Day 31 - Your Voice in My Head (is screaming) - Peter/Neal - R
Title: Your Voice in My head (is screaming)
Author:
turtlebaby_02
Fandom: White Collar
Written For:
mmom 2014
Characters (Pairings): Peter/Neal
Rating: R
Word Count: 1100
Warnings: Spoilers up to and for Season 5 finale, big ones and small, you've been warned.
Summary: Phone calls with Neal were nothing new, just an everyday part of his life.
Disclaimer: 31 in 31 and the wank is done. I'm getting my boys some sort of balm and sending them to bed. Goodbye, see ya later.
He'd heard Neal's voice a thousand times over the phone. A hundred different inclinations and emotions. He'd heard him when he didn't know who he was, just a voice and a tease, a game and a chase. A man on the run with no sense of self preservation; a mocking that begged "Come catch me, I dare you."
So he did and locked the door behind him, but he couldn't shut him out of his mind. So when the calls started coming "Do you accept collect charges from inmate: Hey, Peter! It's Neal!" He always accepted. Those calls were the brightest and the shortest, Peter thought maybe he was trying to reassure himself that he was going to be ok.
The calls stopped between Kate leaving and Peter's deal. They met and Peter had laughed at him and the calls stopped. In the end, though he'd never admit it, that's a big part in why it was so easy to say yes. Because for those months; he missed him.
Once he was at June's, Peter's phone rang daily; sometimes more. With a question or an answer or maybe Neal's desire to reach out and touch someone who knew him. Like maybe it was too quiet in that big house alone. "Did I leave anything in your car? Oh, wait, there it is. ... How's Elizabeth?"
When Kate died the calls started coming with a worrying frequency after midnight that neither man acknowledged. Maybe he should have, maybe he would have if not for the soft sound of crying that took the place of his words, if not for the comfort Peter tried to give back in nonsense whispers. "It's ok. You're ok. I'm sorry." He couldn't imagine the pain, he didn't want to, but that didn't stop his need to lead Neal through the darkness of his heart.
Sometime after that something big changed and he wasn't sure what it was until El came bolting in with the other handset to her ear and a smile that nearly hurt to look at. "He's flirting with you!" He knew his eyebrows almost hit his hairline but then Neal spoke again and something in his chest broke open and glowed. "Maybe I am... Is that ok?"
After that he heard him silly. "Peter, I'm sitting on my couch eating pizza rolls and wine, come over or not but we're watching cartoons." That's usually how the best nights started.
He knew him angry and hurt, on a level Peter had never seen before, because he'd never known him like this before. "You need to give me space, ok? Just fuck off for awhile." He was scary calm when he got mad. The more hurt he was, the slower he talked. Peter misread that the first time and didn't fix it until it was almost too late. Now Neal gave him warning signs. Fuck off always meant that he'd fucked up. He listened for those words very carefully when he wasn't sure if they were arguing or fighting - they defines the difference.
He knew his voice on the phone happy and giddy and sad. He knew it bored and lonely and stressed. He knew when he wanted to talk and when he wanted to talk about the weather just by the way he greeted him. "Peter?" was shades away from "Hey. Peter." which was a whole other ballpark than "Hey, Peter!"
But his favorite was always be "Hey, Peter?" Because it was low and lit a fire and was always followed by "Are you alone?" Which, at his affirmative was was followed by some of the filthiest phone sex he'd ever heard - and he'd spent time listening to phone taps with professionals - and the slide of Neal's hand over his cock until there were no words left and they were both coming, a combination of Neal's high whines and his own subdued gasps that left them both breathless.
He'd heard him playful and drunk and thoughtful. He'd heard the words and knew the uncertainty behind them when he'd been gone for those six weeks and it was Neal accepting his collect calls. He knew the code that took him exactly 7 minutes to figure out after he hung up the first time. "I'm sorry, we miss you, 459." It didn't get too much simpler and it broke his heart, the words they weren't allowed to say.
But he got out, on a lie and a dance with the devil and it all kind of went to shit after that. It wasn't that he didn't understand. It wasn't that he wasn't grateful. But it was a whole new level of worry and burning guilt knowing what Neal had risked for him, knowing that he was slipping and it was because of him; because of the love between them. So he pushed him away. His voice on the phone became professional and cold. The voice of someone he used to love.
He thought he knew hurt then. Until he was gone.
Nothing could have prepared him for the voice three weeks later - he'd never heard him like that before, not once. It was fear. "I didn't run, Peter." Like somehow that was the most important part. "He took me and I don't know where I am." That was. "Please, Peter. You need to be looking for me because I don't know where I am." And then there was a grunt of pain and a cry that he would hear for weeks inside his head. A cry that would wake him in the night and send him bolting for the bathroom as his stomach heaved.
It was Diana's number and her voice when they found him. It was her careful words that had him frozen in the dark with one shoe on and tears burning behind closed lids. It was her who told him of the injuries and the blood. Or the man who was underweight and broken nearly beyond repair.
But it was also the shuffle of static and low murmurs he couldn't hear and her voice that commanded "Stop."
Then. "Peter?" And he fell to his knees in the hush of his home and clung to his phone like a lifeline. "Neal." He breathed and his exhale was echoed and tears wet his cheeks. "We've got you. You're ok, I've got you. I'm coming, I've got you."
"Peter." He breathed hard, like a man exhausted and finished and finally home. "Peter." A gasp of a sob and then Diana was back with the hospital and more careful words about his condition. But Peter barely heard them as his wife grabbed the keys and ushered him out the door.