"Were you scared, Malcolm?" Officer Arroyo hands him a hotdog. His mother never lets him eat hotdogs, but Gil loves street food. And she's willing to turn a blind eye when Malcolm is with the cop.
"No, I wasn't afraid." It's the evening after Malcolm's—what did they call it?—his deposition. The evening after he'd gone into a room and had a lady from his father's attorney's office and a man from the state of New York ask him questions about his father, lots of them, while a videographer got it all on video.
"You had a children's advocate with you," Gil says. "That's good."
"I wouldn't have been scared anyway," Malcolm answers, getting into the passenger's seat of Gil's squad car. "The lawyer lady was scared, not me."
"What do you mean, kid?" Gil asks, getting into the driver's side and starting on his own hotdog.
"She had to be there because she works for my dad's lawyer, but she's scared of my dad, and she didn't want to do it."
"How did you figure that, Malcolm?" the cop asks, reaching over to wipe ketchup from the corner of the boy's mouth. "And try not to get condiments on the car."
"Okay," Malcolm answers, obediently crumpling up his garbage and putting it neatly into Gil's designated garbage bag. "I don't know why I knew that. I just did."
"That's okay," Gil answers calmly, "but I'd love to know if you can think of any way to explain it to me. No rush." He finishes his food and disposes of his trash, then drives away from the parking space next to the mini mart. Malcolm watches everything they pass, wondering who is inside each building and what secrets each house might hold.
The boy feels better. He always feels better when he's with Gil. Better than—well, better than all the other times. He knows the cop won't pressure him to talk if he doesn't want to. Gil never pressures him.
"She was blinking a lot, and she looked away when she mentioned the Surgeon," Malcolm finally answers. It's been several minutes since either occupant of the car has said anything, and it's an unusually silent night for police work, so the cop's radio is mostly quiet except for the occasional update about a petty disturbance in some other part of the city that Gil doesn't need to answer.
"Go on," Gil encourages. "That's good observation." There's nothing judgmental or overeagerly complimentary in the policeman's tone. Just factual.
"She wasn't scared of me," Malcolm continues, starting to feel a little more excited as he realizes how much he remembers, how much he can explain. "But she said 'um' a lot, and when the state lawyer asked me the other questions, she always looked out the window, like she wanted to be somewhere else. I think she wants my dad to get convicted, even though she's not supposed to."
"And how did you feel about that?" Gil asked easily, turning down a side street and flashing his car lights to break up a burgeoning fight.
"I felt sorry for her," Malcolm observers after another period of silence. "I want him to get convicted, too."
"You know, it's okay if you ever feel differently than that. You don't have to tell me what you think I want to hear." Gil looks at the road, but his tone is warm.
Malcolm watches the cop for a long moment. He wonders exactly how Gil knew—how he could tell that that answer was the one time Malcolm hasn't been entirely truthful, because he's never quite sure how he feels about his dad's case. He wants to have that skill, to be able to tell when people are lying or scared, like the cop can. If you can read people like Gil does, he thinks, you can always protect yourself from them.
"Will you—teach me to know what people are thinking like you do, Officer Arroyo?" He finally asks.
Gil smiles. "You gotta start calling me Gil, kid. And you'll be a lot better at reading people than I am, some day. You've got a talent for it."
A talent. Malcolm smiles and goes quiet again, and the cop doesn't say anything either. It's a nice kind of silence, not the scary kind.
The next thing Malcolm knows, he's waking up. He realizes quickly from the sound of breathing, the smell of cologne, and the feeling of a warm hand against his back, that Arroyo is carrying him into the Whitly house. He stays perfectly still in Gil's arms because he's afraid that if he moves, the cop will put him down, and he wants to experience the soothing feeling of the embrace as long as he possibly can. He's too old to be carried much any more, but Gil doesn't care about that.
"He's asleep again? He always sleeps so much better when he's been with you, but I was afraid the deposition might make it worse," he hears his mother whisper.
"He's okay," Gil's voice softly rumbles back as he starts up the stairs. "It was a quiet night. Good for both of us."
"Thank you for taking him; you never have to," his mother answers.
"He's a great kid, Jessica." Gil takes him into his bedroom and gently lays him in bed, and Malcolm finally opens his eyes.
"Go back to sleep, sweetheart," his mother says, bending down to kiss his forehead.
Gil smiles down at him. "Thanks for the ride along, partner." Malcolm nods and holds eye contact. Sometimes he looks for reasons to distrust Gil the way he's starting to distrust most people. He never finds any.
Author's Note: I am not sure where this story is going to end up, or even whether anyone else will find it interesting. I may jump around in time. The plan is to explore pivotal moments along the relationship timeline of Malcolm and Gil. This will stay canon compliant (as much as possible pending future info), and it will involve other characters and dynamics as they intersect with this relationship.
