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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"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.

She nodded. "You left Miami under a bit of a cloud, though, didn't you?"

Malcolm's head snapped up. "You did not."

She gave him a wide-eyed innocent look. "I was just curious about who this mystery man was."

Jessica looked between them and then looked at Ainsley. "What sort of a cloud?"

"He shot a gangster in a quickdraw contest in a restaurant like it was the Old West," she revealed with a grin.

Jessica raised her eyebrows and looked at him. "Is that true?"

Malcolm scrubbed a hand over his face.

Raylan wasn't surprised, and he scoffed a breath, eyebrows lifting in amusement as he glanced at his plate briefly. Tommy Banks had been quite a sticker on his file and reputation; it made sense that that was the first story she found. Or the most prominent one, anyway.

He focused on Jessica first, with a reassuring tone and lift of his expression. "A Miami mafia gun thug pulled on a Federal officer and lost. He'd overstayed his welcome willingly." The fact that he'd given him 24 hours to get out of town wasn't something he was going to mention either.

Raylan's eyes shifted over to Ainsley then and while she was already pretty cute, the question brought a bit of seriousness to her brightness that Raylan knew she'd be able to use like a knife, once she got it mastered and perfected. "It was pretty widely covered there; I'm not surprised you found out about it. The Miami Herald has a half decent piece on it. I was cleared for being in the right, by the way, by the AUSA, 9 months later." Since he was sure the Herald didn't do a follow up on that.

Edited (Spacing) 2020-05-21 15:46 (UTC)

"Well, who wouldn't approve of shooting a badguy," Ainsley said brightly.

One of the staff brought out three salads and a bowl of soup, setting the salads in front of Ainsley, Jessica and Raylan and the soup in front of Malcolm. His place was only set with a soup spoon, as opposed to the full complement of utensils at the other place settings.

He didn't pick up the spoon right away.

"How is your human trafficking charity going, mother?" Malcolm said, changing the subject himself this time.

She waved her hand as she picked up her salad fork.

"It's going well. Eve is a very organized and committed young woman." And Jessica had made no secret that she was the sort of woman she thought Malcolm should have been interested in. "She makes sure my money makes a tangible difference to vulnerable people."

"The AUSA," he remarked dryly with a bob of his eyebrows as he collected his glass for a shallow pull of scotch. So much for no murder talk at the table. He'd hoped the mention of the tour would have been all of it.

Raylan was grateful for Malcolm bringing up a subject; he was bad at it and he didn't do dinner parties.. Unless they were for work... Or In-laws. 'Eve' made him glance between them as he stabbed a bite of his salad.

"Do you know what part of the fight your money is going to?"

Jessica waved her hand at that.

"Eve takes care of those details. She's a lawyer. She puts a lot of the resources towards prosecuting companies that cover for human trafficking or who turn a blind eye to it." She leveled a gaze at Malcolm, who picked up his spoon and ate a careful bite of soup, trying not to meet her eyes. "She was here the other day, as a matter of fact, showing me a presentation they were working on to lobby the government to put laws into place that would better protect people in this situation. I'm sure she'll get them to table a bill; she's very determined."

"I'm glad it's going well," he told her mildly.

"You stopped calling her."

"She didn't take my last forty calls, mother. I'm sure she's moved on as much as I have."

Jessica glanced at Raylan. "Maybe not as much."

Malcolm shrugged and poked at his soup. "Well, she should. I recommend it."

Ainsley cleared her throat. "An anchor position is opening up at the network."

Malcolm was happy to divert his attention to her. "Really? Do you think you have a shot?"

"I've heard a few good rumours..." Ainsley said coyly.

Raylan kept his opinion of that to himself beyond a faint lift of his eyebrows in acknowledgment. He'd never looked into how charities worked and he wasn't going to start now, but it sounded.. a lot like a great opportunity to fleece the ultrarich.

The Marshal listened to the conversation, keeping his eyes on his salad, aside from a conversational glance around that without, would make him suspect. Of course it meant he met Jessica's eye and he gave her a gentle, unapologetic little smile that fell as he took another bite.

Nope, he wasn't stepping into this one. Not even about Ainsley's possible promotion - last thing he wanted to do was invited some idea that would bite him in the ass later.

"Good," Malcolm told her. "I hope you get it."

Ainsley beamed a little. "Leslie says I have the face for the desk," she told them happily. "I think she's really pushing for me with the brass."

"She produced your interview with dad, right?"

Ainsley nodded. "She says I have a lot of promise."

"The newsroom will definitely be a step up from roaming around the unsavoury corners of this city with a camera crew," Jessica noted.

"Yes, well." She gave her brother a playful look. "I'll miss being ignored by Malcolm at crime scenes, but what can you do?"

Raylan smiled as he finished the salad, trading his fork for his scotch as he watched the most functionally family he'd seen outside of TV Sitcoms. He could see where and why the bubble that existed around them did; it wasn't their fault, he didn't hold their wealth against them, but there was an expectation of perfection that made it feel.. surreal somehow. Idealistically unreal.

"You fit in on screen, for what that's worth from me. Very clear articulation." They'd mentioned before at the Gala that Malcolm had gotten Raylan to watch some TV. He might have looked into a little more on his free time.

"Thank you," Ainsley beamed at him. "I studied diction extra-curricularly."

"You said it would come in handy," Malcolm noted. He looked at Raylan. "She always wanted to do TV news. She wasn't interested in newspapers."

"Print is a dying medium," Ainsley declared.

The housekeeper showed up and took their plates, leaving Malcolm's at best half-eaten soup for him to continue working on.

"When do you find out?" Jessica asked, picking up her wine glass.

"Should be in the next couple of weeks."

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

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