Chapter Text
Water splashes across Peter’s feet as he yanks closed his soaked umbrella: insult to injury. He curses, ducks his head down towards the door in a futile attempt at shelter from the April onslaught, and digs for his keys.
It’s one thing to spend all night on a stakeout—an unproductive one at that—it’s another for even the damn weather to have it out for him. The former Peter has to accept without complaint: he knows where he stands and not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Hughes as much as said put your head down, do your work, and be happy you still have your badge. But the latter, Peter can and will air his feelings about.
He manages to shove open the front door and stumbles into shelter, dripping all over the entryway in the process. Peter sheds a sopping jacket, water-logged shoes. Discovers that even his socks are wet. They join the growing pile on the hardwood. Peter’s got three whole days before El’s back from DC and that makes the mess a problem for a later date. A mentality which already has the sink full of dishes and a beer bottle collection coming together nicely on the coffee table.
Peter traipses up the stairs, bed a singular objective on his mind—then realizes he’s forgetting something. The dog. Who hasn’t gone out since the neighbor came by. And who didn’t bother to greet Peter as per usual either.
He wets his lips to whistle halfheartedly. Waits for a click of paws that…doesn’t come.
“Satch?”
There’s a soft thumping in response, a tail wapping against the floor downstairs. Peter reverses course. Unease starting to seep through his haze of fatigue.
He starts across the dim living room, and only makes it halfway.
"Neal?”
The figure, slouched under a blanket against the back of the couch with the missing dog curled beside him, jolts upright. Back—except back is only into heavy upholstery.
“You’re…” Eyes dart around the shadowed space for a beat of confusion. “Home early,” Neal finishes with a wince.
“Are you okay?”
Peter flicks on the closest lamp, bouncing soft light over the living space and making Neal’s eyes pinch.
It’s not a blanket. It’s Peter’s winter coat. The one that he lent the kid months ago and that Peter’s supposed to be packing away from the hall tree to go up with the rest of the winter stuff in the attic—a chore he likely won’t motivate himself to get to until it’s near 80 degrees outside.
The thick fabric is draped over Neal from the shoulders down. Held closed by a pale fist.
There are abrasions on the side of Neal’s face. His lip is swollen.
A sensation washes over Peter like being dipped in ice.
“Shit,” he hears himself exhale. “What happened?!”
A part of himself that Peter isn’t ready to acknowledge yet informs him that he already knows the answer to that.
Neal’s lashes waver over glossy eyes, like he’s still half asleep. That’s the generous explanation.
“I…” The word seems to catch in Neal’s throat. Whatever excuse he’s searching for, he doesn’t find it.
Or maybe he can tell that Peter doesn’t care to hear it.
Peter’s broiling internal argument between fear and cynical rage comes to halt as a third voice—the field agent with crisis management training—kicks back in. Finally. “Can you walk?”
“Walk?” Neal echoes.
“Yeah, to the car.” By the time Peter calls and an ambulance gets here, it likely will have been faster to have driven Neal himself.
He waits, but the only reaction Peter gets is a set of dumbfounded blinks.
“So we can go to the hospital, Neal.”
Neal’s eyes widen at the word, he sits up a little more against the couchback, a spark of coherence returning to his features. “The hospital? Why would… I’m fine.”
Peter doesn’t buy that Neal’s even convincing himself. “You don’t look fine,” he points out as levelly as he can manage.
The kid digs the hand that isn’t still gripping Peter’s coat into the ground, pushing himself up to his awkward feet. Satch jumps up with him. “It’s not a big deal,” he says, his steady voice not doing anything to keep Peter from seeing the way his knees wobble. “Really, Peter, I—”
“You’re hurt. This isn’t a debate.”
Neal casts his eyes up to the ceiling. “It’s swelling,” he says with a half smile, “I think some frozen peas will do the trick.”
If it was just swelling, the kid already would’ve been out the door. The fact that he hasn’t attempted to make a run for it is raising a lump in the back of Peter’s throat. A feeble dam against all the observations Peter doesn’t want to think about—the details he’s certain Neal doesn’t want him to enumerate either.
He lets his stare say the words he won’t.
The rain beats against the windows. The dog shifts to sit against Neal’s leg.
Neal’s bravado melts away in the face of Peter’s resolve.
“I’m sorry that I barged in,” the boy offers meekly, desperation at the edges of his voice and distance in his tone. “I… I know you told me not to pick the lock again, and I didn’t, I promise—”
Peter frowns. “You need to get checked out.” He can’t tell if this is the newest tactic or if Neal genuinely believes that proper medical care is akin to a punitive measure.
“—the…the spare key was right there under the—”
“By a doctor.” Maybe it’d be easier to just pick the kid up and carry him to the car. Then again, Peter can think of at least two reasons why that’s probably a bad idea.
“But I,” Neal babbles on, his shoulders drawing up tighter, “I won’t do it again. And—”
“I don’t care about any of that,” Peter cuts in, harsher.
Neal’s eyes meet Peter’s in a glaze of panic. Hold there, searching for flexibility.
The kid must not find any.
More of Neal’s weight sags against the couch, “I can’t go to a hospital,” he says, with the resignation of honesty.
“Why not?” Last Peter heard, physicians didn’t bite.
Neal swallows through a tremor. His eyes retreat around the room—over the framed photographs on the opposing wall and the files Peter’s not cleared from the kitchen table—and land on the top of the dog’s head. “Doctors are…” he picks up quietly. “They have to report this kind of thing.”
So does Peter, technically. And yet, here they are.
“I know.”
Neal waits, like he’s giving time for Peter to put together the obvious, but Peter long since has. He just doesn’t care. It didn’t cross his mind to care. He’ll do what he has to keep Neal safe and that’s that.
“If you know, then—”
“We’ll figure it out, kid.”
Fear tightens Neal’s voice. “No, we—we won’t. You don’t understand what’s at stake here.”
Neal keeps on saying that, and it might’ve been true the first couple of go-arounds, but it’s not anymore.
“Your safety? My career?”
The first of those is already out the window and the second, Peter couldn’t give less of a fuck about, not when Neal’s life could be on the other side of the equation. Forget could be, is.
That’s the summation of the deluge of clinical details that the investigator who’s found this kid a dozen times over can’t not notice now: Neal’s hair is damp from the rain. He’s trembling under the coat. His knuckles are scraped up and there’s grime under his fingernails.
“He’s—I only get so many chances and he’s already—”
Peter looks bitterly from Neal’s pallid face to the dark blotch of a stain on his own coat. “You’re bleeding. You can’t stand up straight, either. We’re going to the ER.”
Neal shakes his head frantically, his legs wilting beneath him. “Please don’t do this.”
“I can drive you,” Peter lays out firmly, as the kid’s lips start to shake, “or I can call an ambulance, it’s your pick.”
“N-no, I—”
“It’ll be okay. I promise it will—”
Neal audibly drags down a inhalation and what comes back up is a sob.
The kid sags to the ground, tears spilling down his face.
Peter watches on in horror. He’s well acquainted with Neal’s crocodile tears—these aren’t them.
Neal’s ragged breaths are getting quicker and quicker. “Hey,” Peter tries to interject awkwardly, “Neal, it—”
“No,” the boy says roughly, his fingernails biting into the wood and tears still streaming. “He— He’s— It’ll be because of me. ”
Peter has no idea what Neal’s talking about and he doesn’t get to find out, because Neal looks up at Peter with genuine terror in his eyes. Terror that Peter, in the face of, feels rather like he’s staring down the barrel of a loaded gun.
And also like he’s holding a loaded gun.
Satchmo whines, nudges his head into Neal’s lap. Peter’s heartbeat pounds against his ribs. Neal continues to silently cry with the sort of numb despair that Peter’s only ever seen in a prior life on the faces of people who’ve just been told their loved ones are dead.
Peter exhales a shaky breath, he crouches down beside Neal, who doesn’t acknowledge him, and sits back. He doesn’t know what to do anymore than he knows what he just did, but he does know for a fact that he doesn’t want to see that look on Neal’s face ever again.
Neal’s breathing slowly settles, and the tears stop—he doesn’t bother to wipe his face. He stares off vacantly, his expression slightly scrunched with embarrassment.
Peter’s losing in his battle to not perceive that the kid smells like anxious sweat and sex and blood. It settles as a weight on his chest. He swallows against it.
“Why’d you come here?” he asks quietly, holding his tone perfectly even like balancing on a tightrope.
Neal doesn't look at Peter. Shame tautens in his cheeks. “I…I didn’t want to stay on the street like this,” he mumbles.
“And Adler?”
“Can’t see that—he—he’s already going to be mad enough when he does. I can’t work if…”
“Why not Mozzie?”
“You…”
“I wasn’t supposed to be home,” Peter fills in.
Neal nods. His eyes flick to Peter. “I—I wasn’t going to take anything,” he insists weakly.
“I know.”
“Or…mess with anything, or—”
There’s a hard lump in the back of Peter’s throat. “Kid, I told you you could stay here.”
Peter scrubs a hand over his mouth. He knows what he should do, what he’s supposed to do, but somehow this damn kid has managed to erode every ounce of certainty in Peter’s body. Shaken up his compass for correct and incorrect in lava lamp fashion.
Maybe he shouldn’t have let his Catholicism lapse, because if Peter ever needed to say a prayer for himself, now would be that moment. “If you don’t want me to have to call an ambulance, you’re at least gonna have to let me see.”
“See?”
“For all I know, you could be hiding a stab wound under my coat.”
“But I’m not.”
“But you could be.”
Neal doesn’t move for a moment. Then he slowly relaxes his death grip on the coat, drops his hand into his lap, his eyes averted. He shrugs the fabric off his shoulders.
“I wasn’t lying,” he offers.
The t-shirt the kid has on is dirtied, not soaked with blood which Peter will at least take as comfort enough to table the doctor issue for the time being. Maybe until after the kid has slept.
Peter stands as Neal tucks the coat tight with more urgency than is comforting.
“Come on,” Peter sighs, offers out a hand which Neal looks at like it’s a foreign object before accepting the help in getting to his feet. “How do you feel about stairs?”
“Fine,” Neal shrugs.
Peter doesn’t believe him.
Nonetheless, he motions a hand for Neal to proceed. Neal, looking like he has a question on his lips, bites them instead.
Neal limps his way across the living room to the staircase and begins to slowly leverage himself up, more by his hand on the banister than by any strength from his own legs. Peter, trailing, teeth gritted, tries to keep himself from helping because he’s not certain he should.
He points Neal to the guest bedroom and goes to find the first aid kit and some of El’s pajamas, which are likely his best bet for getting Neal into dry clothes. If nothing else, he’s at least cleaning the scrapes on the kid’s face and hands.
Neal, unfathomably, is clutching the back of the chair that’s tucked into the room’s small desk rather than sitting in it—he accepts the pjs with a paltry thanks. Peter leaves him to change and to finally let out Satch, who only follows Peter away from Neal the second time his name is called. The dog trots out the sliding glass door downstairs, unfazed by the rain, while Peter hovers in the doorframe.
Satchmo returns damp and pungent, he immediately darts for the stairs. Peter shares the sentiment—he doesn’t trust the kid alone either.
Satch makes it to the landing first. He paws open the guest bedroom door—a trick that neither El nor Peter taught him—before Peter can manage to catch him by the collar. “Sorry, he—”
Neal’s got El’s flannel pants on, drawstring cinched tight around his waist, he’s got the soiled t-shirt pulled up over his head. Peter’s coat is draped over the chair. Neal’s jeans are bundled on the floor.
Neal’s side is littered with contusions. Blooming purple around straight white lines.
Peter blenches.
The kid drops the shirt to the floor, glances at Peter frozen in the doorway. “You mind?”
Yes, Peter minds. He minds that there’s a heel print of a boot on the kid’s pale stomach. He minds that he can see each of the kid’s ribs. He minds that the pair of jeans that Neal’s just not so surreptitiously tried to cover with his shirt are certainly the source of the blood.
Peter opens his mouth, Neal gets there first.
“Mozzie,” Neal blurts. Folding his arms over himself. Which reveals to Peter that he also has one of the contusions on his upper arm. “Moz has a guy. A doctor. Who does work off the books; I’ve seen him before, he—he’ll come if…”
Peter’s already shaking his head.
“Please, you can call him. Moz has a number that’s just for me and—”
“What the hell happened?” Peter finally gets out.
Neal reaches for El’s folded t-shirt, a remnant from her high school softball team. “You’re always saying that I’m going to get into trouble.”
“That’s not—”
“Going to get hurt then.”
“Who did this?”
“It doesn’t matter. It was— I made a mistake, that’s all.”
“A mistake,” Peter repeats dryly.
Neal ignores him, gingerly pulls the shirt over his head. Working his arms through one at a time.
“You made a mistake.”
Neal nods, weary. He steps away from the chair to sink to the ground beside the desk. Leans against it.
“What are you doing? The bed’s right there, Neal.”
“No, I,” the boy waves off, “I’ll get Elizabeth’s… This is fine. I don’t want to get anything dirty.”
Peter squints. “You just changed,” he points out. “And I can tell you right now, El could care less.”
“I haven’t showered. This—this is fine Peter, really.”
Peter’s heart finds a new and unique way to break.
“I’ll call the little guy, and I won’t—unless this doctor,” and Peter’s saying doctor in the loosest sense, really, “says it’s necessary I won’t make you go to the hospital right now, but I’m— You’re not sleeping on the floor, kid. Not in my house.”
Neal glances down, plucking at the carpet. “O-okay.” He sits up shakily, doesn’t protest further as Peter helps him to the bed, pulls blankets over him. “My stuff,” he says suddenly, as Peter’s adjusting the pillows. Tries to get back up. “I didn’t pay for the hotel for…for tonight, they’ll—”
“Which hotel?”
“Why?”
“Cause I’ll get someone to go get it.”
“The North”
“Room number?”
“Two…207. They might’ve already…”
“I’ll take care of it.”
-
“He’s asleep now I think,” Peter says, keeping his voice low as he paces around the kitchen island. El immediately tried to insist on getting on the first plane, train, anything, home; Peter had reminded her that there’s no guarantee Neal will still be here by the time she is.
It didn’t work—if the road noise behind El is anything to go by.
He had debated not calling at all. But if he didn’t, El would skin him alive once she heard. And, besides, he needs her sanity. God knows El’s voice of reason is the only one that’s going to stop Peter from doing something he’ll regret. Like homicide. “The doctor—if he even is a doctor—said he might have internal bleeding, gave a whole list of… and fuck, El if he—I don’t care if I have to take him out of state, I don’t care if I have to give him a fake identity myself, I’m not letting him leave if—”
“I know, hon.”
“It was a cop,” Peter spits out, failing to control his volume.
“What?”
“I don’t know for sure yet. But—I’ve seen bruises like that before, they’re from a baton. Some piece of shit…” Peter’s gripping the phone hard enough to make his hand throb.
“Can you find them?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Neal comes first.”
“I know.”
The doorbell disrupts Peter from any further comment. He says a quick goodbye to El, discards his phone on the counter, and unlocks the door to let Diana in out of the rain. She’s got a black umbrella in one hand, a leather satchel in the other, and an air of nonchalance like it’s perfectly normal to be delivering the contents of a dingy hotel room to her boss on an early Thursday evening. Diana stays within the bounds of the entry rug as she performs a few pleasantries, the umbrella hooked on her arm. She hands over Neal’s bag and Peter thanks her.
She glances from Peter’s face, and the bags that are likely under his eyes, up the staircase. “Your nephew okay?”
Peter winces. “He’s…”
“You don’t have to tell me, boss.”
He intends on leaving Neal’s bag in the hall outside the guest room, but the door is ajar. Neal, eyes cracked open in the bar of light from the hall, looks at the satchel in Peter’s hand dazedly, “You weren’t kidding,” he says.
“Of course not.” Peter sets the satchel on the desk. The space smells more like antiseptic now than the fabric softener El likes. “Why aren’t you sleeping?” he asks.
Neal slides up against the pillows, his expression stiffening with pain. He shrugs.
The doctor—he’d introduced himself only as Steve—left prescription bottles on the nightstand, none of which have Neal’s name on them. Peter thumbs through them.
“You should take something for the pain.”
Neal smiles faintly. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to do drugs.”
“This is the exception.”
“I’m alright.”
“You can’t sleep,” Peter counters.
“I don’t like them.”
“Pain meds?”
“Drugs. Being… And like I said, I’m alright.”
Peter sets the vicodin bottle back down alongside the antibiotic course that Peter won’t be accepting argument about. “How about some tylenol, kid? Babies take that.”
He sees Neal’s protest make it onto his lips like some kind of reflex, before Neal wavers. And nods jitterily.
A glass of water and a trip to the medicine cabinet is an easy order. Peter sits on the edge of the bed, studies the back of the tylenol box. “How old are you?”
“I’m ei—”
“Are you at least twelve?”
“Yes.”
“Great,” Peter grumbles, and punches two tablets through the foil to drop into Neal’s palm. Neal swallows them. Rests the glass back on the nightstand.
“Why were you in Brooklyn?” Peter spouts. He should wait. He knows that. But his head is still whirling from his talk with El and from the words ‘Steve’ rattled off at him dully, like they weren't being applied to a child.
Neal doesn’t answer.
“If you weren’t in Brooklyn, you wouldn’t have come here, you’d have gone to the hotel. You didn’t want to get on a train, did you? So why were you in Brooklyn? Why were you working in Brooklyn?” The kid doesn’t. He never has. “One of… this isn’t because of Adler or you wouldn’t be scared to go back to him, so I know you were working here.”
Peter stares into blue eyes that surrender him nothing. “You’re not going to tell me who did this, are you?”
“No,” Neal says.
“You know I’m still going to find him, right?”
“I…I know.”
“I thought it might be a security guard, or just someone with a cane handy. But then,” Peter reaches for the boy’s hand, turns it over by his fingertips, “I saw these. He cuffed you. Beat you, and then—”
“Peter,” Neal says. But Peter is the one who pleads.
“I don’t understand. I would help you.”
Neal’s face is solemn. “I know.” The boy runs a hand over the blankets. Watching that instead of Peter’s desperate expression. “Mozzie would too. Don’t you think he’s tried?”
“Then why? Why do you…? What aren’t you telling me, Neal?”
Neal hesitates. Fidgets with the hem of the comforter. Then he exhales, lolling back into the pillows, and nods towards the desk. “Open it.”
It takes a beat for Peter to realize the kid means his bag, and that he’s serious. Peter stands, crosses to unbuckle the satchel, folds back the leather flap.
“The sketchbook,” Neal says.
Peter pulls out a black bound book, holds it flat in his hands.
“Go ahead,” Neal prods, and Neal watches closely as Peter flips over the cover. The sketchbook’s thin pages are filled with graphite.
Peter leafs through messy figures and half finished portraits and snippets of New York architecture. Some of which he recognizes. “These are good,” he comments. Fully meaning it.
“Thanks.”
He doesn’t have to ask what he’s looking for because it quickly becomes clear. Every couple of pages there’s a portrait of the same person. A girl who grows to a teenager as Peter reaches the sketchbook’s midpoint. She’s drawn from every angle. In varying level of detail. And in slowly improving skill.
Peter stops on one of the larger sketches. The girl, taking up the whole page, stares out at him sharply. Light eyes. Dark features. A frown that cuts across her face.
“Who is she?”
Neal swallows, his eyes are on his hands which are folded together tightly in his lap. “She’s…” He looks up, meets Peter’s gaze. “She’s Kate.”
The name is said with reverence. All that Peter feels is dread. “Who is she to you?”
“My sister.” Neal takes in a breath. “He has her,” he says, and drops the final piece into Peter’s puzzle.
“Adler? Where?”
“I don’t know, he’s…keeping her from me. Those are from the last time we were together.”
“When was that?”
“Four years ago.”
“She’s older than you,” Peter realizes, looking back at the drawing.
Neal nods. “I’ve tried to find her. Moz has tried. She’s not dead,” Neal adds quickly, and Peter hates that the kid can read him that easily. “I’ve seen… She’s alive. But this is the only way.”
“Only way to do what?”
“To keep her safe, and to get her out. To get us both out.”
Peter’s apprehension is reaching a zenith. “Adler threatened to hurt her?”
Neal doesn’t reply, he stares glossily at the space before him.
“And what way are we talking about here exactly?”
“I can buy us out.”
“What?”
“I’m valuable,” Neal announces, as if it’s the plainest thing in the world, “not priceless. Think Bellini, not Sistine Chapel. And Kate’s…she’s an insurance policy.”
“How the hell are you supposed to—” Peter determines halfway through his sentence that he’s an idiot. “The checks. The prostitution,” he lists with dawning horror, “Whatever you do with Mozzie— how…how much?”
Neal just frowns.
“Fuck, kid. You believe him?!”
“He’s never lied to me,” Neal replies fervently. “He’s—he’s always told me the truth, from the beginning; he’ll keep his word.”
“He won’t have to,” Peter growls out, “if he’s set an impossible goal.”
“Of course. That’s what he thinks he’s done, but he underestimates me.”
“It’s a terrible idea.” One that’s gonna end in a prison cell or a morgue, or both.
“It’s the only way.”
“No, it’s not. I can find Kate.”
“If he knows the Feds are—”
“Without Adler or the bureau knowing, I can find her, Neal. I can help you and Kate.”
Neal’s shaking his head. “It’s not— it won’t work.”
“If you knew where she was. If both of you were safe, would you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Talk. About Adler. Help me take him down so you and Kate can have a normal life. A home address that isn’t a hotel. An education. A path for yourselves that doesn’t rely on felonies and the word of a pedophile.”
The room falls to silence. Neal picks at the scabbing on his knuckles.
“You said yourself you’re not an island. You would be—”
“I know,” Neal says harshly. “I…but I can’t lose her, Peter. She’s— I can’t.”
“You won’t, Neal. I promise.”