tinstar | Malcolm x Raylan: Cowboy Surprise

"Oh yeah?" He hadn't known. "They'll knock off any remaining dust and add a few words, I promise." He could feel the stupid half smile on his face.

"That's a good idea. That's half of why I wanna go there, if I'm honest. Drink beer on a beach, dip my toes into chaotic waters and the like.." The country came with him no matter what he did; Raylan could only manage it.

It felt, suddenly, like his mouth was full of words he didn't dare say and he resisted the urge to fully run away from it.

"So. What should we do til it's time to get all dressed up for your mother?"

"Washington Square Park is only about a ten minute walk away," Malcolm told him, leaning in to press a kiss to his mouth. "Want to get some fresh air?" He smiled. "If you don't want to go out, we can throw a few axes," he offered, with a gesture over his shoulder.

Raylan hummed and followed to kiss him again before answering. "I like the sound of a walk. Better that I don't work up a sweat before tryin' to look passable," he huffed, sliding off the barstool and padding towards the dresser.

Fresh Air was good; it let Raylan find center again and frankly, the emotional load of being here and dealing with the Whitly family and their idea of 'normal' called for some centering. Raylan got dressed in short order; 'sleep' pants traded for jeans, plain button down pulled over the undershirt and his blazer and duster for the walk itself.

Once he was ready, he clipped his weapon in at his hip, kept his badge in his back pocket and got his hat. Didn't matter that he was on vacation - too much happened for him to leave his gun at home.

Malcolm traded the sweatpants for jeans, but kept the t-shirt and pulled on a jacket and casual black shoes, then led the way out of the apartment and onto the crowded New York sidewalk. He didn't try to do anything so obvious as hold Raylan's hand, but he stayed near enough to him that their arms would occasionally brush as they walked.

"How was the trip up?" he asked. "Did you drive?"

The jeans surprised Raylan but he didn't say anything and simply appreciated the attempt at casual. He assumed it was for his sake, anyway - Jeans was not something Raylan expected Malcolm to have beyond trying to blend into the hills.

Raylan was grateful for the ease that Malcolm allowed and walked alongside him, easy with the closeness.

"Flew and rented a car once I got here. It's an 11 hour drive and I wanted to get here on at a reasonable time. Told Art that I was gonna take some vacation time and actually turn off my phone." Which was a massive step for someone like him. "Figure that Kentucky can survive a few days with my expertise."

He looked over at Malcolm. "You really okay with me having shown up without callin'?"

How was that even a question? But he definitely was more confident than he'd been in the immediate aftermath of Raylan's arrival.

Malcolm grinned at him.

"Okay with it? I loved it," he exclaimed. "You have a standing invitation to my life, okay?" He snapped his fingers, realizing something. "Speaking of which, in case Gil does call me onto a case, I need to give you keys to my apartment. You can't just sit trapped in there all day if I'm working."

The way Malcolm enthused in the word love had Raylan smiling again as he watched his boots move them down the sidewalk. The mention of a key had him looking over again, eyebrows lifting.

"A key huh? Well I appreciate being let out of the stairwell. If you hadn't been home, I would have waited." For what that was worth. "Just possibly boiled to death in my car," he continued with a pull of his smile.

"I'd offer you a key to my motel room but it seems most anyone can get it when they want to. The desk is easy to bribe, apparently."

Malcolm glanced over. "Oh. Well. I have a lot of money, so that's handy," he teased with a smirk. "Are you really going to live in a motel until you can get out of your Kentucky purgatory? Is that how you remind yourself viscerally, on a daily basis, that it's not permanent?" he asked curiously.

"Learn to lie and it'll be free." That's what most people with a decent tongue did. Stupid was stupid was stupid, after all.

"I've already got one piece of property that I'm tryin' to off load," he started with levity, as though the idea of renting was beneath him somehow, even if that's exactly what he was doing at the motel. He couldn't just say 'Yes'. "Seems like taking on another one wouldn't be the most conducive to leaving for good. Plus. It's good for my savings."

Marshals didn't get paid nothing and Raylan did pretty well with his under $500 a month payment to the motel for his consistent room.

"Ya know. For that house, in Miami."

"Well. For your half," Malcolm pointed out. He wasn't about to be kept any more than Raylan would. "But it's a fair point."

As they came to the park, Malcolm led them onto one of the trails that criss-crossed it.

"Your friends at the office don't think it's weird that you live there?"

Raylan's expression winced, head bobbing back and forth. "Friends is a reach. Art and I taught together which gives me some ground, Tim and I get on real well and Rachel tolerates my bullshit," he admitted, a little gracefully sheepish look at it.

"But apparently, I make it very clear how much I don't wanna be in Kentucky. They don't ask about it." He assumed they understood..

"My half? That mean you're gonna go in 50/50? Opens up our options a lot, you know; I'm not sittin' on nothing."

"Of course I'm going 50/50; I'm going to live there," he pointed out reasonably.

He looked sidelong at Raylan.

"They all love you, you know," he said plainly. "I actually didn't meet anyone in Kentucky that doesn't love you. Your team, the village constable, that criminal in the bar..." He smiled a little. "You kind of pull people in."

"Village constable?" Raylan couldn't help but echo that one, automatically imagining the puffing up that Bob would be doing and laughing at it. He admired Bob's pride for the station but the man did make it humorous, in his own way.

"Ah," he scoffed modestly. "They love the idea of me. I blame the hat. Everyone thinks I live in some Louis L'Amour novel or something. They don't get to see the divorce paperwork or the empty bed or the whiskey bottles. The gun, the hat, the gunslinging.. I get it." But it didn't quite fit him, to his mind.

"I just wanna help. Be better than Arlo was... To... make up for the wrongs he's done, to stop more of his kind.. I know it's not like your situation but.." It was his.

"That's exactly like my situation," Malcolm said. It didn't matter what their fathers' crimes were; it had occurred to him that this had gone so well because they could understand each other on a fundamental level, even though they were as different as they were.

"Do you really feel like none of them really knows you?"

Because if he did, then it was probably true and Malcolm knew what that was like, too.

Raylan bobbed his head again, glad for the movement to keep their bodies moving, instead of caving to their more primal natures.

"Art does. Tim.. gets the drift." And they all drank too much. "But they know what I let 'em, and it's not much, beyond what their see with their own eyes. 'Love' isn't the word I'd use, with them."

But overall, he wasn't arguing Malcolm's point. "Trust me, for everyone in Harlan and my team that might love the idea of me, there's at least an equal amount of people who would love to see me six feet under. Always seems to come out about 50/50. Anyway, if they cared about where I lived, next we'd be doing... cake cuttings for a birthday at the office and wellness checks and."

He gestured the thought away with a shake of his head. "Too much trouble, if you ask me."

Things that could be classified as 'having friends' were 'too much trouble' and the psychologist in Malcolm knew what that meant; he'd been in that boat. He'd been flung into that boat. He wanted to ask 'who hurt you like that?' but he didn't. He had a feeling he was wandering into the part of the feelings weeds that Raylan had been taught not to tread.

Instead, he looked up sidelong at his profile. "Do you feel like I know you?"

Raylan looked over and answered too easily, "Of course. As much anyone knows me, I guess." Anyone here being people like 'Winona'. She'd only known him a decade or so, at this point, but Raylan felt like they'd made good progress in the 'knowing each other' department.

He'd never really thought about it.

"And you've even got a head start, with that training under your belt." Raylan wasn't a stupid man, and he was aware that Malcolm's face reading skills weren't paused or turned off just because he was the subject being analyzed.

He also felt like there was still more there to be chewed at.

"Why does it matter if they care about my livin' in a shitty motel by the week?" It wasn't a shitty question, just a curious one.

"I guess, in a way, it doesn't matter. That you stick to what you think is right... that's one of the things I admire about you. But they're also the people you spend the most time with and if they don't care about you... It says something. Though I suppose what it probably says is that you keep them at arm's length so you don't get attached to anything there." He glanced at him again. "You don't want anything to weaken your resolve in not getting trapped there."

Raylan couldn't stop the spread of the amused tilt of his face's everything. The thing was, he felt like he'd been on his own since he was a kid, even with Aunt Helen's help. He didn't need people to care about him. Wanted them to, sure, in a few rare instances, but overall, Raylan was content with what little he got to get him by.

"I haven't needed someone to care about me in a long time." He took care of himself. And even when he did need people to care about him, they fell into selfishness, leaving him in the same position.

"They've all got shit to deal with too. Tim's got PTSD, Art's got grandkids, Rachel's got her family and all that. And I wouldn't say they don't care.. We get on pretty well, no one lets anyone else get shot.." That clearly counted, in Raylan's books.

Oh, this went way back. To running from Arlo's beatings and hiding anywhere Arlo wouldn't either think or dare to look.

But Malcolm was pretty sure not letting each other get shot was part of their actual job.

"I have PTSD and I care about you." He looked over with a wry smile. "Though I'm pretty glad Tim doesn't care about you in the same way I do."

It was their actual job, but much like in the mines, there was an unspoken comradery and trust that was set in. They cared where it mattered. Raylan smiled back, face ducking under the brim of his hat which did him no good, considering Malcolm was next to him.

"Me too. It'd make the office environment more than a little awkward." But he got what Malcolm was saying, loud and clear. "And I think your PTSD is the only reason you can care without losing your mind with worry." If they were being honest. "Civilians.. aren't used to what the reality of the job is. Even if they read it on paper every day. That's what happened with Winona.. She couldn't take worrying about if I'd come home at the end of the day, forever."

Raylan looked over at Malcolm. "Much as I might have talked about it, I think we both knew I wasn't going back to teaching at Glynco."

Edited 2020-05-16 15:56 (UTC)

"I worry about you," Malcolm said plainly. "But I also understand who you are and what this career means to you. For a lot of us, law enforcement isn't a job; it's a vocation. You need to right wrongs. It's sewn into the fabric of you."

That was a good way of putting it. Vocation. He'd have to remember that for next time he got into an argument about it. But he nodded, silently grateful for Malcolm's innate understanding. He'd have to see how it stood up against the test of the day to day grind.

"See, you know me plenty well." He smiled over at him. "So what's at this park, anything special?"

He pointed ahead of them. "See that big arch up there?" he asked, his whole demeanour clearly pleased by Raylan's comment on how well he understood him. "That's the northern entrance to the park and it was built in honour of George Washington's inauguration. There's a big fountain in front of it that's known for buskers and street performers." He pushed his hair out of his face. He'd forgotten to put product in it before they'd headed out and it was being blown around a bit by the gentle breeze. "But they say, originally, this square was used for public executions," he added a little too enthusiastically.

It was harder than Raylan thought, wanting to touch Malcolm in some small innocent way and being completely unwilling, unable to do so. He knew it wouldn't matter here; no one cared except for him but word had already started to travel and if he couldn't handle 3 other people knowing about it..

He listened attentively, glancing between the arch and Malcolm as he gestures only to smile at him. At the sweep of his normally tidied hair, at the infectious rise of enthusiasm, at the way Raylan could feel it tugging him upward like Malcolm was going to float away with him attached at the ankle or something. The last bit made Raylan scoff a laugh and grin with the slightest shake of his head.

"Of course it was. Do they have a plaque for that or is that something taught in schools here?" He meant elementary, middle and high school - Universities would, of course, end up teaching stuff like that.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject