Neal feels Malcolm’s words. It’s like they travel through the air to impact gently against his chest, each one a delicious little surge of pleasure just because it’s Malcolm’s voice. The actual content of them almost doesn’t matter.
Still, he sits, sucking in a deep breath at the feeling of Malcolm’s warm hand against his warmer forehead. It’s the most bizarre sensation, that bit of pressure sending little ripples through him from top to toe. He feels almost deliriously good.
“Don’t know how she expects me to work like this,” Neal mumbles, makes an abortively amused little sound, then gasps again as another wash of whiteout ecstasy rolls through him.
“Kiss me?” He’s breathless as he says it. “Please kiss me.”
She couldn’t possibly expect him to work like this, but the injection was meant for Mozzie. She must understand its effects. If she wants whatever the window leads to, she stop the effects of the drug if she could. He has a bad feeling about this.
He holds a finger up for Neal to wait.
“Dr Whitly.”
“My boy!” he exclaims. “This is an unexpected delight.”
“If someone has been told that they’ll feel the effects of a drug in 8-12 hours, but that two shots of adrenaline could keep them going for up to 48 hours, what do you think that substance could be?”
“An interesting hypothetical; are we talking about a case?” Martin asks.
“Yes,” Malcolm tells him; it’s not really a lie.
“Who gave them the timeline and the adrenaline?”
“The person that injected them. It happened about 40 minutes ago.”
“Interesting. Are they experiencing any symptoms now?”
“Sounds like a combination of drugs,” Martin muses. “Sometimes, when you cut a long acting paralytic with a fast acting cocktail of party drugs you, uh, make the agony of the body shutting down one organ at a time all the more heightened and torturous.”
“The killer is a known sadist.”
“If you know who the killer is, why are you following the drugs?”
“I’m not; I want to know how to counteract them,” Malcolm snaps.
“Well, you need to know the exact composition you’re dealing with, son. You can’t just go shooting this poor idiot full of even more random substances.”
Malcolm’s response is a growl of frustration and he hangs up the phone just as Peter walks in.
“He’s delirious and disoriented,” Malcolm tells him urgently, not waiting for pleasantries. “We need someone who can come here and take blood samples, then a rush analysis to find an antidote. We can’t take him to a hospital. I’ve seen this sort of attack before. This method is employed by sadists and predatory psychopaths; whoever it is will want to see him suffer and we don’t know how they intend to watch their victims but the mostly likely bet is they have eyes on the hospitals.”
That rapturous pleasure isn’t going anywhere this time. If anything it’s building, almost torturously, filling up every inch of his body and mind. It’s hard to think through it. His ears are ringing, or they feel like they are. He’s swamped in it, pupils blown, mouth open slightly as he drags air into lungs that feel starved for attention.
When it starts to ebb, it’s just enough for him to clue back into his surroundings. He’s still neck-deep in a transcendent, languid feeling that makes the whole world feel coated in honey. He reaches out to touch Malcolm’s face and has the strangest conviction that he’s moving his hand through liquid gold.
“Wow,” he slurs. “I almost feel bad I didn’t let Mozzie have this.”
He lets his eyes close in a long blink, adrift in this honey-world, before he sighs contentedly and studies Malcolm’s face. “I love you. I hope you know that. Anything I’d do for Peter, I’d do for you. Everything I did for him, I’d do for you.”
This place is nice. This soul-deep calm. It’s like every crack and crevice in his psyche is getting dripped full of a healing molasses. Like nothing that hurts will ever penetrate this sanctuary again.
Breathe in—and get hit by another tidal flow of pleasure. Slow, implacable, inescapable. Neal’s vision goes slightly unfocused. His words slur a little more. “I might do worse for you,” he admits contentedly.
Peter looks at Malcolm, then at Neal, quickly going to the latter. He noticed what Neal said, sure—but he doesn’t particularly care right now. Not with Malcolm’s current demeanor. “I know a couple of back-room medical centers who owe me favors,” he says, brushing Neal’s hair out of his face. “He was just jumped? Someone just attacked him?”
Even as he asks the questions, Peter is already pulling out his phone. Neal smiles at him absently. His pupils are huge, his attention half on invisible things. The intense physical pleasure is building up again. He closes his eyes and shivers, then groans softly. He reaches toward Malcolm again.
“Can we go to bed?” The words are like putty in his mouth, but even the hum of his own voice in his throat sends little tremors of pleasure through him. He’s pouring sweat, oblivious. “I want to lie down with you.”
“Not yet,” Malcolm tells him before answering Peter’s question. “As far as I know. It’s settling into euphoria now, but he was delirious when I got here. It was Mozzie, it was Rebecca, it was you… I’m concerned about how quickly he’s processing it. How fast can your help get here?”
Neal obeys, holding up his free hand and turning it one way, then the other, watching the light from the room move over his skin.
He blinks in surprise when he gets to the bottom of the glass, offering it back. “You’re the best,” he says. Best at what? Unclear. Best overall? Probably.
Peter is walking back over as Neal’s phone starts to buzz in his pocket. He jumps in surprise, starts to fumble it out, and drops it it instead.
"So what are you going to do now?" Malcolm asks. "Having shot yourself in the foot, I mean. How are you going to get what you want? Pardon me, the other thing that you want."
“Malcolm?” It’s Neal, distracted, having turned to tell the other man something—the thought dissipating into mental champagne bubbles at the realization that he’s not right there.
“Hey, Neal,” Peter says, and Neal looks at him again.
Rebecca pauses, then goes on with a touch of anger. “He wouldn’t be in this situation if you’d let me have him to begin with. Mozzie is doing his best—he’s got the glyphs all copied out, which was its own adventure. Apparently it creates some kind of mathematical problem when arranged in the correct way, but he hasn’t found it yet.”
Another pause, another twinge of irritation in her voice. “Neal is an excellent mathematician, too. Brilliant. He’s wasted in the FBI offices.”
"Sorry, I don't throw people to the wolves to make an easier Thursday. But you didn't answer my question. Mozzie probably can't do it. You know he's not as good as Neal. So what are you going to do?"
“We would have been amazing together,” she says, and that resentful heat is back. “I could have helped him get past the things that held him back. You highlight all his weaknesses, and he loves you for it.”
She sucks in a breath. Reins herself in. “I’m going to let him have his high, and when it starts to hurt, I’m going to give him a chance to figure out my equation in exchange for making it stop.”
“If you want to gamble on him being able to do it in that state of mind. You know where you went wrong? He would have done it if you just asked. You’d already have it. And now you’ve jeopardized your chances at it because you are only the brawn. You’ll enjoy the pain for as long as it lasts, but when it’s over you’ll leave without the spoils and without him, alone and empty handed.”
“He can do it. You’re right—he’s that good.” A longer pause, and she adds with venomous sweetness, “Practically speaking, it’s safer for him to get counteragents to the bad stuff once he doesn’t have so much feel-good stuff in his system. Besides, I want you to see it start to hurt. I want you to see what I can do to him without lifting a finger. I want you to see it and not be able to help. Because that’s your thing. Helping. Saving. Trying to protect. I want you to watch me come an inch from ruining the one person who ever put you first, instead.”
Malcolm is silent for just a moment, glancing over his shoulder at Peter and Neal, then turns away from them again.
"But you did lift a finger. You mixed the cocktail of drugs. Probably tested it extensively before now. Injected it. Probably injected it each and every time. Watched it work. Savoured its work. Nobody will ever appreciate it, you know. Your savage genius. People don't love the sort of thing that you are, but I think you know that. That's why you spend all your time pretending to be something else. Investigators think it's a means to an end, but the end is just a pretence, isn't it? You enjoy it, that time they spend believing you. Believing in you. But you also know you can't keep it up for any length of time, because there's always been something wrong with you and you've always known it."
A long silence on her end. Neal, in the background, rambles to Peter about the time he ended up spending a month in a foursome with a prince, his wife, and their mutual female lover, and how they were all very interesting people.
"I have tested it," Rachel says calmly. "I'll call you back before he starts screaming."
As though in answer, there's a knock on the door. It opens without whoever it is waiting for approval to enter. They're dressed like an EMT and accompanied by Diana. She studies Neal worriedly.
"How's he doing?"
The EMT doesn't bother repeating the question, just goes to work taking Neal's temperature, swabbing the inside of his mouth, and prepping his arm to take a blood sample. Neal himself has lapsed into blissful silence.
Peter studies Neal's face, lips pressed into a tight line. "He's out of it at best. Not making a lot of sense. Talking about..."
He trails off and shakes his head, forcing irony into his tone. "Well, he's shared some romantic stories that I really didn't need taking up visual space in my brain."
"Where's Malcolm?" Neal looks around, brightens when he sees Malcolm, and then jerks and recoils from the EMT as they try to jab him in the arm with a needle. "Ow?"
"Hold him still," the woman says implacably. "And someone get him some mineral water. He needs to a steady intake of fluids. I'll get an IV going too."
"He just drank a glass," Malcolm tells them, slightly more subdued. He picks up Neal's glass and goes back to the kitchen to refill it, bringing it back but standing back while they hook him up.
"I have reason to believe we're dealing with a cocktail of drugs," Malcolm tells them. "And whatever could prove fatal is what we want to focus on counteracting."
Peter holds Neal still as the needle goes in. Neal turns his face away from it, face scrunched up in almost childish discomfort. The EMT is brisk and efficient, listening to Malcolm as she takes the samples she needs and sets up the IV.
She gets to her feet, kisses Diana on the temple, and lifts the case she has her samples in. "I'll get these to my friend at the NYU Emergency Department, she knows people in their bio labs too. We'll get you a result. Leaving a couple of saline bags behind too."
"Thank you," Peter says firmly. "Really. Thank you."
Neal stares at the IV drip, lips parted slightly, wonder in his expression. "I can feel it."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Still, he sits, sucking in a deep breath at the feeling of Malcolm’s warm hand against his warmer forehead. It’s the most bizarre sensation, that bit of pressure sending little ripples through him from top to toe. He feels almost deliriously good.
“Don’t know how she expects me to work like this,” Neal mumbles, makes an abortively amused little sound, then gasps again as another wash of whiteout ecstasy rolls through him.
“Kiss me?” He’s breathless as he says it. “Please kiss me.”
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He holds a finger up for Neal to wait.
“Dr Whitly.”
“My boy!” he exclaims. “This is an unexpected delight.”
“If someone has been told that they’ll feel the effects of a drug in 8-12 hours, but that two shots of adrenaline could keep them going for up to 48 hours, what do you think that substance could be?”
“An interesting hypothetical; are we talking about a case?” Martin asks.
“Yes,” Malcolm tells him; it’s not really a lie.
“Who gave them the timeline and the adrenaline?”
“The person that injected them. It happened about 40 minutes ago.”
“Interesting. Are they experiencing any symptoms now?”
Malcolm watches Neal. “Euphoria. Flop sweat. Brain fog. Hypersensitivity.”
“Sounds like a combination of drugs,” Martin muses. “Sometimes, when you cut a long acting paralytic with a fast acting cocktail of party drugs you, uh, make the agony of the body shutting down one organ at a time all the more heightened and torturous.”
“The killer is a known sadist.”
“If you know who the killer is, why are you following the drugs?”
“I’m not; I want to know how to counteract them,” Malcolm snaps.
“Well, you need to know the exact composition you’re dealing with, son. You can’t just go shooting this poor idiot full of even more random substances.”
Malcolm’s response is a growl of frustration and he hangs up the phone just as Peter walks in.
“He’s delirious and disoriented,” Malcolm tells him urgently, not waiting for pleasantries. “We need someone who can come here and take blood samples, then a rush analysis to find an antidote. We can’t take him to a hospital. I’ve seen this sort of attack before. This method is employed by sadists and predatory psychopaths; whoever it is will want to see him suffer and we don’t know how they intend to watch their victims but the mostly likely bet is they have eyes on the hospitals.”
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When it starts to ebb, it’s just enough for him to clue back into his surroundings. He’s still neck-deep in a transcendent, languid feeling that makes the whole world feel coated in honey. He reaches out to touch Malcolm’s face and has the strangest conviction that he’s moving his hand through liquid gold.
“Wow,” he slurs. “I almost feel bad I didn’t let Mozzie have this.”
He lets his eyes close in a long blink, adrift in this honey-world, before he sighs contentedly and studies Malcolm’s face. “I love you. I hope you know that. Anything I’d do for Peter, I’d do for you. Everything I did for him, I’d do for you.”
This place is nice. This soul-deep calm. It’s like every crack and crevice in his psyche is getting dripped full of a healing molasses. Like nothing that hurts will ever penetrate this sanctuary again.
Breathe in—and get hit by another tidal flow of pleasure. Slow, implacable, inescapable. Neal’s vision goes slightly unfocused. His words slur a little more. “I might do worse for you,” he admits contentedly.
Peter looks at Malcolm, then at Neal, quickly going to the latter. He noticed what Neal said, sure—but he doesn’t particularly care right now. Not with Malcolm’s current demeanor. “I know a couple of back-room medical centers who owe me favors,” he says, brushing Neal’s hair out of his face. “He was just jumped? Someone just attacked him?”
Even as he asks the questions, Peter is already pulling out his phone. Neal smiles at him absently. His pupils are huge, his attention half on invisible things. The intense physical pleasure is building up again. He closes his eyes and shivers, then groans softly. He reaches toward Malcolm again.
“Can we go to bed?” The words are like putty in his mouth, but even the hum of his own voice in his throat sends little tremors of pleasure through him. He’s pouring sweat, oblivious. “I want to lie down with you.”
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When Peter is occupied, Neal tugs at Malcolm’s shirt, a kid wanting attention.
“You’re so smart,” he says, tone still peaceful. “Do people tell you how smart you are, because they should.”
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He feels Neal’s forehead again, then goes to the kitchen, fills a glass with mineral water from the fridge, and brings it to him.
“Drink this,” he urges softly.
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He blinks in surprise when he gets to the bottom of the glass, offering it back. “You’re the best,” he says. Best at what? Unclear. Best overall? Probably.
Peter is walking back over as Neal’s phone starts to buzz in his pocket. He jumps in surprise, starts to fumble it out, and drops it it instead.
The display says unknown number.
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“This is Bright,” he says, moving away from Neal and Peter.
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It is, of course, Rebecca. “He must be feeling pretty good about now.”
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Neal is studying the ceiling while he rambles absently at Peter about the shades of color in the white.
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“Hey, Neal,” Peter says, and Neal looks at him again.
Rebecca pauses, then goes on with a touch of anger. “He wouldn’t be in this situation if you’d let me have him to begin with. Mozzie is doing his best—he’s got the glyphs all copied out, which was its own adventure. Apparently it creates some kind of mathematical problem when arranged in the correct way, but he hasn’t found it yet.”
Another pause, another twinge of irritation in her voice. “Neal is an excellent mathematician, too. Brilliant. He’s wasted in the FBI offices.”
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"Sorry, I don't throw people to the wolves to make an easier Thursday. But you didn't answer my question. Mozzie probably can't do it. You know he's not as good as Neal. So what are you going to do?"
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She sucks in a breath. Reins herself in. “I’m going to let him have his high, and when it starts to hurt, I’m going to give him a chance to figure out my equation in exchange for making it stop.”
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"But you did lift a finger. You mixed the cocktail of drugs. Probably tested it extensively before now. Injected it. Probably injected it each and every time. Watched it work. Savoured its work. Nobody will ever appreciate it, you know. Your savage genius. People don't love the sort of thing that you are, but I think you know that. That's why you spend all your time pretending to be something else. Investigators think it's a means to an end, but the end is just a pretence, isn't it? You enjoy it, that time they spend believing you. Believing in you. But you also know you can't keep it up for any length of time, because there's always been something wrong with you and you've always known it."
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"I have tested it," Rachel says calmly. "I'll call you back before he starts screaming."
She hangs up.
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"Where are they?" he snaps at Peter.
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"How's he doing?"
The EMT doesn't bother repeating the question, just goes to work taking Neal's temperature, swabbing the inside of his mouth, and prepping his arm to take a blood sample. Neal himself has lapsed into blissful silence.
Peter studies Neal's face, lips pressed into a tight line. "He's out of it at best. Not making a lot of sense. Talking about..."
He trails off and shakes his head, forcing irony into his tone. "Well, he's shared some romantic stories that I really didn't need taking up visual space in my brain."
"Where's Malcolm?" Neal looks around, brightens when he sees Malcolm, and then jerks and recoils from the EMT as they try to jab him in the arm with a needle. "Ow?"
"Hold him still," the woman says implacably. "And someone get him some mineral water. He needs to a steady intake of fluids. I'll get an IV going too."
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"I have reason to believe we're dealing with a cocktail of drugs," Malcolm tells them. "And whatever could prove fatal is what we want to focus on counteracting."
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She gets to her feet, kisses Diana on the temple, and lifts the case she has her samples in. "I'll get these to my friend at the NYU Emergency Department, she knows people in their bio labs too. We'll get you a result. Leaving a couple of saline bags behind too."
"Thank you," Peter says firmly. "Really. Thank you."
Neal stares at the IV drip, lips parted slightly, wonder in his expression. "I can feel it."
The EMT makes an ironic noise. "I'll bet, buddy."
Then she's gone.
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"Drink," he says before crossing his arms and starting to pace.
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Diana left with the EMT. Peter has his eyes on Malcolm too. “What is it?”
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