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There’s a stranger sitting at the table when they walk in.
His feet are kicked up, resting on the edge, and he’s leaning back in the chair like he belongs there. His mouth is stretched into a sharp smile Peter has learnt to recognize as trouble and nothing else.
Neal’s steps stutter for a second, a small hesitance that jerks him forward just an inch enough for Peter to notice. He’s staring, looking at the stranger at the head of his table, breath frozen. The stranger is staring back.
And Peter waits, because that’s what he knows to do. Wait for Neal to come to him. Wait for an explanation before calling out bullshit. Wait.
Neal takes a breath in, sharp and tense, and then turns to hold the door open for Peter to follow into his apartment, flicking the lights on as the door clicks shut.
The room brightens with the artificial light, and the stranger’s strange grin flatters, squinting at Neal questionably. He’s tall, big and bulky in the way Neal’s usual friends rarely are. A mess of black hair with a stripe of white and a faint outline of a J on his cheek. Unsettlingly vibrant teal eyes. Handsome in that broken, stray cat way.
“Do you want wine?” Neal asks Peter, heading straight for his kitchenette. Turning his back on the stranger. “Is tonight a wine night? Do you want something stronger? I feel like I want something stronger.”
Neal refuses to look at the dining table, Peter notices. Eyes darting every direction expect the stranger.
The stranger must notice too, because he blurts out a short, offended, “what the fuck, dickface?”
Neal’s shoulders get tense, rigid in a way Peter has rarely seen, and he lets out a shuddering breath. He watches Neal squeeze his eyes closed for a second, breathing through his nose.
“Definitely need something stronger,” he mutters, before turning to Peter with a smirk Peter pretends he can’t see straight through. “You alright with whiskey?”
Peter nods, opening his mouth to ask what was going on? Before the stranger interrupted with a snort.
“Never took you as the whiskey type,” he mused. Peter turned to look at him. Neal’s shoulders bunched together, crowding him closer to the counter. “Always pictured you with some fruity cocktail. Vodka. Golden boy type shit.”
The corner of Neal’s mouth twitched up, but he didn’t respond, instead pouring an inch of whiskey in each glass. He turned to hand Peter his, and then leant back to the counter, carefully avoiding looking at his dining table. Still. Neal swirls his glass for a minute, stares at the amber liquid, and then shoots the entire thing back, barely wincing.
Peter stares. The stranger grins. Neal pours himself another one.
“Where’s my glass?” The stranger asks, dropping his feet from the table and standing up. He’s easily over 6’3, and when he crosses his arms and leans against the table—mirroring Neal, Peter notes quietly—he can see the underlying strength in his arms.
Neal’s head shoots up from his glass to scowl at the stranger. The first time Neal has really looked at him since they had entered. “You’re not old enough.”
The man gapes, face switching from disbelief to outrage in seconds. “Are you fuckin’-- I’m twenty-two!”
Neal snorts, undignified and free, and Peter is lost. “You’re fifteen.”
Peter looks at the stranger. Up and down. That is not a fucking fifteen year old.
The stranger flinches back, and it’s weird to see an absolute brick shithouse of a man flinch, and he scowls at the floor.
“I got older.” It sounds more like a belief than a fact. Like a desperate call of look, see who I am. See how time has grabbed me and changed me and aged my soul.
“Little Wing,” Neal says mournfully, face so full of love and grief and hope and despair that Peter feels something in his heart shift. “You never made it to sixteen.”
The stranger— Little Wing?— squeezes his eyes shut at that, biting his lip hard. It's a minute before he responds, the silence tense and thick and Peter really wants to know what the hell is going on, but he also knows when to sit and let things play out and he definitely needs to let this play out.
“I’m here now,” the stranger says, opening his arms as though he’s welcoming someone to a show. “In the flesh. Blood and guts and brains. The whole package.”
Neal shakes his head sadly, letting out a breath. His eyes trace the strangers’ face, expression so fond Peter feels like he’s intruding on a private moment. He probably is. “No. No, you’re not. You're not here, Jay.”
And what?
“What?” the stranger— Jay??— blurts, shock creeping into his voice. He stands up straight, staring at Neal with wide eyes. Neal looks down, watching the liquor in his glass swirl. “The fuck you mean I ain’ here, dickwad?”
Neal lets out a heavy breath, closes his eyes for a second, opens them, and takes a slow sip of his drink.
“Neal--” Peter starts gently, because he doesn’t know what to do but he might as well try. Neal’s eyes snap to his, wide and frozen. The stranger’s— Jay. Little Wing. Whatever— head also jerks to look at him, and Peter gets the feeling they both forgot he was here until this very moment.
“--Peter,” Neal says slowly, carefully. “I’m-- I’m sorry. Ignore that. Ignore me. The whiskey is stronger than I'm used too, must be. That, or Mozzie poisoned my drink. Again.”
And Peter has to brush past that implication (again??) because he needs to figure out who is at that table and why Neal won’t look at him and what he wants and how on earth he’s going to explain this to Elizabeth.
The stranger snorts out another laugh. Peter glares at him. And then at Neal.
“Neal, what is going on?”
Neal winces, shrinking in on himself and staring down at his glass. Peter huffs, crossing his arms. “Neal.”
“Nothing,” Neal snaps, glaring at his drink now. “Just drop it.”
The stranger raises an eyebrow, and glances at Peter with a are you seeing this? face, and Peter really isn’t paid enough for this. He sighs and takes a sip of his own drink. The liquor burns as it goes down, warm and uncomfortable. He always preferred beer.
“Seriously,” The stranger huffed, crossing his arms and scowling at Neal. “Can I have a drink? I can’t be expected to deal with your emotionally constipated ass sober. God, you’re worse than B. ”
“Neal said you’re fifteen,” Peter said. The stranger turned his glare to him. “No whiskey to fifteen year olds.”
“Do I look like I’m fifteen?” The stranger hissed, and he did have a point there. Neal’s head snapped up to stare at the two of them. “It’s not my fuckin’ fault dickhead over here can’t count.”
Peter shrugged. “Neal said you’re fifteen. You’re fifteen.”
“I’m twenty-two!” The stranger throws his hands up in the air. “I can fuckin’ vote! And drive! I can legally adopt a kid!” He pauses, blinks, grimaces. “Theoretically. I am still legally dead.”
What the fuck.
“Peter,” Neal says, and his voice is strangled. His grip on his glass is turning his knuckles white when Peter turns to look, and his eyes seem glued to the stranger in front of him. His other hand is gripping the counter so hard Peter winces. “Peter, can you see him?”
“What?” Peter frowns. The stranger blinks, turning to look at Neal with a confused expression.
“Tall, black and white hair, leather jacket,” Neal says. His voice is shaking. Neal Caffery’s voice is shaking. “Standing in front of my dining room table. Can you see him?”
Peter blinks. “Yes?”
At the same time, the stranger shouts “you thought I was a fuckin’ hallucination?!”
And what the fuck.
Neal just stares. The stranger stares back. Peter would like to know what the ever-loving fuck is happening.
“You’re alive,” Neal says first, quiet and careful. Words carefully measured. The next sentence is the exact opposite, wet emotion shoved behind the vowels. “You died.”
The stranger made a face, a scowl and a grimace rolled into one, and shrugged. “I got better.”
Neal threw his arms out in exasperation. The whiskey sloshed dangerously close to the edge.
“You don’t—” Neal’s voice broke off. He cleared his throat and tried again. “You don’t get better from that. Jason, you— I saw the autopsy report. I saw. You don’t come back from that. Who are you?”
Jason.
“What, we establish I ain’t an illusion and you jump straight to assumin’ I’m just som’ weird look-alike? The fuck happened while I was gone?”
Peter would also like to know, thanks. A simple run-down, a sixty second recap, would be great right now.
Neal winced, and Peter tried not to notice the tears that were gathering in his eyes. He placed down his drink with a small clink that seemed to echo in the tense silence.
He took a staggering step towards Jason, who tensed immediately, leaning away and onto the dining table he was still leaning against. Neal flattered for a second, before taking two more steps with new determination, until he was standing right in front of Jason.
His arms twitched at his sides, like he wanted to reach out but wasn’t sure he wouldn’t be punched in the face for it. With the way Jason’s hand kept slowly inching towards the— and Peter was willing to bet money he was right about this— gun in his jacket pocket, he probably wasn’t far off.
Neal’s voice sounded so strangled, so full, in a way Peter had never heard before.
“You missed a lot. So much. You’re not Jason. Who are you?”
Jason scowled. “When I was thirteen B grounded me for punchin’ a kid at school on the same night Pride and Prejuicide was playin’ at the theatres. You ‘n B had gotten into a nasty fight a few days before, and ya weren’t talkin’, but ya still drove all the way to sneak me out to see the movies anyways. We got ice cream after.” There was a pause. “And Discowing. Just in general. Satisfied?”
Neal hesitates, eyes blown wide and mouth parted, for a just a second. And then he's running at Jason, crashing into him so hard the man stumbles and sends the dining table screeching back. It’s— they’re hugging. Or Neal’s hugging, and Jason's hands are hovering awkwardly over Neal’s back like he’s unsure he’s allowed to touch, standing stiff as a board.
Peter tries to look away, really. It’s personal and private in a way that makes Peter feel like he’s intruding. But Neal’s shoulders are shaking with sobs, and Jason’s eyes look suspiciously misty and Neal’s clutching Jason like he might disappear if he lets Jason’s lungs expand fully and Peter can’t move.
Neal has his arms wrapped tightly around Jason’s waist, pushing Jason to lean backwards onto table, and his head buried in his chest, over the heartbeat. Peter can imagine the steady thump-thump-thump he’s searching for, and the tension that drains out of his shoulders reveal when he finds it. Jason’s hands raise slowly to wrap around Neal’s back, face contorted like he was never taught how to hold delicate things, but he latches on just as tight, leaning down to press his face into his hair and whisper something that draws a wet laugh out of Neal.
He starts rubbing Neal’s back up and down, the way you would a weeping child, and the action causes Neal to cry harder. Peter takes a half-aborted step towards the duo out of reflex, familiar urges of upset person and protect family. In a second, Jason’s eyes meet Peter’s again, unsettling teal catching the small movement so quickly Peter finds the time to be impressed, and speaks. “Fuck.”
--
They’re sitting on the couches. Neal and Jason on the loveseat. Peter in the armchair.
Neal has his hand wrapped tightly around Jason’s wrist, right over the pulse point, and Jason is frowning at the bookshelves beside them, muttering about a lack of Jane Austen. They’re strangely comfortable together, Neal more open than Peter has ever seen him. He’s got his feet tucked underneath Jason’s thigh, his back leaning on the backrest so he can stare at Jason, and he’s bent at an awkward angle to hold Jason’s wrist without forcing Jason to stretch completely. Both their eyes are suspiciously a little puffy, but no one mentions it.
Jason, to all his credit, is not looking at Neal at all. His eyes are narrowed at Peter.
“Who even are you?”
Peter blinks. Recites his title like he was trained. “I’m special agent Peter Burke. FBI.”
Jason’s mouth drops open, and he swats at Neal's knee with his free hand, hissing, “You work with the fuckin’ feds?”
Oh, Peter thinks, desperately trying to make sense of everything he has learnt in the last hour. Another criminal friend from Neal’s past. Tragic version. Great.
Neal frowns. “I worked in Blud for, like, 3 years.”
“Yeah, but that's Blud. This is the New York FBI. Big difference.”
Neal just shrugs, like he can’t argue with whatever that meant.
“Okay,” Peter cuts in. “Neal. Care to explain anything that just happened?”
Jason snorted, and Neal winced. “This is my, uh, brother.” He jerks his free hand towards Jason, and the hand on Jason’s wrist tightens. Jason wiggles the fingers on his free hand in a mock greeting “Previously thought dead. Until about 20 minutes ago.”
“And you’re not dead?” Peter asked.
“Not anymore.”
“Were you ever?”
Jason shrugged. “It didn’t stick.”
Peter didn’t really want to know what the fuck that meant, thanks.
His face must’ve shown some level of apprehension, because Jason snorted and Neal laughed outright. It was like dealing with twins.
There was something so innocently happy in the way Neal looked at Jason, though. In the way they fell together effortlessly on the couch, as if they had done so so many times that it was an instinctual thing. Piling limbs on top of each other with ease. It made Peter want to just... sit and observe. Watch how they interacted and analyze what they did. The detective in him screamed to investigate, to spout into an integration of ‘how did you hide a whole brother from your files??’ and ‘why did you think he’s dead??’ and ‘why didn’t you think he was real??’ and ‘why didn’t he stay dead??’ and ‘can El meet him??’.
The friend in Peter knew in the way Neal’s eyes kept tracing Jason's face, as if he was trying to commit every detail to memory, and the way that his finger kept digging into the pulse point at Jason’s wrist, that they needed time alone. Time to talk without the overbearing handler of Neal Caffery anywhere close.
He stood up, taking a last sip of his whiskey before leaving it on the coffee table. It was definitely not enough for whatever the fuckery of tonight was, but whatever. Both men’s eyes snapped to Peter as he moved. Neal smiled softly, understanding. Jason narrowed his eyes, analyzing.
“I’ll leave you two boys to catch up,” he offered in explanation. He pointed at Neal on his way out. “But I want a full and proper explanation sometime. Soon.”
Neal grinned, nodding, and Jason glanced warily between the two. Peter twisted the doorknob, opening the door into the pristine hall and stepping out in a smooth motion. Just before the door clicked shut, he added:
“Oh, and Neal? Figure out when your brother is free. El will definitely want to meet him.”