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 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."

Malcolm got out of the car and walked into the market beside Raylan, sticking close to his elbow as he looked around at all the stalls with their produce.

"This is a lot different than the farmer's market I used to go to in DC."

More rustic. He liked it.

"We need green and yellow," he said. "Oh! We can probably get other ingredients here." He pulled out his phone and pulled up the recipe. "Fresh oregano. Garlic. Red onion." He looked at Raylan to gauge his whether he thought that was a good idea and just his overall mood and enthusiasm for the task.

He kept his eyes moving as they ambled about, unable to stop himself for scanning for danger, but when they fell on Malcolm, there was no denying the softness that curled into his smile.

"DC is almost all federals, so that doesn't surprise me. We've got more farms and closer to the city."

At the listing, Raylan started scanning again. "Well, I see a lotta green but I think I've spotted at least those last two. You might be all your own on the beans though. We might have to ask."

Malcolm smiled broadly.

"I think between me and a US Marshal, we can hunt down some beans," he teased, glancing around at the stalls. "Let's try down here," he said, veering off, but not fast enough that Raylan got away from him at all. He couldn't touch him the way he wanted to, but he could stay in his space.

"I see some," he said as they got close to the end of that row. "How much do you think we need?"

"Tax payers dollars at work," Raylan joked as he veered with him, just as eager to keep him in his space as Malcolm was to be there.

"I dunno. How much does the recipe make? Between you and me, whatever it suggests should be enough. I'd be more worried about everything evens out in the bowl than having too much."

Was.. was he going to get to watch Malcolm eat two things in one meal? He was considerably excited by the possibility.

He was going to try to eat two things.

He pulled the recipe up on his phone again and checked the amounts, then asked the woman at the booth for that much. Her eyes kept straying to Raylan and she smiled at him as she weighed out the beans.

Raylan hung around his elbow, eyes moving lazily over the produce before the weight of her eyes drew his up. He smiled, like he always did, warm as a summer's day in all his wrinkles and thanked her with a passing nod of his head as Malcolm collected their beans.

"I think that's our next stop," he said, with a finger towards a cart down the way. "Lotta greens. They're bound to have what you're lookin' for."

The woman might have eyes for him and she wouldn't be alone in the world, but his eyes were currently taken, and had they been in a more progressive place where he felt comfortable, he would have slid an arm around Malcolm.

People looked at Raylan. Of course they did. He was striking. A little part of Malcolm felt triumphant every time Raylan gave them a pleasant smile and then walked away with him.

He looked over the cart Raylan had scouted out, picking up some oregano and then picking up some parsley and some dill because they smelled good and he figured he'd find something to use them in for the next day. The cart also had the garlic and onions, so he grabbed those two before looking over at Raylan. "I think that's everything."

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