Happily Ever After AU - for conning

[abrightboy]

From here

Comments

[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.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm's smile broadens a little. He'd not what one might call confident in his technique, but he's certain as he deftly undresses them both and takes him to bed.

He curls up in the crook of Neal's shoulder afterwards, watching the lights of a plane cross the sky out the window.

"If you could go anywhere right now, but you had to live there forever, where would you go?"

[conning]

Neal glances at him in surprise, then focuses out the window, tracking the plane in silence along with Malcolm until it's out of sight.

Anywhere.

"Ravello, Italy. On the Amalfi Coast."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm smiles softly.

“Why there?”

It sounds romantic, though.

[conning]

"It's beautiful. Historic. It's the height of the Renaissance frozen in time. The Cloisters at the Villa Cimbrone just a few minutes away, the views of the ocean... When it's quiet, in the winter, it's a kind of paradise."

He sighs dreamily. "I lived in the Palazzo Sasso hotel for a little while, after a heist in Corsica. I would've stayed if I hadn't heard a rumor that Europol was closing in."

[abrightboy]

"Europol. That does sound romantic," Malcolm teases. "You know, you can stay wherever you want soon and they won't be coming for you."

[conning]

Neal makes an ironic little noise. "Europol wasn't nearly as close as I was lead to believe at the time."

Thanks for that, Peter. A pause, contemplative silence as he tries to wrap his head around that. "I don't know what it will feel like, to be... in the world without a target on my back."

[abrightboy]

"Well. I might distract you when you start to think about it," Malcolm tells him, fingers fidgeting at his sternum. "But. I was just." He trails off. Maybe saying it outloud is bad luck or something.

[conning]

Neal makes an appreciatively amused little noise. Waits for a moment, to see if Malcolm will go on. When he doesn't, Neal kisses him. "You were what?"

[abrightboy]

Malcolm presses his lips together, then smiles against Neal's shoulder before lifting his head to look shyly at his face.

"I was wondering what kind of place we might go for our honeymoon. You know. Eventually."

[conning]

Neal lights up at that. "Well, who says it has to be one place? Why not a Grand Tour with Ravello as the endpoint?"

[abrightboy]

He... seems pleased with that topic. Malcolm perks up.

"A Grand Tour of Europe?"

[conning]

"Yeah. We could go to a bunch of my old haunts. I could introduce you to... some interesting people on both sides of the proverbial fence."

Neal grins shamelessly.