Voicemail (IC Contact Post) OLD - at capcha

[abrightboy]

 This is Bright. Leave a message.

Comments

[abrightboy]

“No. Right. Yeah.”

It’s not you, he says, it’s me. He’s just looking for a friend. In truth, Malcolm is maybe very slightly relieved that he’s cleared that up. It is, in fact, definitely a relief and not a sinking lead weight in his chest. Definitely good to know and not a devastating disappointment.

“That’s. Understandable.”

Say something. Be cool.

“I… do you want us to… get a dessert or something?”

[conning]

“I’d like that,” Neal says quietly. God, he wants to fix this, he wants to make it better, but he can’t, not really.

But God he wants Malcolm to know it’s not because he wouldn’t.

“Her name…”

All I can see is the girl I fell for.

Remember her like that, Peter had said.

“Her name was Rebecca,” he finally says. “We… I was going to—-”

He laughs breathlessly, clearly pained. The only proposal he’s ever gotten to go through with was for part of a con. No matter how much he wanted it, how much Sara did, how much he really meant it—-they couldn’t be, in the end.

And then Rachel-not-Rebecca.

“We met when I was pulling a job at the gallery where she worked. She lost her job, because of what I did. I tried to make it better, somehow, and we ended up…”

He trails off again. “We we’re together almost a year, and she—”

Neal steels himself to say it. “She killed herself. That was almost two years ago, now, but. I can’t do it. Not yet. If I could, I would love trying with you.”

It’s true, at least, every part of it. No details, sure, but no lies.

[abrightboy]

“I’m sorry,” Malcolm says softly. “I… get it. I do. The last girl I went out with… I found out she was looking for information about one of my father’s victims. She said she really cared about me, but once my father didn’t have any more information about the person she was looking for, she left. They found her body in the river. The man she was investigating put an assassin on her. I do get it.”

[conning]

"I'm sorry too," Neal murmurs. It's so like Rachel he almost tells Malcolm the whole truth, but no. That requires too much of everything about his life. A half-laugh. "That never seems like enough, does it? 'I'm sorry'?"

[abrightboy]

“No,” he admits.

He hadn’t been able to stop there.

“I would… still like to hang out some time. If. That’s okay.”

[conning]

Neal's tone lightens slightly. "If that's on the table still, I'll happily take it."

[abrightboy]

“That’ll always be on the table,” he says quietly.

[conning]

"Well... I should go get groceries, if I'm going to have everything ready for tomorrow."

A pause, then: "It was good talking to you. I mean that. I like talking to you."

[abrightboy]

Right. He has to go. Malcolm’s making things awkward.

But then he says that.

The first two sounds that come out of his mouth aren’t words. He swallows and takes a breath and tries again.

“I’m glad you called. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says evenly, because maintaining a careful control is what’s making the sounds be shaped like words.

[conning]

"You can call too," Neal reiterates, for the sake of... not making things awkward. For the sake of that and nothing more. "If you wanted to. Either way, I'll see you tomorrow."

He hangs up, staring at the phone a moment, seized with the desire to throw it off the roof and into the street.

It seems safer than keeping it. Safer than checking the number every time it rings.

Shit.