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[conning]

"It's Caffrey. Remember the value of plausible deniability. I'll get back to you."

Comments

[conning]

"To put it tactically, yes."

Tiny noogie. "Now that I'm up, yes, I'm going to read it. In pieces, and talk with him after reading each piece. Ask questions, gauge his reactions. It'll let me see, theoretically, which pieces are most sensitive for him and start to clue me in on where we should focus. Hopefully build some trust or show me where I should step lightly. But anyone I'm matched with is getting the option of privacy until they trust me with that kind of information, slow path or not."

He sighs. "I really wish I hadn't gone down right after being paired."

[cactusy]

"Yeah," she says, exhaling hard through her nose. "That's really crappy timing. Guessing you didn't even get the chance to pick a back-up warden?"

[conning]

He groans quietly, resting his head on the back of the couch. "Nope. And Norton was busy with his inmate brainwashing everyone's favorite Russian asshole."

Neal winces. "Sorry, I'm not making light of it, I'm really not, I was just doing a bit of back-reading on the network and saw part of the fallout."

[cactusy]

"Insensitive? How dare you," she deadpans, because really, Neal, Shaw is the last person who's going to call you out for not being delicate enough. "I missed that, too. Who's the asshole, Hilbert?"

[conning]

Neal rubs the bridge of his nose. "Yeah. My top three to-dos are to check in with Stolas, then Eiffel, then Malcolm, since Malcolm seems to have handled the whole thing pretty solidly and Eiffel seems to have done a bit of his own... It just clearly hit him close to home, and it looks like he decided to aim that at the people who had to deal with a brainwashed Hilbert murdering someone."

[cactusy]

There's a brief pause here - because while she can easily imagine Eiffel flying off the handle because of his own trauma, she can also easily imagine Malcolm handling that poorly, and she knows where she'd place her bets on who Neal would be more defensive of and sympathetic to in that moment.

"Sounds like a plan," she says. "You know when it happened? I looked at the network when I woke up--"

For about three minutes, tops.

"-- but I didn't see anything. "

[conning]

There's a lot to read in that brief pause.

"Go ahead." He glances at her, eyebrows raised. "I know you're thinking it."

[cactusy]

"Fights are dumb and I abstain," she says, stretching out a foot so that she can nudge him in the knee.

[conning]

Neal laughs quietly at that. "Part of the reason I've been so viciously defensive of Malcolm is that he's never defensive of himself. He almost always assumes his own wrongdoing first. He didn't this time. He stood up for himself. He held his ground, made his position known, and didn't change his attitude with he caught shit for it. I don't need to try and protect him here, so I'm not going to."

[cactusy]

"Jumping straight to self-hate isn't exactly the same as assuming his own wrongdoing," she says, with uncharacteristic gentleness. "But okay. I get that; that makes sense."

[conning]

"It can be hard to jump anywhere else, when self-hate is what you've been taught your whole life is an appropriate reaction." He matches her gentleness, his own smile warm and proud of Malcolm and of her, for reasons he doesn't have pinned down firmly enough to articulate yet. "I'm... glad he's finding somewhere else to land."

[cactusy]

"I know. Me, too."

She doesn't say anything else: she just studies him, a step or two up from eyeing him warily.

[conning]

He leans sideways suddenly to try and plant a kiss on her forehead. "What, abji?"

[cactusy]

She wrinkles her nose at him, but doesn't pull away, nudging him with her foot again.

"I dunno, nothing. Whatever. I'm glad you're not gonna go protective guard dog on Eiffel; it would hurt him a lot."

[conning]

There are a few things to respond to in that, but the unspoken one is the one that concerns him the most. He takes her hand and gives it a tiny squeeze.

"Sam. What is it?"

[cactusy]

"I just wouldn't be able to do that magical meditation thing he did, that's all," she says, shrugging. "Locking you in a room, yeah, maybe, but the rest? You might be stuck hating him forever. Better it doesn't get that far to begin with."

It's flippant, but with a note of truth behind it: even though she's making light of the situation, she still means the words themselves.

[conning]

"W-- Hating him?" He stares at her, mouth slightly open, half-formed sentences reeling in his head.

Finally, he manages, "Did you think I hated you?"

[cactusy]

"Didn't you, for a couple weeks?" Another shrug. "Then we did the talk-it-out thing, got over it, and moved on. "

[conning]

"No." He lifts a hand to cup her cheek. "Jesus Christ, no. I was pissed at you, sure. I wouldn't have been that mad if your opinion didn't matter to me. If you didn't matter to me. I never, never, never hated you."

[cactusy]

"Okay."

She doesn't pull away, but she does frown a little.

"Are you okay?"

[conning]

Neal snorts, brief and undignified. "I mean, I just found out that my sister thought I hated her the one time we ever had a big fight, so that's... unpleasant, but I'll live. Have you thought that this whole time? That if we disagree on something, if I argue with you, it means I hate you?"

[cactusy]

"No, not about anything and everything. But I know what Malcolm means to you; I know how you feel about him."

She sighs, reaching out a hand and grabbing him by the shoulder (a little roughly, but she means well), trying to pull him into her.

"Hey, c'mere, you sappy nerd. It's okay. "

[conning]

He won't say no to a voluntary Shake hug, even if it's clearly for his sake. He gives her a squeeze.

"He does mean a lot to me. So do you. And I hope if we had that kind of fight now I'd have the ability to explain that it wasn't even about him, at bottom, it was about--as I saw it at the time--someone I trust not trusting me. Which as you might recall was a bit of a flashpoint for me."

[cactusy]

"Does that still bother you?" she asks, resting her hand carefully along to back of his shoulder to keep him in place.

[conning]

He weighs that question carefully before he answers. "I think it's always going to bother me. It hurts, it feels like failing. But I don't think it can break me the way it used to. I trust myself enough these days that I don't need it as much from anyone else."