WC Fic: Steal My Body Home, Part 2/2
Steal My Body Home, Part 2
Part 1
Oklahoma City, OK to Santa Fe, NM, 2014
“Well, look at that - an actual tumbleweed,” Peter remarked as they raced along I-40 West across the Texas panhandle. They were making good progress, but he didn’t think they’d make it to Santa Fe before as soon as he’d hoped. He wasn’t blind - he’d noticed how much worse Neal's insomnia had become lately, and he had let him sleep in that morning. “I half expect to see a coyote chasing a roadrunner along the side of the road.”
“What was that?” Neal replied a full minute later; he’d been sitting with his knee up, staring out across the scrubby landscape, though Peter doubted he was taking any of it in. Neal had been more quiet than usual today, and Peter understood he had a lot on his mind, not least of which was his health.
The aneurysm in Neal's brain, Peter knew, encompassed two branches of a major blood vessel; that, and its position and size made it extremely risky to remedy surgically.
Peter couldn’t ever shake the feeling they were living on borrowed time. Where Elizabeth’s attitude had been one of unrelenting cheerfulness, Peter’s anxiety had manifested as a tendency to hover over Neal that he did not like in himself - and Neal clearly did not either. But he couldn’t help it.
Every time he looked at Neal, he saw the inevitable grief he fully expected would be the end of him.
“It’s so strange, this part of the country,” Peter said. “I’ve never been through here before - I’ve mostly ever been on the East coast. Seems so barren in comparison.”
“It does seem sort of surreal,” Neal agreed. He turned his head to look at Peter. “But it’s still beautiful in its own way.”
Peter glanced at Neal, took in the care-worn face, the dark circles under tired eyes that were still so blue and vibrant, still took his breath away, and couldn’t agree more. He reached out and caressed the side of Neal's face with the backs of his fingers. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Makes me want to see more.”
----
Neal knew he wasn’t much of a driving companion today, but there was nothing he could do. Today, all his mind could accommodate was the upcoming reunion with his mother. What would he say to her? What would she say back? It had been so long - could they get past the way he’d left, the reasons for it?
When he’d found out about his father, he hadn’t left right away. He’d tried to stick it out, tried to live with the lies his mother had told him, the truth that his father was alive and a murderer, see if he could get past it. But when he found out less than a month later that Danny Brooks wasn’t even his real name, the betrayal had felt so raw all over again, and he had to leave. He took nothing with him but a few clothes, and was living on the street before his 18th birthday.
Now he was going to see her again, and he didn’t have any idea what to expect. Would she be angry at him? Happy? Upset? Images of her reaction played themselves out in his mind. He imagined her hugging him to her, close, like she used to do; crying when she saw him, begging for his forgiveness; slapping him across the face for abandoning her, calling him a coward. In each scenario, at least, she was touching him, reaching for him or slapping him.
It didn’t register when Peter reached for him, but he realized suddenly his hand was being cradled by Peter’s, and it calmed him.
Santa Fe, NM, 2014
The house looked like every other one on the block: small, modest front yard, stucco over adobe. The front windows were shuttered against the setting sun, so they could not see inside; Neal thought that was a good thing, maybe.
Peter put the car in Park and cut the engine, rubbed his palms over his jeans repeatedly, and waited for Neal to do something. Neal hoped he did not appear to be as panicked as he felt, but from Peter’s expression, he was having a hell of a time masking his emotions. He opened the car door and got out.
Peter was a reassuring presence just behind, but Neal still felt utterly alone as he walked up the short path to the front porch. He raised his hand to knock and then froze, suddenly uncertain. Peter’s hand at the small of his back made him jump, but it propelled him into action as well. He knocked on the door.
He felt rather than heard the approach of someone inside, the slight depression of the floorboards extending to the small porch. A lock was unlatched, the door opened, and there stood Neal's mother, blinking up at them and against the sunlight.
She was smaller than he remembered, but he supposed that was to be expected - he was certainly a bit taller. Her auburn hair was a shade lighter, and he could see the greying of it at the roots - she was due for a touch-up. She was barefoot, her fingers stained with paint, Neal noticed. And her eyes… looked up at him politely, expectantly, but without a trace of recognition.
“Yes?” she said, a bland smile on her lips.
“Momma?” Neal couldn’t help but say, reverting to his early childhood name for her. He suddenly felt so small and overwhelmed in her presence.
Her brows furrowed, and she looked slightly worried. “No one has called me that in a long, long time.”
“We haven’t seen each other in a long time,” Neal said, the smile he’d plastered on fading.
“I know you?”
“Mom?”
“I know you!” She sounded slightly triumphant, then her face fell and she looked confused and lost. “You’re…” her voice trailed off and she looked away from him, over his shoulder at Peter standing behind her. “You I don’t know.” She at least sounded positive about that.
“No, Ms. Caffrey, you don’t. I’m a friend of your son’s.” He laid a hand on Neal's arm as he spoke.
“My son’s? I have a son…”
“How we doin’ over here?” a man’s voice said to his left, and Neal looked over to see a man of about 60 striding over to them from the house next door. He was of medium height and build and spoke with a light Native accent. He wore jeans and boots, with an honest to God cowboy hat on his head and a bolo tie clasped around his throat. He stood with his hands on his hips and looked at Neal and Peter shrewdly. “I’m Martin Calderon,” he said, “Detective Calderon with SFPD. You boys friends o’ Regina’s?”
“You could say so. I’m her son,” Neal replied, a bit more defensively than he’d intended.
Martin’s eyes flicked over to Regina’s and then back at Neal.
“He’s my son. He’s Danny,” she said, not at all sounding sure of it.
“Well, isn’t that nice?” Martin said, but he was still giving Neal the stinkeye. “Guess it’s been a while since y’all’s talked?”
Neal opened his mouth to answer when Martin eyed Peter. “And who are you?”
“Special Agent Peter Burke, with the FBI,” Peter answered, and Neal loved him so much right now.
“FBI?” Regina said, and looked like she might panic at that bit of news.
“I’m a friend of Neal's,” Peter said gently. “Er, Danny’s.”
“How nice for you,” Martin said, unimpressed, and walked past them both and up to Regina. He put an arm around her shoulders and eased her into the house. “Come on, Reggie, let’s go and have a seat - looks like you’ve got company.”
Neal watched them go, but couldn’t follow for some reason. He didn’t understand what the hell was going on. Of all the reactions he imagined getting from his mother, this was definitely not among them. When his indecisiveness lasted a beat too long, Peter slipped his thumb and forefinger around Neal's wrist and led him into the house.
Neither Regina nor Martin were waiting for them, so they went into the living room and waited. A moment later, Martin appeared.
“She’s making tea,” he said, then put his hands on his hips and regarded Neal with thinly veiled suspicion. “You really Danny?”
“Neal. My real name is Neal.”
“She always calls you Danny.”
“She talks about me?”
“Of course she does - you’re her only child.”
Neal stared at his shoes, defensive. “I changed my name. Back.”
“What brings you here? Why now?”
“Hey now, hang on just a second,” Peter said, stepping forward. “We don’t mean any kind of harm here. Neal just wanted to see his mother. It’s been a long time.”
“Yeah, it has,” Martin said. “How did you find her? I thought that kind of information was classified or something.”
Neal suddenly understood the hostility. “She’s still in WITSEC,” he said to Peter.
“What? Neal - what did you do to find that information?” Peter seemed angry.
“Nothing illegal. She’s still going by the name Regina Brooks - she wasn’t hard to find. She’s my mother, for chrissakes!”
“I know, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Peter placed a warm hand on Neal's forearm and he calmed.
“She’s my mother and she doesn’t know me,” Neal said as the realization dawned, and he suddenly had to get out of there.
----
“It’s early stage Alzheimer’s,” Peter said as he got into the car a few minutes later.
“I kinda figured,” Neal replied.
“Martin said she’s pretty good most days, but sometimes, at the end of the day or if she's tired or stressed, she gets forgetful. I guess we just caught her at a bad time.”
“Can we go? Can we get outta here?”
“Sure.”
The bed and breakfast they’d booked was just two blocks off the main square of the town, but Neal didn’t even register the quaint shops and historic missions as they drove. All he could see, all he could think about, was the utter lack of recognition in his mother’s eyes as she looked at him. Sure, he must have changed since he was a skinny 17-year old, but he’d expected her to at least know him.
They pulled into the small parking lot and Peter began to unload their luggage. Neal felt itchy, he felt like he couldn’t breathe. But mostly, he needed to be alone - he couldn’t talk about this with Peter, even though he knew that Peter would want to, would insist on it. “You got these?” he asked Peter, indicating the luggage.
“Of course.”
“OK,” he said then turned and walked away.
The town of Santa Fe was beautiful, even in the lengthening shadows cast by the sun as it set behind the mountains. The low buildings housed art galleries and antique shops, restaurants and bars, a historic old movie palace. It was a lovely place - quiet and peaceful this time of the evening when people were just closing up shops but before the dinnertime rush for the many restaurants. Neal could understand how it would appeal to his mother; he wondered if she still painted, if any of her work hung in one of the many galleries he’d passed. Part of him wanted to go back and look, and another part of him mourned for the lost years between them.
He shook his head - he couldn’t think about that, he didn’t want to - so he walked around the town some more. He walked until his legs tired; he walked until he was out of breath. That was how Peter found him, bent over and trying to catch his breath in front of a closed jewelry shop on San Francisco.
“You OK?”
“I think I’m having a panic attack,” Neal gasped.
“That’s just the altitude - takes some getting used to, I hear. I think you overdid it. You want to sit down?” He indicated a nearby bench.
“I want to go back to New York.”
“We can talk about that. Come on.”
They took a seat and Neal realized his hands were shaking; he wasn’t sure why, but he shoved them between his knees to stop it. Peter sat beside him and put an arm around his shoulders and he realized he was just cold.
“She always took care of me,” Neal told him quietly.
“Oh?”
“She had this way of knowing when something was wrong and just…” He sighed, remembering. “You know how I learned sleight of hand? From her. She’d do it whenever I was sick, to distract me. She’d pull coins or toys from behind my ears until I begged her to show me how. Her grandfather worked in vaudeville back in the day.
“And she - well, she always fixed me up, you know? Whether I’d broken my head or my heart, she was always there. We didn’t have a lot of money - she worked two jobs - but she always found money to buy me paints or clay or whatever I wanted because she said I’d be a great artist someday.
“Some great artist, huh?”
“Well, you’ve forged some great artists…”
Neal snorted. “I have at that.”
“You loved each other,” Peter said gently, but Neal stiffened up.
“And I forgot all of it when I found out about who my father really was - what he was. I just… I left. Just like him. Like a coward, I left her. And what happened next? I used the skills she taught me to run cons, to… to scam people and rob them.” There were tears in his eyes now. “She gave me everything I was and I distorted it, exploited it, to hurt people. Amazing what all these years will do for your perspective. Why couldn’t I see it before? Why couldn’t I see what she did for me?
“I was so, so selfish, Peter. She doesn’t deserve an ungrateful asshole like me for a son. I guess it’s just as well she doesn’t know me - it’s not like I’ve done her proud or anything.” Neal got up and walked away, because the sick feeling in his chest was making it hard to breathe. Or maybe it was just the altitude. He was practically running by the time Peter caught up.
“Neal, come on!” Peter said when he had. “We should talk about this. You need to talk about this.”
“What’s to talk about? How to tell her that I turned out to be the biggest disappointment ever, or the part where I’m dying?”
Peter looked as if he’d been slapped. “You’re not… you’re not dying,” he said, looking as stricken as Neal had ever seen him. “Are you?”
Neal immediately regretted his histrionics. “No. No, Peter, I’m not.” He rested his hands on Peter’s chest for a moment to emphasize it. “But it’s all I can think about.”
Peter put his arms around him and held him close, and Neal wished - not for the first time - that it really could mean that everything would be all right.
“You know what she said to me the day I left?” Neal said quietly, into the warm solidity of Peter’s chest. “’Have a nice day at school.’ It was a month after I found out. She probably thought it had all blown over, that I was over it, but I wasn’t. I never caught the school bus that day, just hitched a ride to Chicago and never looked back.”
“Oh, Neal. You were just a kid. A mixed-up kid, and you were hurt and angry.”
“Why did I even come here? She would have been better off without me.”
Peter rested his hands on Neal's shoulders and gently pushed back from him, looking him in the eyes. “You said it yourself, Neal. You came because she will make things better. Deep down inside, you knew you needed her.”
“And now?”
“Well, now she needs you more.”
----
That night, it was Peter’s turn to be the insomniac.
They’d walked back to the B&B with a bag of takeout, and he’d practically fed his dinner to Neal, he was so drained. They lay down together - Peter was the big spoon, like always - and he’d held Neal tightly until his breathing evened out and he was asleep.
Peter pushed up on his elbow and watched his lover sleeping. Neal's face was always untroubled and so open when he slept - he looked about ten years younger, too. It was one of Peter’s favorite things to do, to watch Neal sleep. Lately though, Peter watched Neal sleep to be sure he was still breathing. He knew it was morbid and creepy - Elizabeth caught him at it once and told him so - but he couldn’t help it.
It was well after midnight when he finally drifted off, and he was awake before Neal, who was warm and pliant in his arms. Peter leaned his face forward to nuzzle against Neal's ear, his favorite spot because it was the perfect place to catch the unique aroma that was Neal - part aftershave, part shampoo, part sweat, but all Neal. It was always a comfort to him.
Neal made an “mmm” sound and shifted back, his head resting on Peter’s shoulder. Peter leaned forward more and kissed Neal on the corner of his mouth. Neal murmured something sleepily unintelligible, and pressed his ass back against Peter’s crotch. Neal's proximity was making Peter hard and he couldn't help but rut a little against him. Neal took Peter’s hand and guided it down his own body until he was cupping Neal's hard-on through his pajamas. He stroked him gently, squeezing the way he knew Neal liked.
“Peter,” Neal whispered and made to turn to face him.
“No, just like this, OK?” Peter murmured and reached down to push Neal's sleep pants down. “Let me do this for you.” Peter buried his face in the crook between Neal's neck and shoulder and began to kiss him as he slowly jacked Neal to full hardness. Neal gasped, raised his right arm as he turned his head, burying his fingers in Peter’s hair as they kissed.
Moments later, Neal was trembling beneath him, his breath hitching. “Just let it go,” Peter urged softly and then Neal practically whimpered as he came over Peter’s gentle grip and his own stomach.
Peter found leftover napkins from their dinner the night before to clean them both off and then pulled Neal on top of him and settled his head on his chest.
“How was that?”
“I’m sorry I was so quick.”
“Don’t be - it’s been a long six weeks.”
“For a minute, I forgot everything. Everything. Thank you.” Neal tilted his head back and they kissed until they fell asleep again, missing the breakfast tray that was delivered to their door by their hosts.
----
They returned to Regina’s house in the late morning. If anything, Neal was even more fearful of her reaction this time, and fumbled with the car door handle at both ends of the trip.
Peter met him at the curb as he walked round the car and took his hands, which were both shaking with nerves. “Hey, listen to me. Pretend like it’s one of our cases. Just focus on the now, focus on the moment. The past is the past - there’s no changing it. It’s what you do with the future that matters now.”
Neal smiled wanly and snarked, “You find that on a Hallmark card?”
Peter pretended to be affronted, then raised Neal's hands to his lips and kissed them on the knuckles.
Neal held his breath until Regina opened the door, and when she did, she said nothing. The “Mom?” froze on Neal’s lips.
“Danny,” she said a moment later, and he stumbled forward and fell into her open arms. “Oh, my boy!” she said into his ear as she kissed him there, and Neal lost every ounce of his composure as he began to cry.
“I’m sorry, Mom. So, so sorry!” he barely choked out.
“Oh, darling, shhh,” she said gently, running her fingers through his hair soothingly with one hand as she held him close with the other until he quieted.
Neal felt Peter shift uneasily on his feet behind him, and he pulled away.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to interrupt,” Peter said; there were tears streaming down his face.
“That’s OK. Do you want to come in?” Regina asked, and they followed her into a tiny but homey kitchen where she’d apparently been baking all morning; there were muffins cooling on racks beside the stove, and coffee was already on.
“Now I know I’m very forgetful lately, but I’m certain I don’t know you,” she said to Peter with a smile as she poured them all cups of coffee.
“Mom, this is Peter Burke. He’s… someone special.”
Regina’s eyes sparkled as she smiled; Neal noted there were a lot more lines around them than he remembered, but they only served to enhance the twinkle in her green eyes. “I’m glad to hear you’ve got someone special, Dan.”
“It’s Neal now,” Neal said carefully as he took the mug of coffee she offered from her.
“My apologies. It’s been so long since I’ve thought of you as ‘Neal,’ I think I’d have forgotten it no matter what.” She took a seat and offered them each a muffin from the plate she’d brought over. “You know, ‘Neal’ was the first name of my favorite teacher when I was a girl. It was he who encouraged me to pursue art.”
“Oh?” Peter asked. “Did you have a bit of a crush on him?”
Regina laughed. “Hell no, the man was about 50 and weighed over 300 pounds. But he was a kind, kind man, and a photographer when he was young. That’s one of his pieces over there on the wall.”
Neal craned his neck and took in the familiar black and white photo of a high desert landscape. “I never knew that,” he said, rising to go and look at it. He’d never noticed the inscription on it either, though truthfully, it was in pencil and it had faded: “For Ronnie. Fondly, Neal Larssen.”
“Ronnie?” Neal said.
“Yours wasn’t the only name changed by the Marshals when we entered WITSEC, Neal. I used to be Veronica Barbara Bennett nee Charles. Of the Staten Island Charleses, ah-ha-ha-ha!” Her laugh filled the room, and the sound of it took Neal back to his childhood instantly. There had been a lot of laughter in the house where he grew up.
“Why’d you choose ‘Regina’?”
“I liked having a boy’s name for a nickname,” she said, shrugging, and sipped her coffee. “So how long have you known Neal?” she asked Peter.
“Well, we first met - professionally - about ten years ago,” Peter said. “But we fell in love about two years ago when he went away to a tropical island and I thought I’d lost him forever.” Peter smiled at Neal, and when his face was filled with such pride and love, it made breathing difficult. Peter rose. “What happened in between is a story for Neal to tell you. Without me around.”
“Must you leave?” Regina said.
“It’s probably for the best. Plausible deniability or something.”
Regina looked confused as Peter said his goodbyes, kissing Neal and telling him to phone him when he was ready to be picked up. When he’d gone, Neal turned to face his mother and saw something on her face he’d most definitely forgotten - her “don’t screw with me” expression.
Neal sighed - just what he’d been doing with his life was not a story he relished telling his mother, but there was no way around it. “Peter was the … uh… FBI agent who arrested me,” he said and then quickly ducked, because he just knew she’d hook a muffin at his head, and age had done nothing to affect her aim.
----
It took Neal about an hour to lay down the bullet points of his life over the last nineteen years for his mother. She was most interested in his years working with Peter at the FBI - much to Neal's relief. And she was much less scandalized by the fact Neal was in a relationship with a married couple.
“I lived through the 70’s, Neal, I’m no girl scout!” she said.
By midafternoon, though, she was beginning to tire, and she told him she was going to go and take a nap.
“Do you want me to go?” he asked, rising.
“No!” she said, perhaps too quickly, and she looked embarrassed by it. “I want to get used to expecting you to be here,” she said quietly, and went off to her bedroom.
----
When she emerged an hour later, Neal had found some boxes of his old art projects in a closet and was sorting through them, bemused.
“You kept everything,” he said to her when he realized she was standing there.
“Of course.”
“Even the crap.”
“Most of it’s crap, sweetie,” she said lightly, and he laughed.
He turned around to face her as she took a seat on the couch. “Do you still paint?”
She nodded. “When my hands aren’t too achy from arthritis. Don’t get old, Neal, it sucks donkey balls.”
He laughed again and realized suddenly she was exactly like Elizabeth. He didn’t know if he ought to find that disturbing or not.
“I’ve got a few items in a gallery downtown,” she went on. “I’ve even sold a few.”
“That’s great, Mom. You like living here?”
“I like it fine. I was just telling…” she stopped talking abruptly.
Neal looked up and saw the confused look on her face. “Something wrong?”
“Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue. I can’t remember… I was talking to him just yesterday. My neighbor?”
“Detective Calderon?”
The light dawned in her eyes. “That’s right! I was just telling him that… oh, I’ve forgotten what I was about to say.” She went quiet at that, and Neal didn’t know how to fill the silence. “You know,” she said after several moments, “I know what’s wrong with me, and I know it’s going to just get worse, and I just…” She sighed and looked at him, her eyes angry yet mournful, her voice choking with emotion. “The worst part is that I know exactly what’s happening to me, and there’s nothing I can do. Nothing.”
He went to sit on the couch beside her and took her hand. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry you’ve had to face this alone. I’m sorry I haven’t been here.”
“No more apologies, Neal, please,” she said. “You’re here now, and that makes me happy.”
“I just wish I could help you.”
“You can’t. No one can really do anything.”
“Yeah. I get that,” he said in a low voice, and closed his eyes. “I get it.”
“Neal?” she said after a minute. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. You forget, I know you better than anyone, and you could never lie to me. There’s something you’re not telling me.” She put her hand on his face and he opened his eyes.
“I don’t want to burden you.”
“That’s what mothers are for - to be burdened. Now out with it.”
And then he told her. And she cried for him, and pulled him in close and rested his head on her shoulder as he cried too, his sobs choking and desperate, like the little boy all those years ago who only needed her arms around him to know that everything would soon be all right.
Except it wouldn’t be enough, it couldn’t. He was no longer that boy, he was a grown man and he was broken and there was no running to his mother to make it all better, not really. And she was older now, no longer the inexorable force of nature he’d always recognized her to be, and she could do little for him, could fix nothing, and they both knew it.
It didn’t make them hold on any less tightly.
----
When Peter returned in the early evening, the curtains on the picture window in the living room were wide open, and he could see that Neal and Regina were both drawing. Neal was working on something using pastels, Peter couldn’t see what, and Regina was drawing a portrait of her son in profile. She had another drawing sitting to the side - it looked like an illustration for a children’s book; Peter remembered Neal mentioning that was her profession. But it sat untouched as she quickly sketched Neal in pen and ink; Peter suspected Neal had no idea he was the subject of his mother’s work at the moment.
It was marvelous to watch them, each with heads cocked to the side and tongues sticking out unconsciously as they concentrated. Peter was mesmerized for a moment and found he didn’t want to break up their silent communion with each other. But he must have moved or made a sound or something, because Neal soon looked up and spotted him, the smile on his face broad and almost touching his eyes. He rose to come to the door and greeted Peter with a peck on the cheek before he returned to the living room and began to clean up his work. Regina, Peter noticed, had hidden her sketch away and was working on the illustration again.
“Is it that time already?” she said.
“I’ll be back in the morning,” Neal promised as he gave her a hug and kiss and slipped into his jacket.
“How’d it go?” Peter asked guardedly as they walked side by side to the car.
“It went.”
“How do you feel?”
“I dunno. Relieved I guess? Just talking about it with her makes it less scary, somehow.”
Peter reached for his hand and hooked their fingers together; Neal grasped onto Peter lightly and then they parted to get into the car.
A brief, chiming sounded and Neal reached for his phone in his pocket.
“Someone texting you?”
Neal's brows were drawn together as he looked at the phone, then shoved it back into his pants pocket. “Voice mail.”
“You gonna listen to it?”
“I’ll get it later.”
Peter didn’t think that was an answer, but he left it alone. If it was important, Neal would tell him.
----
Regina was scared to death every time she looked at Neal.
It wasn’t that she was afraid of him - he may have spent the last two decades of his life away from her, but he was still her son and she knew him. It was her lifelong regret that she had hidden the truth from him, and she couldn’t help but blame herself for the bad choices he’d made in his life - where would he be if only she’d told him everything from the beginning?
What she was really afraid of was losing him again, in more ways than one.
Primary among her fears was the medical condition he’d told her about the day before. She didn’t know exactly understand it or how bad it might be, but it was clearly bad enough to drive him all the way across the country to find her. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why he was here - he was afraid to die.
The other thing that scared her was, naturally, her own diagnosis. She knew she would eventually begin to lose more and more of who she was and what she knew about her life over the next few years, and the biggest thing that she was afraid of losing was her memories of her life with her child. It had been the single most joyous time of her life, and the thought of forgetting any of that or, even worse, forgetting Neal completely, struck at the very core of her. She may have screwed it all up, but she was still, first and foremost, a mother. The fact she’d just gotten her son back somehow made her feel that loss more keenly.
God, what she would give to get some small fraction of the time they’d lost back!
It made her want to scream and rage, because she felt so impotent and helpless on both scores. But she learned a long time ago there was nothing to be gained from that. At the time, she’d taken all of her energies and poured them into her son and making sure she raised him right. And now?
Now she’d do exactly the same thing. She might not have a lot of time left to be of use or to do much good for him, but while she could, she would support him and take care of him in whatever way he needed.
There was just one thing left to figure out - there was clearly something Neal was keeping from her. He may be a grown man, but she recognized that constipated look on his face still, and she meant to make him tell her.
She looked up from the table of the restaurant where they’d stopped in for lunch as he made his way back from the restroom. She felt the stab of fear and repressed it as ruthlessly as ever she’d done with her anger at James in the past. She didn’t have time for that, and she could do this - he needed her to.
----
Neal and Regina strolled arm-in-arm along a hiking path in a park in the foothills just north of the city. It was a cloudy, windy day - chilly for June, but Neal expected it was par for the course up here. It was beautiful country - he could see the appeal to his mother in coming here; already he’d “banked” a few vistas to sketch later or when he got home to New York.
As they walked, he kept his hand on his cell phone where it sat in his pocket. IN his last message, his doctor had asked him to call, urgently. Apparently, there was an advantageous window in the neurosurgeon’s schedule coming up and Neal would have to schedule something now or lose the opportunity. Neal owed him a call back, but he still had no decision on the surgery yet.
The walk was bracing, and he needed it. He was just so tired, felt it down to his bones, and it wasn’t as if he could partake of his favorite form of stimulant - caffeine - in his time of need. The night before had been another sleepless one, but at least the subject of his late night worryings had shifted from himself to his mother. He couldn’t bear the thought of what was happening to her, the dread she must be feeling on a daily basis, the weight of that knowledge. He wished he could take it away.
He hoped he’d be around to help her as time went on. This realization hit him, hard, and he couldn’t suppress the small, strangled noise that came from his throat.
“Neal? You all right?” Regina asked when he almost stumbled.
“’All right’ has variable definitions.”
“You’ve got that right. But what’s on your mind? I already know there’s something you’re not telling me. Something about your condition.”
Neal took a deep breath - and marveled at the fact they’d already re-assumed their old roles. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised about her knowing this; no one knew him better than she did. “Yeah. There’s… this operation, actually.”
“What?” She stopped walking and turned to face him. “Neal, that’s wonderful - why didn’t you say -“
“It’s experimental, it might kill me.”
“Oh, well…” She looked away from him and down the path they were on. “Oh.”
“It’s a bypass,” he explained. “Like people get in their hearts, only inside my brain. They’d take a vein from my leg or something and use it to reroute the blood flow. It’s -“
“There’s no need to go into detail,” she said. “My skin is already crawling enough, thanks.” They began walking again. “So this is the big secret you’ve been carrying?”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to do?”
“That’s the thing - I don’t know. The odds of a bad result are just so high, and -“ He ran out of words and looked into her eyes.
She reached up and caressed his cheek. “Oh honey,” she said, then slipped her arm around him and guided him to a nearby bench. “I know you’re scared.”
Neal just nodded, words failing him. Regina encouraged Neal to lay his head in her lap, a gesture that was so familiar to him. She ran her fingers through his hair, as she’d done when he was a child; he soon began to feel sleepy.
“This reminds me of all those ear infections you used to get when you were little,” Regina said, sitting back against the bench while she continued to stroke Neal’s hair. “This was the only thing that would soothe you, you remember?”
“Mmmm.”
“You’d fall asleep every time, too. Sometimes it was the only way to get you to sleep, and I was afraid to move or else you’d start crying again. I used to joke to your Aunt Ellen that I was trapped under something light.”
She kept stroking, and Neal may have fallen asleep this time as well - he was certainly drifting on the edge of consciousness and lost track of the time. When she started speaking again, he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming it or not.
“I wish I could make this decision for you, sweetie, but I can’t. One thing I can do is maybe give you some perspective.” She took a deep breath and began to speak slowly. “I know what’s happening to you is completely different than what I’m dealing with, but you know…” her voice broke as she continued, “you have options.”
He opened his eyes. “Mom.”
“I’m not saying that to make you feel bad, or even to make much more of it other than to say that you have a choice here, honey, and I know it’s scary, but it sure beats sitting around and waiting for things to happen to you.”
He rolled over onto his back to look at her, and she rested her hand on his head.
“I want you to know that whatever your choice turns out to be, it is a valid one, and I will support you. And the people who love you will support you.”
Neal blinked and the tears he didn’t even know were in his eyes fell, and she reached out to brush them away. “Don’t cry, baby - it will all be OK, no matter what you do, because it’s your life, and you’ve come through hell to get here, and whatever you do, it’ll be the right thing.”
She kissed him on the forehead, and he knew she was right.
----
Neal sat in the darkening room he and Peter shared at the B&B. It was a very pleasant space - a small, one-bedroom, stand-alone unit, one of half a dozen on the grounds of the main building, which stood just above the terraced yard beyond. The room was extremely pleasant - light, airy, with a vaulted ceiling and its own fireplace. A good place for thinking.
Peter was still out; he’d wanted to explore the area, so Regina had suggested he drive to Taos. Neal expected him back soon, but in the meantime, Regina had dropped him back off here so he could be alone with his decision.
He hadn’t expected it to be this hard.
Most of him - if he had to apply a number to it, he’d randomly go with 75% - thought that having the operation was the way to go, because having the threat hanging over him of the aneurysm in his head bursting someday soon or, worse, waking up dead one fine morning, was an untenable position to be in. But the rest of him - the most insidious, the 25% that spoke to him in the dark and gave voice to his darkest instincts and advised him to take a hit when he was showing 17 in blackjack - thought it’d be OK to take his chances. He’d lived for who knew how long with this thing in his head; surely it wasn’t that great a threat.
Then he remembered his mother’s words - he had people who loved him, who relied on him, whose happiness depended on him. Didn’t he owe them the attempt to at least fight for his own life? As they’d fought for his? Peter, who had literally saved Neal's life time and again; and Elizabeth who loved him despite all the crap he’d put her through; and Moz, who’d stuck by him as he found his way from the crooked path to the straighter (if not quite narrow). And finally his mother - she’d sacrificed so much for him over the years and though neither of them was perfect, they belonged to each other. She loved him and, despite all evidence to the contrary, saw every bit of potential in him he had or ever would. Didn’t he owe it to her to at least try?
Yes, he did.
He lay back on the bed, his head pillowed on his hands, stared up at the ceiling fan hanging inert above his head, and came to a realization. He’d do this thing for Peter, who looked at him like he was a miracle, and for Elizabeth who got all his jokes, and for Moz who had always stood by him. But mostly, he was doing it for his Mom, so that he could help her as her disease progressed, to give her back some of the time they’d lost over the years. He owed her that much - or that little, as he realized.
In the morning, he’d ask her if she’d come home with him to New York. But right now, he had something else to take care of. Picking up his cell, he dialed his doctor’s office, realizing it was after 5:00 back in New York and hoping they had late hours tonight, because he had a surgery to schedule.
----
“Hey,” Peter said as he came in.
“Hey,” Neal said with a smile. “Whatcha got there?”
“Candy! There was this terrific little old-timey penny candy shop up in Taos and I just knew El would love it! Look - flying saucers!”
“She definitely will love them,” Neal said approvingly
“How was your day with your mom?”
“It was good, I had a nice time. We went for a hike, believe it or not.”
Peter laughed. “You? Do you even own boots?”
“OK, so it was really a park. But there were woods. And creatures.”
“Sounds great.” Peter stowed his packages in the closet and came to kiss Neal. “You hungry? I want to take you out to dinner.”
“That’s nice. But - can we talk first? There’s something I need to tell you.”
A panicked expression stole across Peter’s face before he was able to control it. “Do I like the sound of that?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Neal took a deep breath - there was no way Peter wouldn’t be upset with him for holding this back from him, but he could see no other alternative. “So, there’s this operation…”
“Operation?”
“For my aneurysm…”
“There is no operation for your aneurysm, the doctor said.”
“Well, it turns out there is,” Neal said slowly. “Only it’s experimental and highly risky.”
“Define risky.”
“30% mortality rate?”
Peter began to breathe heavily through his nostrils - never a good sign. “When did you find out about it?”
“Um, a week ago?”
“A week ago.”
“Give or take.”
“Give or take. When… when were you going to tell me?”
“Now?”
Peter nodded, and Neal could see the muscles bunching in his jaw. “I want to understand why you didn’t tell me.”
“I needed to make my decision about it first.”
“You couldn’t have decided before we drove all the way out here?”
“I needed to see my mother.”
Peter was staring at him with that squint in his eyes that always made Neal squirm. “Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive?”
“I don’t know - no? I needed her judgment, I needed her input.”
“All of a sudden? After 19 years?”
“I needed her, Peter. You understand that, right?”
“I do. I do.” Peter turned away and rubbed his hand across his forehead. When he turned back to face Neal, his eyes were stony. “No. No, I don’t. You needed her to make this decision for you?”
“I needed her help, yes. She has a certain perspective, Peter.”
“And I don’t?”
“Frankly, not the one I need right now, no.”
Peter looked stunned. “I can’t believe this. I love you - why wouldn’t you want me to help make this decision?”
“Because I have to trust that the person helping me through this won’t have their own point of view - they have to have mine. Peter, I love you, but you’ll only tell me to do what you want me to do, and that’s not the same thing.”
Peter blinked at him. “You think I’m that selfish?”
“When it comes to the people you care about and life-changing decisions? Yes.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s not supposed to do anything. Peter,” Neal rose from his seat on the bed, walked over to Peter and took his hand; Peter pulled it away, but Neal was persistent, taking it and holding it against his chest, over his heart. There were angry tears in Peter’s eyes. “Peter, I love you more than anyone I’ve ever known, and I appreciate everything you’ve ever done for me, but in this? I couldn’t trust your perspective. I needed hers - I needed my family.”
Peter swallowed, and nodded, but the hurt didn’t leave his eyes. “And what did she tell you to do?”
“Ironically, she wouldn’t. But she helped me see what I had to do anyway. If we hadn’t come here, if I hadn’t seen what she’s going through, I couldn't have made this decision.”
“And what is your decision?”
“I’m going through with it. I’m having the surgery.”
Peter closed his eyes and breathed out a long, slow breath. “The surgery that has a 30% chance of killing you.”
“Yes, that one.”
Peter opened his eyes and they stared at each other for a long minute. “I’m afraid, Neal.”
“I’m not. Not anymore.”
“Really?”
Neal pulled Peter into his arms and held him close. “Really.”
Epilogue
New York, 2014
“He’s waking up!” Regina said, pulling on Peter’s sleeve. The nurses had allowed two people to be in the room with Neal, and they’d been waiting for what seemed like hours for him to wake.
Peter scrambled out of the chair he’d been sitting in and hurried to Neal’s bedside. He’d survived his surgery, but the doctor was very clear that he wasn’t out of the woods yet - the chance of complications like blood clots was still very high.
Neal’s face seemed to be the first thing that woke, becoming increasingly animated and he stirred. A moment later, his eyes opened.
“Neal?” Peter and Regina each said at once, but Neal’s eyes were staring at the ceiling blankly. For a single, awful moment, Peter feared the worst - Neal had had a stroke or any one of a dozen things he couldn’t even comprehend. “Neal?” he repeated.
Slowly, Neal moved his head at the sound of Peter’s voice, and immediately Peter knew he was wrong. Bright blue eyes shone up at him, and a wan smile lit up Neal’s face, and everything was suddenly right in the world. The relief was so profound Peter started to cry.
“Hey, stop that,” Neal admonished gently, but Peter couldn’t. Regina held out a handkerchief for him, and he took it gratefully.
“I’m gonna go tell El and Moz.”
----
Two days later, Neal was much less sleepy from the drugs and able to sit up and allowed more visitors. Peter excused himself to go and get everyone coffee, and when he returned, he found them alone, Regina sitting on the edge of Neal’s bed, talking with him softly. Neal had an expression of sheer joy on his pale face, and soon Peter realized why.
From out of nowhere, Regina had produced a small plastic pig that she held out to Neal in the palm of her hand. Where it had come from, Peter couldn’t tell - she had short sleeves on today. With a flash of movement he couldn’t track, it was gone. Then, she pulled a pink pompom from inside Neal’s bandage and booped him on the nose with it.
Neal took it from her with a grin. “You were always so much better at that than me,” he told her.
“More innate talent,” she said, buffing her fingernails on her blouse.
“Probably. Thanks for coming - this would have been a lot harder without you,” he said sincerely.
She reached out and caressed his cheek. “Aww, honey, I wouldn’t have missed it. And I’ll stay as long as you want me to, though I draw the line at bedpans - my days of wiping your ass are over.”
“Fair enough. But I want you to stay forever - have you given moving here any thought?”
“I don’t know, Neal. I don’t want to be a burden.”
“That's what sons are for - to be burdened. I can take it, Mom. We can take it.” He reached out his hand and motioned for Peter, who’d been standing in the doorway, to enter the room.
“I always wanted a mother-in-law closer to home,” Peter kidded.
“Oh really?” Regina said, laughing. “You want to call me mother-in-law, you’d better put a ring on it.” She hooked a thumb at Neal.
“Mom!”
“I’d do that if I thought he’d take me seriously,” Peter replied with a grin.
“Wait, what?”
Regina flapped her hand dismissively at Neal. “I want to know what your intentions are towards my boy. Fed.”
“My wife and I would make a respectable man out of him. Ma’am.”
“I am sitting right here.”
“Honey, shush - if I play my cards right, I get to plan a wedding.”
“Oh God, what have I done?” Neal said plaintively, but he was grinning from ear to ear.
----
More Notes:
• Title is the name of a song by Beck, the lyrics of which have nothing to do with the content of this story, but to me it feels like the song that’s playing in Neal's head during this crisis. Also, it’s really moody and dirge-like.
• I also know next to nothing about brain aneurysms, though the one depicted here is one I read about online. I’m sure there’re loads of medical inaccuracies here. Don’ t bother to tell me.
Thank you for your time.
Here is a timestamp to this story: Blurry-Eyed Worries
Part 1
Oklahoma City, OK to Santa Fe, NM, 2014
“Well, look at that - an actual tumbleweed,” Peter remarked as they raced along I-40 West across the Texas panhandle. They were making good progress, but he didn’t think they’d make it to Santa Fe before as soon as he’d hoped. He wasn’t blind - he’d noticed how much worse Neal's insomnia had become lately, and he had let him sleep in that morning. “I half expect to see a coyote chasing a roadrunner along the side of the road.”
“What was that?” Neal replied a full minute later; he’d been sitting with his knee up, staring out across the scrubby landscape, though Peter doubted he was taking any of it in. Neal had been more quiet than usual today, and Peter understood he had a lot on his mind, not least of which was his health.
The aneurysm in Neal's brain, Peter knew, encompassed two branches of a major blood vessel; that, and its position and size made it extremely risky to remedy surgically.
Peter couldn’t ever shake the feeling they were living on borrowed time. Where Elizabeth’s attitude had been one of unrelenting cheerfulness, Peter’s anxiety had manifested as a tendency to hover over Neal that he did not like in himself - and Neal clearly did not either. But he couldn’t help it.
Every time he looked at Neal, he saw the inevitable grief he fully expected would be the end of him.
“It’s so strange, this part of the country,” Peter said. “I’ve never been through here before - I’ve mostly ever been on the East coast. Seems so barren in comparison.”
“It does seem sort of surreal,” Neal agreed. He turned his head to look at Peter. “But it’s still beautiful in its own way.”
Peter glanced at Neal, took in the care-worn face, the dark circles under tired eyes that were still so blue and vibrant, still took his breath away, and couldn’t agree more. He reached out and caressed the side of Neal's face with the backs of his fingers. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Makes me want to see more.”
----
Neal knew he wasn’t much of a driving companion today, but there was nothing he could do. Today, all his mind could accommodate was the upcoming reunion with his mother. What would he say to her? What would she say back? It had been so long - could they get past the way he’d left, the reasons for it?
When he’d found out about his father, he hadn’t left right away. He’d tried to stick it out, tried to live with the lies his mother had told him, the truth that his father was alive and a murderer, see if he could get past it. But when he found out less than a month later that Danny Brooks wasn’t even his real name, the betrayal had felt so raw all over again, and he had to leave. He took nothing with him but a few clothes, and was living on the street before his 18th birthday.
Now he was going to see her again, and he didn’t have any idea what to expect. Would she be angry at him? Happy? Upset? Images of her reaction played themselves out in his mind. He imagined her hugging him to her, close, like she used to do; crying when she saw him, begging for his forgiveness; slapping him across the face for abandoning her, calling him a coward. In each scenario, at least, she was touching him, reaching for him or slapping him.
It didn’t register when Peter reached for him, but he realized suddenly his hand was being cradled by Peter’s, and it calmed him.
Santa Fe, NM, 2014
The house looked like every other one on the block: small, modest front yard, stucco over adobe. The front windows were shuttered against the setting sun, so they could not see inside; Neal thought that was a good thing, maybe.
Peter put the car in Park and cut the engine, rubbed his palms over his jeans repeatedly, and waited for Neal to do something. Neal hoped he did not appear to be as panicked as he felt, but from Peter’s expression, he was having a hell of a time masking his emotions. He opened the car door and got out.
Peter was a reassuring presence just behind, but Neal still felt utterly alone as he walked up the short path to the front porch. He raised his hand to knock and then froze, suddenly uncertain. Peter’s hand at the small of his back made him jump, but it propelled him into action as well. He knocked on the door.
He felt rather than heard the approach of someone inside, the slight depression of the floorboards extending to the small porch. A lock was unlatched, the door opened, and there stood Neal's mother, blinking up at them and against the sunlight.
She was smaller than he remembered, but he supposed that was to be expected - he was certainly a bit taller. Her auburn hair was a shade lighter, and he could see the greying of it at the roots - she was due for a touch-up. She was barefoot, her fingers stained with paint, Neal noticed. And her eyes… looked up at him politely, expectantly, but without a trace of recognition.
“Yes?” she said, a bland smile on her lips.
“Momma?” Neal couldn’t help but say, reverting to his early childhood name for her. He suddenly felt so small and overwhelmed in her presence.
Her brows furrowed, and she looked slightly worried. “No one has called me that in a long, long time.”
“We haven’t seen each other in a long time,” Neal said, the smile he’d plastered on fading.
“I know you?”
“Mom?”
“I know you!” She sounded slightly triumphant, then her face fell and she looked confused and lost. “You’re…” her voice trailed off and she looked away from him, over his shoulder at Peter standing behind her. “You I don’t know.” She at least sounded positive about that.
“No, Ms. Caffrey, you don’t. I’m a friend of your son’s.” He laid a hand on Neal's arm as he spoke.
“My son’s? I have a son…”
“How we doin’ over here?” a man’s voice said to his left, and Neal looked over to see a man of about 60 striding over to them from the house next door. He was of medium height and build and spoke with a light Native accent. He wore jeans and boots, with an honest to God cowboy hat on his head and a bolo tie clasped around his throat. He stood with his hands on his hips and looked at Neal and Peter shrewdly. “I’m Martin Calderon,” he said, “Detective Calderon with SFPD. You boys friends o’ Regina’s?”
“You could say so. I’m her son,” Neal replied, a bit more defensively than he’d intended.
Martin’s eyes flicked over to Regina’s and then back at Neal.
“He’s my son. He’s Danny,” she said, not at all sounding sure of it.
“Well, isn’t that nice?” Martin said, but he was still giving Neal the stinkeye. “Guess it’s been a while since y’all’s talked?”
Neal opened his mouth to answer when Martin eyed Peter. “And who are you?”
“Special Agent Peter Burke, with the FBI,” Peter answered, and Neal loved him so much right now.
“FBI?” Regina said, and looked like she might panic at that bit of news.
“I’m a friend of Neal's,” Peter said gently. “Er, Danny’s.”
“How nice for you,” Martin said, unimpressed, and walked past them both and up to Regina. He put an arm around her shoulders and eased her into the house. “Come on, Reggie, let’s go and have a seat - looks like you’ve got company.”
Neal watched them go, but couldn’t follow for some reason. He didn’t understand what the hell was going on. Of all the reactions he imagined getting from his mother, this was definitely not among them. When his indecisiveness lasted a beat too long, Peter slipped his thumb and forefinger around Neal's wrist and led him into the house.
Neither Regina nor Martin were waiting for them, so they went into the living room and waited. A moment later, Martin appeared.
“She’s making tea,” he said, then put his hands on his hips and regarded Neal with thinly veiled suspicion. “You really Danny?”
“Neal. My real name is Neal.”
“She always calls you Danny.”
“She talks about me?”
“Of course she does - you’re her only child.”
Neal stared at his shoes, defensive. “I changed my name. Back.”
“What brings you here? Why now?”
“Hey now, hang on just a second,” Peter said, stepping forward. “We don’t mean any kind of harm here. Neal just wanted to see his mother. It’s been a long time.”
“Yeah, it has,” Martin said. “How did you find her? I thought that kind of information was classified or something.”
Neal suddenly understood the hostility. “She’s still in WITSEC,” he said to Peter.
“What? Neal - what did you do to find that information?” Peter seemed angry.
“Nothing illegal. She’s still going by the name Regina Brooks - she wasn’t hard to find. She’s my mother, for chrissakes!”
“I know, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Peter placed a warm hand on Neal's forearm and he calmed.
“She’s my mother and she doesn’t know me,” Neal said as the realization dawned, and he suddenly had to get out of there.
----
“It’s early stage Alzheimer’s,” Peter said as he got into the car a few minutes later.
“I kinda figured,” Neal replied.
“Martin said she’s pretty good most days, but sometimes, at the end of the day or if she's tired or stressed, she gets forgetful. I guess we just caught her at a bad time.”
“Can we go? Can we get outta here?”
“Sure.”
The bed and breakfast they’d booked was just two blocks off the main square of the town, but Neal didn’t even register the quaint shops and historic missions as they drove. All he could see, all he could think about, was the utter lack of recognition in his mother’s eyes as she looked at him. Sure, he must have changed since he was a skinny 17-year old, but he’d expected her to at least know him.
They pulled into the small parking lot and Peter began to unload their luggage. Neal felt itchy, he felt like he couldn’t breathe. But mostly, he needed to be alone - he couldn’t talk about this with Peter, even though he knew that Peter would want to, would insist on it. “You got these?” he asked Peter, indicating the luggage.
“Of course.”
“OK,” he said then turned and walked away.
The town of Santa Fe was beautiful, even in the lengthening shadows cast by the sun as it set behind the mountains. The low buildings housed art galleries and antique shops, restaurants and bars, a historic old movie palace. It was a lovely place - quiet and peaceful this time of the evening when people were just closing up shops but before the dinnertime rush for the many restaurants. Neal could understand how it would appeal to his mother; he wondered if she still painted, if any of her work hung in one of the many galleries he’d passed. Part of him wanted to go back and look, and another part of him mourned for the lost years between them.
He shook his head - he couldn’t think about that, he didn’t want to - so he walked around the town some more. He walked until his legs tired; he walked until he was out of breath. That was how Peter found him, bent over and trying to catch his breath in front of a closed jewelry shop on San Francisco.
“You OK?”
“I think I’m having a panic attack,” Neal gasped.
“That’s just the altitude - takes some getting used to, I hear. I think you overdid it. You want to sit down?” He indicated a nearby bench.
“I want to go back to New York.”
“We can talk about that. Come on.”
They took a seat and Neal realized his hands were shaking; he wasn’t sure why, but he shoved them between his knees to stop it. Peter sat beside him and put an arm around his shoulders and he realized he was just cold.
“She always took care of me,” Neal told him quietly.
“Oh?”
“She had this way of knowing when something was wrong and just…” He sighed, remembering. “You know how I learned sleight of hand? From her. She’d do it whenever I was sick, to distract me. She’d pull coins or toys from behind my ears until I begged her to show me how. Her grandfather worked in vaudeville back in the day.
“And she - well, she always fixed me up, you know? Whether I’d broken my head or my heart, she was always there. We didn’t have a lot of money - she worked two jobs - but she always found money to buy me paints or clay or whatever I wanted because she said I’d be a great artist someday.
“Some great artist, huh?”
“Well, you’ve forged some great artists…”
Neal snorted. “I have at that.”
“You loved each other,” Peter said gently, but Neal stiffened up.
“And I forgot all of it when I found out about who my father really was - what he was. I just… I left. Just like him. Like a coward, I left her. And what happened next? I used the skills she taught me to run cons, to… to scam people and rob them.” There were tears in his eyes now. “She gave me everything I was and I distorted it, exploited it, to hurt people. Amazing what all these years will do for your perspective. Why couldn’t I see it before? Why couldn’t I see what she did for me?
“I was so, so selfish, Peter. She doesn’t deserve an ungrateful asshole like me for a son. I guess it’s just as well she doesn’t know me - it’s not like I’ve done her proud or anything.” Neal got up and walked away, because the sick feeling in his chest was making it hard to breathe. Or maybe it was just the altitude. He was practically running by the time Peter caught up.
“Neal, come on!” Peter said when he had. “We should talk about this. You need to talk about this.”
“What’s to talk about? How to tell her that I turned out to be the biggest disappointment ever, or the part where I’m dying?”
Peter looked as if he’d been slapped. “You’re not… you’re not dying,” he said, looking as stricken as Neal had ever seen him. “Are you?”
Neal immediately regretted his histrionics. “No. No, Peter, I’m not.” He rested his hands on Peter’s chest for a moment to emphasize it. “But it’s all I can think about.”
Peter put his arms around him and held him close, and Neal wished - not for the first time - that it really could mean that everything would be all right.
“You know what she said to me the day I left?” Neal said quietly, into the warm solidity of Peter’s chest. “’Have a nice day at school.’ It was a month after I found out. She probably thought it had all blown over, that I was over it, but I wasn’t. I never caught the school bus that day, just hitched a ride to Chicago and never looked back.”
“Oh, Neal. You were just a kid. A mixed-up kid, and you were hurt and angry.”
“Why did I even come here? She would have been better off without me.”
Peter rested his hands on Neal's shoulders and gently pushed back from him, looking him in the eyes. “You said it yourself, Neal. You came because she will make things better. Deep down inside, you knew you needed her.”
“And now?”
“Well, now she needs you more.”
----
That night, it was Peter’s turn to be the insomniac.
They’d walked back to the B&B with a bag of takeout, and he’d practically fed his dinner to Neal, he was so drained. They lay down together - Peter was the big spoon, like always - and he’d held Neal tightly until his breathing evened out and he was asleep.
Peter pushed up on his elbow and watched his lover sleeping. Neal's face was always untroubled and so open when he slept - he looked about ten years younger, too. It was one of Peter’s favorite things to do, to watch Neal sleep. Lately though, Peter watched Neal sleep to be sure he was still breathing. He knew it was morbid and creepy - Elizabeth caught him at it once and told him so - but he couldn’t help it.
It was well after midnight when he finally drifted off, and he was awake before Neal, who was warm and pliant in his arms. Peter leaned his face forward to nuzzle against Neal's ear, his favorite spot because it was the perfect place to catch the unique aroma that was Neal - part aftershave, part shampoo, part sweat, but all Neal. It was always a comfort to him.
Neal made an “mmm” sound and shifted back, his head resting on Peter’s shoulder. Peter leaned forward more and kissed Neal on the corner of his mouth. Neal murmured something sleepily unintelligible, and pressed his ass back against Peter’s crotch. Neal's proximity was making Peter hard and he couldn't help but rut a little against him. Neal took Peter’s hand and guided it down his own body until he was cupping Neal's hard-on through his pajamas. He stroked him gently, squeezing the way he knew Neal liked.
“Peter,” Neal whispered and made to turn to face him.
“No, just like this, OK?” Peter murmured and reached down to push Neal's sleep pants down. “Let me do this for you.” Peter buried his face in the crook between Neal's neck and shoulder and began to kiss him as he slowly jacked Neal to full hardness. Neal gasped, raised his right arm as he turned his head, burying his fingers in Peter’s hair as they kissed.
Moments later, Neal was trembling beneath him, his breath hitching. “Just let it go,” Peter urged softly and then Neal practically whimpered as he came over Peter’s gentle grip and his own stomach.
Peter found leftover napkins from their dinner the night before to clean them both off and then pulled Neal on top of him and settled his head on his chest.
“How was that?”
“I’m sorry I was so quick.”
“Don’t be - it’s been a long six weeks.”
“For a minute, I forgot everything. Everything. Thank you.” Neal tilted his head back and they kissed until they fell asleep again, missing the breakfast tray that was delivered to their door by their hosts.
----
They returned to Regina’s house in the late morning. If anything, Neal was even more fearful of her reaction this time, and fumbled with the car door handle at both ends of the trip.
Peter met him at the curb as he walked round the car and took his hands, which were both shaking with nerves. “Hey, listen to me. Pretend like it’s one of our cases. Just focus on the now, focus on the moment. The past is the past - there’s no changing it. It’s what you do with the future that matters now.”
Neal smiled wanly and snarked, “You find that on a Hallmark card?”
Peter pretended to be affronted, then raised Neal's hands to his lips and kissed them on the knuckles.
Neal held his breath until Regina opened the door, and when she did, she said nothing. The “Mom?” froze on Neal’s lips.
“Danny,” she said a moment later, and he stumbled forward and fell into her open arms. “Oh, my boy!” she said into his ear as she kissed him there, and Neal lost every ounce of his composure as he began to cry.
“I’m sorry, Mom. So, so sorry!” he barely choked out.
“Oh, darling, shhh,” she said gently, running her fingers through his hair soothingly with one hand as she held him close with the other until he quieted.
Neal felt Peter shift uneasily on his feet behind him, and he pulled away.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to interrupt,” Peter said; there were tears streaming down his face.
“That’s OK. Do you want to come in?” Regina asked, and they followed her into a tiny but homey kitchen where she’d apparently been baking all morning; there were muffins cooling on racks beside the stove, and coffee was already on.
“Now I know I’m very forgetful lately, but I’m certain I don’t know you,” she said to Peter with a smile as she poured them all cups of coffee.
“Mom, this is Peter Burke. He’s… someone special.”
Regina’s eyes sparkled as she smiled; Neal noted there were a lot more lines around them than he remembered, but they only served to enhance the twinkle in her green eyes. “I’m glad to hear you’ve got someone special, Dan.”
“It’s Neal now,” Neal said carefully as he took the mug of coffee she offered from her.
“My apologies. It’s been so long since I’ve thought of you as ‘Neal,’ I think I’d have forgotten it no matter what.” She took a seat and offered them each a muffin from the plate she’d brought over. “You know, ‘Neal’ was the first name of my favorite teacher when I was a girl. It was he who encouraged me to pursue art.”
“Oh?” Peter asked. “Did you have a bit of a crush on him?”
Regina laughed. “Hell no, the man was about 50 and weighed over 300 pounds. But he was a kind, kind man, and a photographer when he was young. That’s one of his pieces over there on the wall.”
Neal craned his neck and took in the familiar black and white photo of a high desert landscape. “I never knew that,” he said, rising to go and look at it. He’d never noticed the inscription on it either, though truthfully, it was in pencil and it had faded: “For Ronnie. Fondly, Neal Larssen.”
“Ronnie?” Neal said.
“Yours wasn’t the only name changed by the Marshals when we entered WITSEC, Neal. I used to be Veronica Barbara Bennett nee Charles. Of the Staten Island Charleses, ah-ha-ha-ha!” Her laugh filled the room, and the sound of it took Neal back to his childhood instantly. There had been a lot of laughter in the house where he grew up.
“Why’d you choose ‘Regina’?”
“I liked having a boy’s name for a nickname,” she said, shrugging, and sipped her coffee. “So how long have you known Neal?” she asked Peter.
“Well, we first met - professionally - about ten years ago,” Peter said. “But we fell in love about two years ago when he went away to a tropical island and I thought I’d lost him forever.” Peter smiled at Neal, and when his face was filled with such pride and love, it made breathing difficult. Peter rose. “What happened in between is a story for Neal to tell you. Without me around.”
“Must you leave?” Regina said.
“It’s probably for the best. Plausible deniability or something.”
Regina looked confused as Peter said his goodbyes, kissing Neal and telling him to phone him when he was ready to be picked up. When he’d gone, Neal turned to face his mother and saw something on her face he’d most definitely forgotten - her “don’t screw with me” expression.
Neal sighed - just what he’d been doing with his life was not a story he relished telling his mother, but there was no way around it. “Peter was the … uh… FBI agent who arrested me,” he said and then quickly ducked, because he just knew she’d hook a muffin at his head, and age had done nothing to affect her aim.
----
It took Neal about an hour to lay down the bullet points of his life over the last nineteen years for his mother. She was most interested in his years working with Peter at the FBI - much to Neal's relief. And she was much less scandalized by the fact Neal was in a relationship with a married couple.
“I lived through the 70’s, Neal, I’m no girl scout!” she said.
By midafternoon, though, she was beginning to tire, and she told him she was going to go and take a nap.
“Do you want me to go?” he asked, rising.
“No!” she said, perhaps too quickly, and she looked embarrassed by it. “I want to get used to expecting you to be here,” she said quietly, and went off to her bedroom.
----
When she emerged an hour later, Neal had found some boxes of his old art projects in a closet and was sorting through them, bemused.
“You kept everything,” he said to her when he realized she was standing there.
“Of course.”
“Even the crap.”
“Most of it’s crap, sweetie,” she said lightly, and he laughed.
He turned around to face her as she took a seat on the couch. “Do you still paint?”
She nodded. “When my hands aren’t too achy from arthritis. Don’t get old, Neal, it sucks donkey balls.”
He laughed again and realized suddenly she was exactly like Elizabeth. He didn’t know if he ought to find that disturbing or not.
“I’ve got a few items in a gallery downtown,” she went on. “I’ve even sold a few.”
“That’s great, Mom. You like living here?”
“I like it fine. I was just telling…” she stopped talking abruptly.
Neal looked up and saw the confused look on her face. “Something wrong?”
“Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue. I can’t remember… I was talking to him just yesterday. My neighbor?”
“Detective Calderon?”
The light dawned in her eyes. “That’s right! I was just telling him that… oh, I’ve forgotten what I was about to say.” She went quiet at that, and Neal didn’t know how to fill the silence. “You know,” she said after several moments, “I know what’s wrong with me, and I know it’s going to just get worse, and I just…” She sighed and looked at him, her eyes angry yet mournful, her voice choking with emotion. “The worst part is that I know exactly what’s happening to me, and there’s nothing I can do. Nothing.”
He went to sit on the couch beside her and took her hand. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry you’ve had to face this alone. I’m sorry I haven’t been here.”
“No more apologies, Neal, please,” she said. “You’re here now, and that makes me happy.”
“I just wish I could help you.”
“You can’t. No one can really do anything.”
“Yeah. I get that,” he said in a low voice, and closed his eyes. “I get it.”
“Neal?” she said after a minute. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. You forget, I know you better than anyone, and you could never lie to me. There’s something you’re not telling me.” She put her hand on his face and he opened his eyes.
“I don’t want to burden you.”
“That’s what mothers are for - to be burdened. Now out with it.”
And then he told her. And she cried for him, and pulled him in close and rested his head on her shoulder as he cried too, his sobs choking and desperate, like the little boy all those years ago who only needed her arms around him to know that everything would soon be all right.
Except it wouldn’t be enough, it couldn’t. He was no longer that boy, he was a grown man and he was broken and there was no running to his mother to make it all better, not really. And she was older now, no longer the inexorable force of nature he’d always recognized her to be, and she could do little for him, could fix nothing, and they both knew it.
It didn’t make them hold on any less tightly.
----
When Peter returned in the early evening, the curtains on the picture window in the living room were wide open, and he could see that Neal and Regina were both drawing. Neal was working on something using pastels, Peter couldn’t see what, and Regina was drawing a portrait of her son in profile. She had another drawing sitting to the side - it looked like an illustration for a children’s book; Peter remembered Neal mentioning that was her profession. But it sat untouched as she quickly sketched Neal in pen and ink; Peter suspected Neal had no idea he was the subject of his mother’s work at the moment.
It was marvelous to watch them, each with heads cocked to the side and tongues sticking out unconsciously as they concentrated. Peter was mesmerized for a moment and found he didn’t want to break up their silent communion with each other. But he must have moved or made a sound or something, because Neal soon looked up and spotted him, the smile on his face broad and almost touching his eyes. He rose to come to the door and greeted Peter with a peck on the cheek before he returned to the living room and began to clean up his work. Regina, Peter noticed, had hidden her sketch away and was working on the illustration again.
“Is it that time already?” she said.
“I’ll be back in the morning,” Neal promised as he gave her a hug and kiss and slipped into his jacket.
“How’d it go?” Peter asked guardedly as they walked side by side to the car.
“It went.”
“How do you feel?”
“I dunno. Relieved I guess? Just talking about it with her makes it less scary, somehow.”
Peter reached for his hand and hooked their fingers together; Neal grasped onto Peter lightly and then they parted to get into the car.
A brief, chiming sounded and Neal reached for his phone in his pocket.
“Someone texting you?”
Neal's brows were drawn together as he looked at the phone, then shoved it back into his pants pocket. “Voice mail.”
“You gonna listen to it?”
“I’ll get it later.”
Peter didn’t think that was an answer, but he left it alone. If it was important, Neal would tell him.
----
Regina was scared to death every time she looked at Neal.
It wasn’t that she was afraid of him - he may have spent the last two decades of his life away from her, but he was still her son and she knew him. It was her lifelong regret that she had hidden the truth from him, and she couldn’t help but blame herself for the bad choices he’d made in his life - where would he be if only she’d told him everything from the beginning?
What she was really afraid of was losing him again, in more ways than one.
Primary among her fears was the medical condition he’d told her about the day before. She didn’t know exactly understand it or how bad it might be, but it was clearly bad enough to drive him all the way across the country to find her. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why he was here - he was afraid to die.
The other thing that scared her was, naturally, her own diagnosis. She knew she would eventually begin to lose more and more of who she was and what she knew about her life over the next few years, and the biggest thing that she was afraid of losing was her memories of her life with her child. It had been the single most joyous time of her life, and the thought of forgetting any of that or, even worse, forgetting Neal completely, struck at the very core of her. She may have screwed it all up, but she was still, first and foremost, a mother. The fact she’d just gotten her son back somehow made her feel that loss more keenly.
God, what she would give to get some small fraction of the time they’d lost back!
It made her want to scream and rage, because she felt so impotent and helpless on both scores. But she learned a long time ago there was nothing to be gained from that. At the time, she’d taken all of her energies and poured them into her son and making sure she raised him right. And now?
Now she’d do exactly the same thing. She might not have a lot of time left to be of use or to do much good for him, but while she could, she would support him and take care of him in whatever way he needed.
There was just one thing left to figure out - there was clearly something Neal was keeping from her. He may be a grown man, but she recognized that constipated look on his face still, and she meant to make him tell her.
She looked up from the table of the restaurant where they’d stopped in for lunch as he made his way back from the restroom. She felt the stab of fear and repressed it as ruthlessly as ever she’d done with her anger at James in the past. She didn’t have time for that, and she could do this - he needed her to.
----
Neal and Regina strolled arm-in-arm along a hiking path in a park in the foothills just north of the city. It was a cloudy, windy day - chilly for June, but Neal expected it was par for the course up here. It was beautiful country - he could see the appeal to his mother in coming here; already he’d “banked” a few vistas to sketch later or when he got home to New York.
As they walked, he kept his hand on his cell phone where it sat in his pocket. IN his last message, his doctor had asked him to call, urgently. Apparently, there was an advantageous window in the neurosurgeon’s schedule coming up and Neal would have to schedule something now or lose the opportunity. Neal owed him a call back, but he still had no decision on the surgery yet.
The walk was bracing, and he needed it. He was just so tired, felt it down to his bones, and it wasn’t as if he could partake of his favorite form of stimulant - caffeine - in his time of need. The night before had been another sleepless one, but at least the subject of his late night worryings had shifted from himself to his mother. He couldn’t bear the thought of what was happening to her, the dread she must be feeling on a daily basis, the weight of that knowledge. He wished he could take it away.
He hoped he’d be around to help her as time went on. This realization hit him, hard, and he couldn’t suppress the small, strangled noise that came from his throat.
“Neal? You all right?” Regina asked when he almost stumbled.
“’All right’ has variable definitions.”
“You’ve got that right. But what’s on your mind? I already know there’s something you’re not telling me. Something about your condition.”
Neal took a deep breath - and marveled at the fact they’d already re-assumed their old roles. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised about her knowing this; no one knew him better than she did. “Yeah. There’s… this operation, actually.”
“What?” She stopped walking and turned to face him. “Neal, that’s wonderful - why didn’t you say -“
“It’s experimental, it might kill me.”
“Oh, well…” She looked away from him and down the path they were on. “Oh.”
“It’s a bypass,” he explained. “Like people get in their hearts, only inside my brain. They’d take a vein from my leg or something and use it to reroute the blood flow. It’s -“
“There’s no need to go into detail,” she said. “My skin is already crawling enough, thanks.” They began walking again. “So this is the big secret you’ve been carrying?”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to do?”
“That’s the thing - I don’t know. The odds of a bad result are just so high, and -“ He ran out of words and looked into her eyes.
She reached up and caressed his cheek. “Oh honey,” she said, then slipped her arm around him and guided him to a nearby bench. “I know you’re scared.”
Neal just nodded, words failing him. Regina encouraged Neal to lay his head in her lap, a gesture that was so familiar to him. She ran her fingers through his hair, as she’d done when he was a child; he soon began to feel sleepy.
“This reminds me of all those ear infections you used to get when you were little,” Regina said, sitting back against the bench while she continued to stroke Neal’s hair. “This was the only thing that would soothe you, you remember?”
“Mmmm.”
“You’d fall asleep every time, too. Sometimes it was the only way to get you to sleep, and I was afraid to move or else you’d start crying again. I used to joke to your Aunt Ellen that I was trapped under something light.”
She kept stroking, and Neal may have fallen asleep this time as well - he was certainly drifting on the edge of consciousness and lost track of the time. When she started speaking again, he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming it or not.
“I wish I could make this decision for you, sweetie, but I can’t. One thing I can do is maybe give you some perspective.” She took a deep breath and began to speak slowly. “I know what’s happening to you is completely different than what I’m dealing with, but you know…” her voice broke as she continued, “you have options.”
He opened his eyes. “Mom.”
“I’m not saying that to make you feel bad, or even to make much more of it other than to say that you have a choice here, honey, and I know it’s scary, but it sure beats sitting around and waiting for things to happen to you.”
He rolled over onto his back to look at her, and she rested her hand on his head.
“I want you to know that whatever your choice turns out to be, it is a valid one, and I will support you. And the people who love you will support you.”
Neal blinked and the tears he didn’t even know were in his eyes fell, and she reached out to brush them away. “Don’t cry, baby - it will all be OK, no matter what you do, because it’s your life, and you’ve come through hell to get here, and whatever you do, it’ll be the right thing.”
She kissed him on the forehead, and he knew she was right.
----
Neal sat in the darkening room he and Peter shared at the B&B. It was a very pleasant space - a small, one-bedroom, stand-alone unit, one of half a dozen on the grounds of the main building, which stood just above the terraced yard beyond. The room was extremely pleasant - light, airy, with a vaulted ceiling and its own fireplace. A good place for thinking.
Peter was still out; he’d wanted to explore the area, so Regina had suggested he drive to Taos. Neal expected him back soon, but in the meantime, Regina had dropped him back off here so he could be alone with his decision.
He hadn’t expected it to be this hard.
Most of him - if he had to apply a number to it, he’d randomly go with 75% - thought that having the operation was the way to go, because having the threat hanging over him of the aneurysm in his head bursting someday soon or, worse, waking up dead one fine morning, was an untenable position to be in. But the rest of him - the most insidious, the 25% that spoke to him in the dark and gave voice to his darkest instincts and advised him to take a hit when he was showing 17 in blackjack - thought it’d be OK to take his chances. He’d lived for who knew how long with this thing in his head; surely it wasn’t that great a threat.
Then he remembered his mother’s words - he had people who loved him, who relied on him, whose happiness depended on him. Didn’t he owe them the attempt to at least fight for his own life? As they’d fought for his? Peter, who had literally saved Neal's life time and again; and Elizabeth who loved him despite all the crap he’d put her through; and Moz, who’d stuck by him as he found his way from the crooked path to the straighter (if not quite narrow). And finally his mother - she’d sacrificed so much for him over the years and though neither of them was perfect, they belonged to each other. She loved him and, despite all evidence to the contrary, saw every bit of potential in him he had or ever would. Didn’t he owe it to her to at least try?
Yes, he did.
He lay back on the bed, his head pillowed on his hands, stared up at the ceiling fan hanging inert above his head, and came to a realization. He’d do this thing for Peter, who looked at him like he was a miracle, and for Elizabeth who got all his jokes, and for Moz who had always stood by him. But mostly, he was doing it for his Mom, so that he could help her as her disease progressed, to give her back some of the time they’d lost over the years. He owed her that much - or that little, as he realized.
In the morning, he’d ask her if she’d come home with him to New York. But right now, he had something else to take care of. Picking up his cell, he dialed his doctor’s office, realizing it was after 5:00 back in New York and hoping they had late hours tonight, because he had a surgery to schedule.
----
“Hey,” Peter said as he came in.
“Hey,” Neal said with a smile. “Whatcha got there?”
“Candy! There was this terrific little old-timey penny candy shop up in Taos and I just knew El would love it! Look - flying saucers!”
“She definitely will love them,” Neal said approvingly
“How was your day with your mom?”
“It was good, I had a nice time. We went for a hike, believe it or not.”
Peter laughed. “You? Do you even own boots?”
“OK, so it was really a park. But there were woods. And creatures.”
“Sounds great.” Peter stowed his packages in the closet and came to kiss Neal. “You hungry? I want to take you out to dinner.”
“That’s nice. But - can we talk first? There’s something I need to tell you.”
A panicked expression stole across Peter’s face before he was able to control it. “Do I like the sound of that?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Neal took a deep breath - there was no way Peter wouldn’t be upset with him for holding this back from him, but he could see no other alternative. “So, there’s this operation…”
“Operation?”
“For my aneurysm…”
“There is no operation for your aneurysm, the doctor said.”
“Well, it turns out there is,” Neal said slowly. “Only it’s experimental and highly risky.”
“Define risky.”
“30% mortality rate?”
Peter began to breathe heavily through his nostrils - never a good sign. “When did you find out about it?”
“Um, a week ago?”
“A week ago.”
“Give or take.”
“Give or take. When… when were you going to tell me?”
“Now?”
Peter nodded, and Neal could see the muscles bunching in his jaw. “I want to understand why you didn’t tell me.”
“I needed to make my decision about it first.”
“You couldn’t have decided before we drove all the way out here?”
“I needed to see my mother.”
Peter was staring at him with that squint in his eyes that always made Neal squirm. “Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive?”
“I don’t know - no? I needed her judgment, I needed her input.”
“All of a sudden? After 19 years?”
“I needed her, Peter. You understand that, right?”
“I do. I do.” Peter turned away and rubbed his hand across his forehead. When he turned back to face Neal, his eyes were stony. “No. No, I don’t. You needed her to make this decision for you?”
“I needed her help, yes. She has a certain perspective, Peter.”
“And I don’t?”
“Frankly, not the one I need right now, no.”
Peter looked stunned. “I can’t believe this. I love you - why wouldn’t you want me to help make this decision?”
“Because I have to trust that the person helping me through this won’t have their own point of view - they have to have mine. Peter, I love you, but you’ll only tell me to do what you want me to do, and that’s not the same thing.”
Peter blinked at him. “You think I’m that selfish?”
“When it comes to the people you care about and life-changing decisions? Yes.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s not supposed to do anything. Peter,” Neal rose from his seat on the bed, walked over to Peter and took his hand; Peter pulled it away, but Neal was persistent, taking it and holding it against his chest, over his heart. There were angry tears in Peter’s eyes. “Peter, I love you more than anyone I’ve ever known, and I appreciate everything you’ve ever done for me, but in this? I couldn’t trust your perspective. I needed hers - I needed my family.”
Peter swallowed, and nodded, but the hurt didn’t leave his eyes. “And what did she tell you to do?”
“Ironically, she wouldn’t. But she helped me see what I had to do anyway. If we hadn’t come here, if I hadn’t seen what she’s going through, I couldn't have made this decision.”
“And what is your decision?”
“I’m going through with it. I’m having the surgery.”
Peter closed his eyes and breathed out a long, slow breath. “The surgery that has a 30% chance of killing you.”
“Yes, that one.”
Peter opened his eyes and they stared at each other for a long minute. “I’m afraid, Neal.”
“I’m not. Not anymore.”
“Really?”
Neal pulled Peter into his arms and held him close. “Really.”
Epilogue
New York, 2014
“He’s waking up!” Regina said, pulling on Peter’s sleeve. The nurses had allowed two people to be in the room with Neal, and they’d been waiting for what seemed like hours for him to wake.
Peter scrambled out of the chair he’d been sitting in and hurried to Neal’s bedside. He’d survived his surgery, but the doctor was very clear that he wasn’t out of the woods yet - the chance of complications like blood clots was still very high.
Neal’s face seemed to be the first thing that woke, becoming increasingly animated and he stirred. A moment later, his eyes opened.
“Neal?” Peter and Regina each said at once, but Neal’s eyes were staring at the ceiling blankly. For a single, awful moment, Peter feared the worst - Neal had had a stroke or any one of a dozen things he couldn’t even comprehend. “Neal?” he repeated.
Slowly, Neal moved his head at the sound of Peter’s voice, and immediately Peter knew he was wrong. Bright blue eyes shone up at him, and a wan smile lit up Neal’s face, and everything was suddenly right in the world. The relief was so profound Peter started to cry.
“Hey, stop that,” Neal admonished gently, but Peter couldn’t. Regina held out a handkerchief for him, and he took it gratefully.
“I’m gonna go tell El and Moz.”
----
Two days later, Neal was much less sleepy from the drugs and able to sit up and allowed more visitors. Peter excused himself to go and get everyone coffee, and when he returned, he found them alone, Regina sitting on the edge of Neal’s bed, talking with him softly. Neal had an expression of sheer joy on his pale face, and soon Peter realized why.
From out of nowhere, Regina had produced a small plastic pig that she held out to Neal in the palm of her hand. Where it had come from, Peter couldn’t tell - she had short sleeves on today. With a flash of movement he couldn’t track, it was gone. Then, she pulled a pink pompom from inside Neal’s bandage and booped him on the nose with it.
Neal took it from her with a grin. “You were always so much better at that than me,” he told her.
“More innate talent,” she said, buffing her fingernails on her blouse.
“Probably. Thanks for coming - this would have been a lot harder without you,” he said sincerely.
She reached out and caressed his cheek. “Aww, honey, I wouldn’t have missed it. And I’ll stay as long as you want me to, though I draw the line at bedpans - my days of wiping your ass are over.”
“Fair enough. But I want you to stay forever - have you given moving here any thought?”
“I don’t know, Neal. I don’t want to be a burden.”
“That's what sons are for - to be burdened. I can take it, Mom. We can take it.” He reached out his hand and motioned for Peter, who’d been standing in the doorway, to enter the room.
“I always wanted a mother-in-law closer to home,” Peter kidded.
“Oh really?” Regina said, laughing. “You want to call me mother-in-law, you’d better put a ring on it.” She hooked a thumb at Neal.
“Mom!”
“I’d do that if I thought he’d take me seriously,” Peter replied with a grin.
“Wait, what?”
Regina flapped her hand dismissively at Neal. “I want to know what your intentions are towards my boy. Fed.”
“My wife and I would make a respectable man out of him. Ma’am.”
“I am sitting right here.”
“Honey, shush - if I play my cards right, I get to plan a wedding.”
“Oh God, what have I done?” Neal said plaintively, but he was grinning from ear to ear.
----
More Notes:
• Title is the name of a song by Beck, the lyrics of which have nothing to do with the content of this story, but to me it feels like the song that’s playing in Neal's head during this crisis. Also, it’s really moody and dirge-like.
• I also know next to nothing about brain aneurysms, though the one depicted here is one I read about online. I’m sure there’re loads of medical inaccuracies here. Don’ t bother to tell me.
Thank you for your time.
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