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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"She was different before the arrest. Lighter. She was happy. Afterwards... she drank a lot. She took pills. Louisa looked after us... quite a bit. My mother might pretend to complain about her affection for us, but she won't intervene. She feels guilty that it was necessary. And Louisa is loyal to her. She stayed with us. She never sold her story to the tabloids." He sighed, one hand sliding up between Raylan's shoulderblades. "I think a lot of her... controlling and chiding and.... picking at things are based in guilt. For choosing him. For not protecting us from him. For not being a rock for us afterwards when she was rudderless herself. I don't blame her, but she drives me nuts."

"Weird way to appreciate those that pick up the slack. But I see how and where she affects you. Can't nothing be done for it now except this. Ain't my place to say more."

He hadn't suffered it, he didn't have to shoulder that guilt or the guilt of not doing the best by her children despite the size of her bank account; Raylan wasn't here to judge. Turning his lips onto Malcolm's head, the gears kept rolling in the back of his mind anyway.

Where and how she affected him, like the way he thought he was embarrassing and inconvenient if he didn't hide his problems. He apologized for hallucinating because it made a scene while they were trying to eat.

Intellectually, he knew some level of it, but so much had been internalized.

"My father only sounds like he was supportive," he added. "But he's actually a raging psychopathic narcissist. If he gave good advice, it was so he would look good. He doesn't do anything that doesn't glorify himself or serve his own needs. He wore a very convincing mask of fatherhood."

Raylan frowned softly and pulled his head back, lifting his chest a little with the motion to get Malcolm's head to come back up so he could study those too blue eyes. These were uneven and dangerous grounds, but Raylan wasn't scared of being asked to back up his own reasonings.

"Darlin'.. Just because the giver is flawed doesn't make the advice flawed. I know your daddy's got his own problems, murders aside, but that advice he gave you isn't wrong or less valuable havin' come from him." Worth suspect and investigation, but Raylan made short work of that. Could confirm.

"For whatever else your father did, he loves you. He gives a shit about you. Doesn't matter why. Trust me. That's better than the alternitive."

He gave that definite consideration, looking up into Raylan's eyes. Raylan was a smart man and Malcolm hadn't forgotten the stories Raylan had told him of Arlo. Things like Arlo breaking his arm and beating his mother. For all of the Surgeon's monstrosities, he'd never raised a hand to his family in anger. Even when he intended to kill Malcolm, his intent had been to cover for his crimes. It was a rational act, not an unpredictable frenzy that could come at any time.

"I suppose. Though the 'why' is that he sees me as an extension of himself. An accessory to his life. Something he made. Like his murders. He knew everything there was to know about human anatomy. He could have destroyed those bodies, but he didn't. He couldn't bring himself to destroy his work. I think that's the same reason why he couldn't kill me on the camping trip, in the end." He took a breath. "But I think if you'd followed the path of your life the way your father wanted you to, he'd have seen you as nothing more than an accessory to his life. It's hard with people who aren't capable of empathy. Their version of love is... rooted in their worldview of what's useful to them."

"All fathers do. We are, no matter much much we don't like it." Raylan had long come to accept that. They couldn't run from their makers forever. He couldn't run from what he'd been made into, with every whipping, punch or shouting match.

"You're right. About both of 'em. Arlo never taught me shit and he used me til the day he died. Hell, he was hired out to kill me once," Raylan said, brows pinching a little with it. "I can't even pretend that he might'd've cared. I know comparing them is.. fundamentally useless."

But he didn't have any other way to express how he wished he had the opportunity to pretend, even with all the reasons not to.

"But you should rethink what he told you - the important parts, not about the murders or the Stepford Lies that he told to do 'em, but what he put into you, as kid.... That's not the chloroform-" fuck you couldn't walk two steps without needing an addendum when it came to Martin Whitly. "Point is, not everything he said was bullshit."

One thing that Malcolm was absolutely certain of at that point was that Raylan absolutely did care about him. And he made sense, however grudging Malcolm was to accept that truth. Most truths were hard; he knew that well.

"I'll think about it," he promised. And he would. It wasn't a blow-off; he meant it.

He hesitated and then he said "This morning's affirmation was 'Keeping things bottled up only leads to broken glass'."

Raylan almost believed that promise, only a fraction of him pulling off in doubt. He'd let Malcolm prove himself, which required nothing but time.

The affirmation made him scoff a sound. "Seems like your cards know your day better than we ever could, huh. You ever look at these before you go to bed, gauge how well you did on 'em that day?"

He smiled a little at that.

"No; maybe I should. Maybe I'd do a better job of internalizing them." He pressed his lips together and looked at Raylan. "How have you been doing on the one I gave you?" he asked.

"I give us a solid B plus." For what that was worth.

"Eh, I've been working on it, here and there. The contents have started to change dramatically - that counts right? Poor thing is about worn to nothin' in my wallet. Might have to get it laminated or something."

Malcolm's expression brightened.

"You still have it in your wallet?" he said, not even attempting to hide how much that buoyed him. It was unabashedly a souvenir of his time with Malcolm and he still kept it close to him.

Raylan hummed and reached behind him to tug his wallet out of his pocket, flipping it open and thumbing out an overly worn affirmation card. The stiffness of it had long been worked out, the intricate border starting to fade around the edges, but it was there.

"Not always a place to throw axes.." The card sufficed in the quiet moments when he was drunk and alone. A reminder of a Bright spot in his life.

Malcolm understood something when Raylan took out that card: Raylan didn't just miss Malcolm when they were apart in a nebulous sort of way. Raylan missed Malcolm in the aching, unremitting way that Malcolm missed him.

He leaned up and pressed an earnest, ardent kiss to his mouth, lingering there, in his breath, when it broke.

"Maybe we should make a more...concrete plan to see each other more often," he murmured.

He missed him like there was a hole in his day that gnawed at him so as to not be forgotten or drank away, despite more than a few nights where Raylan had tried. He tried to find a way to.. not fall down this hole, to not fall into a romance he had no chance of gauging the success of.

Raylan let a little rough noise at the sudden and passionate kiss, curling forward a fraction under Malcolm's attention.

"What do you suggest?"

"My work isn't regular. When I finish a case, there's always at least a couple or three days of space between. Gil doesn't call me all the time. He's afraid of overloading me."

He drew away just a tiny bit more, just enough to see his face.

"I can come to Lexington when I'm not on a case. If you're at work, I can wait. We can salvage a few hours whenever you get done."

"Okay." He wasn't going to fight it or argue; he had no reason to and he agreed. He wanted more of Malcolm. More time with him, no matter what they were doing. He'd figure out whatever hurdles he had to in Kentucky.

"I can't say that I'll be able to carve out extra time or that cases won't run long and that'll..." He took a deep breath, eyes moving back and forth as he watched Malcolm. "I can't protect you from everything in Kentucky. I need to know you understand what you coming down between cases means. I can't control everything down there, and I don't want you gettin' caught up in some side line shitkicker nonsense."

He held up a hand, keeping the other around Raylan. "I'll bring books; I'll stay at the hotel. I'm not coming to sightsee. If there's anything else you think I should do to not make problems for you, just say the word."

Raylan eyed him carefully. "No worry or frettin' over getting asked to stay at home? Where you're safe?"

Because Malcolm had been anxious about that before and Raylan couldn't bring him along on the majority of his work - mainly because it happened late at night on backwoods roads that needed a sharper sense of self preservation than Malcolm had. It wasn't a slight against the man but Raylan was a realist.

"I learned my lesson," Malcolm said soberly. "Square peg, round hole. Got it. I just want to see you. I won't interfere in your work. I won't go to Harlan. I won't talk to anyone."

Raylan considered it, eyes locked on Malcolm's face. This was a choice too, a risk, a massive one. Once Malcolm started coming down - People noticed people that were there more often than not and when someone's never been there, they stick out all the more.

He didn't want to trap Malcolm in his bullshit either. It sounded like Malcolm was going into WITSEC to be with him and that laid on it's own layer of guilt.

Swallowing thickly, Raylan nodded, knowing that if it didn't go well, he could kiss a great many things goodbye, including his reputation and any softpower he had. Not his job, maybe, but there was also Winona to contend with and he wasn't looking forward to that conversation at all.

Malcolm was watching his face carefully and he saw things play out there, not all of which he had the context to guess at.

"You don't like something about this. You're deeply unsettled by it. What is it? Why are you agreeing?" He paused. "I wore out my welcome in Kentucky," he hazarded. "Just my presence there is a problem, but you don't want to tell me not to come."

"I'm agreein' because I want to see you," he impressed with a faint lift of his eyebrows. "And your presence is-- Not a problem." Go ahead Raylan, lie some more.

"I just don't want you stuck in some crappy motel away from all this... Everything that you're used to, like you're hiding out from the whole state." He took a deep breath, looking down for a long moment before looking back up.

"Why don't I find a place to rent in Lexington, on the other side of town. We can stay there, give you some privacy and Lexington's finest attempt at New York hipster coffee?"

He did want to see Malcolm, but Malcolm never doubted that.

His presence was definitely a problem, though. Was he not hiding out from the whole state?

Still, whatever the reasons for it - and he was sure they posed some sort of danger for Raylan to be so adamant (and to lie about them) - the compromise was reasonable. He nodded.

"That sounds nice," he said. "Will you let me pay half? You wouldn't be getting it if I wasn't going to be there."

He nodded, relieved that Malcolm wasn't pushing to pry further, relieved to have a compromise. "Sure, if you want. Looking at maybe five or six hundred each, depending. Not much more than I'm paying for the motel. You can even decorate, if that's your thing."

It wasn't his. His hands tightened around Malcolm again, fractionally.

"I know this isn't ideal. I-.. I wish I knew how to make it ideal. But I promise to do the best I can."

"Good. I wouldn't want you to spend more than you do now. Miami is still the endgame, but... our own place... that would be a lot more comfortable. I could leave some stuff there. Clothes and things. Travel lighter," he noted. He looked at Raylan's face again. "What does 'ideal' look like?"

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