Chapter Text
He can’t sleep.
Which is normal but he’s alone. For the first time in over a year, Malcolm is laying in his bed alone. He rolls on to his side, Dani’s shampoo invading his brain as he takes a deep breath. He can’t force himself to hallucinate but he’d almost prefer the haunted fake feeling of her being around than the lonely pains of his heart.
He understands why she left. She needs to sleep and he’s having a hard time. After all, he was the one to give her the idea. They’ve kept her apartment because while he’s never asked her to move in, most of her stuff has found its way into his apartment. There’s no point in asking when she takes his hand as they walk to the car, asking if he’s ready to go home.
He’d never thought of his apartment as home before.
Exhaustion weighs his chest in. He finds himself blinking through it, struggling to keep himself awake.
Something is wrong. He’s vaguely aware of it. He nearly expects the girl in the box to grab his shoulder but she does not appear. His vision blurs and his stomach twists miserably. Dani’s not even here to hold his hand. To remind him to breathe deep or put a rag to his face. He swallows against the sour bile trying to edge up his throat. His eyes drop a fraction more. He can’t move.
His heart beats quickly in his chest. He means to reach for his phone on the nightstand.
Something’s wrong.
His hand knocks the phone down and his body now thrown too far to one side, he slips over the edge. He doesn’t even let out a startled cry as his body falls limply to the floor. Through half-lidded his eyes he looks at the phone just an inch from his fingers.
The sound of knocking rouses him just enough to force his eyes back open but he can’t stay awake. A voice calls his name, the knocking growing more urgent.
It’s okay, he doesn’t lock the door.
He lets himself be pulled under the warmth of unconsciousness. It’ll be okay. Dani will save him.
---
Ainsley finds him on a stretcher.
She’d called his cellphone and a man she didn’t know answered. His deep voice rumbling, “oh shit-”
It startled her and she could hear as the man passed the phone to someone else, grunting that he hadn’t meant to answer the call. He just picked the phone up. The next man’s voice sounds similar to the voice. “I’m sorry but-”
“Wait!” Something in her gut tells her something isn’t right. “This is my brother’s phone. I-I… Why-Why are you answering?” Tears prick her eyes as her mind fills in a hundred awful things that could have happened. What if he went walking and was mugged? Now he’s sitting the in the morgue and she’s just called the coroner-
The man sighs not sure what he’s supposed to do. He shakes his head, he’d want someone to tell his loved ones if something happened to him. “I’m the chief of the fire department. There was a gas leak, ma’am.”
Ainsley shakes her head. A gas leak? Mom had bought that building years ago and it was all up to date when Malcolm moved in. “H-How? My brother, is he okay?”
The chief looks over at the EMT leader pointing the scrawny kid, the brother he assumes, to a tent. There’s a yellow ribbon tied around the stretcher he’s on. Not a green, marking stable patients who would walk away from tonight’s adventure within an hour, but all things considered yellow isn’t that bad. “He’s-… stable, ma’am.”
Ainsley’s breath leaves in a sigh, relieved. “Thank you, sir.” She’s coming to him. It takes ten minutes because she only lives across the park from him. Being a journalist, she knows the weak spots in the tape they have thrown up to stop civilians from wandering closer.
The sight is haunting. The red lights of the vehicles light up the buildings around them.
She finds Malcolm right away. His scream calling everyone near to notice him.
“Dani!” He fights against the hands pushing him down. His eyes wide and fear lacing his screams as he cries for the woman he’s sure he fell asleep next to. He turns to the man strapping his wrist down. “No, please.” Tears fall from his eyes. “Please, Dani, she’s still up there. She’s still-” his breathe catches as a needle pierces his flesh. He sobs but he doesn’t stop fighting.
Ainsley slips her hand into his, grounding his attention. “Mal,” she calls softly. Ainsley can’t ever remember her brother working himself into a fit like the one she sees before her now. His back is arched off the stretcher, arms and legs kicking and hitting. He can’t free himself from the taunt velcro straps across his chest, wrists, and ankles. He’ll only hurt himself more if he does manage to escape.
“Shh,” Ainley brushes a hand through his sweat-soaked bangs. Her throat is tight with emotion. It hurts to see him like this. Lost. Malcolm Bright is not in the blue eyes looking back at her. He’s gone. It makes her own eyes prick with tears. “Bubby,” his old nickname leaves her mouth. She strokes his cheek, the slight beard he is growing resisting the direction the moves her thumb. “Look at me.”
There’s the briefest glaze of realization in his eyes. They dart between hers, the hand she has around his lightly squeezed in his grip. He gags and Ainsley does a double-take. “Ains-” his eyes roll back in his head. His mouth still hanging open he starts seizing violently.
The sounds that leave his mouth make Ainsley’s heart beat twice as hard. Pained moans, choked at the breath is stolen from his lungs. She stumbles back. Her mind pulling blanks. “H-Help! Help!”
----
She needs to sleep.
She hasn’t slept in her apartment in so long she doesn’t feel safe. There’s something just off about the space that she once called her own. It’s absent of most of her possession and all of her wardrobe. The space is hardly hers anymore. There are no identifiable, lived in, or well-loved articles left in the apartment… they’re all at Malcolm’s.
Which is the problem with her sleeping right now. The bed is absent of Malcolm.
She rolls over and looks at her alarm clock. It’s three o’clock in the morning and she hasn’t gotten a wink of sleep. It’s too cold without Malcolm’s furnace-like body radiating heat in intense waves beside her. Her once perfect comforter isn’t right. Her pillow too stiff. She’d give anything for him to just be near her. To throw an arm over her hips. To hog the bed like he always does and snore when he, inevitably, rolls onto his back.
She caves.
Pulling the comforter around her shoulders. She’s gonna call him. It’s too late to be driving but maybe if he’s up he can talk her to sleep. She hesitates, her fingers already found his caller ID on her phone. His slightly blurred smiling face is looking back at her. What if he’s already fallen asleep and she wakes him up?
“Oh my God, Dani!”
The voice on the other line is unmistakably not Malcolm. Through her sleepy haze of confusion, it takes her a moment to identify Ainsley’s voice. Once she does, she grows moderately worried. Ainsley had acquired the same inability to sleep as Malcolm, an unfortunate gift from their mother. So, the younger Whitley might just be visiting. It would not be the first late-night visit.
“Ainsley,” but… She knows that’s not true. Somehow. Perhaps, after living with Malcolm for so long she’s simply acquired a skill for sensing when he’s thrown himself into dangerous situations. Because the feeling she has in the pit of her stomach is… sour.
Dani can hear Ainsley sniffle, pulling herself together. A well-taught reporter can do that, mask their emotions from their faces and voices. She’s seen Ainsley do it enough that the sound makes Dani stiffen in fear.
“Oh, Dani,” Ainsley’s training fails her and her voice trembles. “He’s-He’s in the hospital. There was a gas leak at the apartment.” Dani can hear her crying over the phone but the most startling thing is, Dani is calm.
She shushes Ainsley softly, standing to her feet despite the chilled floor. “It’s okay, Ains.” She’s wearing a pair of shorts and one of Malcolm’s old shirts and the winter air will nip at her exposed flesh painfully but she needs to leave me now. “I’m on my way, right now. Where are you?” She has to double back to her bedroom to slip on a pair of mitch-matched socks before she slips on her tennis shoes.
Ainsley’s sniffles once more, “Uhm… New York-Presbyterian.”
Dani nods, “okay. I’m on my way. Just-” Her coat is on, she’s got all she needs. Her keys in hand… “Ainsley?” A tear, she hadn’t realized formed, falls down her cheek, her own voice suddenly shaking with emotion. “Is he- Is he-” She can’t force the word out. Can’t find it in her to put that possibility into words.
“No.” Ainsley’s voice is stone, certain. “No. They haven’t let me see him yet but…” She sighs, “he’s alive.”
Dani lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “I’m coming.”
---
He looks…
“That’s not-” Dani places a hand over her mouth. Her knees suddenly too weak to hold her up she finds herself sliding down the wall. Tears fall down her cheeks. Shutting her eyes tight, she covers them with her hands. “That’s not him. That’s not him, Ains. That’s not Malcolm!”
Ainsley crouches down beside Dani. For the first time in a long time, Ainsley loves the woman Malcolm is involved in. They’re friends and as much as it hurts Ainsley to see Malcolm like this she can’t imagine what it’s like for Dani.
“Dani,” she pulls her friend into a hug. “It’s okay.” Dani’s tears soak into Aisnely’s shirt. Heartbreaking at the sight of the man on the bed only a few feet away. “He’s gonna be okay.” Dani shakes her head but her hands grip tighter into Ainsley’s shirt. “Dani,” she forces the detective to look at her. “He’s alive. He’s right there.”
Dani’s eyes move from Ainsely to Malcolm. His skin is a shade of yellow, too pale. His lips are wrapped around a tube in his mouth, his jaw slightly open. His eyes are closed but Dani would know him blind.
Shakily she rises to her feet, wiping her tears away with the sleeve of her coat. She takes his hand in her own, thumb turning his hand over, wrist up. She looks for the scar on his forearm from when he cut his arm fixing her window. A failed attempt at impressing her. It’s faded but it’s there.
“You know,” Dani rubs her thumb over his knuckles. “His hands are steady when he sleeps.” Drawing Ainsley’s attention to her brother’s hands the blonde frowns when she sees Dani’s right. Dani smiles at her sadly, “it’s a psychosomatic tremor.”
Ainsley looks back down at Malcolm. “Did you-”
“I’ve never told him.” Dani shakes her head. She’ll never tell him about the tremor. “He needs it to be something he can’t control,” Dani says. She looks over at Ainsley to solidify her words. “You can’t tell him. He doesn’t need to know.”
Ainsley nods.
Dani looks back to Malcolm, exhausted and all she wants is for him to hold her.
“We should get some sleep,” Ainsley proposes, pulling up a chair to the edge.
Dani looks at Ainsley, considering what’s appropriate for right now. Malcolm’s tactile. Needs to be touched. She tucks her hair behind her ear before pulling herself onto the edge of the bed. The heat radiating off his body is comforting and she sighs in relief. He’s beneath her fingers. Alive. Breathing.
She settles her head on his chest, fingers finding where the gown he’s in ends around his neck. His flesh against hers. This is what they both need. She closes her eyes and lets herself relax against him. She should have stayed home. If she’d been home then maybe-
A blanket is laid over her shoulders and she blinks her eyes open. Ainsley pulls the blanket higher around them both, tucking them in. “Go back to sleep,” she whispers. She settles back into her chair, a blanket pulled up to her own shoulders. “You just looked cold.”
Dani smiles and rests her cheek back against Malcolm’s chest.
In the morning, everything will be okay. They have to be.