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[abrightboy]

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[conning]

Neal sighs, content and comfortable even if there’s still that pervasive offness under his skin. “I love your laugh.”

A little nip of a kiss. “I guess we have to get up at some point.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looks it him, blinking blankly.

"What for?"

[conning]

Neal pauses, considering. “I guess. To do things?”

[abrightboy]

"Like what?" Malcolm asks.

[conning]

“Like…” He can’t think of anything. Nothing pressing, anyway. Nothing necessary. “The… dishes…?”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looks at the toast plate, then at Neal.

"The dish?"

[conning]

He pauses, considering, then says with the tone of confusion and enlightenment, "I don't think I'm very good at not doing things."

[abrightboy]

"Well you're still recovering from a vicious assault, so please try," Malcolm says. Look. He's staying here in the bed. If he can do it, you can do it, Neal.

[conning]

"Assault?" That's... he hadn't thought of it like that. He still can't get his head around it, exactly.

It was supernatural manipulation, sure, something unreal and impossible and too strange for the label of assault to fit. It's another version of the same thing he said downstairs--losing his legs in an accident would be one thing, yeah. That would be normal. Being trapped in the body of an animal is something else, a different kind of loss, and he hasn't got any kind of mental model for handling it. He should be okay, because there's nothing that experience readily compares to.

Or something like that.

He snuggles closer to Malcolm again, nosing gently against him, kissing him wherever he can reach bare skin. Not provocative, really, just wanting to touch him. "I guess. Yeah."

[abrightboy]

That’s better.

“Do you want to put your ring back on your finger or not yet?” Still hanging around his neck, it wasn’t lost on Malcolm that Neal knew it was important, even while senseless.

[conning]

One hand immediately goes to the ring, now snug against the base of his throat, still strung on Tim's shoelace.

He smiles, relieved to feel it under his fingers even though he already knew it was there. "...Put it on for me?"

[abrightboy]

Malcolm shifts so he can see what he’s doing as he carefully unties it, leaning across Neal to drop the shoelace on the nightstand before taking the ring and sliding it onto his finger.

[conning]

He exhales in relief as Malcolm slides it into place, wrapping his hand around the other man’s fingers before he can draw away. It feels a little loose, the ring, but nothing feels right. It’s probably his imagination.

“It was the one thing I remembered by the end. It was important. That was the only me thing I remembered.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm smiles, squeezing his fingers back.

“You never bit me, either.”

[conning]

Neal blinks, surprised. “I didn’t, did I.”

He shivers, skin crawling at the memory of what having that mind was like, how crowded it got before it started getting quieter in a way that scared him. “If I had changed, completely changed…”

He doesn’t really have an ending to that question.

[abrightboy]

“You didn’t,” Malcolm points out.

[conning]

"I know, but if I had." What is he even asking? He presses himself close against Malcolm, resting his face in the curve of the other man's neck, inhaling the smell of him, wondering if all the details he can smell will fade now that he's got his body back. "If I had. What would you have done?"

A whispy little laugh that doesn’t have much humor. What’s there is forced. “Built me a backyard enclosure, or a terrarium?”

[abrightboy]

“…You don’t keep weasels in a terrarium.” Malcolm fidgets in irritation. “Why are you pushing this? Did I do something wrong? Is it because I made you sit in my lap on the bus? You kept getting in fights with John. I didn’t think you minded.”

[conning]

Neal withdraws, slightly, surprised by the reaction and feeling struck. “No, I just.”

He stops himself. “I’m sorry.”

He’s not entirely sure what he’s apologizing for.

[abrightboy]

“Well, I was never going to leave you in a dumpster or something, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Malcolm tells him.

He hasn’t actually slept since Neal transformed. He’s been keeping watch over him, looking for sign he was transforming, maybe hoping for those signs.

Maybe in some wee hour, he wondered if Ainsley is really gone. Maybe she’s a squirrel in a tree in Dogtown. Maybe Tim and Gil don’t remember their missing time because they were a different type of mammal. Maybe Tim was in IT all along but he was a mouse in the walls.

Maybe Neal was leaving him and he promised he wouldn’t.

Maybe he’d be disappeared right now if Malcolm hadn’t seen the transformation and clawed him back.

“Is that what you were asking?”

[conning]

If he weren’t so deep in his own feelings, he might be able to see where this is coming from. He probably could, in fact, knowing Malcolm as well as he does by now. But he’s caught in his own version of the same loop, except it’s strictly personal—his head is filled with nightmare scenarios of losing himself and then being literally lost.

He pulls back a little more, suddenly wanting to get up again for totally different reasons. “I didn’t think you would.”

He just wanted to hear Malcolm say it.

[abrightboy]

“Of course I never would!”

But Neal is inching away and the space between them is noticeable now.

Malcolm leans forward and presses the heels of his palm against his eyes, rocking faintly.

“You just got torn apart and put back together wrong and then torn apart and put back together the original way… and we dealt with all of that; why are we inventing problems we don’t even have?” He drops his hands into his lap and looks at Neal and he seems so very, very far away. He looks at his nails. “You’re going now?” he asks dully.

[conning]

He flinches at the rise in Malcolm’s voice, retreating into himself a little the way he always has when the people around him get angry. “Do you want me to?”

He’s not sure, and that’s a new feeling. Again, if he weren’t so caught up in his own emotional fallout—if he weren’t so close still to that sensation of being torn apart and put back together—he wouldn’t need to ask.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looks at him, a little pained.

“What’s the only thing I’ve ever asked you for?”

[conning]

Neal lets out a breath, blinking a few times to keep himself from crying. Then he wriggles closer against, pulling them together and pressing a kiss to the base of Malcolm’s throat. He slings one bare leg over Malcolm’s hip and tugs the blanket over them.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t… trying to invent problems. I can’t stop… thinking about how close it was. I wanted to hear what I already knew. I think.”