abrightboy | The Lengths That I Would Go To

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The Lengths That I Would Go To

The killer was moving around the country. Malcolm Bright could see the pattern, but he wasn't working for the FBI these days and they weren't exactly taking his calls. Short sighted of them, but they did fire him on suspicion of being crazy. The NYPD's jurisdiction was New York. With the killer beyond its borders, they handed it upwards and left it at that.

Let it go, Bright, had been Gil's sage advice. You can't catch every killer in America single-handedly.

Challenge accepted, some part of him retorted, though he'd only nodded mutely and forced a smile. Gil knew he hadn't simply let it go, but he wasn't going to have him followed to stop him doing anything stupid, either. He didn't have the will or the resources to keep tabs on Malcolm Bright 24/7 and Malcolm Bright knew it.

His mother, on the other hand, had extensive resources, so he simply didn't tell her he was leaving town. He did arrange for Ainsley to feed his bird, so the truth would come out eventually, but he'd be several states away by then.

He rode the bus. There was something oddly comforting about the anonymity of being in a crowd of strangers who had no interest in him whatsoever. He stared out the window and watched the country go by. When he stepped off the Greyhound in Lexington, Kentucky, he walked to a nearby hotel and checked in, then headed straight to the US Marshals office. There was no point in trying to talk to the FBI. If he was going to stop a killer from killing again, he needed someone in law enforcement to listen to him. The pattern suggested the next murder would happen in one of the rural communities around Lexington and it would be precipitated by a young woman's disappearance. He needed law enforcement with local knowledge, specifically.

He wandered into the Marshals' offices in a tidy three piece suit, charcoal grey with a burgundy tie perfectly knotted at his collar. He got a few suspicious sidelong glances but nobody asked if they could help him. He cleared his throat.

"Um, hello? I'm wondering if there's anyone here I can talk to about murder." He held up his hands. "Stopping murder, specifically, not... like... smalltalk."

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The answer was taken with a little nod of his own, fingers reaching out to brush the back of Malcolm's forearm. "I can sleep just about anywhere. But I'm hopin' maybe I'm a little more effective in waking you up when.. things start, being up here. It'll be okay."

He'd be okay. Sleeping in the same bed with someone was something that Raylan had definitely done before - them fucking around on the couch was a bigger point in his evening - but sleep wasn't something one got a lot of around Malcolm, so it might have been a moot point.

Malcolm curled closer to him, closing his eyes to breathe in Raylan's skin. It was... calming. The sense of another presence there, the solidity of his body, the scent of him. The clips on his restraints jingled softly as he shifted and eased himself into a comfortable position, then fell silent when he stilled.

Raylan shifted a little closer, sliding a hand around Malcolm's waist to drape it there and, with a deep breath, start letting his body sink into the well earned sleep he wanted. The bed was comfortable, even with the strap under him that he barely felt, and between the scotch, the high emotion and the sex, it didn't take him long.

It was several hours before Malcolm began to stir. Rather than thrashing, he jerked one way and then the other. He mumbled something incoherent, rolling towards the edge of the bed, pulling on the strap under Raylan. Finally he muttered something that could actually be understood: Don't do this. No. Stop. NO.

The first couple of jerks weren't quite enough to wake Raylan, though it did make his arm slide a little further across Malcolm before the sharper roll towards the end of the bed and the strap Raylan was laying on cut up into his skin.

"Malcolm," he said blearily, quickly shaking off the dust of sleep and pushing up onto his elbow to cup and slightly slap Malcolm's face, repeating his name a little more loudly. Raylan was sure it was hit and miss, waking Malcolm up, but he had to start somewhere. If he could wake Malcolm before it got real bad, that's what he wanted to do.

He jerked in Raylan's grasp. "SOMEBODY HELP!" he shouted, kicking, pushing, trying to escape.

"Shit," Raylan swore, shifting his weight again, both for a better reach and to not hold down that strap that Malcolm was pulling against.. Not like he wasn't pulling at all of them. He wished he could just break into the nightmare and put down whoever was torturing Malcolm now, but people like him didn't spend time lamenting what they couldn't do.

Instead, he slapped at Malcolm's face a little harder. "MALCOLM, WAKE UP!" He wasn't shouting yet, but he'd definitely call it a commanding yell if forced to label it.

Thank god no one else lived in the building.

Malcolm startled away, blinking, his eyes - wild with panic and glassy with the verge of tears - swimming into focus to find Raylan's face. He was breathing hard and it was not the pleasant experience it had been a few hours ago. He swallowed hard.

"Raylan. Sorry... I..."

He tried to take deeper breaths.

"Are you okay? Did I hurt you?"

Raylan's eyes darted back and forth between Malcolm's, expression tight with worry as he let his weight sink back after a long moment, like he wasn't sure if Malcolm was fully awake at first.

"I'm fine," he said, eyes still locked on Malcolm's face. "Are you?"

He didn't know if Malcolm wanted to talk about his nightmares, if that might help, so he was taking it one step at a time.

He nodded, putting on a Brave Face. "I'm fine. That's... normal. It's normal for me." He huffed a self-deprecating laugh and gestured around them. "Which is why nobody's ever slept in my bed before this."

And if Raylan was having second thoughts about it, he didn't blame him, but he watched him carefully. He was concerned he would decide to get up and sleep elsewhere and he was afraid to ask whether he was going to do that. And he was afraid to ask him to stay.

Raylan didn't buy it, not a single cent.

"Normal for you doesn't make you okay." The worry softened in his face, into something gentler and less overall intense as he glanced down at the bed before looking back to Malcolm. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

Malcolm swallowed hard.

After a moment he looked at Raylan, then looked away into the darkness of the rest of the loft.

"I was in my father's cell. It didn't look like it does now. When I was a kid I visited him there. He was in a steel cage inside the cell. They'd let me sit inside the cage. He was in leg irons and shackles. He'd usually sit on the bed and I'd sit on the floor in the corner by the door." He looked over at Raylan. "Sometimes, in these dreams, it's the day I told him I was applying to Quantico and that I wouldn't be seeing him anymore. He... wasn't happy about it, but in the dream he gets out of the shackles and the door won't open and he stops me. He was strangling me with his bare hands. I couldn't get the attention of the guard, even though he was sitting right there...."

He huffed a breath.

"It's dumb, right? Kids' nightmares. The monster under the bed."

Listening quietly, Raylan watched Malcolm's face and the way it moved as he spoke and half re-lived his nightmare. If he had an opinion on the merits of kids visiting the jail cell their father's sat in, he didn't show it. It didn't matter, really.

"It's not dumb. Not with what he is." A beat passed. "I saw how you looked at him when we went." How scared of Martin his son really was.

"How did he react when you left that day? In real life." The day that Malcolm applied for the direct opposite of what his father wanted. Raylan still remembered how Arlo reacted when he said he was leaving to go be a Marshal. No pretty stories or tales of fatherly hugs and adoration there.

Malcolm was scared of the monster inside his father. That was true. But it was also so much more complicated than that. Complicated by the fact that he remembered how he felt with his father before he knew. He remembered how much he loved and admired him. How close they were. The fun they had. Complicated by the fact that he found out his father wanted to kill him on the camping trip. He was ten years old. Complicated by the fact that he needed to know things only Dr Whitly knew and never knew if the things he was told were true.

"He told me it was ridiculous. That it wasn't what he wanted. Like it was some sort of personal affront to him. When I left, I could hear him screaming at me all the way down the hall."

Raylan's jaw tightened and let go again as he nodded, glancing down again before back to Malcolm, unable to take it all in without his righteous fury kicking up their little heels.

"But you went and did it anyway," Raylan reminded him with a little pull of his smile that didn't stay long. "And for a decade. It's your life to live, not his." His tone was clear in the fact that he thought Malcolm out to be proud of those things. Raylan set a hand over Malcolm's forearm, thumb brushing back and forth for a long moment before he patted and pushed up to his feet.

"I've gotta use the restroom, then I'll be back."

For Raylan, there was no question about where he was going to finish sleeping. It'd be right where he started tonight's rest.

Edited 2020-04-22 19:02 (UTC)

Then he'd be back.

Malcolm looked less bruised after the first thing Raylan said, but after that, an actual smile broke through. When Raylan got out of bed, Malcolm fussed with fixing the blankets, so they wouldn't be all rumpled when he got back, settling back into the pillows, staring out the window at the city lights.

Pissing didn't take long, nor the handwashing and few seconds he took to wash his face with water and question himself in the mirror. It wasn't yet light, but his brain wasn't sure of the difference and after a breath and an executive decision that it was too early for that kind of shit, Raylan shelved it all again and padded back out.

He yawned and scratched his head as he went, climbing back into Malcolm's bed and settling in with a sigh, watching Malcolm's face. "What do you think we got - a couple of hours til sun up?"

Would Malcolm even go back to sleep?

Raylan's face and voice brought Malcolm back from whatever thoughts danced around outside the window and his eyes came to focus on him. He smiled softly.

"Three or so." He leaned over and pressed a kiss to Raylan's mouth. "Sleep," he murmured.

He probably wouldn't sleep again, but he wanted to stay here like this anyway. It was all going back to normal the next night. This was it.

Raylan hummed a note of acknowledgement, lips curling as Malcolm leaned over and kissed him. "What about you? You more okay now?"

A faint smile on his face as he again curled towards Raylan, he replied "Yeah. I'm okay now."

With a glance down, Raylan unstrapped Malcolm's closest wrist and scooted closer, fitting himself better against the younger man so he could hold him with more contact.

"Don't worry," he breathed as he settled in again. "Your elbow can't be that sharp anyway."

The way Raylan pulled Malcolm into his arms made something flutter in his chest. After a moment, even though he wasn't sure if Raylan was still awake, he mused "Have you ever felt like you've been cold all your life but you didn't realize it until you found out what it was like to be warm?"

Raylan hummed again, lifting his head enough to press a kiss to Malcolm's shoulder. "I stood in a creek once when I was a kid long enough to for me to think I'd lost my toes. Don't think it's the same though.." But it gave him the barest of bare ideas to turn around on its head to fit.

His arm tightened around Malcolm's waist. "Try to sleep, if you can." The idle brush of his thumb was the best he could do for 'It'll be okay'.

Obligingly, he shut his eyes, but he did not fall asleep. He lingered there in that warmth that seemed to seep right into the centre of him for a couple of hours, then slipped carefully from the bed, gently so as not to wake Raylan up. He padded around the apartment, taking a shower, taking his medicine. He ordered some pancakes and sausages and crept down the stairs to get them from the delivery driver, putting them in the oven on low heat to keep them warm. He found the affirmation card from the previous night on the floor where he'd tossed it and slipped it into Raylan's coat pocket. By the time 7am came around, he was in a plank position on the floor, doing a breathing exercise.

While Raylan didn't go under snap quick, it only took a few minutes of silence for his breathing to shallow and even out, and by the time Malcolm slipped from his arms, he was out cold. Without a body next to him, Raylan naturally shifted, rolling onto his other side and sprawling out a little.

It was Raylan's alarm that woke him, a chirping from the far side of the living room, a sharp breath the only indicator as he cracked his eyes again. It was always a little jarring to not be in his hotel room, when he was in a bed, but the sheets and their scent were plenty of reminder. There it was, that morning light he'd half wanted to avoid.

With a stretch, he rolled over and eyed Malcolm's planking. It was the deeper breath that brought the scent of food and a rumble of his stomach.

"Morning," he grunted as he pushed the blankets off and sat up to lean his elbows on his knees and rub at his eyes. "What's that smell?"

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ugh, they're fuckin cute

SO MUCH

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