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[abrightboy]

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[conning]

"Yeah. I think it must be." He opens his eyes to search Malcolm's face, anxiety turning his stomach. "Are you sure... you feel okay? Normal?"

[abrightboy]

Malcolm blinks at him and then starts almost frantically looking him over.

"Why? Do you feel sick? Are you hurt?"

[conning]

Neal shakes his head, an insistent negative, even though he can feel the new fears Malcolm holds swelling. Dimmer, at least. Like it’s fading, like his inner eyes are adjusting to the light of consciousness or something.

“I felt… I thought I felt something I shouldn’t have been able to feel. But it’s going away. It’s going away, I’m fine.”

[abrightboy]

"...What do you mean? What did you feel?" Malcolm asks, his face creased with concern.

[conning]

He almost lies. Says he’s not sure. Says it was paranoia, or confusion, or the remnants of a dream.

But the risks posed by silence about something like this are real. He’s not willing to put Malcolm’s safety on the line. “Maybe it was something left by the nightmares. I was imagining it. But. I could feel what you were feeling. Before you woke up. All the…”

He shakes his head, realizing for the first time that those were the things Malcolm was feeling. As wrapped up in delight as the horror was, the latter was still there.

Neal presses a hand against Malcolm’s cheek. “All of it. Are you really okay?”

[abrightboy]

"I'm always okay in the morning," Malcolm tells him. "You're not used to them. Not like I am. It was probably just..." He wants there to be a normal psychological explanation but his voice trails off because Neal has already said it wasn't that and he isn't going to serve their relationship by not listening to him. "You could really feel my feelings? How?"

[conning]

Neal shakes his head, deeply unsettled. “I’m not sure. But I could.”

He likes the next part of what he says even less, but forces himself to look Malcolm in the eyes when he does. “But it wasn’t just that I felt them. They felt good, on top of the awful. And it wasn’t just you. I could feel other people, around us, in their apartments. Not as easily. Not as strong. But…”

His stomach gives a little flutter as he remembers the sensation. “It was like having wet hands all over my mind. But I should have hated it and didn’t.”

[abrightboy]

"What..." Malcolm swallows hard, because he thinks he knows the answer but he doesn't want it to be the answer. "What do you think it was?"

[conning]

Neal can’t make himself say it, because he’s pretty sure he knows the answer, too.

“I didn’t do anything, though.” It’s a whisper. “I didn’t say anything or agree to anything or ask for anything…”

[abrightboy]

"Ask for anything from who?" Malcolm asks with concern.

[conning]

“Nothing,” Neal says. But he remembers that sense of a voice, so quiet it felt almost like him. Almost. He shivers. “Something. It was—I was in a dream with someone, someone who was using it to scare me, or trying to.”

He’s not going to rat Luka out. Not when he has so little information. “I could tell, and then I thought… I could give him a taste of it himself.”

[abrightboy]

"So... it was someone else's... thing," Malcolm clarifies. "And it's... it's fading now?"

[conning]

“Yeah.” Neal shivers and shifts closer to Malcolm. “But I turned it on him. The dream. I shifted it to feed on his fear instead of mine.”

Protected himself. Saved himself. Except he’d saved himself in the situation with John, too, and he hadn’t needed fear to do it.

[abrightboy]

"Well... that's like.... that's like that lucid dreaming stuff ADI made us learn," Malcolm points out. "Not. Something. Just. What they said to do." Right? Is that right? That has to be right.

[conning]

"Yeah." Neal doesn't sound remotely certain. "Yeah, you're right. It is that."

He shivers. "Maybe it's all just getting to me again."

A pause, a long one, but one that has words hanging on the edge of it. Neal finally sits up again, looking down at Malcolm with tension in his eyes. "What if it's not nothing, though? What if it's... Something."

Capital S.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm meets his gaze, holds it, holds his hand.

"If it's something, then you have to choose not to listen to it," he says grimly.

[conning]

He hangs on to Malcolm's hand, thoughts straying to Jeff. He didn't show up here that lost. He has a much firmer foundation, he thinks. He hopes. He doesn't even have any proof that Jeff is what he suspects, but...

Neal licks his lips, squeezes his eyes shut. "Yeah. Yeah."

He looks at Malcolm again. "I suppose it won't exactly... announce it's trying to tempt me or something, though."

[abrightboy]

“No, it won’t. But it’s voice isn’t yours. You have to learn what it sounds like,” Malcolm explains.

[conning]

Neal half-laughs. “How do you have answers for this? You make it sound normal. Easy.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm frowns faintly, like he didn’t realize Neal didn’t know.

“I’ve been doing it for most of my life.”

[conning]

Neal gives him a blank, confused look. There’s something he feels like he should be putting together here. Something obvious. But he can’t figure out what it is.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looks down at Neal’s knee.

“He’s always there. In my head. His voice. I hear him all the time. There’s a reason he’s in every walking nightmare I’ve had in this place. He’s always right there. I just… choose not to listen to him.” He chances a look at Neal’s face. “I just don’t listen to him.”

[conning]

"Oh." It clicks then. Of course. It makes perfect sense. Neal runs a hand up and down Malcolm's back, both for the other man's comfort and his own. "...How can anyone not think you're the strongest person they've ever met?"

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looks surprised by that assessment, opens his mouth, closes it, then finally shrugs a shoulder.

“I guess I come across as a bit of a basketcase.”

Because he’s just the kind of basketcase who will give his most honest and considered answer to a rhetorical question.

“I can help you. If you think you’re hearing it.”

[conning]

"I don't know," Neal admits. "I don't feel anything right now. But in the dream, it was..."

He shivers. "It was like something... knew. It knew what to say. How to say it."