TRAUMABEANS AU

[conning]

boop

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[abrightboy]

"Near my apartment," Malcolm supplies. He frowns faintly. "Why does it look like that?"

It hadn't looked like that when he dressed the wounds.

[conning]

“I don’t know. There might have been something on the knife?” The latter is more to herself than either of them, but she doesn’t sound convinced. “I’d like to take a tissue sample before I stitch these up, but we’re going to send you home with some antibiotics regardless.”

Neal looks at her, then at Malcolm, then down at his chest and the angry red mark. Goosebumps prickle over his scalp.

[abrightboy]

"Good idea," Malcolm tells her evenly, "Thank you."

He watches her work carefully.

"The edges are very clean, though. Like the blade was very sharp."

[conning]

She makes a soft noise of agreement as she gets her samples and neatly stitches the first cut, leaving space for it to drain before she bandages it and addresses the cut on Neal’s shoulder. “They’re very clean in terms of the actual cuts themselves. Like… weirdly, unnaturally clean. You were attacked?”

There’s a note of doubt in her voice, and she looks at Neal with a quiet calculation in her eyes. Neal doesn’t really register the risk involved in her suspicions. At least not the risk for his being kept in the hospital.

“Yes,” he says, regardless, because it’s true.

[abrightboy]

“The assailant just… swiped at him, like… he was in a frenzy. Then he took off. It happened so fast,” Malcolm chimes in. “We both do consulting for law enforcement,” he tells her. “Maybe it’s related to a case,” he suggests like he just thought of it.

[conning]

She glances at Malcolm, then nods slowly, seeming to accept that. She finishes tending to the second cut, while Neal keeps his face averted and eyes scrunched up from the sting of it.

When she steps back, he relaxes his grip on Malcolm's hand a little.

"Okay. Well, there's not much we can do beyond antibiotics and getting that tissue tested to make sure we're giving you the right ones." She hesitates, then seems to think better of whatever she was going to say. "I'll have a nurse come by with the paperwork and discharge documents soon."

[abrightboy]

“The infection came on too fast,” Malcolm tells Neal after she leaves. “The edges of the cut are perfect; the implement was razor sharp.”

[conning]

"Except it wasn't done by something... normal." He shrugs into his shirt again, wincing slightly at the twinge of his shoulder. Neal pauses before buttoning it up, looking at the bandage fixed tidily on his chest. "It wasn't done by something that should have been able to hurt me at all."

[abrightboy]

"Which we can't tell them, or they'll have you on the psych unit before you can say 'parasomnia'," Malcolm points out. "We have to figure that part out ourselves."

[conning]

He closes his eyes, nodding as he finishes buttoning up the shirt by feel. “What should we tell your therapist?”

[abrightboy]

"Gabrielle? We can tell her anything," Malcolm says confidently. "She's been my therapist since I was eleven."

[conning]

Neal nods, still nervous, now that he’s committed. Now that they’re actually going.

They get discharged, they get his meds, they get home. There’s not much rest, and when Neal stirs in the morning—when did he fall asleep?—it’s to the sound of Malcolm and Ellen talking quietly in the kitchen while she cooks breakfast. He eases upright, touching his shirt over the bandage. The area feels tender.

Neal rubs his eyes. “Conspiring to take down the remains of the Irish mob without me?”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looks over and pushes the french press towards him.

“No, she’s telling me about how she used to make your breakfast into a face with over easy eggs for eyes and a bacon smile. You didn’t find it gruesome dipping toast points in the eyeballs?”

[conning]

That startles a laugh out of Neal, who pours himself coffee as Ellen answers.

“He would paint with the crust and the yolk. I don’t think he ever noticed the poking the eyes out part.”

“I noticed.” Neal sips his coffee and sighs happily at the taste. “I always pretended I was painting what they were looking at. I wasn’t poking their eyes out, I was seeing what they saw.”

[abrightboy]

“I’m not sure what it says about me that I would have been dissecting its eyes,” Malcolm admits.

[conning]

Neal slides an arm around Malcolm’s waist. “That you were interested in what did the seeing.”

Ellen smiles, dishing up over-easy eggs onto a plate. “Neal’s always been a romantic.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm smiles into his coffee at that, but then sees the eggs sliding onto the plate with faint discomfort. He prefers the texture of scrambled eggs, but saying so seems… ungrateful and fussy. He sips his coffee like that will make Neal miss what just crossed his face.

[conning]

“Would you mind scrambling them, Ellen?” Neal smiles apologetically. “Not sure why, maybe because I didn’t sleep well, but texture-wise I’m feeling the need for simplicity this morning.”

Yes, he caught the look on Malcolm’s face. He doesn’t look at the other man to give him away, though.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm lacks Neal’s smoothness and subtlety and he blinks up at Neal in relieved surprise at the request, then glances at Ellen, then into his coffee.

“That sounds good,” he agrees like that whole production didn’t go on.

[conning]

Ellen glances at Malcolm when he reacts, lips twitching into a smile, but Neal’s expression doesn’t change a bit.

“Of course,” she says, still smiling.

Malcolm’s phone pings. A message from Gabrielle’s office.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm assumes it will be from Gil when he picks it up, but it’s not.

“She has an opening at 11; is that okay with you?” he asks Neal.

[conning]

Neal takes a deep breath, steeling himself already. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s good.”

It’s not good, it’s terrible, this is a terrible idea and he’s half-way to backing out already.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm smiles brightly at him, tapping his response into the phone before setting it aside. He looks at Ellen. “Are you going to be okay here today if we go out for a bit?”

[conning]

That smile. God, he would commit crimes for that smile.

He can do this. He can do it.

Ellen confirms she’ll be okay, and after breakfast and the start of a game of scrabble, he and Malcolm head out. He keeps a white-knuckle grip on Malcolm’s hand all the way there.

“What does she know already? Does she know anything already?”

[abrightboy]

“She knows that I’m seeing an artist that’s an ex-art forger and that you consult for the FBI now and that you went through some stuff that I wasn’t specific about,” Malcolm tells him.