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He doesn’t know how long it’s been.
It could be minutes, it could be hours. The only gauge of passing time is the blood beating in Neal’s ears—a steady pulse—and the tension in his muscles slowly knitting tighter. The pain in his jaw that starts as a low ache and escalates until Neal’s lips are shaking and it takes all of his willpower to keep his mouth from twitching.
The muscles in Neal’s neck protest, spasm involuntarily. His teeth slip slightly over hard metal, and panic spikes through Neal’s chest like physical pain. The air rushes out of his nose in fits.
He pulls against the ropes that are binding his wrists—tries to steady himself, his breathing. He bites down a little harder on the pressure plate, despite the throbbing that this elicits in his teeth, wills his heart rate to slow. Neal’s hands have long since gone numb. The fuzzy shape that’s where the feeling of his fingers used to be pulses with static in the same frantic tempo.
For all he knows, Harrell could be fucking with him. Fucking with the FBI. For all he knows, the packs of C-4 strapped around his midsection are wired to nothing, and he could release the trigger, get up and walk out—well, once he got free, at least.
But there’s some likelihood, some chance, that Harrell was telling the truth—his slimy breath in Neal’s ear as he’d stroked the underside of Neal’s chin with end of his gun—and if the pressure plate that’s clenched between Neal’s teeth is no longer depressed, or the trip line that’s running across the room before him is snagged, there won’t be much left of Neal to regret not having heeded the warning. There won’t be much left of the building .
For once, it’s not even Neal’s fault. All he is in this scenario is bait. Harrell told him as much. “When your handler comes storming in to save you…” he’d said, and cast his eyes, and grin, along the tripwire. Neal, thankful that Peter wasn’t present in that moment, had whimpered around the handgun barrel that had been used as motivation to pry open his teeth.
Exhaustion hasn’t taken the edge off. Exhaustion is moving him closer to death one ounce of muscle fatigue at a time.
Neal inhales musty air and the smell of his anxiety tainted sweat, and in one part of himself wishes desperately to be saved. He pleads with Peter: find me, already. But, of course, saving is not only going to get Neal, but any party unlucky enough to be his savior, killed.
Please, Peter, he silently begs—not that Peter would listen even if he could hear, and Neal supposes that’s what makes him such an ideal lure. Please, don’t come. Not this time.
If Neal were brave, he’d stop it from happening. If he were brave, he’d release the trigger himself and either call Harrell’s bluff or spare any innocent lives on the line in the process. He’d make sure every member of the search team he knows is coming here goes home to their family tonight.
But Neal’s not brave, and he can’t make himself do it. He’s a worm that refuses to slip off the hook.
It’s a discovered selfishness that he’s going to have to live with—though probably not for very long.
He hears the distant sirens first, a wail through the ringing in his ears. Neal prays that they’re not for him, that they’ll pass, and it’s not the first time in his life that he’s done so. It’s also not the first time that that prayer has not been answered.
There’s footfalls. Floorboards creak above his head, shouted voices are muffled by concrete, and Neal slips into blind panic. Rushing in his head that makes the moments click past like scenes in a stereoscope.
The bang of the door breaking down makes Neal jump. Makes the trigger slide back with his sharp breath. Squeak against his teeth. Light bounces into Neal’s eyes, blinding him.
The figures pour into the room; the flashlights sting Neal’s vision; his lungs burn as the breaths through his nostrils grow too quick, too short. Adrenaline like the drop of a mis-administered anesthetic drug.
The last voice in the world that Neal wants to hear right now calls out his name.
The noise Neal makes isn’t a scream. It can’t really be. It comes from his chest and it catches on his clenched teeth. It grinds in his eardrums like anguish.
“Stop!” Peter shouts.
The team behind him freezes.
Peter catches Jones by the arm. The agent wobbles slightly, caught off balance, looks down with the beam of Peter’s flashlight and blenches. Clinton slowly draws back his shoe from where it’s mere millimeters away from the hair thin wire.
“Nobody move,” Peter says firmly. Casting his eyes around the room to ensure each person has listened, before his attention returns to Neal.
Who’s lightheaded from lacking air, whose ribs feel like they're clenching down on his lungs, who can feel the weight of the explosive packs like lead against his chest. He raises up his chin very carefully, meets Peter’s eyes with his own blown out pupils. Tries to shift his shoulders in a way that will give Peter a view of what’s under his jacket.
Neal wants to shout at Peter to leave. He wants to tell the team to get out. He wants to beg Peter to help him. All that squeaks past the control switch are the approximate vowels of Peter’s name.
Peter turns back to his agents. “Cole, call a bomb squad in here,” he says to a bulletproof vest kitted man still in the door frame. Peter motions a hand around himself. “Everyone out,” he orders—the room of agents hesitate. “Now!” Peter adds, and the flashlights and lowered guns begin to shuffle back through a splintered doorframe.
Peter repeats the bomb squad request to his radio. “You too,” he tells Jones.
Jones’ concern catches on Neal, then shoots back to Peter. “But—”
“I’m not leaving.”
Three words have never so simultaneously felt to Neal like relief and a death sentence.
Jones seems to know better than to argue. He gives a curt nod, then disappears into the darkness beyond the gaping doorway, leaving only the illumination of Peter’s flashlight and the creak of bodies moving upstairs and the frothy sound of Neal’s breath catching on his spit.
The light bounces around the room in a careful survey. Neal fights back the dots at the edges of his vision. Fights to fill his lungs.
Peter steps, very slowly, over the tripwire. “Hey buddy, we’re going to get you out of this, okay?”
Neal pinches closed his eyes in the effort of keeping his jaw clenched tight, and he hears Peter’s footsteps cross towards him. Feels the light pass over him. Linger on his face, flashing pink-ish through his eyelids.
Peter curses. “Neal,” he says softer. “Neal, hey.”
Neal peels open his eyelids to a wave of dizziness, squinting at Peter’s shadowed face, which is wrought over with too much concern and entirely not enough fear .
Peter examines Neal’s bound hands, where his ankles are tied to the chair. He crouches down, gently lifts the edge of Neal’s suit jacket.
“Harrell sure has a flair for the dramatic, doesn’t he?” Peter supplies bitterly.
Neal, obviously, can’t bring himself to perform his typical commiserating chuckle. He’s holding as still as he can, and yet, is trembling slightly. Fatigue heavy in his muscles and stiff in his joints.
“Cole,” Peter radios up, in a growl, “What’s my ETA on that bombsquad?” Neal can’t make out the garble that’s returned in Peter’s ear. “Ten minutes, Neal,” Peter lies. “I think we can do that, don’t you?”
Neal’s response is a sharper breath.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.”
That is precisely what Neal is worried about.
He attempts to shake his head. A minute amount of movement that paired with the plea in his eyes he hopes makes his message clear. Get out of here, Peter. Don’t do this.
Neal can’t have this be on his conscience. He can’t have this be his fault.
Peter reaches out a hand, like he wants to put it on Neal’s shoulder—then thinks better of it. He tucks it back into his pocket instead. Rocks forward on his toes, the agitation of wanting to act, but none of the power to do so.
“I’d tell you to relax,” Peter says, “but…maybe don’t relax yet.”
Neal wasn’t planning on it.
There’s an occasional squawk through the radio. Firmly stated reassurance from Peter. “Not much longer now,” and “ hang in there,” and “ they're moving into the building. ” Neal isn’t listening to anything but pulse beating in his ears.
Footfalls clamber above them; Neal’s breath stutters.
“It’s alright. That’d be our bomb squad.”
The words are barely off Peter’s lips when the room is overcome by light and voices. Five more people that Neal is responsible for. His vision swims; he can’t suppress it now, how hard he’s shaking.
The noise around him, the people who are talking to Peter, it compresses to pinpoint. A warble in Neal’s ears.
“Sir, you should evacuate. We’ve set up a perimeter—”
Peter doesn’t shift from Neal’s side. “If he’s here, I’m here.”
Then one of the suited up techs is crouching in front of Neal, pushing back the lapels of his jacket with a gloved hand.
The techs are quiet as they work. Speaking only to each other in the short occasional quip of technical jargon.
At some point, Peter does put down his hand. His grip firm on Neal’s shoulder—a steady reminder of everything Neal stands to ruin.
“That’s the all set on that,” says a voice somewhere to the side of Neal’s head. The bomb tech straightens up, eyes Neal more directly. “The pressure plate’s disconnected. You can release it now, sir.”
Neal doesn’t move.
“Sir?”
There’s the tension in his jaw, and the weight of Peter’s hand. That’s what the room has reduced to.
“You can let go,” the voice repeats. “We’re all set.”
The tech tugs lightly on the wiring attached to the trigger.
Neal clamps down his teeth harder, a small noise of distress escaping through his nose.
He can’t do it. He can’t be responsible.
And he doesn’t want to die.
The tech looks to Peter in confusion.
Peter’s grip on Neal’s shoulder lifts off, leaving Neal unanchored.
“Neal,” Peter’s voice says, very close to Neal’s face. To the tears that are pressing insistently against the back of his eyelids. “It’s okay, nothing’s going to happen.”
Neal shakes his head.
“Hey, look at me. Come on.”
Peter’s eyes are wavering amber and there’s worry written in the scrunch of his forehead and he reaches forward, holds the sides of the pressure plate at its edges. His hands warm against Neal’s clammy skin. “Nothing will happen. You can let go.”
He can’t. He—
“I promise, Neal.”
It takes all of Neal’s willpower to believe him.
Peter pushes slightly on the metal, eases it from Neal’s slowly relaxing jaw. The relief of the strain sending sharp pain down Neal’s neck, up through his teeth.
Nothing happens.
Peter hands the trigger to the tech beside him; Neal struggles first to catch his breath, then to find his voice. Exhaustion a numbing agent to the embarrassment he knows will come next.
“How long?” he creaks out, the sound of his voice foreign, watching Peter’s face through watery vision.
Peter frowns his guilt. Glances at his watch. “Seven hours, and twenty five minutes.”
In twenty more minutes, Neal’s hands will be free and his jacket will be gently peeled from shoulders and the explosive packs removed. Another five and he’ll walk, unsteadily, with Peter out the door into the flash of police lights.
In an hour, he’ll be in the passenger seat of the Taurus insisting that he’s fine, asking if they can pick up dinner before Peter drops him home.
In a day, Harrell will be in custody and the pressing concern in Peter’s expression will have tempered from a blaze to a low simmer.
Maybe, maybe in a week, Neal will be able to convince himself that he’s forgotten.
Or that he did the right thing.