WC: Shirts & Skins Part 5.4

[bella_harvest]

White Collar -- Fanfiction

Disclaimer: 
All recognizable characters are property of Jeff Eastin and USA Network. 
No copyright infringement intended.

Title:  Shirts & Skins - Part 5

• Rating:  R
• Warnings:  Adult content, Violence, Language; nothing explicit; no slash
• Category:  Drama, Hurt/Comfort, Humor, Pre-canon, AU

Summary:

A collection of loosely related stories revolving around pre-series encounters of Burke and Caffrey.  Previously posted on Fanfiction.net.

Part 5:  Le Tour (4/4)

It was fun while it lasted, but all good and bad things must come to an end.
Posted in 4 parts due to post length restrictions.

With a bath towel wrapped around his waist and a large pile of soft pillows behind his back, Neal is lounging in a semi-recumbent position on the Burkes’ guest bed.  Perched on the edge of the bed with the young man’s right hand in her lap, Elizabeth liberally spreads a layer of antibiotic ointment over his palm and wrist.  She grabs a roll of stretch gauze and dresses his hand, alternately wrapping the bandage around his wrist and between his thumb and index finger.  She secures the end of the gauze with a strip of tape and rechecks the patches of Tegaderm dressing she applied along the length of his lower arm before releasing his hand to join Neal’s similarly dressed left hand resting on his bare midriff.

Elizabeth is the first person to admit that Neal is a good-looking man.  Not that she is ogling, but she isn’t blind.  She studies his face as she carefully dabs antibiotic cream over the scrape on his chin.  The bruises that have started to darken the lower part of his face where he had impacted her backyard patio do nothing to conceal his attractiveness.  Elizabeth believes him to be one of those men who will mature nicely into their features, as Peter had.  A trace of adolescent softness still lingers on Neal’s face, but she can tell that in time his jaw line and cheekbones will become more angular as his cheeks hollow out.

Elizabeth eyes casually sweep over the young man’s bare chest as she repositions herself on the bed to tend to his scraped knee and thigh.  Lean muscle fills out his slender frame.  A runner’s body.  No, Elizabeth corrects herself, the body of somebody on the run.  Efficient.  Without unnecessary ballast.  Without reserves.  He looks like a guy who cannot afford to skip a meal but does so more often than is wise, like a guy who goes to bed on a stomach full of expensive wine rather than a home-cooked dinner.

She wonders how prison will change this body.  She wonders how long it will take for the soft skin to become rough, for the delicate hands to become calloused and for the boyish hips and shoulders to be hidden under the hardened shell of adulthood behind prison walls.  How many years did Peter say?  She cannot recall, maybe because she was afraid to ask.

Elizabeth glances up from bandaging his knee and finds Neal looking at her.  She doesn’t know if he has caught her appraising survey of his body.  If he has, he doesn’t seem bothered by it.  He looks tired and slightly on edge.  Elizabeth notes with growing curiosity that his tension doesn’t appear to stem from the fact that he is sprawled out and practically naked in front of a woman he barely knows.  He’s been there, done that, she presumes. He doesn’t even seem particularly phased by the fact that that woman’s husband is standing a few feet away, leaning against the edge of the dresser and watching them intently.  He may have been there, done that, too.  Elizabeth doesn’t really want to muse about that.  What seems to make the young conman uneasy is the fact that this husband, whose vigilant eye is on his every move, is Peter.  Occasionally glancing up from her task at hand, Elizabeth watches the curious exchange of fleeting looks between the men.  She can’t say that there is true fear in Neal’s eyes, no more so than there is serious threat in Peter’s.  Rather there seems to be an unspoken request in the young man’s eyes for Peter to provide him with equally unspoken guidelines of what to do while the hands of the other man’s wife are on his body.  Right now those guidelines seem to include a determined ‘shut up’ and Peter’s ever-popular ‘cowboy up’.  When Elizabeth gently dabs at the oozing edge of a deep scrape in Neal’s lower thigh, the young man goes rigid under her touch and bites back a groan of pain.  The minute nod of empathy and approval that Peter rewards him with seems to be a greater relief to him than the removal of the agonizing piece of gauze from his open wound.  Elizabeth sighs.  Why the man who Peter chained to their radiator for hours and who Peter will send to prison for years would be so eager for her husband’s approval is beyond her.

“I need to see your hip, Neal.”  Another furtive glance at the agent before Neal moves to peel away the edge of the towel from where it is tucked in at is waist.  Elizabeth makes a point of looking the other way while he tugs and folds the towel to expose his chafed right hipbone and the deep abrasions on the side of his cheek and upper thigh.

“Are you decent?”  Elizabeth asks, her eyes still decorously trained at the opposite wall.  Spreading his left hand over his lap to hold the folded edge of the towel securely in place, Neal assesses his state of propriety one more time.

“Yup,” he nods.   Elizabeth turns her attention back to the young man lying next to her.  Her forehead wrinkles in an expression of heartfelt sympathy and concern as her fingers tentatively brush over the deep purple bruising that is discoloring the newly exposed skin.  A tremor he cannot control runs down Neal’s spine at her light touch.

“Caffrey,” Peter’s deliberately low voice drones across the room,  “if I see as much as a nervous twitch coming from that towel-”

“What, Peter? Are you going to send me to-” Neal’s reply is cut off sharply by a high-pitched cry of pain that escapes his throat before he bites down hard on his lower lip.  His body tenses as he arches away from Elizabeth’s probing fingers that have found a particularly sore spot.  Digging his hands deep into the bedspread and turning his face away from Elizabeth’s worried scrutiny Neal closes his eyes and wills his ragged breathing to calm.

“Sorry,” Elizabeth whispers.  Her thumb soothingly strokes the back of his clenched fist until his fingers slowly uncurl from their vice-like grip of the comforter.

“No, it’s fine.”  He blinks at her with a strained and apologetic smile on his lips.  “I just lost my concentration for a second.  I didn’t mean to go all Exorcist on you.”

“I’ll be more careful.  I promise.”  She brushes a strand of damp hair from his forehead and nonchalantly readjusts the towel that has shifted in his lap.  She gives him a quick wink as he blushes and swiftly secures the towel with his hand.

Peter’s groan resonates in the room as the agent melodramatically rubs his forehead.

“I’ll go get some Motrin,” he sighs and makes his way to the bathroom.

“Can you bring me some too, Peter?”  Neal yells after him and shoots Elizabeth a smug grin.

==

A sheen of perspiration has collected on Neal’s upper lip as he hopelessly tries to hold on to the toothy smile he is flashing for Elizabeth’s benefit.

“You know, Elizabeth, when a woman has me sweating and panting on her bed it’s usually a lot more enjoyable.”  The words don’t flow as smoothly as he hopes, his breath hitching when Elizabeth applies a layer of antibiotic ointment to the edges of the angry looking abrasion on his hipbone.

“Caffrey.  It’s enough.”  Peter is growing increasingly tired of calling Neal on the blatant flirting he has engaged in for the past fifteen minutes.  He knows it’s the conman’s tried and tested mechanism for dealing with the pain that is shooting through his body from his leg and hip.  He just wishes his wife wasn’t the target.  And he really wishes his wife wouldn’t encourage the young man by countering with her tantalizingly quick wit.

“Who says I’m not enjoying myself,” Elizabeth replies with a wink, ignoring her husband’s protest.

“Alright, Florence Nightingale, time to finish up here,” Peter urges.

Elizabeth smoothes a film of Tegaderm over the wound.  Her smile fades as she watches Neal bury his face in the crook of his elbow, his arm trembling in an effort to retain control of his pain response.

“All done,” she says softly.  She pulls a handful of Kleenex from the dispenser on the nightstand and wipes off the sweat that covers his rapidly heaving chest and stomach.  Getting to her feet, she flips the comforter cover over his body.  “You should rest for a few minutes.  I need to check on the laundry.  You boys come down for dinner when you’re ready, okay?”  Neal nods, his face still covered by his arm.

“Thank you,” he rasps.

On her way into the hallway, Elizabeth pulls her husband aside.

“Peter, his side is already infected.  Those injuries need to be cleaned every day.  And I think he should get an x-ray.  That bruising is pretty severe.”  Her concern is written plainly across her face.

Peter gently rubs her arm.

“I know, honey.  He’ll get the care he needs.  I promise.”  She looks crestfallen when she lowers her head.  Peter watches her make her way down the hall before returning to the guestroom.

His face no longer buried in the crook of his arm, Neal looks up at Peter.

“How are you holding up?”  Peter asks.

“I’ve been worse.”

The agent acknowledges that fact with a tight-lipped nod.  He looks on as Neal chews his lower lip with a deep furrow in his brow, obviously pondering his next words.

“Peter, I don’t know how to say this,” he starts out hesitantly.

“Just shoot, Caffrey.”  Peter sits down on the edge of the bed, realizing that, with the exception of driving his car, he has been on his feet for hours.  He interlaces his fingers, rests his elbows on his knees and expectantly looks at the young man.

“I don’t want to be rude.  I know Elizabeth means well, but-“ Neal starts.

“-but you were ready to go an hour ago?”  Peter suggests.

Neal nods.

“I tried to explain it to her. I tried to reason with her that she wasn’t doing you any favors,” the agent continues.  “But then I realized that this was what she needed.”

“Why?”

“Because when we’re faced with circumstances that rattle us to the bone we all engage our own coping mechanisms.  Some of us-inexplicably, I might add-feel the need to flirt shamelessly with another man’s wife.  Others need to nurture and cook and do a stranger’s laundry.  And still others need to leave us face down on a dark patio.”  Peter pauses to study the other man’s reaction.  Neal’s eyes are entirely focused on him, begging him to continue.

“When we do those things it’s really not about how we feel about others.  It’s only about protecting our own shaken core,” Peter proceeds.  “Neal, when Kate turned you down she wasn’t saying that she doesn’t love you.”

“Do you really think that, Peter?”

Peter’s clever smile creeps onto his lips and he nods.  He watches with satisfaction as a glimmer of hope returns to the other man’s pale eyes.

“So how do you cope, Peter?”

Some of us-Peter thinks-need to lie to a lost soul to restore the boyish delusion of love and romance that will give him the will the survive the years of deprivation awaiting him.

“Some of us,” Peter says, “need to go through with what they believe to be just and justified.  And right now that amounts to sneaking you past my overbearing wife, into my car and on to my office.”

Neal’s eyes dart desperately around the room, but he nods.

Ignoring the protest by his tired limbs, Peter rises to his feet and walks over to the dresser.  He opens several drawers and pulls out a pair of boxers, socks, a t-shirt and an old pair of gym pants.  He tosses the clothes on the bed and motions for the young man to get up.

“Come on, Romeo, it’s now or never.”

Neal sits up in bed and examines the items of clothing, his disapproval evident.

“Sweat pants, Peter?  You’re being cruel.”

The agent heaves a heavy sigh.

“You’re right,” he admits.  “Neal Caffrey needs to go to the slammer in style.  Wait here.  I’ll be right back.”

When Peter returns to the guest room carrying a heavy black garment bag, Neal is standing by the bed in his borrowed pair of undershorts and socks.  Somewhere in the back of his mind it occurs to Peter that with his bandaged hands and his bruised and scraped chin, the kid looks like a featherweight boxer after a twelve grueling rounds.  A boxer still on his feet and ready to fight another day, Peter adds.

He unzips the garment bag, revealing a tailored black three-piece tuxedo and white dress shirt.

“I haven’t worn it in six years, and I haven’t fit into it in five, ever since my wife turned into a domestic goddess,” Peter explains.  “I should have donated it, but I couldn’t quite part with it.”

“May I?” Neal steps close and brushes his fingers appraisingly over the exquisite fabric.

“Peter, this is the suit you got married in,” he notes, his eyes wide.  He recognizes the tuxedo from the framed wedding picture on the living room mantle.  “I can’t accept this.”

“It’s not a gift, it’s a loan,” Peter replies and pulls the pants from the hanger.  Neal reluctantly steps into them.  The pants are about an inch too long and a little loose around his waist, but the leather belt will hold them in place.  Peter holds the shirt open for Neal to thread his arms into the sleeves.  He waits for the young man to button up and tuck in the shirttails before helping him into the vest and, finally, the fitted jacket.

“Bow tie?”  Peter asks, offering the gray silk accessory.  Neal ponders the idea for a moment but shakes his head.

“I don’t want to overdo it.  How do I look?”

Peter scans the figure in front of him.  In spite of the tux being a little large on his slim frame, the young man admittedly looks better in it than Peter on his wedding day.

“Like a man of his word, Caffrey,” Peter declares.  “Now, hands out front, please.”

Neal blanches visibly.  Lowering his defeated gaze to the ground, he extends his hands, holding them close enough together to accommodate a pair of handcuffs.

With a roguish grin, Peter pulls a pair of cufflinks from his pockets and laces them through the button holes on the dress shirt’s sleeves.

“What kind of monster would I be to send Neal Caffrey to jail without a pair of these, huh?”

The baffled conman blinks at him.

“Thank you, Peter.”  The agent’s hand reaches up to rest on his shoulder.

“Don’t mention it.” Peter gives the young man a friendly cuff to the side of his head.  “I mean it!  Don’t mention it!  Not to anybody!  Now let’s go, Neal.”

He waits for the conman to slip on his shoes and then ushers him towards the door.  Peter stops at the dresser to pick up his discarded pair of handcuffs.  At the sound of the metal restraints, Neal comes to a halt.  He silently offers his hands behind his back.  Peter grabs his wrist and pulls the young man out into the hallway.

“Not in my house, Neal,” he says quietly.  “This can wait.  I trust you.”

The men quietly slip out the front door while Elizabeth is draining a pot of pasta.

==

New Years Eve, 2 months later

Elizabeth puts the bottle of champagne in the door of the refrigerator, her eyes briefly surveying the food she prepared ahead of the quiet New Year’s Eve dinner she has planned for Peter and herself.  Satisfied that everything is where she left it, she shuts the fridge door.  Her heels are clicking on the hardwood floors when she crosses the first floor of her house for a second time.

“Peter?”  She calls up the stairwell and listens for a response from upstairs.

The only answer is a short, rumbling woof coming from the basement.

“Satch?”  Treading carefully, Elizabeth makes her way down the cellar steps.  The big-headed retriever greets her with a quiet whine.  She gives the dog a quick scratch behind the ear before focusing her attention on her husband.

Peter is sitting on a chair at the far end of his basement hobby room.  The black bicycle that Neal had left at their house over two months ago is turned upside down, balanced on the saddle and the handlebars.  The front wheel is removed, the flattened tube and tire stripped off and put aside.  The steel rim is resting on Peter’s lap, while his dirt and grease-strained hands are pulling off the spokes one by one.  Elizabeth walks up to her husband.

“Hello, Special Agent Burke.  What’cha doing?”  She strokes the back of his neck.

“Fixing Neal’s bike.  Straightening the rim.  Relacing the spokes.”  His speech is slurred and Elizabeth’s puzzled gaze scans the room until it finds the half-empty bottle of Glenlivet sitting on a small side table, a glass tumbler by its side.  Elizabeth checks her watch.  It is not even 4 o’clock.  Peter rarely drinks during the day.  Peter never drinks hard liquor during the day.

“What happened, Peter?”  Elizabeth asks, her hands stroking his cheek as Peter looks up at her with glazed eyes.  He doesn’t answer, but his eyes briefly dart to the side table carrying the whiskey bottle.  Letting go of her husband’s face, Elizabeth walks over to the small table.  She senses his eyes on her back when she pulls out the manila folder from under the bottle, its cover stained by brown circles of Scotch.  Elizabeth opens the folder and feels her hands starting to shake.

“When did this happen?”  She asks, her voice barely above a whisper and on the verge of breaking.

“Two days ago,” he replies impassively.  Elizabeth retraces the events of the past few days and gasps.  She instantly returns to her husband’s side, prying the bicycle wheel out of his tight grasp and enveloping him in her arms.

“The day I stood in that fucking ballroom in front of the entire Bureau to get my fucking promotion three guys jumped Neal in the hallway and beat him to the brink of consciousness.”  His voice is strained and muffled as his face is pressed against her chest.  Elizabeth’s tears are running freely.  She can feel Peter tremble in her arms.  She doesn’t know if he is crying or shaking with helpless rage or both.  Elizabeth’s eyes search for the folder that she dropped to the floor at her feet.  She doesn’t want to look at the 8 by 10 photographs that have spilled onto the tiles, but she won’t allow her eyes to turn away.  Peter shouldn’t have to bear this alone.

The man in the photographs is stripped to his underwear and rail thin.  His lower right arm is in a cast and draped protectively over his abdomen.  The skin on his face and body is ashen and marred with bruises that are just beginning to blossom.  The man in the photographs-Neal, Elizabeth forces herself to acknowledge-averts his eyes from the intrusive flash of the camera.  The butterfly strips that dress the cuts above his left eye and in his lower lip are bright white against a backdrop of purple and red.  A separate series of snapshots shows the man from behind, and it is easier for Elizabeth to retain a commodum of detachment when she is not confronted with the young man’s harrowing face.  The boot prints and contusions on his lower back and thighs are no less shocking.

Finally giving herself permission to tear her eyes away from the crude and sterile digital photography that cannot begin to reflect the suffering of its involuntary object, Elizabeth pulls her husband tighter into her embrace.  He eventually returns it.

“Do they know who did this?”  Elizabeth asks.  Peter nods against her body.

“At least a dozen guys were standing around to cheer them on.  There’s not a single person in that cell block who can’t identify them.”  His voice is laced with anger.  “But Neal’s not talking.  He’d be dead-or worse-in a week if he did.”

“Then what’s going to happen?”

“Nothing.  They’ll keep him in medical until he stops pissing blood from his bruised kidneys.  And then he’ll be back in his cell.”  Elizabeth stiffens in his arms.

“I’m sorry, El.  I didn’t mean to be cruel.”  He looks up at her and her heart melts at the sight of the tears brimming in his eyes.  She shakes her head with a weak, comforting smile that tells him that an apology is not necessary.  She presses a kiss against his forehead.

“Are you going to see him?”  He decidedly shakes his head no.

“I’ve filed a request with Hughes to be pulled from Caffrey’s case,”  Peter rasps, his voice uncooperative.

“Why?” Elizabeth gently caresses his cheeks with her thumbs.

“Because I can’t keep finding these on my desk for the next four fucking years.”  The first tear breaks loose when he lowers his gaze to look at the photographs on the floor.

“I’m a coward, El.”

She cuts off his words with a kiss.

==

Elizabeth has been with other men.  She wasn’t a prude in college and there were plenty of men able and willing to date a young and pretty professional in bustling New York City.  She hasn’t been with many, by most standards, but enough to know that Peter is different.  She thought he was a bit of a jock when they met.  It took her all of five minutes to crack the gruff, by-the-book outer shell and discover the gentle, caring soul underneath.  Her friends had laughed at his gauche attempts to flirt.  She had found them endearing.  It had taken him three dates to work up the courage to kiss her goodnight.  She had decided then and there to take control.  When she invited him up for coffee that same night, she spelled out to him that ‘coffee’ was code for ‘sex’.  He had been a real surprise in that department.  Attentive, adventurous, astoundingly physical for someone who was so much of a thinker in most other aspects of his life.

“Happy New Year, Peter,” she whispers against the soft skin of his upper arm that is draped over her.  The clock radio on the nightstand has just turned to 0:01 and snippets of Auld Lang Syne are drifting over from the party at the next-door neighbor’s house.

“Happy New Year, El.”  He pulls her back tighter against his chest, eliminating the last bit of distance between their spent naked bodies.

“Peter?”

“Hmm,” he mumbles sleepily.

“I want to give you something.”

“What is it?”

Elizabeth pulls open her nightstand and retrieves a greeting card sized envelope.  She flips the switch on the reading lamp, prompting Peter to squint in the sudden brightness.

“This came by courier this evening when you were in the shower.  I haven’t opened it.”  His hand trembles faintly when he accepts the card.

‘PETER & EL” is written in neat and unadorned block letters on the envelope.  Peter opens the unsealed sleeve and pulls out the piece of crisp paperboard that has been trimmed and folded into a greeting card.

The penciled handwriting inside the card is crude, the lettering heavily slanted to the left.  Peter shivers at the thought of Neal’s broken right wrist.  The message is simple.

Happy New Year. NC.  PS:  I won’t need these. Enjoy.

There are several matching pairs of admission tickets stapled to the bottom right corner of the card:  Annual passes to the Met, memberships to the New York Philharmonics, Yankees season tickets.  The final item in the collection is a wrinkly dollar bill attached to a business card for a strip club near the Port Authority.  The dollar bill is promptly confiscated by Elizabeth.

With a tense smile on his lips Peter closes the card.  The front of the card is decorated with perfectly aligned copies of blocks of four vertical lines crossed by a fifth diagonal line.  Peter counts fifteen blocks of five and three single lines.  Seventy-eight days.  Today.  What is scribbled without elegance across the bottom of the card looks like an off-handed afterthought:

Thoughts are free.
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