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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Malcolm nodded.

"I've met her, too. But I'm not sure I agree with you about Raylan. I think a lot of the perceptions about him are...taken out of context. He's probably the steadiest person I've ever known."

"Steadfast only works when his feet are planted on solid ground," Art conversationally argued. "I've been workin' with and knowin' Raylan for a decade at least. He tries, but he drinks too much and he goes lookin' for trouble. The man's married to his job, I swear. Which normally, ain't a bad thing, when people have something to balance that out with."

Art kept his resting sceptical face as he watched Malcolm, judging and weighing his responses.

"You got something to balance it out with?"

Malcolm shrugged.

"Someone to talk to that understands this job and the way it can consume the people who do it because they honestly care about protecting people? It's an alternative to liquid therapy, at any rate," he offered. "I think... I also understand what it's like to be seen as too into the job and not enough into Life Things."

Art shrugged with his face in consideration, eyes moving to the doors as Raylan and Tim came back in.

"He'll regret it if he doesn't see these young years of his daughter. Those moments, he'll never get back," Art said, eyebrows raising with a slight nod of his head to direct Malcolm's attention if he hadn't already noticed.

"I told him that," Malcolm said. "I'm trying to g..."

His voice trailed off as he caught sight of Raylan at Art's direction. He was usually good at hiding his tells, but he hadn't be prepared to see Raylan Givens enter a room without smiling. It only just ghosted across his face before it fell and - instead of looking at Art's face - he looked at Art's desk.

"I don't want to make any trouble for him," he said in a soft, serious voice.

He knew what the game was. He knew when he lost.

The passing look was all Art really needed, but the round about admission that there was something there was appreciated.

"More than likely, he'll make trouble for you," Art replied as he pushed to his feet. "But if you can handle his bullshit.. Maybe you'll be alright. Go on, finish your paperwork," Art said, pulling open his office door.

There was no missing it and Raylan stopped short as he saw Malcolm get up and exit Art's office. The look he gave Art was full of questions, but Art gave him nothing as he shut the door and turned around. With a pinch of his brow, Raylan ambled into the conference room after Malcolm.

"What was all that about?"

Malcolm looked up at him uneasily.

"He knows," he said grimly. "He's got no proof or anything but. He knows."

He turned his paper over to record his account of their second encounter with Jeremy.

"And I can't tell what he thinks about it but he wasn't... upset."

Raylan looked over at the window that looked into Art's office, but the man was already bent over some paperwork himself, half moon glasses perched on his nose.

"Well what'd he say about it," Raylan continued as he slid into his seat, picking up his pen again. "Usually Art makes himself pretty clear when he's upset so that might be a good sign."

"He implied it was unlikely that I was your friend, since you've never had a friend that didn't work in your office," Malcolm recalled. "He said you need something to balance out your work life because you drink too much and get in fights. He said you have to be careful not to miss your baby's baby years and that your ex-wife causes a lot of bullshit. Ummm oh and he found the notion of you sightseeing in New York laughable."

He looked up at Raylan from his paper.

"I told him you're the steadiest person I've ever known and that I don't want to make trouble for you. He said you were more likely to make trouble for me. You're not taking me to the airport after this, are you?"

"God no," he replied without hesitation, face pinching at the absurdity of the thought as he started writing again.

There were several barbs in the retelling, but none that weren't fair.

"Sounds like he was givin' you advice." He didn't look up. "It'll be okay." He hoped.

If Art did have some opinion on it, Raylan was sure he'd hear it. He was also sure that it wouldn't change his mind.

"Advice? ...Oh, well he did say if I could handle your bullshit, then maybe I'd be all right."

Malcolm looked over at him.

"I don't really know what he's talking about when he refers to your 'bullshit'; it seems to be a catch-all phrase."

Raylan looked up at him, face guarded in its stoic netrality.

"It's not. Messed up a couple of cases by sleepin' with a key witness. I let a Chicago thug get murdered in his limo because he threatened Winona. Art knows about that too, but we haven't talked about it. I shoot more people than I save. I've been investigated enough times that I'm sure I've got half a drawer on me alone. I wouldn't call it my bullshit, but he's entitled to his opinion on it."

"You haven't shot more people than you've saved," Malcolm said matter-of-factly and with utter conviction of the truth. He knew it wasn't true, because even for each person Raylan would have shot, he saved people they would have hurt. "That's not mathematically possible."

Malcolm didn't realize that Raylan's body count had risen drastically over the last few years or that Raylan was technically responsible for more bodies in the ground that Martin Whitly was.

"You could check my file, but I stopped keepin' count." He hadn't stopped keeping count.

"Let's finish this shit and go get some food, huh?" he asked with a look back down to his papers.

Malcolm put his pen down and leaned forward slightly.

"Raylan, when you put a bad guy down, how many innocent people do you save each time? How much suffering do you prevent? You only shoot people who earn it with the threat of inflicting suffering on someone else. On you or on others or both." Malcolm needed him to understand the difference between what he did and murder. He was nothing like Martin Whitly. "I learned really early on that the lives saved by stopping a killer are tangible things, not... nice bedtime stories. They're lives. Real lives."

When Raylan lifted his gaze, there was a different kinda hardness in his eyes. "Now isn't the time or place, Malcolm. I'd like to get the hell outta here. I'm only worried about two lives right now. Yours and mine."

Malcolm held that gaze, even if he subconsciously sank back a little bit under it. It was the pushing too hard or too far look and so he stopped. He nodded mutely and picked up his pen, putting his head down to carefully fill out the rest of the report in silence. When he finished, he put the cap on the pen and put it on top of the paper before pushing it to the middle of the table for Raylan to take at his leisure.

He glanced around the conference room, noting Art in his office and the others at their desks outside through the windows, flexing his hand open and closed on his knee under the table out of habit, as more of a fidget than anything.

Raylan moved swiftly through his statement, pulling Malcolm's over to read it and compare before adding something onto his and capping his pen with a deep breath.

"That should be satisfactory. I'm ready to go home. What about you?" he asked rhetorically as he stood up and collected their papers. "Lemme drop these off with Art and we can get outta here."

Malcolm nodded his response to the rhetorical question, offering a small, but - he hoped - reassuring smile to Raylan as he gathered up the papers. As he headed into the next room, Malcolm got up and buttoned his jacket before stepping out into the main room, lingering near the door to the conference room, avoiding Tim and Rachel's eyes.

It was a rare moment when Malcolm Bright didn't have something to say to fill the silence and Raylan felt a little guilty. He knew that silence from him was never a good thing. But, there was nothing he could do about it here.

With a look at Malcolm's retreating shoulders, Raylan turned into Art's office.

"Papers for ya, boss," he offered, dropping them on Art's desk before turning towards the door.

"Hey," Art stopped him with a lift of his chin. "You know what you're doin' right?"

Raylan pinched his brow at him. "Yeah. 'Course."

There wasn't much room for discussion after that, because Raylan swept out to grab his jacket and swing it on, letting Malcolm led the way into the elevator.

Once they got in and got moving, Raylan hit the full stop button.

"You're not talkin'."

Malcolm was staring at the wall of the elevator intently, his expression growing faintly confused when the elevator stopped. He looked over when Raylan spoke, blinking at him a brief moment.

"...You asked me to stop," he reminded the Marshal, no accusation or displeasure in his tone. It was a fact he was relating. "You said not here, so I assumed the embargo was on until we at least got outside," he explained.

"I said now wasn't the time or place, I didn't say stop," Raylan replied as he pressed the stop button again to get them goin'.

"If that's the only subject we can talk about, then I'd rather we not talk about it at all." He was supposed to be having a good evening here.

Malcolm frowned faintly, watching Raylan more from the edge of his vision than straight on.

"It's not. Of course it's not."

He paused, his eyes creeping just a little more towards looking at Raylan directly. "Are you tense because they all know now and you don't know what's going to happen because of it? That's understandable," Malcolm assured him.

"They'll be fine." It had to be fine. Raylan wasn't ready to deal with what would happen if it didn't.

"I just want to not be here anymore," he said, eyes watching the elevator numbers tick down until it dinged and let them out. Raylan stepped out, pausing to wait for Malcolm to come into line with him before heading towards the exit and the car beyond.

Malcolm fell into step beside him, but didn't say anything until they got in the car.

Raylan's last answer was a 'yes' disguised as a 'no' if he ever heard one.

He put his seatbelt on and flexed his hands and looked over at Raylan. "I'm sorry. If I hadn't come... out of sight, out of mind, right? I'll just... I'll stay out of sight."

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