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 smiled into Raylan's shoulder and lifted his head. "In all honesty, it will probably look like it was built by a seventh grader in shop class, but... I have to start somewhere." He grinned. "I will try really hard not to cut off my hand. I attend gruesome crime scenes; I have no interest in becoming the gruesome crime scene."

He felt like there was a height joke in here but opted to not dig it out.

"Danger never takes a day off, just remember that," he said with a curl of his smile towards Malcolm. "I don't think anything you put your mind to that comes with these kinda instructions is gonna look that bad. You're too capable for that. And most injuries that happen in this kinda stuff happens when you get casual and cocky with what you're doin'."

Malcolm laughed. "Me? Get cocky about something? That's unheard of," he teased. He pressed a kiss to Raylan's jaw. "I'll be careful. Honest. I'm still half stuck to New York. I won't risk our time together by carelessness with power tools."

He hummed a short note as he leaned into the kiss, smile turning into a smirk.

"Healthcare is better; if you were going to be careless, up there is the better option. Not that carelessness is an option at all," he amended, thumb stroking up and down Malcolm's thigh in whatever range it could get. "When you're done, that we'll take a picture of. So we can compare it to your next project."

He liked this idea of keeping Malcolm's hands busy in what he would consider a more grounding kind of way.

He huffed a laugh. "Carelessness is off the table in New York, too. I can't build something up there. Nobody would appreciate it. Except maybe Gil."

At the idea of taking a picture of his project to start a sort of photo journey of many projects, he smiled broadly. "We can track my progress," he said. "All the way to Miami."

"You're building for yourself, not for any of them. Well, and maybe possibly me, but you already know I appreciate everything you do so there's not much change there. I can see this starting with a garden box and ending with you trying to build and install your own inset bookshelf. One that they're never going to be allowed to use."

"We'll have to see if I can develop the carpenter skills to build a bookshelf I'd be happy with." His face lit as he had another thought. "Oh! A case for my weapons!" he pointed out as a potential project.

Raylan nodded with a tilt of his beer bottle on its way to his lips. "That's a good one. We can always call in contractors to put on the glass doors and that weird velvet backing you've got. The lighting too, you don't wanna mess with electricity unless you know what you're doin'."

For all the cheerleading Raylan did for doing your own work, sometimes it was just less expensive and stressful to cop out for a professional.

Malcolm considered him.

"Do you know how to do electricity?" he asked curiously.

Raylan shook his head with a scoff and a laugh. "Only enough to know that if something is sparkin', to find the fuze box and kill it. I suppose I could learn but there's never been a good reason to bother. Walls I can handle. Deckwork, that kinda thing. Minor repairs."

Malcolm had already seen his work too, in Arlo's wall that had taken him far too long to actually finish fixing.

"I know better than to get my ass shocked with however many volts run in a house."

"One hundred to two hundred amps, depending on the age of the house," Malcolm replied. "It's the amps that are dangerous, more than the volts."

He didn't know anything about wiring, but he knew how a body got electrocuted into a smoking corpse.

He looked at Raylan, suddenly realizing that that was an odd thing to know. "Studied a lot of causes of death," he explained.

He'd find the questioning eyebrow lift, waiting to see if he'd explain how he drew that little bit of information out of nowhere. The answer made him chuckle and nod, mostly with his eyebrows as he looked back out over the view.

"Let's not put that knowledge into practice. Stick to the woodworking. Oh, though you might get a kick out of the possibilities of epoxy. I think we might have to make sure our garage in Miami has enough room for all these tools we haven't bought yet."

"We'll only have one car," he pointed out, "so the other half can be... like a workshop." Okay, maybe he was getting excited for possibilities he'd never even considered. "That'll be fun."

A workshop. Not a 'hobby room'. That was what he father called his 'workshop' and he did indeed work on his hobby in there.

"I bet it smells good after you're working with wood."

"And if I ever lose my mind and buy a street car, it can live in the garage and I'll park the towncar out front." They could totally do this.

Raylan smiled over at him at the musing. "I've always wanted to make like a... a coffee table or something. Something nonintrusive and .. just pretty. Somethin' to look at. Seems to take more time than I've ever got."

Which was part of the reason that he'd enjoy seeing what Malcolm might make. A manifestation of the things he never got around to.

"Maybe we can work in there together on some of your days off," Malcolm suggested. "Slowly build some furniture for our house."

"I'd have to sit down and think of an idea first, but I like it. The idea of us figuring out how to do it and building stuff for the house. Anything we don't like.." Raylan shrugged. "I'm sure lumber isn't that expensive."

He grinned over at Malcolm. "We'll turn you into a builder yet."

"You know, I keep thinking my mother will be horrified, but... she might be pleased if I point out how much time I'm dedicating to things that aren't murder."

"Maybe," Raylan agreed with a nod of his head. "I mean it's not making her any babies, but it's not what she's been expecting you to mess with your whole life. Maybe she'll ease off her complaints about your attention to murder with this." Maybe she'd pile on more because he didn't' choose the 'right' thing.

"You could offer to build her a coffee table. Something to remind her that you're capable in more than just the area of murder."

He laughed down at his knees.

"You know how kids draw pictures and their moms hang them on the fridge where everyone can see them? She never put anything we ever made where people could see them."

He looked at Raylan. "I think I'll save my masterpieces for our house."

"Good. Gives us all the more room to be selfish with."

He couldn't do anything about Jessica, but he would happily benefit and encourage what she clearly didn't appreciate. Arlo never let his even be put up but Raylan still didn't feel right about bringing up past traumas for the sake of conversation. Still, he related.

His brow pinched a little. "Does this mean that you and your mother are gonna get into some kinda... unspoken competition? Do I need to be on the lookout for that?"

Malcolm looked at him a little confused.

"Competition? Over what?" he asked.

"Over how nice your respective houses are. It seems like somethin' she'd care about, anyway." The sentiment was washed down with another drink of his swiftly emptying beer.

Malcolm laughed brightly. "Oh. She does care about that. But I don't. I just... like what I like. And that's what I want in my house," he admitted. "It's a bonus that that stance sort of infuriates her," he joked.

"Parents have a way of drawin' us in." And Raylan could see exactly where it might happen. "We'll see," he said with a nod of his head.

"Gotta say though, I'm glad that Arlo's already 6 feet under. He woulda had a field day with all of this. If you think your mother's harsh, you should seen him when he decided to get goin'." The sentiment alone brought a little smile to his face as he drained his beer and set it on the coffee table in front of them.

Malcolm smiled at that smile.

"You liked riling him up, huh?" he surmised. "Do you think if he was still alive, you marrying a man might be enough to give him a fatal aneurysm?"

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