Sentinel!Neal 15
Okay, I figured out how to get to the next bit! Now I have to figure out what happens between now and when Elizabeth comes out for her visit at the end of next week.
Remind me, is there anything I've suggested or hinted was going to happen in Cascade that hasn't happened yet? Anything people have been hoping to see?
Sandburg, closing his phone, peeked inside the curtained area where Neal and Peter were sitting on a gurney. “Coast Guard caught the boat. All three men are in custody, and about half the artifacts were recovered with them.”
Neal nodded dully. “Great.”
The paramedics had agreed to let Neal and Ellison be checked out by the Clinic, rather than the ER, after Sandburg argued that neither was really injured, and the ER was the last place anybody would want to take a Sentinel who wasn’t in immediate need of lifesaving care. The Clinic had provided them with dry clothes and warmed blankets, and pronounced both Sentinels essentially fine, but none of them had left yet.
“Divers are just getting started,” Sandburg continued.
“No hurry. The artifacts should be fine,” Neal said. “Gold doesn’t rust.”
“Yeah,” Sandburg said gently. “We’re not real worried about that.”
“I can give you-or whoever-her parents’ address. Somebody should probably tell them.”
“The Bureau’ll do that,” Peter said. There probably wouldn’t be much trouble getting the body released for burial, once they found it-there wasn’t any doubt about how she had died.
“Do you need anything?” Sandburg asked.
Neal shook his head. “No. Thanks.”
Peter rubbed his shoulder. “We’re supposed to be having a therapy session right about now,” he said. “Do you want to….”
“Can we skip that today? Please?”
“Yeah. If that’s what you want. It might help to…talk.” Not only was Kate dead, but from what Peter had managed to overhear, she had said some pretty harsh things before drowning herself.
“I don’t want to.”
Well, forcing him to definitely wouldn’t help. “Okay.”
Within a few minutes, they were cleared to leave. Neal didn’t seem to care about his waterlogged suit but Peter, thinking he might care when things settled down a little, arranged to have it taken to a dry-cleaner by one of the ubiquitous student workers. Neal also didn’t comment on the powder-blue scrubs he was wearing-an improvement over prison uniforms only in color-or when Peter put his suit jacket over his shoulders for the walk back to the cottage.
Once there, Neal roamed around restlessly for a few minutes, then announced he was taking a shower. Peter, at a little bit of a loss himself, called Elizabeth.
“Oh, sweetie,” she said, when Peter told her what had happened. “How’s he taking it?”
“I don’t know. He’s…quiet.” If Neal had been anyone else, Peter would probably have poured whiskey into him until he cried, but Neal didn’t seem like the type, somehow.
“Maybe I should talk to him,” Elizabeth said.
“Yeah, maybe.” He knew Neal and El had talked a few times since they’d been in Cascade. Maybe she’d be easier for him to talk to than Peter. “He’s taking a shower right now.”
“I’ll call back in a little while,” she decided. “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”
“The first act was pretty good, actually.” He told her about how well Neal had done with the search. “Of course, he probably wishes he hadn’t.” If she hadn’t stopped to talk to Neal, Kate would have been on the boat. If anyone else had been searching that area, she might have still been caught, but she wouldn’t have drowned.
Maybe Neal wouldn’t think of that.
After hanging up, Peter went over to the kitchenette to see what they could have for dinner. He doubted Neal would have much appetite, but they’d skipped lunch, so he should at least try to eat.
Neal, finished with his shower, padded out in his white bathrobe, which, with his grave expression and forlorn posture, now looked more ‘hospital patient’ than ‘playboy.’ “Hey,” he said.
“Hey. You hungry?”
Neal smiled faintly. “Not really.”
“Didn’t think so. Tomato soup and grilled cheese?” That was Peter’s idea of comfort food; he really had no idea what Neal’s was.
Neal sighed. “Yeah, okay.”
The phone rang as Peter was getting out the bread and cheese. “That’s probably for you.”
Cautiously, Neal answered it. “Hello? Oh, hi, Elizabeth. Yeah. Thanks.”
He went into his bedroom, leaving the door slightly ajar. Not knowing what else to do, Peter kept fixing dinner. The soup was Campbell’s, just like mom made, but the grilled cheese sandwiches were English cheddar on sourdough. Peter managed to get them crisply golden-fairly appetizing, maybe even enough to tempt someone who was having the mother of all bad days. He could hope, at least.
After turning them onto plates and cutting each one in half, Peter went and peeked in Neal’s room. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, the phone in one hand, covering his face with the other.
Peter tiptoed away. It was probably better that way, than the whiskey. The sandwiches could wait.
#
The next day, they stayed close to home, Peter working on FBI paperwork on his laptop in the cottage living room. Neal supposed he was probably supposed to write a report, too, but Peter didn’t tell him he had to, and he certainly didn’t want to.
He felt…hollow. Empty, like Kate’s dying had taken something out of him that he hadn’t known was there. He had always bounced back quickly, even from some pretty horrible things. Kate leaving him. Being sent to prison. The abject failure of the long con that had brought him and Kate together. Other things, before that. He was lucky that way-thinking, ‘Okay, so that happened. Now what?’ was easy for him, just like getting people to give him things he wanted was easy.
But now…there was no next thing. Kate was gone, and, if half of what she’d said just before she died was true, the Kate he loved had never really existed anyway.
Last night, Elizabeth had told him that he had a right to grieve, both for what he’d lost and for what he’d never really had. He supposed she was right. Hearing it had helped, anyway. But if Kate was still his girlfriend-still his Guide-still the love of his life, there would be a next thing. There would be the funeral arrangements to make. People to notify. Memorials to plan. A shattered life to put back together around the empty place where she had been.
But now…the funeral was somebody else’s job. How, or whether, she should be memorialized wasn’t his to decide. And his life…was exactly the way it had been yesterday morning. There was nothing of hers here, or even in his apartment in New York, that would have to be packed away or decided about. He still had his job, and Peter. His Guide and partner-in-crime…solving. He felt as though he ought to be looking at a smoking crater, but really, Kate’s death left barely a ripple in the water.
In truth, he wasn’t sure if he was really grieving, or only surprised into numbness by the fact that he wasn’t.
Peter’s phone rang. “Burke…who is this? No, I don’t-he said what? Okay. Neal?”
“What?”
He held out the phone. “For you.”
“Who is it?” He couldn’t imagine who would be calling him on Peter’s phone, unless it was Elizabeth again, and Peter sounded different when he was talking to her.
“Somebody who said, ‘As if you don’t know, J. Edgar Hoover,’ when I asked.”
Oh. Moz. He took the phone. “Hey.”
“Neal! Are you okay? What’s going on out there? Why are you calling me from J. Edgar Hoover’s phone, and what the hell does, ‘Kate’s dead and I need a new phone’ mean?”
Right; Neal had forgotten that last night, after talking to Elizabeth, he’d left a message for Moz. “It means that Kate’s dead, and I need a new phone. And I called you from Peter’s phone because mine doesn’t work anymore.”
On Moz’s end of the phone, he heard tape being torn off a roll. “Right; I’m sending you one. And I guess I need a new phone, too, now that this one’s contaminated.”
“Oh, yeah, you do. I meant to tell you. Peter traced this number. Yesterday, I think. Unless it was the day before. I don’t remember.”
“Why did your Suit trace-never mind. What happened to Kate?”
“He had to find out if you were here robbing the museum with Kate.”
“Kate robbed the-did the animals get her? Or the Sentinel? Tell me your Suit didn’t shoot her.”
“No. She drowned.” Neal explained about the robbery, about tracking her through Cascade, about Adler, and how he had run as soon as he realized the police were on their heels. How Kate had jumped into the water to swim out to the boat. “With a backpack full of gold, she never had a chance. I jumped in after her, but it was too late. That’s what happened to my phone,” he added. “I didn’t have time to take my jacket off.” He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened to his suit. He’d found his waterlogged wallet, ruined phone, and Sophie’s third-favorite racecar in a ziplock bag on the kitchen table. Peter must have done something with it.
“Jesus. Are you okay?”
That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? “I guess.”
“Is there anything I can do? Besides the phone.”
“No. There isn’t anything I can do, either.”
“No,” Moz said. “I guess not.” He sounded sad. “I’ll overnight your new phone out. Call me if you need anything…use the Suit’s phone if you have to.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
He hung up and gave the phone back to Peter.
“Thanks,” Peter said. “Just so I know, did you use my phone to leave alarming messages for anyone else?”
“No.” Who else could he have called? June, maybe, but she had never known Kate.
“It’s fine if you want to borrow my phone. I just wondered if I should expect to hear from any more of your friends.”
“No,” Neal said again.
“Okay. Are you doing all right? I should do this stuff soon,” Peter said, gesturing at the laptop, “but it doesn’t have to be right now, if you need anything.”
“I’m okay,” Neal said.
Hours passed. They went to the Clinic. They started out with Tim, as usual. Peter quickly filled him in on what had happened yesterday.
“He--” Peter looked over at him. “He did really well, with the search. I don’t know if I should say that, considering.”
“Well, let’s talk about that,” Tim said. “How do you feel about that, Neal?”
He shrugged.
“Do you feel…guilty, for leading the police to your-to Kate?”
“No.” He hadn’t told her to jump into the goddamn ocean with a bag full of gold. He hadn’t tried to run away without her, like Adler had. He never would have. “I told her to turn herself in. She could have done that.”
“You tried to save her,” Tim said.
“Yeah, well, who wouldn’t have?”
“The other Sentinel who was with her, for one,” Tim pointed out.
“Adler always was a bastard.” He turned to Peter. “You know who he is?” He hadn’t thought to tell Peter about that.
“I got his file from the Bureau,” Peter said. “He’s wanted for a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme a few years back.”
“Yeah, that’s him. Everybody who worked for him was plowing every cent they could spare back into the company, until he walked off with it.” Neal had stolen a lot of money, too, but not from people who worked for him. That was probably not a distinction Peter would appreciate.
“Wait-he was the ‘Sentinel businessman’ she was working for when you met?” Peter asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s why she said….” Peter didn’t repeat what she had said.
“Yeah. I was trying to con him, turned out he conned me first. He got all the money, but I got Kate. I thought I came out ahead.”
#
As their counseling session progressed, Neal seemed to wake up a little, coming out of the vague cloud he’d been walking around in since yesterday afternoon. He didn’t, however, talk about yesterday afternoon-he talked about Kate, about the past, but not about her death. Peter thought it might be the challenge of seeming to answer Tim’s questions while deftly steering the conversation away from that topic that made him seem more animated.
The session was cut a bit short, because Neal’s appointment with the Sentinel Medicine Ophthalmologist, scheduled back when they’d first come to the Clinic, was set for that day. Peter wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not, but the ophthalmologist, Dr. Temas, was only in the Clinic one day a week, so it would be difficult to reschedule.
The doctor began with a normal eye exam, with some Sentinel adjustments. He had Neal look at an eye chart, first with both eyes, then with one at a time, then through a series of lenses. “Everything looks good so far,” he said when that was finished. “You have 20/20 vision-you’d be surprised how many Sentinels don’t.” Perching on a high stool, he took out a clipboard. “Now, about these visual distortions….”
Temas asked an extensive series of questions, starting with the visual distortions that Michelle, back at their intake appointment, had said were normal. He nodded at Neal’s answers to these, saying, “Good, good. That’s normal,” and things like that.
When he got to the “Cubist one,” he grew more thoughtful, listening intently to Neal’s answers. “Okay. There’s a few things we have to rule out, but I think I know what that one is. And…Dali. Clocks, or elephants?”
Neal blinked. “Both,” he said. He wasn’t expecting the question, Peter thought, but he appeared to understand what it meant.
“Really? Gosh.” Temas wrote several things on his clipboard.
“Is that bad?” Peter asked.
“No, no, it’s just…they’re both pretty unusual problems. And completely unrelated. Hm.”
Temas had Neal look at more eye charts, these consisting of sets of lines arranged in spoke-like patterns, asking him if any of them appeared darker than the others, or thicker, or curved. They all looked pretty much identical to Peter, but Neal often found some darker or thicker. Not curved, though, which had Temas saying, “Oh, good. That would have been weird.”
“It’s not weird yet?” Neal asked, sounding almost amused.
“Oh, well, you have two rare conditions-minor ones-and one moderately unusual one. Four would just be showing off, wouldn’t it?” Temas turned off the light behind the eye charts and sat down again. “The cubist effect is neurological. Do you know what ‘saccades’ are?”
“I don’t,” Peter volunteered.
“Well, your eyes are never actually still-they make tiny movements, many times a second. Those are saccades. What you think is your visual field is actually a composite that your brain makes up of everything you’ve been looking at in the last second or so.” He paused. “That’s an oversimplification, but it’s close enough. The normal human brain is very, very good at making these composites-so good you never notice it’s doing it. The Sentinel brain is even better, but sometimes, especially if you’re having visual spikes, your brain can’t keep up with all the input and produce a picture that makes sense. It’s mostly seen in untrained Sentinels, and generally goes away-or at least becomes very, very infrequent-once you develop good control over your vision.”
“I haven’t had it happen since we’ve been here,” Neal offered.
“Good. I wouldn’t worry about that one, then. Now, the distortion in the apparent thickness of lines is one of the ways an untreated astigmatism manifests in Sentinels. Yours is in your left eye, and it’s untreated because it’s so tiny that if you weren’t a Sentinel, you’d never know you had it. You’re only noticing it now because you’ve been having so many visual spikes, and it combines with the perspective distortions to make linear objects seem longer or shorter than they should be. So that accounts for the elephants.”
“Oh, okay,” Neal said, nodding.
Temas continued, “If you start doing any kind of detailed visual work at long distances, you should get corrective lenses. Glasses, probably; it would be annoying to take contacts in and out all the time. I’d have to do more tests to figure out the prescription, and then we have them made by a company that does custom microscope optics. But if you aren’t doing the kind of work where you need them, you might not want to bother.” He shrugged. “Now that brings us to the metamorphopsia-that’s the technical term for the effect where straight lines seem curved or wavy.”
“What causes that?” Peter asked.
“Lots of things. The most common is macular degeneration, which is definitely not the case here. Most likely, it’s either a side effect of migraine-you’ve had a lot of problems with nausea, right?”
Neal nodded. “I haven’t had headaches, though. Not really bad ones, anyway.”
“Not everyone does, with migraine, and for some reason migraine without the classic headache is more common in Sentinels. If it’s not that, then most likely it’s idiopathic, which is Latin for ‘Shit happens.’ Sometimes Sentinels just get odd sensory distortions for no reason anyone can figure out. But there is one serious possibility that we have to rule out, and that’s a structural deformity of the eye that can lead to retinal detachment.”
“That does not sound good,” Peter said.
“No, it’s not. And it’s very unlikely-if that was the case, I’d expect to see more problems with visual acuity. But to make sure, we’re going to have to dilate your pupils so I can get a good look at your retinas.” Temas looked at Neal, evidently anticipating some kind of a reaction. Neal shrugged.
“Have you ever had that done?” Temas asked.
“Not that I know of.”
“You’d probably remember, if you had. We put some drops in your eye so your pupil can’t contract, and then I look into it with a really bright light. The drops take a few hours to wear off. Most people don’t like it much, and a lot of Sentinels absolutely hate it. But if you do actually have a problem with your retinas, they could detach without any further warning signs.”
Now Neal did look alarmed. “I definitely don’t want that,” he said with a slight shudder.
Temas nodded. “Like I said, I don’t think that’s what’s causing your metamorphopsia-I’m betting on migraine. But since it is such a serious possibility, we really have to do the test, just in case.”
“If that is it, do I just wait to go blind, or is there something you can do about it?” Neal asked.
“It can usually be corrected surgically,” Temas answered. “Most likely, fifteen minutes from now you’ll know it’s something you don’t have to worry about, but if there is a problem, we’ll be able to get you surgery before the problem gets any worse, which is a lot better than waiting until the final stage.”
Neal nodded. “And if it is migraine, what then?”
“Then it’s most likely that you’ll stop having them when you have your senses under control. If not, we’ll refer you to a neurologist.”
“Okay,” Neal said.
“Ready for the test?”
Neal nodded.
“Okay. Just let me find my Guide.”
Huh. Temas was a Sentinel? Neal didn’t seem surprised; everyone but Peter seemed to just know these things, somehow. He looked over at Neal, who shrugged. “Doing okay?”
“Yeah,” Neal said.
“Good.”
Temas returned with another man, apparently his Guide, dimming the lights as he came in. “Peter, right there,” he said, pointing to a spot next to the examination chair where Neal sat. “You’ll want to link with him for this.”
Peter took his assigned position and offered his wrist to Neal. Neal clasped it, and he made the link.
“When I put the drops in, don’t rub your eyes, and try not to blink for as long as you can,” Temas said. “They don’t sting or anything, but it feels kind of weird.”
“Okay,” Neal said, sounding like he was humoring him.
“Tilt your head this way.” Temas dripped four drops of bright-yellow fluid into Neal’s eye.
“Oh, shit, that is weird,” Neal said.
“I told you. Okay, you can blink now.” He gave Neal a tissue to blot away the excess fluid. “All right, other one.” Neal tilted his head the other way, and Temas repeated the process. “I’m going to take a quick look at your corneas while we wait for those to take effect. This part usually isn’t too bad, but it can be a little bright. You’ll want to dial sight down.”
While Peter talked Neal through that, Temas rolled a lamp on a stand over in front of Neal, and bent his head. “Kas?”
Kas settled one hand on the back of Temas’s neck. Hadn’t Ketner said nobody did that anymore?
“Ready?” Temas asked.
“Me?” Neal said. “Yes.”
“Good, so am I.” Temas turned on the lamp, shining a thin beam of light into Neal’s left eye. Neal squinted. “Keep your eye open, please.”
“Sorry.”
“Okay…there’s the astigmatism…lens is clear, nice corneas... everything looks good so far on this side. Let’s see your other eye.”
“He’s showing off,” Temas’s Guide said in a whisper that was clearly meant to be overheard. “He wouldn’t be able to see that astigmatism if he wasn’t a Sentinel.”
Temas shrugged. “And the other eye looks good, too.” He turned off the lamp and pushed it aside. “Now, this is the bad part.” He took another, smaller light out of his lab coat pocket. “I’m going to have to shine this light in each eye for about a minute and a half. If you need a break, I can stop, but it takes longer that way.”
“Okay,” Neal said. His hand tightened on Peter’s wrist. Peter shifted his grip so that Neal could feel his pulse; according to Dr. Desai, that helped with pain. He didn’t know about brightness, but it couldn’t hurt.
Temas bent in close to examine Neal’s left eye, his Guide following. Peter could feel Neal trying not to flinch away from the light, and patted his shoulder with his free hand. “You’re doing okay.”
Finally, Temas straightened up. “Okay, that one looks fine.”
“Good,” Neal said. He was breathing hard, reminding Peter forcibly of yesterday, when he’d been gasping for breath while treading water.
“Ready for the other one?”
“Yeah, let’s get it over with,” Neal said.
After another agonizing minute and a half, Temas pronounced the second eye fine, too. “So we did all that for nothing,” he said. “That’s usually how it is.”
“Yeah, I understand,” Neal said. He raised his hand to his face, then hesitated. “Can I rub my eyes now?”
“Yes,” Temas said.
Neal did so.
Temas bustled around putting away his instruments for a moment, then handed Neal a pair of chea, blocky sunglasses from a drawer full of them. “Here, you’ll need these.”
Neal examined them blearily. “You’re trying to torture me, aren’t you?”
“You’ll be glad you have them when you go outside,” Temas predicted. “Or, out in the hallway, actually.”
Neal looked highly dubious, but once they left the examination room, he quickly put the ugly sunglasses on, mumbling something about how at least he didn’t have to look at them. “Whatever ‘bodywork’ is,” he said, referring to their last appointment of the day, “I hope it can happen in the dark.”
As it turned out, it could.
#
The first part of “bodywork” turned out to be relaxation exercises. Neal thought they were fairly silly-instead of the straightforward meditation Suzanne had had them do two days before, the bodywork practitioner, Selena, preferred asking them to imagine they were floating on clouds, being immersed in a fluid of the soothing color of their choice (Peter’s was orange, possibly the least soothing color Neal could think of), and other inane things of that sort. Still, after the frankly harrowing end to the eye exam, Neal supposed clouds weren’t so bad. And when he’d asked, Selena had turned the already-dim overhead lights off entirely, leaving the room lit only by a few natural beeswax candles.
After the relaxation exercises came some very gentle stretching. That, too, was not so bad, Neal thought, although he could have done without Selena’s excessively chirpy narration, where she exhorted them to do things like, “Reach up, up, like you’re trying to touch the sun,” and “Reach down, to tickle the cool grass of Mother Earth.”
When they got to the last part of the lesson, though, Neal began to feel positively nostalgic for tickling Mother Earth, because the third part was Selena teaching them to give each other massages, while burbling enthusiastically about the benefits of “soothing, non-sexual touch.” Maybe lounging around on pillows rubbing his…rubbing Peter’s back wasn’t inherently sexy, but constantly talking about how it wasn’t sexy seemed like protesting too much.
“Try using longer, firmer strokes,” Selena urged. “Imagine that you’re kneading bread…push out…stroke back…”
Honestly, it was like being taught to masturbate by a kindergarten teacher.
Fortunately, when Neal finished with Peter’s massage, Selena realized that there wasn’t enough time for them to switch places. Rather than subject Neal to massagus interruptus, she suggested instead that Peter, “Try out what you’ve learned at home. Many Sentinels find it easier to relax in their own environment, anyway.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Peter said.
Neal was sure she was right, too. As far as his dick was concerned, the presence of a neutral third party was the only thing that distinguished this from foreplay. He’d definitely be more relaxed back at the cottage.
“Great! When we meet again on Monday, we can talk about how it went.”
Even better. There was very little chance that Peter would skip out on a homework assignment if he knew there was going to be a test.
Peter put his jacket back on-Selena had insisted he take it off for the massage-and held out Neal’s hideous sunglasses that made him look like a bug. Neal put them on-it wouldn’t be dark outside yet, and looking like a bug beat the alternative.
It occurred to Neal, as they walked back to the cottage, that squinting behind his sunglasses against the late-afternoon sun was nowhere near as bad as what, less than two weeks ago, he would have considered a normal Friday afternoon. He and Peter had made a lot of progress since coming here.
Neal wondered, sometimes, if it would last, once they went back to New York. But he wouldn’t think about that right now. Just like he wasn’t thinking about…the other thing he wasn’t thinking about. Neither the eye doctor nor Selena had known about it, and after over two hours of no one mentioning it, Peter seemed to have forgotten to be careful around him, to treat him like he was damaged.
He probably hadn’t really forgotten. Neal certainly hadn’t. But it was easier, now, to find that “What’s next?” place, as long as he didn’t look too far ahead. The question of who he was, if not Kate’s lover, could be pushed aside, like the question of what would happen between him and Peter when they went home. When Peter went home, and Neal went back to his apartment at June’s. What was next now was dinner, and if he didn’t give it some thought, Peter would.
He put together a simple pasta dish, with a white wine and cream sauce, washed down with perhaps a little more of the wine than was strictly wise. If he wasn’t planning to keep drinking to the point of insensibility-which he wasn’t; he’d learned a long time ago that there was no situation that couldn’t be made worse by drunkenness-he should have stopped about a glass earlier.
That might have been why-or in any case, he told himself it was why-when Peter suggested it might be a good time to try that backrub, Neal stretched and said lazily, “Yeah, okay,” rather than marshalling any of the convenient and partially-true reasons why that might not be a good idea. It was also, he told himself, the reason why, when Peter suggested that a three-piece suit might not be the ideal outfit for this activity, he changed into a pair of pyjama bottoms, and the reason that he didn’t argue for a less relaxing venue when Peter led him toward his bedroom.
He stretched out on the bed (Peter’s bed) on his stomach. Peter sat beside him, saying, “All right, I’ll…I’ll start here, okay?” He settled his hands on Neal’s shoulders.
If Peter proved to be really bad at this, maybe the potential for staggering humiliation-or worse-was less than Neal thought. “Okay.”
At first, he thought he might be safe. Peter’s fingers dug into his trapezius muscles like he thought he was clawing through sand. But after Neal winced a couple of times, Peter said, “Sorry,” and eased up considerably. “Too hard? El always…we took this couples massage class our therapist recommended.”
“That’s funny,” Neal observed. Apparently it wasn’t just the Clinic therapists who thought Peter needed expert instruction in touching people.
“I’m glad it amuses you.”
There was probably something seriously wrong with him, Neal thought, that Peter taking that familiar, pissy tone while rubbing his shoulders was so goddamned hot.
Peter had probably brought it up in the first place to remind him that this wasn’t supposed to be hot, couldn’t be hot, because Peter was married. To Elizabeth, who Neal liked. She was smart and funny and clearly loved Peter while simultaneously thinking he could be a colossal idiot from time to time, which was a position Neal had a lot of sympathy for.
And it was very different from how Neal had felt about Kate, who he had idealized beyond reason, in the face of what he should have realized was mounting evidence to the contrary. She had switched her allegiance from Adler to him before Adler’s betrayal, without a second thought and with no more reason than that Neal seemed more fun. How was it a surprise that she had done the same again, in reverse, when it was Neal who proved to be less fun than she wanted?
Peter wasn’t in this for fun. He wasn’t only in it for duty, either, although that was part of it. The fact that Neal needed him mattered to Peter, in a way it hadn’t to Kate. He wouldn’t have left Neal alone, in prison, even if he hated him. No, if Peter hated him, he’d have fixed Neal up with another Guide, made sure he was all right. And he hadn’t done that, because he didn’t hate him. Peter, in fact, liked him kind of a lot.
Which was why he had not only allowed, but positively encouraged, Neal to lie half-naked on his bed getting a backrub that he was enjoying way more than he probably should. Peter had very nice hands.
“You awake?” Peter asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re very quiet.”
“’m supposed to be relaxing,” Neal reminded him. “You want me to sing?” He could, he supposed.
“Not particularly.”
“’kay.”
Peter’s hands left his shoulders, his thumbs pressing down alongside either side of Neal’s spine, fingers stroking the latissimus dorsi. Neal let out a happy little whimper.
Peter paused. “Is that a good sound?”
“Yes. Good. Very good.”
Continuing, Peter shifted himself up onto his knees to get better leverage. He didn’t quite go so far as to straddle Neal’s hips, but the half-second or so where Neal thought he might was enough to take him from comfortably and sleepily aroused to rock-hard. If this went on much longer, he was going to have a hard time stopping himself from rubbing against the mattress.
Just before the temptation to do so became unbearable, Peter sat back, taking his hands off Neal. “Okay. I think that’s enough-you good?”
“Yeah,” Neal said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Good. That was…really nice.”
“Good.” The mattress bounced slightly as Peter stood up. “I’m just going to…you stay there and relax for as long as you want to.”
It was a damn good thing Peter wasn’t sending him off to “relax” in his own bed-the damn pyjama pants wouldn’t hide a thing, once he was no longer lying on his front. “Okay,” he said as Peter left, shutting the door behind him.
Neal gave himself a few minutes to wallow before turning his mind to how he was going to deal with this situation. He was not going to jerk off in Peter’s bed. That would be wrong, and anyway, Peter was almost certain to find out about it if he did.
There were a few things he was carefully not-thinking about that, if he thought about them, would take care of the situation once and for all. But this was-sadly-the closest he’d come to getting laid in over four years. And it wasn’t like him getting off on it would do Peter any harm, particularly if he never knew it happened. So he really just had to settle himself down enough that he could make it to another room without tripping over his dick-the bathroom, for preference; he could turn on the shower to be sure of not being overheard.
Searching for a subject that was anerotic without being traumatizing, Neal settled on the motel. Not the Best Western-imagine how much more awkward this would be if they were still staying there!-but the motel in Manhattan. With the disgusting bedspreads and the flies and the pervasive smell of pee, which Neal was still not entirely certain was solely the fault of the establishment’s one canine resident.
Maybe, if Peter had liked him then, he would have taken Neal home with him, rather than leave him in that awful place. No, better not think about that-if he thought about it realistically, he’d only have to realize how depressingly unlikely it was, and in the other direction lay only pornographic fantasy, which wouldn’t help the current problem. Motel, right. What color had that horrible linoleum been?
After calling to mind more putrid details of the motel than he cared to count, Neal finally felt able to stand up without embarrassing himself. He did duck quickly into his own bedroom, next door to Peter’s, to grab his robe, just in case the additional camouflage became necessary for the longer trip to the bathroom.
That turned out to be a good idea. As he crossed the living room, Peter, who was perched on the edge of a couch cushion reading a magazine, glanced up and said, “What’s up?”
Neal pointed toward the bathroom. “There aren’t really that many possibilities-do you want details?”
“Not particularly.”
“Good.” Neal managed not to scurry the rest of the way to the bathroom, nor to slam the door behind him.
One side-effect of the lessons he’d been getting in scent-work was that Neal was much more aware of scent now, even when he wasn’t actively using his senses. A week ago, he might not have noticed anything at all. Now, though, the smell of sex-sex and Peter, Peter’s arousal-was as obvious as if the walls had suddenly been painted red.
Entering the room, Neal automatically flipped on the light, but quickly realized his mistake when 100 watts hit his unprotected eyeballs. He turned them off again, closing his eyes for good measure.
The scent was even more pronounced, that way. Absolutely impossible to miss, and so, so, hot. Neal could even identify the washcloth-carefully rinsed, but not carefully enough-Peter had used to clean up after himself. The thought of using it-using the same cloth Peter had used-to jerk himself off was…wrong, but irresistible. He barely managed to remember to turn on the shower before picking it up.
In the back of his mind, Neal knew that Peter hadn’t been turned on for the same reason he was. Not because he was attracted to Neal, or because nobody else touched him. It was, at best, a simple physiological response to the presence of an aroused Sentinel. Even more likely, Peter could have been thinking about his wife, about that couples massage class. That was probably it.
Most of his mind didn’t care about that, though, and his cock didn’t care at all. He started stroking himself, quickly settling into a rhythm. Surrounded by the scent of his Guide’s arousal and release, he couldn’t last long, and bit his lip to keep from crying out as he came. Suddenly weak in the knees, he slumped gracelessly to the tiled floor.
Remind me, is there anything I've suggested or hinted was going to happen in Cascade that hasn't happened yet? Anything people have been hoping to see?
Sandburg, closing his phone, peeked inside the curtained area where Neal and Peter were sitting on a gurney. “Coast Guard caught the boat. All three men are in custody, and about half the artifacts were recovered with them.”
Neal nodded dully. “Great.”
The paramedics had agreed to let Neal and Ellison be checked out by the Clinic, rather than the ER, after Sandburg argued that neither was really injured, and the ER was the last place anybody would want to take a Sentinel who wasn’t in immediate need of lifesaving care. The Clinic had provided them with dry clothes and warmed blankets, and pronounced both Sentinels essentially fine, but none of them had left yet.
“Divers are just getting started,” Sandburg continued.
“No hurry. The artifacts should be fine,” Neal said. “Gold doesn’t rust.”
“Yeah,” Sandburg said gently. “We’re not real worried about that.”
“I can give you-or whoever-her parents’ address. Somebody should probably tell them.”
“The Bureau’ll do that,” Peter said. There probably wouldn’t be much trouble getting the body released for burial, once they found it-there wasn’t any doubt about how she had died.
“Do you need anything?” Sandburg asked.
Neal shook his head. “No. Thanks.”
Peter rubbed his shoulder. “We’re supposed to be having a therapy session right about now,” he said. “Do you want to….”
“Can we skip that today? Please?”
“Yeah. If that’s what you want. It might help to…talk.” Not only was Kate dead, but from what Peter had managed to overhear, she had said some pretty harsh things before drowning herself.
“I don’t want to.”
Well, forcing him to definitely wouldn’t help. “Okay.”
Within a few minutes, they were cleared to leave. Neal didn’t seem to care about his waterlogged suit but Peter, thinking he might care when things settled down a little, arranged to have it taken to a dry-cleaner by one of the ubiquitous student workers. Neal also didn’t comment on the powder-blue scrubs he was wearing-an improvement over prison uniforms only in color-or when Peter put his suit jacket over his shoulders for the walk back to the cottage.
Once there, Neal roamed around restlessly for a few minutes, then announced he was taking a shower. Peter, at a little bit of a loss himself, called Elizabeth.
“Oh, sweetie,” she said, when Peter told her what had happened. “How’s he taking it?”
“I don’t know. He’s…quiet.” If Neal had been anyone else, Peter would probably have poured whiskey into him until he cried, but Neal didn’t seem like the type, somehow.
“Maybe I should talk to him,” Elizabeth said.
“Yeah, maybe.” He knew Neal and El had talked a few times since they’d been in Cascade. Maybe she’d be easier for him to talk to than Peter. “He’s taking a shower right now.”
“I’ll call back in a little while,” she decided. “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”
“The first act was pretty good, actually.” He told her about how well Neal had done with the search. “Of course, he probably wishes he hadn’t.” If she hadn’t stopped to talk to Neal, Kate would have been on the boat. If anyone else had been searching that area, she might have still been caught, but she wouldn’t have drowned.
Maybe Neal wouldn’t think of that.
After hanging up, Peter went over to the kitchenette to see what they could have for dinner. He doubted Neal would have much appetite, but they’d skipped lunch, so he should at least try to eat.
Neal, finished with his shower, padded out in his white bathrobe, which, with his grave expression and forlorn posture, now looked more ‘hospital patient’ than ‘playboy.’ “Hey,” he said.
“Hey. You hungry?”
Neal smiled faintly. “Not really.”
“Didn’t think so. Tomato soup and grilled cheese?” That was Peter’s idea of comfort food; he really had no idea what Neal’s was.
Neal sighed. “Yeah, okay.”
The phone rang as Peter was getting out the bread and cheese. “That’s probably for you.”
Cautiously, Neal answered it. “Hello? Oh, hi, Elizabeth. Yeah. Thanks.”
He went into his bedroom, leaving the door slightly ajar. Not knowing what else to do, Peter kept fixing dinner. The soup was Campbell’s, just like mom made, but the grilled cheese sandwiches were English cheddar on sourdough. Peter managed to get them crisply golden-fairly appetizing, maybe even enough to tempt someone who was having the mother of all bad days. He could hope, at least.
After turning them onto plates and cutting each one in half, Peter went and peeked in Neal’s room. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, the phone in one hand, covering his face with the other.
Peter tiptoed away. It was probably better that way, than the whiskey. The sandwiches could wait.
#
The next day, they stayed close to home, Peter working on FBI paperwork on his laptop in the cottage living room. Neal supposed he was probably supposed to write a report, too, but Peter didn’t tell him he had to, and he certainly didn’t want to.
He felt…hollow. Empty, like Kate’s dying had taken something out of him that he hadn’t known was there. He had always bounced back quickly, even from some pretty horrible things. Kate leaving him. Being sent to prison. The abject failure of the long con that had brought him and Kate together. Other things, before that. He was lucky that way-thinking, ‘Okay, so that happened. Now what?’ was easy for him, just like getting people to give him things he wanted was easy.
But now…there was no next thing. Kate was gone, and, if half of what she’d said just before she died was true, the Kate he loved had never really existed anyway.
Last night, Elizabeth had told him that he had a right to grieve, both for what he’d lost and for what he’d never really had. He supposed she was right. Hearing it had helped, anyway. But if Kate was still his girlfriend-still his Guide-still the love of his life, there would be a next thing. There would be the funeral arrangements to make. People to notify. Memorials to plan. A shattered life to put back together around the empty place where she had been.
But now…the funeral was somebody else’s job. How, or whether, she should be memorialized wasn’t his to decide. And his life…was exactly the way it had been yesterday morning. There was nothing of hers here, or even in his apartment in New York, that would have to be packed away or decided about. He still had his job, and Peter. His Guide and partner-in-crime…solving. He felt as though he ought to be looking at a smoking crater, but really, Kate’s death left barely a ripple in the water.
In truth, he wasn’t sure if he was really grieving, or only surprised into numbness by the fact that he wasn’t.
Peter’s phone rang. “Burke…who is this? No, I don’t-he said what? Okay. Neal?”
“What?”
He held out the phone. “For you.”
“Who is it?” He couldn’t imagine who would be calling him on Peter’s phone, unless it was Elizabeth again, and Peter sounded different when he was talking to her.
“Somebody who said, ‘As if you don’t know, J. Edgar Hoover,’ when I asked.”
Oh. Moz. He took the phone. “Hey.”
“Neal! Are you okay? What’s going on out there? Why are you calling me from J. Edgar Hoover’s phone, and what the hell does, ‘Kate’s dead and I need a new phone’ mean?”
Right; Neal had forgotten that last night, after talking to Elizabeth, he’d left a message for Moz. “It means that Kate’s dead, and I need a new phone. And I called you from Peter’s phone because mine doesn’t work anymore.”
On Moz’s end of the phone, he heard tape being torn off a roll. “Right; I’m sending you one. And I guess I need a new phone, too, now that this one’s contaminated.”
“Oh, yeah, you do. I meant to tell you. Peter traced this number. Yesterday, I think. Unless it was the day before. I don’t remember.”
“Why did your Suit trace-never mind. What happened to Kate?”
“He had to find out if you were here robbing the museum with Kate.”
“Kate robbed the-did the animals get her? Or the Sentinel? Tell me your Suit didn’t shoot her.”
“No. She drowned.” Neal explained about the robbery, about tracking her through Cascade, about Adler, and how he had run as soon as he realized the police were on their heels. How Kate had jumped into the water to swim out to the boat. “With a backpack full of gold, she never had a chance. I jumped in after her, but it was too late. That’s what happened to my phone,” he added. “I didn’t have time to take my jacket off.” He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened to his suit. He’d found his waterlogged wallet, ruined phone, and Sophie’s third-favorite racecar in a ziplock bag on the kitchen table. Peter must have done something with it.
“Jesus. Are you okay?”
That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? “I guess.”
“Is there anything I can do? Besides the phone.”
“No. There isn’t anything I can do, either.”
“No,” Moz said. “I guess not.” He sounded sad. “I’ll overnight your new phone out. Call me if you need anything…use the Suit’s phone if you have to.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
He hung up and gave the phone back to Peter.
“Thanks,” Peter said. “Just so I know, did you use my phone to leave alarming messages for anyone else?”
“No.” Who else could he have called? June, maybe, but she had never known Kate.
“It’s fine if you want to borrow my phone. I just wondered if I should expect to hear from any more of your friends.”
“No,” Neal said again.
“Okay. Are you doing all right? I should do this stuff soon,” Peter said, gesturing at the laptop, “but it doesn’t have to be right now, if you need anything.”
“I’m okay,” Neal said.
Hours passed. They went to the Clinic. They started out with Tim, as usual. Peter quickly filled him in on what had happened yesterday.
“He--” Peter looked over at him. “He did really well, with the search. I don’t know if I should say that, considering.”
“Well, let’s talk about that,” Tim said. “How do you feel about that, Neal?”
He shrugged.
“Do you feel…guilty, for leading the police to your-to Kate?”
“No.” He hadn’t told her to jump into the goddamn ocean with a bag full of gold. He hadn’t tried to run away without her, like Adler had. He never would have. “I told her to turn herself in. She could have done that.”
“You tried to save her,” Tim said.
“Yeah, well, who wouldn’t have?”
“The other Sentinel who was with her, for one,” Tim pointed out.
“Adler always was a bastard.” He turned to Peter. “You know who he is?” He hadn’t thought to tell Peter about that.
“I got his file from the Bureau,” Peter said. “He’s wanted for a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme a few years back.”
“Yeah, that’s him. Everybody who worked for him was plowing every cent they could spare back into the company, until he walked off with it.” Neal had stolen a lot of money, too, but not from people who worked for him. That was probably not a distinction Peter would appreciate.
“Wait-he was the ‘Sentinel businessman’ she was working for when you met?” Peter asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s why she said….” Peter didn’t repeat what she had said.
“Yeah. I was trying to con him, turned out he conned me first. He got all the money, but I got Kate. I thought I came out ahead.”
#
As their counseling session progressed, Neal seemed to wake up a little, coming out of the vague cloud he’d been walking around in since yesterday afternoon. He didn’t, however, talk about yesterday afternoon-he talked about Kate, about the past, but not about her death. Peter thought it might be the challenge of seeming to answer Tim’s questions while deftly steering the conversation away from that topic that made him seem more animated.
The session was cut a bit short, because Neal’s appointment with the Sentinel Medicine Ophthalmologist, scheduled back when they’d first come to the Clinic, was set for that day. Peter wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not, but the ophthalmologist, Dr. Temas, was only in the Clinic one day a week, so it would be difficult to reschedule.
The doctor began with a normal eye exam, with some Sentinel adjustments. He had Neal look at an eye chart, first with both eyes, then with one at a time, then through a series of lenses. “Everything looks good so far,” he said when that was finished. “You have 20/20 vision-you’d be surprised how many Sentinels don’t.” Perching on a high stool, he took out a clipboard. “Now, about these visual distortions….”
Temas asked an extensive series of questions, starting with the visual distortions that Michelle, back at their intake appointment, had said were normal. He nodded at Neal’s answers to these, saying, “Good, good. That’s normal,” and things like that.
When he got to the “Cubist one,” he grew more thoughtful, listening intently to Neal’s answers. “Okay. There’s a few things we have to rule out, but I think I know what that one is. And…Dali. Clocks, or elephants?”
Neal blinked. “Both,” he said. He wasn’t expecting the question, Peter thought, but he appeared to understand what it meant.
“Really? Gosh.” Temas wrote several things on his clipboard.
“Is that bad?” Peter asked.
“No, no, it’s just…they’re both pretty unusual problems. And completely unrelated. Hm.”
Temas had Neal look at more eye charts, these consisting of sets of lines arranged in spoke-like patterns, asking him if any of them appeared darker than the others, or thicker, or curved. They all looked pretty much identical to Peter, but Neal often found some darker or thicker. Not curved, though, which had Temas saying, “Oh, good. That would have been weird.”
“It’s not weird yet?” Neal asked, sounding almost amused.
“Oh, well, you have two rare conditions-minor ones-and one moderately unusual one. Four would just be showing off, wouldn’t it?” Temas turned off the light behind the eye charts and sat down again. “The cubist effect is neurological. Do you know what ‘saccades’ are?”
“I don’t,” Peter volunteered.
“Well, your eyes are never actually still-they make tiny movements, many times a second. Those are saccades. What you think is your visual field is actually a composite that your brain makes up of everything you’ve been looking at in the last second or so.” He paused. “That’s an oversimplification, but it’s close enough. The normal human brain is very, very good at making these composites-so good you never notice it’s doing it. The Sentinel brain is even better, but sometimes, especially if you’re having visual spikes, your brain can’t keep up with all the input and produce a picture that makes sense. It’s mostly seen in untrained Sentinels, and generally goes away-or at least becomes very, very infrequent-once you develop good control over your vision.”
“I haven’t had it happen since we’ve been here,” Neal offered.
“Good. I wouldn’t worry about that one, then. Now, the distortion in the apparent thickness of lines is one of the ways an untreated astigmatism manifests in Sentinels. Yours is in your left eye, and it’s untreated because it’s so tiny that if you weren’t a Sentinel, you’d never know you had it. You’re only noticing it now because you’ve been having so many visual spikes, and it combines with the perspective distortions to make linear objects seem longer or shorter than they should be. So that accounts for the elephants.”
“Oh, okay,” Neal said, nodding.
Temas continued, “If you start doing any kind of detailed visual work at long distances, you should get corrective lenses. Glasses, probably; it would be annoying to take contacts in and out all the time. I’d have to do more tests to figure out the prescription, and then we have them made by a company that does custom microscope optics. But if you aren’t doing the kind of work where you need them, you might not want to bother.” He shrugged. “Now that brings us to the metamorphopsia-that’s the technical term for the effect where straight lines seem curved or wavy.”
“What causes that?” Peter asked.
“Lots of things. The most common is macular degeneration, which is definitely not the case here. Most likely, it’s either a side effect of migraine-you’ve had a lot of problems with nausea, right?”
Neal nodded. “I haven’t had headaches, though. Not really bad ones, anyway.”
“Not everyone does, with migraine, and for some reason migraine without the classic headache is more common in Sentinels. If it’s not that, then most likely it’s idiopathic, which is Latin for ‘Shit happens.’ Sometimes Sentinels just get odd sensory distortions for no reason anyone can figure out. But there is one serious possibility that we have to rule out, and that’s a structural deformity of the eye that can lead to retinal detachment.”
“That does not sound good,” Peter said.
“No, it’s not. And it’s very unlikely-if that was the case, I’d expect to see more problems with visual acuity. But to make sure, we’re going to have to dilate your pupils so I can get a good look at your retinas.” Temas looked at Neal, evidently anticipating some kind of a reaction. Neal shrugged.
“Have you ever had that done?” Temas asked.
“Not that I know of.”
“You’d probably remember, if you had. We put some drops in your eye so your pupil can’t contract, and then I look into it with a really bright light. The drops take a few hours to wear off. Most people don’t like it much, and a lot of Sentinels absolutely hate it. But if you do actually have a problem with your retinas, they could detach without any further warning signs.”
Now Neal did look alarmed. “I definitely don’t want that,” he said with a slight shudder.
Temas nodded. “Like I said, I don’t think that’s what’s causing your metamorphopsia-I’m betting on migraine. But since it is such a serious possibility, we really have to do the test, just in case.”
“If that is it, do I just wait to go blind, or is there something you can do about it?” Neal asked.
“It can usually be corrected surgically,” Temas answered. “Most likely, fifteen minutes from now you’ll know it’s something you don’t have to worry about, but if there is a problem, we’ll be able to get you surgery before the problem gets any worse, which is a lot better than waiting until the final stage.”
Neal nodded. “And if it is migraine, what then?”
“Then it’s most likely that you’ll stop having them when you have your senses under control. If not, we’ll refer you to a neurologist.”
“Okay,” Neal said.
“Ready for the test?”
Neal nodded.
“Okay. Just let me find my Guide.”
Huh. Temas was a Sentinel? Neal didn’t seem surprised; everyone but Peter seemed to just know these things, somehow. He looked over at Neal, who shrugged. “Doing okay?”
“Yeah,” Neal said.
“Good.”
Temas returned with another man, apparently his Guide, dimming the lights as he came in. “Peter, right there,” he said, pointing to a spot next to the examination chair where Neal sat. “You’ll want to link with him for this.”
Peter took his assigned position and offered his wrist to Neal. Neal clasped it, and he made the link.
“When I put the drops in, don’t rub your eyes, and try not to blink for as long as you can,” Temas said. “They don’t sting or anything, but it feels kind of weird.”
“Okay,” Neal said, sounding like he was humoring him.
“Tilt your head this way.” Temas dripped four drops of bright-yellow fluid into Neal’s eye.
“Oh, shit, that is weird,” Neal said.
“I told you. Okay, you can blink now.” He gave Neal a tissue to blot away the excess fluid. “All right, other one.” Neal tilted his head the other way, and Temas repeated the process. “I’m going to take a quick look at your corneas while we wait for those to take effect. This part usually isn’t too bad, but it can be a little bright. You’ll want to dial sight down.”
While Peter talked Neal through that, Temas rolled a lamp on a stand over in front of Neal, and bent his head. “Kas?”
Kas settled one hand on the back of Temas’s neck. Hadn’t Ketner said nobody did that anymore?
“Ready?” Temas asked.
“Me?” Neal said. “Yes.”
“Good, so am I.” Temas turned on the lamp, shining a thin beam of light into Neal’s left eye. Neal squinted. “Keep your eye open, please.”
“Sorry.”
“Okay…there’s the astigmatism…lens is clear, nice corneas... everything looks good so far on this side. Let’s see your other eye.”
“He’s showing off,” Temas’s Guide said in a whisper that was clearly meant to be overheard. “He wouldn’t be able to see that astigmatism if he wasn’t a Sentinel.”
Temas shrugged. “And the other eye looks good, too.” He turned off the lamp and pushed it aside. “Now, this is the bad part.” He took another, smaller light out of his lab coat pocket. “I’m going to have to shine this light in each eye for about a minute and a half. If you need a break, I can stop, but it takes longer that way.”
“Okay,” Neal said. His hand tightened on Peter’s wrist. Peter shifted his grip so that Neal could feel his pulse; according to Dr. Desai, that helped with pain. He didn’t know about brightness, but it couldn’t hurt.
Temas bent in close to examine Neal’s left eye, his Guide following. Peter could feel Neal trying not to flinch away from the light, and patted his shoulder with his free hand. “You’re doing okay.”
Finally, Temas straightened up. “Okay, that one looks fine.”
“Good,” Neal said. He was breathing hard, reminding Peter forcibly of yesterday, when he’d been gasping for breath while treading water.
“Ready for the other one?”
“Yeah, let’s get it over with,” Neal said.
After another agonizing minute and a half, Temas pronounced the second eye fine, too. “So we did all that for nothing,” he said. “That’s usually how it is.”
“Yeah, I understand,” Neal said. He raised his hand to his face, then hesitated. “Can I rub my eyes now?”
“Yes,” Temas said.
Neal did so.
Temas bustled around putting away his instruments for a moment, then handed Neal a pair of chea, blocky sunglasses from a drawer full of them. “Here, you’ll need these.”
Neal examined them blearily. “You’re trying to torture me, aren’t you?”
“You’ll be glad you have them when you go outside,” Temas predicted. “Or, out in the hallway, actually.”
Neal looked highly dubious, but once they left the examination room, he quickly put the ugly sunglasses on, mumbling something about how at least he didn’t have to look at them. “Whatever ‘bodywork’ is,” he said, referring to their last appointment of the day, “I hope it can happen in the dark.”
As it turned out, it could.
#
The first part of “bodywork” turned out to be relaxation exercises. Neal thought they were fairly silly-instead of the straightforward meditation Suzanne had had them do two days before, the bodywork practitioner, Selena, preferred asking them to imagine they were floating on clouds, being immersed in a fluid of the soothing color of their choice (Peter’s was orange, possibly the least soothing color Neal could think of), and other inane things of that sort. Still, after the frankly harrowing end to the eye exam, Neal supposed clouds weren’t so bad. And when he’d asked, Selena had turned the already-dim overhead lights off entirely, leaving the room lit only by a few natural beeswax candles.
After the relaxation exercises came some very gentle stretching. That, too, was not so bad, Neal thought, although he could have done without Selena’s excessively chirpy narration, where she exhorted them to do things like, “Reach up, up, like you’re trying to touch the sun,” and “Reach down, to tickle the cool grass of Mother Earth.”
When they got to the last part of the lesson, though, Neal began to feel positively nostalgic for tickling Mother Earth, because the third part was Selena teaching them to give each other massages, while burbling enthusiastically about the benefits of “soothing, non-sexual touch.” Maybe lounging around on pillows rubbing his…rubbing Peter’s back wasn’t inherently sexy, but constantly talking about how it wasn’t sexy seemed like protesting too much.
“Try using longer, firmer strokes,” Selena urged. “Imagine that you’re kneading bread…push out…stroke back…”
Honestly, it was like being taught to masturbate by a kindergarten teacher.
Fortunately, when Neal finished with Peter’s massage, Selena realized that there wasn’t enough time for them to switch places. Rather than subject Neal to massagus interruptus, she suggested instead that Peter, “Try out what you’ve learned at home. Many Sentinels find it easier to relax in their own environment, anyway.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Peter said.
Neal was sure she was right, too. As far as his dick was concerned, the presence of a neutral third party was the only thing that distinguished this from foreplay. He’d definitely be more relaxed back at the cottage.
“Great! When we meet again on Monday, we can talk about how it went.”
Even better. There was very little chance that Peter would skip out on a homework assignment if he knew there was going to be a test.
Peter put his jacket back on-Selena had insisted he take it off for the massage-and held out Neal’s hideous sunglasses that made him look like a bug. Neal put them on-it wouldn’t be dark outside yet, and looking like a bug beat the alternative.
It occurred to Neal, as they walked back to the cottage, that squinting behind his sunglasses against the late-afternoon sun was nowhere near as bad as what, less than two weeks ago, he would have considered a normal Friday afternoon. He and Peter had made a lot of progress since coming here.
Neal wondered, sometimes, if it would last, once they went back to New York. But he wouldn’t think about that right now. Just like he wasn’t thinking about…the other thing he wasn’t thinking about. Neither the eye doctor nor Selena had known about it, and after over two hours of no one mentioning it, Peter seemed to have forgotten to be careful around him, to treat him like he was damaged.
He probably hadn’t really forgotten. Neal certainly hadn’t. But it was easier, now, to find that “What’s next?” place, as long as he didn’t look too far ahead. The question of who he was, if not Kate’s lover, could be pushed aside, like the question of what would happen between him and Peter when they went home. When Peter went home, and Neal went back to his apartment at June’s. What was next now was dinner, and if he didn’t give it some thought, Peter would.
He put together a simple pasta dish, with a white wine and cream sauce, washed down with perhaps a little more of the wine than was strictly wise. If he wasn’t planning to keep drinking to the point of insensibility-which he wasn’t; he’d learned a long time ago that there was no situation that couldn’t be made worse by drunkenness-he should have stopped about a glass earlier.
That might have been why-or in any case, he told himself it was why-when Peter suggested it might be a good time to try that backrub, Neal stretched and said lazily, “Yeah, okay,” rather than marshalling any of the convenient and partially-true reasons why that might not be a good idea. It was also, he told himself, the reason why, when Peter suggested that a three-piece suit might not be the ideal outfit for this activity, he changed into a pair of pyjama bottoms, and the reason that he didn’t argue for a less relaxing venue when Peter led him toward his bedroom.
He stretched out on the bed (Peter’s bed) on his stomach. Peter sat beside him, saying, “All right, I’ll…I’ll start here, okay?” He settled his hands on Neal’s shoulders.
If Peter proved to be really bad at this, maybe the potential for staggering humiliation-or worse-was less than Neal thought. “Okay.”
At first, he thought he might be safe. Peter’s fingers dug into his trapezius muscles like he thought he was clawing through sand. But after Neal winced a couple of times, Peter said, “Sorry,” and eased up considerably. “Too hard? El always…we took this couples massage class our therapist recommended.”
“That’s funny,” Neal observed. Apparently it wasn’t just the Clinic therapists who thought Peter needed expert instruction in touching people.
“I’m glad it amuses you.”
There was probably something seriously wrong with him, Neal thought, that Peter taking that familiar, pissy tone while rubbing his shoulders was so goddamned hot.
Peter had probably brought it up in the first place to remind him that this wasn’t supposed to be hot, couldn’t be hot, because Peter was married. To Elizabeth, who Neal liked. She was smart and funny and clearly loved Peter while simultaneously thinking he could be a colossal idiot from time to time, which was a position Neal had a lot of sympathy for.
And it was very different from how Neal had felt about Kate, who he had idealized beyond reason, in the face of what he should have realized was mounting evidence to the contrary. She had switched her allegiance from Adler to him before Adler’s betrayal, without a second thought and with no more reason than that Neal seemed more fun. How was it a surprise that she had done the same again, in reverse, when it was Neal who proved to be less fun than she wanted?
Peter wasn’t in this for fun. He wasn’t only in it for duty, either, although that was part of it. The fact that Neal needed him mattered to Peter, in a way it hadn’t to Kate. He wouldn’t have left Neal alone, in prison, even if he hated him. No, if Peter hated him, he’d have fixed Neal up with another Guide, made sure he was all right. And he hadn’t done that, because he didn’t hate him. Peter, in fact, liked him kind of a lot.
Which was why he had not only allowed, but positively encouraged, Neal to lie half-naked on his bed getting a backrub that he was enjoying way more than he probably should. Peter had very nice hands.
“You awake?” Peter asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re very quiet.”
“’m supposed to be relaxing,” Neal reminded him. “You want me to sing?” He could, he supposed.
“Not particularly.”
“’kay.”
Peter’s hands left his shoulders, his thumbs pressing down alongside either side of Neal’s spine, fingers stroking the latissimus dorsi. Neal let out a happy little whimper.
Peter paused. “Is that a good sound?”
“Yes. Good. Very good.”
Continuing, Peter shifted himself up onto his knees to get better leverage. He didn’t quite go so far as to straddle Neal’s hips, but the half-second or so where Neal thought he might was enough to take him from comfortably and sleepily aroused to rock-hard. If this went on much longer, he was going to have a hard time stopping himself from rubbing against the mattress.
Just before the temptation to do so became unbearable, Peter sat back, taking his hands off Neal. “Okay. I think that’s enough-you good?”
“Yeah,” Neal said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Good. That was…really nice.”
“Good.” The mattress bounced slightly as Peter stood up. “I’m just going to…you stay there and relax for as long as you want to.”
It was a damn good thing Peter wasn’t sending him off to “relax” in his own bed-the damn pyjama pants wouldn’t hide a thing, once he was no longer lying on his front. “Okay,” he said as Peter left, shutting the door behind him.
Neal gave himself a few minutes to wallow before turning his mind to how he was going to deal with this situation. He was not going to jerk off in Peter’s bed. That would be wrong, and anyway, Peter was almost certain to find out about it if he did.
There were a few things he was carefully not-thinking about that, if he thought about them, would take care of the situation once and for all. But this was-sadly-the closest he’d come to getting laid in over four years. And it wasn’t like him getting off on it would do Peter any harm, particularly if he never knew it happened. So he really just had to settle himself down enough that he could make it to another room without tripping over his dick-the bathroom, for preference; he could turn on the shower to be sure of not being overheard.
Searching for a subject that was anerotic without being traumatizing, Neal settled on the motel. Not the Best Western-imagine how much more awkward this would be if they were still staying there!-but the motel in Manhattan. With the disgusting bedspreads and the flies and the pervasive smell of pee, which Neal was still not entirely certain was solely the fault of the establishment’s one canine resident.
Maybe, if Peter had liked him then, he would have taken Neal home with him, rather than leave him in that awful place. No, better not think about that-if he thought about it realistically, he’d only have to realize how depressingly unlikely it was, and in the other direction lay only pornographic fantasy, which wouldn’t help the current problem. Motel, right. What color had that horrible linoleum been?
After calling to mind more putrid details of the motel than he cared to count, Neal finally felt able to stand up without embarrassing himself. He did duck quickly into his own bedroom, next door to Peter’s, to grab his robe, just in case the additional camouflage became necessary for the longer trip to the bathroom.
That turned out to be a good idea. As he crossed the living room, Peter, who was perched on the edge of a couch cushion reading a magazine, glanced up and said, “What’s up?”
Neal pointed toward the bathroom. “There aren’t really that many possibilities-do you want details?”
“Not particularly.”
“Good.” Neal managed not to scurry the rest of the way to the bathroom, nor to slam the door behind him.
One side-effect of the lessons he’d been getting in scent-work was that Neal was much more aware of scent now, even when he wasn’t actively using his senses. A week ago, he might not have noticed anything at all. Now, though, the smell of sex-sex and Peter, Peter’s arousal-was as obvious as if the walls had suddenly been painted red.
Entering the room, Neal automatically flipped on the light, but quickly realized his mistake when 100 watts hit his unprotected eyeballs. He turned them off again, closing his eyes for good measure.
The scent was even more pronounced, that way. Absolutely impossible to miss, and so, so, hot. Neal could even identify the washcloth-carefully rinsed, but not carefully enough-Peter had used to clean up after himself. The thought of using it-using the same cloth Peter had used-to jerk himself off was…wrong, but irresistible. He barely managed to remember to turn on the shower before picking it up.
In the back of his mind, Neal knew that Peter hadn’t been turned on for the same reason he was. Not because he was attracted to Neal, or because nobody else touched him. It was, at best, a simple physiological response to the presence of an aroused Sentinel. Even more likely, Peter could have been thinking about his wife, about that couples massage class. That was probably it.
Most of his mind didn’t care about that, though, and his cock didn’t care at all. He started stroking himself, quickly settling into a rhythm. Surrounded by the scent of his Guide’s arousal and release, he couldn’t last long, and bit his lip to keep from crying out as he came. Suddenly weak in the knees, he slumped gracelessly to the tiled floor.