Happily Ever After AU - for conning

[abrightboy]

From here

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[conning]

Neal focuses on Rachel instead of answering right away, shedding his jacket and tucking it in around her on the damp grass. He checks her pulse, like he'll be able to tell anything from it beyond "she's alive," and for a moment he gets stuck with his fingertips against her skin. He stares at her without really seeing her.

"She blew herself up." His voice sounds like it's coming from somewhere a few steps to the left of himself.

[abrightboy]

"She was losing everything and she couldn't face it," Malcolm tells him. "She wanted to die with her school rather than live without it, without its principles, without the comfort of its walls."

[conning]

Neal eases back to his feet. Shakes his head. He's still looking at Rachel, but it's mostly because that gives him somewhere to put visual focus.

"I don't understand it. She has a daughter. She has a daughter."

[abrightboy]

“A daughter she had out of wedlock, against all the principles she preaches, that she hid in the attic like a dirty secret. A secret daughter the world was about to find out about because she murdered five former students. It’s worse than her worst nightmare. But do you understand why you couldn’t save her? If she couldn’t live for her child, why would she listen to you?” Malcolm points out gently, if bluntly.

[conning]

That gets Neal's attention. He meets Malcolm's eyes, somewhere between stubborn and in shock.

"There's always a way. There's always, always another way."

[abrightboy]

“Yes,” Malcolm agrees readily and without hesitation. “And she could have chosen that. But you couldn’t choose it for her.”

[conning]

Neal gives him a longer, helpless look, trying to think of something to say as Ainsley walks back over to them, putting her phone away.

“Cops and EMS on the way.” She looks Neal over. “You don’t look so good.”

[abrightboy]

“We were just in an explosion, Ainsley,” Malcolm chides.

She shrugs.

The police take Rachel into custody as she stirs and the three of them are whisked to the police station for a lecture from Gil.

[conning]

Neal isn’t really listening to the lecture. Gil only has so much sway over him, that particular sway further damaged by Neal’s current opinion of the way Gil treats Malcolm and his personal space. They’re turned loose, finally, after giving statements and signing paperwork, and Neal breathes in the night air of the city with relief.

He looks over at Ainsley. “How were you not drugged?”

[abrightboy]

She holds out her fingers. “New nail polish. Changes colour if your drink’s been roofied. Thought I should at least act drowsy or she’d be suspicious.”

Malcolm looks at her. “This was insane, Ains. You know that right?”

She sighs. “My dad was a serial killer, too, Malcolm. I was young, but… I’m allowed to be messed up.”

[conning]

Neal doesn't feel like he gets to weigh in here. Not on this particular conversation. Even if he doesn't think Ainsley really does get how messed up her behavior actually was.

But.

"When you said I was a performer, what did you mean?"

[abrightboy]

Malcolm nods concession to her point, but at Neal's question, he looks at her with a hesitant curiosity.

She looks at him blankly. "Just. You... " She frowns. "I don't really... aren't you?"

[conning]

Neal glances at Malcolm, then back at Ainsley, trying to decide how to approach this. "What made you think that?"

[abrightboy]

She shrugs and shakes her head.

“I don’t know. I just did, okay? Anyway, I have to go.”

She puts her hand up and hails a cab.

“I have a story to write in the morning, before I get scooped. Take my brother home,” she says over her shoulder, getting in the car and slamming the door shut.

[conning]

Neal exhales softly, rubbing his face. He looks at Malcolm. "Can we go to my place tonight?"

[abrightboy]

Malcolm nods. “Yeah.” He puts his own hand up for a cab.

At Neal’s, he draped his jacket over a dining chair and looks over at him.

“Are you okay?”

[conning]

"Yeah," he says, automatically. Casually. Then pauses. "No."

A soft exhalation. "No, I'm. I don't know what I am. It's not that I haven't... I've seen violence. It's not that, really."

It's partly that, whether he'll admit it to himself or not. "It's the fact that she... that she would do that."

[abrightboy]

“Because you don’t understand giving up as a mindset. You live in a fluid way, adapting to whatever is thrown at you. She lived in an absolutely rigid cage of her own construction, demanding perfection from others only because she could demonstrate it herself. It was all she had. All she was. The idea of the lie of it being revealed was something she literally couldn’t live with. She couldn’t adapt to a world where she’d made a mistake,” Malcolm explains softly. “It’s tragic. It should feel like a tragedy. A waste. But it was her choice.”

[conning]

Neal draws in a deep breath, looking out the open veranda doors at the glow of the city.

“I remember…” He furrows his brow. “I remember, in that other place, telling you I didn’t want to keep coming back. If I died. I remember saying that, and I can’t really imagine what I must have felt to believe that.”

[abrightboy]

“Despair. Hopelessness. Those are the emotions that take people there. There was no way out of there. Just suffering. It’s normal, what you felt, in that situation,” Malcolm tells him.

[conning]

Neal shivers, sliding his arms around Malcolm to pull him close. He’s still staring out the open doors, head spinning from the past 72 hours. Some random corner of his mind is chasing the question of whether or not his father ever felt that kind of despair, separated from his family and accused of crimes he insists he didn’t commit.

He shivers and tries to mentally shake it off, pressing a kiss against Malcolm’s lips. “Let’s go to bed. You saved more lives tonight. You’ve earned at least a nap.”

[abrightboy]

"We saved some people tonight," he reminds Neal. That's what they do now, right? He rubs his hand over Neal's chest. "Maybe we earned... a bit more than a nap?" he suggests, raising an eyebrow slightly, plucking at one of Neal's buttons.

[conning]

Neal grins, giving Malcolm another lingering kiss. "Did you have something in particular in mind?"

[abrightboy]

Malcolm shrugs a shoulder but pops that button open and then the next one.

"What would distract you the most?" he asks, looking up from under his brow.

[conning]

"You doing whatever you want," Neal says softly, his cocksure grin turning into earnest uncertainty. He's breathing a little quicker at Malcolm's attention to his buttons. That look on Malcolm's face. It's attractive in a way he usually associates with aggressive women.