psl: episode 13ish

[abyssum_invocat]

After the scare that had come with Malcolm breaking his own hand with a hammer--though thankfully he'd come home from the hospital only moderately scathed, something Sinthia had yet to let him fully live down--she'd been taking more time out of her work day to check on him, make sure he was alright. It was only texts and short calls at most, but sometimes she'd bring him lunch when their schedules meshed up right, and today was one such day. She had Avi with her, keeping close to her legs as usual to give her enforced space in the precinct and heading towards Malcolm when they spotted him, holding up a takeout bag with a hopeful smile.

It wasn't much, just food from the Iranian food cart a block or two away, but with some luck he could eat some of it with her. (And she'd brought Jello as well, in case he couldn't.)

"Hi, Malcolm," Sinthia greeted with a soft, quick kiss to his cheek. "Has Sunshine gotten used to Ilsa yet?" she asked, setting the container of samosas down in front of him. "And do you think you can eat today?" She was better than average at taking no for an answer to that, though she really did prefer him to eat something, however little it was. They shared some of the same dietary problems, given they shared some of the same kinds of medication, but Sinthia was stubborn about making Malcolm eat.

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[abrightboy]

“Sunshine would have gotten used to her before I did,” Malcolm pointed out. “But, as you can see, I get around it by not being home.” He shifted his weight to peer at the bag to answer her next question. “Maybe a bit of rice,” he conceded.

[abyssum_invocat]

"She's probably not that bad once she can see you, not colored by your mother's perspective." Probably, anyway.

"There is rice, there are vegetable samosas if you think you can try them, and there is Jello if you can't," she listed off, though there were more containers than would be necessary for just the two of them for that amount of food. "And there is food for the lieutenant and detectives as well. I assumed you would all need to eat at some point."

Bringing four people food made it seem less like she was trying to mother-hen just Malcolm; his actual mother did a fine job of that. "You know you can come to my apartment anytime." Sunshine was welcome there too.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm glances around and then leans in slightly.

"I'm going to dismiss her soon and if my mother wants to continue paying her, then that's up to her."

He gestures to the bag. "Just rice for me."

[abyssum_invocat]

"Then eat the rice," she conceded, picking out the appropriate box and a fork for him, holding the small box of samosas for herself. "You can have mine if you want more." Sinthia looked at the little group of them coming for food, and focused back on Malcolm for a moment with her brows creased. Part of her disorder meant she was always wary, always ready to slip into threat-assessment mode at the least hint of trouble.

"What is it? Is there something wrong, Malcolm?"

[abrightboy]

He made a bit of a face at ‘more’ - unlikely - and peeled the lid off his rice, looking up at her question.

“What do you mean?”

[abyssum_invocat]

She gave him a bland look askance for the question; he knew her diagnoses very nearly better than she did, and between his leaning in and the second glances around them both, her tendency towards hypervigilance was ticking up. It left her posture taut, muscles bracing in case she neeed to move quickly, though she wasn't flickering in place--yet.

"You don't usually lean in to answer me or look around beforehand," she said, "And I want to make sure nothing else is cause for worry." Reading habits and surreptitious actions from the people around her was in large part how Malcolm's girlfriend navigated the world she had not been strictly intended for, and any deviation was notable.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm pokes his fork toward’s the lieutenant’s office. “I had to make sure Gil wasn’t around because he might tell my mom,” he points out. “If she finds out I’m firing the nurse before I do it, she’ll find a way to thwart the plan.”

[abyssum_invocat]

She softens at that, relaxing again slowly as if ratcheting down each muscle by conscious control until she was sitting across the corner of the table from him. There was nothing to be concerned over, she was only overreacting--not uncommon. They both had moments of it, after all. "She ought to have just asked him to check in on you," Sinthia says, and though she doesn't smile, her tone of voice does it for her. She knows Malcolm cares very deeply for the lieutenant.

"We both want to make sure you sleep. And eat." They, she and Jessica, simply went about it in drastically different ways. "Not a bad goal."

[abrightboy]

“What she should have asked me is if I wanted a stranger in my house right after finally being released from a building full of strangers in my space,” Malcolm points out. “The answer, for the record, is no. No, I don’t. I don’t need to have my nightmares judoed. I don’t need to be forced to bed when I don’t want to sleep. I get along just fine with my restraints. You know what pinning me down does? It makes me feel like I’m being smothered.”

He takes a bite of rice and looks up at her, gesturing to he rice with his fork. “This is good.”

[abyssum_invocat]

"I thought you'd like it," she says, smiling as she bit into a samosa, crunchy thin pastry giving way to vegetables spiced with much the same mixture as the rice. "It's not very rich, but it isn't bland." They were always hunting for foods both of them could eat and that wouldn't play merry hell with medications.

"You know I don't do much judo," Sinthia segued, aiming for gently teasing. They had sparred a few times together, and her core was more focused in sambo than in Brazilian jiu-jitsu like Malcolm. It had led to a few wins each, but more more commonly a draw between them. She had to hold a soft smile in check as she nudged his ankle to speak more privately; he'd know what she meant. "I thought you enjoyed being pinned down sometimes."

In very specific circumstances.

[abrightboy]

“Not by strangers,” he points out lightly. “Not in my sleep.”

The circumstances where he’d enjoyed it were decidedly more intimate than that.

“I’d think you wouldn’t like a weird chaperone in my house either,” he added, raising an eyebrow at her.

[abyssum_invocat]

That got a tiny chuckle as she shook her head and reached over to steal a forkful of rice. "I wouldn't, I don't blame you."

She would be far more volatile in response to being surprised in a place she'd grown to consider safe, too. "So talk to me about something else, something not your mother or the nurse. What are you working on here today?" Murder, torture, whatever it was; the kinks and twists of the human psyche often brought out the worst in humanity, and Sinthia understood the fascination, even if it was from the other side of things, as it were. "My day is boring. Just a lunch meeting, and walking Avi around."

[abrightboy]

"A girl was kidnapped from a cult by a deprogrammer and I don't think the person we arrested is actually the deprogrammer. He's more a hired thug," Malcolm tells her. "I'm trying to figure out some more info so I can bring it to Gil."

[abyssum_invocat]

Both brows went up at that.

"A...deprogrammer," she repeated, voice pitched ever-so-slightly towards disbelief; it was covered well, masked to sound like her normal, professional tone, but not entirely. It wasn't that she was trying to fool Malcolm, because she knew well enough that was impossible, but nobody else needed to be aware she knew what that profession was. Even her boyfriend wasn't aware of that.

"I think the difference would be subtle at best between the two," Sinthia murmured.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm cocks his head slightly.

"A deprogrammer is an expert in cult psychology. The person we caught... he can barely control his own temper. He's not the mastermind of this operation," he clarifies, but now he's watching her. With that studious look.

[abyssum_invocat]

"Oh, I know what they are," Sinthia said quietly. She hadn't told Malcolm about it, but she knew at least one: it had been an extremely unpleasant association. "They're torturers, not masterminds," she managed, setting down the bite she'd been about to eat. Her whole frame was tensed as if to bolt away, even with Avalon and his protective bulk nearby. Malcolm had seen Sinthia at high alert several times by now, and he was sure to recognize it with her sitting so close next to him.

She also knew what that look he was aiming at her usually meant, and it could mean so many things she didn't want to contemplate at the moment; she hadn't told Malcolm anything that would have led to her knowing what a deprogrammer even was, much less having been involved with one personally.

[abrightboy]

"Who sent one to 'save' you?" Malcolm asked. It was the only relevant question.

[abyssum_invocat]

"SHIELD, the first time," she murmured. "But it's happened twice. Same man."

She doesn't give a name purposefully; she knows who he is, and that's enough.

"They didn't...he's not a deprogrammer by sole trade. But torture is one of the fastest ways to break conditioning that's the least prone to relapse." So saying that this case might be tricky for her is a bit of an understatement.

[abrightboy]

"Torture isn't a fast way to break programming, actually," Malcolm says. "But I can see how a sociopath might suggest it were so he could have his fun."

[abyssum_invocat]

She made a considering noise at that, but it took a while longer to answer. "I don't know if Brock is a socipath," she said slowly, head canting down to look at the food she had yet to eat--and probably wouldn't, now. "It's...complicated."

And she didn't necesarily want to have to explain in the middle of a police precinct. "I don't want to distract you from your case, anyway."

[abrightboy]

"Believe it or not, I can multitask," he tells her. He puts his rice down. "I don't have to make myself eat if you're not, right?"

[abyssum_invocat]

Her brows pinched for a moment before they smoothed out, and Sinthia mechanically picked the next bite up to crunch it between her teeth, interminably slowly.

"You should eat. You need calories."

[abrightboy]

He takes a mollified bite of rice.

"You weren't in a cult, though," he points out.

[abyssum_invocat]

Sinthia shakes her head. "No, I wasn't. But I was programmed."

Very literally.

"I told you I'd had ECT. I didn't tell you how much. Or why."

[abrightboy]

"Or that it was forced on you?" Malcolm points out.