abrightboy | No One's Born Broken

Malcolm fell asleep easily as his anti-anxiety medication kicked in and Raylan's warmth comforted him. He slept heavily.

Just before 9:30, the door of the apartment opened and six inch stilettos clicked across the hardwood floor. Jessica Whitly glanced towards the bed to ensure it was occupied, but paid it little mind as she moved to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

The attempts to not fall into a deep sleep had been lost and Raylan was dead to the world, the only explanation for him not hearing the door close, but the sharp clicks were more than foreign enough to jolt the Marshal out of his sleep with sharp inhale. He moved out of instinct and on reaction, easily snagging his service weapon from it's holster from his position on his back as he popped up, barrel trained on..

He blinked blurrily, gun lowering slowly. "Jessica?"

"Raylan," she gasped, a little startled, if the fluttering hand at her chest and her wide eyes were any indication. "You won't be needing that, I assure you," she told him in the overly gracious tone she used to cover for when she wasn't feeling as confident as she wanted to sound. She busied her hands with a teapot and a diffuser and some cups. "I apologize; I didn't know you were here. But the nurses at the hospital this morning told me my son was there late and I thought I should check on him."

Letting out a breath, his gun hand sagged against the bed as he rubbed his eyes, glanced at Malcolm and turned his legs off the bed to tuck his gun back into its place.

"'Course. Sorry, I-" He wasn't sure it mattered. Taking another breath, he pushed up to his feet, one hand trying in vain to tame the wild salt and pepper hair and failing as he padded closer so they weren't being louder and risking waking Malcolm up. He needed all the sleep he could get.

"I had to barter him into leaving but he took his meds and there's jello for him to eat when he gets up. Didn't expect to have anyone walkin' in this mornin'." His affable nature meant he wasn't too bothered by it; this wasn't his house, after all, and Jessica and Malcolm had been doing this for years.

She glanced at the jello cups on the counter and rolled her eyes a little.

"I suppose jello is a step up from licorice," she conceded. She looked Raylan over. "So you sleep with a gun under your pillow? Is that a Kentucky thing or a Marshal thing?" she asked conversationally.

He bobbed his eyebrows in response. They were working on eggs and those took effort neither of them had after last night.

"Next to the bed, but yeah. Marshal thing. Kinda a Kentucky thing too, but only when you're there." He checked his watch and rubbed his eyes again. "A downfall of never really bein' off duty." He finally looked over at her properly, meeting her eye.

"I take it you're not getting charged then, bein' here and all. What'd they say, the NYPD?"

She looked over at him.

"He told you all about that, did he? Well, of course he did. He called you last night and asked you to come here?"

She shrugged a shoulder.

"They haven't charged me yet, but Gil recommends getting a high powered defense attorney. He says they may yet press first degree murder charges if he dies." She scoffed. "Can you imagine? Like killing Martin Whitly isn't a public service the state should have performed in 1998."

"Called me, but I came up on my own." Malcolm needed him. Or he needed to make sure Malcolm was okay, they were both interchangeable as far as he was concerned.

Raylan couldn't help but breathe a little chuckle at her biting remark towards Martin, bobbing his eyebrows again. "Won't hear me arguin' that one. You're not in cuffs for the stabbing itself, so that's promising. Somehow I think a lady like you has high powered attorneys on speed dial." He found it harder and harder to doubt Gil when the man was involved; if she wasn't in cuffs, they were doing their job and gathering the proof that Jessica was coerced.

"Maloclm's worried about you." In case she wasn't aware.

She glanced over to where Malcolm slept, his face lacking the crease of anxiety he almost perpetually wore.

"He wants to take the blame," she said softly. ”He always wants to save other people instead of looking after himself." She looked at Raylan. "If he's convicted even of manslaughter, he'll never be able to work in law enforcement again. And I hate him working in law enforcement, but..." She sighed and glanced at him again. "He loves it. I can't let him throw it away over this. The kidnapper ordered me to stab Martin but... do you know he confessed that he took Malcolm on a camping trip when he was ten intending to kill him? My baby. His own child. Ten years old. I'd stab him again, given the chance," she spat.

"I'm not arguin' that you should," Raylan said softly as he finally moved from his hip lean on the counter to starting some of the French Press coffee. He'd asked Malcolm how to do it before, but this was the first chance he'd gotten to make coffee for Malcolm.

"He doesn't have a pretty story." He knew and doubted that Jessica knew all of what that attempt by Martin way back when really lead to. She didn't need to know, so he wasn't going to be the one to fill in those blanks. "But I can promise you that when he's with me, I'll be lookin' after him. And you're not goin' to jail," he said with a pull of his smile. "Everythin' that's wrapped up in this? Too many faults lie on the guy who forced you into it. Just cry a little at the Judge, you'll get 'em wrapped around your finger in no time."

"Just when I think that slime can't sink any lower, he finds a way to seep into the ground," she muttered. She looked at Raylan. "You think that would work? I suppose, at the very least, I should keep my opinions on what sort of garden implement castration Martin Whitly deserves to myself, right?" she mentioned with a sweet smile.

She sighed again and looked at Raylan. "You should have seen him when he was a little boy. He was so sweet and kind and sharp. You had to be careful though," she noted with a smile, wagging a finger. "He saw everything." She paused, her expression darkening a little. "I suppose that was the problem in the end."

She turned back to the tea.

"I wonder what his life would be like now if his father weren't a despicable waste of human life."

Raylan listened, plunger pressing slowly down on the boiled water and grounds, looking over towards the bed as she finished.

"Or get yourself a very deep garden," he replied, face curling up in his own amusement before he glanced down and stepped to the side to get a new cup.

"My bets are on a doctorate, if I bothered to think about it. But he's still sweet and kind and sharp. Sharper than my ex-wife, and she isn't exactly a dull spoon. I prefer to think about what life is going to be like in the moment. Ya know. Five year plan it, nothing big, small steps and all." He poured out and set the press aside so he could step back and lean against the counter again, one arm busied with coffee, the other crossed over his chest.

"You should be proud of him. He's not in a mental institution under his own mental pressures, and he excels at his job. He's a good man, Jessica. He wants to make the world a better place and I can tell you from experience that those kinds of people are rare."

She cocked her head slightly. "Is that why you're with him?" she asked evenly. She gestured towards Malcolm. "I couldn't help noticing you sleep in his bed. That seems... risky. Do you just like a challenge?"

She could see why Malcolm liked him. He was sexy and down to earth and probably wasn't put off by her son's lengthy monologues on gruesome crimes. But surely he had... the option of less damaged goods. So why?

"Because he's a good man?" That wasn't what she was asking and he knew it, but he couldn't help but bat a volly back at her. "If you want the raw, no bullshit answer? No. Breaks my heart to hear him come up outta those screams half sobbing. Who'd want to wake up alone after that?"

He shook his head and shifted his feet. "You're divorced. And it doesn't take a mind reader to figure how your relationship with Martin is. To hell with what he done for a minute-" That wasn't the point, the point was the divorcing itself. "-You don't worry about what that looks and sounds like when you're dating? The baggage that comes with kickin' each other around for a few years?" Of course, he understood that Jessica's marriage didn't fall apart until her husband turned out to be a psychopath but her venom about it proved his point.

"You know what Malcolm's life is like, so, bar a few flagrant misunderstandings about my range of work, you can imagine what mine is like. I'm a 43 year old divorcee with a 7 month old daughter and an ex-wife that's left me three or four different times at this point. He makes me happy. Accepts me and mine for what it is. That's why I'm with him."

She just looked at him for a moment. It was a much less dressed up answer than she'd been expecting, somehow. Maybe she was just from a world where nobody was straight about their real feelings about anything.

"It's not exactly what I pictured for him," she admitted, then glanced down at the floor between their feet. "But since it seems like it's better for him than the way anything I pictured could have turned out, that's probably a good thing." She took a breath and looked at him. "You said you won't let anything happen to him?"

"Yes ma'am," he assured with a bob of his head, steady as ever. If he'd been wearing his hat, he'd have tipped it at her. "Even if that means putting someone else into a pine box."

Raylan offered her a crooked smile. "I know it's not home and gardens in the society page, but if you're itching for humans of the small variety, I've got a dangerously cute little girl in joint custody."

She huffed a laugh.

"I'm sure I'd be very charmed to meet her some time," she admitted. "But what does Malcolm think of that? He's never been... warm to the idea of starting a family."

Raylan sighed, wincing slighing with a bob of his head to the side.

"He hasn't met her either. He seems open to it and he and I already have an understandin' about her." Raylan met Jessica's eyes again, hazel gaze serious in the passing moment. Jessica would recognize the Papa Bear Syndrome seedly already deep rooted there. "There's no choice to be made when it comes to kids."

If Malcolm changed his mind and decided he wanted out, wanted away from the obstacles that parenthood brought, he could - Raylan wouldn't choose anyone over his child.

"We haven't talked about it beyond that." He thought it prudent to not mention the suggestion Malcolm had posed last night, easily wrapping that up into his inital statement.

"No, there is no..."

Her voice trailed off as Malcolm started mumbling something incoherent, his face pinched, just beginning to pull at his restraints.

She looked over and stared a moment, then looked away.

"I haven't seen one of these in years," she admitted.

"Then go stop it before it gets loud and violent. Means you'll have to touch him. Sooner he's woken, the better." Raylan spoke before taking a pull from his coffee cup and setting it on the counter.

"I have to use the little boys room, excuse me." Yes, he was leaving Jessica to deal with Malcolm's nightmares in the hopes that she would. Wishing things were different didn't make reality go away.

Jessica looked at him like he was a maniac.

"What? Are you crazy?" She followed him to the bathroom, calling through the door. "His therapist said never to touch him when he's having one of these...episodes. She said you can just make it worse!" She frowned at the door. "Do you actually try to stop them? I told her she should have told Malcolm that!"

God, she was one of those kinds of women. He wasn't unfamiliar. Thankfully, he could pee while being yelled at. A few moments later, and after he'd washed his hands, he reopened the door, a little unapologetic about the space he took up in it.

"Makes no sense at all to sit back and listen like we're a horror movie drive in. You've got Malcolm just about as terrified of himself as he is of his father-" And with the bruises on his face, Raylan looked like he didn't give much of a shit about if he got hit again as he gestured over her shoulder. "-and I've yet to see where a fear campaign really ever helped anyone. Now, you gonna let me go wake him up or are we going to stand here and get louder to get over his screams?"

Malcolm was thrashing violently, but he was still mumbling. Suddenly, he screamed, curling in on himself.

Jessica looked over, clearly both horrified and concerned, but she only stepped out of Raylan's way.

She was scared of it too.

"He did tell you about the woman he almost stabbed, I assume?" she said, even as she let him pass.

His thank you was all in his expression and the way his palm tilted up and out as he went by, heading for Malcolm.

"I'm a US Marshal, Jessica. I've put men worse than him down, I can handle a nightmare or two." Even if Malcolm got his hands on another knife in his sleep, Raylan had been come at with those before too. It didn't matter, or change his opinion on it.

Sitting down on the side of the bed, Raylan started with Malcolm's shoulder, one hand coming to cup his face as he turned with the contact for better or worse. No matter how loud or hard he had to get, he couldn't help but try to wake Malcolm softly. He wanted that to be the way Malcolm came up, but it hadn't worked so far.

Raylan was of the opinion its because Malcolm just isn't used to the possibility yet.

"No don't," he pleaded at whatever was in his head, rolling towards Raylan like there was open space there, trying to crawl to escape.

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