tinstar | Malcolm x Raylan: Cowboy Surprise

He saw the half aborted decision and while Malcolm was right, Raylan wasn't going to go without touching him, and slid a hand around the side Malcolm's neck, thumb brushing a passing caress before Raylan finished stepping out of the way.

"I figure I'll get used to livin' here, even part time. Though the lack of space still rubs me the wrong way." There's so many people packed in here. "Especially if I get to come bat here now and then."

Malcolm leaned almost unconsciously into the touch.

"Yeah, I guess New York is denser than Lexington. Or Miami."

There were passes for the facility, though, and Malcolm would look into picking up an annual, so Raylan could use the cages whenever he wanted.

"How long does hurricane season last?" he asked curiously as he took up his stance with the bat.

"June to November, but that doesn't mean one always comes through. Does seem to be getting more frequent though, if I'm honest." He paid attention and global warming was definitely a thing being talked about.

"And the summer crowds can be a little crazy on their own, sometimes. Beaches get a lotta holiday foot traffic. We'll have to keep that in mind too. Don't think we can get private beach anywhere anymore in this country." He didn't know how he felt about that. Beyond sort of wanting to move to an island sometimes to get it.

Maybe they'd have to buy an island when they retired. If they retired.

Maybe having each other meant they might consider retiring eventually.

"We'll have to make sure the house will be nice and private even when the beach isn't," Malcolm said, watching a ball whiz past before getting ready to swing at the next one. He hit it and it skittered along the ground just inside the foul line.

"This is its own workout for the shoulders, huh?" he said, stretching as the next ball flew past. He lined himself up for the next one.

Right now it seemed like they were the only ones that could talk each other into not working for even a short time; retirement might happen, if its pitched the right way, but retirement was eons away. Raylan couldn't look that far ahead yet, out of fear he'd miss something in the now.

But he could get behind a nice private house where they could walk around and sunbathe in the nude if they wanted to.

"Findin' all sorts of muscles you didn't realize you had huh?" He was grinning as he spoke. "Now you know what it was like for me throwin' those axes. There's a reason we're not doin' more than two buckets. I'm not as young as I used to be and you're new."

Malcolm laughed and the ball flew by him, so he got ready for the next one.

"Was there a time when you could bat all day?" he asked, swinging at the ball and hitting it straight down the middle. He couldn't do it anything like consistently, but there was always a little surge of triumph when one actually went the way he wanted.

"God no, not all day. But I used to do hour chunks over a day, two or three. Four if Arlo was drunk and pissed off. It was a good way to.. work some of that bullshit out. Got me too tired to do anything about my hurt feelings." It was more than hurt feelings, it was all out fury, but Raylan of then didn't relish getting his ass beat again or going home into a fist fight. It didn't get him much other than black eyes and a broken bone or two.

"Now it's become the place I go to when I need to work something out in my head." Usually with Jim Beam holding his company. "Kinda a retreat from everything, I guess."

"I get that," Malcolm told him. "It's like why I do yoga."

He swung and caught a piece of it, sending it up and foul.

"Still think I need to work on breathing?" he teased. Batting might look simple, but it was physically demanding and that came with a need to control one's breath.

"In baseball? No, you've got it down. In yoga? We'll see how you do with a sun salute," he teased.

He lined himself up for the next ball and hit it with a loud crack, sending it towards the ground and then skittering the rest of the way to the end of the cage.

Raylan chuckled. "If it were anyone else, that statement might scare me." He nodded at the pitching machine. "You're already doing better than a little bit ago. Hitting the ball inside the foul lines totally counts. Though I'm afraid you might be sweating a little bit," he teased gently with a gesture towards Malcolm's back.

Malcolm laughed brightly.

"I don't know how that could be a surprise. You make me sweat every time you visit," he teased, stepping back and holding out the bat to Raylan.

Raylan hummed behind a suggestive bounce of his eyebrows before laughing and stepping forward to collect the bat. "Not enough for my liking, not yet," he teased back, letting his off hand slide around Malcolm's waist as he moved past him.

"You're pretty when you sweat," Raylan supplied, just in case Malcolm didn't know, as he stepped up to the plate and twirled the bat up into position. "And I-" Crack - It would have been a two baser, at least. "- am definitely going to need a beer after this."

He hit the next three in quick succession before stepping back, shoulders rolling as he twirled the bat again. "I know it's terrible, but considering everything, I feel a little less bad about telling you but-" Raylan looked over his shoulder at Malcolm. "I like using a bat a little too much."

He wasn't talking about baseball anymore. He was talking about the way it cracked against Dickie Bennett's knee after he got kicked in the face, or the way it connects with a body. It was deeply satisfying to his inner fury. Somehow, he didn't worry about Malcolm judging him.

"To defend yourself? Well, it's more... feral than a gun. More satisfying to the animal part of the brain where our survival instinct lives," Malcolm explained matter-of-factly. "Does that worry you?"

He winced and bobbed his head back and forth, ignoring the few balls that went past him during all of it.

"Only when it's quiet. Sometimes when it's not. There's just.." There's just some people that didn't speak any other language other than violence. "I worry about all the things I've done. The men I've killed, the compromises I've made," Raylan rolled his shoulders in something of a shrug as his eyes found the ground.

"I didn't hate pulling the trigger sometimes either."

"Sometimes people deserve what they get," Malcolm allowed simply. "When you didn't hate pulling the trigger.... was it because those people hurt people?"

Raylan shrugged and looked away for a long moment before looking back to Malcolm.

"It stopped them from hurting others." But he still killed them. "You already know how people like to draw down on me... But what if they didn't draw? Would I still have killed them?" Without the draw first, Raylan had no justification. "My ass is only saved by the fact that they've all been justified."

"That's not a statistical anomaly, Raylan. The fact that one hundred percent of the people you've killed have presented a clear and present danger is significant. You've come up against a lot of bad people. You've had many chances to shoot criminals who didn't draw on you and you never have. And even so, you're still thinking about it. Do you know how many sociopaths think about whether they had to use lethal force or not? Zero of them."

He hummed and turned back, bat coming back up. "Yeah." Logically, it made sense but it wasn't enough to override the guilt in his lizard brain because he was capable of murdering without being drawn on. He'd gotten so close so many times and that closeness was its own danger. How easily he'd slipped into being a ghost of Arlo before.

Raylan cracked another ball into outfield. "That's what I keep telling myself." He hit another one, and poorly, before wincing and rolling his shoulders again. "A waste of balls but I think my shoulders are callin' it." He kind of hated that he had to say it out loud but his cautions for Malcolm about tearing a shoulder was one he took seriously. He used those, rather frequently.

"You wanna bat off the rest?"

"It's good that you think about it. As long as you do, you're still good."

He looked at the machine. "No, I think I'm going to be sore as it is," he admitted. "Want to get lunch? Then we can head down to Times Square."

Nodding, Raylan hit the emergency stop button provided on their side and set the bat against the cage before he held out a hand towards Malcolm for his helmet which still got a wild grin from Raylan.

"They'll clean up." He collected his hat and his jacket, slipping them back on before leading Malcolm out. "I'll let you choose lunch, you know what's around. And for a guy who doesn't really eat, you've got great food taste." For Raylan, anyway.

He huffed a laugh, smoothing his hair back from where the helmet left it decidedly ruffled.

"Well, I listen to people talk about food. But there's this sports bar down the street that is apparently packed with memorabilia and has really good chicken wings? JT raves about it."

Raylan winced with a bob of his head. "Never much cared for sports bars myself. If I'm going to watch a game, it'll be at home. They're always loud and full of rowdy drunks." He'd never been much one for chicken wings either, he didn't like how much work it took to get a disassifying amount of meat off it.

"JT seems like the sports bar type. He married?"

"Yes. His wife's name is Tally. I met her once," he explained as they headed out of the building. "She was really nice. There's a restaurant I like about halfway to Times Square. We could take the subway."

Raylan nodded. JT was probably a fan of sports bars to get away from her now and then.

"Never ridden the subway, let's do that. Never really done public transit. Hell, even taxis a just a little weird sometimes. I did have to hang off a side of a bus in Nicaragua though. If that counts." Whether or not he was getting to shoot someone didn't really matter, right?

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