TRAUMABEANS AU

[conning]

boop

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[conning]

"You didn't, it wasn't you, I promise. I don't need the hospital, I'm okay, I promise." He makes Malcolm look at him, turning his face with one hand. His clean one. "It's okay. I'm okay."

Except he's got a haunted look on his face that's far from okay. "Did... you see anything cut me? Were you asleep?"

[abrightboy]

“I don’t know,” Malcolm chokes. A shaky hand points at the shoulder wound. “I saw that one just appear but I don’t know if I was awake; I don’t know.”

He tears his eyes from the wound to Neal’s face.

“What did you see?” he asks shakily.

[conning]

"I think you were awake," Neal murmurs. He shivers. "I was dreaming about being trapped inside 1306. Things were chasing me, toying with me, a couple of them attacked."

He dabs his tongue against his lips. "One cut my chest open. One cut open my shoulder. There was one going for my throat when I woke up."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm’s expression creases again.

“What would have happened if you hadn’t woken up?” he asks, but his voice is tight; he feels like he has no air.

[conning]

“I don’t know,” Neal admits quietly. He looks at the cut on his shoulder, then gently shifts the t-shirt so he can see the one on his chest. “They’re not as bad or as deep as they were in my dream.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm sniffles as he starts to unbuckle his restraints.

“We have to clean them up,” he says.

He’s fumbling the buckle; his hand is shaking too much. Like when Ainsley’s boyfriend was stabbed. He’s so useless just when he needs to not be.

[conning]

Neal takes over that part, at least, gently freeing Malcolm from the restraints before he can get too frustrated. “It’s okay.”

He cards his fingers through Malcolm’s hair. “We’re okay.”

[abrightboy]

That shaking hand touches Neal’s skin above the cut. It feels like his skin always feels. He looks at the cut, then looks to meet his eyes.

“…Are you sure?”

But his breathing already sounds less ragged.

[conning]

“We’re the only thing I’m sure of right now.”

Goosebumps again as he remembers the thing leaping for his throat. “You get the first aid kit, I’ll make tea?”

[abrightboy]

“No!” Malcolm gasps instinctively, lunging to grab him before he can get away. He takes a breath. “Come to the bathroom and let me clean it up,” he says softly.

[conning]

Neal flinches in surprise, but then nods, letting Malcolm lead him there. Making sure they stay touching in one way or another until Neal himself is planted on the seat of the closed toilet and Malcolm is getting a better look at the injuries.

They’re not as long as the cuts in his dream. They’re not as deep. But they’re definitely not shallow, and someone with Edrisa’s eye—or Malcolm’s—could probably tell that they seem to have been made from the inside out.

“Are you okay?”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm is peering at the cut on Neal’s chest as he cleans it up and it takes him a second to process the question. He looks up from under his brow.

“Am I okay?”

[conning]

"Yeah?" He's disoriented enough to be unsure what he said wrong. If he did say something wrong. Neal takes Malcolm’s wrist lightly in on hand, rubbing his thumb against the inside curve of the other man’s skin. “You… I got hurt in front of you and you couldn’t tell if you were awake. Are you okay?”

[abrightboy]

“I’m still not sure I’m awake,” Malcolm admits in a subdued tone. “But I have to assume I am. If I’m not and I act like I am, it’s fine. If I am and I act like I’m not… it’s bad. Are you sure you don’t want stitches?” he confirms.

[conning]

Neal eyes his shoulder for a moment. “Do you think I need them?”

Mathias notwithstanding, he doesn’t have a lot of personal experiences with significant physical injuries.

[abrightboy]

“They’re not so deep that you have to have them, but they’ll scar less if you do,” Malcolm tells him. “Up to you,” he adds. “They don’t make you less attractive.”

[conning]

He sits up a little straighter at the notion of having another scar.

“Stitches,” Neal says. A pause. “Please.”

Malcolm might not think they make him less attractive, but Neal has his twitches.

[abrightboy]

“Okay. Let me tape them up and we have to get dressed,” Malcolm tells him. “We have to go to the clinic.” Malcolm isn’t qualified to do it.

[conning]

Neal grimaces a little, then nods. He’s willing to do it even if he doesn’t want to leave the house. He stays almost comically still as Malcolm tapes up the injuries, then writes a note left-handed for Ellen to explain where they’ve gone if she wakes up. His left-handed writing is just as elegant as his right.

They’re at the door before Neal realizes something. He lifts a hand to Malcolm’s cheek. “You don’t have to come if you’re worried they’ll think you did it. You didn’t.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm’s hand starts shaking and he clenches it against his leg.

“I can’t leave you there,” he protests.

[conning]

Neal shakes his head. "You're not. You wouldn't be."

He would like Malcolm there. He's unsettled, and the more time he has to think about it on his own the more unsettled he's going to get, but he's also not going to ask Malcolm to go to a hospital when he has so many of his own issues with them. What is balancing one's own emotional needs with those of another person??

[abrightboy]

“I can’t,” Malcolm informs him, pressing the second bandage into place, then going out into the bedroom to grab clothes to get dressed.

[conning]

Neal follows him, pulling on a button-up and slacks and leaving it at that. It hurts to move his shoulder too much, and he's getting paranoid. "Okay. All right. I just thought..."

He pinches the bridge of his nose. "I don't know what I thought. I don't know what I'm thinking."

[abrightboy]

“We don’t know what’s happening,” Malcolm says, pulling on a sweater and jeans, “and there’s no one to ask. I can’t abandon you because they might hurt my feelings.”

[conning]

Neal catches Malcolm around the waist with one arm as he locks the door behind them downstairs.

"Thank you," he says softly. "I don't. I don't want to be there alone."