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[abrightboy]

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[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?"

[conning]

He shrugs, bending to pick George up. "Can't that be your deal? He cures them?"

[abrightboy]

"I mean... I guess? But... wouldn't that be a waste of a wish?" Who would that help besides Malcolm?

[conning]

Neal frowns. "Is there another way to cure them?"

[abrightboy]

"Cure them? No, of course not," Malcolm tells him. "I mean, the intensity waxes and wanes but they'll always be there."

[conning]

"So how is that a waste of a wish?" He's confused, Malcolm.

[abrightboy]

"It would only help me. How is it not a waste of a wish when you can use it to help lots of people? He can grant basically anything. In the entire universe," Malcolm points out.

[conning]

His brows knit a little. “Like a new life? A changed one? A world that’s completely different, good and fair?”

Neal gestures at nothing in particular, no judgment in his tone. “You haven’t asked for any of that. And you don’t seem to think it’s even a good idea every time. And you can get more than one deal with more than one graduate, can’t you? Why not choose something that makes your life better in a way no one else can?”

[abrightboy]

"Maybe if I graduate two or three people first, and use those wishes for something... good that I think of. Then we'll see. I can't just... throw it away on something nobody else will even notice," Malcolm points out.