anyway.

“None of us know what we’re into. The only thing we can do is take it a day at a time.”

Malcolm's gaze snapped to Neal's face when he took Malcolm's hand. Very few people would do something like that. He'd noticed the psychogenic tremor was often treated like it was a contagious physical ailment. People didn't just... touch that hand.

Malcolm didn't pull it away, either.

"One day at a time," he echoed. He nodded, taking a deep breath. "I have to go take a nap," he said. "I didn't... sleep. There. At the boarding house. Raylan said he'd sit with me."

Neal hung on a moment more before letting go. "I should probably do the same. Didn't sleep either. It was like whenever we started to pass out the noises or the shaking would start again."

First he needed to clear up the breakfast he hadn't eaten. "Good luck? Should I be wishing you luck?"

"If you're going to attempt sleep when I am, maybe I should be wishing you luck," Malcolm told him with a laugh. "It... usually takes three or so hours for me to come up screaming, if that helps. The cowboys try to wake me up quickly at that point. Pavor nocturnus is pretty inconsolable so... results vary, depending on the night." He pressed his lips together. "Though once I wake up, even on a normal night... I don't go back to sleep. So it's... only once a night. Just. Keep in mind it's just me and not... something scary in the dark."

"Well, there are a couple of people from the Gull I should check in with first. Maybe I'll wait until the watch has been figuratively called."

Neal drew a breath to speak, then let it go. A beat. "You can't help what happens when you sleep. They know that. I do too. Something you can't help..." He shrugged, one-shouldered. "As unpleasant as it might be, something you can't help isn't the sum total of who you are. I think it's pretty clear the cowboys know that."

He glanced down, then looked back at Malcolm's face like the little self-conscious tell didn't happen. "And besides, I heard what you were yelling the night I was here before we got taken. Even in your sleep, you were worrying about someone else."

Neal cleared his throat, picking up his fork and focusing on that instead of Malcolm. "You're a good man. Anyone can see it. ...And people who know how rare that is will go a long way to protect it."

Malcolm's face threatened to crumple for a moment, then he recovered it. He pressed his lips together and nodded, his own eyes dropping to the floor.

"Thank you," he said quietly. "Um." He looked at Neal. "There was this chasm and this..." he started, then stopped and waved it off, clearing his throat. "Anyway. I'm." He gestured towards the stairs. "But I'll see you later, right? Since you're staying?" he confirmed one more time.

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