WC Fic: The Tale of the Tape
Title: The Tale of the Tape
Rating: R for violence
Characters/Pairings: Neal/Jones; Diana, Peter
Spoilers: None
Content Notice: Explicit violence
Word Count: 3,600
Summary: Considering they kidnapped his boyfriend Neal, Special Agent Clinton Jones is keeping it together pretty well.
A/N: For dmk0064’s prompt for Angst-a-Palooza, now going on over at whitecollarhc.
----
”Mr. Halden, what an unexpected pleasure.”
“Come now, Mr. Almshouse, surely you didn’t think I could stay away?”
“Ah ha, ha, no. I suppose not.”
“The stones you showed me last week were exquisite. I am told you have access to more.”
“Oh? Well, that’s interesting, because I haven’t told a soul except my buyers. They’re utterly discreet, so I must wonder where you’ve gotten your information.”
“I’m not one to kiss and tell.”
“…wouldn’t you say…”
”I’m sorry, what was that?”
SQUELCH
THUD
Clinton dragged the indicator on the digital surveillance app’s playback screen back 4.6 seconds.
”…what was that?”
SQUELCH
THUD
“Clint?”
”…what was that?”
SQUELCH
THUD
Diana strode into the media bay, and raised her voice, “CLINT!”
“…sorry, what was that?”
SQUELCH
THUD
Clint pulled the headphones, which he’d had half-on at that point, from his ears and looked up at her from under furrowed eyebrows. He breathed slowly through his nose.
“ERT got a partial on the knife handle - they’re running it now,” she said. Her voice was gentle, pitched to soothe.
“How long until they have a result?”
“Three, four hours?”
“He may not have three or four hours,” Clint pointed out.
Neal had gone in undercover to expose a blood diamond smuggling ring, and had made inroads with Hugh Almshouse, a smuggler and fence who traveled in the same circles as Neal's Nick Halden alias. Establishing contact had not been difficult, but Peter was more interested in busting the man’s buyers as well, and so Neal had been trying to get in on one of their meetings to determine his identity. Neal was just in the beginning stages of ingratiating himself with Almshouse - this meeting was meant to further the contact and nothing more, and so there was just a skeleton crew in the van - Jones and Jaime Sotomayor, the new probie, who he was showing the ropes on surveillance.
So they were completely unprepared when a person or persons unknown had interrupted Neal's meeting with Almshouse and - well, the audio gave some clue that something bad had happened, but by the time Jones and Sotomayor were able to make it inside, Neal and Almshouse were gone, and all that was left behind was a pool of blood with drips that led to a spot just outside the warehouse’s door and then stopped. Neal's hat lay on its side on the floor, several large drops of blood beading along its brim; not enough time had elapsed for the blood to be absorbed by the felt.
Clint closed his eyes at the memory and focused his concentration on analyzing the audio as Diana quietly left. He pulled the headphones over his ears.
”…what was that?”
SQUELCH
THUD
whisper
Jones opened his eyes and stopped the playback. There had been a low sound, a sigh almost, so faint he had not picked it up earlier, and not until he’d put both headphones over his ears. He dragged the audio indicator back on the screen and listened again.
“Neal?” he murmured, as he played the sound over and again. The voice he knew, he recognized the timbre and tone, but could not discern the words. Moving the mouse on the screen, he endeavored to isolate it. He sat staring at the screen as the sophisticated analysis program ran its algorithms and compiled its results.
“Hey, I’ve got a surprise for you tonight,” Neal had said to him that afternoon as Clint was taking the anklet off of Neal's left leg.
“Surprise? It’s not my birthday.”
“Who says it has to be your birthday to get you a surprise?”
“It’s not another scarf is it?” So Jones had worn a scarf that one time on the Burmese ruby case - now Neal couldn’t get enough of the sight of him in them.
“No, not a scarf. Better.”
“Special mesh underwear?” Clint said playfully.
Neal raised an eyebrow. “Would you wear special mesh underwear if I bought them for you?”
“You’ll just have to guess, now, won’t you?” Clint had said, taking Neal's lapel in his right hand and pulling him in for a kiss.
The kiss had had to be cut short - Sotomayor had opened the door and was blundering in - but the promise of what was to come that night was evidenced by the saliva still glistening on Neal's bottom lip as he headed off to the meet, fastening the watch with the one-way transmitter onto his left wrist.
That was the last time Clint saw Neal, and now all he could think about was the pool of congealing blood on the floor of that warehouse, the bloody handkerchief in his pocket front pocket that he’d used to hastily clean the fedora, since he knew it was Neal's favorite.
A light PING from the computer screen alerted him that the application had completed its actions and Clint clicked the mouse around a few times, then pressed the headphones against his head to listen more carefully to the enhanced audio
“I’m not one to kiss and tell.”
Scrape - tap - tap - tap.
Now Jones picked up the unmistakable sound of a door being pushed open, and footsteps. Whoever had attacked Neal was likely to be this new person.
“But my friends would count themselves as such, including Mr. McManimon, wouldn’t you say, Kevin?”
Clint felt his stomach clench painfully at the mention of the name - Kevin McManimon was the enforcer for the Guerrero crime family and had a reputation for brutality that even the White Collar division had heard of.
The recording went on, the upper registers of it tinny because of the enhancement, but Clint ignored it.
”I’m sorry, what was that?”
SQUELCH
Clint flinched - that was unmistakably the sound of a knife being driven into soft flesh. The blood at the scene confirmed as much, and the lack of audio evidence for it ruled out the possibility that Neal had been shot. The relatively low amount of blood, too, was evidence that Neal hadn’t been fatally injured onsite, at least not yet. If they’d slit his throat, there would have been much more blood, arterial spray, and other evidence. Clint was convinced Neal was alive when McManimon and Almshouse left with him.
*sigh*
THUD
That was the sound of Neal falling to the floor; he had not cried out. There was a lull in the track where nothing happened. Then: Neal's voice.
Bends, he said. There was more shuffling around on the track, and harsh, labored breathing. The sound cut off there - Clint didn’t know why, or what had happened to the one-way transmitter in Neal's watch, but it was something. It was the only thing. Clint took it directly to Peter.
----
“Bends? What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Peter said. His eyes were tight and tense, his knuckles white from clenching his hands into fists for the last two hours. He was as worried for Neal as Clint was.
Clint squeezed the bridge of this nose between his thumb and index finger and shook his head. He didn’t know.
“Maybe he was stabbed in the lung?” Sotomayor suggested.
“What?”
“Isn’t that the bends? When your lung is punctured?”
“No. No.” Peter said to him, taking a step forward. “Did you even pass the basic first aid class at Quantico?”
“Yes, sir, I got a B in that class.”
“Go back until you get an A. Do you think he may have meant ‘Ben’? Someone named Ben was there?”
“What about ‘Benz’?” Diana said from her spot leaning against the doorframe of the conference room. “What’s McManimon drive?”
Clint’s eyes snapped open and he pulled Sotomayor’s laptop in front of himself, accessing the NY State DMV records database with record speed. He snapped his fingers and started to shake his leg up and down repeatedly when he saw the result. “A 2012 S-350 sedan,” he said, turning the screen to show Peter.
“That has to be it. Let’s pull surveillance footage and traffic cams from the area of the warehouse - see if we can trace where they took him.” Sotomayor and Diana scurried to comply. Peter’s eyes met Jones’. “Jones, you’re certain he said, ‘Benz’?”
Clint struggled to keep his voice even as he replied. “I know we are running out of time, Peter. I have never been more certain of anything in my life.”
Peter rose and headed to the door to muster the troops to move as quickly as possible once they had an address. He paused to squeeze Jones’ shoulder reassuringly, a silent communion. They both cared for Neal, both were worried, and Clint appreciated Peter’s gesture. He felt the urgency and intensity he’d been holding on to the last hours congeal into a lump in his throat he quickly swallowed down. The flash of a bloodied fedora entered his mind’s eye and he closed his eyes.
Later. He’d think about it all later.
----
Within minutes they had an address on where McManimon was likely to be found. It took just a few calls for the Organized Crime unit, who kept tabs on him even if there wasn’t an open investigation, and they were soon on their way to a private residence in Queens.
Clint rode in the front seat of a black Bureau SUV that Peter was driving; though they had their flashers on, their siren was off, so getting through midday traffic was difficult at best. Jones sat with his foot propped against the inner door frame, his elbow resting on his knee, worrying his bottom lip with his fingers. All he could think of was Neal; Neal in profile, Neal with his head on Clint’s shoulder in bed, his scent, the way he sang in the shower - he never got the lyrics right.
Neal in pain. Neal hurt. Neal bloodied.
He did not realize he was growling until Peter said something. “You OK over there?”
“Fine.”
“Am I going to regret bringing you along on this?”
“No.” Probably, he thought darkly.
“You’re in the van.”
Jones grunted in annoyance.
“Are we going to have a problem, Clinton?”
Clint turned his head to meet Peter’s hard, brown eyes. “You tell me. Would anything Hughes said have kept you from finding your wife when Keller had her?”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“How? Tell me how this is not the same thing.”
Peter couldn’t answer.
“I’ll take the rear entrance, how’s that?”
Peter glanced back at the road and then back at Clint, his eyes softening even if his forehead was still furrowed. “OK,” he said quietly as they made the approach to the Queensboro Bridge. “Don’t make me regret it.”
----
The sun had fallen below the rooftops in the quiet neighborhood when they arrived, casting long shadows on the streets and obscuring finer details. Clint hated this time of evening - if it was completely dark, then things would at least have distinctive edges, but with the still too-sharp contrast between day and night, there were too many blind spots.
They’d taken final instructions from Peter, and he and Diana crept along the side of the house toward the back porch, huddling down so they wouldn’t be spotted from the house. The house was a small Cape Cod, set at the front of its quarter acre lot, which was ringed by a chain link fence. The backyard was small, with a tidy patch of well-kept lawn and a vegetable garden; a mid-sized garden shed stood in the far corner, perfectly ordinary. The neighbor’s dog, some kind of pit bull mix, snorted lowly at them from the other side of the fence, tail wagging stiffly as they passed. Diana gestured at it once and it lay down immediately, eyes intent on her movements, but its body relaxed.
“Nice,” Clint said.
“I have that effect on men,” she snarked and they moved closer to the back of the house.
According to Organized Crime, McManimon and Almshouse were inside with at least two other men, and no one had left in over an hour. Diana signaled their readiness and they waited for the call to bust the doors down.
Clint leaped up onto the porch before the call came, taking down the flimsy door with two kicks. The door sprang inward, bouncing once off the back wall and back at Clint. He propped it open with one hand, entered with his gun up and felt Diana come up from behind. She wordlessly moved off to the left as Clint followed the wall farther into the kitchen, toward a door that led to another room beyond.
Shouts of Freeze! FBI! rang out from the front of the house. Clint could hear his own heartbeat in his ears as he slowly advanced into the house, arms stiffening with tension. Then, a gunshot, and another.
Someone screamed, and another voice, possibly Peter’s, yelled, “McManimon!” There was the sound of crashing bodies at the front of the house and then the man himself came barreling into the kitchen.
“Freeze!” Diana said, planting her feet and raising her weapon, trying to block McManimon’s route through the kitchen. But he turned and easily deflected her gun, knocking it to the floor. He swung an arm and she easily ducked, coming up with a jab to his ribs he readily absorbed. He swung again and this time connected, his much-larger bulk giving him an easy advantage. Diana caught his fist to the side of her head and went down with a groan.
“Freeze!” Clint shouted, “I won’t say it again.” But they were too close together and the kitchen was too small, so Clint had no time to react when McManimon rushed him, grabbing his gun arm and pushing it up just as he fired, then shoving the heel of his hand against Clint’s jaw as he used his momentum to push Clint backwards. They tripped over and then through the door, which had been sagging on its hinges across the doorway, and Clint rolled backwards across the wooden porch, losing his gun in the process. He heard rather than saw it slide across the porch.
Coming up in a crouch, the tip of his tongue jutting out of the side of his mouth, Clint waited for McManimon to approach. McManimon stalked around him for a beat, flexing his shoulders, and Clint could hear the joints crack. McManimon had perhaps four inches of height and thirty-five extra pounds to his advantage, but Diane was down, Neal was missing, and this was the man he held responsible for both of those things. Given his current state of rage, Clint would argue they were equally matched.
“Come on,” Clint said beckoning with the fingers of one outstretched hand. McManimon’s eyes glittered, clearly relishing the fight, and reached inside his jacket with his right hand. When he removed it, it held a knife - and there was no doubt in Clint’s mind that it was the one he’d used on Neal - and then he launched himself at Clint.
What McManimon lacked in finesse, he made up for in bulk, his first clumsy thrust at Clint only getting close enough because of his size. Clint quickly deflected the blow, though not completely, and the knife sliced harmlessly into his sleeve; Clint then wrapped the same arm around McManimon’s, tying up the hand that held the knife, rendering it useless. Using the man’s forward momentum against him, Clint turned his own body, delivering a hard and fast blow to the back of McManimon’s elbow. The blow lacked the satisfying crunch Clint had hoped for, but at least McManimon dropped the knife.
McManimon twisted and got away, facing Clint in a defensive crouch. Clint launched himself back at him immediately, fists delivering carefully measured blows he landed with quiet precision. His first landed on the elbow he’d just wrenched, his second to McManimon’s ribs, his third a vicious jab to the soft and yielding flesh of his throat. McManimon yelled in pain and went down on his knees, but Clint caught him and drove his own knee into the center of the man’s face once, then again. This time, Clint felt a very distinctive, wet crunching sound and knew he’d broken his nose or his jaw or both, and let McManimon fall to the floor.
Clint crouched beside him and put his hands on the back of the man’s jacket, lifting him up, intending to bash his face against the floorboards, but Peter and the other agents had arrived.
“Agent Jones!” Peter roared, and Clint looked up, eyes wild. “I see you’ve subdued the suspect,” Peter said with emphasis on the word ‘subdued.’
Clint dropped McManimon to the floor and stood, panting heavily. “Peter,” he gasped as two additional agents came through the door behind Peter. One of them cuffed the unconscious McManimon and the other returned Jones’ service weapon to him. “Diana?” Clint asked his boss.
“She’ll be OK.”
“And N-“ Clint almost couldn’t say his name, his voice sounding too high in his own ears. “Neal?”
Peter held out a hand, beckoning. “He’s inside,” he said gently, lying a hand on Clint’s shoulder and leading him to the living room at the front of the house.
Neal lay on his side atop a ratty couch, Agent Sotomayor standing over him semi-protectively, looking as pale as a ghost and like he’d like to bolt. Several other agents were leading Almshouse and one other man away in cuffs; another lay on the floor, a gunshot wound to his chest, unmoving.
Neal’s body was curled into a ball with his arms clutched around his midsection. His face was grey, his eyes were closed, and if he hadn’t bent his head forward in a grimace of pain right at the moment Clint and Peter walked through the doorway, Clint would have sworn he was dead. Clint rushed across the room, coming down beside Neal on his knees, hand on his upper arm. “Neal?” He moved his hand down Neal's arm to his midsection, where he saw that his shirt, as well as a towel someone had at some point provided him, was soaked entirely through with blood. “Neal!” Clint repeated, louder, and Neal's eyes opened. He did not speak - maybe he couldn’t - but there was recognition in his eyes when they locked onto Clint’s, and some of the tension in his face and shoulders eased.
Not caring who saw, Clint leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Neal's temple, whispering, “I got you,” reassuringly into his ear, and then threading his fingers through Neal's hair to rest his hand protectively against his scalp. Neal closed his eyes again, but leaned his head against Clint’s caress, and suddenly nothing else mattered.
----
“I may never get out of here,” Neal groused, kicking his leg out and letting it dangle from where he sat on the edge of the hospital bed he’d called home for the last ten days. The knife wound he’d been dealt by McManimon had required a long yet successful surgery to repair, and he was finally being discharged. If only the doctor would show up to sign off on it.
“I dunno,” Clint said lightly from the chair near the wall where he’d sat sprawling for the last hour, “I think some of the nurses might not mind if you became a permanent fixture around here.”
“You’re not jealous, are you?” Neal had been a model patient, and literally half the staff of the ward had fallen under his spell, so much so that the nurses argued daily over who gave him his sponge baths.
“Nope, not at all,” Clint laughed.
“Why not?” Neal asked, truly affronted.
Clint laughed again. “Because I know you’re mine. And I know your flirting is harmless. And I know where you are at all times.”
Neal glanced ruefully down at the tracker, its green light shining placidly up at him. “So much for my rep.”
Thirty minutes later, however, Neal was safely ensconced in a wheelchair, with Clint wheeling him slowly along the hospital’s corridors, a leather duffel perched on Neal's lap. “Thanks for coming to pick me up,” he said lightly.
“Like I’d make you take a cab.”
“And thanks for letting me recuperate at your place,” Neal said, his voice more serious.
“Well, my place is closer to your rehab center,” Jones said, shrugging.
Neal swallowed, and when he spoke again, his voice was thick with emotion. “And thanks for finding me. Diana told me how it went down.” Clint stopped walking and Neal stretched his neck back to look up at his lover. “Who knows what would have happened if you hadn’t analyzed that audio.”
Clint looked down on Neal's upside down face, and felt a hot flush come to his cheeks. “I… I don’t…”
“I’m lucky to have you in my life.”
Clint said nothing, because there was nothing to say. He bent over and kissed Neal lightly on his mouth, bringing up both his hands to caress the sides of his face. Neal's own hands came up to cover them, and when they parted, Neal planted another kiss on Clint’s right palm.
“Very lucky.”
----
Thank you for your time.
Rating: R for violence
Characters/Pairings: Neal/Jones; Diana, Peter
Spoilers: None
Content Notice: Explicit violence
Word Count: 3,600
Summary: Considering they kidnapped his boyfriend Neal, Special Agent Clinton Jones is keeping it together pretty well.
A/N: For dmk0064’s prompt for Angst-a-Palooza, now going on over at whitecollarhc.
----
”Mr. Halden, what an unexpected pleasure.”
“Come now, Mr. Almshouse, surely you didn’t think I could stay away?”
“Ah ha, ha, no. I suppose not.”
“The stones you showed me last week were exquisite. I am told you have access to more.”
“Oh? Well, that’s interesting, because I haven’t told a soul except my buyers. They’re utterly discreet, so I must wonder where you’ve gotten your information.”
“I’m not one to kiss and tell.”
“…wouldn’t you say…”
”I’m sorry, what was that?”
SQUELCH
THUD
Clinton dragged the indicator on the digital surveillance app’s playback screen back 4.6 seconds.
”…what was that?”
SQUELCH
THUD
“Clint?”
”…what was that?”
SQUELCH
THUD
Diana strode into the media bay, and raised her voice, “CLINT!”
“…sorry, what was that?”
SQUELCH
THUD
Clint pulled the headphones, which he’d had half-on at that point, from his ears and looked up at her from under furrowed eyebrows. He breathed slowly through his nose.
“ERT got a partial on the knife handle - they’re running it now,” she said. Her voice was gentle, pitched to soothe.
“How long until they have a result?”
“Three, four hours?”
“He may not have three or four hours,” Clint pointed out.
Neal had gone in undercover to expose a blood diamond smuggling ring, and had made inroads with Hugh Almshouse, a smuggler and fence who traveled in the same circles as Neal's Nick Halden alias. Establishing contact had not been difficult, but Peter was more interested in busting the man’s buyers as well, and so Neal had been trying to get in on one of their meetings to determine his identity. Neal was just in the beginning stages of ingratiating himself with Almshouse - this meeting was meant to further the contact and nothing more, and so there was just a skeleton crew in the van - Jones and Jaime Sotomayor, the new probie, who he was showing the ropes on surveillance.
So they were completely unprepared when a person or persons unknown had interrupted Neal's meeting with Almshouse and - well, the audio gave some clue that something bad had happened, but by the time Jones and Sotomayor were able to make it inside, Neal and Almshouse were gone, and all that was left behind was a pool of blood with drips that led to a spot just outside the warehouse’s door and then stopped. Neal's hat lay on its side on the floor, several large drops of blood beading along its brim; not enough time had elapsed for the blood to be absorbed by the felt.
Clint closed his eyes at the memory and focused his concentration on analyzing the audio as Diana quietly left. He pulled the headphones over his ears.
”…what was that?”
SQUELCH
THUD
whisper
Jones opened his eyes and stopped the playback. There had been a low sound, a sigh almost, so faint he had not picked it up earlier, and not until he’d put both headphones over his ears. He dragged the audio indicator back on the screen and listened again.
“Neal?” he murmured, as he played the sound over and again. The voice he knew, he recognized the timbre and tone, but could not discern the words. Moving the mouse on the screen, he endeavored to isolate it. He sat staring at the screen as the sophisticated analysis program ran its algorithms and compiled its results.
“Hey, I’ve got a surprise for you tonight,” Neal had said to him that afternoon as Clint was taking the anklet off of Neal's left leg.
“Surprise? It’s not my birthday.”
“Who says it has to be your birthday to get you a surprise?”
“It’s not another scarf is it?” So Jones had worn a scarf that one time on the Burmese ruby case - now Neal couldn’t get enough of the sight of him in them.
“No, not a scarf. Better.”
“Special mesh underwear?” Clint said playfully.
Neal raised an eyebrow. “Would you wear special mesh underwear if I bought them for you?”
“You’ll just have to guess, now, won’t you?” Clint had said, taking Neal's lapel in his right hand and pulling him in for a kiss.
The kiss had had to be cut short - Sotomayor had opened the door and was blundering in - but the promise of what was to come that night was evidenced by the saliva still glistening on Neal's bottom lip as he headed off to the meet, fastening the watch with the one-way transmitter onto his left wrist.
That was the last time Clint saw Neal, and now all he could think about was the pool of congealing blood on the floor of that warehouse, the bloody handkerchief in his pocket front pocket that he’d used to hastily clean the fedora, since he knew it was Neal's favorite.
A light PING from the computer screen alerted him that the application had completed its actions and Clint clicked the mouse around a few times, then pressed the headphones against his head to listen more carefully to the enhanced audio
“I’m not one to kiss and tell.”
Scrape - tap - tap - tap.
Now Jones picked up the unmistakable sound of a door being pushed open, and footsteps. Whoever had attacked Neal was likely to be this new person.
“But my friends would count themselves as such, including Mr. McManimon, wouldn’t you say, Kevin?”
Clint felt his stomach clench painfully at the mention of the name - Kevin McManimon was the enforcer for the Guerrero crime family and had a reputation for brutality that even the White Collar division had heard of.
The recording went on, the upper registers of it tinny because of the enhancement, but Clint ignored it.
”I’m sorry, what was that?”
SQUELCH
Clint flinched - that was unmistakably the sound of a knife being driven into soft flesh. The blood at the scene confirmed as much, and the lack of audio evidence for it ruled out the possibility that Neal had been shot. The relatively low amount of blood, too, was evidence that Neal hadn’t been fatally injured onsite, at least not yet. If they’d slit his throat, there would have been much more blood, arterial spray, and other evidence. Clint was convinced Neal was alive when McManimon and Almshouse left with him.
*sigh*
THUD
That was the sound of Neal falling to the floor; he had not cried out. There was a lull in the track where nothing happened. Then: Neal's voice.
Bends, he said. There was more shuffling around on the track, and harsh, labored breathing. The sound cut off there - Clint didn’t know why, or what had happened to the one-way transmitter in Neal's watch, but it was something. It was the only thing. Clint took it directly to Peter.
----
“Bends? What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Peter said. His eyes were tight and tense, his knuckles white from clenching his hands into fists for the last two hours. He was as worried for Neal as Clint was.
Clint squeezed the bridge of this nose between his thumb and index finger and shook his head. He didn’t know.
“Maybe he was stabbed in the lung?” Sotomayor suggested.
“What?”
“Isn’t that the bends? When your lung is punctured?”
“No. No.” Peter said to him, taking a step forward. “Did you even pass the basic first aid class at Quantico?”
“Yes, sir, I got a B in that class.”
“Go back until you get an A. Do you think he may have meant ‘Ben’? Someone named Ben was there?”
“What about ‘Benz’?” Diana said from her spot leaning against the doorframe of the conference room. “What’s McManimon drive?”
Clint’s eyes snapped open and he pulled Sotomayor’s laptop in front of himself, accessing the NY State DMV records database with record speed. He snapped his fingers and started to shake his leg up and down repeatedly when he saw the result. “A 2012 S-350 sedan,” he said, turning the screen to show Peter.
“That has to be it. Let’s pull surveillance footage and traffic cams from the area of the warehouse - see if we can trace where they took him.” Sotomayor and Diana scurried to comply. Peter’s eyes met Jones’. “Jones, you’re certain he said, ‘Benz’?”
Clint struggled to keep his voice even as he replied. “I know we are running out of time, Peter. I have never been more certain of anything in my life.”
Peter rose and headed to the door to muster the troops to move as quickly as possible once they had an address. He paused to squeeze Jones’ shoulder reassuringly, a silent communion. They both cared for Neal, both were worried, and Clint appreciated Peter’s gesture. He felt the urgency and intensity he’d been holding on to the last hours congeal into a lump in his throat he quickly swallowed down. The flash of a bloodied fedora entered his mind’s eye and he closed his eyes.
Later. He’d think about it all later.
----
Within minutes they had an address on where McManimon was likely to be found. It took just a few calls for the Organized Crime unit, who kept tabs on him even if there wasn’t an open investigation, and they were soon on their way to a private residence in Queens.
Clint rode in the front seat of a black Bureau SUV that Peter was driving; though they had their flashers on, their siren was off, so getting through midday traffic was difficult at best. Jones sat with his foot propped against the inner door frame, his elbow resting on his knee, worrying his bottom lip with his fingers. All he could think of was Neal; Neal in profile, Neal with his head on Clint’s shoulder in bed, his scent, the way he sang in the shower - he never got the lyrics right.
Neal in pain. Neal hurt. Neal bloodied.
He did not realize he was growling until Peter said something. “You OK over there?”
“Fine.”
“Am I going to regret bringing you along on this?”
“No.” Probably, he thought darkly.
“You’re in the van.”
Jones grunted in annoyance.
“Are we going to have a problem, Clinton?”
Clint turned his head to meet Peter’s hard, brown eyes. “You tell me. Would anything Hughes said have kept you from finding your wife when Keller had her?”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“How? Tell me how this is not the same thing.”
Peter couldn’t answer.
“I’ll take the rear entrance, how’s that?”
Peter glanced back at the road and then back at Clint, his eyes softening even if his forehead was still furrowed. “OK,” he said quietly as they made the approach to the Queensboro Bridge. “Don’t make me regret it.”
----
The sun had fallen below the rooftops in the quiet neighborhood when they arrived, casting long shadows on the streets and obscuring finer details. Clint hated this time of evening - if it was completely dark, then things would at least have distinctive edges, but with the still too-sharp contrast between day and night, there were too many blind spots.
They’d taken final instructions from Peter, and he and Diana crept along the side of the house toward the back porch, huddling down so they wouldn’t be spotted from the house. The house was a small Cape Cod, set at the front of its quarter acre lot, which was ringed by a chain link fence. The backyard was small, with a tidy patch of well-kept lawn and a vegetable garden; a mid-sized garden shed stood in the far corner, perfectly ordinary. The neighbor’s dog, some kind of pit bull mix, snorted lowly at them from the other side of the fence, tail wagging stiffly as they passed. Diana gestured at it once and it lay down immediately, eyes intent on her movements, but its body relaxed.
“Nice,” Clint said.
“I have that effect on men,” she snarked and they moved closer to the back of the house.
According to Organized Crime, McManimon and Almshouse were inside with at least two other men, and no one had left in over an hour. Diana signaled their readiness and they waited for the call to bust the doors down.
Clint leaped up onto the porch before the call came, taking down the flimsy door with two kicks. The door sprang inward, bouncing once off the back wall and back at Clint. He propped it open with one hand, entered with his gun up and felt Diana come up from behind. She wordlessly moved off to the left as Clint followed the wall farther into the kitchen, toward a door that led to another room beyond.
Shouts of Freeze! FBI! rang out from the front of the house. Clint could hear his own heartbeat in his ears as he slowly advanced into the house, arms stiffening with tension. Then, a gunshot, and another.
Someone screamed, and another voice, possibly Peter’s, yelled, “McManimon!” There was the sound of crashing bodies at the front of the house and then the man himself came barreling into the kitchen.
“Freeze!” Diana said, planting her feet and raising her weapon, trying to block McManimon’s route through the kitchen. But he turned and easily deflected her gun, knocking it to the floor. He swung an arm and she easily ducked, coming up with a jab to his ribs he readily absorbed. He swung again and this time connected, his much-larger bulk giving him an easy advantage. Diana caught his fist to the side of her head and went down with a groan.
“Freeze!” Clint shouted, “I won’t say it again.” But they were too close together and the kitchen was too small, so Clint had no time to react when McManimon rushed him, grabbing his gun arm and pushing it up just as he fired, then shoving the heel of his hand against Clint’s jaw as he used his momentum to push Clint backwards. They tripped over and then through the door, which had been sagging on its hinges across the doorway, and Clint rolled backwards across the wooden porch, losing his gun in the process. He heard rather than saw it slide across the porch.
Coming up in a crouch, the tip of his tongue jutting out of the side of his mouth, Clint waited for McManimon to approach. McManimon stalked around him for a beat, flexing his shoulders, and Clint could hear the joints crack. McManimon had perhaps four inches of height and thirty-five extra pounds to his advantage, but Diane was down, Neal was missing, and this was the man he held responsible for both of those things. Given his current state of rage, Clint would argue they were equally matched.
“Come on,” Clint said beckoning with the fingers of one outstretched hand. McManimon’s eyes glittered, clearly relishing the fight, and reached inside his jacket with his right hand. When he removed it, it held a knife - and there was no doubt in Clint’s mind that it was the one he’d used on Neal - and then he launched himself at Clint.
What McManimon lacked in finesse, he made up for in bulk, his first clumsy thrust at Clint only getting close enough because of his size. Clint quickly deflected the blow, though not completely, and the knife sliced harmlessly into his sleeve; Clint then wrapped the same arm around McManimon’s, tying up the hand that held the knife, rendering it useless. Using the man’s forward momentum against him, Clint turned his own body, delivering a hard and fast blow to the back of McManimon’s elbow. The blow lacked the satisfying crunch Clint had hoped for, but at least McManimon dropped the knife.
McManimon twisted and got away, facing Clint in a defensive crouch. Clint launched himself back at him immediately, fists delivering carefully measured blows he landed with quiet precision. His first landed on the elbow he’d just wrenched, his second to McManimon’s ribs, his third a vicious jab to the soft and yielding flesh of his throat. McManimon yelled in pain and went down on his knees, but Clint caught him and drove his own knee into the center of the man’s face once, then again. This time, Clint felt a very distinctive, wet crunching sound and knew he’d broken his nose or his jaw or both, and let McManimon fall to the floor.
Clint crouched beside him and put his hands on the back of the man’s jacket, lifting him up, intending to bash his face against the floorboards, but Peter and the other agents had arrived.
“Agent Jones!” Peter roared, and Clint looked up, eyes wild. “I see you’ve subdued the suspect,” Peter said with emphasis on the word ‘subdued.’
Clint dropped McManimon to the floor and stood, panting heavily. “Peter,” he gasped as two additional agents came through the door behind Peter. One of them cuffed the unconscious McManimon and the other returned Jones’ service weapon to him. “Diana?” Clint asked his boss.
“She’ll be OK.”
“And N-“ Clint almost couldn’t say his name, his voice sounding too high in his own ears. “Neal?”
Peter held out a hand, beckoning. “He’s inside,” he said gently, lying a hand on Clint’s shoulder and leading him to the living room at the front of the house.
Neal lay on his side atop a ratty couch, Agent Sotomayor standing over him semi-protectively, looking as pale as a ghost and like he’d like to bolt. Several other agents were leading Almshouse and one other man away in cuffs; another lay on the floor, a gunshot wound to his chest, unmoving.
Neal’s body was curled into a ball with his arms clutched around his midsection. His face was grey, his eyes were closed, and if he hadn’t bent his head forward in a grimace of pain right at the moment Clint and Peter walked through the doorway, Clint would have sworn he was dead. Clint rushed across the room, coming down beside Neal on his knees, hand on his upper arm. “Neal?” He moved his hand down Neal's arm to his midsection, where he saw that his shirt, as well as a towel someone had at some point provided him, was soaked entirely through with blood. “Neal!” Clint repeated, louder, and Neal's eyes opened. He did not speak - maybe he couldn’t - but there was recognition in his eyes when they locked onto Clint’s, and some of the tension in his face and shoulders eased.
Not caring who saw, Clint leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Neal's temple, whispering, “I got you,” reassuringly into his ear, and then threading his fingers through Neal's hair to rest his hand protectively against his scalp. Neal closed his eyes again, but leaned his head against Clint’s caress, and suddenly nothing else mattered.
----
“I may never get out of here,” Neal groused, kicking his leg out and letting it dangle from where he sat on the edge of the hospital bed he’d called home for the last ten days. The knife wound he’d been dealt by McManimon had required a long yet successful surgery to repair, and he was finally being discharged. If only the doctor would show up to sign off on it.
“I dunno,” Clint said lightly from the chair near the wall where he’d sat sprawling for the last hour, “I think some of the nurses might not mind if you became a permanent fixture around here.”
“You’re not jealous, are you?” Neal had been a model patient, and literally half the staff of the ward had fallen under his spell, so much so that the nurses argued daily over who gave him his sponge baths.
“Nope, not at all,” Clint laughed.
“Why not?” Neal asked, truly affronted.
Clint laughed again. “Because I know you’re mine. And I know your flirting is harmless. And I know where you are at all times.”
Neal glanced ruefully down at the tracker, its green light shining placidly up at him. “So much for my rep.”
Thirty minutes later, however, Neal was safely ensconced in a wheelchair, with Clint wheeling him slowly along the hospital’s corridors, a leather duffel perched on Neal's lap. “Thanks for coming to pick me up,” he said lightly.
“Like I’d make you take a cab.”
“And thanks for letting me recuperate at your place,” Neal said, his voice more serious.
“Well, my place is closer to your rehab center,” Jones said, shrugging.
Neal swallowed, and when he spoke again, his voice was thick with emotion. “And thanks for finding me. Diana told me how it went down.” Clint stopped walking and Neal stretched his neck back to look up at his lover. “Who knows what would have happened if you hadn’t analyzed that audio.”
Clint looked down on Neal's upside down face, and felt a hot flush come to his cheeks. “I… I don’t…”
“I’m lucky to have you in my life.”
Clint said nothing, because there was nothing to say. He bent over and kissed Neal lightly on his mouth, bringing up both his hands to caress the sides of his face. Neal's own hands came up to cover them, and when they parted, Neal planted another kiss on Clint’s right palm.
“Very lucky.”
----
Thank you for your time.