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[abrightboy]

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[abrightboy]

“Neal!” Malcolm greets with enthusiasm as he arrives for his shift. “How are you doing?”

[conning]

Neal smiles up at him. It’s the first time they’ve seen each other directly since Sunshine’s arrival, though granted it’s only been a day. Or one sleep cycle. However time is measured in space. Neal keeps his hands busy petting his sleeping cat.

He feels weird. He’s not sure how to tell Malcolm he feels weird, or what kind of weird he feels. “Not bad. Glad to not have bled out this time around.”

[abrightboy]

He gestures for Neal to precede him into the office.

“But we were still vulnerable,” Malcolm points out. “How do you feel about that?”

[conning]

Neal unfolds from his position on the floor, dislodging a disgruntled George, who stays close as they go into the office. Once the door is closed Neal lets George off the leash.

“I don’t know,” he says, and hates the words as much as he always has. Not knowing things is embarrassing at the best of times and dangerous at the worst. “I don’t remember all of it. I don’t remember the times I was… older. Not as more than a feeling or a couple of memories.”

[abrightboy]

“You were happy,” Malcolm supplies. “At ease.”

[conning]

He watches George explore for a few silent seconds, trying to sort through his thoughts. “Why is that the one I can’t remember? The one where I’m happy? Because it hasn’t happened? Because it can’t?”

[abrightboy]

“Obviously it can. At some point it does. But maybe it’s dangerous to have specific knowledge about your own future.” Malcolm fiddles with his pencil. “I didn’t have a future self as far as I know. Do you think that means I don’t have one?”

[conning]

“Maybe it’s because you don’t want to leave yet. There’s no… predictable outcome for you, because you haven’t resolved on going back.”

Neal wanders the room, restless, aimless. “You’ll have a favor from the Admiral when you do, right? You can choose any future you want.”

[abrightboy]

“I didn’t ask for anything,” Malcolm admits. “I’ve never had a… a view of the future beyond the next case. I just… came here to help people. I don’t know… I don’t have anything beyond that.”

He gives Neal a tight smile.

“You seemed to really have a life that you loved.”

[conning]

“Did I?” He looks at Malcolm. “It wasn’t real. It was something this place made for me. I’m dead. If I don’t graduate, I don’t have a future either.”

That’s about when it registers that Malcolm is upset. Neal isn’t sure about what, there are too many possibilities. But he came here for himself without even considering that Malcolm might be upset, too. A little tease of shame wriggles in the pit of his stomach. “I wish we’d known each other as kids. I think we would have been friends.”

[abrightboy]

“You’ll graduate,” Malcolm says confidently. “And that’s what’s waiting for you. Incentive when my nattering doesn’t do it,” Malcolm says with a self-deprecating laugh.

He looks up at Neal’s next comment with genuine surprise that he lacks the guile to mask.

“Really? I didn’t really… have friends at school. Well, one time but… only for a little while.” He seems to consider that. “You think you would have liked me?”

[conning]

“I know I would have.” He smiles a little. “I didn’t really have friends either. I had people I liked, some people who liked me who I’d go and play with, but I never let anyone come to my house. Eventually people stopped asking me to theirs. I was weird. Charming, smart, good to bum homework answers from, but weird.”

Weird and poor, though that was a little less relevant in that neighborhood.

[abrightboy]

"I was just weird. The serial killer's weird son who would probably be a serial killer too," Malcolm tells him. "I could tell they were watching for some indication. I could tell by the way they looked at me. Even my mother watched me like that for a while."

[conning]

“You’re one of the kindest people I’ve ever met.” Neal’s tone is genuine surprise. “Which might not help with little kids, but…”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm smiles at his desk.

“Or teenagers. Or most adults.” He looks up. “She let me have pets, for a little while. To see if I… did things to them, I found out later. But I never did. Then one of them ate my sister’s gerbil, like I told you, and she made me get rid of them.”

[conning]

"That's terrible," Neal says softly. All of it, but the idea of Malcolm's mother giving him animals just to see if he hurt them and then taking that companionship away when her litmus test was finished in particular.

[abrightboy]

“She doesn’t like my parakeet either,” he says with a shrug. That’s just how Mother is. He looks at Neal. “Honestly there’s nothing not to like about a parakeet.”

[conning]

Neal's lips pinch into a little frown and he looks down at George, who's come back to lean against his leg. Not rubbing against him, really, just leaning there like a little weirdo. He smiles, reaching down to pet him as a pang of something guilty he doesn't want to think about tugs at him.

"Have you always liked birds?"

[abrightboy]

“I didn’t know I did,” he admits. “When I lived in DC, my therapist suggested a support animal, to keep me company. I think she had, like, a dog or cat in mind. Maybe a guinea pig. But I saw her when I went to the pet store. I liked the noise she made,” he says, smiling faintly at the memory.

[conning]

Neal smiles in response, a bit of the Odyssey springing to mind. “Come hither, as thou farest, renowned Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans,” Neal murmurs, repeating the first line of the Sirens’ song. He pauses.

“Did you get her to have someone to come home to?”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm blinks at him because he hadn’t thought of that, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t so.

“…I …guess? I mean. I guess that’s how it turned out, at least. I’ve had to live alone for a long time. I scream in my sleep.”

[conning]

Neal blinks in surprise. He can't remember Malcolm mentioning that before. "That's... like, on a regular basis?"

[abrightboy]

"Yeah. I have night terrors almost every night." Thankfully, the Barge is constructed so it doesn't bother his neighbours. Only Raylan has seen it. He doesn't usually bring it up, but he's not really about actively hiding things anymore either. He left that behind with his FBI badge. "Like. Inconsolable parasomnias."

[conning]

He mentally translates the Latin, adding it to “night terrors” and wincing at the mental result.

“Can’t… can’t the Admiral stop them?”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looks at him blankly and raises his eyebrows.

"...What do you mean?"