elrhiarhodan | White Collar Fic - The Truth About Ourselves

Title: The Truth About Ourselves
Author:

elrhiarhodan
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing: Neal Caffrey, Peter Burke, Elizabeth Burke, Peter/Neal/Elizabeth
Fandom: White Collar
Spoilers: None
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Off-Camera Torture, Neal Being Badass,
Word Count: ~2400
Summary: Peter and Neal are kidnapped and Neal has to take extreme measures to keep badly injured Peter safe until they are rescued. In the process, he shares something that will have consequences for the rest of their lives.

A/N: Written for

ivorysilk for my recent Comment Fic meme. Her prompt is at the end of the story. Title is from Annie Lennox’s song, The Gift. Set in the Vinegar Hill continuum, so it's post-anklet, Neal's with the Bureau.

______________________

It was cold. Neal huddled in the middle of what seemed to be a metal shipping container and tried to conserve his body heat. The single low wattage lightbulb that illuminated the space gave off no appreciable warmth.

This was one of the few times in his life that he wished he wore a watch. They took his cellphone and he had no idea how much time had passed. It could have been an hour, two hours or twenty minutes. In the near darkness, Neal had no way to judge the passage to time.

He wasn’t freaking out about where he was. The container was significantly larger than his former prison cell. The lack of bright light wasn’t an insurmountable problem either. It was not knowing what was happening to Peter that was making him crazy. Not knowing if his friend and lover and partner was alive, was injured or had even escaped to get help.

The container door opened and before Neal could even think of charging, a man, masked and holding an assault rifle pointed it at him and shouted at him to get on his knees with his hands behind his head.

Neal whispered a short prayer. Not to a god he didn’t believe in. Nor to the saints and angels of his mother’s people, but to whatever benevolent powers in the universe that may have existed – that someone would find his body and tell those he loved that he was gone. The living shouldn’t have to suffer ignorance of the dead.

But the guard didn’t shoot. Two others, not carrying guns, came in. They dumped Peter in front of him, beating to a bloody and nearly unrecognizable pulp. A fourth guard dropped a few bottle of water. They left without any further communication.

As soon as he heard the door latch, Neal scrambled to Peter. He was in bad shape, both eyes nearly swollen shut, blood clogging his nostrils, bruising around his mouth and jaw. Neal was afraid to see what other damage those bastards had inflicted. Peter’s tie was missing and his shirt was haphazardly buttoned. He gently undid it and began to plot a very violent revenge against the animals who did this.

Peter’s chest was covered in welts. Someone took a belt to him, many times. He was marked from collar to naval, front and back. Neal gently palpated Peter’s stomach and sides, and he didn’t like how he flinched from the gentle pressure. It could just be bruising or internal damage.

Back in the day when he first started running with Mozzie, his friend made him learn first aid. Hospitals meant permanent records and identification and insurance. The more a conman on the job could do for himself, the better off he was. Peter’s skin was cool and clammy and Neal recognized that he was going into shock. It wasn’t bad enough that Peter was already at risk for internal bleeding, he could die from the body’s attempt to protect the circulatory system.

Neal stripped off his jacket and vest and wrapped them around Peter to keep him as warm as possible, and he used his shirt and some of the water to clean off the blood from Peter’s face.

He worked slowly and carefully, unwilling to inflict anymore pain on Peter. At least Peter’s breathing wasn’t too labored. Neal listened closely, he couldn’t hear that awful liquid rattle that indicated a punctured lung. Right now, his first concern was keeping Peter warm. He debated keeping his feet elevated, but the odds of a stomach injury were too high.

Instead, he settled Peter’s head in his lap, to insulate him from the cold floor. There was nothing more he could do except wait.

Neal gently brushed the hair off Peter’s forehead and wondered how his life came down to this moment. Sitting in an empty shipping container and holding on to the one thing that mattered most to him.

He started to talk, if just to ward off the absolute silence.

“I don’t know how this happened, Peter. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” Neal cupped his hands around Peter’s face, hoping to transfer some body heat to him. “It was supposed to be a fling, right? Some harmless fun between friends.

“No commitments, no promises. Just enjoy ourselves. When it stops being fun, we all walk just away. You and Elizabeth and me – an improbable, impossible threesome.

“You two shocked me with your proposition. You did. I’ve spent the better part of the last four years wanting what you have, then wanting to be part of you, expecting to spend the rest of my life on the outside of the most perfect circle. And one day you show up, open the circle, kiss me and leave.”

Neal shook his head at the memory. It was about six months after his anklet came off. He’d been to Europe, found it too lonely, and came back - to the Bureau, to Peter. Moz hooked him up with a fabulous loft property in Vinegar Hill, not too far from the waterfront, not too far from the Burkes. He’d done most of the renovations himself and had invited Peter and Elizabeth over to celebrate his new kitchen.

They had munched on canapés and sipped champagne and all got a little tipsy, dancing and laughing and creating one of the best memories he thought he’d ever have. Neal was cleaning up when Elizabeth trapped him. Her eyes were full of mischief when she pressed against him, her thigh in a place that her thigh should probably never be. He had looked frantically for Peter, who disappeared – only to reappear behind him, as implacable as a cement wall, as hot as the sun. He had wrapped a hand around his waist and held him immobile.

“Caffrey.” Neal had never thought that the syllables of his name were an erotic utterance. “I think my wife wants to kiss you.”

He stood there – caged more surely than he’d been in a cell of steel bar and concrete blocks. Elizabeth - El - kissed him. Peter kissed him.

They left and he stood there like an idiot.

“Some fling.” Neal didn’t know why he was whispering. There was no one listening. But somehow, it didn’t seem right to let his words echo in the twilight. “I have to tell you a secret. It was never a fling for me. I’ve been in love with you for years. The two of you – it’s crazy. It’s beyond any dream I’ve had of a white picket fence and PTA meetings.

“I love you. I wish I could tell you when you could understand me. I love you more than anything. But that would wreck this – and I’d rather have a brief place in the center of your lives than be consigned to an eternity on the fringes. But you must never know that.”

Peter groaned in pain, and for the millionth time since they’d been taken, Neal wished he had his tracker back on.

“Hold on, hold on. The cavalry is on its way. Please hold on.” He begged and he’d keep begging, but he had no way of knowing if any rescue was imminent.

Neal worried at the increasing clamminess of Peter’s skin. He wasn’t keeping him warm enough. He gently put Peter’s head onto the ground, stripped off his shirt and made it into a pillow. He had to do something.

Neal went to the container’s door and started to bang. He kept at it until his hand was raw and bleeding. One of the masked goons finally opened it.

“What the fuck do you want?”

“He’s dying. He’s in shock and unless I can keep him warm, he’s going to die. If your boss had wanted him dead – he’d already be that way. So you had better get me some pillows and blankets.”

The guard pushed Neal back with the point of his gun and something snapped. He grabbed the muzzle and yanked it out of the man’s hands. It was luck, surely. The guard hadn’t been expecting this, he wasn’t prepared for anything aggressive.

Neal didn’t think – he acted. Old skills that he thought he lost came back. Like riding a bicycle. He flipped the rifle around and shot the man in the kneecap. As he went down, Neal brained him with the butt of the rifle. He didn’t have much time – he dragged the unconscious guard into the container and shut the door. He patted the man down and found just what he was looking for, a cell phone.

He dialed the office - they had the tools to find them. If they were looking for them.

Blake answered, put him on speaker and he told them what happened. The time it took to trace the call seemed to take an eternity. But they weren’t far - a half hour away. Neal told the team to hurry - please hurry.

He stripped the still unconscious guard and piled his clothing on top of Peter. He took his tie - the only article of clothing he couldn’t use to keep Peter warm and tied him up.

He kept the phone on, but placed it near the door. He wanted to keep talking, but he didn’t want anyone to hear what he had to say.

Neal stretched out next to Peter, carefully wrapping his arms around him, willing his body heat to seep into Peter’s skin. “Help is coming, you have to hold on. You have to stay alive. I don’t know what I’d do without you. How will we go on?” Neal whispered words of love and desperation, begging and pleading in ways that he never had, not even in his darkest moments.

Neal lost all track of time, his universe narrowed to Peter’s labored breathing and the fading sound of his own voice.

“I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Neal didn’t hear the shouts and the gunshots, he didn’t look up as the container was filled with floodlights and FBI agents.

He only looked up when someone - it was Hughes - was kneeling next to him. “We’ve got you - you’re safe.”

Neal blinked, against the sudden brightness, against the awful hope. “Don’t let him die. Please don’t let him die.” Diana drew him away and wrapped him in an FBI jacket. She didn’t make any promises - she couldn’t.

****

They rode in separate ambulances. Neal was treated in the emergency room and released. Clinton and Diana took his statement while they waited for a report on Peter. No one seemed to care that the guard he shot and bludgeoned was in critical condition, too.

The longer they waited, the more desperate Neal became. He paced the waiting room like a restless lion, ready to maul anyone who asked him one more time if he was “okay.” Even Elizabeth kept her distance from him.

The doctor came out and Neal let her go to Elizabeth, who was supported by Peter’s team. Raw and aching and still suffused with adrenaline, he listened from the periphery.

There were signs of inter-cranial bleeding, which didn’t need surgery, but the beating Peter took had ruptured his spleen, and they had to perform emergency surgery. Despite these injuries, the doctor was confident that Peter would make a complete recovery.

****

Peter was restless. His surgical incisions itched, he was bored and achy. He yelled at El, apologized, and cried. He was easily startled, unreasonably angry and he fully understood why.

Being beaten and tortured did that to a man.

What he didn’t understand was why Neal hadn’t been in to see him. El had no answers. Clinton and Diana didn’t either. As far as they knew, he was holed up at his loft in Brooklyn, and they were both shocked that he hadn’t been in to see Peter at all.

“When we rescued you, we practically had to pull him off you. He was trying to keep you out of shock by sharing body heat. He was terrified that you were going to die.”

It was on the tip of Peter’s tongue to say that Neal seemed to have lost interest in his condition, but something stopped him. It was a shadow of an echo, the faintest memory, or maybe a dream.

I love you. I wish I could tell you when you could understand me. I love you more than anything. But you must never know that.

Comprehension arrived on angels’ wings.

He was released three days later with a stack of prescriptions and appointments for private and departmental psychologists. Elizabeth didn’t argue with him when he insisted on going to Neal’s, rather than home.

Neal was standing at the bank of windows, he didn’t turn around when they approached. Peter held onto El, still shaky and weak. She stood by him, a strong and silent presence.

Neal looked up and Peter thought his heart was going to break. He had aged a century in two brief weeks.

“We are all so foolish, Neal. We proposed a fling because we didn’t want to scare you. You agreed to a fling because you didn’t want to scare us. And love has been here all along.”

Neal ducked his head and turned back to the window.

“I remember everything you said to me, Neal. You said you’ve loved me, loved us for a long time. You begged me not to die. You said you didn’t know how you’d go on without me. You have given me a precious gift. Don’t take it back. Please.”

The seconds passed into an eternity.

Neal finally turned back to them. “I do love you. I don’t know how to take that back. If it’s even possible.”

Peter didn’t think he ever saw another human being quite so terrified to believe in his own happiness. “Sometime you have to be willing to risk everything to discover if it was worth the risk at all.”

FIN

Written for

ivorysilk, for her prompt: Peter/Neal/El, Neal and Peter are trapped somewhere, Neal is injured and Peter and Neal chat, Neal or Peter reveals something about himself.

Alas, I started writing (and made significant progress) without double-checking the prompt. I hope you don’t mind that it was Peter who was injured, not Neal.