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[Fic][White Collar] The Sky Never Fights Back
Title: The Sky Never Fights Back
Fandom: White Collar
Prompt: Bruises
Medium: Fic
Wordcount: ~3000
Rating: T
Warnings: Spoilers through 4x11 (Family Business) of White Collar.
Summary: Neal's taken a beating, physically and emotionally, over the last weeks.
He felt the bullet like someone had tackled him, Drugov's vest dispersing the force of the round into a constrictive pressure, crushing his ribs and the bruised flesh on top of them – and then the floor came up and punched him, one gigantic fist the size of his body, and Neal managed to tuck himself into enough of a ball to hide his profile against an SUV. Bless FBI agents and their unnecessarily large vehicles.
Ow, that had hurt.
Across the garage he could hear backup arriving, and he unfolded himself enough to press his back into the SUV by its door. That was good; the pressure there almost-but-not-quite took his mind off the ache in his chest, thumping in time with his heartbeat. His skin felt like it didn't fit right, like all the pain he'd thought had been tucked down under his consciousness had been woken up at once.
That was the thing with bulletproof vests; they didn't actually stop you getting hit by the bullet, they just made sure that more of you took the hit. The ground was another matter entirely.
He was still catching his breath when Peter skidded around the car and crouched next to him, his look of alarm dissolving into relief when Neal pulled open his shirt to reveal the bullet melded with the vest like a medallion. "You were wearing the vest," Peter said, with a tone that said that he was unreservedly happy about this turn of events. Neal, while he was happy not to be bleeding out from automatic-weapon fire to the chest, still had his share of black and blue reservations.
But he said something to downplay that, and Peter pulled him up, clapping a hand, gingerly, on his shoulder.
There were bruises painted all up and down Neal's chest – bruises that predated his mishaps with assault rounds and concrete. Peter was still twitchy about having put those bruises there with his fists, which was obvious to anyone who knew him, and Neal had resolved not to bring them up because Peter would either be apologetic or he'd go off on him about turning their scripted match into a real fight and what did he expect, or possibly he'd ignore all aspects of that little debacle and tell Neal to go see a doctor if it bothered him that much. Neal didn't want to deal with any of those options.
Anyway, the bruising wasn't even that severe. It was nothing like what he'd dealt with after Keller had worked him over with Napoleon's walking stick.
Though, for some reason, these bruises bothered him more.
"I'm going to process Anderson," Peter said, and that sounded way too much like a dismissal. Thanks for your help, Neal; we've got it from here. Neal had thought that things would steady up after Cape Verde, but between Abigail Kincaid and the damn Pascal and Alex and the entire debacle with Sam, it felt like the trust between them was as shaky and wounded as the days after Keller. You know, like maybe they'd never moved past that. Maybe Peter, fetching him back from the central Atlantic, hadn't been making a gesture of solidarity or good faith or contrition, just a gesture of God knows what you'll get up to if I don't keep an eye on you.
But that was an uncharitable thought, and as soon as it occurred to him, Neal brushed it aside like a cobweb. Things were deeply messed up on more than one axis, but he had plans in place and plenty of resources to work with and it was easy to blame at least part of his prickliness on the intrusive throbbing pain that had made its home on top of his ribs.
Really. The people who boxed for fun either had to be masochists or the angriest people on Earth. God willing and the Hudson didn't rise, he was hoping to avoid being lumped in with either category.
Good luck with that one, part of him thought.
"You all right?" Peter asked. "Need to get checked out?"
Neal leveled a look at him, and he could have said Ellen's not coming back or What if Sam hadn't come back or I'm so fucking tired of losing everyone at the end of the day, can't it just work out where someone sticks around, maybe just once in my life, but nothing good would come out of saying any of those things, so what he actually articulated was "Breathing's not the most comfortable thing in the world right now, but I'll manage."
"Good," Peter said, like he'd missed all of that. Or maybe like he didn't. Peter was good at looking clueless and then turning around and knowing too much for comfort, and Neal was tired and didn't want to deal with it, right then. "I like you breathing."
"I'm not planning on stopping anytime soon."
He was pretty sure he wasn't going to die.
Sam might, whoever he was. Peter might. That seemed to be the way these things liked to go.
-
He left Peter to deal with Anderson, and Peter didn't seem to care that he was being ducked. He seemed to assume that Neal had gotten the running out of his system – didn't seem that worried if he disappeared without supervision in the middle of the day, when his radius alert wasn't set because he should have been working with the FBI, which was gratifying and depressing all at once. So Neal took a cab to a nicely anonymous part of the city and then walked the rest of the way to Mozzie's safehouse, discovering on the way that one hip had picked up a new contusion or two and that, to use Mozzie's words, "Fake Sam's gone rogue."
Nothing ever seemed to go to plan, with him.
Mozzie said he'd meet Neal there, and he did, looking edgy and not at all comfortable with any of this. Not that Neal could blame him. There was one man neither of them quite trusted acting as bait for a murderer, and Mozzie preferred not to fight at all, if he could help it. Neal, for his part, couldn't think of a time when getting into a fight had actually ended well for him.
Which meant that the universe just had to greet them as they walked onto the property with the noises of fists hitting flesh. With a man and a gun, whistling his invulnerability as he washed blood off his knuckles.
Neal was just waiting for the second bullet of the day – the one he didn't have a vest for – when he crept in and hauled the man provisionally known as Sam Phelps out, too much weight slung across Neal's shoulders and dragging at his already-aching muscles. Peter met them on their way out with a look that said he couldn't wait to see which of his questions were going to answer themselves, but he went off to lose the suspect no one had warned him they had, and Neal dragged half again his bodyweight of semi-conscious retired cop out to the property's stairs.
There was blood on his face, but so far, no bruises. Maybe he didn't bruise easily. Visibly. But Neal could tell he was having trouble walking, having trouble breathing, and it wasn't the FBI that got him into this situation, this time, it was their own brilliant plan. And the bastard who did this got away.
"I didn't want you getting hurt if things went bad," maybe-Sam said. Neal resisted pointing out the obvious.
Most of his life, Neal had gotten by on a moment-to-moment certainty of what he was doing. Yeah, it tended to fall apart with some distance and time, but he knew enough to keep himself moving. That was fraying enough to worry him, these days.
He was definitely second-guessing crouching in front of the man who could be Sam on the stairs, using an old silk handkerchief to mop up his blood.
Stealing someone's blood. His life had taken a turn for the macabre, somewhere.
Ellen's last words – to him, anyway – had been Trust Sam. And god, he would have liked to, but that required Sam to be the person in front of him. The only way to know that for certain was to put him through the FBI database again, maybe get him well and truly killed, this time.
Maybe this was what people like Diana or Mozzie felt, when they decided something; maybe they could feel every other option, including the option not to have done, burning in their peripheral vision.
His chest and throat were both tense, the one aching and the other rough, when he made his decision. Went to Peter with the evidence in his hands, handed over one bloodied handkerchief, and said, "Run his DNA."
Peter got that look on his face, like he was proud of Neal doing something he hadn't wanted to do, and that was more than enough emotion for the day, thank you.
"Back to the Bureau?" Neal asked, and ducked Peter's hand with what he thought was subtlety, when Peter went to clap him on the shoulder, turn him around, guide him out. Peter, being Peter, caught and noted that anyway.
"Back to the Bureau," he agreed, and then paused like he was calculating how many times he could ask You all right? in one day. "That guy make you?"
"No." Neal let out a breath. "No, he didn't see me."
"Okay," Peter said. And – thank the god of lost causes – left it at that.
-
It was harder than it should have been, certainly harder than usual, to keep up the usual pleasant appearances for the rest of the day. Keep the poker face up when Jones so Jonesishly handed them a lead and went to clean up Neal's con; charm a roomful of FBI agents without letting too much or not enough slip.
Let Peter talk about trust and faith like it wasn't surprising he had any.
But no, maybe that was uncharitable; maybe it had just been a rough week, and it just felt like his life was knocking him into walls. Every day, a different wall, or up or down a staircase, like he was stuck in an Escher sketch of bad decisions. The end of the day rolled around and he went home like he was walking into a wolf's den, with the wolf sitting on his balcony and reading the day's news and wearing his sheep's clothing.
It didn't take long for the phone to ring. We'll know who we're dealing with, soon enough.
And when it did–
"There's something you should know," Peter said, and oh, damn right there was. James Bennet. The man who was sitting there in front of him, expression all implied innocence, was the name he'd seen on a birth certificate, the name Ellen had revealed years ago. Danny, there's something you should know about your father. I know your mother doesn't want me to say–
Nothing but a ghost, here suddenly made flesh.
And all he could think, through Sam's – James' – explanations and Peter's bursting in ready to draw on him and the shuddery détente on which James walked out, was: he should have seen it coming.
Should've seen it, in the way the man made Neal want to trust him. In the way he never called attention to the assumptions he let slide.
There'd been times, yeah, when Neal had been conned before. Adler conned him. (Adler conned everyone.) Keller, more than a few times. And there were times when he thought Kate might be conning him and these days he wondered if things would have been better if he had trusted her, just trusted her a little. His father, though. His goddamn father. That's what he was left with, when the cavalry walked out and the door swung closed.
Neal wasn't sure whether he wanted to run after the man and demand to know more, to get back all those pieces of his past which were cut up jigsaw-style and hidden from him, or whether he wanted to chase after the man and take a swing at him. Or maybe to catch Peter on his way out, say Give me everything you've got on this guy; I know you were looking into him and you haven't told me anything.
But he didn't run after anyone. Instead he stripped down and got in the shower and let the heat ease into his bruises; it helped there, a little, though the troubles of the day stubbornly refused to wash away.
He should have seen it coming in how they both just about got their lights punched out because they pushed off their friends and went raring for a fight, then found it.
He should have seen it coming.
-
"I'm back in the family business," Neal told James, and didn't much care that it was a petty thing to say. No matter what everyone around him seemed to think, from Peter and Elizabeth through to Mozzie himself, he wasn't sure he owed James the time of day, let alone consideration.
No, no, this was fine; really, everything was swell. He was working with one murderer to take down another. The one who'd ruined their family's lives against the one who'd ended Ellen's. It wasn't that he didn't know who his enemies were, it was just that he wanted to expand the definition.
-
Two things kept Neal from taking a swing at Flynn on any of the many, many chances he got: one, it'd blow any chance for him to get the right evidence to the FBI and send him down for murder; two, he was pretty sure that Flynn and his men would beat him to a bloody pulp and then kill him. But oh, it was good to see him led away in cuffs.
Peter turned to him, the usual satisfaction on his face, and quirked his head. "A flamethrower, Neal?"
Adrenaline and anger were both humming in his veins, and Neal crossed his arms to contain them. "I had a glassblowing forge and a bottle of whiskey," he said. "It seemed like the thing to do."
"You MacGuyvered a flamethrower," Peter repeated. "I wish we had another panel at the conference just so we could tell them that."
"Hey," Neal said. "Let's leave some of my trade secrets as trade secrets, can we?"
Peter gave him a little laugh at the joke, and Neal pulled his arm tighter against his side. Throwing a bottle hadn't been comfortable, but nothing really was. And he was hoping Peter wouldn't notice, but no luck there.
"You're still looking a little stiff," Peter said. "Side still bothering you?"
Neal let out air. "Only when I move," he said, and glanced back into the distillery. "Still, you'd be amazed what a steady diet of counterfeit whiskey will do for you."
"Hmph." Peter gave him a sidelong smile. "I'll buy another jar of pickles."
"Please don't." Neal winced.
There was a long, heavy moment, and Neal started ranking half a dozen ways to turn aside the dreaded You all right?, which no interaction seemed to be complete without. It was like Peter was waiting for the moment all his strings would be cut, or something.
But instead, Peter shook his head, and gave a pointed look out into the distillery.
"When you're counterfeiting this whiskey," he said, "is there a rule you actually have to swallow it? Couldn't you just get, I don't know, a spittoon?"
Neal turned to give him a long look.
"What?" Peter said.
-
Neal was ready for his luck to turn. It had to, after a certain point; even just statistically, he was sure you couldn't experience a bad week that lasted forever. He thought it might be turning when Peter told him they'd matched the ballistics on Flynn's gun.
That lasted approximately fifteen seconds, right up until he walked into the conference room and saw a still of Flynn's corpse on the screen mounted on the wall.
There was a moment of disconnect, where his body wanted to feel joy but his mind went too fast for it. Flynn had hurt his father and killed one of the people who meant the most to him, and every fibre of his being had wanted Flynn dead.
Just not like this. Not as a victory for the other side.
"The good news is," Peter said, "we forced someone to play their hand."
Playing their hand meant tossing away Flynn's life like a dirty napkin. A low-value piece in a larger game.
Neal remembered a day, what seemed impossibly long ago, with Mozzie pouring over a chessboard and remarking If only there were some way to compare this to your life. Well, he'd graduated from a pawn, at least. Now, he was – what? A king?
No. James was probably the king, if the metaphor held. The one there was no game without; the one everyone wanted dead.
"James was right," Peter said. "He isn't safe here."
"I can't send him away," Neal said, but the truth was already there in front of them. There were only a few choices left: dead or gone.
"He'll be back," Peter told him.
That was the hope, at least.
And when he was standing inside the big picture windows, with Manhattan glowering out past his balcony, saying They got to Ellen, they got to Flynn, he couldn't help but think of Ellen in that self-same room with a brittle smile as she said The marshals are shipping me off in a few weeks. Nowhere close, I'm afraid. Maybe if they'd moved a bit faster, maybe if she'd gotten out while the getting was good–
It wasn't hard to sell James on the necessity of leaving. Neal was expecting to win the argument; soft-sell, hard-sell, outright blackmail, it wasn't like he couldn't be convincing.
He hadn't been expecting James to hug him on his way out the door.
It knocked the breath from him. Him, his friends, they didn't do this, and he wouldn't have done this now – there was too much body, too much truth, hand to back, bruise to bruise, the blue in their eyes and the blood in their veins.
And then James let go. Walked out of the door like he was walking out of his life again, left Neal to a hitch in his breathing and a deepening pain.
Going, going–
Neal tried telling himself it was the same ache that had been through his chest, these last few days. What kind of a con man were you, if you couldn't buy into your own con?
But the bruises on his skin were a specific kind of pain, and it wasn't a kind that lied.
Fandom: White Collar
Prompt: Bruises
Medium: Fic
Wordcount: ~3000
Rating: T
Warnings: Spoilers through 4x11 (Family Business) of White Collar.
Summary: Neal's taken a beating, physically and emotionally, over the last weeks.
You say the price we pay for love
is loss. I say the price we pay for love
is love. You say sometimes you've nothing
save your hand in the glove and the glove
against wind and you're jabbing at the sky now
in the match of your life but the sky
never fights back so you praise it.
– "Match", Brynn Saito
He felt the bullet like someone had tackled him, Drugov's vest dispersing the force of the round into a constrictive pressure, crushing his ribs and the bruised flesh on top of them – and then the floor came up and punched him, one gigantic fist the size of his body, and Neal managed to tuck himself into enough of a ball to hide his profile against an SUV. Bless FBI agents and their unnecessarily large vehicles.
Ow, that had hurt.
Across the garage he could hear backup arriving, and he unfolded himself enough to press his back into the SUV by its door. That was good; the pressure there almost-but-not-quite took his mind off the ache in his chest, thumping in time with his heartbeat. His skin felt like it didn't fit right, like all the pain he'd thought had been tucked down under his consciousness had been woken up at once.
That was the thing with bulletproof vests; they didn't actually stop you getting hit by the bullet, they just made sure that more of you took the hit. The ground was another matter entirely.
He was still catching his breath when Peter skidded around the car and crouched next to him, his look of alarm dissolving into relief when Neal pulled open his shirt to reveal the bullet melded with the vest like a medallion. "You were wearing the vest," Peter said, with a tone that said that he was unreservedly happy about this turn of events. Neal, while he was happy not to be bleeding out from automatic-weapon fire to the chest, still had his share of black and blue reservations.
But he said something to downplay that, and Peter pulled him up, clapping a hand, gingerly, on his shoulder.
There were bruises painted all up and down Neal's chest – bruises that predated his mishaps with assault rounds and concrete. Peter was still twitchy about having put those bruises there with his fists, which was obvious to anyone who knew him, and Neal had resolved not to bring them up because Peter would either be apologetic or he'd go off on him about turning their scripted match into a real fight and what did he expect, or possibly he'd ignore all aspects of that little debacle and tell Neal to go see a doctor if it bothered him that much. Neal didn't want to deal with any of those options.
Anyway, the bruising wasn't even that severe. It was nothing like what he'd dealt with after Keller had worked him over with Napoleon's walking stick.
Though, for some reason, these bruises bothered him more.
"I'm going to process Anderson," Peter said, and that sounded way too much like a dismissal. Thanks for your help, Neal; we've got it from here. Neal had thought that things would steady up after Cape Verde, but between Abigail Kincaid and the damn Pascal and Alex and the entire debacle with Sam, it felt like the trust between them was as shaky and wounded as the days after Keller. You know, like maybe they'd never moved past that. Maybe Peter, fetching him back from the central Atlantic, hadn't been making a gesture of solidarity or good faith or contrition, just a gesture of God knows what you'll get up to if I don't keep an eye on you.
But that was an uncharitable thought, and as soon as it occurred to him, Neal brushed it aside like a cobweb. Things were deeply messed up on more than one axis, but he had plans in place and plenty of resources to work with and it was easy to blame at least part of his prickliness on the intrusive throbbing pain that had made its home on top of his ribs.
Really. The people who boxed for fun either had to be masochists or the angriest people on Earth. God willing and the Hudson didn't rise, he was hoping to avoid being lumped in with either category.
Good luck with that one, part of him thought.
"You all right?" Peter asked. "Need to get checked out?"
Neal leveled a look at him, and he could have said Ellen's not coming back or What if Sam hadn't come back or I'm so fucking tired of losing everyone at the end of the day, can't it just work out where someone sticks around, maybe just once in my life, but nothing good would come out of saying any of those things, so what he actually articulated was "Breathing's not the most comfortable thing in the world right now, but I'll manage."
"Good," Peter said, like he'd missed all of that. Or maybe like he didn't. Peter was good at looking clueless and then turning around and knowing too much for comfort, and Neal was tired and didn't want to deal with it, right then. "I like you breathing."
"I'm not planning on stopping anytime soon."
He was pretty sure he wasn't going to die.
Sam might, whoever he was. Peter might. That seemed to be the way these things liked to go.
-
He left Peter to deal with Anderson, and Peter didn't seem to care that he was being ducked. He seemed to assume that Neal had gotten the running out of his system – didn't seem that worried if he disappeared without supervision in the middle of the day, when his radius alert wasn't set because he should have been working with the FBI, which was gratifying and depressing all at once. So Neal took a cab to a nicely anonymous part of the city and then walked the rest of the way to Mozzie's safehouse, discovering on the way that one hip had picked up a new contusion or two and that, to use Mozzie's words, "Fake Sam's gone rogue."
Nothing ever seemed to go to plan, with him.
Mozzie said he'd meet Neal there, and he did, looking edgy and not at all comfortable with any of this. Not that Neal could blame him. There was one man neither of them quite trusted acting as bait for a murderer, and Mozzie preferred not to fight at all, if he could help it. Neal, for his part, couldn't think of a time when getting into a fight had actually ended well for him.
Which meant that the universe just had to greet them as they walked onto the property with the noises of fists hitting flesh. With a man and a gun, whistling his invulnerability as he washed blood off his knuckles.
Neal was just waiting for the second bullet of the day – the one he didn't have a vest for – when he crept in and hauled the man provisionally known as Sam Phelps out, too much weight slung across Neal's shoulders and dragging at his already-aching muscles. Peter met them on their way out with a look that said he couldn't wait to see which of his questions were going to answer themselves, but he went off to lose the suspect no one had warned him they had, and Neal dragged half again his bodyweight of semi-conscious retired cop out to the property's stairs.
There was blood on his face, but so far, no bruises. Maybe he didn't bruise easily. Visibly. But Neal could tell he was having trouble walking, having trouble breathing, and it wasn't the FBI that got him into this situation, this time, it was their own brilliant plan. And the bastard who did this got away.
"I didn't want you getting hurt if things went bad," maybe-Sam said. Neal resisted pointing out the obvious.
Most of his life, Neal had gotten by on a moment-to-moment certainty of what he was doing. Yeah, it tended to fall apart with some distance and time, but he knew enough to keep himself moving. That was fraying enough to worry him, these days.
He was definitely second-guessing crouching in front of the man who could be Sam on the stairs, using an old silk handkerchief to mop up his blood.
Stealing someone's blood. His life had taken a turn for the macabre, somewhere.
Ellen's last words – to him, anyway – had been Trust Sam. And god, he would have liked to, but that required Sam to be the person in front of him. The only way to know that for certain was to put him through the FBI database again, maybe get him well and truly killed, this time.
Maybe this was what people like Diana or Mozzie felt, when they decided something; maybe they could feel every other option, including the option not to have done, burning in their peripheral vision.
His chest and throat were both tense, the one aching and the other rough, when he made his decision. Went to Peter with the evidence in his hands, handed over one bloodied handkerchief, and said, "Run his DNA."
Peter got that look on his face, like he was proud of Neal doing something he hadn't wanted to do, and that was more than enough emotion for the day, thank you.
"Back to the Bureau?" Neal asked, and ducked Peter's hand with what he thought was subtlety, when Peter went to clap him on the shoulder, turn him around, guide him out. Peter, being Peter, caught and noted that anyway.
"Back to the Bureau," he agreed, and then paused like he was calculating how many times he could ask You all right? in one day. "That guy make you?"
"No." Neal let out a breath. "No, he didn't see me."
"Okay," Peter said. And – thank the god of lost causes – left it at that.
-
It was harder than it should have been, certainly harder than usual, to keep up the usual pleasant appearances for the rest of the day. Keep the poker face up when Jones so Jonesishly handed them a lead and went to clean up Neal's con; charm a roomful of FBI agents without letting too much or not enough slip.
Let Peter talk about trust and faith like it wasn't surprising he had any.
But no, maybe that was uncharitable; maybe it had just been a rough week, and it just felt like his life was knocking him into walls. Every day, a different wall, or up or down a staircase, like he was stuck in an Escher sketch of bad decisions. The end of the day rolled around and he went home like he was walking into a wolf's den, with the wolf sitting on his balcony and reading the day's news and wearing his sheep's clothing.
It didn't take long for the phone to ring. We'll know who we're dealing with, soon enough.
And when it did–
"There's something you should know," Peter said, and oh, damn right there was. James Bennet. The man who was sitting there in front of him, expression all implied innocence, was the name he'd seen on a birth certificate, the name Ellen had revealed years ago. Danny, there's something you should know about your father. I know your mother doesn't want me to say–
Nothing but a ghost, here suddenly made flesh.
And all he could think, through Sam's – James' – explanations and Peter's bursting in ready to draw on him and the shuddery détente on which James walked out, was: he should have seen it coming.
Should've seen it, in the way the man made Neal want to trust him. In the way he never called attention to the assumptions he let slide.
There'd been times, yeah, when Neal had been conned before. Adler conned him. (Adler conned everyone.) Keller, more than a few times. And there were times when he thought Kate might be conning him and these days he wondered if things would have been better if he had trusted her, just trusted her a little. His father, though. His goddamn father. That's what he was left with, when the cavalry walked out and the door swung closed.
Neal wasn't sure whether he wanted to run after the man and demand to know more, to get back all those pieces of his past which were cut up jigsaw-style and hidden from him, or whether he wanted to chase after the man and take a swing at him. Or maybe to catch Peter on his way out, say Give me everything you've got on this guy; I know you were looking into him and you haven't told me anything.
But he didn't run after anyone. Instead he stripped down and got in the shower and let the heat ease into his bruises; it helped there, a little, though the troubles of the day stubbornly refused to wash away.
He should have seen it coming in how they both just about got their lights punched out because they pushed off their friends and went raring for a fight, then found it.
He should have seen it coming.
-
"I'm back in the family business," Neal told James, and didn't much care that it was a petty thing to say. No matter what everyone around him seemed to think, from Peter and Elizabeth through to Mozzie himself, he wasn't sure he owed James the time of day, let alone consideration.
No, no, this was fine; really, everything was swell. He was working with one murderer to take down another. The one who'd ruined their family's lives against the one who'd ended Ellen's. It wasn't that he didn't know who his enemies were, it was just that he wanted to expand the definition.
-
Two things kept Neal from taking a swing at Flynn on any of the many, many chances he got: one, it'd blow any chance for him to get the right evidence to the FBI and send him down for murder; two, he was pretty sure that Flynn and his men would beat him to a bloody pulp and then kill him. But oh, it was good to see him led away in cuffs.
Peter turned to him, the usual satisfaction on his face, and quirked his head. "A flamethrower, Neal?"
Adrenaline and anger were both humming in his veins, and Neal crossed his arms to contain them. "I had a glassblowing forge and a bottle of whiskey," he said. "It seemed like the thing to do."
"You MacGuyvered a flamethrower," Peter repeated. "I wish we had another panel at the conference just so we could tell them that."
"Hey," Neal said. "Let's leave some of my trade secrets as trade secrets, can we?"
Peter gave him a little laugh at the joke, and Neal pulled his arm tighter against his side. Throwing a bottle hadn't been comfortable, but nothing really was. And he was hoping Peter wouldn't notice, but no luck there.
"You're still looking a little stiff," Peter said. "Side still bothering you?"
Neal let out air. "Only when I move," he said, and glanced back into the distillery. "Still, you'd be amazed what a steady diet of counterfeit whiskey will do for you."
"Hmph." Peter gave him a sidelong smile. "I'll buy another jar of pickles."
"Please don't." Neal winced.
There was a long, heavy moment, and Neal started ranking half a dozen ways to turn aside the dreaded You all right?, which no interaction seemed to be complete without. It was like Peter was waiting for the moment all his strings would be cut, or something.
But instead, Peter shook his head, and gave a pointed look out into the distillery.
"When you're counterfeiting this whiskey," he said, "is there a rule you actually have to swallow it? Couldn't you just get, I don't know, a spittoon?"
Neal turned to give him a long look.
"What?" Peter said.
-
Neal was ready for his luck to turn. It had to, after a certain point; even just statistically, he was sure you couldn't experience a bad week that lasted forever. He thought it might be turning when Peter told him they'd matched the ballistics on Flynn's gun.
That lasted approximately fifteen seconds, right up until he walked into the conference room and saw a still of Flynn's corpse on the screen mounted on the wall.
There was a moment of disconnect, where his body wanted to feel joy but his mind went too fast for it. Flynn had hurt his father and killed one of the people who meant the most to him, and every fibre of his being had wanted Flynn dead.
Just not like this. Not as a victory for the other side.
"The good news is," Peter said, "we forced someone to play their hand."
Playing their hand meant tossing away Flynn's life like a dirty napkin. A low-value piece in a larger game.
Neal remembered a day, what seemed impossibly long ago, with Mozzie pouring over a chessboard and remarking If only there were some way to compare this to your life. Well, he'd graduated from a pawn, at least. Now, he was – what? A king?
No. James was probably the king, if the metaphor held. The one there was no game without; the one everyone wanted dead.
"James was right," Peter said. "He isn't safe here."
"I can't send him away," Neal said, but the truth was already there in front of them. There were only a few choices left: dead or gone.
"He'll be back," Peter told him.
That was the hope, at least.
And when he was standing inside the big picture windows, with Manhattan glowering out past his balcony, saying They got to Ellen, they got to Flynn, he couldn't help but think of Ellen in that self-same room with a brittle smile as she said The marshals are shipping me off in a few weeks. Nowhere close, I'm afraid. Maybe if they'd moved a bit faster, maybe if she'd gotten out while the getting was good–
It wasn't hard to sell James on the necessity of leaving. Neal was expecting to win the argument; soft-sell, hard-sell, outright blackmail, it wasn't like he couldn't be convincing.
He hadn't been expecting James to hug him on his way out the door.
It knocked the breath from him. Him, his friends, they didn't do this, and he wouldn't have done this now – there was too much body, too much truth, hand to back, bruise to bruise, the blue in their eyes and the blood in their veins.
And then James let go. Walked out of the door like he was walking out of his life again, left Neal to a hitch in his breathing and a deepening pain.
Going, going–
Neal tried telling himself it was the same ache that had been through his chest, these last few days. What kind of a con man were you, if you couldn't buy into your own con?
But the bruises on his skin were a specific kind of pain, and it wasn't a kind that lied.