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[abrightboy]

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[abrightboy]

Malcolm's brow creases. "I'm not going to kill you," he says. "But I still have some of that tea that you brought the other day."

YOU SAW NOTHING

[conning]

“Why does it hurt this much?”

Tea, tea. Tea?

“Refresh my memory?” he manages, before squeezing his eyes shut tight.

[abrightboy]

“You brought tea over when I invited you to talk about my…. wolf thing,” Malcolm reminds him. “I have an ice pack, if that would help.” Lies. It’s a pack of frozen peas.

[conning]

“I’ll try it,” Neal whispers, remembering a moment later what the ice pack probably is. He manages a tiny laugh, and tries not to be too embarrassed at the soft whimper that follows. “Wolf. How is the wolf? How’s that…”

It’s almost as hard to focus as before only now it’s not fun.

“Wait… is—this is your cabin.”

[abrightboy]

“I haven’t really… wolfed much. I argued with Raylan really badly after Lark disappeared and… I don’t know. I just. Haven’t been feeling it so much. Just. With Will a little bit. It’s kind of fun to play with his dogs in the Enclosure.”

He’s moving around while he talks, putting the kettle on, taking the tea and cups down.

He looks over at the next question. “Um. Yes. Is… that okay? You were really out of it. It didn’t seem like a good idea to just dump you in your cabin.”

[conning]

“No, it’s fine, I just… figured if Will was living here you probably wouldn’t want someone couch surfing.”

He manages to get through all of that with only two words tightening sharply at bursts of pain.

[abrightboy]

“Will doesn’t stay here all the time,” Malcolm tells him. He glances over. “And he knows how important your friendship is to me,” he adds as he carefully scoops tea into a diffuser.

[conning]

He tries to smile, but it twists into a grimace. "No painkillers left?"

[abrightboy]

"They didn't give me any more. They said you can't have more." He looks over. "You had a lot. I can teach you a technique to breathe through the pain, if you want."

[conning]

He resists the urge to point out that maybe they gave him a lot for a reason, squeezing his eyes shut instead. "Yeah. Sure. Please."

[abrightboy]

Oh, they definitely did and he doesn't know if they're now conserving supplies or if they're worried about dependency or what, but they didn't give him any to keep the high going.

Malcolm walks over and leans over the back of the couch. "Take a deep breath in through your nose and push it out through your mouth, but as you breath out, picture that breath going through wherever the pain is. It's weird but it works."

[conning]

He also resists the urge to say that sounds stupid. He knows that's the pain talking, and he doesn't want his first conversation with Malcolm in almost a year to be marred by bad temper that Malcolm did absolutely nothing to deserve.

Neal tries. It takes a little bit. He struggles, loses focus more than once, remembers in a weird far-off way how Malcolm started teaching him the breathing exercises for anxiety.

It's a little bit easier after that.

He's still making the occasional soft sound of pain.

"I like the lethargy and nausea better," Neal manages, half-joking.

[abrightboy]

"Yeah. Everyone does. That's why drug addiction is a Thing," Malcolm points out, folding his arms on the back of the couch, like he's settled in for a good lean, at least until the kettle whistles.

[conning]

Neal grimaces again, remembering Kendall's oblique request for drugs. "Yeah. I'll take the temporary throes of agony."

He'll stop whining about it, anyway.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm gives him a smile and reaches over the back of the couch to gingerly pat his shoulder.

“Probably for the best.” He goes back over to the kitchen island to work on the tea. “Why were you in the dining hall anyway? You know I would have been happy to see you. I would have made you breakfast. …If you like tea and…. I might still have a couple apples? Okay. I answered my own question. We could have had very nice coffee, though!”

[conning]

Neal gives a wheezy little laugh, then takes a second to gather his breath again. "I figured I'd get coffee and something to eat with Shaw and Eiffel, then I could come pick up George and see you, catch up. Wash the taste of dining hall coffee out of my mouth. Then see if I could track down Raylan and Norton, in either order. Maybe put a general hello up on the network in the afternoon."

[abrightboy]

"You called Eiffel before you called me?" Malcolm blurts out, then immediately tries to seem more casual than that. "I didn't realize you guys were so close," he says, forcing lightness into his tone that definitely sounds forced.

[conning]

Neal has an odd moment of vertigo, deja vu. He can't pin down why but he knows there's a reason. "Uh--our walkie talkies. Mine was sitting on the kitchen table, so I picked it up on my way out the door."

[abrightboy]

“…Walkie talkies?” Malcolm echoes. “What walkie talkies?”

[conning]

He has to pause, to breathe, try to push the air through the place that hurts, even though he's still half-hung-up on what that means physically or metaphysically. "Eiffel and Shaw had them after those monsters got turned loose, the time Shaw and I both died. I found out about them a little bit before I went home, and Eiffel made me one."

[abrightboy]

“Oh. So it’s like…. A club,” Malcolm surmises with a too forced casual shrug of his shoulder. “With Eiffel.”

[conning]

Neal grunts softly. "Less a club, more a... triad of dysfunctional idiots whose dysfunctions are all somehow complimentary."

The length of the sentence makes him wheeze a little. He frowns, lifting one arm to try and tug at Malcolm's sleeve if he's come back within reach. "What's wrong?"

[abrightboy]

“Nothing is really wrong. Per se. I’m not the boss of who your friends are. It’s just… I know it doesn’t matter to anyone, what Eiffel said to me at the meeting. I just… didn’t realize it really… doesn’t matter. To anyone. Like. Everything is just. Fine. For him. Everything just goes on like it never happened and he’s fine and you’re all fine with it and you’re getting breakfast before I even know you’re back and that’s it. I live with the wounds and nobody cares. Like after Lestat. Like after Laura. If you don’t have physical marks on your body, then get over it. That’s the deal, right?” He shrugs again and this time it’s more like a desperate effort to shrug something off. “I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. But that’s my problem, not your problem. Or his problem. Or their problem.”

[conning]

Neal sits up, slowly, expression twisted into concentration as he gets vertical enough to try and catch Malcolm's wrist. "I'm not fine with it."

He leans heavily against the back of the couch, taking a second to breathe through what feels like a stitch in his side. "I wasn't okay when Lestat hurt you, I had to talk myself out of sending flowers to Kikimora twice, and I went to Eiffel the day of the meeting and told him I wanted him to apologize to you. He said he wouldn't. I've been... trying to work on him. On and off. You both care so much, I know if you had a chance to talk you'd like each other."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm doesn’t pull out of his grasp, but he does look concerned for a moment when Neal’s hand shoots out, glancing over him to make sure he didn’t hurt himself.

“I was trying to make friends with him before that. We talked a few times. I wanted to be friends. And his sum takeaway from all of our conversations to that point was that. Did he tell you why he didn’t want to apologize?”