WC Fic: Live Through This
Title: Live Through This
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Moz, Jones; established Neal/Jones
Spoilers: None
Content Notice: hurt/comfort
Word Count: 1,700
Summary: With Neal on the edge of death, Clint finds comfort and support where he least expects it.
A/N: This is a timestamp to my “Undeniable Chemistry” series, set sometime in the middle of I Keep Missing You. A recap of the story thus far: Keller kidnapped Neal to help him forge an artwork and Neal betrayed him; when the FBI caught up to them, Keller grabbed a gun and shot Neal three times.
For Day 5 of my annual Twelve Days of Ficmas challenge.
----
Numb.
He would call this feeling numb. Things are happening to him but they don’t affect him, as if he moves through the world cocooned in cotton.
But despite that, ironically, Mozzie is consumed by rage.
Matthew Keller was a dead man.
Moz stares out of the window of the cab as it inches its way uptown toward the hospital where his best friend may very well be dead already.
He’s just numb.
----
The elevator ride to the eighth floor is made less interminable by Moz’s fantasies of the tortures he will inflict upon Matthew Keller. Many of them involve the man’s scrotum and a staple gun; Moz doesn’t want to think about why.
----
“Moz!” Elizabeth Burke throws her arms round him like he’s her savior - or maybe she’s his, he’s not sure. He just stands there stiffly with his hands at his sides, trying to keep his rage and fear banked down.
“Where is he?” he manages.
“In surgery. They told us all to wait here.”
Moz notices that there are others here: the Lady Suit, the Old Suit, perhaps half a dozen of the Suitlings. He wonders if Neal will appreciate the attention or the irony. Or something.
Clinton Jones sits alone in a corner, hunched in on himself, arms crossed at the elbow and resting on his knees; his head is cradled in one of his hands. He stares at a wall. One look at him and Moz’s fears are confirmed: it really is as bad as he thinks. All thoughts of revenge are temporarily forgotten as Moz makes his way over to the man.
“What happened?” Moz asks.
Jones unfurls. “Mozzie.” His eyes are glazed-over, almost empty. He’s wearing surgical scrubs, Moz notes.
“What happened?” Moz repeats, trying not to sound frantic.
“Keller grabbed a gun off a probie. Somebody said he’d been secured, but he wasn’t.”
He speaks with almost no affect, like a robot. Moz notices there is dried blood on his hands, caked under his nails, and in a lurid streak down the right side of his throat; he knows whose it must be and seeing it there makes something turn over inside Moz, something primal, protective.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Moz says with a perfunctory air.
“What?”
He holds a hand out to Jones, who squints at him as if the light in the waiting room hurts his eyes. After a moment, he stands and Moz leads him away. They find an empty patient room and Moz ushers him inside, finds him a towel. He can’t do anything about fresh clothes, though he can guess where the ones Jones had worn earlier in the day went. He leaves when he hears the water start.
When he comes back, Jones is sitting shirtless in a visitor’s chair in the room, towel around his neck and staring at the floor. He is shivering. “Here,” Moz say, handing him the tea he’d brought for him from the cafeteria.
“I can’t get warm. Even in the shower.”
“It’s the shock, probably,” Moz tells him.
“How am I going to live through this?”
“You just do.”
----
“Jesus, Doc, don’t sugarcoat it or anything,” the Suit is saying to Neal's surgeon. Moz is standing in the doorway as they learn the chances of Neal not making it. They are odds that Moz would himself never take.
He needs to leave.
He walks around the block thirteen times, because it is his lucky number, then returns to the waiting room.
The Suit and his Missus sit off to the side holding hands and watching CNN. Everyone else is standing around drinking old-smelling coffee and speaking in hushed tones. Jones is in the chair he’d occupied earlier, facing away from everyone and huddled in on himself again, clearly not interested in interacting with anyone. Moz walks over to him anyway.
‘They’re wrong, you know,” Moz tells him, sitting down beside him.
“Huh?”
“Neal's beaten bigger odds than this - he’ll pull through this,” Moz explains.
“Is that what you need to think?”
“No, it’s what you need to think. Raisinette?” Moz brandishes a box of chocolates at him. “You could probably use the sugar,” he further explains. Jones takes one from the box, then another, and soon enough he’s eaten the whole thing.
----
The fact that Neal survives his first night is a minor miracle; Jones refuses to leave, even when the nurses threaten to ban him from the floor.
“You need sleep,” Moz points out reasonably. He hasn’t slept either, but then again, he didn’t literally hold Neal’s life in his hands less than 24 hours ago, either.
Jones shakes his head.
“If you leave, nothing bad will happen.” Jones gives him a look. “Nothing worse will happen.” The look persists. “At least let me find you a blanket.”
He does better than that - he finds an office with a couch in it - apparently the Chief of Oncology is on vacation along with all his staff - and he tosses a blanket at Jones and makes him lie down.
He’s about to leave when Jones speaks, his voice practically a whisper, “When I look ahead, it’s impossible to imagine a future without him in it. Literally every plan I have for my life involves - no, revolves around Neal. When I see myself in DC someday, or God, if I ever have kids - he’s right there beside me. He’s my world, Moz, my whole world. Have you ever had someone like that?”
Moz is relieved that Jones is facing away from him, because then he won’t see the tears in his eyes. “Can’t say that I have. What’s it like?”
Jones turns onto his side, his words muffled by the cheap leather couch. “Sometimes it sucks.”
----
“How did you and Neal meet?”
It’s dinnertime on Day Two, Neal has not yet awakened, and Moz and Jones are holed up in Doctor Oncology’s office, the ruins of a couple of “Shack Stacks” between them.
“He hasn’t told you?” Moz replies. Jones shakes his head. “Well, it was nearly ten years ago, so I suppose the statute of limitations must be up by now.”
That remark gets a smile out of him, and Moz is grateful to have lifted the other man’s mood. He tells the story of the three card Monty scam Neal busted into and how it led to Moz seeking him out, though he doesn’t recount many specifics. When he gets to the part about Neal's inability to locate Kate when he returned from Europe, Jones becomes quiet again.
“He really loved her, didn’t he? Kate?” he asks.
“You guys haven’t discussed that?” Moz says carefully.
“I’m afraid to bring it up.”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s this big tragedy in his life - he was about to have everything he ever wanted and it was ripped away.” He’s looking down, worrying at a small hole in the seam of the jeans he wears, and Moz’s heart breaks.
“He doesn’t compare you to her.”
“I know.”
Moz spots the lie a mile away. “There’s something you don’t know about that, and if you tell Neal I told you, I’ll make you live to regret it, but… in the end, Kate was all about Kate.”
“What do you mean?”
“She changed when Neal went to prison - became cold, calculating. Hell, maybe that’s what she always was, I don’t know - but it was that person who lured him out of prison.” Jones’ eyes widen. “What, you think Adler couldn’t wait another three months for Neal to get out? He’d waited his entire life to find that goddamn music box. No, it had to have been Kate’s idea, and no one will be able to convince me otherwise.”
They sit in silence for several moments, then Moz adds, “I think Neal knows that now, and I think that’s probably why you two haven’t discussed her - it hurts him too much.”
Moz watches as a kind of relief washes over the young agent’s face. “Thank you.”
----
Neal wakes a few hours later, but the doctor will only allow one person to see him at a time. Moz thinks Jones looks almost scared when he goes in.
When he comes out, his face is carefully neutral.
“How - how was he?” Moz asks carefully.
“He was so out of it,” Jones replies, shaking his head. “I’m not sure he even knew I was there.”
“He did, man,” Moz assures him, patting his shoulder.
They both know he’s lying.
----
Neal is in ICU for five long days. When he is transferred to a private room, Moz and Jones celebrate that night with a bottle of 40-yr old single malt Moz pays for with his own money. He pours himself a double but limits himself to that much only. He keeps a watchful eye on Jones.
“I feel like this is the first time I can breathe in, like, a week,” Jones says, slurring slightly. An almost total lack of sleep will do that to you when you finally start to come down, which is why Moz made sure they were at Neal’s for this.
“If either of us had hair, it’d be white,” Moz agrees.
Jones chuckles, a bright sound after a week of such darkness. “I wouldn’t have gotten through it if it hadn’t been for you, though.” He raises his glass in toast to Moz.
Moz scoffs.
“It’s true,” the other man insists, and Moz shakes his head.
Looking after Clinton helped Moz just as much he thinks, kept his mind occupied, kept him from doing something rash. He pours Jones another hit then goes to root around in Neal's fridge to see about something to eat - no one should drink like this on an empty stomach. He finds bread and cheese and goes about making the man a grilled cheese sandwich, lactose be damned.
As he goes through the motions, a warm feeling blooms in his belly, one that has nothing to do with the whisky. He almost laughs - few people trigger his maternal instincts these days - actually, only one does, and they’re hanging out in his apartment. He glances over at Jones as the pan heats, and can’t help a smile for the one person in the world who loves Neal more than he does. The warm feeling grows, and he covers his stomach with a hand, shakes his head. Then he throws a pat of butter in the pan with a satisfying hiss.
He’ll take care of what’s Neal's, like always.
----
Thank you for your time.
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Moz, Jones; established Neal/Jones
Spoilers: None
Content Notice: hurt/comfort
Word Count: 1,700
Summary: With Neal on the edge of death, Clint finds comfort and support where he least expects it.
A/N: This is a timestamp to my “Undeniable Chemistry” series, set sometime in the middle of I Keep Missing You. A recap of the story thus far: Keller kidnapped Neal to help him forge an artwork and Neal betrayed him; when the FBI caught up to them, Keller grabbed a gun and shot Neal three times.
For Day 5 of my annual Twelve Days of Ficmas challenge.
----
Numb.
He would call this feeling numb. Things are happening to him but they don’t affect him, as if he moves through the world cocooned in cotton.
But despite that, ironically, Mozzie is consumed by rage.
Matthew Keller was a dead man.
Moz stares out of the window of the cab as it inches its way uptown toward the hospital where his best friend may very well be dead already.
He’s just numb.
----
The elevator ride to the eighth floor is made less interminable by Moz’s fantasies of the tortures he will inflict upon Matthew Keller. Many of them involve the man’s scrotum and a staple gun; Moz doesn’t want to think about why.
----
“Moz!” Elizabeth Burke throws her arms round him like he’s her savior - or maybe she’s his, he’s not sure. He just stands there stiffly with his hands at his sides, trying to keep his rage and fear banked down.
“Where is he?” he manages.
“In surgery. They told us all to wait here.”
Moz notices that there are others here: the Lady Suit, the Old Suit, perhaps half a dozen of the Suitlings. He wonders if Neal will appreciate the attention or the irony. Or something.
Clinton Jones sits alone in a corner, hunched in on himself, arms crossed at the elbow and resting on his knees; his head is cradled in one of his hands. He stares at a wall. One look at him and Moz’s fears are confirmed: it really is as bad as he thinks. All thoughts of revenge are temporarily forgotten as Moz makes his way over to the man.
“What happened?” Moz asks.
Jones unfurls. “Mozzie.” His eyes are glazed-over, almost empty. He’s wearing surgical scrubs, Moz notes.
“What happened?” Moz repeats, trying not to sound frantic.
“Keller grabbed a gun off a probie. Somebody said he’d been secured, but he wasn’t.”
He speaks with almost no affect, like a robot. Moz notices there is dried blood on his hands, caked under his nails, and in a lurid streak down the right side of his throat; he knows whose it must be and seeing it there makes something turn over inside Moz, something primal, protective.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Moz says with a perfunctory air.
“What?”
He holds a hand out to Jones, who squints at him as if the light in the waiting room hurts his eyes. After a moment, he stands and Moz leads him away. They find an empty patient room and Moz ushers him inside, finds him a towel. He can’t do anything about fresh clothes, though he can guess where the ones Jones had worn earlier in the day went. He leaves when he hears the water start.
When he comes back, Jones is sitting shirtless in a visitor’s chair in the room, towel around his neck and staring at the floor. He is shivering. “Here,” Moz say, handing him the tea he’d brought for him from the cafeteria.
“I can’t get warm. Even in the shower.”
“It’s the shock, probably,” Moz tells him.
“How am I going to live through this?”
“You just do.”
----
“Jesus, Doc, don’t sugarcoat it or anything,” the Suit is saying to Neal's surgeon. Moz is standing in the doorway as they learn the chances of Neal not making it. They are odds that Moz would himself never take.
He needs to leave.
He walks around the block thirteen times, because it is his lucky number, then returns to the waiting room.
The Suit and his Missus sit off to the side holding hands and watching CNN. Everyone else is standing around drinking old-smelling coffee and speaking in hushed tones. Jones is in the chair he’d occupied earlier, facing away from everyone and huddled in on himself again, clearly not interested in interacting with anyone. Moz walks over to him anyway.
‘They’re wrong, you know,” Moz tells him, sitting down beside him.
“Huh?”
“Neal's beaten bigger odds than this - he’ll pull through this,” Moz explains.
“Is that what you need to think?”
“No, it’s what you need to think. Raisinette?” Moz brandishes a box of chocolates at him. “You could probably use the sugar,” he further explains. Jones takes one from the box, then another, and soon enough he’s eaten the whole thing.
----
The fact that Neal survives his first night is a minor miracle; Jones refuses to leave, even when the nurses threaten to ban him from the floor.
“You need sleep,” Moz points out reasonably. He hasn’t slept either, but then again, he didn’t literally hold Neal’s life in his hands less than 24 hours ago, either.
Jones shakes his head.
“If you leave, nothing bad will happen.” Jones gives him a look. “Nothing worse will happen.” The look persists. “At least let me find you a blanket.”
He does better than that - he finds an office with a couch in it - apparently the Chief of Oncology is on vacation along with all his staff - and he tosses a blanket at Jones and makes him lie down.
He’s about to leave when Jones speaks, his voice practically a whisper, “When I look ahead, it’s impossible to imagine a future without him in it. Literally every plan I have for my life involves - no, revolves around Neal. When I see myself in DC someday, or God, if I ever have kids - he’s right there beside me. He’s my world, Moz, my whole world. Have you ever had someone like that?”
Moz is relieved that Jones is facing away from him, because then he won’t see the tears in his eyes. “Can’t say that I have. What’s it like?”
Jones turns onto his side, his words muffled by the cheap leather couch. “Sometimes it sucks.”
----
“How did you and Neal meet?”
It’s dinnertime on Day Two, Neal has not yet awakened, and Moz and Jones are holed up in Doctor Oncology’s office, the ruins of a couple of “Shack Stacks” between them.
“He hasn’t told you?” Moz replies. Jones shakes his head. “Well, it was nearly ten years ago, so I suppose the statute of limitations must be up by now.”
That remark gets a smile out of him, and Moz is grateful to have lifted the other man’s mood. He tells the story of the three card Monty scam Neal busted into and how it led to Moz seeking him out, though he doesn’t recount many specifics. When he gets to the part about Neal's inability to locate Kate when he returned from Europe, Jones becomes quiet again.
“He really loved her, didn’t he? Kate?” he asks.
“You guys haven’t discussed that?” Moz says carefully.
“I’m afraid to bring it up.”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s this big tragedy in his life - he was about to have everything he ever wanted and it was ripped away.” He’s looking down, worrying at a small hole in the seam of the jeans he wears, and Moz’s heart breaks.
“He doesn’t compare you to her.”
“I know.”
Moz spots the lie a mile away. “There’s something you don’t know about that, and if you tell Neal I told you, I’ll make you live to regret it, but… in the end, Kate was all about Kate.”
“What do you mean?”
“She changed when Neal went to prison - became cold, calculating. Hell, maybe that’s what she always was, I don’t know - but it was that person who lured him out of prison.” Jones’ eyes widen. “What, you think Adler couldn’t wait another three months for Neal to get out? He’d waited his entire life to find that goddamn music box. No, it had to have been Kate’s idea, and no one will be able to convince me otherwise.”
They sit in silence for several moments, then Moz adds, “I think Neal knows that now, and I think that’s probably why you two haven’t discussed her - it hurts him too much.”
Moz watches as a kind of relief washes over the young agent’s face. “Thank you.”
----
Neal wakes a few hours later, but the doctor will only allow one person to see him at a time. Moz thinks Jones looks almost scared when he goes in.
When he comes out, his face is carefully neutral.
“How - how was he?” Moz asks carefully.
“He was so out of it,” Jones replies, shaking his head. “I’m not sure he even knew I was there.”
“He did, man,” Moz assures him, patting his shoulder.
They both know he’s lying.
----
Neal is in ICU for five long days. When he is transferred to a private room, Moz and Jones celebrate that night with a bottle of 40-yr old single malt Moz pays for with his own money. He pours himself a double but limits himself to that much only. He keeps a watchful eye on Jones.
“I feel like this is the first time I can breathe in, like, a week,” Jones says, slurring slightly. An almost total lack of sleep will do that to you when you finally start to come down, which is why Moz made sure they were at Neal’s for this.
“If either of us had hair, it’d be white,” Moz agrees.
Jones chuckles, a bright sound after a week of such darkness. “I wouldn’t have gotten through it if it hadn’t been for you, though.” He raises his glass in toast to Moz.
Moz scoffs.
“It’s true,” the other man insists, and Moz shakes his head.
Looking after Clinton helped Moz just as much he thinks, kept his mind occupied, kept him from doing something rash. He pours Jones another hit then goes to root around in Neal's fridge to see about something to eat - no one should drink like this on an empty stomach. He finds bread and cheese and goes about making the man a grilled cheese sandwich, lactose be damned.
As he goes through the motions, a warm feeling blooms in his belly, one that has nothing to do with the whisky. He almost laughs - few people trigger his maternal instincts these days - actually, only one does, and they’re hanging out in his apartment. He glances over at Jones as the pan heats, and can’t help a smile for the one person in the world who loves Neal more than he does. The warm feeling grows, and he covers his stomach with a hand, shakes his head. Then he throws a pat of butter in the pan with a satisfying hiss.
He’ll take care of what’s Neal's, like always.
----
Thank you for your time.