Voicemail (IC Contact Post) OLD - at capcha

[abrightboy]

 This is Bright. Leave a message.

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[abrightboy]

I'm not in trouble; he's just a bit prickly.

[ukan]

[A laugh] Sounds kinky when you put it that way.

[abrightboy]

It’s usually awkward, actually.

[ukan]

What, hobbies or romance?

[abrightboy]

Romance. I’m mostly good at my hobbies.

[ukan]

I was all thumbs at it too. Mostly because I was always trying to use my partners and people, apparently, don't like that either.

[abrightboy]

I’ve been used. I was willing to live with it, but she got what she wanted and left.

[ukan]

I'm sorry. [Both that he was used and abandoned, and that he was willing to just live with it.]

What was it that made it worth living with?

[abrightboy]

…She was a good person and I’m not someone that… I have problems that put people off.

[conning]

“What did you want to give her, by helping her?”

He puts away the cleaned brushes, and then just… lingers in front of their paintings, not wanting to leave the gazebo yet. “What did it bring you?”

[ukan]

Everyone does, though, don't they? What's different about you?

[abrightboy]

I'm worse.

[ukan]

Worse how? I doubt you're worse than I am. Or some of our inmates

[abrightboy]

Well. Not 'worse' as in 'more evil' so much as 'worse' as in 'more annoying to live with'.

[abrightboy]

"I just wanted to give her a way out," Malcolm tells him. "What does this have to do with painting?"

[conning]

“I don’t know,” he says tiredly. He closes his eyes, wondering if he lets himself die if Malcolm will hold off on bringing him back again. He’s so tired. “Because they’re feds and I’m a con man. Because I’ve lied to them in the past, because I don’t tell them everything, I don’t know.”

[abrightboy]

"But you said they were your family," Malcolm points out.

He absolutely won't let you stay dead, Neal. Please.

"Do you think that was fair of them?"

[ukan]

[He grins] I ate my husband's favorite pair of boots when he wouldn't weed the garden. You can't be worse than that.

Maybe the problem was her.

[conning]

“No,” he says, though there’s a defeated undertone to the word.

Is he still bleeding? He’s pretty sure the dampness at his ankle is new, or at least new to the last few minutes. It’s warm, anyway, and presses close to his skin like it’s being held there by a bandage.

[abrightboy]

"How does that make you feel?" Malcolm asks.

[conning]

“Tired,” he says.

It’s honest enough. It’s the tip of the iceberg, a veneer that shallowly hides so much more. The conversation he overheard between Jones and Peter, the latter advising Jones against volunteering to be his handler, plays in Neal’s head with a thousand other dialogues as a backing chorus. His eyes burn, and and he gasps in pain as a fresh injury starts to form in the spot where Agent Seigel got shot, blood blossoming against Neal’s shirt as it feels like someone with very sharp nails is digging their thumbs down into his skin.

[abrightboy]

“What’s this?” Malcolm asks, putting pressure on it with both hands, unable to school his voice into something less shrill and panicked. “What’s this from?”

[conning]

He gasps in pain, meeting Malcolm’s eyes with fear and helplessness of his own. “My handler. Got shot, my fault.”

He gasps again, this time for air. “Trying to protect Peter. Couldn’t tell anyone what happened.”

[conning]

“Why though? Why did you want to give her that?”

He realizes he’s not just asking for the sake of the point he’s trying to make and stops himself. “It has to do with art. With the reason anyone created or destroys anything.”

He gestures toward their easels. Malcolm’s still life, Neal’s outlined replica. “You want to reach something. Someone. Share or explore or figure something out. Just because you’ve never channeled it with paint and paper doesn’t mean you don’t have an artist’s heart.”

[abrightboy]

“Because I couldn’t give it to the girl in the box,” he finally blurts out. “That’s why. Or any of the ones before her. Or so many after her. There’s no noble reason for what I do, Neal. It’s a compulsion to claw back my failures. That’s it. The need to just… give one person a chance at life for all the lives I couldn’t save.”