TRAUMABEANS AU

[conning]

boop

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[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.

[conning]

"I don't know," Neal whispers. "That's the part that terrifies me the most. I have no idea what it could do. Get inside your head and drive you crazy, hurt you physically, I..."

He reaches out, resting his hands on Malcolm's waist. "He, you, in that place, you were so scared of it making you really crazy. Without your medications, with the things we saw and the ways it made it impossible to tell if it was real. I just."

Deep breath. "I don't know what it could do, if it's... real, in this world too."

[abrightboy]

“Okay. Well.” Malcolm shrugs expansively. “Do you want to draw a landscape or something instead?”

[conning]

Neal actually flinches. His hold on Malcolm's waist loosens. He's not sure what he expected, what he wanted, or why that question hurts as much as it does.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm’s brow creases. When Neal’s grip on him loosens, his grip on Neal instinctively tightens.

“I said the wrong thing,” he surmises, but he isn’t sure why. He’s hunting for techniques to ease into it. A landscape wouldn’t have any people in it to get ‘got’. Neal could see if the shadow intruded or not. “You don’t have to try that or anything else. I was just spitballing ideas.”

[conning]

"Oh," Neal says, surprised. "I..."

He looks down, forcing an ironic smile. "I thought... I don't know what I thought. That you were saying you didn't think I could do it, or. Something. Writing it off."

He shakes his head. "Sorry. I should know better."

[abrightboy]

"I probably... said it wrong," Malcolm admits. "I just thought an empty tableau wouldn't have any people for it to 'get', but you could see if it showed up. But. You're right. I don't understand. I don't know how it works."