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

[abrightboy]

Malcolm just blinks at him again, looking a little like he’s been slapped, but he doesn’t get to ask questions; suddenly he gets up and retreats to his private bathroom, locking the door like it can keep the sounds of retching in.

[conning]

Neal—the real Neal, the first Neal—has been at Bonnie’s. He slogs back into the apartment, tired but pleased with the day, at least until he closes the door and hears Malcolm throwing up.

He notes the two plates on the table, the half-filled coffee mug on the kitchen counter, but they’re peripheral considerations. He rushes to the locked door, knocking and trying the knob. He forces himself to sound at least mostly calm. “Malcolm? Can you unlock the door? Please?”

He doesn’t bother asking if the other man is okay. The noises from inside make it clear enough that he isn’t.

[abrightboy]

“I’m fine.” He very obviously lies before he retches again. “Go away!” He snaps petulantly around a raw throat.

[conning]

Neal flinches back in surprise, then doesn’t bother asking again, just pulls his picks from one pocket and opens the door. He immediately moves to crouch next to Malcolm, one hand hovering over his back. “You’re not fine. Was it the coffee? It’s late in the day for you.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm shrugs away from his hand, creeping around the toilet bowl like there’s any room for him to go in the tiny space of its circumference.

“Very funny,” he says with no amusement at all. “Which part did you not understand: ‘go’ or ‘away’?”

[conning]

Neal withdraws a little, enough that Malcolm doesn’t have to duck to avoid his touch any more. He still doesn’t leave. By now he’s stopped hiding in front of Malcolm ninety percent of the time—his confusion and hurt broadcast on all frequencies for a moment before he shuts them off to be dealt with later. “I wasn’t joking. It is late for you to have coffee if you want to get any kind of sleep, never mind it being rough on your stomach.”

A momentary pause, a fumble for something else to say. “Do you—if you really want me to leave I’ll go.”

[abrightboy]

“Why are you pretending you don’t know what’s happening? What was in that food? Was it supposed to be a joke?” Malcolm rasps, vomiting again before Neal can answer.

[conning]

“The stuff on the table?” But then Malcolm is throwing up again. Neal grimaces, trying not to gag in sympathy. “I don’t know. I just got here. I’ve been at Bonnie’s all day. Maybe Steve made something and forgot to label it—why are you so angry at me?”

[abrightboy]

Pale and fed up, Malcolm gives him a look over the toilet bowl.

“You made it in that kitchen. I watched you serve it. You said you learned to make it in New York when times were l…” He doesn’t finish the sentence; he retches again, just bile and dry heaving at this point. More raspy, more exhausted he adds “I don’t know what this game is supposed to be but I don’t like it. Just… just stop it. Stop.”

[conning]

For a second, Neal gets angry. Furious, hurt, a dozen buttons pressed by Malcolm not believing him for the first time.

Then the evidence he saw in the apartment catches up with his anger and it curdles into fear. He reaches out without thinking and catches Malcolm’s wrist tightly. Not painfully, but tight enough that Malcolm can’t just yank away.

“I wasn’t here. I was at Bonnie’s. Anyone who saw me there can tell you. It wasn’t me, Malcolm. There was something else in our apartment.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm flinches when Neal takes his wrist; he startles visibly, with a momentary terror crossing his features at the involuntary jerk of his whole body, folded up between the toilet and the tub. The last person to grab his wrist like that had been his father.

But then there is a rush of words that Malcolm blinks at.

“What… what something?” His voice drops to an urgent whisper. “I talked to you. You touched me.” His expression crumples a little. “I trusted you,” he confesses, but the whisper has become small. Broken.

[conning]

“It wasn’t me,” Neal says again, desperate, the flinch cutting into tender places he’s left exposed to very few people. “I would never make you sick on purpose.”

He turns his grip so he can rub his thumb against the inside of Malcolm’s wrist in a tiny, intimate, soothing gesture. “I promise you I would never…”

He wants to beg Malcolm to believe him and hates the impulse. He’s gotten used to it. Malcolm believing him. Trusting him. Losing that because of some kind of infiltrator pretending to be him, using magic or illusion… It makes him sick to think about the possibility. “There’s water in the fridge I steeped in some crushed mint and ginger. Would that help?”

[abrightboy]

He wants to believe Neal’s story so badly - more than anything - and that’s all over his face, mixed with wariness, mixed with heartache.

He looks at Neal’s hand when it switches to that familiar, soothing gesture. He stares at it like he’s trying to solve it.

There’s a question. He’s shaking. He looks up, eyes welling.

“I don’t know.” His voice cracks. He drops it back to a whisper. “I don’t know what to do.”

[conning]

“I would never do this to you on purpose, Malcolm. You know me. Whoever, whatever was here, it must have been good at pretending, but you know me.”

Neal dabs lightly at his lips with the tip of his tongue, trying to keep desperation at bay. “What have I ever done that would make you think I’d hurt you if I had a choice?”

Enough, Neal’s cruelly practical self hisses. He doesn’t know what to do, so give him something. “We need to find out what was here or who and make sure they can’t come back. What about a code word? Something only the two of us know?”

[abrightboy]

He thought he did know that. He thought he knew until he ate the food.

He hears what Neal offers and maybe he’ll accept, but first things first.

“I want to know what the food was,” he says quietly, making no move to dislodge himself from his safe nook, wedged between the bathroom fixtures. “I want to know what was in the food. That you wouldn’t tell. If you’re you, then tell me.”

[conning]

Neal looks at him in confusion, then gets up without further comment and goes back to the table. It’s easy to see which plate is Malcolm’s, based on serving size. Neal braces himself like that will stop any kind of poison if there’s some there and takes a bite.

After a moment he sets the fork down, anger bubbling up to push the other things back. He goes to the kitchen and gets some vanilla yogurt and the bottle of mint and ginger water, testing both to make sure they haven’t been messed with before he brings them back to Malcolm.

“Crushed red pepper,” Neal says, voice tightly controlled. He kneels down and offers the water. “And there’s beef mixed in to the ground chicken breast. Pretty sure they added a little tallow fat too. Not enough for the flavor to be obvious, but enough for it to do this.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm takes the water, but doesn’t attempt to drink it, pressing the cool surface of the bottle to his forehead as a tear manages to slip down his face.

Neal’s probably here now and he probably wasn’t before - things were wrong, weren’t they? Not just dinner, but he wishes he were certain; he didn’t question any of it in the blindness of his devotion - and he wants to go to him but is also afraid to and he feels so, so alone for basically the first time since he arrived in Gloucester.

It was better than home.

“He was here when I got home,” Malcolm reports shakily, clutching the water to his chest now. “How did he know where you live? How did he get in? How did he know how much food to put on my plate?”

[conning]

“I don’t know,” Neal says, “I don’t know. But there’s so much here we don’t know about.”

Neal reaches out tentatively, touches Malcolm’s cheek, braces himself for another flinch or withdrawal. He got too used to it. He got too used to someone believing him, trusting him, knowing him. “I should’ve been here.”

[abrightboy]

He doesn’t pull away this time, his eyes flutter shut for a second, then open to search Neal’s face.

“If it knows what you know, a code word won’t help,” he points out in a small voice.

[conning]

He closes his eyes, a surge of frustration hitting him, none of it directed at Malcolm. Then he offers the yogurt. “Can you manage a couple of bites of this? It’ll help with the capsaicin in the red pepper.”

He strokes Malcolm’s cheek with his thumb and enlightenment strikes a moment later. He gets up, leaving the yogurt, moving forward enough to kiss Malcolm’s forehead—ignoring the sweat and the way the scent of bile makes his stomach roll. “If it knows what I know, there’s still something it can’t duplicate without some time and effort.”

He goes to their shared room, rummaging through his collection of gathered trinkets to find what he’s looking for. Then he goes back to the bathroom and holds it up for Malcolm to see.

An earring. A very particular earring. The one Malcolm saw him steal the first day they spoke. “I’ll keep it on me. You can ask to see it whenever you need to.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm stares at it, then puts the yogurt and the water on the ledge of the tub as he wriggles his way out from between the tub and the toilet.

He accidentally knocks the yogurt into the tub and startles at the noise it makes but crawls into Neal’s lap anyway.

[conning]

Neal wraps him up in a tight hug, hanging on, trying not to think about what that person-who-looks-like-him could have done with Malcolm's trust.

"We're going to figure this out. We figure everything out."

[abrightboy]

“What’s a tallow?” Malcolm asks, muffled into his shoulder.

[conning]

"Beef or mutton fat, usually, rendered to specific standards of thickness, consistency, and melting point. It used to be the primary grease used in deep-frying because of its high smoke point, until vegetable oils got popular in the 1980s--doesn't matter. What matters is it's heavy and they knew it would make you sick."

He rubs circles against Malcolm's back.

[abrightboy]

“Oh. I thought it was some kind of animal,” he replies, his voice tired from exertion and still raspy with the burn of stomach acid.