Work Text:
Halfway down the street an American voice said, "Neal?" and the weathered paving stones under Neal's feet seemed to slip and tilt sideways.
It had been a year. A long, long, awful year. He had thought at first, Peter will find me, he'll figure it out, this plan won't work, and had both dreaded and impatiently waited for it. But Peter hadn't found him, and then at last there had been news of the Panthers' sentencing and he had sent another clue, fighting against the part of him that said he should just let it rest, let New York go. Peter might not even want to come. Peter wouldn't come — it had been a year, and he had only been a CI, after all, and anyway if he did work it out he would be furious with Neal. He wouldn't come to Paris to look for him.
But Peter was standing on the Parisian street, framed against the frantic afternoon rush of traffic and squinting into the sunlight, a travel bag slung over one shoulder. "Neal?" he said, again, as if he didn't quite believe it.
Neal opened his mouth. He had played out this reunion in his head too many times to count. He would say something light like, "Miss me?" and Peter would laugh, and make a joke, and then…
He couldn't speak.
"Oh god," Peter said, and then he was right there, embracing Neal in a grip so tight as to be almost suffocating. "Oh my god, Neal…" His words became choked because he was crying now, his whole body shaking with sobs as he didn't let Neal go.
And Neal just stood there, feeling totally blank, unable to say anything at all.
~
Peter hadn't caught the first flight to Paris. There were arrangements to make, Elizabeth to tell… he was almost glad he didn't have a way of contacting Mozzie, because that would complicate things even more.
"Hon, are you sure?" Elizabeth asked. Her arms were clasped tight around him, and he could feel her tremoring.
Peter shook his head. "I can't be. How can I be? El, I saw him. He was dead. Is. Oh, god, I don't even know." He was shaking too. He had been overwhelmed with joy, earlier, and unlooked-for hope, but the more time that passed the less certain he became. He could have stumbled across Mozzie's den of conspiracies for all he knew. Or a plan Neal had meant to put into place, but then Keller had shot him before it could be enacted… He felt elated and sick to his stomach all at once.
"Are you going to Paris?" El pulled herself away slightly. She wasn't quite crying, but her eyes were on the point of overflowing.
"Do you think I should?" Peter asked. He had tortured himself with this question the entire way home. Would finding out he was wrong be worse than never knowing?
Baby Neal began making the sort of mewling grumble which was the prelude to bawling. They were both practised now in the art of swooping him up before it could properly develop; Elizabeth got there first. "It's okay, sweetie," she cooed, bouncing him in her arms. He reached up to grab her hair and she flicked it behind her shoulders and out of his reach as she looked back to Peter. "You have to," she said.
She booked his flight while he organised leave at short notice, which was easier than he had expected. It gave him over an hour to pack.
He called Diana. She agreed to attempt to track Neal down, if any trail existed. She also swore a lot, which for some reason made Peter laugh chokingly and feel less dazed.
He arrived in Paris to an email full of leads from her after a flight sleep during which he hadn't been able to sleep or even concentrate on the book he'd brought. He felt a sinking feeling in his stomach as he scanned the street names and addresses. It increased as he took a cab to the first one. This was ridiculous. Paris was crammed with people, but none of them were Neal. Neal was dead.
He chased down one empty lead after another. He had almost stopped thinking at all; it was too painful around the bitter knot of desperation in his throat.
Then, just like that, there was Neal.
Peter said his name before he'd thought about it; before he was even convinced that it was him. But the other man stopped with a jolt, and turned, and even the noise of the afternoon traffic rush seemed to stop.
"Neal," Peter said again, and he hadn't planned what he would say if he found Neal (that would have been too much like tempting fate), but words didn't seem important anyway. Neal. He all but ran at him, suddenly terrified that he would slip away again, and caught Neal in a hug that was probably too tight but he couldn't modify it, he needed to hold him tightly. "Oh god, oh my god…" His heart was hammering, and tears broke through in a dam burst.
He became aware, after a while, that Neal wasn't saying anything. Peter tore himself slightly away, scrubbing the back of his hand over his eyes with no hope of making himself stop crying. "Neal?" he said.
If Peter had felt dazed, Neal looked ten times so. His face was chalk-white, and he had the air of one staring at a ghost. "Miss me?" he whispered, almost too quietly to be heard.
"How can you even say that?" Peter demanded, and then realised that Neal's whole body was shaking, his breathing fast and shallow. "Buddy, I think you need to sit down."
Neal continued to stare at him uncomprehendingly, so Peter took his arm and pulled him along, unprotesting, to the parasol-shaded tables outside a nearby cafe. He pressed Neal down into a chair, and pulled up one of the others as close as he could get it. "Just breathe, okay? Take a minute."
A waiter appeared, speaking French which Peter couldn't concentrate enough on to have a hope of understanding. "Two coffees," he said. "Uh, americanos. And water, please." What was water in French? Still, the waiter nodded and strode away, clearly used to tourists. Peter wiped at his eyes again with his sleeve, and then with a napkin. He put a hand on Neal's knee, his fingers pressing down with more force than he'd meant them to.
"Peter," Neal said. Quiet, shell-shocked. He had lost weight, the lines of his face standing stark. "You're really here."
"Of course I am," Peter said. He wanted to hold onto Neal even more tightly, to reassure himself that this was actually happening. He'd woken from too many dreams where Neal was alive and well into a colder reality where that wasn't true… "I'm here," he insisted. "It's okay, I'm here."
~
Neal still felt like he could barely breathe. It didn't seem possible that Peter could be sitting next to him, solid and real and trying to reassure him. So stupid, that Peter was the one doing the reassuring, when he…
"Sorry," he choked out. "I'm okay, really —"
He made a blind grab for one of the cups of coffee which had just arrived. It clanked in the saucer, and as he lifted it his hand was shaking so badly that the hot liquid slopped out over his fingers. Peter reached to help him but Neal found himself instinctively jerking away, dropping the cup altogether. It bounced across the tablecloth, coffee pouring out in a dark flood.
"Neal!" Peter exclaimed, but Neal was already pushing himself jerkily to his feet. He fumbled a crumpled note from his pocket and dropped it on the table as he retreated.
Or tried to retreat. Peter, of course, was still there, just a pace behind him. Neal began walking, without coherent thoughts or plans. He just felt suffocated, and needed to get out. It was too much — Peter's overflow of emotions, it was too much. He'd had a year of working alone, of refusing to develop more than the most casual of acquaintances, of having no one who would look at him and say his name like…
Like they cared.
Peter let him walk in silence for several streets before he caught up with a few quick steps and halted Neal with a hand on his arm. "Hey," he said.
Neal stopped. Finally he looked at Peter properly, as he hadn't been able to do so far because he hadn't been able to bear the naked pain he knew was written on Peter's face. And it was — it hurt Neal like a gut-punch.
Peter swallowed, and cleared his throat. "You left the Bordeaux," he said, his voice husky and awkward now. "And the key. I thought — I thought you were leaving clues for me to follow. But if you want me to leave —"
"No!" Neal startled himself with the loud vehemence of his voice. It shocked Peter too — he took a half-step backwards. Neal paused, breathed. "No, I just — I've missed you so much —"
He wasn't sure if he began crying before or after Peter pulled him back into his arms. Regardless, his face was pressed into the shoulder of Peter's sweatshirt and he was sobbing, and clinging on as if for dear life. He always shied away from expressing emotion like this, but he couldn't get himself under control. But Peter was crying again too, and holding on just as tightly…
Finally, Neal broke away, and wiped fiercely at his eyes with his sleeve. "What now?" he asked, quietly, his throat hoarse.
Peter spread his hands. "Neal, I only just convinced myself that you're alive, you can't expect me to have plans."
Neal laughed, and barely managed to stop it from turning into another sob. "Well, my apartment's just around the corner," he said, affecting casualness as well as he could when he knew full well that his eyes were red and swollen, and his hands were threatening to start trembling again. "Do you want to come up?"
"I'd like that," Peter said. He was trying to be cautious, but Neal could well enough read the elation under it — and the deep hurt that was Neal's fault, even further down. "I guess we've got a lot to catch up on."
"You can say that," Neal agreed, shakily. Peter's arm settled around his back, warm and solid, and Neal felt no indication whatsoever to shake it off.
A year. It had been a whole year, and it seemed beyond belief that everything really could be okay again, that these relationships could be picked back up. But… It might be okay, he thought, or said, or Peter said.
It might.