Neal Caffrey || Log || September/October Catch-All

[conning]

Who: Neal and OTA/some for existing CR
When: September/October Catch-All (with one backdated August thing)
Where: ALL OVER ZE PLACE
Summary: SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER CATCH-ALL. Neal being bovvered by the sleep stuff and rescuing people/needing rescue, Evil Twin TDM prompts, sleepwalking after his murdered adoptive aunt, painting at Bonnie's, a couple of SOL prompts, DEATH BREAAAD both lead-up and hypersensitivity, some talk about mental health.
Warnings: HORROR STUFF.... Awful deaths, possibly drowning, murder of loved ones, gun violence, suicidal ideation, some ableism might crop up in the mental health threads. Toplevels will be labeled with likely subjects.

Prompts TBA below as they're finished! Feel free to PM me or message me at researchboner on plurk for specific prompts or with questions.

Comments

[conning]

The redness is so deep. Neal’s skin prickles with that particular unsettled feeling that comes with the unfightable and strange. There are shadows out there, but he can’t tell if they move because the sub is moving now—slowly, carefully, as he pilots them—or because there’s something out there in the dark. Both maybe, who knows. Neal shivers, the dampness in the air not helping his internal chill.

He clears his throat. “So I made an assessment appointment.”

Might as well fill the silence with something.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looks at him.

"You did? For when?" he asks.

[conning]

“Theoretically next month, if we’re not in the throes of a maritime adventure still.”

A shadow in the dark moves toward them then sharply away, and something past that, something huge—no, it’s his imagination. Neal shivers. “I think if we have to eat our own limbs we should start at the bottom. I need to maintain my fine motor skills.”

[abrightboy]

“You’re more useful than I am. You have my permission to kill and eat me if it comes to that,” Malcolm deadpans back, but his fingers tighten in the fabric of Neal’s shirt. “Can we go up?”

[conning]

“I’m not killing you,” Neal says, tone firm and immediate. “Even in a joke. We’re in this together. All of this.”

Nightmares, kidnappings, impossible missions and all.

He bites his lip, trying to guide the sub upward. It rises some. Enough that they would be able to get over obstacles. But it won’t go all the way to the surface. The light in the water doesn’t change enough for Neal to figure out if they’re even close to it. “That’s as far as it’ll go.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm draws a shaky breath and pushes it out slowly through his mouth, rocking faintly from foot to foot.

“So we should just. Go straight where they’re sending us?”

[conning]

Neal takes a moment to pull his hands off the controls, a part of him still acutely aware of the readings, tracking them out of the corner of his eye for anything that looks like a warning or something going wrong.

He touches Malcolm’s cheek, combs his fingers through the man’s hair. “Probably for the best. See what there is to see, find out what resources we can find.”

He starts breathing in the count that Malcolm taught him months ago now, meeting the other man’s very blue eyes and silently encouraging him to mimic the pattern.

[abrightboy]

Without even consciously realizing it, that's what Malcolm does, calming a bit. He stops rocking.

"You think they sent us here to see something? Like. The ADI did?"

[conning]

“I would hope ADI would do better by us than this.” He eyes their surroundings a moment, forcing himself not to dwell for Malcolm’s sake. He goes back to the controls and starts them on their way, grateful that the maps and coordinates are at least easy to read. The creaking isn’t reassuring. The occasional ping from the hull. And he’d swear there are things moving out there, just beyond the sub lights.

After a few seconds, he can’t take the machinery noises and quiet. “It’ll be a year next month,” he says. “For me. I got here almost a year ago. What about you?”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm shifts his weight, watching out the window.

"I haven't really... been paying much attention to that." He considers it. "Fourteen months. It'll be fourteen months. I was here for two months before... you arrived."

Of course he remembers when that was, the first time he saw Robin Hood in a coffee shop.

[conning]

"We should do something." He has no idea what. Neal reaches out to touch Malcolm's face, reassure himself, but something flashes past the window outside and Neal throws the sub's controls back hard in the other direction to avoid smashing into it.

Something breaks. The engine hums. They start to pick up speed in no particular direction.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm is just leaning into that touch but then Neal is moving and they're jolting and he reaches out to grab the wall for purchase, looking at Neal with panic in his eyes.

"What's happening?"

[conning]

“I think I messed up,” Neal whispers.

The hull tremors slightly and something flashes past outside again. And then slams against the side of the sub.

[abrightboy]

“You didn’t do anything!” Malcolm shouts, but the collision knocks him off his feet, flinging him into the opposite wall before he falls, dazed, onto the floor.

[conning]

Neal gets thrown against the controls, striking his head hard enough to see stars. Something cuts into his forehead, and for a second he thinks that's the source of the red stickiness on the back of his hand. Then another little patter hits his fingers from above--red, viscous. Blood. Blood from the ceiling. From a leak in the ceiling.

He staggers away from the controls and over to Malcolm, wanting to be close to him. Wanting to make sure he doesn't go first, doesn't leave Malcolm alone. "Hope this is a dream after all."

He has to shout over the alarms and the creak of bending metal. Something slams the hull again.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looks at him, slightly dazed himself.

“You’re bleeding,” he shouts, reaching up to try to see the wound.

[conning]

Neal winces when Malcolm's fingers touch the edge of the cut. It is bleeding. But there's a shriek of metal from somewhere overhead and a fine red mist starts spraying over the two of them. It reeks of copper and ocean.

Neal looks up at it instinctively, horrified, then quickly away as some of the blood gets in his eyes and he has to blink to clear them. "So's... so's the sub."

[abrightboy]

“…What?” He looks up, then has to blink against it. “…We have to… we have to get to the surface.” He tries to get to his feet but another impact knocks him into Neal. “You’ll drown… we can’t stay here; you’ll drown.” He starts looking around frantically.

[conning]

Neal wraps his arms around Malcolm to steady them both at the next impact and to keep Malcolm close. “We will,” he says, goosebumps crawling over him. “We will, not just me. We have to get to the surface for both of us.”

[abrightboy]

“Is there a way to surface the sub or do we have to swim for it?” Malcolm asks.

[conning]

Neal holds on a little tighter for a moment from pure fear. “Swim for it? Do you think we can make it?”

He is a swimmer, that’s true, he’s got that going for him, but he remembers the feeling of drowning, he remembers. It was a nightmare, yeah, but it also wasn’t. The water he threw up into that waste basket was real.

The sub starts to list to one side as something else springs a leak.

[abrightboy]

“There’s more of a chance out there than if we stay in here while it fills up,” Malcolm points out. “We have to push clear, then kick hard for the surface.”

[conning]

“What if we lose each other? What if we don’t both make it?”

Even as he says it, though, he’s pulling off his shoes and shedding his jacket, looking for the hatch that will let the ocean in.

“Will we even be able to open the hatch with the water pressure?”

[abrightboy]

“If it’s an emergency hatch, it should open inwards and break away,” Malcolm says. “Let the water rush in, then kick out hard,” he advises. He meets Neal’s gaze. “I’m not going without you, so kick hard.”

[conning]

Neal grabs his hand briefly. “I love you.”

This doesn’t make sense, he knows it doesn’t, there’s blood pouring into the sub, but… the adrenaline is real. The fear is real.

It is an emergency hatch.

It won’t open.