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English
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Published:
2021-02-25
Completed:
2021-02-28
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3,680
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2/2
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2
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38
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Chapter 2: Afternoon

Summary:

A continuation of the day. This kept trying to get seriously moody on me despite supposedly being fluff; sorry about that.

Chapter Text

After several hours, Gil had had enough of the idiot box. He turned it off with the remote and patted Malcolm’s legs. “Want to go for a walk?” he asked.

Malcolm looked up, startled, and then glanced around him. “Oh, uh, sure.”

“Lost track of time?” Gil teased.

Bright actually blushed. “Yeah,” he admitted, before pulling his phone out and checking the time. “It’s a good book!”

“I am glad you are enjoying yourself,” Gil said, pushing Malcolm’s legs to the floor and then standing and stretching. He watched as Malcolm eyed the strip of stomach he showed doing so, but wasn’t about to let his husband follow that thought right now. “Put Sunshine away, and I’ll let the cats back out.”

Malcolm’s eyes snapped up to his, and he nodded. The kid held out a finger, and Sunshine hopped up onto it as Gil made his way to the stairs. He reflected, not for the first time, that they were either going to need to have an elevator put in at some point or that they were going to have to find another place to live--what with their jobs and Malcolm’s antics, it was probable that one of them would at least temporarily lose the ability to climb stairs at some point.

Gil was pretty sure Bright never thought about things like that; he was still too young to think about reduced mobility or to feel the aches and pains that came along with age. Gil, however, had been through enough to know just how impractical stairs could be if one of them were seriously injured.

That, however, was a morbid topic, so he pushed it out of his head. Gil waited until Sunshine was tucked away in her cage before opening the catio door. The cats were both fast asleep, and didn’t even bother to leave the cage--but he knew they would if he and Malcolm were gone for any length of time.

“Where do you want to go?” Bright asked when he came back down stairs. He was wrapping himself in his coat and scarf; it might officially be spring and the sun might be shining, but it was still New York City in late February.

“I was thinking the Park,” Gil told him. He pushed his feet into his shoes and grabbed his own coat. “Unless you have a better idea?” He raised an eyebrow at his husband.

“Park’s fine,” Malcolm responded. Central Park was one of the safest places in New York City--at least, during the day. Gil did not care to experience any trouble on his (forced) day off, but he still put on his badge and gun along with his coat--just in case.

Once they were outside, Gil reached down and twined his fingers with Malcolm’s. It wasn’t as cold outside as Gil had expected; Malcolm probably could have gotten away without the scarf, and neither one of them needed to retrieve the gloves from their pockets. Gil could feel the wedding ring on Bright’s hand, and it made him smile at the memory of their simple wedding.

They began walking, shoulder-to-shoulder, toward the park. “Anything in particular you want to do when we get there?” Gil asked.

“I want ice cream!” Malcolm pressed closer, and Gil let his hand drop so they could put an arm around each other. It was difficult to walk like that, but they managed, dodging street vendors and the occasional homeless person.

“Bright, it’s barely 35 degrees out. You’ll freeze to death if you eat ice cream,” Gil pointed out.

“No, I won’t,” Malcolm insisted.

“Yes, you will. I know you want licorice ice cream. But why don’t we just buy ice cream and bring it home to eat?”

“You know there’s only the one place within walking distance that sells licorice and it’s cones or nothing there,” Malcolm argued. “I won’t get cold. We’ll be walking around, and it’s pretty warm out compared to what it has been.”

Gil heaved a sigh. “Fine,” he said, knowing full well that they would end up cutting their walk short when Malcolm got too cold. Of course, it wasn’t as if he could blame the kid; he didn’t have an ounce of body fat anywhere on him.

“Yessss!” Bright pumped a fist in the air, and Gil rolled his eyes.

“You can be so childish sometimes,” the detective complained.

“Gabby says that’s because I didn’t have a normal childhood.” Malcolm actually skipped for a few steps, pulling away from Gil. He then whirled around and stopped short, bringing Gil to a halt as well.

Another man crashed into Gil’s back and then swore at him. “Watch where you’re going! Fucking tourists.”

Gil grabbed Malcolm’s elbow, spun him around, and forced him to walk forward again. “Come on, city boy, you know better than to stop like that in this town.” There was plenty of exasperation in his voice, but fondness as well. He really couldn’t stay mad at his husband, no matter what he did.

“This isn’t a town, as you well know, Gil. The term ‘city’ refers to any municipality greater than one square mile but holding more than 1000 people. At roughly 300 square miles and a population of approximately eight and a half million--” and Bright was off.

Gil listened to Malcolm’s miniature lecture, keeping his eyes moving around their surroundings so he would notice trouble if it did approach them. To be honest, he had no idea how the kid generally avoided getting mugged, between how willing as he was to display wealth and how little he seemed to notice his surroundings when he got absorbed in something--which was almost all of the time.

“Gil? Gil?” Malcolm had finally noticed he wasn’t really listening.

“What, kid?” Gil pulled Bright close once again.

“I asked if you thought that density should matter when labeling something a city vs. a town. Did you know that New York’s the most densely populated city in the US? Of course, there are much more densely populated cities in other countries. I believe Mumbai has the highest density...or maybe Calcutta, I’m not sure.”

Gil nodded, and let Malcolm continue talking. It was a common arrangement for them, and Gil didn’t mind because, whenever he really had something important to say, Malcolm would usually stop talking his ear off and listen carefully.

It wasn’t long before they reached Central Park and started walking the trail that would lead to the cart that sold licorice ice cream--even in the dead of winter. Gil had no idea how they stayed open in February, but then, Malcolm was hardly the least stable of New York’s denizens, and some of them probably liked licorice ice cream too. (Gil did not. He’d tried it, once, and Malcolm had laughed for a full five minutes at the look on his face.)

Bright leaned over into Gil’s space, and Gil happily leaned down and met his lips with his own, smiling briefly against the profiler’s lips before pulling away. Two men kissing--regardless of the age difference between them--was a common sight, especially in Central Park, and no one paid them any mind. Gil thought about how different it had been when he was younger; he’d felt he had no choice but to marry Jackie back then, despite the fact that he was bisexual. Not that he regretted his marriage to her for a moment; he’d loved her very much.

Unfortunately for Gil’s plan to siphon off some of Bright’s nervous energy with a long walk, the deserted ice cream cart appeared even sooner than he had remembered. Malcolm promptly pulled him over to it. “Hello! A double scoop of licorice in a waffle cone, and...what do you want, Gil?”

“Nothing, thanks,” Gil said, trading a ‘what can you do?’ look with the young man behind the cart. He pulled out his wallet and paid, and the cashier gave him change once he’d handed over Malcolm’s cone. He felt odd, still, that he didn’t pay any attention to the bills he handed over any more; now that he’d married Malcolm, Gil wouldn’t ever have to worry about money again.

“Mmmm.” It was rare for Malcolm to eat with gusto, so Gil had multiple reasons for turning and staring at Malcolm’s tongue licking up the black substance in the waffle cone.

Gil very much wanted to pull Bright close and tell him just how much he wanted to see that tongue on certain parts of his anatomy, but chose not to--it wasn’t fair after all, since he’d declared a moratorium on sex until Bright’s back healed. “Come on, let’s get back to the walk, kid.”

“Did you know that this is where the Central Park Five--”

“Kid, I was on the force then, remember? Eat your ice cream.” Gil didn’t need any reminders of that particular travesty of justice.

“Okay, but--”

“Malcolm. It was an awful time to be a person of color in the police force. Please--pick a new topic,” Gil told him.

“All right.” Malcolm side-eyed him, seemed to realize just how much the memory bothered Gil, and re-focused. “Were you on the force when Son of Sam was active?” Gil noticed--through his superior detecting skills, of course--that the ice cream Malcolm was eating wasn’t melting at all due to the cool air.

“I was only fifteen years old when he was caught. But,” he went on, knowing Malcolm wanted him to talk for a while, “It was included in our training. How a parking ticket and an astute witness led to his arrest. Things have changed so much since then.”

“Hmm?” Malcolm’s mouth was occupied, so he simply hummed the question.

“DNA, for one. Forensic analysis of, well, everything, for another. Nowadays we would have connected the shootings right away and at least we would have known we were looking for a serial killer.” Gil hesitated, thinking back. “I think that’s part of what happened with the Central Park Five. In those days, you had to follow your instincts, and a confession was one of the easiest ways to convict someone. For cops like Shannon...it’s just what you did.”

Malcolm raised his eyebrows. “But you never did it.” There was only the barest hint of a question in his tone.

“No. I’ve never laid a hand on a suspect after they were in an interrogation room,” Gil confirmed. “I swore I wouldn’t. But, by the time I became a detective, the police had a lot more going for them than they did back in the 80’s. Databases existed by then, at least for fingerprints.”

“You’re too good for this world, Gil.” Malcolm polished off his cone, and then pressed himself to Gil’s side again.

“Look who’s talking,” Gil teased, setting his arm around Bright’s shoulders.

“I’m not a good person, Gil.” It was one of the first arguments they’d ever had, and they regularly re-hashed it. Thankfully, Bright wasn’t nearly as serious about it as he had once been.

“Yes, kid, you are. You may not play by all the rules, but you do everything you can to make sure everyone gets justice. And you don’t hurt people who don’t deserve it,” Gil told him.

“...Will you still think I’m good if I tell you that I’m cold now and I want to go home?” Malcolm gave him a sheepish grin.

Gil rolled his eyes and turned them around, toward home. “Takeout for dinner?” he proposed.

“Thai?”

“Sure.”