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magibrainTitle: Three Times Neal Ran (and one time he was found) – 6. Action
Index Post: [Fic][White Collar] Three Times Neal Ran (and one time he was found) – Index
He stops for breath somewhere where the rushing of the river sounds as expansive as the sea, for all that Neal can't see it past the impersonal buildings. He was heading away from the city, the city with its million-dollar views, the city with its Federal building and late nights and radius. The city where everyone will look for him. Now he's turned around, thinking of heading in.
He can't tell any more if that's a good idea, or just a good way to give up.
It's probably giving up. Or, like Mozzie puts it: to take someone in is to con them or dupe them. You've gotta love the cops and the feds, then, who take you in when they arrest you. It's all a game, win or lose, zero sum, and he's about to throw it.
Oh, well. Too bad, so sad; he's thrown the game once already, for Kate, and look where that got him. The big house, rent-free, for four years, but after that, it worked out okay.
For certain values of "okay".
He remembers running from the police, which suggests he's not heading in toward Manhattan to get that life back. He remembers a flash of dark hair and another person going to ground, and if she's still on this side of the river, he should find her before he vanishes into some kind of Federal judgment day. But he remembers a conversation – can't remember when that conversation happened; a storm was involved, but he doesn't think it was this one – with Mozzie, saying: Find me. Find the Suit. He's pretty sure the Suit here is not an article of clothing.
So either the police thing is wrong – and, wrong or not, Neal's life is generally happier when he doesn't have to deal with the NYPD, and he doesn't think that it's wrong, in any case – or he's got a dilemma on his hands. And not just that he doesn't know where to start on saving anyone.
To wit:
If someone breaks into a store to steal a burner phone, it's the police who get called, not the FBI. If someone stumbles into a gas station looking beat-up and half-dead, it's not an FBI issue. If someone sends up a flare, the FBI doesn't get that on their radar. FBI means rarified trouble, not the sort of thing Neal can get into at a moment's notice, and not the sort of thing that beats out the response time of the local PD.
What's he going to do? Forge a painting? Make it a rush order?
He looks up into the haphazard rain. Between it and the pavement and the pallor of his skin, he could do a credible Goya, he thinks.
He's grinning like an idiot, two beats away from bursting into laughter at his own unfunny joke, when there's no noise at all but it sounds like a car backfiring or a gun going off, and his whole body jerks like he's been hit. He goes down on his hands and knees, almost his hands and knees, fingers splayed just barely above the cold pavement.
It's nothing. It's nothing.
But try telling that to Neal's heart, which is hammering so hard he can feel it in his jaw. Try telling that to his adrenal glands. His body is convinced it's going to die out here, and his brain can't put enough together to keep up.
However he's going to get the FBI onto him, it's going to have to be fast.
Neal pays no attention to the voice. Rather, he does; he just doesn't stop for it. He walks faster.
Footsteps behind him pick up, and Neal takes a corner and then a door and then another door and finds himself in a stairwell, every step up feeling like his foot's about to snap off at the ankle. Whoever was behind him is chasing him, but that's not a surprise, is it? He's always being chased.
(Who is it now? FBI? NYPD?)
He pushes open a door at the top of the stairs and spills out into the concourse, and there's Kate, dark and uncompromising, with a hand on his chest. "Neal, stop. You need to run."
"I thought that's what we were doing," Neal says. Kate shakes her head.
"This wasn't what we planned."
"We didn't have time to make plans."
Kate's expression scrunches. This isn't exactly how Neal pictured their reunion, but to be fair, he's never been good at predicting these things. "Are you an idiot?" Kate hisses. "Neal, don't get killed for me. I can make it on my own."
"We need to stick together," Neal says. "We can watch each other's backs–"
"No," Kate says. "No. We split up, we hide our tracks in the river, and if one of us gets out–"
"Collins is here. I can't just leave you–"
"Neal," she says. "You're in a lot more trouble than I am."
That, he wasn't expecting.
"You need to run," Kate says again. "I can handle myself."
Let's say you run from something.
He swallows, but his throat is dry. Sky full of rain clouds, and no moisture here. "What if I can't?"
"Don't." Her voice is suddenly, unexpectedly final. "Remember, you told me you'd teach me how to survive?"
Had he, ever?
A flash of lightning sharpens itself on the planes of her face. Face like a city skyline. Beacons in the dark. "Neal," she says, "I love you. And if I need you to save me, I can't be saved."
He registers the pain of that. "Kate–"
"You can't save everyone." Her hand finds his, twisting down as though if she holds on tight enough, their flesh will switch places, they won't really be alone. "You just have to trust them, sometimes. And you have to save yourself."
I have to save you, is in his head. But he's never been that good at saving anyone.
"You'll slow me down," she says, and he has a feeling she's just saying it; a way to make him go, a way to push away. But what was his plan, really? Limp after her onto a plane, dripping blood and desperation as he went?
His hand curls around hers, clever fingers all. "I'll find you," he promises. "After–"
"Go," she says, and he leaves.
He leaves.
Breaking into Peter's house isn't hard.
The house has a couple of locks – good, solid ones, but not out of the ordinary for the area. The Burkes have a dog, but the dog is a little too friendly; he wags his tail and noses into Neal's hand like he isn't a stranger at all. And there's no one home. The place is drowned in darkness, the heavy, smoggy sort that clings to places too used to inhabitation and light and life to be left alone like this.
The place is domestic. He's not sure what he expected, but it's still a shock like a dislocation to walk in from the rain and find the kind of home people come back to day after day, fill up with sentimental detritus and casual clutter and the accumulations of lives that aren't pared down to what little can't be left behind and what little more wouldn't be a tragedy to lose. It's too much, for a reason he can't articulate, and he tucks himself down in the space between the couch and the coffeetable, hidden from the windows and not immediately obvious from the door.
This is a stupid idea. Stupid, stupid, stupid, but he's seen the way Adler blew up at Alex, and a sick, heavy pressure in his stomach is telling him that's not the worst Adler can do. And as for Burke, why the hell he's trusting Burke–
It gets muddy, there.
The dog comes around to his side – not the side between him and the door, fortunately – and sprawls out, leaning into Neal's hip. Too friendly by half.
Burke. Kate. Kate he can trust, or he has to believe he can trust, but there are too many questions there. He remembers Kate at the prison, saying I have to go, and somewhere in there, he'd got the sense she was saying You idiot, don't come after me. And he hadn't listened, or maybe he hadn't heard, and he can't put his finger on her saying that at all.
This isn't the way it's supposed to happen.
The dog makes a mournful, agreeing noise, then goes back to his empty dog-grin, and Neal glares down at the top of his fuzzy head. "Yeah, what would you know?" he asks, and his voice sounds out-of-place and wrong. "You don't have these problems."
The dog's a dog. He sleeps on the floor and waits for his people to come home, and he wears a collar and never has to wonder who he can trust or if he's doing the right thing. No one ever chases him, to throw him in prison or destroy him some other way.
No one ever runs from him, either.
Must be nice, Neal thinks, and shifts away from the weight and the warmth. The dog just slides down a little bit more, and puts his chin in Neal's lap. Neal resigns himself to the indignity.
It's dark, made darker by the clouds dripping down on Brooklyn, and Neal can't track time as well as he usually can. It's slippery, like everything. He catches himself looking for the clock on the wall, thinking, Why the hell aren't you here? and It's late; what could possibly be important enough to keep you from home?, thinking What's a con man have to do to get some attention, around here?
Other people and their other, not-broken lives.
He's just beginning to rise, stretch out his legs – one is threatening to cramp, and damn, but he must have lost his edge in prison for that – when the knob on the front door turns, and he freezes in a ready crouch. The door eases open and there's the man himself, briefcase in hand, wearing a wool coat the color of asphalt scattered with rain.
Peter reaches for the light and Neal rushes him; Peter turns and he has Peter against a wall, knuckles twisted in a utilitarian suit shirt. "Listen," he hisses, not entirely voiced; it's dark in the room and he doesn't want to break the silence, much as he has to. "Hear me out."
He's expecting something – recognition, maybe, or rapport – but Peter just doesn't look like he can buy what he's seeing. "What the – Neal Caffrey?"
Oh, goddamnit, Neal thinks. This is wrong. It's all wrong.
"Let go of me," Peter says.
It's a stupid idea, but those are all Neal is having, tonight. He does.
"And step back." Peter waits for him to comply, then smooths down his shirt; Neal can see the outline of a shoulder holster, but Peter seems more annoyed than threatened.
Neal can't even tell if he's feeling threatened. All he can hear is the rain, the rain, the rain.
"Okay," Peter says, and sets the briefcase down. His eyes are narrow, his body language solid like a prison wall. "Help me see how this makes sense. You escape from a maximum-security prison two months before your sentence is up, you run, and then you show up in my house?"
It doesn't make sense; that's the problem. Everything that's made sense is up in flames. Neal lets his head drop forward, his shoulders slump – just a bit, just enough to let the exhaustion roll off him, just enough so he can breathe. "I need your help."
Peter raises an eyebrow, at that. "You turning yourself in?"
"Yes." Maybe. Maybe that will solve this. Or– "–no. I don't know." He walks to the couch and drops into it, and Peter's eyebrows raise another millimeter or so. "Something's wrong, Peter, and you're the only one I can turn to."
Peter chews on that, and Neal drops his head into his hands. Drags his fingers through his hair.
"Someone after you?" Peter asks.
Neal drops his hands, and looks up, again. Lets his eyes track across the wall behind Peter – the shelves, everything just as he remembers it; the pictures on the stairwell behind him. He knows, even without being able to make out the shapes in the dark, what they're of; knows which one will be Peter with that incriminating ring, that old invitation to jump to conclusions. Trip and sprain his ankle, bruise his palms on the way to conclusions. He can't remember what the conclusions were. "Yeah, maybe."
Peter narrows his eyes. "I can protect you."
Neal swallows. "I know." And he thinks, so why don't you?
Peter's staring at him, and Neal can guess why: none of this makes a damn bit of sense to him, and he's been chasing Neal for too many years to have that many surprises coming out of left field. He doesn't get that it's not chasing him that makes it make sense, it's what happens after Neal's not running any more. "I'm going to take you in."
"To the FBI." Neal starts nodding. "Right." Pis aller; when there are no options left, that's where he has to end up.
Peter reaches for his cuffs. They glint in the street light filtering through the curtains, and Neal jumps up like a gun's gone off. Peter stops moving, like he's dealing with an animal he doesn't want to startle.
"No cuffs," Neal says. His mouth is engine-dry; his tongue feels asphalt-rough.
He trusts Peter. He trusts Peter to cuff him and bring him in. But in the dark room, in the unreal light, he doesn't trust the cuffs, those specific cuffs, the cuffs in Peter's hands.
"Caffrey," Peter begins.
"Peter," he says. "I swear to you, I'm not resisting arrest. But if you put those on me, I'm dead. I'm dead."
"Why?" Peter asks, and the cuffs don't leave his hand.
"I don't know," Neal says, "but you have to trust me."
Peter raises the cuffs as though to make a point. "You're a convicted felon and a fleeing, escaped prisoner. Tell me why I have to trust you."
"I'm standing in your livingroom," Neal pleads. "I'm not fleeing."
None of this is right.
He needs to talk to Mozzie.
He hasn't talked to Mozzie in years. Since the day he got caught, when Mozzie warned him away from Kate. Mozzie has a good instinct for a trap. Mozzie would probably not approve of him turning himself in.
Unless he would, and it feels like he would, which makes no sense because Peter is FBI, and to people in Neal's world, the FBI are dangerous; so, Peter here is a dangerous man, and Neal here is the criminal who's broken into his private residence. But that's here, and Neal feels like he should be somewhere else, some different situation. Like he's dreaming all of this, and the noise outside the house, and all the reasons it seemed like the right thing to do.
He raises both hands, slowly, to chest-height, a stop gesture, a gesture saying hold on – just hold on. Peter's attention shifts. The cuffs go back to his belt, he shows both hands – not going to hurt you – and takes a step forward.
"Let me see your wrists."
Neal doesn't move. His sleeves have pulled back on his forearms, and Peter reaches out and takes his arms by the unbroken skin just above the wrist.
"Someone's already cuffed you," he says.
Neal looks down. There are two rings of skin scraped raw on his wrists, and he feels like that was something he should have noticed before now.
Like the sirens. He should have noticed when they were blocks away, not when they were here. Police sirens, outside the window. A silhouette. Neal's looking down at his wrists, not out the window, but he can see it all the same; recognize the stance and the stature and the lines of the suit and the hair and the jaw, and Peter steps up to see what's going on, and Neal lashes out blind. His elbow catches the window behind the couch, and at that touch it explodes into a shower of glass; Peter ducks, the night rushes in, and–
The sirens are a block and a half away and the glass is on the other side of the street, some lanky kid – drunk or angry or something – with a beer bottle in hand, and another shattered against a corrugated-steel door, constellations of streetlights and neon Closed signs that shatter on the debris. One other piece of life out here – New York City is the City that Never Sleeps, but all the way out here, on a night like this, it's huddled up somewhere. Neal shrinks back into the shadow of one of the auto shops, then curses himself and then finds his breath falling over itself in the back of his throat. His chest hurts and he can't breathe, and when he goes to his knees and pushes his palm into the wet concrete his gasping breaths sound way too close to someone losing control.
The second bottle smashes into the pavement and Neal pulls himself together as much as he can, though there are still sharp edges poking through his suit and grinding against each other. He stands, and lurches toward the only other human presence in his immediate world.
"Hey. Kid! Kid!"
The kid jumps and looks at him and Neal stumbles halfhazardly into his space, stealing all the info he can get his hands on. Boy's young, hard to tell in the low light but not white one way or another; hoodie, baggy pants, the kind of person the police must love to pick on. The kind of person who's learned not to trust police. He backs up, which part of Neal finds hysterical in a breathless, terrified way – he's never looked like the police, now less than ever.
"The fuck," the kid says.
"It's all right," Neal says, showing his hands in a jerky sort of motion that makes the kid tense up until he sees that Neal's unarmed. "Just all right," he says again, and thinks fast, and mostly in little disoriented circles.
He doesn't know how to fight. Hopes he can talk his way out of this one. It's a blind grab, which isn't his usual style, but he's not thinking straight; he's not thinking – thinking isn't going to get him out of this; thinking barely gets him from one lucid moment to another.
"Jesus, man," the kid hisses, keeping out of range – out of knifing range, probably; Neal can't follow it that far. "You are messed up."
"Police are looking for someone like you," Neal lies. No preamble. He doesn't know how long he'll be able to hold on to this reality. "Shooting in the construction over on Avenue F, but I can tell you're not carrying; I can help. They've blocked off a couple of these streets, but I can get you out of here. I just need something."
Okay, now the kid looks freaked. The bits of half-truth sell it; there were bullets fired, and the police are out in force. Kid probably knows it. "I don't do drugs, man," he says. "I ain't got nothing to sell you."
On another day, he'd be affronted. Today, it just takes the wind out of him. "I don't need drugs," he says. "I need a phone."
"What?" the kid demands.
"A phone," Neal presses. "I get you out of here, you give me your phone. I'll buy your phone. That's it. Is that okay?"
He can feel it fraying, feel the kid looking for an out, but another police car follows the route of the earlier one and saves him. The kid reaches for his pocket, touching the bulge of a phone there like he's weighing its value.
The value of these things always comes to less than freedom.
"I don't know nothing about no shooting," the kid mutters. "I came out to – you know, I met up with some friends, we had a few drinks – Ally's dad has a shop, man, that's all. We were just having some drinks in the shop and I left. I didn't shoot no one."
"I believe you," Neal says, and cases the alley in a second. If I were running, if I needed to get away... "This way."
He loses a little time, there.
There's rain hammering at a window and he comes back to his mouth forming words like cops on the payroll and know what they'll do, you know, there's always the threat of solitary, and his hands are easing a door open and for a moment he's staring into the long, crowded hold of a U-boat. He wrenches himself back with a choked-off sob and finds himself standing in an auto shop with a feeling that he hasn't made it back all the way. He can see himself darting forward into the darkness like he's not lodged completely in his skull; hear himself talking without choosing what to say, or understanding what he's saying.
Crap, he thinks, and that's not strong enough. Shit. Merde. Putain.
He is completely losing it.
"–always have back exits," he's saying. "The fire escape. You get up that, all of these buildings north of here–"
"Yeah, yeah, my cousin smokes joints up there," the kid says. "They looking for a shooter, they not gonna check up there?"
Neal breaks into hacking laughter.
"Why would they?" he asks, after a moment. "They've got the streets covered."
He's never been a believer in the NYPD's imagination.
"This is some joox shit," the kid mutters, and shoves his phone into Neal's hands. "Fuck, man, just take it; I ain't supposed to have that anyway. I'm gone."
The kid slips out the door and down the alley, and Neal turns over the phone in his hands. The instinct is to grin – celebrate a victory, however partial, however piecemeal – but when he starts to grin he forgets why he was grinning, and the phone is cool and foreign in his hands.
Part of him thinks, no, and part of him yanks his head up at the sound of feet just outside; going, going–
Focus. He pulled off the con. Next step. He's got a phone in his hands.
Phone in his hands and an ache in his skull and he's completely, completely nowhere.
Index Post: [Fic][White Collar] Three Times Neal Ran (and one time he was found) – Index
( )
He stops for breath somewhere where the rushing of the river sounds as expansive as the sea, for all that Neal can't see it past the impersonal buildings. He was heading away from the city, the city with its million-dollar views, the city with its Federal building and late nights and radius. The city where everyone will look for him. Now he's turned around, thinking of heading in.
He can't tell any more if that's a good idea, or just a good way to give up.
It's probably giving up. Or, like Mozzie puts it: to take someone in is to con them or dupe them. You've gotta love the cops and the feds, then, who take you in when they arrest you. It's all a game, win or lose, zero sum, and he's about to throw it.
Oh, well. Too bad, so sad; he's thrown the game once already, for Kate, and look where that got him. The big house, rent-free, for four years, but after that, it worked out okay.
For certain values of "okay".
He remembers running from the police, which suggests he's not heading in toward Manhattan to get that life back. He remembers a flash of dark hair and another person going to ground, and if she's still on this side of the river, he should find her before he vanishes into some kind of Federal judgment day. But he remembers a conversation – can't remember when that conversation happened; a storm was involved, but he doesn't think it was this one – with Mozzie, saying: Find me. Find the Suit. He's pretty sure the Suit here is not an article of clothing.
So either the police thing is wrong – and, wrong or not, Neal's life is generally happier when he doesn't have to deal with the NYPD, and he doesn't think that it's wrong, in any case – or he's got a dilemma on his hands. And not just that he doesn't know where to start on saving anyone.
To wit:
If someone breaks into a store to steal a burner phone, it's the police who get called, not the FBI. If someone stumbles into a gas station looking beat-up and half-dead, it's not an FBI issue. If someone sends up a flare, the FBI doesn't get that on their radar. FBI means rarified trouble, not the sort of thing Neal can get into at a moment's notice, and not the sort of thing that beats out the response time of the local PD.
What's he going to do? Forge a painting? Make it a rush order?
He looks up into the haphazard rain. Between it and the pavement and the pallor of his skin, he could do a credible Goya, he thinks.
He's grinning like an idiot, two beats away from bursting into laughter at his own unfunny joke, when there's no noise at all but it sounds like a car backfiring or a gun going off, and his whole body jerks like he's been hit. He goes down on his hands and knees, almost his hands and knees, fingers splayed just barely above the cold pavement.
It's nothing. It's nothing.
But try telling that to Neal's heart, which is hammering so hard he can feel it in his jaw. Try telling that to his adrenal glands. His body is convinced it's going to die out here, and his brain can't put enough together to keep up.
However he's going to get the FBI onto him, it's going to have to be fast.
(ii)
Neal pays no attention to the voice. Rather, he does; he just doesn't stop for it. He walks faster.
Footsteps behind him pick up, and Neal takes a corner and then a door and then another door and finds himself in a stairwell, every step up feeling like his foot's about to snap off at the ankle. Whoever was behind him is chasing him, but that's not a surprise, is it? He's always being chased.
(Who is it now? FBI? NYPD?)
He pushes open a door at the top of the stairs and spills out into the concourse, and there's Kate, dark and uncompromising, with a hand on his chest. "Neal, stop. You need to run."
"I thought that's what we were doing," Neal says. Kate shakes her head.
"This wasn't what we planned."
"We didn't have time to make plans."
Kate's expression scrunches. This isn't exactly how Neal pictured their reunion, but to be fair, he's never been good at predicting these things. "Are you an idiot?" Kate hisses. "Neal, don't get killed for me. I can make it on my own."
"We need to stick together," Neal says. "We can watch each other's backs–"
"No," Kate says. "No. We split up, we hide our tracks in the river, and if one of us gets out–"
"Collins is here. I can't just leave you–"
"Neal," she says. "You're in a lot more trouble than I am."
That, he wasn't expecting.
"You need to run," Kate says again. "I can handle myself."
Let's say you run from something.
He swallows, but his throat is dry. Sky full of rain clouds, and no moisture here. "What if I can't?"
"Don't." Her voice is suddenly, unexpectedly final. "Remember, you told me you'd teach me how to survive?"
Had he, ever?
A flash of lightning sharpens itself on the planes of her face. Face like a city skyline. Beacons in the dark. "Neal," she says, "I love you. And if I need you to save me, I can't be saved."
He registers the pain of that. "Kate–"
"You can't save everyone." Her hand finds his, twisting down as though if she holds on tight enough, their flesh will switch places, they won't really be alone. "You just have to trust them, sometimes. And you have to save yourself."
I have to save you, is in his head. But he's never been that good at saving anyone.
"You'll slow me down," she says, and he has a feeling she's just saying it; a way to make him go, a way to push away. But what was his plan, really? Limp after her onto a plane, dripping blood and desperation as he went?
His hand curls around hers, clever fingers all. "I'll find you," he promises. "After–"
"Go," she says, and he leaves.
He leaves.
(i)
Breaking into Peter's house isn't hard.
The house has a couple of locks – good, solid ones, but not out of the ordinary for the area. The Burkes have a dog, but the dog is a little too friendly; he wags his tail and noses into Neal's hand like he isn't a stranger at all. And there's no one home. The place is drowned in darkness, the heavy, smoggy sort that clings to places too used to inhabitation and light and life to be left alone like this.
The place is domestic. He's not sure what he expected, but it's still a shock like a dislocation to walk in from the rain and find the kind of home people come back to day after day, fill up with sentimental detritus and casual clutter and the accumulations of lives that aren't pared down to what little can't be left behind and what little more wouldn't be a tragedy to lose. It's too much, for a reason he can't articulate, and he tucks himself down in the space between the couch and the coffeetable, hidden from the windows and not immediately obvious from the door.
This is a stupid idea. Stupid, stupid, stupid, but he's seen the way Adler blew up at Alex, and a sick, heavy pressure in his stomach is telling him that's not the worst Adler can do. And as for Burke, why the hell he's trusting Burke–
It gets muddy, there.
The dog comes around to his side – not the side between him and the door, fortunately – and sprawls out, leaning into Neal's hip. Too friendly by half.
Burke. Kate. Kate he can trust, or he has to believe he can trust, but there are too many questions there. He remembers Kate at the prison, saying I have to go, and somewhere in there, he'd got the sense she was saying You idiot, don't come after me. And he hadn't listened, or maybe he hadn't heard, and he can't put his finger on her saying that at all.
This isn't the way it's supposed to happen.
The dog makes a mournful, agreeing noise, then goes back to his empty dog-grin, and Neal glares down at the top of his fuzzy head. "Yeah, what would you know?" he asks, and his voice sounds out-of-place and wrong. "You don't have these problems."
The dog's a dog. He sleeps on the floor and waits for his people to come home, and he wears a collar and never has to wonder who he can trust or if he's doing the right thing. No one ever chases him, to throw him in prison or destroy him some other way.
No one ever runs from him, either.
Must be nice, Neal thinks, and shifts away from the weight and the warmth. The dog just slides down a little bit more, and puts his chin in Neal's lap. Neal resigns himself to the indignity.
It's dark, made darker by the clouds dripping down on Brooklyn, and Neal can't track time as well as he usually can. It's slippery, like everything. He catches himself looking for the clock on the wall, thinking, Why the hell aren't you here? and It's late; what could possibly be important enough to keep you from home?, thinking What's a con man have to do to get some attention, around here?
Other people and their other, not-broken lives.
He's just beginning to rise, stretch out his legs – one is threatening to cramp, and damn, but he must have lost his edge in prison for that – when the knob on the front door turns, and he freezes in a ready crouch. The door eases open and there's the man himself, briefcase in hand, wearing a wool coat the color of asphalt scattered with rain.
Peter reaches for the light and Neal rushes him; Peter turns and he has Peter against a wall, knuckles twisted in a utilitarian suit shirt. "Listen," he hisses, not entirely voiced; it's dark in the room and he doesn't want to break the silence, much as he has to. "Hear me out."
He's expecting something – recognition, maybe, or rapport – but Peter just doesn't look like he can buy what he's seeing. "What the – Neal Caffrey?"
Oh, goddamnit, Neal thinks. This is wrong. It's all wrong.
"Let go of me," Peter says.
It's a stupid idea, but those are all Neal is having, tonight. He does.
"And step back." Peter waits for him to comply, then smooths down his shirt; Neal can see the outline of a shoulder holster, but Peter seems more annoyed than threatened.
Neal can't even tell if he's feeling threatened. All he can hear is the rain, the rain, the rain.
"Okay," Peter says, and sets the briefcase down. His eyes are narrow, his body language solid like a prison wall. "Help me see how this makes sense. You escape from a maximum-security prison two months before your sentence is up, you run, and then you show up in my house?"
It doesn't make sense; that's the problem. Everything that's made sense is up in flames. Neal lets his head drop forward, his shoulders slump – just a bit, just enough to let the exhaustion roll off him, just enough so he can breathe. "I need your help."
Peter raises an eyebrow, at that. "You turning yourself in?"
"Yes." Maybe. Maybe that will solve this. Or– "–no. I don't know." He walks to the couch and drops into it, and Peter's eyebrows raise another millimeter or so. "Something's wrong, Peter, and you're the only one I can turn to."
Peter chews on that, and Neal drops his head into his hands. Drags his fingers through his hair.
"Someone after you?" Peter asks.
Neal drops his hands, and looks up, again. Lets his eyes track across the wall behind Peter – the shelves, everything just as he remembers it; the pictures on the stairwell behind him. He knows, even without being able to make out the shapes in the dark, what they're of; knows which one will be Peter with that incriminating ring, that old invitation to jump to conclusions. Trip and sprain his ankle, bruise his palms on the way to conclusions. He can't remember what the conclusions were. "Yeah, maybe."
Peter narrows his eyes. "I can protect you."
Neal swallows. "I know." And he thinks, so why don't you?
Peter's staring at him, and Neal can guess why: none of this makes a damn bit of sense to him, and he's been chasing Neal for too many years to have that many surprises coming out of left field. He doesn't get that it's not chasing him that makes it make sense, it's what happens after Neal's not running any more. "I'm going to take you in."
"To the FBI." Neal starts nodding. "Right." Pis aller; when there are no options left, that's where he has to end up.
Peter reaches for his cuffs. They glint in the street light filtering through the curtains, and Neal jumps up like a gun's gone off. Peter stops moving, like he's dealing with an animal he doesn't want to startle.
"No cuffs," Neal says. His mouth is engine-dry; his tongue feels asphalt-rough.
He trusts Peter. He trusts Peter to cuff him and bring him in. But in the dark room, in the unreal light, he doesn't trust the cuffs, those specific cuffs, the cuffs in Peter's hands.
"Caffrey," Peter begins.
"Peter," he says. "I swear to you, I'm not resisting arrest. But if you put those on me, I'm dead. I'm dead."
"Why?" Peter asks, and the cuffs don't leave his hand.
"I don't know," Neal says, "but you have to trust me."
Peter raises the cuffs as though to make a point. "You're a convicted felon and a fleeing, escaped prisoner. Tell me why I have to trust you."
"I'm standing in your livingroom," Neal pleads. "I'm not fleeing."
None of this is right.
He needs to talk to Mozzie.
He hasn't talked to Mozzie in years. Since the day he got caught, when Mozzie warned him away from Kate. Mozzie has a good instinct for a trap. Mozzie would probably not approve of him turning himself in.
Unless he would, and it feels like he would, which makes no sense because Peter is FBI, and to people in Neal's world, the FBI are dangerous; so, Peter here is a dangerous man, and Neal here is the criminal who's broken into his private residence. But that's here, and Neal feels like he should be somewhere else, some different situation. Like he's dreaming all of this, and the noise outside the house, and all the reasons it seemed like the right thing to do.
He raises both hands, slowly, to chest-height, a stop gesture, a gesture saying hold on – just hold on. Peter's attention shifts. The cuffs go back to his belt, he shows both hands – not going to hurt you – and takes a step forward.
"Let me see your wrists."
Neal doesn't move. His sleeves have pulled back on his forearms, and Peter reaches out and takes his arms by the unbroken skin just above the wrist.
"Someone's already cuffed you," he says.
Neal looks down. There are two rings of skin scraped raw on his wrists, and he feels like that was something he should have noticed before now.
Like the sirens. He should have noticed when they were blocks away, not when they were here. Police sirens, outside the window. A silhouette. Neal's looking down at his wrists, not out the window, but he can see it all the same; recognize the stance and the stature and the lines of the suit and the hair and the jaw, and Peter steps up to see what's going on, and Neal lashes out blind. His elbow catches the window behind the couch, and at that touch it explodes into a shower of glass; Peter ducks, the night rushes in, and–
( )
The sirens are a block and a half away and the glass is on the other side of the street, some lanky kid – drunk or angry or something – with a beer bottle in hand, and another shattered against a corrugated-steel door, constellations of streetlights and neon Closed signs that shatter on the debris. One other piece of life out here – New York City is the City that Never Sleeps, but all the way out here, on a night like this, it's huddled up somewhere. Neal shrinks back into the shadow of one of the auto shops, then curses himself and then finds his breath falling over itself in the back of his throat. His chest hurts and he can't breathe, and when he goes to his knees and pushes his palm into the wet concrete his gasping breaths sound way too close to someone losing control.
The second bottle smashes into the pavement and Neal pulls himself together as much as he can, though there are still sharp edges poking through his suit and grinding against each other. He stands, and lurches toward the only other human presence in his immediate world.
"Hey. Kid! Kid!"
The kid jumps and looks at him and Neal stumbles halfhazardly into his space, stealing all the info he can get his hands on. Boy's young, hard to tell in the low light but not white one way or another; hoodie, baggy pants, the kind of person the police must love to pick on. The kind of person who's learned not to trust police. He backs up, which part of Neal finds hysterical in a breathless, terrified way – he's never looked like the police, now less than ever.
"The fuck," the kid says.
"It's all right," Neal says, showing his hands in a jerky sort of motion that makes the kid tense up until he sees that Neal's unarmed. "Just all right," he says again, and thinks fast, and mostly in little disoriented circles.
He doesn't know how to fight. Hopes he can talk his way out of this one. It's a blind grab, which isn't his usual style, but he's not thinking straight; he's not thinking – thinking isn't going to get him out of this; thinking barely gets him from one lucid moment to another.
"Jesus, man," the kid hisses, keeping out of range – out of knifing range, probably; Neal can't follow it that far. "You are messed up."
"Police are looking for someone like you," Neal lies. No preamble. He doesn't know how long he'll be able to hold on to this reality. "Shooting in the construction over on Avenue F, but I can tell you're not carrying; I can help. They've blocked off a couple of these streets, but I can get you out of here. I just need something."
Okay, now the kid looks freaked. The bits of half-truth sell it; there were bullets fired, and the police are out in force. Kid probably knows it. "I don't do drugs, man," he says. "I ain't got nothing to sell you."
On another day, he'd be affronted. Today, it just takes the wind out of him. "I don't need drugs," he says. "I need a phone."
"What?" the kid demands.
"A phone," Neal presses. "I get you out of here, you give me your phone. I'll buy your phone. That's it. Is that okay?"
He can feel it fraying, feel the kid looking for an out, but another police car follows the route of the earlier one and saves him. The kid reaches for his pocket, touching the bulge of a phone there like he's weighing its value.
The value of these things always comes to less than freedom.
"I don't know nothing about no shooting," the kid mutters. "I came out to – you know, I met up with some friends, we had a few drinks – Ally's dad has a shop, man, that's all. We were just having some drinks in the shop and I left. I didn't shoot no one."
"I believe you," Neal says, and cases the alley in a second. If I were running, if I needed to get away... "This way."
He loses a little time, there.
There's rain hammering at a window and he comes back to his mouth forming words like cops on the payroll and know what they'll do, you know, there's always the threat of solitary, and his hands are easing a door open and for a moment he's staring into the long, crowded hold of a U-boat. He wrenches himself back with a choked-off sob and finds himself standing in an auto shop with a feeling that he hasn't made it back all the way. He can see himself darting forward into the darkness like he's not lodged completely in his skull; hear himself talking without choosing what to say, or understanding what he's saying.
Crap, he thinks, and that's not strong enough. Shit. Merde. Putain.
He is completely losing it.
"–always have back exits," he's saying. "The fire escape. You get up that, all of these buildings north of here–"
"Yeah, yeah, my cousin smokes joints up there," the kid says. "They looking for a shooter, they not gonna check up there?"
Neal breaks into hacking laughter.
"Why would they?" he asks, after a moment. "They've got the streets covered."
He's never been a believer in the NYPD's imagination.
"This is some joox shit," the kid mutters, and shoves his phone into Neal's hands. "Fuck, man, just take it; I ain't supposed to have that anyway. I'm gone."
The kid slips out the door and down the alley, and Neal turns over the phone in his hands. The instinct is to grin – celebrate a victory, however partial, however piecemeal – but when he starts to grin he forgets why he was grinning, and the phone is cool and foreign in his hands.
Part of him thinks, no, and part of him yanks his head up at the sound of feet just outside; going, going–
Focus. He pulled off the con. Next step. He's got a phone in his hands.
Phone in his hands and an ache in his skull and he's completely, completely nowhere.