No One's Born Broken

[abrightboy]

For tinstar.



Gil came and went. Dani came and went. Ainsley came and then left with their mother, who refused to even hear him out about telling the truth. He stared through the window at the motionless man in the bed for some indeterminate amount of time, his hand clutching his phone in his pocket.

Finally he let his eyes leave the figure through the window and he took his phone out of his pocket. He stared at that for a long moment, then scrolled through his contacts until one name rolled onto the screen: Raylan Givens.

He looked through the window, then looked at the name. Then he pressed it.

Comments

[abrightboy]

"You know, I don't remember that being in the handbook," he admitted. "But when I've actually engaged suspects in my own home, I've found it works to keep them talking until help arrives or an opportunity to turn the tables presents itself," he explained matter of factly. "Usually by crawling under their skin." He held up a finger. "That also works with suspects outside my own home. It's sort of my go-to play."

[tinstar]

"Crawling under their skin is the short way to gettin' shot, you know that right?" He buckled his seatbelt and turned the engine over. "Least out here it is. In your home or not. You do what they want til you can get a message to me.. Or help arrives. Nothin' we got right now, or anythin' you know worth gettin' shot for."

[abrightboy]

"But... I can disarm them," Malcolm pointed out. "Myself."

[tinstar]

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

[abrightboy]

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

[tinstar]

Raylan's eyes narrowed. "How so?"

[abrightboy]

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."

[tinstar]

"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.

[abrightboy]

"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?

[tinstar]

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."

[abrightboy]

"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."

[tinstar]

"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.

[abrightboy]

"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?"

[tinstar]

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?"

[abrightboy]

"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."

[tinstar]

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'.

[abrightboy]

"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.

[tinstar]

"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?"

[abrightboy]

"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."

[tinstar]

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.

[abrightboy]

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."

[tinstar]

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.

[abrightboy]

"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.

[tinstar]

"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.

[abrightboy]

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."