TRAUMABEANS AU

[conning]

boop

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[abrightboy]

"Do you want me to really read this?" Malcolm asks, looking up at him. "Or do you want me to, like, stay really still?"

[conning]

“Really read.” Neal brushes a stray hair back from Malcolm’s temple. “Relax. Be on vacation.”

[abrightboy]

"Okay," Malcolm says, watching him for a moment before turning his attention to the book. He glances at Neal, then looks at the book again.

[conning]

Neal busies himself doing little nonsense things until Malcolm is genuinely involved in his book. Then he goes to get the smaller sketchbook he bought, not wanting to look at the picture of Mathias from yesterday without Malcolm there with him, so to speak.

He settles in his own chair, pencils arrayed at his side, and picks up the lightest to start tracing light shapes onto the page.

[abrightboy]

After a little while - Malcolm doesn't know how long; he's been absorbed - he looks over.

"Am I still doing it right?"

[conning]

Neal blinks out of his own hyperfocused space, giving Malcolm a confused look for a moment before the words register. Then he smiles. "You're doing fine. You don't have to do anything in particular, really."

He looks down at his sketchbook, the faint etchings of Malcolm's surroundings, the action lines shaping his body. For some reason he's drawn in more of details of the room around Malcolm than Malcolm himself yet.

He takes a deep breath, pushing the squeeze of anxiety he can't explain down before focusing on Malcolm again. "Are you uncomfortable? Do you want a break?"

[abrightboy]

Malcolm shakes his head.

“No. I’m fine here. When you want lunch, there’s fruit and croissants left.”

[conning]

Neal nods, looking at the drawing more than at Malcolm. He can feel his hand starting to tremble. What’s wrong with him? Why can’t he do this? It doesn’t have to be some grand statement piece, as though he’d know how to make an original one if he tried. That’s not who he is. He’s a forger. A mimic.

Neal gets up abruptly, setting sketchbook and pencil down on the chair. “Lunch sounds good actually.”

It doesn’t, and he pauses, because a lie is a lie.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looks over at him. He hears something in his voice.

"No it doesn't," he notes from his face. "What's wrong?" He bites his lip. "Did I mess it up by saying something?"

[conning]

“No! No. It’s nothing like that.”

He comes over to Malcolm, touching him lightly on the knee, the arm. Little butterfly grazes that Neal is afraid will pass right through him. His hand is shaking properly now, and he quickly clenches it and closes his eyes. “I don’t know what it is. It’s stupid.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm watches his hand, then looks up at Neal's face.

"It's not stupid. What were you thinking about when that started?" he asks curiously.

[conning]

Neal looks at his clenched fingers, frustrated and anxious and annoyed that he's not sure why. "Nothing."

[abrightboy]

"You had a thought in your head," Malcolm says, setting his book aside and pushing himself out of the chair. "You were working on the drawing. What do you think about when you're drawing?"

[conning]

He makes an aggravated noise, though the aggravation isn't at Malcolm. "I don't..."

Neal stops himself. Tries to think it through. "I wasn't drawing you. I was drawing everything around you, but not you. And I wanted to know what was wrong with me. Why I couldn't just do it."

[abrightboy]

“You were experiencing an actual aversion to drawing me?” Malcolm confirms.

[conning]

"No! No." He slips his arms around Malcolm's waist. "I want to. I don't know why I'm... struggling with it."

[abrightboy]

“In the drawing of the town, I was the only thing you drew clearly. What was the difference between this and that?” he asks.

They’ll figure it out.

“Is it because that wasn’t really me?”

[conning]

"Maybe?" Neal says, voice very faint. "Mathias was..."

His voice goes even quieter. "I don't know."

Except he does know. It's clicking now. Neal bites his lip. "What if I draw you and it isn't good? What if something goes wrong with it? What if I draw you and something happens to the picture?"

[abrightboy]

“‘Something’ like what, for example?” Malcolm asks.

[conning]

"Something," he whispers. He looks toward the larger pad of paper again, sitting on the easel nearby.

[abrightboy]

“I don’t know what range of things a ‘something’ covers in this context,” Malcolm tells him patiently. “Do you mean like the shadow in the other drawing?”

[conning]

"I don't know," Neal says, still a whisper, but strangled with emotion this time. "What if it twists the image, or makes me see things, or can get to you through it somehow?"

[abrightboy]

"Then we'll deal with it," Malcolm says matter-of-factly. "Do you want to let it run your life by scaring you away from the things you love the most?" he asks. "Because I'm personally willing to take the chance and to fight it if we have to."

[conning]

"You don't understand," Neal says, somewhere between frustrated and desperate, and that's when it truly clicks for the first time. Malcolm doesn't understand. He really doesn't understand what that place was, what it was capable of. What it might still be able to do to them both.

He lets out a long, slow exhale and presses his face into his hands for a moment. He can feel his fingers shivering against his brow and forehead and he clamps down on the surge of frustration that hits him. "We can't fight it."

The words come out, and he rebels against them. "There's got to be a way to stop him, or... banish him, or exorcise him, or something. There's always a way. But I don't want to risk losing you."

[abrightboy]

He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand, because he wasn’t there and because - like a man of reason and science in the year 2020 - he doesn’t default to the supernatural as an explanation. He doesn’t understand because he’s not Neal’s Malcolm, that went through all that with him.

But he recognizes frustration.

“What do you think it can do to me, exactly?” Malcolm asks.