Work Text:
The conversation had taken more than a few turns since the initial reunion.
At first it was hugs and tears. The good kind. Peter warned him that Elizabeth might slap him when they got back to New York, but he claimed he couldn’t find it in himself to be angry. But as they began to catch up, he apparently found it in himself to be angry, and there had been more tears, just… of a different kind. None of Neal’s explanations came out the way he’d rehearsed them, but that was just as well—it was probably better, at that point, to be genuine.
And eventually, it all fell to awkward silence, the quiet coexistence of two friends who had never really been able to live without each other, but had been trying their best to fake it for the last five years.
Neal was okay with that. His apartment had been silent for years. Silent with Peter was such an astronomical improvement he might actually cry. Almost on cue, a tear threatened to fall from one of his eyes, and he reached up to wipe it away with one of his fingers.
It was eventually Peter who broke the silence. “I wasn’t the only one, you know,” he said.
It didn’t immediately register to him what Peter was talking about. “The only one what?”
“The only one who saw the good in you,” Peter said, and now Neal recalled his last words to Peter.
You’re the only one who saw the good in me. You’re my best friend.
He’d rehearsed that moment over and over when he was planning to fake his death. His last words in his head were always some variation on You’re my best friend. Sometimes you saved me. Sometimes I love you worked its way in there. It hadn’t crossed his mind to tell Peter he was the only one who saw the good in him until the moment came, and the toxins were racing through his system and Peter was standing over him looking completely distraught, and even though Neal had anticipated the moment, he just felt so valued, so much more than he’d ever really acknowledged, and it just… came out. In that moment, he suddenly needed Peter to know that the difference in the way he’d seen Neal had been immensely meaningful.
“I didn’t plan to say it, you know,” Neal said. “It came to me then. And I’m glad I said it.”
“I wasn’t,” Peter insisted. “So many people saw the good in you, Neal. See the good in you. Elizabeth, for one. Sara, Diana and Jones…”
Neal shook his head. “I didn’t mean you were the only one who believed there was a good part of me at that moment. I meant you were the only one to see it, unprompted, just by looking at me when I was…” He didn’t know exactly how to phrase it, which was off-brand for him. Words were normally his to command like an expert, yet this wasn’t something he’d dedicated as much thought to as it seemed Peter had.
To him, it was just a fact. A sentimental one. A heartwarming one. A somewhat bittersweet one when he was on his fake deathbed.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Peter admitted. “I wasn’t the only one.”
“You were the first, though,” he said, wondering if that was a better way of putting it. But it still wasn’t perfect. He sighed, closing his eyes and reaching for the words. “Look, Peter, you didn’t meet a confidential informant that was helping a division close over ninety percent of their cases. You didn’t meet a convict with a deal working for the FBI, theoretically reforming along the way. You didn’t even meet a criminal who one of your colleagues swore would be an asset, or the person your wife had been chasing and talking about non-stop for years—”
“I didn’t necessarily—”
“You just met me. When I was a criminal. Con man, thief, forger—a guy on your stack of case files. And you—”
“You were so much more than that,” Peter said immediately.
Neal gave him a look. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
“Any idiot could have seen that.”
“Okay, well, they didn’t. You were the first person after I ran away from home to see me as more than my criminal actions and talents. Even Mozzie took up with me specifically because he saw that kind of potential in me, and went to great lengths to remind me that was who I was. Keller was… well, we weren’t always strictly enemies, I guess, but he also saw me as the manifestation of my work, my best crimes, even as he would mock me for not having what it took to be violent. Alex clocked me as a grifter from the moment we met and never tried to look beyond that. Kate was close, because we fell in love before she knew who I was and chose to stay after I told her the truth, but… once she knew who I really was, it was like she thought part of accepting who I was was accepting that I wasn’t really a good person, and she was fine with that.”
Peter mulled this over. “How did you know I was different?”
“You were a federal agent, and looking into you proved you were an honest and effective one, and you knew exactly who I was and what I did, but… you never responded to my teasing like it was some kind of bad-faith taunting, which I guarantee you any other agent would have done. I mean, you acted annoyed—”
“It really wasn’t all acting,” Peter said wryly.
“—but it was all in a way that made me feel, I don’t know… like you thought me doing those things, sending cards and cookies and making phone calls, was just me being a human being, not some separate nefarious plot. I know you can’t quite tell why that matters, because it’s so obvious to you, but Peter, it did. And then I asked you for the deal, and I know Elizabeth talked you into it, but… all of that ultimately comes from the fact that you described me to her a certain way, like a person who was capable of good things, and literally no other FBI agent, cool wife or not, would have been willing to give me that chance, but you did. And… I’m not really making a lot of sense.” Neal shook his head. “I just mean that everyone in my life who ever saw the good in me… both as a good person but also just as a person who should be valued… it all went back to you. I didn’t give you lots of reasons to think I was anything more than just… a selfish criminal, I guess, but you looked at me and you just saw it, and believed in it, and I guess before I died I just wanted you to know how much that mattered.”
Neal had never done it for the money, or because he didn’t care about other people, or because he was bitter or selfish, but the face he put out to the world… the infamous image he built for himself on purpose… Peter’s ability to see past part of that mask from afar, see through to the good parts of him, enough to reassure him that those parts were there? It meant everything.
And that was part of why being told he could never be anything for a criminal never hurt half as bad as it did when Peter said it to him. Even knowing he couldn’t really mean it deep down, something Neal hadn’t truly come to terms with til after he faked his death, that one stung, because Peter really had been the only one to really see past that on first glance and care.
Peter hummed in acknowledgement, thinking it over. “I can’t imagine how anyone ever could have looked at you and not seen what I saw.”
“Well, trust me: they didn’t. Not before you,” Neal said. “After you… it was different. When we worked together, I mean. I don’t know if I ever really acknowledged aloud just how much you changed my life.”
“I think I had some idea.”
“It would be hard not to, in some way. But…” Neal didn’t know how to finish his point, to really show Peter why it had mattered so much to him that the words sprang to mind when it finally set in that he would never see Peter again. “Maybe the better way of seeing it is just that you saw something in me that no one else did. Something no one else was ever going to, if it weren’t for you. And you made me really see it in myself, and believe that it could matter.”
Peter blinked hard, and Neal realized that, for the third time since they’d seen each other for the first time in years, he was about to cry. “Just so you know, Neal, you changed my life too. I wouldn’t ever want to live a life where you weren’t a part of it. Not even if it made those three years I spent chasing you easier for me, not even if it would have changed the course of my career, not even if it would have kept things simpler and never forced me to question things the way our partnership did. I wouldn’t trade knowing you for anything.”
And… now Neal was about to cry. He reached for the right words to reply with, but nothing came to mind. Either he was majorly off his game today, or there was something about this situation that just couldn’t fully be described in words. He settled on, “Then I guess I’m glad you found me.”
Peter met Neal’s gaze, the first time they’d made eye contact since their first conversation had faded to silence, and said, so heart-wrenchingly sincerely, “I’m really, really glad I did.”