Exploring in Dogtown [closed]

[abrightboy]

Who: Malcolm Bright and Neal Caffrey (may add open component after)
When: Dec 6
Where: Dogtown
Summary: Malcolm and Neal attempt to explore Dogtown.
Warnings: arachnophobia; body horror; unnatural anatomy; potential for severe injury



After the warning from Sheppard and McKay, Malcolm opts for the other entrance to Dogtown. Taking Neal isn't just a logistical consideration, though he works in Security. If they're going to go into Dogtown, he expects they both want to know where the other is. They don't walk far before Malcolm's glance at the ground becomes a concentrated gaze.

"....Those are human fingers."

Comments

[abrightboy]

Malcolm holds the knife while they run. He's holding the knife and he's running and he's ten years old and he's running through the forest. Running. Running away. The knife has blood on it. He knows what he did.

But then they're on a street and he's not ten and he's staring at the knife in his hand as they pant to catch their breath.

[conning]

Neal is shaken. Malcolm, he can tell, is a fair ways past that, and the look on the other man’s face tells Neal it might not have much to do with the hand monsters.

He raises his own gently into Malcolm’s field of vision, reaching for the knife. “I can take it,” he says softly.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm’s eyes follow the knife as Neal’s fingers gently pluck it from his own, but then they reach Neal’s face and it’s like an anchor.

“Oh.”

A beat.

“…Did I hurt you?”

[conning]

Neal reaches up to touch the marks near his eye, wincing a little at the sting of the scratches on his face as adrenaline starts to give way to knowledge of injuries. “No, you protected me from… whatever those things were.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm nods acceptance of that, his eyes drifting back to the knife.

“I had a knife like that once,” he confesses. He looks around, seeming to come out of whatever spell he was under. “Do you think this whole place is full of… things?”

[conning]

"I don't know," he says, shivering. "Not the whole place, or we would probably still have them on our asses, but... Enough of it to be dangerous."

He comes closer, wrapping his hand around Malcolm's wrist very gently, a gesture of comfort rather than restraint. "When did you have a knife like this?"

[abrightboy]

"When I was a kid. My father bought it for me, to take on a camping trip."

The camping trip. There was only the one.

He looks at Neal. "I stabbed a serial killer with it. Not my dad. His friend."

[conning]

Neal presses his free hand against Malcolm's face, lets go of his wrist, cups Malcolm's other cheek.

For half a stuttering second, he doesn't say anything, then he does.

"I don't want you to go home."

[abrightboy]

"Well, no," Malcolm misinterprets. "I'm staying with you, like you promised not to leave me."

[conning]

He almost, almost lets the misinterpretation lie. The man he was a year ago, two years ago, would have.

"I meant I didn't want you to go... back where you came from. But I don't want you to not go back," he adds, quickly. "I just... you've been through so much hell, and I want you to be safe. Happy. I don't want you to decide against going back to your world because of something I said on impulse either."

[abrightboy]

"I'll think about it," Malcolm tells him. "But I promise that I'm happy as long as I'm with you."