WC Fic: Steal My Body Home, Part 1/2
Title: Steal My Body Home
Rating: R, though there’s a soft core pornisheh scene
Characters/Pairings: Neal/Peter(/Elizabeth) established relationship, OFCs
Spoilers: None
Content Notice: Road trip, hurt/comfort, stealth kidfic
Word Count: ~18,000
Beta thanks go to: elrhiarhodan
Summary: Sometimes, running away means going home. Sometimes, you find what you need there. And sometimes, you just need your mom. Neal finds out all of these things on a road trip with Peter.
A/N: This is my entry for Caffrey-Burke Day! It is also a long overdue story for my pal doctor_fangeek, who bought a fic on my Sandy auction last year and has been patiently waiting for a Neal/Peter road trip fic for as long as I’ve known her - hope this doesn’t disappoint on either count, bb.
In this story, Neal is a month post-anklet. Additonal notes at the end.
----
New York, 2014
Peter made an annoyed sound as they inched forward in heavy bridge traffic.
“Just say it,” Neal said.
“What?”
“You’re pissed because we’re in traffic, and we’re in traffic because we left late, and we left late because of me.”
“I’m not pissed.”
“OK.”
Fifteen minutes and three sighs later, Peter picked up the conversation as if there had been no delay: “It’s just that if everyone would move up a little more, then everyone could be that much closer, you know? I mean, what do you get by leaving so much space in front of your car, except for every single car in the right lane getting in front of you?”
“You’re pissed that we left late,” Neal said mildly. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, just -“ Peter cut himself off.
“Be on time?”
“Well, yes.”
“I had to do my laundry,” Neal protested. “I wasn’t going to pack for two weeks without clean laundry.”
Peter didn’t respond.
“OK, so arguably, I should have done laundry over the weekend, but I got distracted by shiny things.”
Still, Peter didn’t respond.
“There was a Douglas Sirk retrospective at the Angelika!”
Silence.
“I’m just one man, Peter.”
Peter gave Neal the side-eye and then laughed. “It’s fine, you know - I’m just happy to be able to do this for you.”
Neal closed his mouth and then looked out the window, and Peter regretted his choice of words immediately. “With you,” he amended quickly.
Neal tensed.
“It’s not every week you drive out to see your Mom, Neal,” Peter added, feeling the flames and trying to at least get back into the frying pan.
“Been a long time,” Neal said quietly, still looking out of the window as he began to gnaw on a thumbnail.
Washington DC, 1981
“Nee-eal.”
Neal opened his eyes and stared up at his Momma, his long lashes clumped together from the tears he’d cried earlier.
“How are you feeling, kiddo?”
He tried to be brave, he really did, but the boo-boo on his belly really, really, REALLY hurt. “Hurts, Momma,” he said, lower lip quivering.
She frowned. “I’m sure it does, baby, and I wish I could make it go away, but we can’t give you any more medicine for another two hours.”
“Hernias is bad,” Neal whined as the tears began to flow again.
“I know, but look - what’s this?”
She reached behind his ear and pulled out a small object, yellow and fuzzy - a toy duck! Neal hadn’t known it was back there - he reached up to touch his ear.
“Haven’t I told you to wash behind your ears?” she teased, and Neal’s eyes on hers boggled. “Where’d it go?” she asked, and when Neal looked at her hands - the duck was gone.
“Here it is!” She pulled it from behind his other ear with her other hand. Neal’s hand shot up to his other ear. “Am I going to be finding a whole flock up there?” she asked, sounding amused. She handed him the duck.
“No, Momma!”
“But what’s this?” she asked, and when Neal looked down, there was a cookie in the palm of her hand.
“Is dat for me?”
“Is what for you?” she asked, moving her hands so fast Neal couldn’t see, but suddenly the cookie was gone.
Neal was so confused. “De cookie, Momma.”
“This one?” she asked, producing an Oreo - the other had been chocolate chip. “Or this one?” Another chocolate chip cookie materialized. “Or maybe this?” A sugar cookie - the kind with sprinkles - appeared out of nowhere and joined the others in the palm of her hand.
“You godda milk?” Neal asked, grabbing them all before they could disappear. His Momma laughed and laughed.
Alexandria, VA, 2014
“Boy, I haven’t seen Shirl in years!” Peter enthused as he and Neal pulled into a tree-lined street, looking for the address.
“Turn left here,” Neal said, consulting his phone’s map application; these suburban streets were damn confusing - and twisty. “I’m looking forward to meeting her,” he continued, looking at Peter with an avid expression.
Since they’d gotten such a late start, they decided to stop off in the DC area for the night instead of Roanoke, VA, as they’d originally planned. Neal had found them a nice B&B in Old Town to stay in, and Peter called his old Quantico instructor and friend, Dr. Pamela Shirley, to see if she was available to meet them for dinner. She’d invited them for a home-cooked meal instead.
“She used to be a psychiatrist at the CIA - practically rewrote the FBI Academy’s curriculum on interrogation techniques when she transferred.”
“Maybe I don’t want to meet her,” Neal said wryly.
“Stop - you’ll love her.”
“There,” Neal said, pointing, and Peter turned into the driveway of a stately old stone house set back from the road. Despite the lowering light, Neal caught a glimpse of a well-maintained lawn and garden, where beds filled with hundreds of colorful tulips peeped up at them. As they left the car and headed for the front door, Peter bent and picked one of the tulips and threaded it through the buttonhole of Neal’s jacket. It was a shade of pink so pale it was nearly white.
“Peter!” Neal hissed, batting at Peter’s hands. “What are you doing?”
“Trust me, she’ll get a kick out of it,” he said confidently, though Neal didn’t look like he believed him.
The woman who answered - short, motherly, and with her greying hair pulled back in a ponytail at the nape of her neck - certainly didn’t project fearsome interrogator to Neal.
“Peter, darling!” she exclaimed, pulling him into a fierce hug on sight. “It’s been so long, my goodness.” She beamed up at him, and grasped Peter’s hand between both of hers.
“Shirl, old girl, you haven’t changed a bit,” Peter said, a large grin on his face.
“Yes, well, there are a few more grey hairs, but grandchildren will do that to you. And who have we here?” she asked, her piercing blue eyes eyeing Neal shrewdly.
“This is Neal Caffrey,” Peter said, adding no qualification at all, making Neal wonder.
“Hello, Neal, I’m pleased to meet you,” she said, holding out a hand. Her handshake was firm and brief. “What a pretty flower you’ve chosen,” she said, but she turned her mischievous eyes on Peter.
Still, Neal felt uncomfortable. “It reflects the gardener,” he offered up, and she laughed lightly.
“Charming,” she said, then led them into the kitchen. “Can I get you both a cocktail?” she offered.
“Nothing for me, thanks, Dr. Shirley,” Neal said politely.
“Please call me Pamela - only that one gets away with calling me Shirley,” she said as she tossed her head at Peter. “Peter? The usual?” She pulled a bottle of Heisler from the fridge.
Peter smiled. “You know me so well.”
She laughed. “I’m surprised I remembered! I don’t normally keep that stuff in the house!”
“What, beer?” Neal asked.
“Cheap beer,” she qualified, and then they were all laughing.
Dinner was a simple yet delicious pasta dish prepared with new peas and prosciutto. When they’d done eating, Neal rose immediately to clear, carefully stacking the plates in his left hand, then went to pick up the large serving bowl the pasta was in.
“I’ve got that,” Peter said, rising as Neal struggled with the combined weight of the heavy stoneware dishes.
“I can do it,” Neal said a bit sharply, but then added a smile, “you drink your cheap beer.” He headed off for the kitchen and lay what he was carrying on the counter.
“I can at least rinse or something,” Peter said, having followed close behind. He put a hand on Neal’s back as he moved past him towards the sink. Neal stiffened but did not respond, then returned to the dining room to retrieve the remaining glasses and cutlery. Leaving them on the counter for Peter to deal with, he went to find containers for the leftovers, keeping the kitchen island between them. Peter glanced at him half-apologetically, half-defiantly while Neal ignored him.
“Can I interest anyone in some coffee?” Shirley asked, breaking the silence.
“We’ll both have decaf,” Peter answered right away.
Neal closed his eyes and sighed. “Yep, decaf,” he said resignedly.
“Don’t sound so excited about it, Neal,” Shirley kidded, and then indicated the Keurig machine on the counter. “Luckily, we can all have whatever we like.”
They settled in the living room with their desserts and coffee a few minutes later.
“Why so tense Neal?” Shirley asked him mildly, after the small talk about recipes and how one took one’s coffee had petered out.
Neal smiled self-consciously, then sat back into the chair he occupied, trying to appear relaxed. “Well, I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Peter mentioned you were a top interrogator at the CIA and that you pretty much reinvented the curriculum at Quantico, and, well…” His voice trailed off sheepishly.
Shirley cocked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes. “Have you done something I ought to be interrogating you for?”
“Not as far as you know, no.”
That got a laugh, but she still eyed him shrewdly. “Well, you needn’t worry - I can turn it off, you know.”
“That’s good to hear.”
They drank their coffee in silence for a few minutes more, Shirley watching them both passively, but not missing anything, either. Neither man looked at each other.
“So Peter, I know you said you were just passing through, but you never mentioned where you were going,” Shirley prompted.
“We’re going to visit my mother,” Neal supplied, setting his dessert dish down on the coffee table.
“Does she live nearby?”
“No, she’s in Santa Fe.”
“New Mexico? That’s an awfully long commute,” Shirley observed, but Neal's eyes flicked away.
“Neal’s a bad flyer,” Peter explained, “and I like road trips.”
“You always did at that. He used to insist on driving us everywhere,” she explained to Neal. “At first I thought it was because he was a little kiss-ass.”
Neal laughed. “Then you discovered he’s just a garden variety control freak?”
“Ah-ha-ha-ha! Yes. But you’d know that as well as anyone, yes, Neal?”
“You don’t know the half of it, Pamela.”
“I think I’m going to regret bringing you here,” Peter said.
“Oh, I don’t,” she said. “Any opportunity to tease you, Peter, cannot be passed up. So Santa Fe - it must be lovely in the mountains this time of year?”
“I’ve never been there,” Neal told her, uncomfortable again. “I haven’t really seen my mother since she moved there.”
“Then it’ll be nice to catch up,” she said, deftly moving on to less touchy topics.
Eventually, Neal persuaded her to regale him with more tales of Peter’s time as a student and, later, when he worked with her on his thesis. They laughed until after midnight, most of it at Peter’s expense.
“My goodness, is that the time?” Neal said at 12:25. He rose and stood beside Peter’s chair. “We need to be going.”
“Do you think we’ll be able to check in at the B&B still?” Peter said in a low voice.
Shirley waved her hands. “Nonsense - you’ll stay here. I’ve got plenty of room, and I’ll love to make you both breakfast in the morning.”
“We wouldn’t want to impose,” Neal began.
“You aren’t. As a matter of fact, you’ll be doing an old lady a favor - just seeing the look on my busybody neighbor’s face when two handsome young men leave here in the morning will make it all worth it!”
----
“Where am I sleeping?” Neal asked Peter as he entered the guest room. He had just taken a shower and noticed that Peter was already sitting in the bed.
Peter looked at the space next to himself in the bed and then up at Neal. “With me. Like always.”
Neal looked over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Peter.” Neal didn’t want to shock Peter’s old mentor - it was one thing for her to extend her hospitality to them on such short notice, another thing entirely for them to expect her to understand their polyamorous relationship.
“Don’t worry about it, Neal.”
“Well, someone should be worried about it, don’t you think?”
----
“You’re an early riser, Neal,” Shirley said, taking a seat on the couch.
Neal looked up from his mug of herbal tea to look at the clock on the wall - it was 6:30. He’d risen before 5:00 and had been sitting in the same chair he’d occupied the night before, but he’d turned it around so he could watch the birds and squirrels scampering around in the garden through the large windows that took up most of the back wall.
“I don’t need a lot of sleep, lately.”
“Peter’s snoring doesn’t bother you?”
Neal looked away, unsure how to answer. “Umm…”
She chuckled, her eyes twinkling. “What are you more shocked by, the fact I knew you were sleeping together, or that I know that Peter snores?”
“The latter, I think? Someone’s been holding back vital information, Pamela.”
“It was a long time ago, shortly after my husband and I separated. Peter was… well, he had a crush, and I needed to feel like I mattered to someone. We both knew it was a bad idea as soon as the sun came up.”
“But you stayed close?”
“It’s hard to leave Peter Burke. I think you know that already.”
A hint of sorrow entered Neal's eyes, which he quickly suppressed.
“He cares for you, you know,” Shirley continued.
“I do. I do know.”
“It’s why he gave you that flower last night - it’s an old joke between us. He did the same when he brought Elizabeth down to meet me.”
“Is that what that was all about? So you knew all about us from the moment we got here?”
She nodded. “Peter’s always been an alpha male in that way - marking his territory as it were. A flower in a lapel here, a hand at the small of the back there. It used to drive me bonkers until I realized he did it with everyone he loves.”
Neal looked down into his half-drunk mug of tea. “I love him too,” he murmured, barely audibly.
She rose and placed a warm hand on his shoulder. “Then what are you holding back from him?”
St. Louis, MO, 1983
Danny sat in the small space on the floor of his closet, next to the laundry basket filled with stuffed animals and the one filled with laundry. He was folded up as small as he could get, his knees hugged tightly against his chest, and his head resting on top of them. He stopped crying a little while ago; now he was just tired.
“Danny? Baby?”
He heard his mother’s voice filter in through the slats on the closet door; when he looked up, he could see her legs through them, the light of the late January sun filtering into his room.
“I got a call from your teacher,” she said, and Danny could feel the tears rise in his eyes again. He didn’t like them, didn’t want them, but it happened whenever he was really, really mad and he couldn’t ever stop them. He hid his face in his folded arms and willed all of the feelings to just go away NOW.
“Ya wanna tell me what happened?” His mother’s voice was a lot closer now - she was resting on her knees just outside the door, her hand resting on the handle.
“Got in a fight,” Danny told her sullenly, his arms muffling his voice.
“So I heard. Why?”
He sighed; it was too big to put into words, really - the sadness and the misery - but what confused him the most was how small it made him feel.
“They were makin’ fun o’ me.”
“Making fun how?”
“They said I was a bastard.”
“What? Why would they say that?”
Danny raised his head and sighed. “Cuz I don’t have a daddy. They said all kids who don’t have daddies are bastards.”
It was Danny's mom’s turn to sigh. “That’s not what that means,” she told him, then sat down with her back against the wall beside the closet. “What did you do?”
“I told them my daddy was a hero and he was dead, but they said it didn’t matter, I was still a bastard.”
“Little assholes,” Regina Brooks muttered, because she didn’t think Danny could hear her. “Then what happened?”
Danny opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. He knew he wasn’t really in trouble, but he still couldn’t say it.
“Danny?”
“Then I punched Tommy Evans and then they jumped me.”
Danny saw his mother’s arm reach up and pull on the closet door, which folded outward on its tracks. Half of the closet was now completely illuminated from the sunlight in the room, including the lower half of Danny's body. He fought an urge to shrink away from it. “You hit first?”
Danny winced - he knew he wasn’t supposed to do that, but he’d been so mad. “I know ‘violence isn’t the answer,’” he replied by rote.
“Too right it isn’t - those kids are a lot bigger than you.” It was true - Tommy Evans was in the third grade. “You draw blood?” she asked after a long pause.
“Knocked out his tooth.”
“Danny!”
“It was loose anyways.”
“Violence is never the answer,” his mom repeated, even though she didn’t sound like she meant it, really.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“I know you are, honey.”
Danny was sorry - sorry he was so much smaller, sorry he wasn’t a big, brave hero like his daddy was. Mostly he was sorry that he might have made his mom sad, because it was hard enough on her, Aunt Ellen always said, raising a little boy all by herself. He didn’t mean to, and that was why he was in the closet hiding, because he was ashamed.
“Why don’t you come on downstairs?” she said, pulling the door out a bit more. She got to her feet and left the room.
Danny unfolded himself from the position he was in and scrambled out of the closet. Closing the door, he followed, finding his mother sitting at the tiny table in their kitchen, a glass of milk and a napkin with two cookies on it waiting for him at the place beside her. She had her sketchbook out and the oil pastels she only used when she was working - Danny's mom was an illustrator and usually only did boring drawings of knees and bones and stuff for a medical publisher, but every once in a while she drew for a kids’ book or a magazine, and that’s when she used the pastels. Danny took a bite out of one of the cookies and then sipped his milk, watching her. There was already an outline of what looked like a man on the paper.
“Whatcha drawin’?”
She didn’t answer him, instead she asked him a question. “Have I ever told you what happened to your dad?” she asked. He knew she knew the answer to that, because she never had. She thought he was too little to understand before, but maybe she’d changed her mind now. He shook his head no.
“You know he was a police officer, and that we had to move away when he… when he was… taken away from us.” She didn’t talk for a few minutes after she said that, she just drew.
“Well, there were some really bad men, and your daddy tried very hard to arrest them, and to make them pay for all the crimes they committed, but in the end he couldn’t.” She didn’t look at Danny, she just kept drawing.
“Did he try his bestest?”
She nodded. “He did, honey, he tried and tried, but sometimes that’s not good enough.”
Danny's brow furrowed in confusion. “But…” he paused, thinking really hard for the right words, “aren’t the good guys always s’posed to win? That’s why they are good.”
Danny's mom blinked really, really hard and kept drawing. “I know that’s what the stories say, and sometimes it’s even true. But other times… at other times the bad people are so good at being bad that they can fool people into helping them, or they can offer them things they’ve always wanted just so the bad people will win. It’s all very complicated - grown up stuff, you know?” She glanced up at Danny and then picked up a brown pastel and began coloring in what she’d drawn.
Danny thought really, really hard as his mother kept drawing. “It’s kind of like… Kyle Washington.”
“Who’s that, honey?”
“He was nice to me when school started, but now he’s friends with Tommy and them.” Danny had thought that maybe Kyle was his friend, but when he’d joined in with all the other boys calling him names - well, in a way, that hurt as much as their fists and their kicks.
“Yes, it is exactly like that.”
Danny finished his milk and watched his mother finish her drawing. When she was done, she pushed back from the table and motioned for him to join her. He hopped down from his chair and went to her, and she put her arms around him as he took in the scene. It was of a tall man in a policeman’s uniform, with a young boy on his shoulders, wearing his cap. Both of them were smiling; both of them had the same blue eyes.
“Is that me and my dad?” Danny asked, reaching out tentative fingertips to touch the figures, but holding back - he didn’t want to smudge it.
“Uh-huh.”
He stared at the picture for a long time while his mom held onto him, her nose buried in his hair. His mom didn’t really keep that many pictures of his dad around, and Danny thought it was because he was gone and she was too sad. “Are the bad men… can they get us?” he asked, giving voice to one of his deepest fears.
“No, honey. They may have taken your daddy away from us, but they can’t hurt us anymore. They’re far, far away.”
“My daddy was a brave man?” Danny just needed to hear her say it again.
“Uh-huh. He was.”
Danny knew in that moment that he wanted to be a policeman, just like his father. “I’m gonna be brave someday, too.”
“You already are, pumpkin,” she said, then pulled away from him and swatted him lightly on his behind. “Now, I’ve got to start dinner - why don’t you go and watch TV for a while? I think Scooby-Doo is on in a few minutes”
“OK, mom,” he said, letting the sketchbook fall to the table and scampering off to the living room.
When he was gone, Regina put her pastels away and stared down at her handiwork. It wasn’t the best likeness of James she’d ever drawn, but it was close enough, and she had gotten his and Danny's eyes exactly right.
“You are the blue in his eyes,” she said to the man in the drawing, wiping an angry tear from her eye before getting up to start making spaghetti and meatballs - Danny's favorite.
Shenandoah Valley, 2014
“What is Skyline Drive? I keep seeing signs,” Neal said, shifting in his seat to take in the rolling countryside outside the window of the Taurus. They had taken their leave from Shirley’s home shortly before 8:00 that morning.
“I think it’s a route along the Blue Ridge Mountains, overlooking the valley,” Peter said.
“It sounds intriguing.”
“You want to check it out?” Peter gave him the side-eye, eyebrows raised.
Neal frowned, mindful of their conversation the day before. “Should we? I know you’ve got all the legs of this trip planned out to the minute.”
Peter shrugged. “You tell me - isn’t your mom expecting us on a certain day?” Neal looked away. “Neal, your mother is expecting us, isn’t she?”
“I thought it would be better if she didn’t have the opportunity to think too much about my coming,” he replied.
“Neal! We’re driving 2,000 miles to see her, and she’s not expecting us? What if she’s not home or something?”
“She’ll be there.”
“What if she moved?”
“She didn’t - that’s a verified address.”
Peter stared at him as incredulously as he could whilst still driving and keeping an eye on the highway.
“So… Skyline Drive?” Neal prompted.
----
“Ooo! Stop here!”
Peter suppressed a sigh as he pulled over into yet another scenic overlook along Skyline Drive. As he might have predicted, when they’d finally arrived and entered the park, each turn of the road had offered up scenery more breathtaking than the last, and this was their sixth stop since lunch. At this rate, they were definitely not going to make it to Nashville, which had been the original plan. So much for the romantic night at the boutique hotel he’d gotten a great deal on.
Peter pulled into the small parking area at the side of the road and opened his door. When he glanced over at Neal, he was staring at the vista of the peaceful valley before them, open-mouthed.
“What?”
“I’ve got to paint this!”
“What? Neal, we can’t stay here all day.”
“Fine then, I’ll just sketch it.”
Neal got out of the car and headed straight for the trunk, where he’d squirreled away a few art supplies; Peter had wondered at it when they’d left, but said nothing - it wasn’t like they didn’t have the room in the trunk. Neal barely took his eyes off the view as he rooted around, then headed for a picnic table and sat atop it, cross-legged. Peter watched with a mixture of bemusement and exasperation and finally grabbed his Kindle and an old blanket from the trunk and sat under a tree in the shade near where Neal was setting up. Rather than read, though, he just watched Neal sketch using pen and ink, his wrist flicking delicately but surely as he worked, his eyes alight with the kind of inner fire that had made Peter fall for him in the first place.
An hour later, Peter cleared his throat and mentioned that they should think about getting back on the road. Neal agreed, but with the air of a child being told it’s time to leave the playground to go home and have a nap. Peter tried to hide his amusement under a gruff exterior, but it was a tough sell. Besides, if he knew Neal, he’d be ordering Peter to pull over at least a dozen more times before getting back on the Interstate - the park had over 70 according to the pamphlet from the visitor’s center.
“We have to come back here in the Fall,” Neal said enthusiastically as he buckled his safety belt. “The lighting then will be so much better-angled for painting, and the leaves - El will love the leaves!”
“She sure will,” Peter chuckled, starting the car. As he glanced at Neal with his bright eyes and anticipatory smile, Peter felt a stab of sorrow that he quickly suppressed. They would come back in the Fall. Neal would make it that long.
They would come back in the Fall.
Kingsport, TN to Memphis, TN, 2014
“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Neal, did you hear that?” They’d been listening to the comedy station on the satellite radio, and it was the classic George Carlin bit about seven words. “God, I love this guy!
“Neal?” Peter glanced over to see that Neal’s eyes were closed, he was hunched down in his seat, and he appeared to be sleeping peacefully. “Neal?” Peter said a bit louder, but Neal didn’t stir.
“NEAL!” Peter said loudly, panicked. He reached out to clutch at his lover’s wrist.
“What? What?” Neal said, waking immediately and looking around. “What happened - did we hit something?”
“No, um…” Peter didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry… I woke you… I…”
“I fell asleep.”
Peter nodded.
“I do it all the time. Fall asleep. Like, nightly sometimes.”
“I know that.”
“No need to freak out over a cat nap, Peter.”
Neal was cranky and Peter supposed he couldn’t blame him, having been so rudely awakened. He hadn’t been sleeping well, Peter knew this, and mentally kicked himself for overreacting. They drove in silence for several minutes.
“I know you’re scared,” Neal said so quietly Peter barely heard it, but it sounded like an accusation.
----
They actually made it to Memphis in time to check into a decent, suite-style hotel and consider dining choices. “Where do you want to go?”
“As long as it’s not an Olive Garden, I’ll eat anywhere,” Neal said, lifting his suitcase onto the bed.
“Barbecue?”
“When in Rome.”
The front desk made some recommendations, and Peter chose one within walking distance. Neal opted for pulled pork, but Peter went for a full rack of ribs that were the best he’d ever tasted - not that he expected any less in this part of the country. They talked about everything and nothing - that is, nothing to do with their current trip or the reasons for taking it. He actually wasn’t all that clear on why they were taking it, but Neal suddenly wanted to see his mother, and who was Peter to refuse him? Besides, he had the vacation time coming, and El thought they’d do well with some “boy time.” They had a good time at dinner.
They were walking back to the hotel when Peter came to a stop, Neal looking at him questioningly. “Beale Street’s not far - wanna check out a few clubs?” Neal’s smile was answer enough.
They found a hole in the wall and ducked into its smoky darkness; it was standing room only for a pair of local acts that clearly had devoted followers. They left around 11:00, and when they were halfway to the hotel on the deserted streets of Memphis, Peter felt Neal’s fingers worm their way into his, and they strolled back slowly without speaking.
They parted when Peter needed to open their door with the key card, and he held the door open for Neal, who walked a few steps inside then turned and took Peter’s hand again. He used Peter’s forward momentum to pull him in closer, their chests bumping. Neal put his arms around Peter’s back and angled his head up, laying light kisses along Peter’s jaw. Closing his eyes and wrapping his own arms around Neal’s shoulders, Peter turned his own head and met Neal’s mouth halfway, the kiss long and slow and needful and everything a kiss ought to be.
“God,” Peter breathed, pulling him in even closer. Neal’s right hand came up and started tickling the short hairs on Peter’s neck, making him shiver. They kissed some more, Peter’s mouth traveling along Neal’s jaw and then to the spot just behind Neal’s ear that made him squirm.
When Neal’s hands came to rest on Peter’s belt, Peter pulled away with a jolt. “We... we shouldn’t.”
“Yeah, we should,” Neal said enthusiastically as he rubbed his crotch against Peter’s hip. Peter could feel Neal’s hard-on, his own dick stirring in answer to it. “Come on!! You’re not going to break me,” Neal said, his fingers trying to worm their way into Peter’s jeans, warm and insistent against his stomach.
Peter stilled and pulled his hips back. “I’m afraid I will.”
Neal stiffened and disengaged entirely. “Dammit, Peter, I’m not dying any time soon.”
Peter didn’t answer, he just looked down at his shoes.
“You’re really doing this to me, you’re really,” Neal gestured vaguely between them, indicating their physical closeness, “taking this away?”
“Neal -“
“Don’t ‘Neal’ me, Peter! Do you know how condescending that sounds?”
“Don’t upset yourself, the doctor said -“
“I am fully aware of what the doctor said,” Neal said coldly. “And I can’t let this diagnosis hold my life hostage. I am not some ticking time bomb.”
“But that’s all I can think about,” Peter said quietly and took another step back, acutely aware of the bulge in his pants and cursing it.
“It’s all I can think about!” Neal practically shouted. He laughed bitterly. “Stupid me for thinking, maybe for the first time since I found out that maybe … that you could help me forget. Just one night, Peter. Just us, back to normal again.”
“Neal.”
“You haven’t touched me in weeks. Neither has El. Do you know how that makes me feel, on top of everything else?”
“I’m sorry,” Peter said, and he was suddenly unsure what to do with his hands. He folded his arms in front of himself, then dropped them, then shoved them into his pockets. Neal was right, it had been weeks. What were they thinking coming on this trip? At least at home they could pretend that the rigors of their daily lives got in the way. Now? Now they were supposed to be on vacation. What the fucking hell?
Peter pulled his hands from his pockets and reached out for Neal, but he backed away. “Careful, Peter, I might shatter,” he said before leaving the room entirely.
“FUCK!” Peter shouted, and he would have punched a wall or something, but he didn’t want to have to explain it to the hotel’s management.
----
Neal sat quietly in the living area of their hotel room some hours later, staring out of the window at the acid yellow lights in the parking lot, and cradling his cell phone in the palm of his hand. He’d walked around the neighborhood surrounding the hotel for over an hour before returning; when he had, Peter had already gone to bed and closed the bedroom door. He felt relieved - he didn’t think he could look at him - but he couldn’t walk the streets of this city all night long, and he could brood just as easily here.
He thought about the twist of fate that had brought them here, the diagnosis that had put his life in what seemed like a state of perpetual limbo. Neal had a “fusiform trifurcation aneurysm” - try saying that five times fast - in his brain, and it was in a place that was generally thought to be impossible to operate on. Ironically, it was found because an overenthusiastic intern at Lennox Hill had ordered a head CT for him when he’d taken a shot to the nose during his last case with the White Collar team.
It was supposed to have been a textbook case of mortgage fraud - a milk run before his sentence finally ended and the anklet was forever removed from his life - but the perp had other ideas when he was being arrested and the fist he’d thrown that Peter had deftly ducked wound up connecting with Neal’s face and he’d dropped like a sack of potatoes. Since he’d been knocked out, and Peter was a born worrywart, they’d taken him to the hospital, where an unnecessary head scan had uncovered the…
Well, the ticking time bomb in his head.
He had shown no symptoms whatsoever before or since, was in no pain or discomfort, but the position and size of the thing made it impossible to operate without an uncomfortably high chance of brain damage or worse, so he really had no choice but to live with it. The doctor said it may have been there for months or years, might last for years more. There was no predicting it. All he knew was he shouldn’t fly, had to avoid alcohol, caffeine, sodium (and most of the things that made life worth living), not exert himself, and eat healthfully. Apparently “not exerting himself” equated to sex in Peter and El’s book, and Neal hadn’t gotten any in the six weeks since the diagnosis. His balls were so blue he wondered if that might be a risk, though if he was truthful with himself, he was afraid to even jerk off.
The fact of the matter was this was the thing that would probably kill him, and there would be no warning at all if it was about to burst, not until it did. And then it wouldn’t matter because he’d be dead.
It was the uncertainty and unpredictability of his plight that was the worst - at least if he had cancer or heart disease or something, he could work out a progression in his head and learn to accept it along the way. All he had to go on now was that he would simply drop dead one of these days.
Except for the experimental procedure his doctor told him about just before he decided to leave New York that had a 31.3% mortality rate for cases like his. His doctor had dropped that little bombshell on him a week ago, and the next day he decided to go and visit his mother. Peter was only too enthusiastic to go along for the ride with him, and El was delighted he wanted to reunite with his mother. They’d begun booking hotels and planning the route immediately. Neal hadn’t told either of them a thing about the operation - he had an irrational desire to keep it to himself that he didn’t quite understand. His doctor kept leaving him messages to try to schedule something - he’d just picked up another one on his cell.
Neal sighed and got up to go to the window, feeling the need to move. The city was quiet - not much happening around the hotel at 2:00 in the morning, apparently. Memphis was definitely not New York in that respect, but he found the quiet soothing.
A few minutes later, the bedroom door opened suddenly and with force, and Peter stood there, rumpled from sleep and with his hair sticking out in all directions. His eyes looked wild, until they rested on Neal, and he relaxed. “You’re here,” he said.
Neal didn’t say anything, just shrugged.
“I dreamt you were gone.”
There was a quality to his voice that pulled at Neal; he took a step forward. “I’m right here.”
Peter ran a hand through his hair. “You were gone and I couldn’t find you. I was so…”
“Mad?”
“Grief-stricken,” Peter said, and now Neal realized there were tears in his eyes. He went to him and wrapped his arms around him; Peter was shaking.
“I’m right here, Peter.”
Peter draped his arms around Neal. “Don’t go, don’t leave us.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Don’t go,” Peter repeated, and Neal led him back into the bedroom and settled him down on the bed. He stripped to his underwear and got in beside him, pulling Peter into his arms and tucking his head under his own chin.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you before,” Neal said slowly.
“I’m sorry I made you feel like you had to.”
Neal sighed and reached his hand up to stroke Peter’s hair. “I hate everything about this, but do you know what’s the worst? The way you act around me. You’re always just there, and you give me these looks, and it’s like...” He searched for the right words. “When you hover over me like that, it’s a constant reminder that something’s wrong.”
Peter took Neal’s other hand and held onto it tightly. “When I hover over you, it reassures me that nothing’s wrong,” he said wryly.
They lay in silence for several minutes. Neal thought that Peter had fallen back to sleep when he spoke again, quietly, “In my dream, you were gone. I was in a big house - ours but then not, you know? And I was going from room to room, and you just weren't there. I kept expecting to see you behind the next door, or the next, but you were gone. And I felt like I had lost you, like physically lost you, and I had to get you back. But I couldn’t find you.”
Peter took a deep breath before continuing. “You always run.”
“Peter, I -“ Neal was about to deny it, but Peter was right - Neal always ran from his problems. He ran to Europe when he lost Kate, he ran after the warehouse exploded, or he intended to; he ran from the knowledge of his past when he was 17. And what was this road trip if not him trying to run away from having to make a decision about his surgery?
“I can see it in your eyes, sometimes, that you want to, and it scares me. Don’t run, don’t leave us. Please.”
In that moment, with Peter’s head warm and slightly sweaty on his chest, Neal realized a truth that hadn’t occurred to him before: he was needed. There were two people who he now knew would be diminished by his absence, just as he would be by theirs. He was responsible for their happiness as much as he was for his own. He felt humbled and a bit overwhelmed by the realization.
“I swear to you that I never will,” he said to Peter, who seemed to be satisfied and soon drifted off to sleep.
St. Louis, MO, Thanksgiving, 1992
“Danny, I don’t want to have to ask you again to pick up all this stuff before your Aunt Ellen gets here, come on,” Regina Brooks said to her son in the slightly condescending tone of exasperated mothers of teenaged boys the world over. She swept into the kitchen to check on the pies in the oven. A surly response, muttered just low enough for her not to hear, made her stop in her tracks. “What was that?” she asked.
“I SAID YOU NEVER LET ME DO WHAT I NEED TO DO!” Danny shouted at her, then he scrambled to his feet from where he was sitting in the middle of the living room and stomped out of the room.
“Lord save me from teenaged drama,” Regina said to herself and went to pick up after him. She was mildly surprised to see a sketchbook, and around it several drawings were scattered that had fallen out of it. As she gathered them to shove them back inside, she noticed they were all portraits of the same person in a variety of costumes - a boy she didn’t recognize - and many of them were surprisingly good. When she opened the sketchbook, there were several more inside, and in the last one, the one Danny had been staring at when she walked through, the boy was shirtless. Also, his face had been nearly obliterated by one of Danny’s discarded charcoal pencils.
Sighing, Regina picked up the sketchbook and walked up the stairs to her son’s room.
She knocked, but the music being played inside was so loud he didn’t hear her, so she was reduced to pounding on the door. “Danny! Come on now, open up the door!” she practically had to shout.
The music cut off suddenly as the door was pulled open, and her son - she was always surprised these days that he was now taller than her - stood glaring at her.
“What?!”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “Tone,” she warned.
“Sorry,” he said sullenly, and his shoulders relaxed marginally.
She handed him the sketchbook. “I think we have something to talk about.”
Danny froze, clutching the thing to his chest. Instantly, his eyes widened, and he began to look panicked. “Mom -“
“I didn’t know you could draw so well.”
“I… um… huh?”
She laid her fingertips on the sketchbook and let them trail down until they were resting on his wrist. “These are very good. I didn’t know you were interested in art.”
“You knew I took it in school,” he said to her warily.
“But I didn’t know you were this good, honey. You shouldn’t hide them all - you should be proud of them.”
“They suck.”
“They don’t.” She smiled at him. “Nice to see the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. If you were interested in art, you should’ve told me. I could help, give you pointers.”
“Mooooom!”
She held her hands up. “OK, OK.” He turned around and returned to the bed, and she leaned against the door frame, crossing her arms. “Who’s the boy in your drawings?” she asked him gently, and his entire body stiffened.
“Just this guy. From school.”
“You like him?”
Danny’s entire demeanor went cold. “No.”
“I could tell, the way you obliterated his entire face.” They stared at each other, and Regina could see the fear in her son’s eyes, the fear of what she would say next. “Never destroy your work, honey,” she said quietly. “You will always regret it.”
She turned around to return to the kitchen.
----
Hours later, after literally the most silent Thanksgiving meal ever served, Regina walked past Danny’s bedroom to find the door wide open and her son lying on his stomach, arms around the pillow his head was resting on. He was facing away from her.
Thinking he was asleep, she went in to turn off the lamp beside the bed.
“Carlos,” Danny said.
“Hmm?”
“The guy in the drawings, his name is Carlos. He’s on the football team.”
She made a non-committal noise, but stood her ground.
“I like him. I mean, liked him.”
“You don’t anymore?”
She saw him shake his head, but still he faced away from her. “He doesn’t like me. I thought he did, but then…”
He sounded utterly miserable, so she sat on the edge of his bed and laid a hand in the unruly waves in his hair, stroking through it soothingly as she’d done since he was a baby. “You want to tell me about it?”
He stirred, and turned to face her, and she could see the beginnings of tears in his eyes. “We used to hang out, mess around, you know - guy stuff, wrestling and telling jokes and stories. And then he…”
Regina felt her heart clench a bit in fear - the boy looked older, and was almost certainly larger if he was on the football team. “Did he hurt you, Danny?”
“He kissed me.”
“Oh?”
“And then he called me a faggot and pushed me away.”
“Oh.”
“I thought he liked me - he said he liked me. Why would he do that?”
“Probably because he’s afraid.”
Danny scoffed. “Afraid of me? He’s a junior and I’m a freshman!”
“No, not afraid of you, Danny, of himself. He’s afraid of what liking you means.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?”
He lowered his eyes. “He’s afraid if anyone finds out. Cuz he likes a guy, cuz he likes me.” He rolled over onto his back, pulling the pillow with him, hugging it to his chest. “It’s not fair, why can’t people just like who they want to like?”
She reached over and laid her hand on his leg, sighing; her son was so sensitive, so open and loving - the traits in him she loved the most, but that would probably get him hurt a lot in his life. He was just like her, and she feared for him. “If only it were that simple, honey.”
He looked at her, blue eyes so wide and innocent. Life was going to eat him alive unless she did something about it. “Danny, there are certain truths in life that you are going to have to learn for yourself,” she said. “People are going to hate you, and they are going to judge you, and they are going to be cruel and hurtful, just because of who you are.”
“Is this supposed to be a pep talk, Mom? Because you’re doing a really crappy job of it.”
She couldn’t help but smile, a little, grimly, and remembered a similar conversation she’d had with her beloved Grandpa Solomon when she was young and being taunted for being different. He was the one who’d taught her sleight of hand, and he’d taught her how to keep her face neutral in the face of some pretty spectacular bullying. She learned later he’d been a magician on Vaudeville as a young man, and, she’d always thought, had probably used those skills for thingsa bit less savory as well.
“It’s supposed to help you cope, Danny. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that if people think they can’t hurt you, they stop trying.”
“How do you do that?” he asked, sitting up.
“Think of it like putting on a mask. I’m going to teach you how to make it so that no one will ever really know what you are thinking or feeling.”
“You think I can do that?” he marveled.
“You can do anything you put your mind to, kiddo. I know you can.”
Memphis, TN to Oklahoma City, OK, 2014
“VIVA LAS VEGAS!!! VIVAAAAA LAS VEGAS!”
Peter sat back in the passenger seat of the Taurus and sang along at the top of his lungs to the new CD he’d popped into the car’s stereo. Neal laughed hysterically as they zipped along the wide expanse of I-40 just West of Little Rock, AR. When the song was over, Peter was laughing too.
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into going to Graceland!” he said happily to Neal.
Neal turned the sound down on the next song - In the Ghetto was not a favorite - and smiled at Peter. “I thought we could use some light entertainment.”
“Well, the Jungle Room is that, indeed,” Peter agreed. “I’m starving to death - can we get some lunch?”
“As long as it’s not the Olive Garden -“
“Hey, what have you got against Olive Garden, anyway?”
Neal shuddered. “You can’t slop Alfredo sauce on everything and call it Italian cuisine, you just can’t.”
Peter thought he had a valid point. They found a Cracker Barrel next to the highway and pulled off. Neal excused himself to the men’s room while Peter perused the game of Chinese checkers at their table, trying to remember the rules. A flash of movement in front of the table caught his attention and when he looked up, he saw Neal standing there, his hair all gelled up into a pompadour, with a classic Elvis sneer on his lips.
“Uhh…” Peter began, astonished.
“Hey, bebeh,” Neal drawled in a fair approximation of an Elvis impression, then he swiveled his hips in an even better physical one.
Peter grinned from ear to ear. “I can see why they called him the pelvis.”
“Thank you. Thankyouverehmuch,” Neal growled and lifted his leg over the back of his chair as he sat down, popping his collar at the same time.
The impersonation lasted through the waitress bringing them their drinks, and then Neal let it go, running his hands through his hair to right its style to something more like he usually wore. They discussed current events over a bacon cheeseburger (“I’m telling El,” Neal said) and a plate of pancakes (“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day - all day,” he added).
Peter was happy to see Neal acting more like his old self, the fight the night before gone, but probably not forgotten. How could they forget it? They’d been tentative around each other all morning, but it had changed when they’d passed the signs for Graceland on the highway and Neal had made an unexpected detour.
Clearly, Elvis fixed everything.
----
Neal took a seat at the desk in their darkened hotel room, staring at the symbol on his phone that told him he had another voice mail from his doctor’s office, and wondering when his insomnia, which had plagued him off and on his entire adult life, had become such a regular thing that he planned for it now. He’d taken the side of the bed nearest the windows when they’d turned in, and despite falling asleep beside Peter with no problem had found himself awake two hours later with no inclination to sleep more.
He wondered if it was a symptom or not. He wondered that about a lot of things, actually, and he was getting tired of it. Each time he woke with a stiff neck, or when his eyes got tired, he wondered if this was it, and he was getting tired of the drama, frankly. He glanced over at Peter and sighed - he wasn’t ready to leave him, not yet. Not ever.
He couldn't wait to see his mother.
He didn’t want to see his mother.
The last time he saw her, he was 17; he turned 36 eight weeks ago. He’d now lived more years apart from her than with her.
Suddenly restless and claustrophobic in the small hotel room, he got up, deleted the voice message without listening to it, and left. He walked aimlessly until he finally felt tired and then headed back to the hotel. When he returned he was surprised to see it was after 3:00 AM.
He crawled under the covers and curled up next to Peter, who he realized was awake when he pulled Neal close to him and buried his nose in his hair with a rumbly sigh. He fell asleep with the sound of Peter’s heartbeat in his ear, and wondered what he’d say to his mother when he saw her the next day.
St. Louis, MO, 1995
Danny stood in the doorway to his mother’s bedroom where she was folding some laundry and waited to be noticed.
“Hey, honey - home so early? Half day at school?”
“I spoke to Aunt Ellen.”
“You always speak to Aunt Ellen.”
“She told me the truth about my father.”
Regina flinched as if physically struck, and Neal could see her shoulders stiffen. “Oh.”
“You let me think he was a hero. You told me he was dead.”
“I said he was taken from us, and he was. The man I knew - the man I loved - was taken away. The day he accepted a bribe, he became a different person, one who put his own greed ahead of his family.”
Danny didn’t understand what she was talking about. All he knew was that the only one he trusted, the person who’d mattered most in his life, had based everything he’d believed about himself and his background on a pack of lies. “You lied to me,” he accused.
“I have never lied to you, Dan, not once. I may have let you draw certain conclusions that weren't correct, but I never actually lied.”
“Is that supposed to make it all right now?” She didn’t answer. “Is it? Why wouldn’t you tell me? Why, Mom, why? WHY?” He was shouting now, shaking, his anger and feelings of betrayal and shame nearly overwhelming.
She shook her head, tears streaming down her face, as if she was denying something.
“Why, Mom?” he asked once more, his own tears blurring his vision until he could barely see her. He blinked them away angrily.
“Because I’m afraid of what that knowledge will do to you, Dan,” she said, the words sounding as if they were being torn from her, as if they hurt. “I’m afraid you’ll be just like him!”
Danny took a step back as if struck.
“You think I don’t know?” she asked quietly. “Did you think your old Mom wouldn’t find out you were pulling Three Card Monty scams and hustling pool after school? Did you think I didn’t know?”
Dan was shocked she knew - he’d only done those things for some pocket money, and he never greased any chumps that couldn’t afford it. He lashed out at her, “Where do you think I learned how to do all of that from? Who taught me how to palm a card in the first place?”
“Those were just stupid party tricks,” she said; it was Regina’s turn to be shocked.
“You said you were afraid I’d become like him? Well, you’re the one who taught me everything I know, so I guess that apple really didn’t fall far from the tree did it?” Dan said and ran to his room, slamming the door behind him.
Part 2
Rating: R, though there’s a soft core pornisheh scene
Characters/Pairings: Neal/Peter(/Elizabeth) established relationship, OFCs
Spoilers: None
Content Notice: Road trip, hurt/comfort, stealth kidfic
Word Count: ~18,000
Beta thanks go to: elrhiarhodan
Summary: Sometimes, running away means going home. Sometimes, you find what you need there. And sometimes, you just need your mom. Neal finds out all of these things on a road trip with Peter.
A/N: This is my entry for Caffrey-Burke Day! It is also a long overdue story for my pal doctor_fangeek, who bought a fic on my Sandy auction last year and has been patiently waiting for a Neal/Peter road trip fic for as long as I’ve known her - hope this doesn’t disappoint on either count, bb.
In this story, Neal is a month post-anklet. Additonal notes at the end.
----
New York, 2014
Peter made an annoyed sound as they inched forward in heavy bridge traffic.
“Just say it,” Neal said.
“What?”
“You’re pissed because we’re in traffic, and we’re in traffic because we left late, and we left late because of me.”
“I’m not pissed.”
“OK.”
Fifteen minutes and three sighs later, Peter picked up the conversation as if there had been no delay: “It’s just that if everyone would move up a little more, then everyone could be that much closer, you know? I mean, what do you get by leaving so much space in front of your car, except for every single car in the right lane getting in front of you?”
“You’re pissed that we left late,” Neal said mildly. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, just -“ Peter cut himself off.
“Be on time?”
“Well, yes.”
“I had to do my laundry,” Neal protested. “I wasn’t going to pack for two weeks without clean laundry.”
Peter didn’t respond.
“OK, so arguably, I should have done laundry over the weekend, but I got distracted by shiny things.”
Still, Peter didn’t respond.
“There was a Douglas Sirk retrospective at the Angelika!”
Silence.
“I’m just one man, Peter.”
Peter gave Neal the side-eye and then laughed. “It’s fine, you know - I’m just happy to be able to do this for you.”
Neal closed his mouth and then looked out the window, and Peter regretted his choice of words immediately. “With you,” he amended quickly.
Neal tensed.
“It’s not every week you drive out to see your Mom, Neal,” Peter added, feeling the flames and trying to at least get back into the frying pan.
“Been a long time,” Neal said quietly, still looking out of the window as he began to gnaw on a thumbnail.
Washington DC, 1981
“Nee-eal.”
Neal opened his eyes and stared up at his Momma, his long lashes clumped together from the tears he’d cried earlier.
“How are you feeling, kiddo?”
He tried to be brave, he really did, but the boo-boo on his belly really, really, REALLY hurt. “Hurts, Momma,” he said, lower lip quivering.
She frowned. “I’m sure it does, baby, and I wish I could make it go away, but we can’t give you any more medicine for another two hours.”
“Hernias is bad,” Neal whined as the tears began to flow again.
“I know, but look - what’s this?”
She reached behind his ear and pulled out a small object, yellow and fuzzy - a toy duck! Neal hadn’t known it was back there - he reached up to touch his ear.
“Haven’t I told you to wash behind your ears?” she teased, and Neal’s eyes on hers boggled. “Where’d it go?” she asked, and when Neal looked at her hands - the duck was gone.
“Here it is!” She pulled it from behind his other ear with her other hand. Neal’s hand shot up to his other ear. “Am I going to be finding a whole flock up there?” she asked, sounding amused. She handed him the duck.
“No, Momma!”
“But what’s this?” she asked, and when Neal looked down, there was a cookie in the palm of her hand.
“Is dat for me?”
“Is what for you?” she asked, moving her hands so fast Neal couldn’t see, but suddenly the cookie was gone.
Neal was so confused. “De cookie, Momma.”
“This one?” she asked, producing an Oreo - the other had been chocolate chip. “Or this one?” Another chocolate chip cookie materialized. “Or maybe this?” A sugar cookie - the kind with sprinkles - appeared out of nowhere and joined the others in the palm of her hand.
“You godda milk?” Neal asked, grabbing them all before they could disappear. His Momma laughed and laughed.
Alexandria, VA, 2014
“Boy, I haven’t seen Shirl in years!” Peter enthused as he and Neal pulled into a tree-lined street, looking for the address.
“Turn left here,” Neal said, consulting his phone’s map application; these suburban streets were damn confusing - and twisty. “I’m looking forward to meeting her,” he continued, looking at Peter with an avid expression.
Since they’d gotten such a late start, they decided to stop off in the DC area for the night instead of Roanoke, VA, as they’d originally planned. Neal had found them a nice B&B in Old Town to stay in, and Peter called his old Quantico instructor and friend, Dr. Pamela Shirley, to see if she was available to meet them for dinner. She’d invited them for a home-cooked meal instead.
“She used to be a psychiatrist at the CIA - practically rewrote the FBI Academy’s curriculum on interrogation techniques when she transferred.”
“Maybe I don’t want to meet her,” Neal said wryly.
“Stop - you’ll love her.”
“There,” Neal said, pointing, and Peter turned into the driveway of a stately old stone house set back from the road. Despite the lowering light, Neal caught a glimpse of a well-maintained lawn and garden, where beds filled with hundreds of colorful tulips peeped up at them. As they left the car and headed for the front door, Peter bent and picked one of the tulips and threaded it through the buttonhole of Neal’s jacket. It was a shade of pink so pale it was nearly white.
“Peter!” Neal hissed, batting at Peter’s hands. “What are you doing?”
“Trust me, she’ll get a kick out of it,” he said confidently, though Neal didn’t look like he believed him.
The woman who answered - short, motherly, and with her greying hair pulled back in a ponytail at the nape of her neck - certainly didn’t project fearsome interrogator to Neal.
“Peter, darling!” she exclaimed, pulling him into a fierce hug on sight. “It’s been so long, my goodness.” She beamed up at him, and grasped Peter’s hand between both of hers.
“Shirl, old girl, you haven’t changed a bit,” Peter said, a large grin on his face.
“Yes, well, there are a few more grey hairs, but grandchildren will do that to you. And who have we here?” she asked, her piercing blue eyes eyeing Neal shrewdly.
“This is Neal Caffrey,” Peter said, adding no qualification at all, making Neal wonder.
“Hello, Neal, I’m pleased to meet you,” she said, holding out a hand. Her handshake was firm and brief. “What a pretty flower you’ve chosen,” she said, but she turned her mischievous eyes on Peter.
Still, Neal felt uncomfortable. “It reflects the gardener,” he offered up, and she laughed lightly.
“Charming,” she said, then led them into the kitchen. “Can I get you both a cocktail?” she offered.
“Nothing for me, thanks, Dr. Shirley,” Neal said politely.
“Please call me Pamela - only that one gets away with calling me Shirley,” she said as she tossed her head at Peter. “Peter? The usual?” She pulled a bottle of Heisler from the fridge.
Peter smiled. “You know me so well.”
She laughed. “I’m surprised I remembered! I don’t normally keep that stuff in the house!”
“What, beer?” Neal asked.
“Cheap beer,” she qualified, and then they were all laughing.
Dinner was a simple yet delicious pasta dish prepared with new peas and prosciutto. When they’d done eating, Neal rose immediately to clear, carefully stacking the plates in his left hand, then went to pick up the large serving bowl the pasta was in.
“I’ve got that,” Peter said, rising as Neal struggled with the combined weight of the heavy stoneware dishes.
“I can do it,” Neal said a bit sharply, but then added a smile, “you drink your cheap beer.” He headed off for the kitchen and lay what he was carrying on the counter.
“I can at least rinse or something,” Peter said, having followed close behind. He put a hand on Neal’s back as he moved past him towards the sink. Neal stiffened but did not respond, then returned to the dining room to retrieve the remaining glasses and cutlery. Leaving them on the counter for Peter to deal with, he went to find containers for the leftovers, keeping the kitchen island between them. Peter glanced at him half-apologetically, half-defiantly while Neal ignored him.
“Can I interest anyone in some coffee?” Shirley asked, breaking the silence.
“We’ll both have decaf,” Peter answered right away.
Neal closed his eyes and sighed. “Yep, decaf,” he said resignedly.
“Don’t sound so excited about it, Neal,” Shirley kidded, and then indicated the Keurig machine on the counter. “Luckily, we can all have whatever we like.”
They settled in the living room with their desserts and coffee a few minutes later.
“Why so tense Neal?” Shirley asked him mildly, after the small talk about recipes and how one took one’s coffee had petered out.
Neal smiled self-consciously, then sat back into the chair he occupied, trying to appear relaxed. “Well, I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Peter mentioned you were a top interrogator at the CIA and that you pretty much reinvented the curriculum at Quantico, and, well…” His voice trailed off sheepishly.
Shirley cocked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes. “Have you done something I ought to be interrogating you for?”
“Not as far as you know, no.”
That got a laugh, but she still eyed him shrewdly. “Well, you needn’t worry - I can turn it off, you know.”
“That’s good to hear.”
They drank their coffee in silence for a few minutes more, Shirley watching them both passively, but not missing anything, either. Neither man looked at each other.
“So Peter, I know you said you were just passing through, but you never mentioned where you were going,” Shirley prompted.
“We’re going to visit my mother,” Neal supplied, setting his dessert dish down on the coffee table.
“Does she live nearby?”
“No, she’s in Santa Fe.”
“New Mexico? That’s an awfully long commute,” Shirley observed, but Neal's eyes flicked away.
“Neal’s a bad flyer,” Peter explained, “and I like road trips.”
“You always did at that. He used to insist on driving us everywhere,” she explained to Neal. “At first I thought it was because he was a little kiss-ass.”
Neal laughed. “Then you discovered he’s just a garden variety control freak?”
“Ah-ha-ha-ha! Yes. But you’d know that as well as anyone, yes, Neal?”
“You don’t know the half of it, Pamela.”
“I think I’m going to regret bringing you here,” Peter said.
“Oh, I don’t,” she said. “Any opportunity to tease you, Peter, cannot be passed up. So Santa Fe - it must be lovely in the mountains this time of year?”
“I’ve never been there,” Neal told her, uncomfortable again. “I haven’t really seen my mother since she moved there.”
“Then it’ll be nice to catch up,” she said, deftly moving on to less touchy topics.
Eventually, Neal persuaded her to regale him with more tales of Peter’s time as a student and, later, when he worked with her on his thesis. They laughed until after midnight, most of it at Peter’s expense.
“My goodness, is that the time?” Neal said at 12:25. He rose and stood beside Peter’s chair. “We need to be going.”
“Do you think we’ll be able to check in at the B&B still?” Peter said in a low voice.
Shirley waved her hands. “Nonsense - you’ll stay here. I’ve got plenty of room, and I’ll love to make you both breakfast in the morning.”
“We wouldn’t want to impose,” Neal began.
“You aren’t. As a matter of fact, you’ll be doing an old lady a favor - just seeing the look on my busybody neighbor’s face when two handsome young men leave here in the morning will make it all worth it!”
----
“Where am I sleeping?” Neal asked Peter as he entered the guest room. He had just taken a shower and noticed that Peter was already sitting in the bed.
Peter looked at the space next to himself in the bed and then up at Neal. “With me. Like always.”
Neal looked over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Peter.” Neal didn’t want to shock Peter’s old mentor - it was one thing for her to extend her hospitality to them on such short notice, another thing entirely for them to expect her to understand their polyamorous relationship.
“Don’t worry about it, Neal.”
“Well, someone should be worried about it, don’t you think?”
----
“You’re an early riser, Neal,” Shirley said, taking a seat on the couch.
Neal looked up from his mug of herbal tea to look at the clock on the wall - it was 6:30. He’d risen before 5:00 and had been sitting in the same chair he’d occupied the night before, but he’d turned it around so he could watch the birds and squirrels scampering around in the garden through the large windows that took up most of the back wall.
“I don’t need a lot of sleep, lately.”
“Peter’s snoring doesn’t bother you?”
Neal looked away, unsure how to answer. “Umm…”
She chuckled, her eyes twinkling. “What are you more shocked by, the fact I knew you were sleeping together, or that I know that Peter snores?”
“The latter, I think? Someone’s been holding back vital information, Pamela.”
“It was a long time ago, shortly after my husband and I separated. Peter was… well, he had a crush, and I needed to feel like I mattered to someone. We both knew it was a bad idea as soon as the sun came up.”
“But you stayed close?”
“It’s hard to leave Peter Burke. I think you know that already.”
A hint of sorrow entered Neal's eyes, which he quickly suppressed.
“He cares for you, you know,” Shirley continued.
“I do. I do know.”
“It’s why he gave you that flower last night - it’s an old joke between us. He did the same when he brought Elizabeth down to meet me.”
“Is that what that was all about? So you knew all about us from the moment we got here?”
She nodded. “Peter’s always been an alpha male in that way - marking his territory as it were. A flower in a lapel here, a hand at the small of the back there. It used to drive me bonkers until I realized he did it with everyone he loves.”
Neal looked down into his half-drunk mug of tea. “I love him too,” he murmured, barely audibly.
She rose and placed a warm hand on his shoulder. “Then what are you holding back from him?”
St. Louis, MO, 1983
Danny sat in the small space on the floor of his closet, next to the laundry basket filled with stuffed animals and the one filled with laundry. He was folded up as small as he could get, his knees hugged tightly against his chest, and his head resting on top of them. He stopped crying a little while ago; now he was just tired.
“Danny? Baby?”
He heard his mother’s voice filter in through the slats on the closet door; when he looked up, he could see her legs through them, the light of the late January sun filtering into his room.
“I got a call from your teacher,” she said, and Danny could feel the tears rise in his eyes again. He didn’t like them, didn’t want them, but it happened whenever he was really, really mad and he couldn’t ever stop them. He hid his face in his folded arms and willed all of the feelings to just go away NOW.
“Ya wanna tell me what happened?” His mother’s voice was a lot closer now - she was resting on her knees just outside the door, her hand resting on the handle.
“Got in a fight,” Danny told her sullenly, his arms muffling his voice.
“So I heard. Why?”
He sighed; it was too big to put into words, really - the sadness and the misery - but what confused him the most was how small it made him feel.
“They were makin’ fun o’ me.”
“Making fun how?”
“They said I was a bastard.”
“What? Why would they say that?”
Danny raised his head and sighed. “Cuz I don’t have a daddy. They said all kids who don’t have daddies are bastards.”
It was Danny's mom’s turn to sigh. “That’s not what that means,” she told him, then sat down with her back against the wall beside the closet. “What did you do?”
“I told them my daddy was a hero and he was dead, but they said it didn’t matter, I was still a bastard.”
“Little assholes,” Regina Brooks muttered, because she didn’t think Danny could hear her. “Then what happened?”
Danny opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. He knew he wasn’t really in trouble, but he still couldn’t say it.
“Danny?”
“Then I punched Tommy Evans and then they jumped me.”
Danny saw his mother’s arm reach up and pull on the closet door, which folded outward on its tracks. Half of the closet was now completely illuminated from the sunlight in the room, including the lower half of Danny's body. He fought an urge to shrink away from it. “You hit first?”
Danny winced - he knew he wasn’t supposed to do that, but he’d been so mad. “I know ‘violence isn’t the answer,’” he replied by rote.
“Too right it isn’t - those kids are a lot bigger than you.” It was true - Tommy Evans was in the third grade. “You draw blood?” she asked after a long pause.
“Knocked out his tooth.”
“Danny!”
“It was loose anyways.”
“Violence is never the answer,” his mom repeated, even though she didn’t sound like she meant it, really.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“I know you are, honey.”
Danny was sorry - sorry he was so much smaller, sorry he wasn’t a big, brave hero like his daddy was. Mostly he was sorry that he might have made his mom sad, because it was hard enough on her, Aunt Ellen always said, raising a little boy all by herself. He didn’t mean to, and that was why he was in the closet hiding, because he was ashamed.
“Why don’t you come on downstairs?” she said, pulling the door out a bit more. She got to her feet and left the room.
Danny unfolded himself from the position he was in and scrambled out of the closet. Closing the door, he followed, finding his mother sitting at the tiny table in their kitchen, a glass of milk and a napkin with two cookies on it waiting for him at the place beside her. She had her sketchbook out and the oil pastels she only used when she was working - Danny's mom was an illustrator and usually only did boring drawings of knees and bones and stuff for a medical publisher, but every once in a while she drew for a kids’ book or a magazine, and that’s when she used the pastels. Danny took a bite out of one of the cookies and then sipped his milk, watching her. There was already an outline of what looked like a man on the paper.
“Whatcha drawin’?”
She didn’t answer him, instead she asked him a question. “Have I ever told you what happened to your dad?” she asked. He knew she knew the answer to that, because she never had. She thought he was too little to understand before, but maybe she’d changed her mind now. He shook his head no.
“You know he was a police officer, and that we had to move away when he… when he was… taken away from us.” She didn’t talk for a few minutes after she said that, she just drew.
“Well, there were some really bad men, and your daddy tried very hard to arrest them, and to make them pay for all the crimes they committed, but in the end he couldn’t.” She didn’t look at Danny, she just kept drawing.
“Did he try his bestest?”
She nodded. “He did, honey, he tried and tried, but sometimes that’s not good enough.”
Danny's brow furrowed in confusion. “But…” he paused, thinking really hard for the right words, “aren’t the good guys always s’posed to win? That’s why they are good.”
Danny's mom blinked really, really hard and kept drawing. “I know that’s what the stories say, and sometimes it’s even true. But other times… at other times the bad people are so good at being bad that they can fool people into helping them, or they can offer them things they’ve always wanted just so the bad people will win. It’s all very complicated - grown up stuff, you know?” She glanced up at Danny and then picked up a brown pastel and began coloring in what she’d drawn.
Danny thought really, really hard as his mother kept drawing. “It’s kind of like… Kyle Washington.”
“Who’s that, honey?”
“He was nice to me when school started, but now he’s friends with Tommy and them.” Danny had thought that maybe Kyle was his friend, but when he’d joined in with all the other boys calling him names - well, in a way, that hurt as much as their fists and their kicks.
“Yes, it is exactly like that.”
Danny finished his milk and watched his mother finish her drawing. When she was done, she pushed back from the table and motioned for him to join her. He hopped down from his chair and went to her, and she put her arms around him as he took in the scene. It was of a tall man in a policeman’s uniform, with a young boy on his shoulders, wearing his cap. Both of them were smiling; both of them had the same blue eyes.
“Is that me and my dad?” Danny asked, reaching out tentative fingertips to touch the figures, but holding back - he didn’t want to smudge it.
“Uh-huh.”
He stared at the picture for a long time while his mom held onto him, her nose buried in his hair. His mom didn’t really keep that many pictures of his dad around, and Danny thought it was because he was gone and she was too sad. “Are the bad men… can they get us?” he asked, giving voice to one of his deepest fears.
“No, honey. They may have taken your daddy away from us, but they can’t hurt us anymore. They’re far, far away.”
“My daddy was a brave man?” Danny just needed to hear her say it again.
“Uh-huh. He was.”
Danny knew in that moment that he wanted to be a policeman, just like his father. “I’m gonna be brave someday, too.”
“You already are, pumpkin,” she said, then pulled away from him and swatted him lightly on his behind. “Now, I’ve got to start dinner - why don’t you go and watch TV for a while? I think Scooby-Doo is on in a few minutes”
“OK, mom,” he said, letting the sketchbook fall to the table and scampering off to the living room.
When he was gone, Regina put her pastels away and stared down at her handiwork. It wasn’t the best likeness of James she’d ever drawn, but it was close enough, and she had gotten his and Danny's eyes exactly right.
“You are the blue in his eyes,” she said to the man in the drawing, wiping an angry tear from her eye before getting up to start making spaghetti and meatballs - Danny's favorite.
Shenandoah Valley, 2014
“What is Skyline Drive? I keep seeing signs,” Neal said, shifting in his seat to take in the rolling countryside outside the window of the Taurus. They had taken their leave from Shirley’s home shortly before 8:00 that morning.
“I think it’s a route along the Blue Ridge Mountains, overlooking the valley,” Peter said.
“It sounds intriguing.”
“You want to check it out?” Peter gave him the side-eye, eyebrows raised.
Neal frowned, mindful of their conversation the day before. “Should we? I know you’ve got all the legs of this trip planned out to the minute.”
Peter shrugged. “You tell me - isn’t your mom expecting us on a certain day?” Neal looked away. “Neal, your mother is expecting us, isn’t she?”
“I thought it would be better if she didn’t have the opportunity to think too much about my coming,” he replied.
“Neal! We’re driving 2,000 miles to see her, and she’s not expecting us? What if she’s not home or something?”
“She’ll be there.”
“What if she moved?”
“She didn’t - that’s a verified address.”
Peter stared at him as incredulously as he could whilst still driving and keeping an eye on the highway.
“So… Skyline Drive?” Neal prompted.
----
“Ooo! Stop here!”
Peter suppressed a sigh as he pulled over into yet another scenic overlook along Skyline Drive. As he might have predicted, when they’d finally arrived and entered the park, each turn of the road had offered up scenery more breathtaking than the last, and this was their sixth stop since lunch. At this rate, they were definitely not going to make it to Nashville, which had been the original plan. So much for the romantic night at the boutique hotel he’d gotten a great deal on.
Peter pulled into the small parking area at the side of the road and opened his door. When he glanced over at Neal, he was staring at the vista of the peaceful valley before them, open-mouthed.
“What?”
“I’ve got to paint this!”
“What? Neal, we can’t stay here all day.”
“Fine then, I’ll just sketch it.”
Neal got out of the car and headed straight for the trunk, where he’d squirreled away a few art supplies; Peter had wondered at it when they’d left, but said nothing - it wasn’t like they didn’t have the room in the trunk. Neal barely took his eyes off the view as he rooted around, then headed for a picnic table and sat atop it, cross-legged. Peter watched with a mixture of bemusement and exasperation and finally grabbed his Kindle and an old blanket from the trunk and sat under a tree in the shade near where Neal was setting up. Rather than read, though, he just watched Neal sketch using pen and ink, his wrist flicking delicately but surely as he worked, his eyes alight with the kind of inner fire that had made Peter fall for him in the first place.
An hour later, Peter cleared his throat and mentioned that they should think about getting back on the road. Neal agreed, but with the air of a child being told it’s time to leave the playground to go home and have a nap. Peter tried to hide his amusement under a gruff exterior, but it was a tough sell. Besides, if he knew Neal, he’d be ordering Peter to pull over at least a dozen more times before getting back on the Interstate - the park had over 70 according to the pamphlet from the visitor’s center.
“We have to come back here in the Fall,” Neal said enthusiastically as he buckled his safety belt. “The lighting then will be so much better-angled for painting, and the leaves - El will love the leaves!”
“She sure will,” Peter chuckled, starting the car. As he glanced at Neal with his bright eyes and anticipatory smile, Peter felt a stab of sorrow that he quickly suppressed. They would come back in the Fall. Neal would make it that long.
They would come back in the Fall.
Kingsport, TN to Memphis, TN, 2014
“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Neal, did you hear that?” They’d been listening to the comedy station on the satellite radio, and it was the classic George Carlin bit about seven words. “God, I love this guy!
“Neal?” Peter glanced over to see that Neal’s eyes were closed, he was hunched down in his seat, and he appeared to be sleeping peacefully. “Neal?” Peter said a bit louder, but Neal didn’t stir.
“NEAL!” Peter said loudly, panicked. He reached out to clutch at his lover’s wrist.
“What? What?” Neal said, waking immediately and looking around. “What happened - did we hit something?”
“No, um…” Peter didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry… I woke you… I…”
“I fell asleep.”
Peter nodded.
“I do it all the time. Fall asleep. Like, nightly sometimes.”
“I know that.”
“No need to freak out over a cat nap, Peter.”
Neal was cranky and Peter supposed he couldn’t blame him, having been so rudely awakened. He hadn’t been sleeping well, Peter knew this, and mentally kicked himself for overreacting. They drove in silence for several minutes.
“I know you’re scared,” Neal said so quietly Peter barely heard it, but it sounded like an accusation.
----
They actually made it to Memphis in time to check into a decent, suite-style hotel and consider dining choices. “Where do you want to go?”
“As long as it’s not an Olive Garden, I’ll eat anywhere,” Neal said, lifting his suitcase onto the bed.
“Barbecue?”
“When in Rome.”
The front desk made some recommendations, and Peter chose one within walking distance. Neal opted for pulled pork, but Peter went for a full rack of ribs that were the best he’d ever tasted - not that he expected any less in this part of the country. They talked about everything and nothing - that is, nothing to do with their current trip or the reasons for taking it. He actually wasn’t all that clear on why they were taking it, but Neal suddenly wanted to see his mother, and who was Peter to refuse him? Besides, he had the vacation time coming, and El thought they’d do well with some “boy time.” They had a good time at dinner.
They were walking back to the hotel when Peter came to a stop, Neal looking at him questioningly. “Beale Street’s not far - wanna check out a few clubs?” Neal’s smile was answer enough.
They found a hole in the wall and ducked into its smoky darkness; it was standing room only for a pair of local acts that clearly had devoted followers. They left around 11:00, and when they were halfway to the hotel on the deserted streets of Memphis, Peter felt Neal’s fingers worm their way into his, and they strolled back slowly without speaking.
They parted when Peter needed to open their door with the key card, and he held the door open for Neal, who walked a few steps inside then turned and took Peter’s hand again. He used Peter’s forward momentum to pull him in closer, their chests bumping. Neal put his arms around Peter’s back and angled his head up, laying light kisses along Peter’s jaw. Closing his eyes and wrapping his own arms around Neal’s shoulders, Peter turned his own head and met Neal’s mouth halfway, the kiss long and slow and needful and everything a kiss ought to be.
“God,” Peter breathed, pulling him in even closer. Neal’s right hand came up and started tickling the short hairs on Peter’s neck, making him shiver. They kissed some more, Peter’s mouth traveling along Neal’s jaw and then to the spot just behind Neal’s ear that made him squirm.
When Neal’s hands came to rest on Peter’s belt, Peter pulled away with a jolt. “We... we shouldn’t.”
“Yeah, we should,” Neal said enthusiastically as he rubbed his crotch against Peter’s hip. Peter could feel Neal’s hard-on, his own dick stirring in answer to it. “Come on!! You’re not going to break me,” Neal said, his fingers trying to worm their way into Peter’s jeans, warm and insistent against his stomach.
Peter stilled and pulled his hips back. “I’m afraid I will.”
Neal stiffened and disengaged entirely. “Dammit, Peter, I’m not dying any time soon.”
Peter didn’t answer, he just looked down at his shoes.
“You’re really doing this to me, you’re really,” Neal gestured vaguely between them, indicating their physical closeness, “taking this away?”
“Neal -“
“Don’t ‘Neal’ me, Peter! Do you know how condescending that sounds?”
“Don’t upset yourself, the doctor said -“
“I am fully aware of what the doctor said,” Neal said coldly. “And I can’t let this diagnosis hold my life hostage. I am not some ticking time bomb.”
“But that’s all I can think about,” Peter said quietly and took another step back, acutely aware of the bulge in his pants and cursing it.
“It’s all I can think about!” Neal practically shouted. He laughed bitterly. “Stupid me for thinking, maybe for the first time since I found out that maybe … that you could help me forget. Just one night, Peter. Just us, back to normal again.”
“Neal.”
“You haven’t touched me in weeks. Neither has El. Do you know how that makes me feel, on top of everything else?”
“I’m sorry,” Peter said, and he was suddenly unsure what to do with his hands. He folded his arms in front of himself, then dropped them, then shoved them into his pockets. Neal was right, it had been weeks. What were they thinking coming on this trip? At least at home they could pretend that the rigors of their daily lives got in the way. Now? Now they were supposed to be on vacation. What the fucking hell?
Peter pulled his hands from his pockets and reached out for Neal, but he backed away. “Careful, Peter, I might shatter,” he said before leaving the room entirely.
“FUCK!” Peter shouted, and he would have punched a wall or something, but he didn’t want to have to explain it to the hotel’s management.
----
Neal sat quietly in the living area of their hotel room some hours later, staring out of the window at the acid yellow lights in the parking lot, and cradling his cell phone in the palm of his hand. He’d walked around the neighborhood surrounding the hotel for over an hour before returning; when he had, Peter had already gone to bed and closed the bedroom door. He felt relieved - he didn’t think he could look at him - but he couldn’t walk the streets of this city all night long, and he could brood just as easily here.
He thought about the twist of fate that had brought them here, the diagnosis that had put his life in what seemed like a state of perpetual limbo. Neal had a “fusiform trifurcation aneurysm” - try saying that five times fast - in his brain, and it was in a place that was generally thought to be impossible to operate on. Ironically, it was found because an overenthusiastic intern at Lennox Hill had ordered a head CT for him when he’d taken a shot to the nose during his last case with the White Collar team.
It was supposed to have been a textbook case of mortgage fraud - a milk run before his sentence finally ended and the anklet was forever removed from his life - but the perp had other ideas when he was being arrested and the fist he’d thrown that Peter had deftly ducked wound up connecting with Neal’s face and he’d dropped like a sack of potatoes. Since he’d been knocked out, and Peter was a born worrywart, they’d taken him to the hospital, where an unnecessary head scan had uncovered the…
Well, the ticking time bomb in his head.
He had shown no symptoms whatsoever before or since, was in no pain or discomfort, but the position and size of the thing made it impossible to operate without an uncomfortably high chance of brain damage or worse, so he really had no choice but to live with it. The doctor said it may have been there for months or years, might last for years more. There was no predicting it. All he knew was he shouldn’t fly, had to avoid alcohol, caffeine, sodium (and most of the things that made life worth living), not exert himself, and eat healthfully. Apparently “not exerting himself” equated to sex in Peter and El’s book, and Neal hadn’t gotten any in the six weeks since the diagnosis. His balls were so blue he wondered if that might be a risk, though if he was truthful with himself, he was afraid to even jerk off.
The fact of the matter was this was the thing that would probably kill him, and there would be no warning at all if it was about to burst, not until it did. And then it wouldn’t matter because he’d be dead.
It was the uncertainty and unpredictability of his plight that was the worst - at least if he had cancer or heart disease or something, he could work out a progression in his head and learn to accept it along the way. All he had to go on now was that he would simply drop dead one of these days.
Except for the experimental procedure his doctor told him about just before he decided to leave New York that had a 31.3% mortality rate for cases like his. His doctor had dropped that little bombshell on him a week ago, and the next day he decided to go and visit his mother. Peter was only too enthusiastic to go along for the ride with him, and El was delighted he wanted to reunite with his mother. They’d begun booking hotels and planning the route immediately. Neal hadn’t told either of them a thing about the operation - he had an irrational desire to keep it to himself that he didn’t quite understand. His doctor kept leaving him messages to try to schedule something - he’d just picked up another one on his cell.
Neal sighed and got up to go to the window, feeling the need to move. The city was quiet - not much happening around the hotel at 2:00 in the morning, apparently. Memphis was definitely not New York in that respect, but he found the quiet soothing.
A few minutes later, the bedroom door opened suddenly and with force, and Peter stood there, rumpled from sleep and with his hair sticking out in all directions. His eyes looked wild, until they rested on Neal, and he relaxed. “You’re here,” he said.
Neal didn’t say anything, just shrugged.
“I dreamt you were gone.”
There was a quality to his voice that pulled at Neal; he took a step forward. “I’m right here.”
Peter ran a hand through his hair. “You were gone and I couldn’t find you. I was so…”
“Mad?”
“Grief-stricken,” Peter said, and now Neal realized there were tears in his eyes. He went to him and wrapped his arms around him; Peter was shaking.
“I’m right here, Peter.”
Peter draped his arms around Neal. “Don’t go, don’t leave us.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Don’t go,” Peter repeated, and Neal led him back into the bedroom and settled him down on the bed. He stripped to his underwear and got in beside him, pulling Peter into his arms and tucking his head under his own chin.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you before,” Neal said slowly.
“I’m sorry I made you feel like you had to.”
Neal sighed and reached his hand up to stroke Peter’s hair. “I hate everything about this, but do you know what’s the worst? The way you act around me. You’re always just there, and you give me these looks, and it’s like...” He searched for the right words. “When you hover over me like that, it’s a constant reminder that something’s wrong.”
Peter took Neal’s other hand and held onto it tightly. “When I hover over you, it reassures me that nothing’s wrong,” he said wryly.
They lay in silence for several minutes. Neal thought that Peter had fallen back to sleep when he spoke again, quietly, “In my dream, you were gone. I was in a big house - ours but then not, you know? And I was going from room to room, and you just weren't there. I kept expecting to see you behind the next door, or the next, but you were gone. And I felt like I had lost you, like physically lost you, and I had to get you back. But I couldn’t find you.”
Peter took a deep breath before continuing. “You always run.”
“Peter, I -“ Neal was about to deny it, but Peter was right - Neal always ran from his problems. He ran to Europe when he lost Kate, he ran after the warehouse exploded, or he intended to; he ran from the knowledge of his past when he was 17. And what was this road trip if not him trying to run away from having to make a decision about his surgery?
“I can see it in your eyes, sometimes, that you want to, and it scares me. Don’t run, don’t leave us. Please.”
In that moment, with Peter’s head warm and slightly sweaty on his chest, Neal realized a truth that hadn’t occurred to him before: he was needed. There were two people who he now knew would be diminished by his absence, just as he would be by theirs. He was responsible for their happiness as much as he was for his own. He felt humbled and a bit overwhelmed by the realization.
“I swear to you that I never will,” he said to Peter, who seemed to be satisfied and soon drifted off to sleep.
St. Louis, MO, Thanksgiving, 1992
“Danny, I don’t want to have to ask you again to pick up all this stuff before your Aunt Ellen gets here, come on,” Regina Brooks said to her son in the slightly condescending tone of exasperated mothers of teenaged boys the world over. She swept into the kitchen to check on the pies in the oven. A surly response, muttered just low enough for her not to hear, made her stop in her tracks. “What was that?” she asked.
“I SAID YOU NEVER LET ME DO WHAT I NEED TO DO!” Danny shouted at her, then he scrambled to his feet from where he was sitting in the middle of the living room and stomped out of the room.
“Lord save me from teenaged drama,” Regina said to herself and went to pick up after him. She was mildly surprised to see a sketchbook, and around it several drawings were scattered that had fallen out of it. As she gathered them to shove them back inside, she noticed they were all portraits of the same person in a variety of costumes - a boy she didn’t recognize - and many of them were surprisingly good. When she opened the sketchbook, there were several more inside, and in the last one, the one Danny had been staring at when she walked through, the boy was shirtless. Also, his face had been nearly obliterated by one of Danny’s discarded charcoal pencils.
Sighing, Regina picked up the sketchbook and walked up the stairs to her son’s room.
She knocked, but the music being played inside was so loud he didn’t hear her, so she was reduced to pounding on the door. “Danny! Come on now, open up the door!” she practically had to shout.
The music cut off suddenly as the door was pulled open, and her son - she was always surprised these days that he was now taller than her - stood glaring at her.
“What?!”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “Tone,” she warned.
“Sorry,” he said sullenly, and his shoulders relaxed marginally.
She handed him the sketchbook. “I think we have something to talk about.”
Danny froze, clutching the thing to his chest. Instantly, his eyes widened, and he began to look panicked. “Mom -“
“I didn’t know you could draw so well.”
“I… um… huh?”
She laid her fingertips on the sketchbook and let them trail down until they were resting on his wrist. “These are very good. I didn’t know you were interested in art.”
“You knew I took it in school,” he said to her warily.
“But I didn’t know you were this good, honey. You shouldn’t hide them all - you should be proud of them.”
“They suck.”
“They don’t.” She smiled at him. “Nice to see the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. If you were interested in art, you should’ve told me. I could help, give you pointers.”
“Mooooom!”
She held her hands up. “OK, OK.” He turned around and returned to the bed, and she leaned against the door frame, crossing her arms. “Who’s the boy in your drawings?” she asked him gently, and his entire body stiffened.
“Just this guy. From school.”
“You like him?”
Danny’s entire demeanor went cold. “No.”
“I could tell, the way you obliterated his entire face.” They stared at each other, and Regina could see the fear in her son’s eyes, the fear of what she would say next. “Never destroy your work, honey,” she said quietly. “You will always regret it.”
She turned around to return to the kitchen.
----
Hours later, after literally the most silent Thanksgiving meal ever served, Regina walked past Danny’s bedroom to find the door wide open and her son lying on his stomach, arms around the pillow his head was resting on. He was facing away from her.
Thinking he was asleep, she went in to turn off the lamp beside the bed.
“Carlos,” Danny said.
“Hmm?”
“The guy in the drawings, his name is Carlos. He’s on the football team.”
She made a non-committal noise, but stood her ground.
“I like him. I mean, liked him.”
“You don’t anymore?”
She saw him shake his head, but still he faced away from her. “He doesn’t like me. I thought he did, but then…”
He sounded utterly miserable, so she sat on the edge of his bed and laid a hand in the unruly waves in his hair, stroking through it soothingly as she’d done since he was a baby. “You want to tell me about it?”
He stirred, and turned to face her, and she could see the beginnings of tears in his eyes. “We used to hang out, mess around, you know - guy stuff, wrestling and telling jokes and stories. And then he…”
Regina felt her heart clench a bit in fear - the boy looked older, and was almost certainly larger if he was on the football team. “Did he hurt you, Danny?”
“He kissed me.”
“Oh?”
“And then he called me a faggot and pushed me away.”
“Oh.”
“I thought he liked me - he said he liked me. Why would he do that?”
“Probably because he’s afraid.”
Danny scoffed. “Afraid of me? He’s a junior and I’m a freshman!”
“No, not afraid of you, Danny, of himself. He’s afraid of what liking you means.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?”
He lowered his eyes. “He’s afraid if anyone finds out. Cuz he likes a guy, cuz he likes me.” He rolled over onto his back, pulling the pillow with him, hugging it to his chest. “It’s not fair, why can’t people just like who they want to like?”
She reached over and laid her hand on his leg, sighing; her son was so sensitive, so open and loving - the traits in him she loved the most, but that would probably get him hurt a lot in his life. He was just like her, and she feared for him. “If only it were that simple, honey.”
He looked at her, blue eyes so wide and innocent. Life was going to eat him alive unless she did something about it. “Danny, there are certain truths in life that you are going to have to learn for yourself,” she said. “People are going to hate you, and they are going to judge you, and they are going to be cruel and hurtful, just because of who you are.”
“Is this supposed to be a pep talk, Mom? Because you’re doing a really crappy job of it.”
She couldn’t help but smile, a little, grimly, and remembered a similar conversation she’d had with her beloved Grandpa Solomon when she was young and being taunted for being different. He was the one who’d taught her sleight of hand, and he’d taught her how to keep her face neutral in the face of some pretty spectacular bullying. She learned later he’d been a magician on Vaudeville as a young man, and, she’d always thought, had probably used those skills for thingsa bit less savory as well.
“It’s supposed to help you cope, Danny. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that if people think they can’t hurt you, they stop trying.”
“How do you do that?” he asked, sitting up.
“Think of it like putting on a mask. I’m going to teach you how to make it so that no one will ever really know what you are thinking or feeling.”
“You think I can do that?” he marveled.
“You can do anything you put your mind to, kiddo. I know you can.”
Memphis, TN to Oklahoma City, OK, 2014
“VIVA LAS VEGAS!!! VIVAAAAA LAS VEGAS!”
Peter sat back in the passenger seat of the Taurus and sang along at the top of his lungs to the new CD he’d popped into the car’s stereo. Neal laughed hysterically as they zipped along the wide expanse of I-40 just West of Little Rock, AR. When the song was over, Peter was laughing too.
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into going to Graceland!” he said happily to Neal.
Neal turned the sound down on the next song - In the Ghetto was not a favorite - and smiled at Peter. “I thought we could use some light entertainment.”
“Well, the Jungle Room is that, indeed,” Peter agreed. “I’m starving to death - can we get some lunch?”
“As long as it’s not the Olive Garden -“
“Hey, what have you got against Olive Garden, anyway?”
Neal shuddered. “You can’t slop Alfredo sauce on everything and call it Italian cuisine, you just can’t.”
Peter thought he had a valid point. They found a Cracker Barrel next to the highway and pulled off. Neal excused himself to the men’s room while Peter perused the game of Chinese checkers at their table, trying to remember the rules. A flash of movement in front of the table caught his attention and when he looked up, he saw Neal standing there, his hair all gelled up into a pompadour, with a classic Elvis sneer on his lips.
“Uhh…” Peter began, astonished.
“Hey, bebeh,” Neal drawled in a fair approximation of an Elvis impression, then he swiveled his hips in an even better physical one.
Peter grinned from ear to ear. “I can see why they called him the pelvis.”
“Thank you. Thankyouverehmuch,” Neal growled and lifted his leg over the back of his chair as he sat down, popping his collar at the same time.
The impersonation lasted through the waitress bringing them their drinks, and then Neal let it go, running his hands through his hair to right its style to something more like he usually wore. They discussed current events over a bacon cheeseburger (“I’m telling El,” Neal said) and a plate of pancakes (“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day - all day,” he added).
Peter was happy to see Neal acting more like his old self, the fight the night before gone, but probably not forgotten. How could they forget it? They’d been tentative around each other all morning, but it had changed when they’d passed the signs for Graceland on the highway and Neal had made an unexpected detour.
Clearly, Elvis fixed everything.
----
Neal took a seat at the desk in their darkened hotel room, staring at the symbol on his phone that told him he had another voice mail from his doctor’s office, and wondering when his insomnia, which had plagued him off and on his entire adult life, had become such a regular thing that he planned for it now. He’d taken the side of the bed nearest the windows when they’d turned in, and despite falling asleep beside Peter with no problem had found himself awake two hours later with no inclination to sleep more.
He wondered if it was a symptom or not. He wondered that about a lot of things, actually, and he was getting tired of it. Each time he woke with a stiff neck, or when his eyes got tired, he wondered if this was it, and he was getting tired of the drama, frankly. He glanced over at Peter and sighed - he wasn’t ready to leave him, not yet. Not ever.
He couldn't wait to see his mother.
He didn’t want to see his mother.
The last time he saw her, he was 17; he turned 36 eight weeks ago. He’d now lived more years apart from her than with her.
Suddenly restless and claustrophobic in the small hotel room, he got up, deleted the voice message without listening to it, and left. He walked aimlessly until he finally felt tired and then headed back to the hotel. When he returned he was surprised to see it was after 3:00 AM.
He crawled under the covers and curled up next to Peter, who he realized was awake when he pulled Neal close to him and buried his nose in his hair with a rumbly sigh. He fell asleep with the sound of Peter’s heartbeat in his ear, and wondered what he’d say to his mother when he saw her the next day.
St. Louis, MO, 1995
Danny stood in the doorway to his mother’s bedroom where she was folding some laundry and waited to be noticed.
“Hey, honey - home so early? Half day at school?”
“I spoke to Aunt Ellen.”
“You always speak to Aunt Ellen.”
“She told me the truth about my father.”
Regina flinched as if physically struck, and Neal could see her shoulders stiffen. “Oh.”
“You let me think he was a hero. You told me he was dead.”
“I said he was taken from us, and he was. The man I knew - the man I loved - was taken away. The day he accepted a bribe, he became a different person, one who put his own greed ahead of his family.”
Danny didn’t understand what she was talking about. All he knew was that the only one he trusted, the person who’d mattered most in his life, had based everything he’d believed about himself and his background on a pack of lies. “You lied to me,” he accused.
“I have never lied to you, Dan, not once. I may have let you draw certain conclusions that weren't correct, but I never actually lied.”
“Is that supposed to make it all right now?” She didn’t answer. “Is it? Why wouldn’t you tell me? Why, Mom, why? WHY?” He was shouting now, shaking, his anger and feelings of betrayal and shame nearly overwhelming.
She shook her head, tears streaming down her face, as if she was denying something.
“Why, Mom?” he asked once more, his own tears blurring his vision until he could barely see her. He blinked them away angrily.
“Because I’m afraid of what that knowledge will do to you, Dan,” she said, the words sounding as if they were being torn from her, as if they hurt. “I’m afraid you’ll be just like him!”
Danny took a step back as if struck.
“You think I don’t know?” she asked quietly. “Did you think your old Mom wouldn’t find out you were pulling Three Card Monty scams and hustling pool after school? Did you think I didn’t know?”
Dan was shocked she knew - he’d only done those things for some pocket money, and he never greased any chumps that couldn’t afford it. He lashed out at her, “Where do you think I learned how to do all of that from? Who taught me how to palm a card in the first place?”
“Those were just stupid party tricks,” she said; it was Regina’s turn to be shocked.
“You said you were afraid I’d become like him? Well, you’re the one who taught me everything I know, so I guess that apple really didn’t fall far from the tree did it?” Dan said and ran to his room, slamming the door behind him.
Part 2