apocalypsehowcomm | LOG - July Catch-All/TDM Prompts (OPEN)

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zz_neal caffrey (white collar)

LOG - July Catch-All/TDM Prompts (OPEN)

Who: Neal and VARIOUS PEOPLE, POSSIBLY INCLUDING YOU?
When: Throughout July
Where: All around Gloucester
Summary: TDM prompts, as well as some other stuff, will get more specific as I write them.
Warnings: Nothing big at the moment tho lord knows that's bound to change. Scopophobia, paranoia, the issues mentioned in the TDM prompts.

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Malcolm frowns faintly, still clearly not getting it, but he glances down at his lap.

"I'll consider it."

Neal isn't the first to suggest it.

"I mean. I guess... doing something is..." He shrugs.

“You don’t have to.” Neal kisses his temple and takes one of Malcolm’s hands. “What is it? There’s something wrong.”

God, Neal is always so sweet and kind.

"I just. I don't know who I am here, without my job.... without him. And becoming something else just doesn't feel like the answer. I don't know how to find myself."

Neal shifts on the couch to hold Malcolm's other hand, too. "Doing something else doesn't mean becoming someone else."

He understands, though. God, he understands all too well. The wallowing helplessness that came with wondering if he could be anything other than Neal Caffrey, brilliant criminal. In some ways the had the opposite struggle. He wanted to be someone else. People kept telling him he couldn't change.

"You're not going to figure out who you are sitting behind that desk and waiting for something to happen. You're not going to find yourself if you're not looking at what's here."

“But I’m a cop,” he protests weakly. He sighs. “I guess I could try working as a therapist. I’ve been to a lot of therapy.”

“You don’t have to,” Neal says again. “I don’t want you to do it if you won’t be happy. I’m not saying you have to do it all the time, either.”

He frowns, squeezing Malcolm’s hands. “I don’t know. I just feel like—felt like—I’m starting to figure out what I need to do while we’re here. I want you to have that too.”

Malcolm lifts his head to look at Neal. He doesn’t actually know what would make him happy.

“What do you need to do here?” he asks, eyes slightly wide with the eagerness of anticipation.

“Find a way to stop the apocalypse,” he says, firmly. “Not piecemeal either. Stop all of them. Free this world and the people in it.”

Malcolm thinks about that.

“I want to help the Avatars. Help them go back to being humans.”

“There we go,” Neal says, brightening. “That’s a place to start, with figuring out who you want to be here. That’s something you want.”

Neal kisses him. “Something good and important.”

Neal’s reward system is highly effective.

“I’m not sure how to go about it. ADI doesn’t want to save them.”

“The ADI isn’t the only supernatural game in town.”

Just the biggest, most official one.

Malcolm blinks at him.

“…What do you mean?”

“Bonnie, for one. I think she’d be a lot more sympathetic to the idea of helping Avatars. And there are other people who have connections to the supernatural already.”

Neal gets up to go back to the kitchen and get them both some cheap-but-palatable wine.

Edited 2022-08-09 21:04 (UTC)

"I... don't think I've ever actually met Bonnie," Malcolm concedes. "Have you? Is she... " He searches for a word. "Friendly?"

"Not directly, but we can change that." The seed had already been planted by Rae. It's just taking proper root now.

"Don't take chances," Malcolm implores him.

The plea has more of an effect coming from Malcolm than it probably would from anyone else. “I won’t. We won’t. Nothing unjustifiable or unnecessary.”

When Neal returns to the couch with the wine, Malcolm snuggles right up against him before taking his.

“She would have known Jeff. I wonder if she knows what happened to him.”

Neal's eyes go wide. "Macaroni."

"You think he left food in there?" Malcolm asks.

"No." He gets up, starts for the door, then turns around again. "The cat, Abby's cat, the whole reason she moved to Bonnie's in the first place. I can't believe I forgot about him."

“Well… it’s a cat. At a boarding house. Wouldn’t someone feed it?” He scrambles off the couch after Neal. “Based on the condition of the place, it can probably feed itself.”

He fixes Malcolm with a slightly frantic look. “You think? I’ve never had a pet, I don’t know how cats handle themselves.”

"Well, I think - out of all the pets - cats handle themselves the most well," Malcolm tells him.

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conning - 2022-08-30 18:40 (UTC) - Expand

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abrightboy - 2022-09-05 20:20 (UTC) - Expand

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