tinstar | Malcolm x Raylan: Cowboy Surprise

"More skin exposure is not more skin protection," Malcolm said, picking up his axe. "Though I can't argue with how it feels stripping it off," he teased back.

Throw in it.

Okay.

He stepped up to the point he last threw successfully and threw it hard, following through. He looked up to see it land in the centre. He turned and grinned at Raylan. "It's pretty freeing, though." He glanced down. "It's stretchy."

"The trade off is a lighter fabric that breathes more while still providing coverage. Important trade off when you're working with the sun." He'd waited to speak until after Malcolm threw, choosing to appreciate the view over conversation as he remembered exactly what it did feel like.

Very good in the Kentucky heat, as he recalled.

Raylan stepped up and gestured Malcolm aside. "You can keep that one. Maybe I'll get to see you in more of them.."

Focusing on the target, Raylan focused and hefted, landing his axe just above Malcolm's. He looked at Malcolm with a smile and walked over, stealing a kiss before patting his hip, silently gesturing for him to go on and step up.

He smiled widely as the kiss broke, the hip pat unexpected and wonderful, he happily went and retrieved the axes, swinging one of them in a circle as he walked back.

"The important question is whether I look less carpetbaggy now," Malcolm told him. "I..." He frowned and glanced at his watch. "Oh no. We have to get ready," he said in disappointment. He looked at Raylan. "Throw one more."

The flex of his shoulders when he threw was definitely worth a few extra minutes.

Raylan wasn't ready to wear a disappointed face yet and kept his smile at Malcolm's frown and glanced at the target before shrugging as he stepped back up, taking one of the two they had with them with him.

"Only if you throw yours too. I can put them away while you get dressed."

The axe was spun in with a twirl in his hand - it was like a baseball. A Danger baseball, but he turned the right way around, pulled back and threw again, body leaning beautifully into it. This had actually given him a little more definition on his back muscle, not that he'd strictly needed it.

The axe landed dead center and Raylan was grinning again. "I think I might be alright at this."

Malcolm certainly found himself noticing those back muscles as he followed through.

"I told you you'd be a natural," Malcolm said. He heaved the axe up and threw it hard and it landed in the target.

He turned and pressed a kiss to Raylan's lips. "That was a good idea," he murmured. "Thank you."

It had eased some tension out of him over the upcoming dinner. He headed to his dresser and closet to collect clothes and dress, putting on the bare bones of a suit: pants and jacket with a simple black long-sleeved t-shirt. He tucked the undershirt Raylan gave him into one of his drawers, then went into the bathroom to tame his hair.

Malcolm looked just as good as the first throw in the undershirt, but Raylan wasn't done enjoying it yet. It was a shame they had to leave, but the way Raylan saw it, the sooner the dinner and house tour were over, the sooner they could come back here.

Raylan met the kiss and smiled again. "You're the one that suggested it." He just followed through with the suggestion. Once Malcolm had walked away, Raylan gathered and put the axes away where he'd seen them pulled. He followed by tidying up their (his) food and beer and putting the dishes in the sink for him to get when they got back. Grabbing his overshirt from the counter, Raylan traded it for the one 'good' shirt he'd brought and tucked it in.

"Is this a tie required thing? Or should I just leave the top button open?"

"No tie needed," he said, just finishing up smoothing back his hair. "I'm not wearing a tie and I've worn a tie just about everywhere. Including on a beach once, but I was working."

He kissed Raylan. "You look good," he informed him.

Raylan was pulling on his jacket as Malcolm came out, making sure his collar was straight as he looked that way, greeting the kiss with a smile.

"I'd say the same but you always look good." And he knew Malcolm knew. If not, Raylan had more work to do. But he trusted his new lover's advice and went to collect his hat and gun before nodding.

"You ready to do this?"

"As ready as possible," he said. "Do you want to drive or should I call a taxi?" he asked.

He didn't want to assume whether Raylan would want to take advantage of his mother's liquor cabinet; he had no idea how the night would go.

"Taxi might be best, considering how I came out last time," Raylan reasoned. "I'd hate to give us a reason to go back over unless we have to."

He drank, and while that wasn't a problem out in Harlan or Miami where he could drive and walk, respectively, he didn't want to invite any trouble in the big city. That and they had really good liquor.

"Besides, parking here sucks."

Malcolm called the taxi and slipped his phone back into his pocket before stepping over to Raylan and giving him a lingering kiss.

One more for the road, before they were in the realm of Not Touching again. And so he remembered why he was doing this.

The taxi ride uptown wasn't long and soon they were in front of a posh townhouse on the Upper East Side. Malcolm led the way up the steps and let them in with his key. It put them in a grand entrance hall with black and white tile on the floor.

"Do you want the tour before or after dinner?" he asked.

The kiss was more than welcome and Raylan drank it and Malcolm in like he was taking the last free breath of air before being forced to hold it til they were alone again. He could only hope that they'd come back home in a similarly okay mood.

He'd expected the ride to be a little longer but said nothing about it, only frowning with his brow a little as Malcolm welcomed them in. There was a deep seated rule in the back of his head, still heard in his Mother's voice. 'You don't step into people's house uninvited.' Of course, the men she'd been telling it too didn't care and did as they pleased, but it stuck with the ten year old Raylan.

"I suppose that would depend on what time dinner is but I'm guessing that's fluid enough. Let's do the tour first." He wanted to see what else he could glean about the house that Built Malcolm, much like Malcolm did at Arlo's. "Do you still have a room here?"

"Yeah," he said nodding. "And it's pretty untouched since I left it. We'll go up there first, once we say hi to my mother."

It was the polite thing to do, he supposed.

He led Raylan into the lush livingroom beyond the entrance hall, with its antiques and its oil portraits. Jessica was sitting on the couch in a navy blue silk dress, flipping through the newspaper's society pages, glancing up as Malcolm walked in with Raylan.

"Good evening, mother."

She smiled brightly. "Ah, you made it. Good." She stood, stepping forward to offer Raylan her hand. "Nice to see you again, Raylan."

Edited 2020-05-20 13:08 (UTC)

Oh good, they were going to follow some semblance of manners that Raylan recognized. That made him feel better, somehow, like not having done would result in Jessica chiding the both of them.

His eyes wandered as they moved around, not having enough time to soak everything in, but taking a general gauge of the place and it's accents and decor. There was a lot. Once they were in.. Raylan wasn't even sure what to call the room, he was polite enough to focus on Jessica as they came up, taking off his hat long enough to shake her hand before setting it back onto his head.

"Nice to see you as well, ma'am. Thank you for the dinner invite." He wasn't going to say it was unexpected. No, considering the family, of course it was expected. This was how they got nosey. "You've got a lovely home."

And she did, but Raylan was only remarking on it because of where he was raised.

"Call me 'Jessica', please," she said with a girlish laugh, though her eyes were taking him in front top to bottom, assessing. "And really, it's my pleasure. I can't remember the last time Malcolm brought someone home." A beat. "Oh, because it's been never," she noted, looking at him pointedly, but still with the politest of smiles.

Malcolm gave her a look and she patted his cheek.

"Oh, don't look like that, darling," she told him, her mood still light and pleased. "Have a drink. Both of you, of course."

"I'm going to give him a tour first," Malcolm told her. "When's Ainsley arriving?"

"Any minute now," she told him. "But take your time. Unless you're intending to go down into that dour basement. In which case, dinner is imminent," she said emphatically.

He didn't respond to that, tilting his head for Raylan to join him as he headed back towards the stairs up.

He nodded his head slightly, giving her a warm, friendly smile. He'd have stuck with ma'am if she hadn't given him other direction, and as she hadn't at the Gala, he was erring on the safe side.

Jessica's barb only got a faint lift of his eyebrows, the most quiet of social surprise. "First time for everything, I suppose," Raylan offered conversationally, letting Malcolm manage his mother and the situation.

He tipped his hat at Jessica before turning around and following Malcolm, very aware of her eyes on his back as he went.

"Dour, huh?" He didn't directly know the word but he could well grab it's concept. "Can't say I blame her for the opinion.. Should I even ask how many rooms this place has?"

He huffed a laugh and glanced over as they headed up the wide staircase.

"I've never counted them. A lot."

They passed two doors before he opened one. Malcolm's childhood bedroom still had bookshelves along one wall filled with books. No toys. A small writing desk on one wall. A twin bed. It was immaculately tidy and it wasn't clear whether Malcolm was always Like That or if the staff kept it clean. On the bedside table, there was a rotating lamp sitting dark, but the cutouts suggested it projected the shapes of animals on the walls when it was on.

He spread his arms and dropped them. Here they were.

Of course, Raylan was curious what was in the rooms they passed but he focused on where they were going and stepped into Malcolm's younger bedroom to look around.

"Hard to believe you fit in a bed that small," he started with a pull of his smile, ambling over to the books to eyeball the kinds of books young Malcolm consumed. "Always been a reader, huh? Not even one poster.."

Though he didn't know what Malcolm would put on his walls - Bach wasn't on a lot of them as he could recall.

Most of the books were too old for the age he was when he read them, too.

He glanced at the bed, then looked at Raylan. "I bet I could still fit in it if I had to," he joked. "But yeah. I always liked reading. Fictional people were so much less... disappointing than real people, I guess."

He gestured one way and then the other. "My mother's... boudoir is down the hall. I can't really call it a bedroom. It's a suite. And Ainsley's bedroom is next door."

He head back into the hall and down the stairs.

"But I promised to show you where I was made."

His smile curled a little at the joke, eyes narrowing a soft understanding before looking back to the book self. 'Boudoir' made his lips curl, but he glanced in the direction of Ainsley's room before falling back into stride with Malcolm.

"I take it she also doesn't live here." Must be lonely for Jessica; she seemed like the type of woman to thrive on company and Raylan resisted saying so due to the fact that she was so close. He didn't know how sound traveled in here.

"Just so you're aware, we don't have to go down there." If Malcolm didn't want to. Just in case. Raylan had never run back to the place that made him; every time he entered Arlo's house, it was with a little consternation.

"Ainsley lives in a highrise apartment about halfway between here and my place," he said.

He looked up at Raylan when he said they didn't have to go to the basement and shook his head.

"No; I want to show you."

He walked around the corner from the main staircase to a door that he opened to reveal a smaller staircase leading down.

The basement was dimly lit and certainly dour and Malcolm led the way further in.

"That was my father's office," he said pointing at, by all indications, a solid wall. He nodded through an arched doorway to the right. "I'd been in the office with my father. He was teaching me the structure of the nerves in a human hand, then he sent me to bed. I was holding a mug of hot cocoa. I...think I must have heard something, but I definitely remember walking through here," he said heading through the arch. "And I put my cup down."

He pulled something out from under the bench, then pulled a dropcloth off it. It was an old-fashioned travel trunk. He dropped the cloth and stood over the box.

"I opened it."

He crouched and opened the lid, looking down into the empty box. "And there she was."

So they still stayed close; that was nice.

Raylan took Malcolm's answer silently and kept his surprise equally quiet at the door so nearby. As they headed down the stairs, Raylan checked the gun at his back out of habit; something about the ambiance and the stark lack of care that had been given to the upstairs put him on edge.

Maybe it was the fact that he knew some of what had gone on down here.

The Marshal slowed at the arch and watched wordlessly as Malcolm continued, otherwise wrapped up in the memory. It was only when Malcolm opened the trunk that he stepped forward, jaw tight and almost fully expecting to see... scrap papers, photos, a collection of a life that once was.

The trunk was, of course, empty, and Raylan stopped himself from stepping back to a 'safe' distance.

"Who teaches their ten year old about the nerves in a hand?" he asked uselessly. He didn't know what else to say. Listening to the retelling downstairs where it happened was its own visceral kind of experience, considering the real world context his own job and life had provided him.

A beat passed, his jaw working. "Was that the same night you called the cops?"

"I was interested," he said conversationally about the nerves in the hand. At Raylan's next question, he looked back down into the box.

"No. My father came up behind me and drugged me with chloroform. I have a hazy memory of my room after that. Then I have fragments of the camping trip."

He got up and walked across the room, pushing back a panel in the wall, revealing a hidden room with an iron ring bolted to the concrete floor.

"I didn't know about this until recently, but this is where he brought victims sometimes. I don't know why that girl ended up in a box instead, but..." He didn't step inside; he lingered outside the door. "That's where John Watkins brought me on Christmas Eve. Their old... rec room." He looked over at Raylan. "I'm not ready to go in there yet," he said, flexing his hand. "Anyway, I don't know how much later it was when I called the police because I'm still missing most of that time."

It was all the detail he'd been missing to build a timeline and more. Raylan couldn't quantify how this was worse than all the shit that Arlo had put him through, and all the violence in his life. There was a difference, a line, that Dr Whitly had put himself over.

Another door? How many doors were in this place?

Raylan gauged Malcolm's rise in tension - so much for the relief of axe throwing. He pointed at the room and thought better of asking before ducking his head a little and stepping in and back, resisting the urge to check his weapon again.

"How'd he get through the front door?" he called behind him, peering into the back of the room before looking down at the floor and the blood stains here. "Jesus," he muttered under his breath.

"He didn't come through the front door. There's a secret tunnel we found out about when he took me." He noticed Raylan noticing the floor. "Oh. That's my blood, not... twenty year old unsolved victims' blood. They kept it clean when they were active." He looked up at Raylan's face. "Watkins stabbed me." Raylan knew that on some level. He'd mentioned it in passing and Raylan had seen the still-pink scar just below his ribs. "That's..." He gestured vaguely. "From that."

Edited 2020-05-20 22:02 (UTC)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

BAT. BASEBALL BAT. Shit, myself. :|

i knew what u meant <3

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