abrightboy | No One's Born Broken

"Verbally?" he clarified as he pulled them onto the road with a glance over. "Self defense is not the same firearm removal, generally speaking."

"Verbally if possible," Malcolm replied. "Physically if necessary."

Raylan's eyes narrowed. "How so?"

Malcolm looked at him with equal confusion.

"....What do you mean? I took self defense. When I was growing up I took aikido and karate because I kept getting beat up after school. And I took judo at Quantico because they were concerned about my ability to take down suspects larger than myself. Which would be a lot of them, statistically."

"What?" Raylan glanced at the road frequently as they talked, not abandoning his task of safety for this apparent secret ninja power that Malcolm had and hadn't shared. "Was that before or after the ballet? Or did you like.. squeeze it in between pirouettes? I only know what one of those are, and the other two sound like the first."

Well. He watched John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, not Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan.

"Um, I started taking martial arts after ballet. After my dad was arrested, the bullying was worse than when I took ballet. Which is interesting, from a social psychology standpoint. But the third time in two weeks that I came home with a black eye or bloodied nose, my mother enrolled me in a course. ...And also a different school." He looked over at Raylan. "I was the FBI's go-to guy for the most twisted murders and serial killers they had for ten years," he reminded Raylan. "My close rate was over eighty percent compared to a national average close rate on murder investigations of only sixty percent." He had to have some self-defense skills, right? What with all the confronting murderers?

His eyes narrowed a little. Jessica had to have done something right and that was clearly one of them, but it was hard to imagine a man of Malcolm's size being.. lethal without a weapon.

"I thought most of that 80 had to do with said gettin' under their skin." If he was being honest. He glanced at the road again before back at Malcolm.

"Really? Karate? Judo? Why didn't you tell me you were a ninja. I feel like that's at least third date stuff."

"I... is it?" He considered that. "I don't know. I mean, it's not really my... thing. I prefer to talk them out of it. But if they're just going to resort to violence... I can."

"You're gonna have to show me one day," he said after a moment, looking back at the road again. "That's somethin' I wanna see in action. And changes some things, I guess." He glanced over. "I'd still rather you do what they say until you can get a message to me or help comes."

It helped that most of the time it seemed that the bad guys just rang Raylan up and invited him over.

"I can do that. I wouldn't want to have all the fun without you," he teased, glancing over.

Whether he did actually do that was another matter. He had a tendency to get caught up in the moment.

"But if there's somewhere... padded to practice, I'd be happy to show you," he said. "Maybe give you some peace of mind?"

He nodded. "Yeah. I'm sure I can find a gym.. or ask Tim which one he uses. I wanna make sure I'm understanding what it is that you can do. So I can adjust my escape plans around it."

It'd make him feel better and take a little more care in what he worried about. And he could use less to worry about.

"What level are you? There's colors, right?"

"I'm a black belt," Malcolm said so casually that it was in passing. "You know, the last time someone put a gun in my face, I distracted him by talking, then zapped him in the chest with an electroshock therapy machine. I really think you have to take these things case by case."

Raylan's brow only pinched further. Yeah, he definitely felt like he shoulda known all this beforehand somewhere along the way.

"I'm sorry, Electroshock therapy? As in, you going in for, or you just 'happening' to be there." As he asked, one hand gestured out along with him, putting the looseness around 'happening'.

"It was at the office. Evidence I brought in for the case. See, we found this murder victim with burn marks on his temples and we traced him to this self-help guru's shady clinic and Gil didn't want me to at the precinct for the investigation because I'd just gotten out of the hospital, so I enrolled in the clinic to see what they were about. They were using off the books electroshock therapy to mitigate trauma, which is deeply illegal," Malcolm explained gamely. "Though, in all honesty, it was less painful than the time I got shocked with a cattle prod." A beat. "I guess cows are bigger than people, though," he mused.

"You'd just gotten out of a hospital and work is what you were focused on? Hard Investigative kinda work? You let them shock you?" What the hell? It wasn't worth him getting upset over but some small part of them was anyway. There was a point in all stupid things where self preservation was needed.

"Is this what you normally do?"

"Solve murders?" he said pointedly. "Yes." He looked over at Raylan. "I'd been in the hospital for over three weeks. Just me, four walls and the inside of my head. I needed a case. Anyway." He cleared his throat. "I was having trouble dealing with some of the things that happened under the house. The shock kind of... helped."

Raylan gave him a look. That is not what he had meant and Malcolm knew it. Raylan shook his head and looked back on the road.

"If you say so. I've been tased a couple of times, cattle prod included, but it's not an experience I'm lookin' to repeat ever again." He supposed this was what he had to look forward to.

Malcolm looked over at him a bit oddly.

"I'm not looking to repeat it either," he said as though he thought it was obvious. "We did catch the killer," he said. "And his boss." He looked down for a moment. "Gil tried to take me off the case a couple of times. We had an argument about it. And it was maybe a bit early for me to go back but I didn't have any other way to deal with it all."

It was not obvious, Malcolm. Not with willing repeat performances, even if it was just one.

"I'd say you should have listened to him but it's a little late now." Several beats passed. "Putting yourself in danger over restlessness is probably not the best answer." Then again, neither were bottles of Jim Beam. He worried, but he couldn't do much about it.

And he knew that.

"It wasn't restlessness. That's... benign. It's more than that. I need to work. I need my mind to be occupied by something. I thought you understood that," he said, looking over.

"Maybe not as well as I thought," he admitted, jaw a little tighter than he wanted it but he couldn't make it unclench. Either way, it was clear Raylan was avoiding confrontation and not elaborating. Talking about feelings was still nowhere near a competent skill of Raylan Givens.

"Then again, I got a house to keep up on the side and plenty of hillbilly bullshit to keep me occupied when you're not around." And beforehand, but Raylan didn't want to exclude what he had now.

Malcolm watched him carefully for a moment. The way he held the wheel, the tension in his jaw. Raylan's little tells.

"Are you mad?" he asked carefully. "I didn't... I just... thought were kind of... the same. About work."

And oh how he longed to be 'the same' in any way as someone so opposite of Martin Whitly. Raylan was smart and dedicated to stopping criminals to protect innocent people and he was fundamentally good and Malcolm wanted to be fundamentally good and never to doubt it just like he never, for a moment, doubted it in Raylan.

"I did it to solve the case; it's not a new lifestyle choice."

"After the last time I was shot, I couldn't draw for near a month and Art wouldn't let me on cases. I get the urge to work. Work or drink or beat someone up but I don't put myself in danger for it," Raylan caved fairly easily, still speaking in an almost casual, affable tone despite his otherwise glaring physical tells.

"No use in bein' mad over somethin' that's already happened," he reasoned, none to happy with said reasoning before glancing over.

"The job is dangerous, that I get. Egging on the edges, not so much."

"You put yourself in danger every time you put the badge on your belt," Malcolm reasoned. "You said people draw on you all the time. They do that because of a reputation you have that you contribute to cultivating because having it helps you do what you do. I think we just push different edges. I had to let them shock me because otherwise they'd have figured out that I wasn't what I said. I needed to stay in long enough to know what they were up to. I had to know how it tied into what happened to the kid that was killed. They did that to vulnerable people every day before I exposed it. At least I understood what I was getting into when I sat in that chair."

"I don't go lookin' for it." Most of the time. Generally, it came to him but Raylan knew the dangers of being lackadaisical and tried to stay ahead of those trying to stay ahead of him.

"Plus, I don't have to blur lines about my legality," he continued as he pulled into their parking lot and threw the car into park, killing the engine so he could look over at Malcolm properly and for more than a second.

"I know we gotta do some extreme things to solve our cases, get our guy. That doesn't mean I take risks I don't have to. They're not worth us dyin," he continued before opening his door and sliding out.

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