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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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."

Raylan slid in and turned over the engine, but he wasn't going anywhere just yet, not with that comment from beside him.

"You've got nothin' to apologize for and you don't have to stay outta sight. I don't know what you've got wrapped up in your head as bein' wrong this time, but it's not. You've shut down since the conference room, all because I don't want to hear about how good you think I am. What's that got to do with you stayin' outta sight."

Malcolm frowned in faint confusion.

"You objected to the... Oh. I just... I know you're not a fan of all the... talking. Everyone keeps telling me. You told me. I thought you were on edge because of Art finding out and everyone kind of knowing and it becoming a sort of open secret and I thought it was just the general..."

But his brain was processing the rest of that and he stopped, his eyes widening slightly as he realized.

"Oh. Oh, I get it. Okay."

Raylan believed he wasn't good for a lot of reasons, but suggesting he was tilted his whole worldview, because on some level he believed he deserved the shit he took and the things that happened to him, like a sort of cosmic compensation for being bad.

Well if he didn't like hearing that he had virtues, he sure wouldn't like to talk about why he felt that way.

"Where's a good place to get fresh beans?" he asked. "They said in the recipe to make sure they're good and fresh."

Raylan looked over as he'd finished his statement to look at Malcolm as he answered and he took Malcolm's processing without much of anything on his face. Raylan wasn't sure what Malcolm 'got' but the guilty tension that had been coming from him broke like a rainstorm breaking.

He wished he was that good at letting tension go.

"There's a farmer's market here that all the housewives seem to love," he replied, everything still a little tight as he put the car in gear and pulled out. "We can see where the closest butcher shop is from there."

Either way, they'd be hitting a liquor store on the way. Beer wasn't going to be enough for him tonight.

So much for being the alternative to liquid therapy, but he'd at least try to mitigate it, if he could.

He looked over, studying the tension in Raylan's frame and jaw for a moment.

"Can I ask you something?" he asked hesitantly.

"Shoot," he said with a glance over.

"You said I 'shut down' after the conference room and that's... a strange way to describe someone not talking. Why did you phrase it that way?" he asked, watching the profile of Raylan's face.

"There's a difference between falling silent and shutting down. People who are silent don't hesitate to meet eyes. People who are shutting down do. Like you're trying to make yourself small to avoid the conflict." He glanced over again.

"Am I wrong?"

"About what shutting down is?" he said with a brief hint of a smile. "No. But... I wasn't trying to close myself off to you. I just didn't want to make it harder for you. I know what it feels like when you know everyone is staring at you. You wanted to get done and get out of the freak show. I could facilitate that. Like I said, I thought all the chatter was annoying you. You've put people in the trunk for talking less than I do."

"Mm," Raylan hummed. He wasn't going to do a song and dance around reiterating themselves if he could help stop it before it started.

"I also don't love any of those people. So you get a little more runnin' room."

Malcolm huffed a small laugh down towards his lap, distractedly wringing his hands.

After a moment, he looked over. "Are you really all right?" he asked quietly. "Because you seem... not so much. And if I didn't upset you, then something did."

"I'm fine," he assured, knowing full well that Malcolm's spider senses would still pick up. "I'll be better once we get home."

Raylan pulled into the farmers market and cut the engine.

"Let's go raid their beans."

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