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"They’ll kill me," Neal had said, eyes flat. No panic, no urgency.
Peter had nodded, saying nothing in return. But he'd hesitated. He remembers that. An image of Elizabeth flit in the periphery of his awareness then, blood caked at the corner of her mouth. It had been months since her kidnapping. Still. It was too soon for concessions. It made it easy, or at least it wasn't hard, to ignore the fear (his or Neal's, Peter can't now parse whose) and the too quiet way Neal held himself. Neal’s face had shuttered closed as Peter turned away, walked out of the FBI office without a word, not even one to offer reassurance.
The next day, the FBI’s carefully orchestrated sting collapsed on itself like one of Neal’s origami cranes. Neal’s "old friends" had ambushed them with guns drawn too quickly, too expertly, blindsiding the FBI into a delayed reaction, too slow to prevent damage. It resulted in the death of one of their men and two injured agents. Neal had disappeared in the crossfire, shoved into the back of an SUV. What a pathetic cliché; it was exactly like a scene out of a poorly contrived cop show.
That was three weeks ago and here they are now, on a narrow street in Chinatown steeped in the putrid odors of raw fish and overripe produce. Neal is a crumpled, unconscious, barely breathing mess, face grey as the sprawling concrete bed beneath him.
The whirr of a camera captures a still as flashbulbs flash in the dark. Several feet from Peter are three fat officers suited in blue, one scratching his rotund belly. They look as dumb as ducks. Peter feels the bile rise in his throat and excuses himself with a muttered curse. Vomit splatters on the taillight of the Taurus. Breathe. Breathe, Peter tells himself. He reaches for and finds rage. Rage, he can draw comfort from.
__
Files, papers, photographs. There’s a slew of them. A heady mess on Peter’s already cluttered desk. They catalogue Neal’s injuries with sterile observation. Three broken fingers, two on his left hand and one on his right. Lacerations along his ribs, with a particularly long tear on the inside of his left torso, peaking near his armpit and narrowing at his hip; it’s a wound older than the rest, left to curdle in pus and who knows what kind of infection Neal's earned for his service. Finger shaped bruises mar his throat, purple and black splotches a dissonant contrast to the slender, finer line around his neck. It's a dark impress that echoes of rope. No, rope would be too thick. Something more supple than thread. Twine, maybe. Or a length of steel wire.
God. Peter rubs at his eyes. A too cheerful, tinkling sound shatters the austere silence. He jumps and reaches for his cell phone.
"Honey," Elizabeth greets him. The single word is heavy in tone and meaning and it's enough to drive her yet unasked questions: Where are you? What are you doing? Why aren’t you here?
"How is he?"
"In and out. Out, mostly. But the doctors say he’s stable. Peter – "
"I know."
Elizabeth sighs on the other end and Peter imagines her nod in understanding. "Come soon."
"I will." And before the other hangs up, "I love you." They say it almost in unison. It draws a bright and airy laugh from Elizabeth, spiking a raw longing in Peter and his heart breaks all over again. "I will," he repeats.
__
This is not his first visit to the hospital. Peter had bullied his way beside Neal in the ambulance ride that initially brought him here. He’d hovered outside the ER during those long, crucial hours when they’d determined what of Neal would survive and what was permanently broken. None of the latter, thank goodness. It would be a long process, the doctors had advised him, but Neal would heal. He would fully recover. Physically. The bruises will fade, sure, but what will they leave behind? Peter exhales a shaky breath and steps into Neal’s room.
Neal lies prone under a scant white sheet, his body long and slender. Thinner, as evidenced by his arms, exposed to the cool air, an IV stuck in one, tender veins stark against too pale skin.
It's jarring in real time. The photos were graphic, bloody and morbidly graphic, and Peter had certainly spent enough hours dissecting them, but seeing Neal like this, under the harsh fluorescent lights of the hospital, looking like he's two steps away from the grave... Peter shakes his head, lips tight. He did this. He sent Neal into the lion’s den. To swim with the sharks. Be eaten by the piranhas.
"You look like a man wallowing in guilt and cliché metaphors."
Peter startles and his attention shifts to Neal’s half-open eyes, the flesh beneath one a sick yellow-green. He forces a smile. "Hey."
"Hey, yourself."
"How are you feeling?"
"Like shit." Neal’s voice is rough as sandpaper. "You?"
"Me?"
Neal raises his eyebrows. I know you, Peter, they declare. Three years and change, not counting their pre-anklet history. Marriages have been shorter. And, anyway, he’s not the conman here. So – "I’m sorry."
"Peter – "
Peter holds up a hand. "I’m sorry," he says again. There's an entire speech in him: I’m sorry I stopped having drinks with you after work. I’m sorry I haven’t seen the inside of your studio since…well, since. I’m sorry I stationed FBI thugs outside your door on 24-hour watch. I’m sorry for the months of silent treatment and that I stopped inviting you over for dinner. I’m sorry I revised your contract to add a term forbidding you to contact Moz. And Alex. And Sara. And, well, everybody. I’m sorry it was always "do it or else prison." I’m sorry you got the crap beaten out of you – no, I take that back: I’m sorry you were tortured because if we’re going to be honest, let’s just call a square a square.
And if Peter is really going to be honest, what he can’t say is: I’m sorry for blaming you for Elizabeth’s kidnapping. Because if Peter is really, really going to be honest, he still does. Blame Neal. And the sadistic, sanctimonious part of him believes that Neal deserved it, all of it – the tighter leash, the new rules (all three hundred of them), douchebag Peter and his silent treatment and demoting Neal to criminal-without-friendship-benefits, Peter’s utter disregard for his safety, dangling Neal like bait in operations that increasingly became more and more dangerous, until, and finally…
But. For now, it’s only "I’m sorry." Because his emotions are tangled in a wild thicket of jungle, thorns and poisonous berries, and there’s a time and place for everything including hacking through that mess, but now isn’t it. Now reminds him of where he was months ago, in the loneliest and most desperate place he’d ever been, when the most important person in his life was a thin slip of memory at his fingertips, wondering if one commonplace phone call of so many before was their final good-bye. Now is where he stands, two feet away from the person he’d come to embrace as his partner; his other other. His Number 2 on speed dial.
Peter hates Neal. Peter would die for Neal.
There's a chair at one corner crowded with flowers and stuffed animals. Peter relocates them to the floor (it must be clean, it's a damn hospital) and pulls it close to Neal’s bed. He leans forward, elbows on his knees. Neal watches him from beneath hooded lids, heavy from fatigue, drugs, gratitude and – Gratitude. And just like that Peter feels worse than crap. It's too soon for forgiveness, but there it is in Neal's bleary gaze.
Peter is careful when he curls his hand over Neal’s, the right one with the single, broken pinky. The one Neal paints with and the one Peter is certain Neal will still be able to paint with even with his injury – as if this is a comfort. He grazes over Neal’s too thin wrist, discolored from bindings drawn tight enough to stifle blood flow. Neal blinks at him, eyes translucent and wet. He squeezes Peter’s hand, a faint and trembling gesture that catches something harsh in Peter’s throat.
"Okay," Peter coughs out (or, rather, coughs through the lump of something hard and bony that his lungs are trying to expel through his esophagus.) "Go to sleep, Neal. I’ll be here." Neal’s lips curve into a conservative grin, but it’s genuine if not nearly as radiant as his charm maxed at one hundred percent brilliance. Just as Neal’s eyes close there’s a "Thanks, Peter" puffed out in a breathy whisper so soft Peter almost doesn’t hear it. He flips a stray lock of hair from Neal’s closed eyes, then keeps his hand laid there on Neal’s head, as he thumbs at his temple.
__
Peter visits the next day, the day after and every day until Neal is released.
On his third visit, Peter breezes into Neal’s room just as the nurses are replacing the bandages on his torso. His naked back is a palate of Rorschach-like inkblots. For example, below the nape of Neal’s neck is what Peter would say resembles a squashed grasshopper. On Neal’s right, where his waist tapers, is what looks like the imprint of a heel; it’s large and square so Peter pegs a heavy boot as the culprit, something industrial. Peter doesn't know what either says about his psyche but on-the-spot he self-diagnosis himself as afflicted with an episodic incident of something like Tourette's intensified by homicidal rage. Obscenities silently shape his mouth as the sudden and infernal desire to machine-gun everything glass and mirrored has him caressing the safety on his gun. One of the nurses discovers him freeze framed at the doorway. Just as she’s about to alert Neal, Peter manages to shake his head. I’ll be back, he mouths at her. It takes him twenty minutes of walking the circumference of the block where the hospital is located, round and round, throwing up his hands, pulling at his hair and having an imagined fist fight with a pretend army of psychopaths before he’s calmed enough to return.
At every lunch and dinner, the nurses deposit a small pile of pills in a tiny paper cup next to Neal's jell-o: two pinks, one green, one yellow and two white. Peter places each, one at a time, in Neal's palm and holds the glass of water as Neal swallows, grimacing the entire time. Peter pats his hand and tells him, "Good job, buddy," and smoothes the sheets as Neal reclines back, eyes drifting shut.
Neal sleeps more than he is awake. Peter watches him, the way his mouth falls slack, the lines on his forehead and at his eyes relaxing. Neal has an ageless aesthetic; it's enviable. He should look younger in sleep, Peter often thinks, but all he looks is battered. Damaged.
They talk about the weather. Neal observes, "More rain, huh?" Because, once, Peter leaves for the hospital without his umbrella, which of course means Peter is caught in one of New York’s sudden torrential downpours and arrives drenched – on a bright, sunny day. God bless New York and its love of irony. Neal asks about Satchmo, Elizabeth’s latest gig and who's brewing the coffee at the office these days. They skim the surface of everything because the few times they don’t and stray from higher ground Neal lapses into prolonged silence and he stares at Peter without seeing him, his breath coming in gasps. Peter distracts him with chess and cards and dominoes. Neal teaches Peter how to make a t-shirt out of a dollar bill. Then keeps the dollar bill. And they dance at the peak of the volcano, each waiting for the other to erupt.
__
"You’ve been busy," Peter says. Here he is again, standing awkwardly in another doorway, eyes busy as they take inventory of the numerous canvases and sculptures cluttering Neal’s apartment.
"It was this or cable TV after curfew."
Curfew. One of Peter’s other demands after Neal’s full blown confession. Life. Perspective. Turned out even Neal Caffrey wasn’t immune. After Elizabeth's kidnapping, Neal had surrendered his two-headed coin, so to speak: the Chrysler forgery of his own painting, the Nazi plunder. And Moz. That they'd had to practically rip out of him, because Neal Caffrey is one stubbornly, stupidly and irrationally loyal son of a – Which is why even after Peter forbade him (reluctantly and through clenched teeth) Neal had gone ahead anyway and offered Keller a sweet deal he couldn’t refuse: himself for Elizabeth. Neal could’ve died then, too.
The curfew locked him inside his studio after nine and didn't release him until seven in the morning, when Peter or some other FBI agent picked him up before office hours.
Large, bright blue eyes peek out at Peter from behind several other canvases propped against the wall at the opposite end of the room. He crosses Neal’s dining area and pulls the painting free. "When did you do this?" Peter asks. It’s Elizabeth, posed sitting on Neal’s balcony, azure skies a clear and soothing stretch behind her. She’d visited when Peter refused. "A while ago," Neal mumbles. "You can keep it if you like." Peter nods and sets the painting down.
Neal moves like he's aged fifty years in the three weeks he was gone. Peter trails him with his eyes as he shuffles gingerly from his bed, where he’d been sitting when Peter arrived, to the dining table. Peter remains where he is, saying nothing, but continues to watch Neal like a hawk as he fumbles with a chair. He's tensed to spring at the first sign Neal might need him. Neal's arms shake as he braces himself against the table and his face creases with the agony of lowering himself inch by inch to sitting, but they both sigh in relief when he manages it alone without collapsing.
"How are you feeling?" Peter asks.
"Like shit."
Peter laughs and something necessary loosens inside of him. It's become their routine greeting over the last several weeks. A faint resurrection of their odd couple dynamic. He grips the chair perpendicular to Neal and eases himself onto it.
"Diana and Jones send their regards."
"Diana promised me cupcakes."
"So she said. She’ll have a box of lemon yummys for you the next time she comes by."
"Sweet. Keeping them busy, huh?"
"Yeah, we’ve got solid leads on the whereabouts of the guys that did this to you."
Neal nods, his eyes distant on some ambiguous spot above the kitchen sink. He wears a blank expression but Peter doesn’t miss the slight twitch at his jaw. "That’s…encouraging."
"Yeah."
They lapse into silence. Peter watches Neal watch the wall. Here, absent the hum and beeping of the hospital’s machines and the constant squish of shoes against linoleum, there’s only dead air. It makes the elephant in the room near as conspicuous as Mr. Snuffleupagus to Big Bird and Peter isn't counting on it to magically shrink itself into oblivion. Whoever came up with the idea that time healed all things was an idiot. Time didn’t heal squat; it turned friends into strangers and loved ones into enemies. Well, it was either seize the moment or be seized by it. So. "Listen, Neal, I’ve been meaning to – "
Neal holds up a hand as he turns to Peter and shakes his head. "You don’t have to."
"You don’t know what I was going to say."
"Yes, I do."
"No, you don’t."
"Peter, you haven’t stopped apologizing. I don’t need to hear you keep saying it."
Peter rakes a hand through his hair. "Okay, but I shouldn’t have sent you into that operation."
"No, you shouldn’t have."
"And I’ve been a jerk."
Neal laughs, hollow and strained. "That’s the understatement of the year."
"I was angry."
"Yeah." Neal sobers quickly, nodding. "You had a right to be."
"But I didn’t have the right to put your life in danger."
"The way I put Elizabeth’s life in danger?" Neal stares at him, unflinching. "So, we’re even. We’ll call it quid pro quo." It should sound bitter. It would be fair if it did. Instead, it’s flat and resigned, the way Neal had said, so matter-of-fact: "They’ll kill me." Right before Peter had stormed off like a jilted lover, uncaring.
"You didn’t deserve this," Peter says, finding that he means it. "You didn’t deserve – a lot of things."
Neal drops his eyes and shrugs.
"How about you messed up and I messed up and we'll call that quid pro quo."
"Deal," Neal says with a real laugh this time. His expression lapses into thoughtful and his eyes slide away. "You must regret it. Keeping me out of prison."
Peter snorts. "Always."
It pulls another smile out of Neal.
"It wasn’t a regular day on the job if you didn’t give me a reason to regret taking you out. Like this – " Peter flicks a finger at him " – this would’ve never happened if you’d stayed inside."
"It wasn’t your fault this happened."
"And it wasn’t your fault Elizabeth was kidnapped. Not…not entirely. Maybe not at all," Peter admits quietly.
Peter wanted him locked up. Peter didn't want him locked up. They were the two absolute, co-existing, contradicting truths that battled fist-to-fist when the decision had been his to make. "It's your call," Hughes had said, lobbing the ball into his court. But he couldn’t choose either or so he created a makeshift in-between, ten new rules for each invisible bar of a prison cell. It was the passive-aggressive route: I’ll make it really hard for you to stay so that you’ll choose to go. But Neal had chosen to stay.
"Why?" Peter asks, abruptly he realizes when Neal looks back at him, confused.
"Why what?"
"Why did you choose to stay? If you'd gone to prison, odds are you would've found your way back out. Always have before."
It's a long, long time before Neal answers. He licks his lips once, causing the jagged cut on his bottom lip to glisten wet. "I stayed for the same reason I didn’t run with Mozzie. Because of you."
__
"Hey, boss."
Peter looks up at the sound of Diana's voice. "What's up?"
"Just got off the phone with Connecticut P.D. They've got a couple of our guys in custody."
"Matching descriptions?"
"Better. They got picked up with I.D's on them. Early happy hour in a neighborhood pub owned by a former detective."
Almost as dumb as waving at the camera on the way out of a bank robbery. Peter shoots to his feet and grabs his jacket. "Let's get 'em."
__
Peter is right. Neal continues to paint even as his pinky continues to heal. Today, he’s forsaken the brushes and instead dips his fingers, sometimes his thumb, in dollops of oil, presses color to canvas and blends them until the sharpness in hues softens to pale and almost watery. The blurred images faintly resemble classical impressionist pieces and Peter says so aloud. Neal laughs: "Yeah, this is the fingerpaint-by-numbers version."
The sky is a sooty black behind the drawn curtains in Neal’s apartment, but inside the room is bathed in light. Each and every light fixture has been switched on and, in sync, they create a too glaring, freakish glow. It’s too much honesty; even the furniture screams of age, deterioration and reckless manhandling.
It's no less unrepentant on Neal’s face and his limbs, on each patch of exposed skin. Most of his cuts and bruises have faded, but he looks no less worn. Under the stark illumination, the hollow in Neal’s cheeks and along his collarbone are more pronounced. He’s beyond spare, too gaunt and brittle, and neither suit him. His hands shake; he still tries to hide it from Peter. Like now. Neal twists suddenly reaching for a washcloth and they flinch in tandem, Peter aching in sympathy as Neal clutches at his left side. It needed restitching several days ago after the wound reopened while Neal was in the throes of a nightmare. Tiny, pitiful noises escape him and his cheeks color pink in embarrassment.
Peter chews at his bottom lip. There’s a meaningless platitude itching to see light but Peter heroically clamps down on it, chases it away along with his good intentions. He’s tempted to cajole Neal back to bed or at least to the couch where Peter can tuck a blanket around his shoulders, shove something hot and steaming in his hands and hush at Neal’s protests until they died. But Neal’s had his fill of coddling and pity, withdrawing to sullen silence and stubborn refusal the last few times Peter had pushed more rest, more sleep, less activity. And this is what recovery is: moving slowly and tenaciously through the pain. Instead, Peter asks, "Have you taken your pills?"
Neal nods, exhaling slowly.
They’d kept him blindfolded, Peter had learned, even in the dark, except when they wanted him to see what they were doing to him. When they’d bent his left index finger back until it cracked, for instance.
Neal waits for the sun to rise before he sleeps so Peter’s modified his schedule. He naps after work and arrives at Neal’s an hour or two before midnight each night with a deviled ham sandwich in a brown bag and "something special for Neal," both courtesy of Elizabeth. Tonight’s "something special" is pasta in truffle oil cream sauce.
"Eat," Peter orders, after helping Neal into a chair and dumping a loaded plate in front of him.
"Wow, the super-sized portion. Again."
At least they’ve graduated from soup to solid foods, even if Neal will only manage a third of what’s on his plate.
"Are you criticizing my wife?"
"Never."
"So, what was on Netflix today?" Netflix. The cure for insomnia caused by fear of nightmares caused by forced captivity. Or "a solution to being bored out of my skull," which Neal had supplied, sidestepping Peter’s questions about the dark patches under his eyes.
"Hoarders," Neal says.
"Ah." That explains why the apartment is especially immaculate tonight.
"How was work?"
"The same."
Neal hums his acknowledgement but doesn’t ask for details. He hasn’t since that day he’d felt particularly adventurous and asked Peter to tell him, with gory specificity (yes, those were his words), about a recent FBI op that involved fraud, old people and feces smeared on the wall in one ghastly kept nursing home. Peter doesn’t know which of those sent Neal to hyperventilating but he was near passed out when Peter finally succeeded in shaking him back to the present, on the floor, where both of them lay panting.
The recent break in the case has Peter salivating over victory and revenge. He plans to be rough with the perps and he flexes his fingers thinking just how, just enough to sear lasting marks in their brains, even if not on their bodies. Peter now understands how to inflict terror so it leaves a permanent, haunting impression; Elizabeth’s kidnapping changed him and he isn’t a bit sorry for it. Still, he has misgivings about how Neal will take the news.
Peter bides his time, mind churning over the most innocuous way to broach the subject. He clears the dishes and washes them while Neal unfolds the chessboard and props the pieces in their places. When the chessboard is a comforting and familiar presence between them and there’s a beer in his fist, a mug of hot chocolate at Neal’s elbow, Peter cautiously says, "We’ve made some arrests."
Neal pales, drops his bishop and abruptly stands. The chair clatters to the floor behind him. He edges away from the table and winces past the balcony doors, moving too quickly to properly accommodate his injuries. Peter sighs into his hand and then rushes to follow him. There’s a light rain and he barely resists reaching for Neal and dragging him back inside. "Neal – "
"I know who did this to me."
"I know."
"I won’t cooperate in their prosecution."
"You haven’t even thought about it – "
"YES, I HAVE!" Neal screams. His eyes bulge wide in shock. Peter is no less stunned by the outburst. Neal’s face crumples for a moment. He swallows convulsively, throat shivering, as he gathers himself. When he speaks again, his tone is leveled, but stilted and no less desperate. "Yes, I have. I’ve thought about it. I’ve dreamed about it. I – I've woken up choking from hands around my throat that aren't really there... They didn’t kill me, Peter. They could have, but they didn't. They chose not to. They wanted me to live, with this…like this. And I can’t. I can’t face them." He shakes his head. "Please don't ask me to because I can’t."
A siren trills in the distance and when it fades only the muted sound of regular street traffic, the rain’s soft pattering and Neal's haggard breaths fill the silence.
"Okay," Peter says quietly and raises both hands. "All right, Neal." He waits for Neal's breathing to slow before he lowers one and then with the other beckons. "Let's go inside." Neal’s eyes slide from Peter’s face to his outstretched hand. He looks so lost, so uncertain, so unlike the slick, suave, meticulously crafted confidence artist "Neal Caffrey." It's a little like seeing the wizard behind the curtain. Something hard and unyielding clenches in Peter's chest. When Neal finally takes his hand, he grips it like a man drowning.
An hour later, they’re settled on the couch, Neal in a fresh t-shirt he’d allowed Peter to help him change into. A mug of tea is cradled in Neal’s frail hands. Peter sips at his coffee.
On the television screen, a woman in a purple beanie yells at her daughter, "Don't holler at me, ho!" Peter is tempted to laugh. He might have, if it wasn't so sad. "It’s your turn to choose," Neal says quietly, not looking at him.
__
Peter rehearses the arguments, his ultimatums, growls out his threats. Elizabeth audiences and approves. Days later, when he plants himself in the center of the White Collar Division's special conference room, hands on his hips, he's phenomenally intimidating when he announces: "Under no circumstances are we going to force Neal to cooperate with the prosecution as a condition of his work release." But the fight never comes. Hughes merely shrugs. "Fine," he says, flipping the file closed and re-buttoning his suit jacket when he's on his feet. Bradley, the U.S. Attorney assigned to Neal’s case, follows likewise and with, "No problem."
"It was all very anti-climactic," Peter tells Neal at lunch.
"So that’s that?"
"That's that."
"Well. Good." But Neal pushes the chicken and broccoli around his plate and appears only marginally less troubled. "Peter, I’ve been meaning to ask you. What if – "
"You can’t con the cons? Anymore, that is."
Neal nods, peering up at Peter through his overgrown bangs. "Yeah."
"You can still do other things. Identify forgeries. Call out the magic tricks even if you can’t challenge the magicians. Lecture on abstract expressionism even as you yourself 'confess to feeling cold and detached from a process driven genre of art.'" Peter makes the requisite air quotes because they really did need to go with that one. "Make decent coffee. Even from instant. Or – deliver decent coffee. Not instant."
Neal chuckles. "Except choices a, b, c and d make me break out in hives just thinking about them."
"Even the part about the coffee?"
"Only the instant." Neal purposely shivers to demonstrate. "But. Yeah."
"I don't know." It's the truth. And after too long of telling Neal anything but, it's refreshing. Healthy, as Neal's therapist had told him the other day after Neal admitted to catapulting an empty wine glass over his balcony. In anger and it was healthy to feel the anger. Right, that was the healthy part. The throwing – they're working on that. Peter says again, "I don't know. But we'll figure it out."
"But what about – "
"No one's going to send you back to prison in your condition. Stop worrying. Besides, you can always sue us."
"What?"
"It would delay things, if it ever got to that. And it'd make for terrible publicity."
"That's...that's really sneaky, Peter."
"I've learned from the best."
__
"There are things to look forward to." Among the three cards faced down in front of him Peter chooses the middle. He takes a massive bite out of his deviled ham sandwich – sans the edges for a change of pace.
"Like desert?" Neal flips the card. Queen of hearts. His smile is smug and dirty.
"Yeah, like a banana split sundae with whipped cream and a cherry on top."
"Or crème brûlée." Neal removes his Fedora and flips it into the air; it lands squarely back on his head. Fancy. He's in sweatpants and a t-shirt and looks utterly ridiculous. Like a cartoon.
"I like crème brûlée."