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[conning]

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

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[abrightboy]

Sure! Do you want to come over?

[conning]

[Its a tiny, tiny tell, the way his chin just barely lifts, reluctance brief and dismissed as quickly as he feels it come up. He even keeps himself from asking if Malcolm is alone.]

Yeah, I’ll be right over. Anything I should bring to celebrate?

[abrightboy]

Do you have any more of that tea?

[conning]

The chamomile ginger? Yeah, I can bring some. Is your stomach okay?

[abrightboy]

Mostly. But I just like it.


...That's a boring notion of celebrating, right? Herbal tea? It's going to be a real party in here.

[conning]

[That prompts a fond if brief grin.]

Malcolm, there is no definitive way to celebrate something. If you want a quiet cup of tea to do it, that’s as valid as throwing a rager. I’ll be over in ten?

[abrightboy]

Yes I'll see you then.

-----> [prose action]

Will is not over currently; Malcolm is there alone. But there are signs that Will is there a lot more and on a more permanent sort of basis. There are dog dishes by the kitchen island. There's a blanket with dog hair on it on the livingroom floor as a sort of makeshift dog bed. There's a plaid flannel shirt slung over the foot of the bed. There's a rustic army green jacket hanging on one of the hooks by the door.

Malcolm is behind the kitchen island arranging sliced fruit and cheese on a plate. He looks up at Neal's knock.

"Come in!"

[conning]

Neal balks internally at the signs of foreign habitation, as though he has any right at all to the space. It still makes him feel strange, makes it very clear that he won’t be spending his next inevitable death toll reclined on Malcolm’s couch in the company of Goya’s masterworks. He and Malcolm aren’t paired any more. That’s that.

Neal smiles when he sees Malcolm, disorientation at the realized change warring with intense curiosity. He holds up the jar of tea, giving it a little shake. There’s a ribbon tied around the neck. “Happy Wolfday?”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm smiles brightly when he sees him.

He would almost certainly still be expected to spend a death toll on his couch, where he could be looked after.

"Hi! I didn't have much in the fridge but um... apples and cheese go together...."

[conning]

It would be a hard sell at the moment--he doesn't care to have anyone he doesn't trust that close when he's vulnerable.

Again, he can't help the way he looks down and smiles. "Now that I have a kitchen, maybe I can try a few of the recipes I was toying around with, see if I can't provide you with something that's both palatable and stays down."

He pushes the jar of tea across the island at Malcolm, studying the other man's face, the way he moves, trying to spot if there's anything different.

"It's just... done? You didn't have to wait for a full moon or something?"

[abrightboy]

"Oh. No. The full moon doesn't turn this kind of wolf. We can do it at will, though it takes energy. You can't just keep... flipping back and forth. I keep some of the, um... heightened senses, though, when I'm... human me."

He puts the kettle on.

"How's Wardening going? Did you get someone in the last pairing?"

[conning]

"Why can't you change back and forth? What kind of heightened senses?" It's genuine curiosity, fascination, though when Malcolm says we can do it at will there's a little scissor-pang of loneliness and jealousy that he looks toward the Goyas to hide in case it makes it to his face.

"Kendall Roy, on a temporary basis. Roman's older brother. He's... interesting. There's a lot going on there."

[abrightboy]

“Oh, yeah, I noticed that,” he says of Kendall, scooping tea into a diffuser. His hands pause in their work and he looks up at Neal. “I noticed it verbally, so probably better not to mention me.”

As for the senses, he goes back to scooping. “I can smell a… broader range of scents? Like. I can pick out the scents of the various components of this tea, for example. And my hearing is better, though that may be a double-edged sword. I’m not sure I needed a way to be more sure of overhearing people talking about me behind my back.”

[conning]

"The better to hear your friends telling them to go fuck themselves if they try." Implacable on that front, thank you very much. He leans a little further forward on the counter. "The scent sensitivity must do fascinating things to flavor profiles."

As far as Kendall is concerned, well... "He's tightly wound in a completely different way than Roman. Has a pretty strong chosen one personal narrative that would make him an absolute dream to run a con on, so it's good for us both that I'm not here for that, I guess."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm points at him with the cheese knife.

"What if you could con him into graduating?" he jokes with a grin.

[conning]

Neal snorts quietly. "I have to con him into telling his brother whatever Kendall's hiding from him, first."

Which is an issue for another time, one he has to talk about with Raylan, really.

Neal shakes his head. "How did it work anyway? Did Lark bite you? Is he the only one who can do it?"

[abrightboy]

“Oh. No. He cut his hand with a knife and then mine and then tied them together so the blood transfer wouldn’t be interrupted if I… convulsed a little,” Malcolm explains, looking up as he drops the diffuser in the teapot.

[conning]

Please hold.

“I’m sorry, I swear you just said he tied your hands together so things wouldn’t be interrupted if you convulsed.”

[abrightboy]

“From the pain,” Malcolm explains. And then, pointing out the obvious: “When my bones changed.”

[conning]

“Right.” Jesus Christ. “Right. Was there any concern around it… being fatal?”

Things he absolutely should have asked the first time they had this conversation, but Neal wants to know exactly how hard he should be slapping himself mentally.

[abrightboy]

“I don’t think so. That seems like the sort of thing someone would have mentioned,” Malcolm muses. “Anyway, that only took a couple of minutes and then I was sort of… disoriented at first. Because everything is taller than it used to be and you can hear things you couldn’t hear before… that sort of thing.”

[conning]

“Yeah it does.” Neal’s statement is less agreement than wondering what Lark might not have mentioned about this whole thing. He shakes his head, getting back on track. “Were you stuck? How did you change back? Where did you even do this, in his cabin?”

[abrightboy]

“In his cabin, yeah. And then when I sort of got my bearings, he took me to see Iris and she took us on her ship to… go hunting together. Like. An initiation, I guess,” Malcolm tells him.

[conning]

Oh. That’s also concerning, in its own way. Neal circles the island at last so he can be close enough to Malcolm to touch his elbow gently. “Did you want to go hunting? Are you okay?”

[abrightboy]

“Um…” For Neal, that’s probably most of an answer. “I mean, it’s what you do, I guess. They took me to hunt a moose, so I could understand the strength and stamina that I have now. And… the chasing part and figuring out how to corner it was kind of fun, but I’m not sure we needed to go for the kill. I can still kind of… taste it,” he says distastefully.