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Language:
English
Series:
Part 5 of Tale of Two Dopes
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Bad Things Happen Bingo
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Published:
2020-04-27
Completed:
2022-07-01
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115,619
Chapters:
55/55
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64
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98
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20
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6,963

Holy Water

Summary:

It happened in a flash. One second Malcolm was searching for the oblivion promised him at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey, the next Gil stood before him, accusing him of murder as Dani slapped him in cuffs and JT read him his rights. None of them had any idea this was only the beginning or that the people Nicholas Endicott is involved with are a far greater threat.

Notes:

Hello, all, and welcome! This starts off within the realm of events happening in episodes 1x19 into 1x20 but I am expanding and building on things to expand the story. I have decided to take this story into a crossover territory as of chapter 24 and combine it with one I was intending to tell at a later date. Events here are linked with Mirror, Mirror, where I started connecting Endicott with a greater organization. That organization is called the Parliament of Owls, an elite group who controls the world and employs a group of assassins called Talons. This is also going to explore the finale of season 1 but not in the way the show went with season 2 (which doesn’t happen here).

This is also for my twelfth Bad Things Happen Bingo card, prompt: touch starved.

Please, if you like this story, follow/bookmark/kudo/favorite it. Comments are also dearly welcomed!

Thanks for reading!

Take care!

Chapter Text

It all happened in a flash.

One second he was sitting, alone, at his desk, trying to find the oblivion the bottom of the bottle of whiskey promised him while begging the ghostly figure who replaced her sister in his hallucinations to leave him alone, and the next his door was getting busted open.

Startled, he looked up to see officers in full riot gear in his doorway.

Everything after happened in slow motion.

JT and Dani entering his loft.

Gil, face serious, telling him he was under arrest for the murder of Eddie.

Sunshine screeching her denial.

Led out of his loft in cuffs.

Photographed, fingerprinted.

Shoved in a holding cell.

Waking up from a dream of himself seated across from his father in a matching orange jumpsuit.

The humiliation of being fitted with an ankle monitor and being told by his mother he was, "Grounded."

Walking out of the jail and feeling anything but a free man.

The ride home took forever.

Malcolm allowed himself to zone in and out, too exhausted to listen to his mother's lectures and angry sighs, and too drained from everything to bother offering her any sort of reply.

Not that she seemed inclined to want one.

For once.

The car pulled up to the curb and Adolpho got out to open the door for them. Malcolm followed his mother into the house, ignoring the microphones and cameras jabbed in his face, not bothering to respond to the overzealous reporters demanding to know why, "He did it."

He hadn't done it but there was no convincing any of them of that.

Not when he couldn't even convince Gil he hadn't done it.

That, more than anything, cut him the deepest.

The one person he never wanted to let down, that he trusted with his entire being, thought him a murderer.

Treated him as he did his father the night he arrested him in the house Malcolm now was confined too.

"We're the same." His father smiled at him from the opposite end of the foyer. "Never forget that, my boy. We're the same."

The bands that formed around his head, his chest after finding out Eve was dead, tightened further. It took what little control he had to not fist his fingers in his hair and scream until he was hoarse.

"Vultures," his mother snapped as she discarded her purse on the coffee table and headed to the sideboard to pour what would be the first of many drinks. "I should send cease-and-desist orders to all their networks."

"You can't silence the news media, Mom."

"Watch me, dear."

Ainsley got up from the chair she had been waiting in. "They're only doing their job."

"By furthering this disgusting narrative that your brother is a murderer?" She scoffed as she poured whiskey into a tumbler. "I think not."

"We have to turn the narrative to our favor."

"And how do you propose we do that?"

Malcolm let them drone on in silence. He simply didn't have the energy this sort of argument took.

What he wanted really was the quiet solitude of his loft.

Soft nuzzles from Sunshine.

The comfort of the familiar.

Being released to his mother's custody put a stop to all that.

It also put a wrench in his plans to get out there and work the case.

Prove his innocence.

With his mother watching his every move and his team now not his team, figuring out what happened to Eddie would be especially difficult.

He couldn't sit in his mother's house and do nothing, though.

He had to validate his stance that he did not kill Eddie.

He couldn't have.

"But you don't know for sure, do you?" His father said from the couch. "There's a, uh, rather large amount of time missing from you arriving at the hospital and talking to my would-be killer and returning to your loft. What could you have done in that time?"

Malcolm couldn't answer that.

He didn't kill Eddie, though. He was positive of that.

There'd be scratches to corroborate the DNA finding.

He had none.

"What happened then?" Martin Whitly hummed a soft laugh. "Besides me gouging his eyes out, of course."

That's what Malcolm needed to find out.

Ainsley snapped her fingers in front of his face to get his attention. "Hey!"

Malcolm pulled himself from his dark musings to look at her. Harder to clear away was their father in his red sweater with that paternal smile of his while Eve stood by the window in her white gown.

An angel and a demon.

The summation of his entire existence.

"Malcolm?"

"I'm fine."

He did his best to smile reassuringly. The frown on Ainsley's face said it was anything but.

"Did you hear a word I just said?"

"No." Malcolm heaved a tired sigh. "What is it, Ains?"

"I said you should go upstairs."

"I'm fine down here."

"No, bro." Ainsley made the face she did whenever she was trying to tell him something but he was being too dimwitted to catch on. "You really need to go upstairs." She rolled her eyes upwards. "To your bedroom."

"My bedroom?" One brow quirked as he followed her gaze. "Why?"

Ainsley stomped her foot and gave him her I'm-completely-exasperated-with-you look.

"You need to go to your bedroom." She enunciated every word for maximum effect. "There's something up there that you need to see."

His other brow winged up to join the first. Something in his room he needed to see? What could...

His breath whooshed out of him as he realized what the something — no, someone, he amended — was. Everything inside him quieted with the realization Sorcha was waiting for him in his bedroom.

He didn't know how or why and he didn't care.

She was there.

It meant she still cared.

Not that he deserved it.

"When did she get here?"

"She showed up while mom was working on getting you out of jail."

"Mother knows she's here?"

"Who do you think called her, bro?"

That rocked Malcolm to the core of his being.

"She called Sorcha?" His heart slammed against his chest, hard enough he swore it'd burst out of his chest. "And she answered?"

"Yes, she did." Ainsley moved closer to him and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "No matter what happened between you, she's still your friend."

"I'll always be your friend," Sorcha whispered as she stroked a hand over his hair. Her soft sigh bounced off the bathroom walls. "No matter what happens, I'll always be here for you."

Too late.

He realized what he had too late.

Sorcha pegged him right as a borderline masochist. Someone who thrived on the flash and burn. Who believed he deserved pain because of what his father did.

"Still blaming me for all your problems, I see." His father sighed as he leaned back. "You really are a broken record, my boy."

Malcolm's hands fisted at his sides. He wanted, desperately, to lash out at his father, tell him how he was the cause of all his problems, but Ainsley's next words stopped him cold.

"Sorcha wants to help you clear your name and stop Endicott."

Endicott.

Who had Eve killed for getting to close to the truth about her sister.

Who got an assassin into Claremont as his father's orderly to kill him.

Who framed him for the murder of same said assassin as a warning to not dig too deeply or else.

Who wouldn't think twice about hurting anybody he cared about if it meant protecting his secrets.

Malcolm's breath came in short and shallow pants as his overwrought mind showed him the people he loved: Gil, Ainsley, his mother, Sorcha, Dani, JT, Edrisa lying in caskets all lined up in a row.

"A bit melodramatic for my taste, but then, you are like your mother." Another smile appeared through the thick bristles covering his mouth. "Though, I guess I should, ah, thank you for not including me."

"Malcolm?" Malcolm barely heard Ainsley through the noise filling his head. "Did you hear me? I said Sorcha wants to help you stop Endicott."

He didn't offer a reply.

He couldn't.

Not when panic was an icy poker jabbing him in his belly. He ordered himself to breathe, slow and steady, but the air wheezed in his lungs, stuck there.

He needed Sorcha.

Desperately so.

He could admit that without shame or reservation.

After finding out about Eve being murdered and her apartment bugged, his father nearly being killed by her killer and watching as he shoved his fingers deep into Eddie's eye sockets, and his team busting down the door to his loft to arrest him, he needed a friend.

Someone who believed him.

Who trusted him.

Not say they did while giving him suspicious looks from beneath lowered lashes or the corners of their eyes.

Sorcha would.

More than that, she'd give him the one thing he denied himself these past weeks: human touch.

It wasn't a need for sexual intimacy as much as it was a craving for the feel of her body warm and real against his, her uniquely exotic scent wrapping around him, her soft, lilting voice singing in his ear, "It's all right."

However, he feared that by accepting her comfort and help, her friendship and support that she'd meet the same end Eve had.

He couldn't let that happen.

He couldn't lose Sorcha, too.

His fingers rattled hard enough to bounce off his thighs.

"Go see her." Ainsley set a hand on his arm. "I'll deal with mom."

Before Malcolm could stop himself, he went.