Fic (White Collar): Nature of the Chase - Part 1
Title: Nature of the Chase
Artist: elrhiarhodan
Author: cookielaura
Wordcount: 16,145 (part 1 = 8,205)
Characters/Pairings: Neal, Peter, Mozzie, Elizabeth, Clinton, Kate, OMC, past Neal/Kate, Peter/El, pre-Peter/Neal, pre-Peter/El/Neal
Rating: Hard R
Contains: One curse word, brief violence, blood/injury, references to death, sexual content
Spoilers: s2e11
Betas: wise_old_crone and erinm_4600
Summary: Pre-series fantasy AU. Neal’s true nature means he has the ability to keep running from Peter forever - if he chooses to.
Notes: Written for the White Collar Reverse Big Bang at wc-reverse-bb. Inspired by elrhiarhodan’s lovely artwork which you can comment on here. Title from Land of a Thousand Words by Scissor Sisters.
The first thing Neal Caffrey learned was how to hide himself.
His mother drummed it into him. Secrecy. Disguise. Misdirection. The art of the con, the skill of making people think you’re just like them. Mess it up, and they’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth. Reveal yourself fully to anyone, and you’ll never be safe again.
You can be anything you want to be, have anything you want to have, as long as nobody else knows.
‘Be yourself,’ said the children’s books and the television shows and the school assemblies. ‘Be someone else,’ said Neal’s mom, ‘if you want to survive.’
Neal wanted to survive.
----
Agent Peter Burke had great instincts, and he almost always followed them. They’d led him to Quantico and, after that, to the White Collar unit. They’d told him not to give up on the beautiful assistant manager at the art gallery, the one who was so obviously out of his league. They’d helped him solve cases that more experienced agents had struggled with; they were partly responsible for the fast progress he was making through the FBI ranks. They were almost entirely responsible for him taking the file that became known as James Bonds.
And yet, when it really mattered, he’d ignored them.
The knowledge of his mistake had been a constant frustration to him for the last year, a background hum in his mind, an unscratchable itch under his skin. A memory that by all logic should be a regret, but wasn’t quite.
He could have caught Caffrey back then, he knew. Could have cuffed him right outside that bank in Midtown, could have ripped the wrapper from that green sucker straight away, could have won before the game had even really started. He had replayed that scene in his mind so many times that it had taken on a cinematic quality; and now, pacing the floor in a cheap hotel room in Innsbruck, he thought: One more time.
He’d known. Known there was something wrong, something beneath the friendly curiosity and the clean-cut good looks, the non-threatening body language and the unnecessary compliments about the FBI’s hard work. Something in the man’s deep, fathomless eyes had set Peter’s skin tingling, sent adrenaline flooding into his blood, made his gut clench. And then the man had smiled, and for a moment, there was something animalistic in it; it was the satisfied, lazy smile of a predator delighting in his position at the top of the food chain, untouchable.
Every part of Peter had screamed at him to stop the man, to give chase as he walked away. But there had been no real reason to do so, nothing beyond the hairs rising on the back of his neck, and the unusually strong urge that said: pursue, capture, take. So he’d stood there and argued with his instincts for precious seconds, watching the man’s lithe body weave through the crowd with smooth, unhurried ease until he had disappeared. By the time Peter decided to follow, it was too late; the man was nowhere to be found.
It was the first and last time he had seen James Bonds in the flesh.
It won’t be the last time much longer though, Peter thought, and the thrill of it thrummed through his veins.
Peter pushed open the door to the hotel room balcony, suddenly in need of a cool breeze to calm the flush that was creeping up his neck. The balcony was small and empty, surrounded by a rickety-looking wooden railing, but the view of the Tyrolean Alps - so close he felt he could almost touch them - was stunning. The mountains towered up around the city, the snow-capped tops unfeasibly picturesque against the darkening sky. Birdsong drifted idly through the clear evening, and a blue-tailed swallow landed on the balcony rail, dipping its head at Peter. Peter smiled and breathed in deeply, the air sweet with the scent of wildflowers and the promise of tomorrow.
Tomorrow, he would catch Caffrey.
----
It wasn’t difficult. It had never been difficult to transform; the hardest part was controlling it. When he was very small, it would happen automatically. His mother once told him of the day she’d left him on the living room floor, a nine-month-old baby, the television set tuned to a nature documentary about life in the Sahara, and come back moments later to find a small, golden lion cub sitting in Neal’s place, blinking confusedly at her. That was when she knew the gene had been passed on.
By the time he was three years old, Neal was having daily practice sessions. His mother would sit cross-legged in front of him, keeping her gaze steady and calming. ‘Cat,’ she would say, firmly. ‘Concentrate.’ And Neal would screw up his eyes tightly, and think about cats: their small, supple bodies, their furry coats, their mewling voices.
And then he would open his eyes, and the world would be different: the colors duller, tinged with grey, but the field of his vision wider, the edges of the room suddenly in focus. And his mother, taller and larger now, smiling at him, proud. With a tiny black kitten reflected in the blues of her eyes.
‘Back to Neal,’ she would say, and he would close his eyes again, and think of himself, of his own dark curly hair and blue eyes, of the red T-shirt and denim jeans he was wearing, of his hands and fingernails and ears and nose. And he would open his eyes to find the colors bright around him again, and his sneakered feet planted firmly on the floor.
By the time he was four, Neal barely had to think about it. He could shift as easily as he could breathe.
----
Neal had been in Austria for over a month, and he was still floored by its beauty. He loved the crashing waterfalls, the castles built into the hills, the villages poised impossibly on the edges of lakes. He had spent more time than he was really aware of in the mountains, losing himself in their grandeur. Flying until his mind cleared, until he was gliding without thought, without regret, until he forgot everything but the air under his wings and the beauty around him. Until he forgot the ache in his heart.
Tonight, though, had not been a night for mindless recreation. Tonight had been a night for reconnaissance, for checking that everything was as it should be at Schloss Ambras: that the security remained the same, that there would be no surprises tomorrow. And tonight had been a night for confirming what he had half feared, half hoped - that Peter Burke was here in Innsbruck.
He was.
Neal swooped back into his and Mozzie’s room through the open veranda door, leaving the darkness outside behind. Mozzie barely looked up from his laptop.
‘You’ve been a while.’ There was censure in his voice.
Neal landed softly on the polished wooden floor and let himself transform. The process was practiced, smooth and swift, over in the blink of an eye. He stretched, adjusting to the increased size and strength. Returning to human form always felt like returning home, like putting on a well-worn pair of jeans.
‘We’re all set for tomorrow,’ he told Mozzie as he smoothed down his clothes, which always seemed to get a little rumpled during the transition.
‘What took you so long?’
Neal grinned. ‘I may have taken a short detour. To see our good friend Agent Burke.’
Mozzie swung around in his chair, horror flooding his face. ‘He’s here? He’s here, and you say we’re all set? Are you mad? You really want to go ahead with the FBI breathing down our necks?’
‘You worry too much, Moz. We can handle Peter.’
‘I really wish you wouldn’t call him by his first name. May I remind you that he is not your plaything? And I’m sure he’s brought the whole crew with him.’
‘Probably. Do you think we should we send them something? Some schnitzel? I doubt they’ve tried much of the local cuisine.’
‘No, we should not. Enough with the food and the notes - yes, I know about the notes. You’re going to get us caught. Did he see you tonight?’
Neal shrugged. ‘He saw a version of me. But I really don’t think he’s going to connect the dots. He’s good, but he’s not good enough to connect me to a bird on his balcony.’
‘You went to his balcony?’ Mozzie shook his head in despair.
‘As a bird, Moz. It was risk-free.’
‘Nothing is risk-free.’
Mozzie turned back to the laptop, and Neal seated himself across the table. Regardless of what Mozzie thought, the excursion had been worth it. The delicious frission of being so close to the agent yet so far from his clutches, being right in front of his eyes yet completely hidden, was always impossible to resist. And the vision of Peter on that balcony - sleeves rolled up to his elbows, shirt loosened at the neck, eyes glinting hazel in the evening light - well, that was just a bonus, an unexpected treat to keep his mind off Kate a little longer.
‘It’ll be fine, I promise,’ Neal said. Then he nodded towards the keyboard Mozzie was tapping away at. ‘Any news?’ he asked, which meant, as always: Any news about Kate?
Mozzie pursed his lips and shook his head, which Neal knew meant: No, and I wish you’d stop asking. He hadn’t expected to hear anything different, yet his heart sank regardless.
‘Moz? You’re still looking for her, right?’
‘I said I would, and I am.’
‘You said you’d look until I came to my senses.’
‘And? Have you?’
Neal glared at him.
‘I’ll keep looking then.’
----
By the time Neal turned twenty-one, he had long since given up hope of finding someone like him. When he was younger, he would examine the faces of everyone he met, convinced that when he saw one of his kind, he would know. He’d see in them the boundless knowledge of swimming in great seas, swinging through rainforests, flying freely across endless skies, and his heart would recognize a person he could finally share himself with. But every face was just another face, and Neal had nobody. Whether others didn’t exist, or he just couldn’t recognize them, he wasn’t sure.
Even his mother was gone by then, her human form forsaken as too much trouble and too much work. Neal knew neither where nor what she was, and he told himself that he no longer cared. He had come to terms with the idea that he would live and die alone.
And then one evening there was a party, and an introduction, and a girl with dark hair and glacial skin and oceans in her eyes.
And Neal knew.
----
Peter hadn’t slept well. He felt like a coiled spring, ready to jump into action at any moment. From what they’d heard, the heist on Ambras was planned for the following afternoon, but information like that wasn’t always reliable, and he’d sent two members of his team to stake out the castle overnight. He had spent the night on the edge of wakefulness, waiting for his phone to ring to alert him to a change.
When it did ring, at six a.m. on the dot, he roused himself in seconds and answered on the fourth ring.
‘Burke.’ His voice was rough from the early hour.
‘Good morning, this is your six a.m. wake-up call,’ said a light-hearted voice, and any vestiges of sleep fell away instantly.
‘Caffrey,’ Peter stated, bluntly, doing a decent job of keeping the jolt of excitement out of his voice. It was like this every time Caffrey called, a hot rush of certainty that this would be the phone call where he’d slip up, where Peter would trap him, where he’d finally get something useful out of him.
‘How many times do I have to tell you, Peter? You can call me Neal.’
‘And you can call me Agent Burke, Caffrey.’
‘Don’t you think we’re a little beyond that, Peter? I mean, you obviously want us to be close, or you wouldn’t be following me around Europe. I’ll be honest, it’s getting a bit stalkery.’
‘I do want us to be close.’
‘You do? That’s very…upfront of you. You’re not usually so forward.’ Caffrey paused, and Peter could hear that grin down the phone, that cocky smile he’d seen outside of the bank. Whenever he imagined the conman, it was with that smile on his face.
‘Only for a minute, of course. Just while I’m putting the cuffs on you.’ Peter let his mouth curve into his own predatory grin at the thought of that.
A good-natured laugh floated down the phone line. ‘Shame. I was going to suggest we meet for coffee and cake in one of the charming cafes they have around here, have a nice civil catch-up. But you’re obviously not in the mood.’
‘Maybe it’s to do with having been woken at six, when I booked my wake-up call for seven,’ Peter shot back.
‘Seven? Isn’t that a little late? Don’t you need to get a head start on hunting down some dirty criminals?’ The way Caffrey’s voice wrapped around the word dirty made Peter swallow hard.
‘There’s only one criminal I’m interested in right now.’
‘Peter, you flatter me. I guess I’ll be seeing you soon, then. I do hope you’ve been enjoying the country while you’ve been waiting for me?’
‘I’m not really here for tourism purposes.’
‘That’s a shame, after I’ve gone to all this trouble to arrange a federally-funded Austrian holiday for you.’
Peter couldn’t help but smile at that. ‘Oh, I see, so this was all for my benefit?’
‘Of course. I’ve decided to take an interest in your cultural education.’
‘That’s kind of you, Neal. Tell you what, after I’ve arrested you I’ll take a couple days to check out the museums.’
Neal laughed again, the sound infused with the light-heartedness and confidence of a man who believes he will never be caught, and Peter wondered, not for the first time, why it was so impossible to intimidate him.
‘I hope you stick to the latter part of that plan, even if the first part doesn’t come off,’ Caffrey said. ‘Take care, Peter.’
‘You too,’ Peter replied automatically, then rolled his eyes at himself.
‘Oh, and Peter?’
‘Yes?’
‘It was nice to hear you call me Neal.’
----
Neal pressed the call end button and set the phone down on the small veranda table next to him. The early morning sunlight had bathed his view of the Alps in muted golds, and he appreciated the aesthetically pleasing background to his conversation. Talking to Peter was like an art, a tapestry of unsaid words woven in the rich strands of Peter’s warm, deep voice, threaded through with Neal’s own teasing tones.
He tapped his fingers on the surface of the table, restlessness already seeping through him, and pushed away the ridiculous accusation that Mozzie had thrown his way ten minutes prior: that his most recent heists had been as much about an excuse to make such phone calls as they had been about stealing art or drawing Kate to him. Mozzie was wrong, of course. He was just tense, displeased with the proximity of the FBI and Neal’s determination to proceed regardless. He knew as well as Neal that it was still all about Kate.
----
‘What’s your favorite?’ Kate asked, shifting in Neal’s arms until she could look up at him. The moonlight glanced off her face, making her look ethereal. She was beautiful, lying next to him on the sand; she’d been just as beautiful an hour earlier, cantering through the surf beside him, her mane black and shining, hooves kicking up sea foam. He loved her in all her forms.
‘For me? Anything that can fly. For you? Anything at all.’
‘I should have known it would be flying.’ Kate traced her fingers down Neal’s bare chest. She sounded amused, though Neal wasn’t sure why.
‘And you? What’s your favorite?’
Kate smiled, slow and sure. ‘No contest. It has to be a unicorn.’
Neal laughed, the sound ringing out clear across the deserted beach. ‘Of course. But seriously?’
Kate sat up, moving out of Neal’s arms and looking him square in the face. ‘Seriously. You don’t know?’
‘Know what?’
‘It’s not just animals that are alive now that we can transform into. It’s any animal that’s ever been. Even the ones you think only existed in fairy tales. Unicorns. Phoenixes. Centaurs. Almost every creature you can think of was real at one time or another.’
Neal’s mouth hung open, his mind reeling with the shock. ‘But, that’s not possible. My mother never…’
‘Maybe your mother didn’t know everything. And you know as well as I do… few things are impossible.’
----
It would be impossible, Peter thought, for Caffrey to slip past them today. He leaned back in his chair, satisfied that they were well prepared. They had cameras on every entrance, exit and exhibition room, there were plainclothes officers patrolling each of the galleries, and there were five pairs of eyes, including his own, glued to the video feeds, waiting for the first glimpse of Caffrey. Admittedly they didn’t have a lot of information to go on - criminal informants were notoriously vague and unreliable, and this one had been able to tell them little more than the time and location of the planned job - but there were only four different exhibition halls in the castle, and each one was under close surveillance. All they had to do was wait for Caffrey to enter the premises and begin to steal whatever it was he wanted to steal, and then they would catch him red-handed: another charge to add to the bond forgery, and to whatever else they could manage to prove.
Peter ran a finger under his collar, tugging it away from his neck. The warmth of the day combined with the tension in all of his muscles was making him uncomfortable, and he felt as though his heart had been beating at twice its normal rate for the last hour. He was so close. So close he could taste it, could feel the satisfaction of finally pinning Caffrey down.
He felt Clinton Jones shift slightly in his seat beside him, but Peter didn’t take his eyes off the screens in front of him to look over.
‘Anything yet?’ Peter asked, somewhat redundantly, knowing that Jones would have said if he’d seen anyone who could be Caffrey. Jones was watching the camera feed for the main entrance, having told Peter that he figured James Bonds was cocky enough to walk right through the front door.
‘Nah,’ came the answer. ‘Just an elderly couple and a short guy with a bad toupee. They don’t look much like associates of Bonds.’
There were a fair amount of tourists around today, which was probably something Caffrey had been banking on to give him cover. The August day was beautiful, the sun high and hot, and Ambras, with its extensive grounds and its position high in the hills above Innsbruck, was the perfect place for an outing. Still, most of the visitors were in the courtyard, soaking up the sun and wandering amongst the topiaries, or relaxing in the café. The exhibitions had less than ten people in each one.
Peter took a swig from his water bottle and let his eyes flick between the different feeds: the whitewashed walls and dark, formal portraits in the Hapsburg Gallery; the array of glinting gold and stone in the Collection of Gothic Sculpture; the rich wooden floors and brightly lit display cases in the Chamber of Art and Curiosities. His gaze rested on the large hall that was named the Chamber of Armour. Something had caught his attention, registering in the corner of his eye, and he stared intently, trying to work out what was wrong. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. There was a family with two children, the parents trying to stop the kids from darting in and out amongst the hulking suits of armor and the model horses; a young couple, laughing over one of the description plaques; another couple who looked more interested in each other than the armor; and a short, bespectacled man, with a mop of sandy hair - the bad toupee Jones had mentioned. Peter leaned forward as though the extra few inches would reveal something new, and then, as if on cue, the scene exploded in chaos.
At least three different smoke bombs exploded in unison around the hall, spewing thick, billowing clouds of gray fog into the air as the tourists scattered, the parents lunging for their children and the couples running for the exit. As the smoke rose up and started to obscure the view from the camera completely, Peter barked instructions into his mouthpiece and sent his agents sprinting for the hall. But he stayed exactly where he was, his pulse jumping in his throat, his eyes sharp on the other galleries. He pulled Jones’ arm back down as he rose out of his seat too, keeping him there alongside him to watch the other feeds.
‘Diversion?’ Jones asked, and Peter nodded grimly.
‘Maybe.’ He was about to say something else, when he saw a young man enter the sculpture hall, his head ducked away from the cameras, a fedora pulled low over his eyes. It could have been any slim, well-dressed man, of course, but Peter knew. How had Caffrey even gotten into the castle without any of the agents raising the alarm? It didn’t matter now, because as Peter watched he drew a bag and some sort of instrument from inside his jacket, and reached for one of the smaller statues.
Peter was out of his chair and running for the sculpture gallery before he saw anything more. Jones was on his heels, and they skidded into the hall to find three glaringly empty wooden shelves and Caffrey’s back heading out of the door. He worked fast.
Peter gave chase, his footsteps echoing throughout the cavernous hall, the distance between him and Caffrey narrowing as he followed him out of the gallery and down a corridor, slammed through a heavy wooden door just meters behind him and burst out into the warm afternoon air seconds after. Caffrey was slipping down the external steps and into the tree-studded gardens, somehow looking relaxed and graceful even as he ran.
Peter’s heart was thudding, and the sharp, sweet taste of victory rose in his throat. Caffrey was within his grasp, Jones had already called for back-up and the whole area would soon be swarming with agents. Neal would have to run at the speed of light to escape now.
He stayed close on Caffrey’s trail as the man sprinted up the path that led into the mountains, and Peter managed to keep pace with him as the track wound up through the thickening forest, the fir trees towering over them, the light dimming a little as the trees grew closer together. Behind him he heard Jones fast approaching.
Caffrey twisted suddenly, taking a sharp right turn off the path and through the trees. Peter swung around and headed after him, crashing through the undergrowth in his wake, emerging just moments after Caffrey into a clearing. A clearing that was empty, silent and still.
Peter stood, his breath coming hard and heavy, scanning the glade. It was large, bordered on one side by the rocky rise of the mountain, and there was no way Caffrey had made it to the other side and back into the forest before Peter had got there. Then Peter noticed the crack in the rock just a few meters away. It was the entrance to a cave. The taste of triumph sweetened further still: he had him.
He felt Jones reach his side, and turned to him, indicating the cave entrance. They headed slowly and quietly towards it, one on each side, guns drawn. Peter didn’t expect to have to take Caffrey by force though; if anything, he expected to find him lounging on a rock within the cave, twirling his hat in his hand and smiling serenely at them, the perfect gentleman in defeat.
That was not what he found. The cave didn’t go far back; there was nowhere to hide in it. There was also no Caffrey. The only creature inside was a deer, sheltering from the sun just inside the entrance, sitting calmly on the dirt floor and studying them through half-closed eyes. It was a beautiful animal, russet red with huge, majestic antlers, but it definitely wasn’t what Peter was looking for.
Peter swore, staring helplessly around the small cavern at the rough stone walls and trying to make sense of Caffrey’s sudden disappearance. He headed angrily back out into the clearing, screwing his eyes up against the lowering sun that glared across the tops of the trees.
‘Set up a search of the surrounding forest,’ he snapped at Jones, wishing they had the resources to establish road blocks out of Innsbruck too, but knowing that Caffrey would find a way to bypass them anyway.
He had no idea how to explain to his superiors that they had lost him again.
----
Night had fallen by the time the agents had given up on the search and Neal could leave the cave. He stood, stretching out his long, slender legs with relief and revealing the bag of sculptures sitting in the dip in the earth beneath him - the dip he’d carefully dug out the night before in preparation. He tilted his head back, feeling serene, the usual effect of spending so many hours as such a peaceful creature. The stag was one of his favorites.
He stepped softly from the edge of the cave and surveyed the glade in front of him, checking for the final time that there was no longer any danger. Then he returned to the cavern’s mouth, closed his eyes and let his limbs shorten, the color of his coat darken, and his hooves turn into paws. The transformation from deer to large dog was smooth. He darted forward, snatched up the small sack of valuable sculptures in his teeth and bounded back through the forest, heading for the hotel where Mozzie was no doubt pacing the floors.
----
‘Thank God,’ he heard Mozzie mutter in relief as Neal padded up to their room and barked at the French doors. Mozzie swung one of them open and let in the black Retriever, reaching down to snag the bag from the ground beside him.
‘Rover.’ Mozzie greeted him with a nod of his head.
Neal shook his coat roughly, sprinkling Mozzie with water drops from the river he’d ran through on the way back, before shifting back into human form.
‘Could you not call me that?’
Mozzie shrugged, brushing the water from his shirt. ‘If the collar fits…’ he said lightly. ‘Are you alright? I was starting to worry, though not too much seeing as the Feds have been running around the woods like headless chickens.’
‘I had to stay in the cave a little longer than planned. They took their time searching. But there are worse places to spend a few hours…there was a nice selection of grasses and twigs by the entrance to snack on.’
Mozzie wrinkled his nose. ‘Sounds appetizing.’
Neal sat down at the table and poured himself a glass of the wine Moz had been drinking. ‘You got out okay, I assume?’
‘I was gone by the time the first one reached the Armoury,’ Mozzie assured him with a hint of pride.
‘All’s well that ends well, then?’ Neal said, raising his glass for a toast.
Mozzie chinked his glass. ‘True. But maybe we could do the next job when we’re not being quite so closely supervised by Burke and his friends? My constitution can’t take much more of this.’
‘Deal.’ Neal swirled the wine around his glass. ‘Speaking of which…I really should see how Agent Burke is doing tonight. It’s only polite to check up on the wellbeing of your defeated foe, right?’
Mozzie rolled his eyes. ‘I’d tell you to stay here, but you’d only ignore me.’ He pointed a finger at Neal. ‘But no human form outside the hotel.’
Neal grinned. ‘Don’t worry. Human Neal isn’t going anywhere tonight.’
----
‘So, why have I never seen you as a unicorn?’ Neal asked. ‘You must be stunning.’
Kate sighed, her eyes glazing over, and she trailed her hand in the coarse yellow sand beside her, leaving disordered circles in her wake. ‘I don’t take that form often. It’s too much.’
‘Too much?’
‘Too much power. Too much temptation. Just…too much.’ She looked away, staring at the sea, the moonlight gilding the tops of the waves silver. For a few moments she was silent, but Neal sensed she had more to say.
‘Unicorns are special,’ she continued eventually, her voice softer now, almost reverent. ‘What do you know about them?’
Neal scanned his memory. ‘Not a lot. I’ve seen paintings… and the Unicorn Tapestries in the Cloisters. They’re so beautiful. But I remember looking at The Unicorn in Captivity and wondering how he could be happy, penned up like that, chained to the tree. He looked so content, even though he was fenced in.’
Kate shook her head, her jaw tightening. ‘We’d all be chained up if the rest of the world had anything to say about it. And it wouldn’t be in a field of wildflowers. I’ve never liked that tapestry.’
Neal pulled her more tightly against him. ‘No one will ever catch you. I won’t let them.’ He was so sure, his words confident in the darkness, but Kate’s answering smile was dry, and he knew she didn’t trust him to keep her safe from those who would hunt them down if they knew of their existence, who would lock them in cages and use them for their own ends. Kate didn’t trust anyone but herself.
He would change that one day.
‘Have you heard the myths?’ Kate asked. ‘About the unicorn?’
Neal smirked. ‘I know it’s said that they’re so pure, only a virgin can find them. But that can’t be true -’ he flipped Kate underneath him, pressing her down into the sand and stealing a kiss - ‘because I found you, and I am definitely not a virgin.’
Kate grinned up at him. ‘You’re not? Neal, I’m shocked.’ She pushed him away, propping herself up on her elbows. ‘That myth isn’t true, anyway. But you’ve heard about their healing powers? In the Middle Ages, they believed unicorn horns held the power to cleanse poisoned water, and to heal the sick.’
‘Were they right?’ Neal asked, fascinated, already thinking through all the possibilities this could open up.
‘No,’ Kate replied, disappointing him. But she wasn’t finished.
‘It’s not the horn. It’s the blood.’
----
Neal landed softly in one of the trees outside Peter’s balcony and folded his wings in by his side. Light was flooding through the balcony doors, which were standing ajar, but the tree’s thick foliage provided cover as he shifted from his swallow form to a butterfly. He’d considered a normal fly for the sake of inconspicuousness, but it stood too much risk of being swatted with a newspaper. And besides, the ‘fly on the wall’ thing was a little too cliché even for a man who loved the classics.
He flitted towards the balcony doors, taking a second to admire his new form in the glass: his slim, sleek, turquoise body, his deep blue wings with black tips and his sharp, dark eyes - a little bulbous for his liking, but shining beautifully in the night. Then he darted smoothly through the gap between the doors and slipped past the curtains, swooping over to land softly on the wall behind the bed.
The room was empty despite being lit, and he heard the sound of movement from the bathroom. Moments later, Peter emerged fresh from the shower, his hair damp and swept back untidily, a towel tied around his waist. His chest was bare and glimmering with a few water droplets that hadn’t yet been towelled off, and Neal instantly felt his wings start to vibrate as the blood in the veins that crisscrossed them pumped faster. Despite several attempts at spying on the agent in the past, Neal had never seen him in such a state of undress, though he’d often wondered what was underneath those ill-fitting suits. There was no denying now that Peter kept in shape - his shoulders were broad and well-defined, his arms strong and sculpted, and Neal couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to be pinned down by him. There was a light tan all over his skin, and Neal’s mind automatically conjured an image of Peter doing yardwork, sweating in the summer heat, shirt cast aside and the muscles in his arms rippling in the sun. His heart thudded at the thought, and his body began to heat up as Peter neared the bed, then sat down, swung his legs up and leaned back against the headboard, the top of his head not far from Neal. Neal was close enough to see the few shining beads of water still caught in the hair at the nape of Peter’s neck - if he floated down a few centimeters he’d be close enough to taste them. He did his best to restrain himself.
Peter reached across to the bedside table, picked up his cell and dialled. Neal’s antennae pricked up and he had no problem hearing the ring tone, or the voice that answered.
‘Hey hon.’ It was sweet and beautiful. And familiar. Elizabeth.
Neal liked Elizabeth. And she liked him too. Not that they’d met yet - not exactly. Not that she was aware of, anyway. But Neal had visited the Burkes’ house in Brooklyn more often than he’d like to admit. At first he’d gone looking for Peter, wanting to learn more about the agent and hoping to overhear something about himself or the investigation. He’d taken the form of a cat - an adorable black kitten with blue eyes, that surely even the hard-nosed Agent Burke wouldn’t be able to resist giving a saucer of milk to. It hadn’t been Peter that had found him on the back doorstep on the chilly Saturday afternoon though; it had been Elizabeth. She had cooed and stroked him, exclaimed over the fact that such a beautiful cat didn’t have a collar, and taken him inside for a drink. The drink of warm milk had been followed by a small piece of the fish that she’d been cooking for dinner, and before Neal knew it he’d been curled up next to Elizabeth on the couch as she wrote emails on her laptop and scratched Neal’s head. Peter Burke’s house was the last place on earth that Neal should feel safe and comforted, yet that was exactly how he felt. It was intoxicating, and from then on Neal had not been able to stop himself returning regularly to visit Elizabeth. Hearing her voice now felt like coming home.
‘Hi hon,’ Peter replied. There was an easy warmth in his voice when he spoke to her that Neal recognized from the few times Peter had let his guard down whilst on the phone to him.
‘So? Am I speaking to the triumphant Agent Burke who has one very handsome conman in his custody?’ Elizabeth asked. Neal’s wings fluttered in surprise. He’d never heard her call him handsome before. Well, not his human form.
Peter grunted. ‘Sadly not. Houdini gave us the slip again.’ He sounded bitter, but Neal noted that he hadn’t contested the ‘handsome’ part.
‘Oh hon, I’m sorry. You’ll get him next time. He can’t run from you forever.’
‘I don’t know how he does it. I was so close to him today, I could almost touch him.’
‘Bet you enjoyed that,’ Elizabeth said mischievously. Neal’s antennae twitched. Was she saying what he thought she was saying?
Peter gave a dismissive snort. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Of course you don’t.’ El’s tone was teasing, and it sounded like a conversation they’d had many times before. ‘So he got away with whatever it was he was after?’
‘Yeah, a few statues. Religious relics. They’re worth a fair bit, but they weren’t the most expensive things there, so I’m guessing someone with a desire for those particular ones hired him to steal them. The thing I can’t figure out, though, is how he
managed to get into the castle without us spotting him in the first place. We had all the entrances covered, and I’ve gone back over the recordings - he’s not on them. He must have found a different way in somehow.’
As a butterfly, Neal wasn’t capable of grinning exactly, but he smiled internally at the idea of Peter staring at the video footage for hours, with no hope of ever seeing him. He’d flitted unnoticed through the castle’s front door in the very form he was using now, not becoming human again until he’d reached the privacy of the men’s restroom.
‘It’s driving you crazy, isn’t it?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘You know Caffrey. He always drives me crazy.’
‘Like I do?’ El said, and Neal could hear the smile in her voice.
‘In an entirely different way, I promise,’ Peter said drily.
‘If you say so, sweetie.’
‘How are things with you, anyway?’ Peter changed the subject. ‘How’s the planning for the Wilson wedding going?’
‘Good, thanks. We’re almost finished. Though I haven’t seen my little helper around recently. It’s a shame, I was hoping he’d come and keep me company while you were away.’
‘The cat? I wish you’d stop letting it in. It’ll start thinking it lives with us.’
‘He could though, couldn’t he? He looks like he needs a good home, and I’d like to keep him.’
Neal felt warmth spread through him. It felt like a long time since anyone had really wanted him, though of course Elizabeth was only referring to his cat form.
‘He doesn’t seem like the kind of animal that wants a collar, El. He’s always running off - I think he’s happy being wild. Besides, the damn thing probably has rabies.’
Neal was momentarily affronted. Rabies? He certainly did not.
‘Oh it does not, Peter,’ Elizabeth scolded lightly, amusement clear in her tone. ‘Don’t take your frustration out on the kitten just because you can’t get your hands on Caffrey.’
It was the first time Neal had heard his name come from Elizabeth’s lips, and he liked the sound of it. He had to admit he liked the sound of Peter’s hands on him even more.
Peter sighed. ‘I miss you, El. I wish you were here with me.’
‘I miss you too, hon. But when you get back, I promise I’ll give you a really great welcome home present. And it’ll be worth the wait.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Peter tilted his head back and closed his eyes, his lips curving into a smile. ‘Sounds good. Tell me more.’
Elizabeth laughed. ‘I wish I could, but I have to get ready for the Jackson dinner. I leave in twenty and I’m not dressed. But I’m sure you can fill in the gaps with your imagination.’
‘I’ll definitely do that,’ Peter said, grinning.
‘Oh and two more things,’ Elizabeth added. ‘One: don’t worry. You will catch Neal, and soon. I know you, Peter Burke; you’ll be putting cuffs on him before you realize it.’
‘What’s the second thing?’
‘Oh, the second thing’s very important. I bought some new lingerie.’
‘You did?’ Peter shifted on the bed, his hand sneaking down to the towel at his waist.
‘I did. And I’ll send you a photo as soon as you hang up.’
‘You are the best wife ever.’
‘Of course. So, do you think those two things will keep you going til you get home?’
‘I think so. Love you, El.’
‘I love you too.’
Neal watched Peter hang up the call, and seconds later his cell beeped with an incoming message. Neal damped down his curiosity and averted his eyes, but whatever picture Elizabeth had sent was obviously something special - Peter’s reverential murmur of ‘God, El,’ proved that. His voice was low and throaty and it sent tremors through Neal. And then Peter cast the towel aside and Neal forgot how to breathe.
He should leave, should fly right out through the door and back to his hotel. But he didn’t. He stayed, glued to the wall, listening to Peter’s hitching breaths, unable to tear his gaze away from Peter’s hand on his cock, strong and firm and assured. The sweet, tangy scent of Peter’s pre-come reached the chemoreceptors at the ends of his antennae and almost overwhelmed him.
Peter’s strokes steadily increased from languid to more urgent, and El’s name fell from his lips again, a soft groan. And then, almost under his breath, came another name.
Neal started, shaken out of his reverie. Had he heard his own name? Surely not - El and Neal didn’t sound that dissimilar; Peter was just repeating his wife’s name. He watched, feeling every beat of his own heart, his small body aching with need as Peter’s head fell back further and his hips tilted up. Then Peter was coming, thick white ribbons across his taut stomach, his left hand clenching and unclenching in the sheets, his right hand still fisted around his cock.
And, unmistakably this time, came the words: ‘Fuck…Neal.’
----
The swallow swooped back through Neal’s hotel room, flying into the bathroom. The air in the small room shifted and Neal transformed back into himself. He shed his clothes quickly, arousal flooding him more strongly now that he was human again, his cock already hard and begging for attention. He locked the bathroom door and slipped into the shower, turning the knob to cold and letting the cool water flow over him in an effort to chill his flushed skin. But the image of Peter danced behind his closed eyelids - Peter lying on that bed, the satisfied curve of his smile, his calloused, confident fingers, his hard flesh - and Neal had to steady himself against the tiled wall. One hand splayed out against the wet ceramic, whilst his other reached down, desperate to relieve himself of the evening’s pent-up tension. He came, moments later, so powerfully that the world inside the shower cubicle seemed to spin, and though he didn’t say a word out loud, Peter’s name exploded in his mind.
----
Neal felt as if the world was expanding around him, the night air suddenly humming with potential.
‘We can really heal people? From illness? Or injury? Completely?’ He couldn’t believe he’d had this skill all his life and was only just learning about it.
‘Completely.’ Kate said. ‘It only takes a little unicorn blood. But Neal -’
‘Could we bottle it?’ he asked eagerly. ‘We could siphon off a little, take it to the hospitals, we could -’
‘No.’ It was a cold, sharp rebuke that brooked no arguing. ‘It has to be fresh. But even if it didn’t, we couldn’t do it. Can you imagine what would happen if doctors, scientists, got hold of it? We’d be found out. We’d end up in a laboratory. At best.’ Kate took Neal’s hand, her grip tight and urgent. ‘Promise me, Neal. You can’t heal people. It would be better if you never even took the unicorn form.’
‘But… you said it was your favorite.’
‘It is. You can feel the magic running through your veins. It’s intoxicating. But it’s hard to resist using that magic. And we have to resist.’ She squeezed his hand again. ‘Promise you’ll never give us away?’
Neal looked into her eyes, wide and pleading. She was right, of course. And even if she wasn’t… he couldn’t deny her anything.
‘I promise.’
----
Peter sat in the hotel lounge, his laptop balanced on the small table in front of him, sunlight flooding through the large windows and glancing off the screen. He squinted as he tried to read through the first half of his report, his index finger tapping frustratedly on the saucer of his coffee cup. His flight wasn’t due to leave until after lunch, so he had decided to spend the morning writing up the case notes, but the gaps in his knowledge were eating away at him.
He was about to order a third coffee, in the hopes that it would kick-start his brain, when his cell phone started to vibrate. The familiar words flashed up on the screen: unknown number. Rolling his eyes, he stabbed at the call accept button, the customary mix of irritation and anticipation already flooding through him.
‘Burke,’ he answered, deliberately injecting impatience into his tone.
‘Morning, Peter. Beautiful day, isn’t it?’ The voice wasn’t quite as intolerably smug as he’d expected, but it wasn’t far off.
‘Caffrey. Called to gloat?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just thought I’d wish you a safe trip home.’
‘How thoughtful of you.’
‘Thanks for noticing. Have you enjoyed your trip?’
Peter shook his head in exasperation. ‘I’ve had better, as I’m sure you can imagine.’
‘Oh yeah? I’m sorry to hear that.’ Caffrey almost sounded genuinely apologetic.
‘I’m sure,’ Peter said drily.
‘Will you be in trouble at work for the wasted trip?’
Peter frowned. ‘Not too much. Why? You worried you’re gonna get assigned a different case agent?’
‘Never happen,’ Neal said without missing a beat.
‘Why so sure?’
‘Because you’re the best,’ he said, as though the answer was an undisputed fact. ‘And I deserve the best.’
Peter tried to suppress a smile at that. ‘Of course. And will you be returning to the States today as well?’
Neal laughed. ‘I don’t think so. I thought I might give Berlin a try next. I hear the Pergamon Museum has an exciting new exhibit.’
‘Good to know.’ Peter made a mental note that of all the places he could expect Caffrey to go next, he could at least cross Berlin off the list. Probably.
‘Listen, Neal -’ he started, then paused, and debated whether to say what he’d wanted to say for a while. He took a deep breath, figuring this was as good a time as any, and continued. ‘You know, it doesn’t have to be like this. You don’t always have to spend your life running.’
There was silence from Caffrey’s end of the line for a moment, and then came the reply, his voice carefully light. ‘I’m pretty sure that’s not true. But how about this: I’ll stop running, if you agree to stop chasing me.’
‘Sorry kid, that’s not how it works. But you could turn yourself in. Do a few years for the bond forgeries -’
‘Alleged bond forgeries.’
‘Fine, alleged bond forgeries. You could do your time, and you’d be out before you were thirty. You’d have your whole life to spend doing something more useful with your talents.’
‘You think I’m talented?’ Neal teased.
Peter swallowed down a sigh of frustration. ‘That’s not the point I was making. Look, Caffrey, if you carry on like this, you’ll end up spending your entire adult life in prison.’
‘I’m not worried about that,’ Neal replied easily.
‘Well, I am.’
The words lay heavy in the air for a moment, and Peter bit his lip. He hadn’t meant to say that, not exactly.
‘I’m touched,’ Neal said at last, and though his tone was the same as ever, there was a sincerity lying underneath it that Peter had rarely heard before. ‘But I’ll be fine, really.’
‘Okay Neal.’ Peter leaned back in his chair, resigned. He’d offered, at least. Maybe Caffrey would think about it and take him up on it at a later date. He hadn’t expected it to work - didn’t expect Caffrey to ever stop of his own accord - but he’d had to try.
‘So,’ Neal said, changing the subject swiftly, ‘you still planning on visiting those museums?’
‘Sadly, no. I’m no longer in the mood for tourism.’
‘Oh Peter, you disappoint me. You could at least try some of the famous Sachertorte before you leave. It’s the best chocolate cake in Europe.’
Peter rolled his eyes. ‘Fine. I’ll get right on that. But Caffrey…’
‘Yes?’
‘Think about what I said, okay?’
‘I always do,’ Neal said, and hung up.
Peter sat still for a moment, the cell feeling heavy in his hand, his mind replaying those last words. Then he looked up and motioned to the waitress.
‘Excuse me. Do you serve Sachertorte here?’
A few minutes later he was forking the first bite of chocolate cake into his mouth, and cursing Caffrey for being right again - it was, of course, incredible. After a few mouthfuls Peter set his fork down and pulled his laptop back towards him, then opened up a search page, typing in Pergamon Museum, Berlin. It wouldn’t hurt to do a little research on what Neal had said. Just in case.
CONTINUE READING HERE: PART TWO
Artist: elrhiarhodan
Author: cookielaura
Wordcount: 16,145 (part 1 = 8,205)
Characters/Pairings: Neal, Peter, Mozzie, Elizabeth, Clinton, Kate, OMC, past Neal/Kate, Peter/El, pre-Peter/Neal, pre-Peter/El/Neal
Rating: Hard R
Contains: One curse word, brief violence, blood/injury, references to death, sexual content
Spoilers: s2e11
Betas: wise_old_crone and erinm_4600
Summary: Pre-series fantasy AU. Neal’s true nature means he has the ability to keep running from Peter forever - if he chooses to.
Notes: Written for the White Collar Reverse Big Bang at wc-reverse-bb. Inspired by elrhiarhodan’s lovely artwork which you can comment on here. Title from Land of a Thousand Words by Scissor Sisters.
The first thing Neal Caffrey learned was how to hide himself.
His mother drummed it into him. Secrecy. Disguise. Misdirection. The art of the con, the skill of making people think you’re just like them. Mess it up, and they’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth. Reveal yourself fully to anyone, and you’ll never be safe again.
You can be anything you want to be, have anything you want to have, as long as nobody else knows.
‘Be yourself,’ said the children’s books and the television shows and the school assemblies. ‘Be someone else,’ said Neal’s mom, ‘if you want to survive.’
Neal wanted to survive.
----
Agent Peter Burke had great instincts, and he almost always followed them. They’d led him to Quantico and, after that, to the White Collar unit. They’d told him not to give up on the beautiful assistant manager at the art gallery, the one who was so obviously out of his league. They’d helped him solve cases that more experienced agents had struggled with; they were partly responsible for the fast progress he was making through the FBI ranks. They were almost entirely responsible for him taking the file that became known as James Bonds.
And yet, when it really mattered, he’d ignored them.
The knowledge of his mistake had been a constant frustration to him for the last year, a background hum in his mind, an unscratchable itch under his skin. A memory that by all logic should be a regret, but wasn’t quite.
He could have caught Caffrey back then, he knew. Could have cuffed him right outside that bank in Midtown, could have ripped the wrapper from that green sucker straight away, could have won before the game had even really started. He had replayed that scene in his mind so many times that it had taken on a cinematic quality; and now, pacing the floor in a cheap hotel room in Innsbruck, he thought: One more time.
He’d known. Known there was something wrong, something beneath the friendly curiosity and the clean-cut good looks, the non-threatening body language and the unnecessary compliments about the FBI’s hard work. Something in the man’s deep, fathomless eyes had set Peter’s skin tingling, sent adrenaline flooding into his blood, made his gut clench. And then the man had smiled, and for a moment, there was something animalistic in it; it was the satisfied, lazy smile of a predator delighting in his position at the top of the food chain, untouchable.
Every part of Peter had screamed at him to stop the man, to give chase as he walked away. But there had been no real reason to do so, nothing beyond the hairs rising on the back of his neck, and the unusually strong urge that said: pursue, capture, take. So he’d stood there and argued with his instincts for precious seconds, watching the man’s lithe body weave through the crowd with smooth, unhurried ease until he had disappeared. By the time Peter decided to follow, it was too late; the man was nowhere to be found.
It was the first and last time he had seen James Bonds in the flesh.
It won’t be the last time much longer though, Peter thought, and the thrill of it thrummed through his veins.
Peter pushed open the door to the hotel room balcony, suddenly in need of a cool breeze to calm the flush that was creeping up his neck. The balcony was small and empty, surrounded by a rickety-looking wooden railing, but the view of the Tyrolean Alps - so close he felt he could almost touch them - was stunning. The mountains towered up around the city, the snow-capped tops unfeasibly picturesque against the darkening sky. Birdsong drifted idly through the clear evening, and a blue-tailed swallow landed on the balcony rail, dipping its head at Peter. Peter smiled and breathed in deeply, the air sweet with the scent of wildflowers and the promise of tomorrow.
Tomorrow, he would catch Caffrey.
----
It wasn’t difficult. It had never been difficult to transform; the hardest part was controlling it. When he was very small, it would happen automatically. His mother once told him of the day she’d left him on the living room floor, a nine-month-old baby, the television set tuned to a nature documentary about life in the Sahara, and come back moments later to find a small, golden lion cub sitting in Neal’s place, blinking confusedly at her. That was when she knew the gene had been passed on.
By the time he was three years old, Neal was having daily practice sessions. His mother would sit cross-legged in front of him, keeping her gaze steady and calming. ‘Cat,’ she would say, firmly. ‘Concentrate.’ And Neal would screw up his eyes tightly, and think about cats: their small, supple bodies, their furry coats, their mewling voices.
And then he would open his eyes, and the world would be different: the colors duller, tinged with grey, but the field of his vision wider, the edges of the room suddenly in focus. And his mother, taller and larger now, smiling at him, proud. With a tiny black kitten reflected in the blues of her eyes.
‘Back to Neal,’ she would say, and he would close his eyes again, and think of himself, of his own dark curly hair and blue eyes, of the red T-shirt and denim jeans he was wearing, of his hands and fingernails and ears and nose. And he would open his eyes to find the colors bright around him again, and his sneakered feet planted firmly on the floor.
By the time he was four, Neal barely had to think about it. He could shift as easily as he could breathe.
----
Neal had been in Austria for over a month, and he was still floored by its beauty. He loved the crashing waterfalls, the castles built into the hills, the villages poised impossibly on the edges of lakes. He had spent more time than he was really aware of in the mountains, losing himself in their grandeur. Flying until his mind cleared, until he was gliding without thought, without regret, until he forgot everything but the air under his wings and the beauty around him. Until he forgot the ache in his heart.
Tonight, though, had not been a night for mindless recreation. Tonight had been a night for reconnaissance, for checking that everything was as it should be at Schloss Ambras: that the security remained the same, that there would be no surprises tomorrow. And tonight had been a night for confirming what he had half feared, half hoped - that Peter Burke was here in Innsbruck.
He was.
Neal swooped back into his and Mozzie’s room through the open veranda door, leaving the darkness outside behind. Mozzie barely looked up from his laptop.
‘You’ve been a while.’ There was censure in his voice.
Neal landed softly on the polished wooden floor and let himself transform. The process was practiced, smooth and swift, over in the blink of an eye. He stretched, adjusting to the increased size and strength. Returning to human form always felt like returning home, like putting on a well-worn pair of jeans.
‘We’re all set for tomorrow,’ he told Mozzie as he smoothed down his clothes, which always seemed to get a little rumpled during the transition.
‘What took you so long?’
Neal grinned. ‘I may have taken a short detour. To see our good friend Agent Burke.’
Mozzie swung around in his chair, horror flooding his face. ‘He’s here? He’s here, and you say we’re all set? Are you mad? You really want to go ahead with the FBI breathing down our necks?’
‘You worry too much, Moz. We can handle Peter.’
‘I really wish you wouldn’t call him by his first name. May I remind you that he is not your plaything? And I’m sure he’s brought the whole crew with him.’
‘Probably. Do you think we should we send them something? Some schnitzel? I doubt they’ve tried much of the local cuisine.’
‘No, we should not. Enough with the food and the notes - yes, I know about the notes. You’re going to get us caught. Did he see you tonight?’
Neal shrugged. ‘He saw a version of me. But I really don’t think he’s going to connect the dots. He’s good, but he’s not good enough to connect me to a bird on his balcony.’
‘You went to his balcony?’ Mozzie shook his head in despair.
‘As a bird, Moz. It was risk-free.’
‘Nothing is risk-free.’
Mozzie turned back to the laptop, and Neal seated himself across the table. Regardless of what Mozzie thought, the excursion had been worth it. The delicious frission of being so close to the agent yet so far from his clutches, being right in front of his eyes yet completely hidden, was always impossible to resist. And the vision of Peter on that balcony - sleeves rolled up to his elbows, shirt loosened at the neck, eyes glinting hazel in the evening light - well, that was just a bonus, an unexpected treat to keep his mind off Kate a little longer.
‘It’ll be fine, I promise,’ Neal said. Then he nodded towards the keyboard Mozzie was tapping away at. ‘Any news?’ he asked, which meant, as always: Any news about Kate?
Mozzie pursed his lips and shook his head, which Neal knew meant: No, and I wish you’d stop asking. He hadn’t expected to hear anything different, yet his heart sank regardless.
‘Moz? You’re still looking for her, right?’
‘I said I would, and I am.’
‘You said you’d look until I came to my senses.’
‘And? Have you?’
Neal glared at him.
‘I’ll keep looking then.’
----
By the time Neal turned twenty-one, he had long since given up hope of finding someone like him. When he was younger, he would examine the faces of everyone he met, convinced that when he saw one of his kind, he would know. He’d see in them the boundless knowledge of swimming in great seas, swinging through rainforests, flying freely across endless skies, and his heart would recognize a person he could finally share himself with. But every face was just another face, and Neal had nobody. Whether others didn’t exist, or he just couldn’t recognize them, he wasn’t sure.
Even his mother was gone by then, her human form forsaken as too much trouble and too much work. Neal knew neither where nor what she was, and he told himself that he no longer cared. He had come to terms with the idea that he would live and die alone.
And then one evening there was a party, and an introduction, and a girl with dark hair and glacial skin and oceans in her eyes.
And Neal knew.
----
Peter hadn’t slept well. He felt like a coiled spring, ready to jump into action at any moment. From what they’d heard, the heist on Ambras was planned for the following afternoon, but information like that wasn’t always reliable, and he’d sent two members of his team to stake out the castle overnight. He had spent the night on the edge of wakefulness, waiting for his phone to ring to alert him to a change.
When it did ring, at six a.m. on the dot, he roused himself in seconds and answered on the fourth ring.
‘Burke.’ His voice was rough from the early hour.
‘Good morning, this is your six a.m. wake-up call,’ said a light-hearted voice, and any vestiges of sleep fell away instantly.
‘Caffrey,’ Peter stated, bluntly, doing a decent job of keeping the jolt of excitement out of his voice. It was like this every time Caffrey called, a hot rush of certainty that this would be the phone call where he’d slip up, where Peter would trap him, where he’d finally get something useful out of him.
‘How many times do I have to tell you, Peter? You can call me Neal.’
‘And you can call me Agent Burke, Caffrey.’
‘Don’t you think we’re a little beyond that, Peter? I mean, you obviously want us to be close, or you wouldn’t be following me around Europe. I’ll be honest, it’s getting a bit stalkery.’
‘I do want us to be close.’
‘You do? That’s very…upfront of you. You’re not usually so forward.’ Caffrey paused, and Peter could hear that grin down the phone, that cocky smile he’d seen outside of the bank. Whenever he imagined the conman, it was with that smile on his face.
‘Only for a minute, of course. Just while I’m putting the cuffs on you.’ Peter let his mouth curve into his own predatory grin at the thought of that.
A good-natured laugh floated down the phone line. ‘Shame. I was going to suggest we meet for coffee and cake in one of the charming cafes they have around here, have a nice civil catch-up. But you’re obviously not in the mood.’
‘Maybe it’s to do with having been woken at six, when I booked my wake-up call for seven,’ Peter shot back.
‘Seven? Isn’t that a little late? Don’t you need to get a head start on hunting down some dirty criminals?’ The way Caffrey’s voice wrapped around the word dirty made Peter swallow hard.
‘There’s only one criminal I’m interested in right now.’
‘Peter, you flatter me. I guess I’ll be seeing you soon, then. I do hope you’ve been enjoying the country while you’ve been waiting for me?’
‘I’m not really here for tourism purposes.’
‘That’s a shame, after I’ve gone to all this trouble to arrange a federally-funded Austrian holiday for you.’
Peter couldn’t help but smile at that. ‘Oh, I see, so this was all for my benefit?’
‘Of course. I’ve decided to take an interest in your cultural education.’
‘That’s kind of you, Neal. Tell you what, after I’ve arrested you I’ll take a couple days to check out the museums.’
Neal laughed again, the sound infused with the light-heartedness and confidence of a man who believes he will never be caught, and Peter wondered, not for the first time, why it was so impossible to intimidate him.
‘I hope you stick to the latter part of that plan, even if the first part doesn’t come off,’ Caffrey said. ‘Take care, Peter.’
‘You too,’ Peter replied automatically, then rolled his eyes at himself.
‘Oh, and Peter?’
‘Yes?’
‘It was nice to hear you call me Neal.’
----
Neal pressed the call end button and set the phone down on the small veranda table next to him. The early morning sunlight had bathed his view of the Alps in muted golds, and he appreciated the aesthetically pleasing background to his conversation. Talking to Peter was like an art, a tapestry of unsaid words woven in the rich strands of Peter’s warm, deep voice, threaded through with Neal’s own teasing tones.
He tapped his fingers on the surface of the table, restlessness already seeping through him, and pushed away the ridiculous accusation that Mozzie had thrown his way ten minutes prior: that his most recent heists had been as much about an excuse to make such phone calls as they had been about stealing art or drawing Kate to him. Mozzie was wrong, of course. He was just tense, displeased with the proximity of the FBI and Neal’s determination to proceed regardless. He knew as well as Neal that it was still all about Kate.
----
‘What’s your favorite?’ Kate asked, shifting in Neal’s arms until she could look up at him. The moonlight glanced off her face, making her look ethereal. She was beautiful, lying next to him on the sand; she’d been just as beautiful an hour earlier, cantering through the surf beside him, her mane black and shining, hooves kicking up sea foam. He loved her in all her forms.
‘For me? Anything that can fly. For you? Anything at all.’
‘I should have known it would be flying.’ Kate traced her fingers down Neal’s bare chest. She sounded amused, though Neal wasn’t sure why.
‘And you? What’s your favorite?’
Kate smiled, slow and sure. ‘No contest. It has to be a unicorn.’
Neal laughed, the sound ringing out clear across the deserted beach. ‘Of course. But seriously?’
Kate sat up, moving out of Neal’s arms and looking him square in the face. ‘Seriously. You don’t know?’
‘Know what?’
‘It’s not just animals that are alive now that we can transform into. It’s any animal that’s ever been. Even the ones you think only existed in fairy tales. Unicorns. Phoenixes. Centaurs. Almost every creature you can think of was real at one time or another.’
Neal’s mouth hung open, his mind reeling with the shock. ‘But, that’s not possible. My mother never…’
‘Maybe your mother didn’t know everything. And you know as well as I do… few things are impossible.’
----
It would be impossible, Peter thought, for Caffrey to slip past them today. He leaned back in his chair, satisfied that they were well prepared. They had cameras on every entrance, exit and exhibition room, there were plainclothes officers patrolling each of the galleries, and there were five pairs of eyes, including his own, glued to the video feeds, waiting for the first glimpse of Caffrey. Admittedly they didn’t have a lot of information to go on - criminal informants were notoriously vague and unreliable, and this one had been able to tell them little more than the time and location of the planned job - but there were only four different exhibition halls in the castle, and each one was under close surveillance. All they had to do was wait for Caffrey to enter the premises and begin to steal whatever it was he wanted to steal, and then they would catch him red-handed: another charge to add to the bond forgery, and to whatever else they could manage to prove.
Peter ran a finger under his collar, tugging it away from his neck. The warmth of the day combined with the tension in all of his muscles was making him uncomfortable, and he felt as though his heart had been beating at twice its normal rate for the last hour. He was so close. So close he could taste it, could feel the satisfaction of finally pinning Caffrey down.
He felt Clinton Jones shift slightly in his seat beside him, but Peter didn’t take his eyes off the screens in front of him to look over.
‘Anything yet?’ Peter asked, somewhat redundantly, knowing that Jones would have said if he’d seen anyone who could be Caffrey. Jones was watching the camera feed for the main entrance, having told Peter that he figured James Bonds was cocky enough to walk right through the front door.
‘Nah,’ came the answer. ‘Just an elderly couple and a short guy with a bad toupee. They don’t look much like associates of Bonds.’
There were a fair amount of tourists around today, which was probably something Caffrey had been banking on to give him cover. The August day was beautiful, the sun high and hot, and Ambras, with its extensive grounds and its position high in the hills above Innsbruck, was the perfect place for an outing. Still, most of the visitors were in the courtyard, soaking up the sun and wandering amongst the topiaries, or relaxing in the café. The exhibitions had less than ten people in each one.
Peter took a swig from his water bottle and let his eyes flick between the different feeds: the whitewashed walls and dark, formal portraits in the Hapsburg Gallery; the array of glinting gold and stone in the Collection of Gothic Sculpture; the rich wooden floors and brightly lit display cases in the Chamber of Art and Curiosities. His gaze rested on the large hall that was named the Chamber of Armour. Something had caught his attention, registering in the corner of his eye, and he stared intently, trying to work out what was wrong. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. There was a family with two children, the parents trying to stop the kids from darting in and out amongst the hulking suits of armor and the model horses; a young couple, laughing over one of the description plaques; another couple who looked more interested in each other than the armor; and a short, bespectacled man, with a mop of sandy hair - the bad toupee Jones had mentioned. Peter leaned forward as though the extra few inches would reveal something new, and then, as if on cue, the scene exploded in chaos.
At least three different smoke bombs exploded in unison around the hall, spewing thick, billowing clouds of gray fog into the air as the tourists scattered, the parents lunging for their children and the couples running for the exit. As the smoke rose up and started to obscure the view from the camera completely, Peter barked instructions into his mouthpiece and sent his agents sprinting for the hall. But he stayed exactly where he was, his pulse jumping in his throat, his eyes sharp on the other galleries. He pulled Jones’ arm back down as he rose out of his seat too, keeping him there alongside him to watch the other feeds.
‘Diversion?’ Jones asked, and Peter nodded grimly.
‘Maybe.’ He was about to say something else, when he saw a young man enter the sculpture hall, his head ducked away from the cameras, a fedora pulled low over his eyes. It could have been any slim, well-dressed man, of course, but Peter knew. How had Caffrey even gotten into the castle without any of the agents raising the alarm? It didn’t matter now, because as Peter watched he drew a bag and some sort of instrument from inside his jacket, and reached for one of the smaller statues.
Peter was out of his chair and running for the sculpture gallery before he saw anything more. Jones was on his heels, and they skidded into the hall to find three glaringly empty wooden shelves and Caffrey’s back heading out of the door. He worked fast.
Peter gave chase, his footsteps echoing throughout the cavernous hall, the distance between him and Caffrey narrowing as he followed him out of the gallery and down a corridor, slammed through a heavy wooden door just meters behind him and burst out into the warm afternoon air seconds after. Caffrey was slipping down the external steps and into the tree-studded gardens, somehow looking relaxed and graceful even as he ran.
Peter’s heart was thudding, and the sharp, sweet taste of victory rose in his throat. Caffrey was within his grasp, Jones had already called for back-up and the whole area would soon be swarming with agents. Neal would have to run at the speed of light to escape now.
He stayed close on Caffrey’s trail as the man sprinted up the path that led into the mountains, and Peter managed to keep pace with him as the track wound up through the thickening forest, the fir trees towering over them, the light dimming a little as the trees grew closer together. Behind him he heard Jones fast approaching.
Caffrey twisted suddenly, taking a sharp right turn off the path and through the trees. Peter swung around and headed after him, crashing through the undergrowth in his wake, emerging just moments after Caffrey into a clearing. A clearing that was empty, silent and still.
Peter stood, his breath coming hard and heavy, scanning the glade. It was large, bordered on one side by the rocky rise of the mountain, and there was no way Caffrey had made it to the other side and back into the forest before Peter had got there. Then Peter noticed the crack in the rock just a few meters away. It was the entrance to a cave. The taste of triumph sweetened further still: he had him.
He felt Jones reach his side, and turned to him, indicating the cave entrance. They headed slowly and quietly towards it, one on each side, guns drawn. Peter didn’t expect to have to take Caffrey by force though; if anything, he expected to find him lounging on a rock within the cave, twirling his hat in his hand and smiling serenely at them, the perfect gentleman in defeat.
That was not what he found. The cave didn’t go far back; there was nowhere to hide in it. There was also no Caffrey. The only creature inside was a deer, sheltering from the sun just inside the entrance, sitting calmly on the dirt floor and studying them through half-closed eyes. It was a beautiful animal, russet red with huge, majestic antlers, but it definitely wasn’t what Peter was looking for.
Peter swore, staring helplessly around the small cavern at the rough stone walls and trying to make sense of Caffrey’s sudden disappearance. He headed angrily back out into the clearing, screwing his eyes up against the lowering sun that glared across the tops of the trees.
‘Set up a search of the surrounding forest,’ he snapped at Jones, wishing they had the resources to establish road blocks out of Innsbruck too, but knowing that Caffrey would find a way to bypass them anyway.
He had no idea how to explain to his superiors that they had lost him again.
----
Night had fallen by the time the agents had given up on the search and Neal could leave the cave. He stood, stretching out his long, slender legs with relief and revealing the bag of sculptures sitting in the dip in the earth beneath him - the dip he’d carefully dug out the night before in preparation. He tilted his head back, feeling serene, the usual effect of spending so many hours as such a peaceful creature. The stag was one of his favorites.
He stepped softly from the edge of the cave and surveyed the glade in front of him, checking for the final time that there was no longer any danger. Then he returned to the cavern’s mouth, closed his eyes and let his limbs shorten, the color of his coat darken, and his hooves turn into paws. The transformation from deer to large dog was smooth. He darted forward, snatched up the small sack of valuable sculptures in his teeth and bounded back through the forest, heading for the hotel where Mozzie was no doubt pacing the floors.
----
‘Thank God,’ he heard Mozzie mutter in relief as Neal padded up to their room and barked at the French doors. Mozzie swung one of them open and let in the black Retriever, reaching down to snag the bag from the ground beside him.
‘Rover.’ Mozzie greeted him with a nod of his head.
Neal shook his coat roughly, sprinkling Mozzie with water drops from the river he’d ran through on the way back, before shifting back into human form.
‘Could you not call me that?’
Mozzie shrugged, brushing the water from his shirt. ‘If the collar fits…’ he said lightly. ‘Are you alright? I was starting to worry, though not too much seeing as the Feds have been running around the woods like headless chickens.’
‘I had to stay in the cave a little longer than planned. They took their time searching. But there are worse places to spend a few hours…there was a nice selection of grasses and twigs by the entrance to snack on.’
Mozzie wrinkled his nose. ‘Sounds appetizing.’
Neal sat down at the table and poured himself a glass of the wine Moz had been drinking. ‘You got out okay, I assume?’
‘I was gone by the time the first one reached the Armoury,’ Mozzie assured him with a hint of pride.
‘All’s well that ends well, then?’ Neal said, raising his glass for a toast.
Mozzie chinked his glass. ‘True. But maybe we could do the next job when we’re not being quite so closely supervised by Burke and his friends? My constitution can’t take much more of this.’
‘Deal.’ Neal swirled the wine around his glass. ‘Speaking of which…I really should see how Agent Burke is doing tonight. It’s only polite to check up on the wellbeing of your defeated foe, right?’
Mozzie rolled his eyes. ‘I’d tell you to stay here, but you’d only ignore me.’ He pointed a finger at Neal. ‘But no human form outside the hotel.’
Neal grinned. ‘Don’t worry. Human Neal isn’t going anywhere tonight.’
----
‘So, why have I never seen you as a unicorn?’ Neal asked. ‘You must be stunning.’
Kate sighed, her eyes glazing over, and she trailed her hand in the coarse yellow sand beside her, leaving disordered circles in her wake. ‘I don’t take that form often. It’s too much.’
‘Too much?’
‘Too much power. Too much temptation. Just…too much.’ She looked away, staring at the sea, the moonlight gilding the tops of the waves silver. For a few moments she was silent, but Neal sensed she had more to say.
‘Unicorns are special,’ she continued eventually, her voice softer now, almost reverent. ‘What do you know about them?’
Neal scanned his memory. ‘Not a lot. I’ve seen paintings… and the Unicorn Tapestries in the Cloisters. They’re so beautiful. But I remember looking at The Unicorn in Captivity and wondering how he could be happy, penned up like that, chained to the tree. He looked so content, even though he was fenced in.’
Kate shook her head, her jaw tightening. ‘We’d all be chained up if the rest of the world had anything to say about it. And it wouldn’t be in a field of wildflowers. I’ve never liked that tapestry.’
Neal pulled her more tightly against him. ‘No one will ever catch you. I won’t let them.’ He was so sure, his words confident in the darkness, but Kate’s answering smile was dry, and he knew she didn’t trust him to keep her safe from those who would hunt them down if they knew of their existence, who would lock them in cages and use them for their own ends. Kate didn’t trust anyone but herself.
He would change that one day.
‘Have you heard the myths?’ Kate asked. ‘About the unicorn?’
Neal smirked. ‘I know it’s said that they’re so pure, only a virgin can find them. But that can’t be true -’ he flipped Kate underneath him, pressing her down into the sand and stealing a kiss - ‘because I found you, and I am definitely not a virgin.’
Kate grinned up at him. ‘You’re not? Neal, I’m shocked.’ She pushed him away, propping herself up on her elbows. ‘That myth isn’t true, anyway. But you’ve heard about their healing powers? In the Middle Ages, they believed unicorn horns held the power to cleanse poisoned water, and to heal the sick.’
‘Were they right?’ Neal asked, fascinated, already thinking through all the possibilities this could open up.
‘No,’ Kate replied, disappointing him. But she wasn’t finished.
‘It’s not the horn. It’s the blood.’
----
Neal landed softly in one of the trees outside Peter’s balcony and folded his wings in by his side. Light was flooding through the balcony doors, which were standing ajar, but the tree’s thick foliage provided cover as he shifted from his swallow form to a butterfly. He’d considered a normal fly for the sake of inconspicuousness, but it stood too much risk of being swatted with a newspaper. And besides, the ‘fly on the wall’ thing was a little too cliché even for a man who loved the classics.
He flitted towards the balcony doors, taking a second to admire his new form in the glass: his slim, sleek, turquoise body, his deep blue wings with black tips and his sharp, dark eyes - a little bulbous for his liking, but shining beautifully in the night. Then he darted smoothly through the gap between the doors and slipped past the curtains, swooping over to land softly on the wall behind the bed.
The room was empty despite being lit, and he heard the sound of movement from the bathroom. Moments later, Peter emerged fresh from the shower, his hair damp and swept back untidily, a towel tied around his waist. His chest was bare and glimmering with a few water droplets that hadn’t yet been towelled off, and Neal instantly felt his wings start to vibrate as the blood in the veins that crisscrossed them pumped faster. Despite several attempts at spying on the agent in the past, Neal had never seen him in such a state of undress, though he’d often wondered what was underneath those ill-fitting suits. There was no denying now that Peter kept in shape - his shoulders were broad and well-defined, his arms strong and sculpted, and Neal couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to be pinned down by him. There was a light tan all over his skin, and Neal’s mind automatically conjured an image of Peter doing yardwork, sweating in the summer heat, shirt cast aside and the muscles in his arms rippling in the sun. His heart thudded at the thought, and his body began to heat up as Peter neared the bed, then sat down, swung his legs up and leaned back against the headboard, the top of his head not far from Neal. Neal was close enough to see the few shining beads of water still caught in the hair at the nape of Peter’s neck - if he floated down a few centimeters he’d be close enough to taste them. He did his best to restrain himself.
Peter reached across to the bedside table, picked up his cell and dialled. Neal’s antennae pricked up and he had no problem hearing the ring tone, or the voice that answered.
‘Hey hon.’ It was sweet and beautiful. And familiar. Elizabeth.
Neal liked Elizabeth. And she liked him too. Not that they’d met yet - not exactly. Not that she was aware of, anyway. But Neal had visited the Burkes’ house in Brooklyn more often than he’d like to admit. At first he’d gone looking for Peter, wanting to learn more about the agent and hoping to overhear something about himself or the investigation. He’d taken the form of a cat - an adorable black kitten with blue eyes, that surely even the hard-nosed Agent Burke wouldn’t be able to resist giving a saucer of milk to. It hadn’t been Peter that had found him on the back doorstep on the chilly Saturday afternoon though; it had been Elizabeth. She had cooed and stroked him, exclaimed over the fact that such a beautiful cat didn’t have a collar, and taken him inside for a drink. The drink of warm milk had been followed by a small piece of the fish that she’d been cooking for dinner, and before Neal knew it he’d been curled up next to Elizabeth on the couch as she wrote emails on her laptop and scratched Neal’s head. Peter Burke’s house was the last place on earth that Neal should feel safe and comforted, yet that was exactly how he felt. It was intoxicating, and from then on Neal had not been able to stop himself returning regularly to visit Elizabeth. Hearing her voice now felt like coming home.
‘Hi hon,’ Peter replied. There was an easy warmth in his voice when he spoke to her that Neal recognized from the few times Peter had let his guard down whilst on the phone to him.
‘So? Am I speaking to the triumphant Agent Burke who has one very handsome conman in his custody?’ Elizabeth asked. Neal’s wings fluttered in surprise. He’d never heard her call him handsome before. Well, not his human form.
Peter grunted. ‘Sadly not. Houdini gave us the slip again.’ He sounded bitter, but Neal noted that he hadn’t contested the ‘handsome’ part.
‘Oh hon, I’m sorry. You’ll get him next time. He can’t run from you forever.’
‘I don’t know how he does it. I was so close to him today, I could almost touch him.’
‘Bet you enjoyed that,’ Elizabeth said mischievously. Neal’s antennae twitched. Was she saying what he thought she was saying?
Peter gave a dismissive snort. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Of course you don’t.’ El’s tone was teasing, and it sounded like a conversation they’d had many times before. ‘So he got away with whatever it was he was after?’
‘Yeah, a few statues. Religious relics. They’re worth a fair bit, but they weren’t the most expensive things there, so I’m guessing someone with a desire for those particular ones hired him to steal them. The thing I can’t figure out, though, is how he
managed to get into the castle without us spotting him in the first place. We had all the entrances covered, and I’ve gone back over the recordings - he’s not on them. He must have found a different way in somehow.’
As a butterfly, Neal wasn’t capable of grinning exactly, but he smiled internally at the idea of Peter staring at the video footage for hours, with no hope of ever seeing him. He’d flitted unnoticed through the castle’s front door in the very form he was using now, not becoming human again until he’d reached the privacy of the men’s restroom.
‘It’s driving you crazy, isn’t it?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘You know Caffrey. He always drives me crazy.’
‘Like I do?’ El said, and Neal could hear the smile in her voice.
‘In an entirely different way, I promise,’ Peter said drily.
‘If you say so, sweetie.’
‘How are things with you, anyway?’ Peter changed the subject. ‘How’s the planning for the Wilson wedding going?’
‘Good, thanks. We’re almost finished. Though I haven’t seen my little helper around recently. It’s a shame, I was hoping he’d come and keep me company while you were away.’
‘The cat? I wish you’d stop letting it in. It’ll start thinking it lives with us.’
‘He could though, couldn’t he? He looks like he needs a good home, and I’d like to keep him.’
Neal felt warmth spread through him. It felt like a long time since anyone had really wanted him, though of course Elizabeth was only referring to his cat form.
‘He doesn’t seem like the kind of animal that wants a collar, El. He’s always running off - I think he’s happy being wild. Besides, the damn thing probably has rabies.’
Neal was momentarily affronted. Rabies? He certainly did not.
‘Oh it does not, Peter,’ Elizabeth scolded lightly, amusement clear in her tone. ‘Don’t take your frustration out on the kitten just because you can’t get your hands on Caffrey.’
It was the first time Neal had heard his name come from Elizabeth’s lips, and he liked the sound of it. He had to admit he liked the sound of Peter’s hands on him even more.
Peter sighed. ‘I miss you, El. I wish you were here with me.’
‘I miss you too, hon. But when you get back, I promise I’ll give you a really great welcome home present. And it’ll be worth the wait.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Peter tilted his head back and closed his eyes, his lips curving into a smile. ‘Sounds good. Tell me more.’
Elizabeth laughed. ‘I wish I could, but I have to get ready for the Jackson dinner. I leave in twenty and I’m not dressed. But I’m sure you can fill in the gaps with your imagination.’
‘I’ll definitely do that,’ Peter said, grinning.
‘Oh and two more things,’ Elizabeth added. ‘One: don’t worry. You will catch Neal, and soon. I know you, Peter Burke; you’ll be putting cuffs on him before you realize it.’
‘What’s the second thing?’
‘Oh, the second thing’s very important. I bought some new lingerie.’
‘You did?’ Peter shifted on the bed, his hand sneaking down to the towel at his waist.
‘I did. And I’ll send you a photo as soon as you hang up.’
‘You are the best wife ever.’
‘Of course. So, do you think those two things will keep you going til you get home?’
‘I think so. Love you, El.’
‘I love you too.’
Neal watched Peter hang up the call, and seconds later his cell beeped with an incoming message. Neal damped down his curiosity and averted his eyes, but whatever picture Elizabeth had sent was obviously something special - Peter’s reverential murmur of ‘God, El,’ proved that. His voice was low and throaty and it sent tremors through Neal. And then Peter cast the towel aside and Neal forgot how to breathe.
He should leave, should fly right out through the door and back to his hotel. But he didn’t. He stayed, glued to the wall, listening to Peter’s hitching breaths, unable to tear his gaze away from Peter’s hand on his cock, strong and firm and assured. The sweet, tangy scent of Peter’s pre-come reached the chemoreceptors at the ends of his antennae and almost overwhelmed him.
Peter’s strokes steadily increased from languid to more urgent, and El’s name fell from his lips again, a soft groan. And then, almost under his breath, came another name.
Neal started, shaken out of his reverie. Had he heard his own name? Surely not - El and Neal didn’t sound that dissimilar; Peter was just repeating his wife’s name. He watched, feeling every beat of his own heart, his small body aching with need as Peter’s head fell back further and his hips tilted up. Then Peter was coming, thick white ribbons across his taut stomach, his left hand clenching and unclenching in the sheets, his right hand still fisted around his cock.
And, unmistakably this time, came the words: ‘Fuck…Neal.’
----
The swallow swooped back through Neal’s hotel room, flying into the bathroom. The air in the small room shifted and Neal transformed back into himself. He shed his clothes quickly, arousal flooding him more strongly now that he was human again, his cock already hard and begging for attention. He locked the bathroom door and slipped into the shower, turning the knob to cold and letting the cool water flow over him in an effort to chill his flushed skin. But the image of Peter danced behind his closed eyelids - Peter lying on that bed, the satisfied curve of his smile, his calloused, confident fingers, his hard flesh - and Neal had to steady himself against the tiled wall. One hand splayed out against the wet ceramic, whilst his other reached down, desperate to relieve himself of the evening’s pent-up tension. He came, moments later, so powerfully that the world inside the shower cubicle seemed to spin, and though he didn’t say a word out loud, Peter’s name exploded in his mind.
----
Neal felt as if the world was expanding around him, the night air suddenly humming with potential.
‘We can really heal people? From illness? Or injury? Completely?’ He couldn’t believe he’d had this skill all his life and was only just learning about it.
‘Completely.’ Kate said. ‘It only takes a little unicorn blood. But Neal -’
‘Could we bottle it?’ he asked eagerly. ‘We could siphon off a little, take it to the hospitals, we could -’
‘No.’ It was a cold, sharp rebuke that brooked no arguing. ‘It has to be fresh. But even if it didn’t, we couldn’t do it. Can you imagine what would happen if doctors, scientists, got hold of it? We’d be found out. We’d end up in a laboratory. At best.’ Kate took Neal’s hand, her grip tight and urgent. ‘Promise me, Neal. You can’t heal people. It would be better if you never even took the unicorn form.’
‘But… you said it was your favorite.’
‘It is. You can feel the magic running through your veins. It’s intoxicating. But it’s hard to resist using that magic. And we have to resist.’ She squeezed his hand again. ‘Promise you’ll never give us away?’
Neal looked into her eyes, wide and pleading. She was right, of course. And even if she wasn’t… he couldn’t deny her anything.
‘I promise.’
----
Peter sat in the hotel lounge, his laptop balanced on the small table in front of him, sunlight flooding through the large windows and glancing off the screen. He squinted as he tried to read through the first half of his report, his index finger tapping frustratedly on the saucer of his coffee cup. His flight wasn’t due to leave until after lunch, so he had decided to spend the morning writing up the case notes, but the gaps in his knowledge were eating away at him.
He was about to order a third coffee, in the hopes that it would kick-start his brain, when his cell phone started to vibrate. The familiar words flashed up on the screen: unknown number. Rolling his eyes, he stabbed at the call accept button, the customary mix of irritation and anticipation already flooding through him.
‘Burke,’ he answered, deliberately injecting impatience into his tone.
‘Morning, Peter. Beautiful day, isn’t it?’ The voice wasn’t quite as intolerably smug as he’d expected, but it wasn’t far off.
‘Caffrey. Called to gloat?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just thought I’d wish you a safe trip home.’
‘How thoughtful of you.’
‘Thanks for noticing. Have you enjoyed your trip?’
Peter shook his head in exasperation. ‘I’ve had better, as I’m sure you can imagine.’
‘Oh yeah? I’m sorry to hear that.’ Caffrey almost sounded genuinely apologetic.
‘I’m sure,’ Peter said drily.
‘Will you be in trouble at work for the wasted trip?’
Peter frowned. ‘Not too much. Why? You worried you’re gonna get assigned a different case agent?’
‘Never happen,’ Neal said without missing a beat.
‘Why so sure?’
‘Because you’re the best,’ he said, as though the answer was an undisputed fact. ‘And I deserve the best.’
Peter tried to suppress a smile at that. ‘Of course. And will you be returning to the States today as well?’
Neal laughed. ‘I don’t think so. I thought I might give Berlin a try next. I hear the Pergamon Museum has an exciting new exhibit.’
‘Good to know.’ Peter made a mental note that of all the places he could expect Caffrey to go next, he could at least cross Berlin off the list. Probably.
‘Listen, Neal -’ he started, then paused, and debated whether to say what he’d wanted to say for a while. He took a deep breath, figuring this was as good a time as any, and continued. ‘You know, it doesn’t have to be like this. You don’t always have to spend your life running.’
There was silence from Caffrey’s end of the line for a moment, and then came the reply, his voice carefully light. ‘I’m pretty sure that’s not true. But how about this: I’ll stop running, if you agree to stop chasing me.’
‘Sorry kid, that’s not how it works. But you could turn yourself in. Do a few years for the bond forgeries -’
‘Alleged bond forgeries.’
‘Fine, alleged bond forgeries. You could do your time, and you’d be out before you were thirty. You’d have your whole life to spend doing something more useful with your talents.’
‘You think I’m talented?’ Neal teased.
Peter swallowed down a sigh of frustration. ‘That’s not the point I was making. Look, Caffrey, if you carry on like this, you’ll end up spending your entire adult life in prison.’
‘I’m not worried about that,’ Neal replied easily.
‘Well, I am.’
The words lay heavy in the air for a moment, and Peter bit his lip. He hadn’t meant to say that, not exactly.
‘I’m touched,’ Neal said at last, and though his tone was the same as ever, there was a sincerity lying underneath it that Peter had rarely heard before. ‘But I’ll be fine, really.’
‘Okay Neal.’ Peter leaned back in his chair, resigned. He’d offered, at least. Maybe Caffrey would think about it and take him up on it at a later date. He hadn’t expected it to work - didn’t expect Caffrey to ever stop of his own accord - but he’d had to try.
‘So,’ Neal said, changing the subject swiftly, ‘you still planning on visiting those museums?’
‘Sadly, no. I’m no longer in the mood for tourism.’
‘Oh Peter, you disappoint me. You could at least try some of the famous Sachertorte before you leave. It’s the best chocolate cake in Europe.’
Peter rolled his eyes. ‘Fine. I’ll get right on that. But Caffrey…’
‘Yes?’
‘Think about what I said, okay?’
‘I always do,’ Neal said, and hung up.
Peter sat still for a moment, the cell feeling heavy in his hand, his mind replaying those last words. Then he looked up and motioned to the waitress.
‘Excuse me. Do you serve Sachertorte here?’
A few minutes later he was forking the first bite of chocolate cake into his mouth, and cursing Caffrey for being right again - it was, of course, incredible. After a few mouthfuls Peter set his fork down and pulled his laptop back towards him, then opened up a search page, typing in Pergamon Museum, Berlin. It wouldn’t hurt to do a little research on what Neal had said. Just in case.
CONTINUE READING HERE: PART TWO