tinstar | Malcolm x Raylan: Cowboy Surprise

Malcolm x Raylan: Cowboy Surprise

Art was suspicious right off the bat when Raylan took a week off with the express note that his phone would be Out Of Order til the next Monday, but the Chief Marshal wasn't going to look gift horses in the mouth. Not when it suggested he'd have a few days of peace, until Raylan caved to turning his phone back on again. Still, he watched the younger Marshal walk out of the office and promised himself to check into the state of Harlan within 3 days to make sure that the place wasn't on fire. The smoke would reach him before he called, he was sure.

But Art didn't have much to worry about - Raylan had no plans on staying in the state for his vacation, beyond one day spent closing up Arlo's and securing it the best way he could before getting on a plane to New York City. He wanted to surprise Malcolm - it'd been near two months since they'd last seen each other and frankly, Raylan was tired of missing him. They'd called and texted, stayed in a fairly consistent, if odd houred, touch but it wasn't the same.

Once he landed, Raylan rented a car and navigated his way towards Malcolm's apartment, stopping to grab a bouquet of flowers. It was.. Extra, but Raylan didn't want to show up empty handed, just in case. Thirty minutes later, Malcolm's door buzzer was being hit, like Raylan was here to deliver something. Well, he was, but that was half the fun.

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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)

Raylan's head swiveled back to Malcolm with a hard look in his eye.

"How sanitary of them," he replied, with the barest attempt at a even a fake smile that went nearly nowhere. He was happy enough to turn his hat towards the back. "Where's it come out at?"

"A disused subway tunnel," Malcolm answered. "Looking for a quick way out of dinner?" he teased in an attempt to lighten a bleak scene. "I was unconscious when he brought me here," he explained in all seriousness. "I didn't realize where we were right away."

He walked a little further back before pausing again. No - this wasn't any time for security detail... Except telling himself that didn't ease the new itch in the back of his head. It was clear he was struggling with it as he turned around, letting the brim of his lead him back to Malcolm.

"You guys should really do something about that," he said, closing the door to the room behind them like he could barr the memories held there in. "No idea who has access to that tunnel. I wouldn't keep cheap tin in here, much less what your mother has above our heads. How old is this place?"

"It's a few hundred years old," he said. He gestured towards the room. "We locked the tunnel entrance from the inside," he added. "Now that we know it's there."

He studied Raylan's face for a second.

"It's okay," he told him. "She had the house scoured after that for other... secret entrances while I was in the hospital. It's secure now."

"Oh, I'm sure Masterlock has got you covered from all the sociopathic axe murders." Dry sarcasm was dry, indeed. He was not impressed and his opinion hadn't changed.

Raylan met Malcolm's eye but the tension in his jaw didn't go anywhere. "No offense to whatever the best that money can buy is, but well hidden hiding places are lost to time for a reason." He didn't have faith in those services.

"We should probably get back upstairs before she starts looking for us."

Malcolm nodded, hesitating a second, unsure if this had been the right thing to do. Raylan seemed upset. But he was right, someone might come looking for them. He headed for the stairs.

As soon as Malcolm started away, Raylan worried that he'd been a little to free with his criticism. He followed but caught Malcolm by the elbow before he started up the stairs.

"Hey," he started, wincing a little as he drew up in front of Malcolm. "I'm.. -- Thank you for showing me." It wasn't easy for him, so he could only imagine what it was like for Malcolm. "It's.." Raylan took a deep breath, looking down the way he'd came. "It just.." He looked down.

It wasn't right. It was so demonstonerably wrong.

"I'm glad you showed me." That was all. And he felt the urge to.. touch Malcolm, reassure him somehow, and he worried that it'd be useless fretting. Malcolm was still working through it and he didn't need the guilt of Raylan's guilt to make it worse.

He breathed out a small, almost relieved smile and slid his arms around Raylan, hugging him tightly.

"I want to share everything with you," he admitted into Raylan's shoulder. He pulled away enough to look up at his face. "Sorry it's..." he glanced back into the basement. "Ugly," he concluded with a faint frown. "I'm still trying to work out how someone can pretend to be a great dad and then torture people to death in the basement while his children are asleep upstairs." He huffed a rueful laugh. "He maintains he was a great dad, by the way. He denies the chloroform but I remember now. I remember it."

Raylan wrapped his arms around Malcolm, leaning the weight of his face carefully on Malcolm's combed coif so as to not muss it. He almost cautioned him about the gun at the small of his back, but Malcolm knew it was there, so he tried not to worry. There was an inarguable power to their contact; Raylan already felt a little better about it.

"Some places look exactly as they are," Raylan said, glancing back up the way they'd come. He could argue where and how Martin was a good father and he hated that too. Raylan looked back down at Malcolm.

"How about we add another memory?" Malcolm wouldn't get much time to answer before Raylan was leaning down to steal his lips in a hesitantly chaste kiss. It was sheer gamble, but Raylan couldn't do anything about Martin or what he'd done right now. Not down here.

Malcolm met it gladly, smiling into it, his hands sliding up and curling around Raylan's neck.

"That is a better one," he murmured against his mouth as the kiss broke, not quite pulling away yet.

Humming behind a smile, Raylan kissed him again more confidently as one hand found its way around Malcolm's waist to keep his body against Raylan's. When the kiss broke again, his embrace loosened a little and he muttered back.

"I'm a lot more fun to think about."

From upstairs, Jessica was starting to call for Malcolm and Raylan could just imagine the click click click of her heels on the floor.

Raylan glanced up the stairs and smiled crookedly. "Are we okay?" Collectively, he meant. Dinner was still something they had to get through before retiring to more distracting things.

He was infinitely more fun to think about and that was good, because Malcolm had a hard time not thinking about him these days.

Malcolm heard her too and nodded his answer to the question, pressing one more quick, impulsive kiss to Raylan's mouth before letting go of him to walk up the stairs.

"Of course you were down there," Jessica said as they emerged. There's wine on the table; let Louisa know if you want anything else," she told them, click-clacking her way back towards the dining room.

The impulsive kiss was met with a hand coming up to catch Raylan's hat before it started to tumble, having already been pushed to a precarious position, and he settled it back onto his head as he followed Malcolm up the stairs.

Jessica's quip was given a pull of his smile and he looked back to Malcolm. "I don't know who Louisa is, but I'm not much of a wine drinker. Does she keep scotch?"

"She's my mother's housekeeper," Malcolm told him. "I'll get the scotch."

Louisa already collected his laundry on a weekly basis and cleaned his apartment, whether he wanted her to or not. But he could control whether he fetched his own drink.

As they entered the dining room, Malcolm went to the sideboard and took out two crystal tumblers and filled them from a matching crystal decanter, setting one in front of Raylan as he took his seat next to him. Jessica just looked at him a moment and sighed as she put her linen napkin across her lap.

"So how was your murder tour of my home, Raylan?" she asked lightly.

Ah, same Louisa, he assumed.

Raylan followed Malcolm into the dining room, breaking off towards the table itself as he pulled his hat off and set it into a sitting chair on the way by. Manners dictated you didn't wear hats that the table. He waited for Malcolm to come back before sitting down, looking over at Jessica as she started them out.

"Overlooking the massive security issues that you have and the lack of paint downstairs, you've got a lovely home. Generational, as Malcolm tells it, couple hundred years? It's an impressive building." Hey, if she was going to be blunt about it, why shouldn't he. "How many generations of Whitly's have grown up here?"

Ainsley rolled her eyes at her mother launching right into that question. Of course Malcolm had shown his boyfriend the basement. He'd probably told him about it ages ago.

"Just these two," Jessica answered, gesturing between Ainsley - seated across from them - and Malcolm.

"Hi again, by the way," Ainsley said to Raylan.

"This house had been in my family," Jessica explained, "- the Miltons - for seven generations before it was defiled by Martin Whitly's crimes and it will be in my family long after I've scattered his ashes to the wind in whatever swamp is closest to the city."

Malcolm made an expansive gesture to the table. "So bon appetite," he quipped.

"What brings you to New York this time?" Ainsley asked, changing the subject, taking a sip of wine.

Raylan looked over to greet Ainsley with a little bob of his head. "Hi. Sorry I didn't see ya before hand, we said hello before Malcolm showed me around."

He looked back over to Jessica, nodding his understanding of his mistake with a gentle, "Of course, the Miltons. Surprising that you'd want even his ashes that close," he offered with a fraction of levity. But Jessica's fury and bitter anger wasn't missed, no matter the tone she took. Raylan kicked himself internally for using the wrong name but no changing it now.

He glanced at Malcolm, quirking his smile faintly before he looked back over at Ainsley.

"Ah, well.." He glanced at Malcolm again. "I had some free time on my hands, so I thought I'd come up to keep Malcolm out of trouble for a few days."

Okay, not exactly the truth, but definitely not a lie. "Might help with a case, if I'm needed." He didn't expect to be needed, but it was a good cover over a cover.

It made Malcolm smile into his lap as he laid his napkin there. Ainsley didn't miss it, but she hadn't missed Raylan's greeting to him, either.

She nodded. "You're working out of the Marshal's office in Lexington these days, right?" Maybe she'd been poking around since confirmation of the nature of his relationship with her brother.

"For now, yes. Unless Art gets tired of me beforehand and lets me transfer back out of Kentucky. I'm only there for a set of specific people. Once we get them where they belong-" Firmly in jail, "-I can look at goin' back to Miami."

He wondered how far Ainsley dug, but knew better than to give her more fodder or poke that particular curious bear.

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He's gonna stop him before they hit the stairs.

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