Title - Come Undone

Timeline/Spoilers - Assume spoilers up to the most recent episode and speculation on Pied-A-Terre

Warning - angst

Author's Note - written for written for vanilla_fluffy & Cozy_coffee in comment_fic for the prompts Prodigal Son, Malcolm Bright, losing it on a day when nothing goes right & Any, any, when was the last time you smiled? & a late whumptober offering for the prompt dragged away. Also this continues what will obviously be canon divergent once Pied-a-Terre airs but contains my speculation on Eve, who she really is and what she wants. I decided on a different crime than the one in the trailer simply because it fit the prompts better than one where they were joking back and forth.

Can't ever keep from falling apart
Who do you need?
Who do you love?
When you come undone

Duran Duran

XXX

The door buzzer startled Malcolm, mostly because he couldn't imagine who it could be. His mother would just let herself in whether he wanted her to or not. Even changing the locks hadn't stopped her. Ainsley and he rarely invaded each other's private spaces. When he pressed the intercom to ask who it was, he was baffled as to why he never thought it might be Gil. He buzzed his mentor in and went over to the kitchen island to rapidly hide all his pill bottles. It wasn't like Gil didn't know Malcolm was medicated to the gills, no pun intended. He just didn't want the best man he knew to realize the depths of his own mental illness. He didn't want Gil to think he shouldn't be out in the field even though Malcolm had no reason to think Gil would ever stigmatize his illness. Of course he hadn't thought the FBI would have either until they did.

Gil arrived carrying a big thermal bag, which he promptly set on the kitchen island before looking around the place. Malcolm's cheeks burned a bit, embarrassed at having not invited his friend here since he'd been back. "I see the weapons collection has gotten even bigger."

Malcolm nodded. "I always have my eyes open for something new and interesting. What's in the bag, Gil?"

"Dinner."

Malcolm sighed. He didn't want dinner. He honestly didn't even want company. His mind had been a whirl since the moment he'd been taken off the Paul Lazar case, a cacophony of polar opposite ideas shrieking in his brain. He wanted desperately to disobey as he had so many times before. However, his logical frontal cortex reminded him that he wouldn't just hurt himself. He'd damage the team, the one he had slipped into so easily – well maybe not with JT, not just yet. He couldn't bring himself to tarnish them. He couldn't just not leave it go either, not when he saw the girl in the box's bracelet. Had Gil turned that over to the FBI? No, he suspected that had not been entered into evidence, at least not yet. "You didn't have to do that."

Gil snorted. "Did you eat last night after I told you you're off the case? Did you eat at all today?"

"I had a little something." That wasn't an outright lie, not if you considered the sugar in his coffee 'a little something.'

Gil side eyed him, not believing his bullshit for a moment. "You're having dinner. Hmm, where's Sunshine?" he asked suddenly when he spotted her empty cage.

Malcolm pointed to the stairs leading up to the next level. She was perched on one of them, having gotten bored with stretching her wings or curious about something she had spotted there. "You really didn't need to come, Gil."

"The fact you're so hot to push me out the door tells me I was right to come over. Talk to me, kid."

"What's to say, Gil? They're going to be all over my case, telling people things about me that aren't even true." Malcolm stopped, his voice cracking as his throat went thick and tight. What Dani and JT, not to mention Edrisa, thought of him mattered. They already knew he was weird. Only Edrisa hadn't cared from the very beginning but she was weird too. Dani was on her way to being a friend and at least JT didn't roll his eyes every time Malcolm said something anymore. What would they think when his ex-colleagues started accusing him of being as bad as his father? How could they be so bad at understanding psychology, though to be fair, the others weren't profilers but he had to think a profiler might be assigned to this? He hoped they were better at understanding Lazar than the rest of the FBI would be. Of course his own arrogance – and he couldn't deny he had some when it came to his abilities – hadn't helped his cause but that's what you got when you spent your entire life fighting against everyone's preconceived notions of what you were like. Everyone always assumed the worst of him and he tended to give it to them. It was easier than the constant battle. He regretted that now.

"You don't know…."

"I don't want to talk about this, Gil, not if you plan for me to keep down dinner." Malcolm stared at the countertop. It was preferable to looking into Gil's dark eyes and seeing the ocean of worry held within. "What did you bring?"

Gil let him slide and emptied the bag. "I brought both pancit sotanghon and chicken adobo because I wasn't sure which you'd eat. Both are Jackie's recipes."

Malcolm smiled a little. "I like both."

"I am familiar with you." Gil chuckled "And look there, you almost smiled. I was going to ask you when was the last time you've done that."

What did he have to smile about? Malcolm thought but didn't inflict the harshness on Gil. "When I was out with Dani at that club?"

"What you do while high doesn't count. Almost sorry that she didn't record it then. I heard about your trying to get her to throw axes, though god knows where you planned to do that."

He shook his head, wincing as his neck ached. His body had a lot to recover from after foolishly falling into Lazar's turnstile trap like an idiot. "I don't remember. I'm afraid to know what else she told you."

"Mostly just that," Gil replied but the little smile playing on his lips suggested he was lying and that Malcolm had made a complete fool of himself. Well he couldn't be blamed for that. He had been so high. Gil put one of the dishes in a skillet to heat it up and rooted around for a pan for the adobo. The loft almost immediately began to fill with the smells of spice and Malcolm's belly rumbled a bit.

He hadn't eaten all day and his memory was filled with all the good nights growing up when Jackie Arroyo had cooked for him, had held him close and comforted him. Malcolm knew his mother loved him but she had her own demons to fight. They kept her from being particularly demonstrative in her love or maybe that was the rigid, frigid Milton upbringing.

"Bright, I need you to promise something."

Malcolm turned to Gil, knowing he wasn't hiding his pain well. He knew what was coming. "Please don't ask that of me."

"I am because I have to. You need to let the FBI do their thing and do not throw all of us under the bus."

"But I'm the one who'll catch Lazar, not them and you know it." Malcolm balled his fist to keep it from shaking.

"You don't know that. Don't let your ego do you thinking for you, kid." Gil pointed a finger at him. "The FBI is good at their job and that's why you went to work for them."

Malcolm couldn't hold Gil's gaze. "Lazar wants to talk to me not them."

"And I've told them that. If it comes down to it, to letting you talk to him or losing him for good, they'll do it and I'll be there to supervise it," Gil promised but Malcolm knew that he had no control over that. He just didn't want to fight with Gil over it.

He nodded. "It will come to that. It's me Lazar wants, Gil. He was there on that camping trip. I don't remember it but I know that much. I think…I was to be the next apprentice."

Gil's mouth tightened, the muscles in his cheeks jumping. "I believe you. Damn, this isn't what I wanted to talk about when I came here."

"You came to feed me."

"I came because I wanted to keep you company and I wanted to see you smile."

Malcolm walked over to the pot of adobo, breathing in as deep as his injured ribs would allow. He savored the scents of vinegar and soy. "This does make me smile. I'll behave myself, Gil. I don't want the team in trouble."

Gil patted Malcolm's shoulder. "I know you'll try. Just remember we all float or sink together."

He melted into Gil's touch. It had been too long since he'd allowed himself to think of Gil as his father, or at least the father he should have had. "I know."

"So long as you remember that." Gil moved off and dug up a wooden spoon to stir the adobo. "Since we have a bit of free time whether or not we want it, want to go on a little trip to see a weird museum?"

Jackie had started that tradition when Malcolm was a child, arguing that Malcolm wasn't just a little bit weird himself, he was also highly intelligent and creative and it needed nurturing. At the remembrance of many fascinating trips with her and Gil he smiled wide, a true honest smile for the first time in a while. "I'd love it. What did you have in mind?"

"Let's see." Gil pulled out his phone and Googled it. "There's the museum of finance but honestly, that sounds horrible. Hmmm, the museum of sex." He glanced at Malcolm and they both burst out laughing.

"Not with you!" Malcolm's face heated up. No one wanted to think about sex with their dad, real or adopted.

"Agreed and the museum of morbid anatomy sounds a little too on the nose for us. Ah, how about this? The Houdini Museum?"

"Perfect." Malcolm took down some plates thinking that maybe a little down time with Gil like when he was younger was just what he needed. He could forget it all for a little while and then things would get better? Why did he somehow doubt that?