Malcolm/Milo (Patreon)

A/N: I started thinking about how Lamplight would change their relationship. How having the MC around would cause them to grow up some or face some fears. This is what I came up with.

The door slammed, shaking the dishes left out to dry and threatening to topple that morning's tea mugs. Malcolm tore his coat off, tossing it across the entryway table instead of hanging it up, his shoes following to lay haphazardly on the floor. When he turned to look over his shoulder, Milo was setting everything right, hanging his coat, putting his shoes in the small cabinet meant for them. They locked eyes as Milo straightened, the lighter haired man raising a brow to him.

“I don’t want to hear it from you,” Malcolm snapped.

Milo slowly raised his hands in surrender, keeping his lips shut. The nonchalance irritated Malcolm as he stormed into his living room. He had stomped back here from the gallery, his feet pounding against the wet cobblestones as he twisted and turned through the familiar alleys to make his way home. His art bag was slung over his shoulder and he had half a mind to toss it in the river on the way here. Maybe if Milo wasn’t there.

Milo.

That was the other issue. He had shown up to support Malcolm, or maybe to mock him. Either way, he had arrived at the studio, dressed for once in a nice pair of slacks and a deep blue button down that complimented the brown jacket he had tossed over his shoulder. He looked perfect. Not a hair out of place as he mingled effortlessly with the art crowd, smiling and laughing and schmoozing with the best of them. It was an image that was in high contrast to the disaster that was Malcom’s work.

Malcolm went to his record player, shifting through the vinyls for something to obliterate the silence. Nothing seemed right. Nothing was going to match his mood. He had failed. And not just failed, embarrassingly failed. Why did he think after so many years, he had any sort of pulse on the art world? He was old at this point. Past his prime. The scene was now the young and the avant-garde or whatever the term was. He was just a mediocre drop in a large pond of color and the fantastical. He was not what the world wanted anymore. Same old same old, he supposed. The world had rarely wanted Malcolm Albright. It had always viewed him as broken.

His fingers shook over the vinyls before he tossed it aside, not even wincing as it slid to the ground. He stared around his living room. At the paintings he had done. The charcoal drawings. Stupid. Imperfect.

His hands slammed down on the record table before he realized what he was doing, knocking the music to the floor in a heap of round discs and artists of old. He wanted to scream. To tear everything in the damn living room apart. He wanted to rip down the drawings on the wall and burn them, scattering their ash to the wind.

A loud slurp sounded behind him.

Whirling around, he spotted Milo, taking a long drink from a mug. Had he made tea?

“What the fuck are you still here?” Malcolm growled.

“Miss a Malcolm Albright melt down? Never.”

He wanted to hit him. It was a rage he often had as he curled his fingers together. It was one he had given into once or twice before. Another tick in the column of him not being right. Who hit someone who was abused as a child? Then again, who continued to yell at a man who was simply drinking tea? “Get the hell out, Milo. I didn’t invite you here tonight.”

Milo shrugged. “Didn’t think I needed an invitation to a house that I take my morning constitutional at. But hey, you live and learn.”

“Get out.”

Milo was staring at him in that irritating way that said he wasn’t even considering listening. It caused an irrational amount of anger to rise within Malcolm. They hadn’t even had a discussion of getting back together. They never did. They always went through periods of distance where they saw other people. Where they tossed anger and verbal abuse around with an uncomfortable ease. They had been good for a while but Malcolm could feel another one of their ends coming. They had probably only done as well as they had this time around because of Lamplight. He had warned them, though. Warned them that this was never going to work.

“I don’t want you here, Milo. Get out.”

Milo set aside his mug of tea and turned towards the stove. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

Malcolm didn’t register it. He was across the room in three strides, picking up the mug and throwing it against the wall. It shattered, brown tea dripping down the light colored wood. Milo continued on like it was nothing, grabbing another mug from the rack and rummaging through Malcolm’s tea cabinet.

“Get out,” he repeated. “I don’t need you around. I’m sick of it, in fact, Milo. All you’ve been doing is hanging around here. Living on my damn couch. Taking up space. You’re nothing more than a burden. I can’t focus.”

“Is this the part where you blame me for none of your paintings selling?” Milo asked calmly, pouring hot water into a chipped mug. When Malcolm reached for it, Milo caught his hand and gently moved it away. “Hazel made this one. You want to break something, break something that isn’t that.”

Malcolm spun, walking away. He marched halfway across the room, fingers threading through his hair and tugging harshly. Why wasn’t his stuff good enough? What had gone wrong the last few weeks? Or maybe it wasn’t the last few weeks. Maybe it was the last few years. He hadn’t truly recovered from it all, had he? Something had broken inside him when he became Gatekeeper. He thought that he would at least get a hard reset when he died. Become the man he had once been. Yet, it was becoming more and more clear that the success he had was a fluke, set during a time when the world had accepted him for a brief moment before something better came along.

Strong arms wrapped around him from behind. Malcolm looked down, mapping the freckles on Milo’s arms as they circled his waist. The gold watch he wore shone dully in the dim light of the living room. Lamplight had gotten it for him last Yule, teasing him that it would hopefully help him from being late. It hadn’t.

Milo’s head rested on Malcolm’s shoulder, breathing easy against his ear. The strong beat of his heart was to Malcolm’s back, grounding him slightly. Milo didn’t say anything. In the soft glow from the evening lantern lights, they stood in a dark living room, broken remnants of a tirade scattered around them. Malcolm was breathing heavily, chest heaving. He hadn’t realized the tears gathering at the corners of his eyes until the plants that were piled around his enchanted window began to blur.

“I fucked up,” he breathed, the words coming out like knives, scraping the inside of his body and turning him inside out.

“How?” Milo asked.

“I don’t know. I’m not good enough, though. My– my art… you saw it tonight. It was shit.”

Milo hummed a little, still not letting up on the vice-like grip. One hand traveled upwards to splay across Malcolm’s chest, pressing firmly against his sternum. “What I saw tonight,” he whispered. “Was my boyfriend, for the first time in a long while, put himself back out there. And I couldn’t be more fucking proud of that.”

Malcolm shook slightly, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing sold. No one came up to inquire. I stood there like an idiot, people passing me by to look at everything else.” That stupid smile plastered to his face, making eye contact with people who awkwardly turned away or avoided his gaze behind a glass of champagne.

“And?”

“Milo–”

“No,” Milo said. “No. Listen. Tonight was a financial failure. Sure. Nothing sold and they probably won’t invite you back.”

Malcolm was breathless. “Thanks,” he rasped.

“You’re welcome. But that is not a commentary on your art. That means that it wasn’t the right art house for you. The right venue. You have told me a billion times that art is subjective. You didn’t find the right place. But, Mal, come on. You had your first show. You got back into the routine of drawing again. Do you know that Darlin’ and I came here the other night for dinner? We were here for two hours and you didn’t even realize it because you were so immersed in your art.”

Malcolm frowned. He had thought something was off in his kitchen. He had chalked it up to lack of sleep.

“I haven’t seen you like that in forever,” Milo whispered. “I hadn’t realized how much I missed it until I saw it again.” Turning him around in his arms, Milo took him by the shoulders. “So, fuck the people who didn’t give you a chance tonight. They are not your people. Tomorrow we will find another place to show your work and we will do it again and again and again.” He smiled softly, pressing his head to Malcolm’s own. “Then, when you inevitably get angry at the lack of culture these people have, I’ll go out and get you some food and leave it on your counter so you can go into an art fugue. And, Darlin’ and I are going to fuck in your bed just to see if you notice.”

Malcolm’s shoulders slumped. Just like that, everything went out of him. He leaned forward into Milo’s embrace, letting him take his weight. And Milo? Milo held him up without hesitation.

“You aren’t a burden,” Malcolm told him.

Milo snorted. “I like being a burden.”

“I’m sorry.”

Milo’s hand rubbed up and down his back. “Don’t be.”

Before, Milo would have run. Before, this would have blown up into an argument of old hurts. Regrets. Childhood trauma that never seemed to quite leave. Malcolm felt the tears begin to fall simply because Milo was still here.

“I got you,” Milo whispered.

As Malcolm broke apart, he let Milo hold him. And maybe for the first time, he was confident that Milo would be here the next morning.