empathicfault | IC Inbox

Malcolm crawls into bed next to Will that night and curls up against him. Things have been slowly untangling in the couple of days since the sword was dealt with but the things that happened right before the sword thing have dominated his mental space a lot more than the things that happened during it.

Except maybe one.

"I called Shaw today," he admits to the outline of Will's face in the diffused light of simulated streetlamps below the window. "To apologize for being mean when I was telling her off."

Will has been doing what he personally can to keep himself distracted, because otherwise he would've broached that one thing Malcolm's been thinking about. And he knows he needs to give it time to settle. It's still difficult not to apologize or try to explain certain things.

It's easier when Malcolm is here with him, though. When they're close and warm together. Will can see Malcolm's face clearly, but he barely needs that to tell what's going on with him, now. "How did that go?" he asks, because he suspects it wasn't all that well.

She thinks I'm encouraging you to kill people and that totally justifies her telling I don't even know how many people that I'm dangerously unstable and needed intervention the day after the Avalon thing. People calling up and coming over telling me to let her do the Wardening when all I did was stay away from both of you and it was already hard without... that. ...She at least said if we were going to talk about it, you had to be there. Are you okay with meeting up with her after breakfast?

[ Will smiles and somewhat sleepily brushes some hair back away from Malcolm's face. ]

At least she's agreeing now. Yes, we can do that. Maybe we'll manage to get a thing or two straightened out. If we're lucky.

"Thank you," Malcolm tells him with gratitude and relief. "How are you doing? A lot happened in like a week."

"Of course," Will breathes out in response to Malcolm's thanks. He'd wanted to do this for them ages ago.

The question is harder to respond to. Malcolm can hear him taking in a big breath, as he thinks it over. "I think I'm still in shock, somewhat. I haven't started really analyzing what all of it meant. I almost wouldn't be surprised if we got hit by the next breach tomorrow."

It's easy to get back into that mode. "You? You...did better with the curse, or- at least, it seemed like you did. Are you all right?"

Malcolm’s fingers fidget with the seam of Will’s undershirt at his shoulder and then with an errant curl below his ear.

“I’m… glad we had instant healing. But I’m not… really upset with that stuff. It wasn’t personal like the stuff right before it with Shaw and her agents. Or. …Most of it wasn’t. I just…” His vision better adjusted now, he looks for Will’s eyes in the dark. “Do you think you’d be happier now, if he was here instead of me?” The question is curious, not tense, though his fingers continue their anxious dance.

...ah, there it is. Will doesn't have to wait any longer at all, as it turns out. Will's fingers settle on one of Malcolm's shoulders, as Malcolm's continue moving. He's decided he's not going to lie about anything- not even going to sugarcoat it (if he can help himself).

"I'd be happy," he admits, quietly. "But I wouldn't be happier. I never- never feel safe around Hannibal. It's not always an issue, for me, but...it's important, having someone I actually trust, who I don't have to...decode, every time I talk to them. Even with me, Hannibal rarely says what he means."

Will shifts up so he's on his elbow. It changes the lighting a little, so the bottom half of his face and his eyes can more easily be seen. He's watching Malcolm, worried but earnest. "Did it scare you? The way I acted? That was...how I tended to be, around him. I don't hide the dark around you, but I might...cordon it off, some. Take some unearned distance from it."

“Unearned?” Malcolm asks. He wants to understand how he means that before he answers.

How does he put this? "I'm...comfortable in the dark, with the violence. More comfortable than in most of the more 'acceptable' places. You've known that. I fell back into it so quickly."

His eyes drop down to Malcolm's fingers. "If there's anything the past week has shown me, it's that I'm clearly not as far from that darkness as I thought. As I maybe hoped."

"Because it's tempting?" Malcolm clarifies. "I'm tempted by it too." He touches Will's face. "It didn't scare me like... being scared you would hurt me or something. If it scared me at all, it was in a... maybe you would realize that you weren't into me as much, after having a chance to be with him like that here. Danger is exciting. Maybe being safe is getting boring."

Will decides not to mention that he doesn't think that he'd be able to be like that with Hannibal at all here, because they'd both be locked down far more tightly than he has been thus far. It's true, but also not the point.

"I...I like the darkness in you, Malcolm. And the light. Being with you isn't boring...even if we weren't on a ship that goes to hell every couple of weeks- and might do so literally some day. That's why I want what I want. A safe home with you and access to everything else. All the good fights we could imagine."

He frowns a bit, after considering another option. "But I don't...you've worked so hard to not step across the line. And I-" He's being too soft about it again. It's hard not to be when he's leaning his face into Malcolm's hand and enjoying the comfort of the bed. "I replay killing Avalon in my head. It was...so. Satisfying. To finally do something when nothing had worked. To watch their breathing slow and hitch and stop. To know they deserved it a thousand times over."

He's practically salivating, recounting it. Maybe that's a werewolf thing, but he's not entirely betting on it. He pulls in a shaky breath and realizes he stopped watching Malcolm's face. He looks back up now, cautiously. "I don't want to tug you over that line. But I am- I do often wish you could step across it. Because the most terrifying thing in my life right now? It's the thought of losing you. And I doubt I can change the part of me that sees beauty, in a terrible end for horrible people."

Edited (rephrasing) 2023-10-25 01:28 (UTC)

“I’m not strictly against bad things happening to bad people,” Malcolm tells him carefully, but there’s no revulsion or even distaste in his eyes. “There was a bad man in my world. He was going to hurt my family. He had Gil stabbed. He was a monster and he was pulling political strings at the highest levels. One night, my sister just… lost it and stabbed him to death right in front of me. You know what I did? I covered it up. I dismembered his corpse and then I actually used the guy’s own clandestine courier network to have the pieces dropped in a lake in Estonia. And… I’m not saying that I didn’t have an existential crisis or three over it, but I also came here about an hour after stabbing my father. Shaw thinks I don’t understand why you’re an inmate because I think we’re so similar, but she’s so wrong about that. I don’t always understand why I’m a Warden. But I also feel like explaining that to her would be… counterproductive. And if we’re going to make a home anywhere, we have to get you graduated. But I don’t want… I don’t want to not have you in the meantime. That’s all I was concerned about that day. And… if Hannibal does really show up here… I just. Want to still matter to you.”

Will's heard the first bit of this, but it's helpful to hear it retold, re-committed, after everything he's just gone into. Will can't help but smirk at hearing that the guy's own network was used to hide the body parts. A little bit of the Will Graham who burned evidence and joyously ate ortolan peeks through again.

The middle part, the part about Malcolm somehow 'mysteriously' being a Warden, needs addressing, but it's obviously not as pressing as the What If scenario posed.

He opens his mouth, thinks for a moment, then says, "I know that it's hard to believe what would happen until it did, for a...situation as dire as that. But I can say with confidence that you would still matter to me. I would still love you, dearly. And I won't let him kill you. I...know you didn't ask about that, but he'd try. You know he would."

Of course he would.

"I...I thought my feelings for him would've faded. But he's struck down to my core and...attached. A part of me will probably always be him, now." He smiles, but it's more of a twitch than something real. "A part of my past, but still...embedded. And I'm sorry for that."

“I don’t want you to be sorry for who you are. My… abuser is part of me, too. I tried to deny that for a long time, but… I’d come to terms with it before I came here.” He presses his lips together. “I’ll try not to… say what I think when Shaw is… lecturing you or whatever. I just… don’t always have good impulse control. She thinks I’m going to keep you from graduating by telling you you’re perfect, no notes, and that you’ll believe me and not listen to her and then you won’t change what needs changed to get out of here. Which… is a perversion of what I actually meant that night, but she won’t hear that. Nobody who came to talk to me about leaving the Wardening to Shaw would hear that. I’m tired of screaming into the void about it. But that’s why - now - a bunch of people apparently think I’m bad for you. Because I’m keeping you from graduating by blindly idolizing you.”

It's an echo of their first conversation, with the vibrations given time to warp. But it comes back in crystal clarity, the same trust even after all the details have been laid out. Malcolm doesn't even hesitate. The things he's worried about are not at all a concern for Will. They are bound tightly now, in their experiences and understanding. Will's not going to let Malcolm go. Not even for Hannibal.

The rest is...well, it doesn't matter as much, but they do need to talk about it. Will leans towards Malcolm and kisses him, softly on the forehead first, and then on the lips. "You want me to graduate more than anyone else here. I know that. But I think...I might've found a hitch in your logic." He's settled now, and he speaks with a gentle tone. "You don't idolize me, but you also think of yourself as...less than you are. You've dug yourself a hole to live in, and you don't belong there."

He puzzles over that.

"What do you mean?" he asks, but it's curious more than anything and there's significantly less anxiety in the way his fingers fidget at the collar of Will's undershirt or lightly along the skin of his neck alongside it.

"You think of yourself as a murderer," Will says softly. "As someone who has committed pre-meditated murder. You haven't. Everything that's happened has been accidents, or you pulled back before you stepped over that line. I was inched over it, but I still crossed it myself. That's...that's why I'm an inmate and you aren't."

He touches Malcolm's face delicately, as if appreciating fine china. "You've come close, and you know you're capable of it. You feel wholly responsible for some deaths. But that doesn't make it so."

“I planned and executed a whole murder,” Malcolm tells him softly. “I did that.”

"You planned one," Will concedes. "You didn't go all the way through with it. I did. I set up circumstances to bait one serial killer with another- including a violent escape- and then I murdered both of them. That was the plan as designed. You-"

He smiles a little, proud and sad at the same time. "You didn't even kill your target. You stopped it, saved him, no matter what happened at that point. Trust me, I know what it is to feel guilty. But even though you've danced in the same space I have, you are not stained the same." Will's eyes search Malcolm's face, hoping he's getting through on some level. "I won't venture a guess as to why, although I imagine it has something to do with the strength of your convictions."

Malcolm’s gaze falls to Will’s chin.

“Maybe I was just afraid that if I let Nicky die, I’d be like him.” His eyes lift to Will’s hesitantly. “What if I liked it?”

In his memory, Martin’s voice: Maybe you’re all torn up inside because getting away with murder didn’t feel bad at all. No. It felt gooooood.

Will is still watching Malcolm's face. His own expression is gentle and accepting, in a way only a few people ever get the opportunity to see. Not only is he not judging, he's been here. He knows the push and pull of that fear inside the gut.

"What if you do? What exactly are you afraid of?" It's an honest question, although Will does venture a guess so they can hopefully get more specific. "That you'll hurt someone the way your father hurt you? That you'll enjoy that?"

"I think if I liked it, I might tell myself I'd... do helpful things with it, get rid of bad guys, but I can see myself sliding down the slippery slope of justification so easily. I don't want to be someone who hurts people for fun. Revenge, first, for those that have hurt me, then punishment for those that have hurt others, then, when those run out at any point... what, vague annoyance starts to call for a death sentence? Rudeness? Disagreement? Where does it stop?" he asks. His expression becomes a little grim, because here is the heart of his fear: "I don't know that I could stop. He couldn't stop."

Will presses a palm to Malcolm's cheek. "You are not your father. You would not paint with the same brush, much less paint similar pictures. You're not a sadist, Malcolm. You genuinely want to help people. None of that is going to disappear."

He's not sure Malcolm will believe that, no matter how much he wants to. "Do you think I've slipped down that slope?" he asks quietly. "Do you think I'm in danger of slipping further?"

"No," he admits. "But you're... stronger than I am. You don't have the... the genetic weakness." His brow creases faintly. "They were all watching me for it. When I was a kid. After he was arrested. ...Maybe I don't have it, but finding out will be too late. The only way to be sure is to just... not test it."

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