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hoosierbitchTitle: Feel Better Soon
Author:hoosierbitch
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Neal/Peter/Elizabeth, past Neal/Kate
Word Count: 4,400
Thanks:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ivorysilk gave me the ideas for most of the flashback sections, and also was a lovely cheerleader. rabidchild67 was kind enough to beta for me! Any remaining mistakes are all mine.
Notes: This was written for the amazingarsenicjade. I combined three of her prompts as best I could: “It's just that he's not used to having people who care what he does, other than because they're sure he's going to mess up,” and “The last time Neal got any sicker than a mild cold, he'd been dumped from a job by his employer. It's beyond his comprehension that being sick might mean being taken care of, or, at the very least, people going easy on him,” with a little bit of Neal-not-realizing-that-Elizabeth-loves-him-too thrown in for good measure.
Summary: Three times Neal’s been sick, and the one time someone takes care of him.
*
He’s going to die.
“I’m going to die.”
Peter smacks the back of his head. “No theatrics in the offices, Caffrey. You’re setting a bad example for the probies.”
Neal grumbles and touches the back of his head gingerly. “What form do I need to file with internal affairs about handler-on-CI-abuse?”
“I don’t know,” Peter says, putting a folder down on Neal’s desk and walking away, “but I’m sure you can sweet talk someone in HR into finding out for you.”
Neal glares at Peter’s back, just in case he turns around, and then looks at the folder. It’s about an inch thick. Page after page after page of financial reports. Neal takes out a new stack of sticky notes and looks at the first page of account information.
He can’t read it. He can’t focus. His eyes are blurry and there’s sweat dripping down his ribs and lower back and from the backs of his knees, soon it’ll start soaking through his suit. He hasn’t felt this sick in years, not since prison, but he’s not about to tell any of that to Peter. An unhealthy partner is an untrustworthy partner, and things between the two of them are still fragile. They’ve both apologized to each other, they’ve both done their best to let the past go, but Neal’s not dumb enough to think that he’s still skating on thin ice.
Two weeks ago Peter had invited Neal over for dinner, and didn’t tell Neal to leave afterwards. He can’t remember the last time he slept so well. Probably the last time that he was in the Burkes’ bed, a warm body on either side, Satchmo scratching on the door to wake them up in the morning.
He stares at the forms again. It’s only two o’clock in the afternoon. He has to get through this, at least a little bit, has to play this off. He calls Peter’s office phone.
“Find something already?”
“I am dying,” Neal says solemnly. “I may have the plague. Or consumption. Or malaria.”
“I’m not going to let you off work early because you’ve got the sniffles, so stop asking. We’re understaffed, and I need your opinion on that info by the end of the day tomorrow.”
“But it’s boring,” Neal counters, holding his hand palm down over the file and watching his fingers tremble.
“Deal with it.” Peter hangs up his phone and closes the blinds on his office.
Neal spends the rest of the work day pestering Peter and complaining to anyone who will listen about his malaria, and by the end of the day, everyone’s rolling their eyes at him and calling him Typhoid Mary.
When work’s over for the day, he skips out of the office before Peter can offer him a ride. He’s not at his best, and he doesn’t want to be at the Burkes’ house when he crashes. He’ll make it up to both of them when he’s better. He hails a taxi and slumps against the seat as soon as the door’s closed.
It was a hard lesson to learn, but the easiest way he’s found to conceal an illness is to turn it into a farce. Putting up a stoic mask is the quickest way to make people suspect that there’s something weak hiding behind it. If he’d opened his mouth and said, “I’m fine,” Peter would have doubted him, and there’s no way in hell that Neal would ever sincerely say “I’m sick.” The best he can do is to get Peter to believe that Neal has a minor cold and is blowing it out of proportion to get sympathy. He can deal with the flu on his own.
He overpays the cabbie and drags himself up the steps of June’s house. He sits on the floor in the foyer, his back against the closed door, and rests his head against his knees.
*
He is eight and his mother loves him, but she is busy.
"I'll be back when I can," she says. She leaves the apartment without kissing him on the forehead, so he knows that he must be really gross. He feels sweaty and hot and slimy. He tries to get out of bed, to go lie on the couch, but he ends up just sliding onto the floor.
There's something on fire in his stomach but he'll be okay. He's going to hang in there.
He pulls the blanket off the bed and tugs it until it covers him. He'll be fine. He's a big boy. Eventually, the fire in his stomach will go out. He hasn't had anything to eat or drink in over a day, so probably the fire will go out soon.
*
He wakes up crying.
His mom still isn't home. She's at work, and then she was going to go out, but maybe—maybe she'll come straight back to see Neal. He needs her.
He's sweated enough that his blanket's soaked again. The floor underneath him is wet.
He—um, he rolls over and sniffs and—and he probably peed. On himself. On the floor and on himself and the blanket, which is gross, and is something a baby would do.
He tries to get up but can't.
He is sick and pathetic and gross and his mom still isn't home.
*
The next time he wakes up he's in the hospital and his mom still isn’t there. He spends a few minutes staring at the ceiling, trying to plan an escape from the hospital before social services can come after him, but before he can leave (steal an overlarge coat from someone to hide his paper gown, then follow really close at the heels of a distracted adult who’s leaving the building) Miss Parker comes in.
“Hey, Champ,” she says. Neal doesn’t like nicknames, but Miss Parker doesn’t like his real name, so they compromise.
“Hi.”
“How are you feeling?”
He thinks about it for a minute. He’s tired, and achy, and his stomach hurts. He’s also scared, but that’s a secret. “Okay.”
“You gave us quite a scare, kiddo. We almost didn’t get you here in time.” She stands next to his bed and frowns at him with sad eyes. “Why didn’t you tell someone that you didn’t feel good?”
Neal stares at the washed-out pink blanket covering his lap and puts on his big-kid face. “I can take care of myself,” he says, even though he can’t, because he’d cried and peed on himself and hadn’t hung in there.
Miss Parker sits down next to him and sighs. Neal doesn’t say anything else. Eventually, his mom comes and takes him home.
*
He wakes up in the dark. His cheek’s pressed against June’s hardwood floor; from the aching in his muscles, he can tell that not only have a few hours passed, but he’s definitely got the flu.
He forces himself to crawl up the stairs to his own apartment, because he can’t remember when June’s going to get home, and the thought of her seeing him sprawled on her floor like a sick dog is unbearable.
He forces himself to crawl to the fridge and drink a bottle of water, and sets four different alarms on his phone before he’ll let himself sleep, to make sure that he wakes up in the morning. He’ll be better by then. He has to be.
*
He wakes up after all of his alarms have gone off, only to find a string of text messages and voicemails from Peter. Neal contemplates the likelihood that he’ll be able to go into the office, but he can’t even get himself out of bed to get more water from the fridge. He won’t be any good to Peter like this.
He props himself up against the headboard and clears his throat as best he can before he calls Peter back.
“Neal? It’s past nine, what the hell are you doing? Your anklet has you at June’s—if you overslept, I will—”
“I’m sick,” Neal interrupts. Peter’s voice is painfully loud even through the phone.
“Are you seriously pulling that crap? We need you here, Neal, this is exactly your kind of case. We haven’t had a win in a while, and this would go a long way towards strengthening your record.”
Neal can’t think of any excuses, clever or otherwise, except for that he really is sick. “I’ll get better as fast as I can,” he says. “I swear, I’m not—I’m not lying, I just—” He wants to ask Peter not to fire him. Neal knows that he’s only out of prison because of the work that he can do, he’s got that written out in black and white; he can’t expect Peter to treat him any differently just because they fuck occasionally.
“Neal, are you okay? You sound…. Wait, yesterday, you said you felt awful, were you—goddamnit.” Neal flinches and bites back a whimper when the sharp movement rockets through his tense body. “Of course. You were telling the truth, weren’t you? You can’t just ask for help, like a normal person, you have to make a production out of it.”
Neal grits his teeth and says nothing, because he knows that his attempt to hide his illness blew up in his face.
“Okay. Stay home. Do you need anything? Do you have medicine? Is June there? Do you just have a cold, or is it something more serious?” Neal’s mind is reeling from the quick string of questions, and from the change in Peter’s tone. He doesn’t sound frustrated or exasperated anymore, he sounds--worried. It makes sense, though, when Neal thinks about it longer—Peter’s his employer, and he’s taking care of a sick employee. “Neal?”
“I’m fine. I’m—I’m taking care of myself. I promise.”
“Somehow, I have less than total faith in that statement. Hang tight, and I’ll try to stop by on my lunch break. Will you be all right until then?”
Neal lies and says yes and falls asleep with his phone still in his hand.
*
Frank Delauney was not a good man. He owned a string of fast-food franchises, and routinely hired illegal immigrants and then fired them, without pay, knowing that there would be no repercussions.
Neal’s nineteen, and is half-way convinced that he’s a modern-day Robin Hood. Getting shot in the leg by a pissed-off Delauney goes a long way towards changing his mind. In Delauney’s defense, he had literally caught Neal with his hand in the cookie jar—or a Sentry 750 wall safe—but still. Guns are just not Kosher.
(It took Neal a while to figure out that not only do most people not play by the same rules he does, they were playing an entirely different game.)
It had been part of the plan for Neal to get caught, but neither Neal nor his partners—two grizzled conmen, both in their sixties, who said that they wanted to take Neal under their wing, show him the ropes—had counted on Delauney being armed and dangerous.
“You stupid fuck,” Delauney says, stepping over to Neal, who’s crumpled on the floor, his back pressed against the wall, the safe’s open door swinging over his right shoulder. “You are going to regret this.”
Delauney puts the heel of his shoe against the entry wound in Neal’s thigh and presses down on it until bright explosions streak behind Neal’s eyelids and he passes out.
*
Neal comes to soon after, as Delauney drags him down the hallway, apparently unconcerned about the trail of blood they’re leaving in their wake. He throws Neal into the small, closed off room that isn’t on any architectural plan for the house, but which Neal had figured out was there from his nighttime reconnaissance of the premises. Neal had put most of this job together—identifying the safe, predicting Delauney’s actions upon finding an intruder, and doing the majority of the grunt work. The fence is someone he doesn’t know, but he works across state lines, which will help keep the cops off their trail.
When the door shuts behind him, Neal tears his shirt off and ties it around his thigh. It soaks through almost immediately. He pulls it tighter, then takes off his belt and wraps that around it, too. He passes out again when he pulls it as tight as he can.
He doesn’t know how much time passes in that tiny little room, but eventually, he realizes that it has been too long.
Either something else in the plan had gone wrong, or—or his partners had changed it.
There is a small metal plate in the ceiling. By the time Neal works it open with the tiny lock pick set that he always carries with him, hidden in the waistband of his slacks, there’s a puddle of blood around his feet.
When he reaches the outside of the building three hours later, he can barely breathe.
He doesn’t know where he gets the strength to keep moving. Doesn’t know if it’s bile or blood or pain that keeps stinging the back of his throat. The sun is creeping over the horizon by the time he hotwires a car and leaves Delauney’s mansion in his rearview.
When he gets back to his apartment, all of his valuable belongings are gone. The phone numbers he had for his partners are no longer in service.
It’s a full month before his leg will support his weight again, and it’s a full year—until his first meeting with Moz—before he works with another partner. It’s nearly nine years before he trusts anyone again.
*
Unfortunately for Neal, there’s a breakthrough at the office, so it's Elizabeth who comes to check on him. It’s somehow worse than if Peter had come. Peter's already seen him at his weakest—in prison, after Kate, drunk and sad and tired. Neal's still a little in awe of Elizabeth, still a bit wary around her. She's not a type of person that he's come across very often before. He has a hard time figuring out what she wants, other than Peter, so he has no idea how to handle her.
It doesn't help that he's sweating about a gallon of water a minute at this point, and that the sweat dripping into his eyes is blurring his vision, and that he feels like maybe he really is dying.
She gasps when she sees him, which, really? He can't look that bad.
The first thing she does is help him stand up and walk to the bathroom. He catches a glance at himself in the mirror and, yes, he does actually look that bad. Pale and waxy, dark circles around his eyes, his hair plastered to his head.
She helps him into the bathtub, where he sits cross-legged, his knees banging against the porcelain tub. His legs barely held him long enough to walk to the bathroom, there’s no way he’d be able to stand for an entire shower. Elizabeth gets down on her knees next to him and, despite his protests, washes his hair for him, gently moving his head from side to side, one hand cupped over his forehead to keep the shampoo from getting in his eyes. He has to constantly stop himself from leaning against her. It is so nice to have someone touch him. She's careful, gentle, her voice moving at the same slow, constant pace as her hands.
She directs the flow of water over him one final time to wash him off, and he closes his eyes and ducks his head forward so that his bangs will stream over his face. It's as close as he can get to hiding, with her only a few feet away.
She's seen him naked enough times that he's not embarrassed by the brief glimpse she gets before she wraps the towel around his waist. "Let's get you back in bed," she says, lifting one of his arms so that she can slide underneath, against his side.
"You're getting wet," he says, his whole body giving a startled quiver. He is very aware that he is not supposed to touch Elizabeth like this. He is a fuckbuddy and a friend, but she doesn't owe him anything; there's no reason to be here, except for Peter, and Neal owes Peter too much. All his accounts are getting out of balance.
"I'll dry off," she says, walking him forward. His bed's been made, the green sheets that were buried at the back of the linen closet (there's a bleach stain in the corner) look inviting and soft. She sits him down and he lists to the side; she eases him onto the mattress as gently as she can.
"You can leave now," he mumbles, turning his face into his pillow, which smells like laundry detergent instead of flopsweat. "I'll see you later. Thanks." She says something that he doesn’t catch. It was nice of her to stop by. He’ll figure out how to repay her later.
He doesn't know if he just blinks or if he falls asleep, but the next time he pries his eyelids open, Elizabeth is sitting in a chair at his bedside, reading Moz's annotated copy of Slaughterhouse Five. Or maybe Neal's still dreaming. Maybe he's hallucinating that she's there, her lips moving every so often as her eyes flick across the page. Probably he is making this up because he is lonely and he would really like for someone to be with him.
He fumbles, pulling his arm out from under his body, but when he reaches for her, she's already reaching for him. She holds his hand, her book folded and forgotten in her lap.
Even if she is real, he’s going to pretend that she isn’t, because there's no way he could ask the real Elizabeth for this. To stay while he sleeps, to wake him up if he gets worse, to do nothing except take care of him.
He doesn't know how it's supposed to happen. He doesn’t even know how it happened for Peter and Elizabeth. They take care of each other without keeping score. There's nothing expected in return, there's no trade, there's no need to feel guilty that someone else had given their time and attention to you.
Neal's got no idea how to ask someone to take care of him, and no idea how to con it from someone without having to ask.
When he falls asleep Elizabeth is still holding his hand.
*
It's lights-out and Neal's puking into his toilet, grateful for once that it's only a foot away from his bunk. The cafeteria meatloaf is even less appetizing coming up, and the smell of it makes him puke even harder.
It's two days away from Christmas. He's sent out all of his holiday cards—to Moz and Kate and Peter and Ellen—and gotten a little extra money transferred into his account, to give out later as a bonus for the two guards who help him out the most. And that's all Christmas is going to be this year. Paying other people, and a visit with Kate that will last for an hour, time that they’ll spend looking at each other through bullet-proof glass.
Happy fucking Holidays.
A new round of heaving wracks his body. At least there's nothing coming up anymore. His stomach muscles are starting to hurt and the cons in the nearby cells are yelling at him to shut up.
He spends the rest of the night wrapped around his toilet. The guards don't let him go to the infirmary until the next evening, insisting that he go to the yard and the common spaces at the appropriate times with everyone else. By the time they let him see a doctor he's too weak to walk there, and is dragged there by his elbows, his chains scraping along the floor.
They think he's faking.
The nurse handcuffs him to the bed, gives him two aspirin, and tells him that he'll feel better in the morning. He drifts in and out of what is almost sleep, but wakes every time he pulls against the restraints.
He spends Christmas tied spread-eagled on a thin mattress, in clothes that he's been wearing for four straight days, being told by his doctor that, if he hadn't made such a big deal out of things, he would have been allowed visiting hours.
He doesn't get any Christmas cards. Ellen probably never got the one he wrote for her, since he'd sent it to a PO Box that he doesn't know if she's still using, Moz doesn't believe in the holidays, and Kate had planned on meeting him in person. He doesn’t know what Peter thinks of the cards.
He’s seven pounds lighter and maybe a little smarter when he finally gets released.
He gets sick two more times before Kate runs. Each time, he buys black market pseudoephedrine and antibiotics, and doesn't say a word about it to anyone but the dealer.
*
He feels slightly more human the next time he wakes up. The sunlight doesn’t hurt his eyes, and the sheets around him aren’t sticking to his body with sweat. He doesn’t see Elizabeth at his bedside, which makes him feel better. Except then he sees Slaughterhouse Five on his bedside table with a coaster tucked in it as a bookmark.
He pushes himself up onto his elbows and sees both Elizabeth and Peter sitting at his dining room table. His stomach sinks. He doesn’t feel ready to pretend that he’s fine.
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” Elizabeth says, standing up and walking over to the bed, sitting down on the mattress next to him. “How are you feeling?”
“Good,” he says, even though he still has to concentrate to keep his eyes open, and everything hurts. Peter walks over to the bed and looks down at him, his hands on his hips. He doesn’t look happy.
“You were pretty out of it for a while,” Elizabeth says, drawing Neal’s attention back to her. “At one point you actually told me to leave.”
Neal smiles uneasily when she doesn’t continue. “And…?”
“I mean—you told me to leave,” she says again. He tries to remember if he’d been rude, or if he’d maybe sounded angry. “There’s no way I would have left you,” she says softly.
Neal glances over at Peter, whose face is pinched and stern. “Of course,” Neal says, trying to catch up in the conversation, unsure how to play along. “I can’t even remember half the things I said.”
“Do you remember asking us to stay?” Peter asks. Neal slowly shakes his head. “Yeah. Me either.”
Elizabeth’s got her hand over her face, and Peter still looks angry, and Neal’s too worn-out for this. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I mean—thank you, for coming over, and for taking care of me. I know you’re both busy, I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for you to rearrange your schedules at such short notice—”
“Shut up,” Peter says, spitting the words out between gritted teeth before stalking away from the bed.
Neal’s breath hitches in his throat. He tries to sit up, to follow Peter, to apologize again, but Elizabeth’s hands are on his shoulders, holding him down. “I’m sorry,” he says, and, Jesus Christ, there are tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. “I tried to take care of it on my own, but Peter—Peter didn’t let me.” And now Peter’s mad, because Neal fucked up again, and he’d dragged Elizabeth into the whole mess.
He almost wishes that he was a kid again, when there hadn’t been anyone around to take care of him and make him pay for it.
Peter comes back over and Neal tenses to keep from flinching again.
“What do you think is going to happen?” Peter says. “If you admit that you’re not perfect? If you have a bad day, or forget about an anniversary, or get sick? What do you think we’re going to do?”
The answer is so big and obvious and unvoiceable that Neal just shakes his head. If he doesn’t keep giving them good reasons to stay, if he can’t convince them that he’s worth the trouble that he inevitably causes, they will leave him. It’s simple logic. But it doesn’t matter now, because Neal is determined not to fuck up like this again. He’s lost his parents, Ellen, Kate, even Moz—he couldn’t stand losing anyone else.
“Please don’t leave me,” he whispers, hoping that they’ll understand that he’s promising to try his best not to push them away. It’s the biggest thing he’s ever asked for without having done anything to earn it.
“We won’t,” Elizabeth says. She’s crying. Neal doesn’t know if that’s good or bad.
“We’re partners,” Peter says. “It’s our job to take care of each other.” It takes Neal a minute to realize that Peter’s not just talking about himself and Elizabeth.
Maybe that’s it. The expectation that one day, Neal will return the favor; he’ll take care of them the same way they’re taking care of him, so they’ll all end up breaking even. And Neal will pay them back, he wants to, even though he doesn’t quite know how. He’ll take care of them, too.
It’s confusing, because when he thinks about Peter or Elizabeth being sick, he almost wants to take care of them. There’s no reluctance or resentment. The thought that Peter and Elizabeth might feel the same way about him is overwhelming.
Peter climbs into bed on Neal’s right side, opposite Elizabeth, even though the bed’s full of germs and the sheets need a good wash. Peter ruffles Neal’s messy hair and then presses his hand over Neal’s chest.
“No one’s ever wanted to stay with me before,” Neal whispers, staring straight up at the ceiling, not moving a muscle.
Peter inhales sharply before putting a hand on Neal’s chin, which is rough with stubble, and tilting his head to the side so that Peter can kiss his cheek.
“Now you have two people who want you,” Elizabeth says quietly. “We love you. We’re not going anywhere.”
*
Feedback is loved and adored!
Author:
hoosierbitch Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Neal/Peter/Elizabeth, past Neal/Kate
Word Count: 4,400
Thanks:
ivorysilk gave me the ideas for most of the flashback sections, and also was a lovely cheerleader. rabidchild67 was kind enough to beta for me! Any remaining mistakes are all mine.Notes: This was written for the amazing
arsenicjade. I combined three of her prompts as best I could: “It's just that he's not used to having people who care what he does, other than because they're sure he's going to mess up,” and “The last time Neal got any sicker than a mild cold, he'd been dumped from a job by his employer. It's beyond his comprehension that being sick might mean being taken care of, or, at the very least, people going easy on him,” with a little bit of Neal-not-realizing-that-Elizabeth-loves-him-too thrown in for good measure. Summary: Three times Neal’s been sick, and the one time someone takes care of him.
*
He’s going to die.
“I’m going to die.”
Peter smacks the back of his head. “No theatrics in the offices, Caffrey. You’re setting a bad example for the probies.”
Neal grumbles and touches the back of his head gingerly. “What form do I need to file with internal affairs about handler-on-CI-abuse?”
“I don’t know,” Peter says, putting a folder down on Neal’s desk and walking away, “but I’m sure you can sweet talk someone in HR into finding out for you.”
Neal glares at Peter’s back, just in case he turns around, and then looks at the folder. It’s about an inch thick. Page after page after page of financial reports. Neal takes out a new stack of sticky notes and looks at the first page of account information.
He can’t read it. He can’t focus. His eyes are blurry and there’s sweat dripping down his ribs and lower back and from the backs of his knees, soon it’ll start soaking through his suit. He hasn’t felt this sick in years, not since prison, but he’s not about to tell any of that to Peter. An unhealthy partner is an untrustworthy partner, and things between the two of them are still fragile. They’ve both apologized to each other, they’ve both done their best to let the past go, but Neal’s not dumb enough to think that he’s still skating on thin ice.
Two weeks ago Peter had invited Neal over for dinner, and didn’t tell Neal to leave afterwards. He can’t remember the last time he slept so well. Probably the last time that he was in the Burkes’ bed, a warm body on either side, Satchmo scratching on the door to wake them up in the morning.
He stares at the forms again. It’s only two o’clock in the afternoon. He has to get through this, at least a little bit, has to play this off. He calls Peter’s office phone.
“Find something already?”
“I am dying,” Neal says solemnly. “I may have the plague. Or consumption. Or malaria.”
“I’m not going to let you off work early because you’ve got the sniffles, so stop asking. We’re understaffed, and I need your opinion on that info by the end of the day tomorrow.”
“But it’s boring,” Neal counters, holding his hand palm down over the file and watching his fingers tremble.
“Deal with it.” Peter hangs up his phone and closes the blinds on his office.
Neal spends the rest of the work day pestering Peter and complaining to anyone who will listen about his malaria, and by the end of the day, everyone’s rolling their eyes at him and calling him Typhoid Mary.
When work’s over for the day, he skips out of the office before Peter can offer him a ride. He’s not at his best, and he doesn’t want to be at the Burkes’ house when he crashes. He’ll make it up to both of them when he’s better. He hails a taxi and slumps against the seat as soon as the door’s closed.
It was a hard lesson to learn, but the easiest way he’s found to conceal an illness is to turn it into a farce. Putting up a stoic mask is the quickest way to make people suspect that there’s something weak hiding behind it. If he’d opened his mouth and said, “I’m fine,” Peter would have doubted him, and there’s no way in hell that Neal would ever sincerely say “I’m sick.” The best he can do is to get Peter to believe that Neal has a minor cold and is blowing it out of proportion to get sympathy. He can deal with the flu on his own.
He overpays the cabbie and drags himself up the steps of June’s house. He sits on the floor in the foyer, his back against the closed door, and rests his head against his knees.
*
He is eight and his mother loves him, but she is busy.
"I'll be back when I can," she says. She leaves the apartment without kissing him on the forehead, so he knows that he must be really gross. He feels sweaty and hot and slimy. He tries to get out of bed, to go lie on the couch, but he ends up just sliding onto the floor.
There's something on fire in his stomach but he'll be okay. He's going to hang in there.
He pulls the blanket off the bed and tugs it until it covers him. He'll be fine. He's a big boy. Eventually, the fire in his stomach will go out. He hasn't had anything to eat or drink in over a day, so probably the fire will go out soon.
*
He wakes up crying.
His mom still isn't home. She's at work, and then she was going to go out, but maybe—maybe she'll come straight back to see Neal. He needs her.
He's sweated enough that his blanket's soaked again. The floor underneath him is wet.
He—um, he rolls over and sniffs and—and he probably peed. On himself. On the floor and on himself and the blanket, which is gross, and is something a baby would do.
He tries to get up but can't.
He is sick and pathetic and gross and his mom still isn't home.
*
The next time he wakes up he's in the hospital and his mom still isn’t there. He spends a few minutes staring at the ceiling, trying to plan an escape from the hospital before social services can come after him, but before he can leave (steal an overlarge coat from someone to hide his paper gown, then follow really close at the heels of a distracted adult who’s leaving the building) Miss Parker comes in.
“Hey, Champ,” she says. Neal doesn’t like nicknames, but Miss Parker doesn’t like his real name, so they compromise.
“Hi.”
“How are you feeling?”
He thinks about it for a minute. He’s tired, and achy, and his stomach hurts. He’s also scared, but that’s a secret. “Okay.”
“You gave us quite a scare, kiddo. We almost didn’t get you here in time.” She stands next to his bed and frowns at him with sad eyes. “Why didn’t you tell someone that you didn’t feel good?”
Neal stares at the washed-out pink blanket covering his lap and puts on his big-kid face. “I can take care of myself,” he says, even though he can’t, because he’d cried and peed on himself and hadn’t hung in there.
Miss Parker sits down next to him and sighs. Neal doesn’t say anything else. Eventually, his mom comes and takes him home.
*
He wakes up in the dark. His cheek’s pressed against June’s hardwood floor; from the aching in his muscles, he can tell that not only have a few hours passed, but he’s definitely got the flu.
He forces himself to crawl up the stairs to his own apartment, because he can’t remember when June’s going to get home, and the thought of her seeing him sprawled on her floor like a sick dog is unbearable.
He forces himself to crawl to the fridge and drink a bottle of water, and sets four different alarms on his phone before he’ll let himself sleep, to make sure that he wakes up in the morning. He’ll be better by then. He has to be.
*
He wakes up after all of his alarms have gone off, only to find a string of text messages and voicemails from Peter. Neal contemplates the likelihood that he’ll be able to go into the office, but he can’t even get himself out of bed to get more water from the fridge. He won’t be any good to Peter like this.
He props himself up against the headboard and clears his throat as best he can before he calls Peter back.
“Neal? It’s past nine, what the hell are you doing? Your anklet has you at June’s—if you overslept, I will—”
“I’m sick,” Neal interrupts. Peter’s voice is painfully loud even through the phone.
“Are you seriously pulling that crap? We need you here, Neal, this is exactly your kind of case. We haven’t had a win in a while, and this would go a long way towards strengthening your record.”
Neal can’t think of any excuses, clever or otherwise, except for that he really is sick. “I’ll get better as fast as I can,” he says. “I swear, I’m not—I’m not lying, I just—” He wants to ask Peter not to fire him. Neal knows that he’s only out of prison because of the work that he can do, he’s got that written out in black and white; he can’t expect Peter to treat him any differently just because they fuck occasionally.
“Neal, are you okay? You sound…. Wait, yesterday, you said you felt awful, were you—goddamnit.” Neal flinches and bites back a whimper when the sharp movement rockets through his tense body. “Of course. You were telling the truth, weren’t you? You can’t just ask for help, like a normal person, you have to make a production out of it.”
Neal grits his teeth and says nothing, because he knows that his attempt to hide his illness blew up in his face.
“Okay. Stay home. Do you need anything? Do you have medicine? Is June there? Do you just have a cold, or is it something more serious?” Neal’s mind is reeling from the quick string of questions, and from the change in Peter’s tone. He doesn’t sound frustrated or exasperated anymore, he sounds--worried. It makes sense, though, when Neal thinks about it longer—Peter’s his employer, and he’s taking care of a sick employee. “Neal?”
“I’m fine. I’m—I’m taking care of myself. I promise.”
“Somehow, I have less than total faith in that statement. Hang tight, and I’ll try to stop by on my lunch break. Will you be all right until then?”
Neal lies and says yes and falls asleep with his phone still in his hand.
*
Frank Delauney was not a good man. He owned a string of fast-food franchises, and routinely hired illegal immigrants and then fired them, without pay, knowing that there would be no repercussions.
Neal’s nineteen, and is half-way convinced that he’s a modern-day Robin Hood. Getting shot in the leg by a pissed-off Delauney goes a long way towards changing his mind. In Delauney’s defense, he had literally caught Neal with his hand in the cookie jar—or a Sentry 750 wall safe—but still. Guns are just not Kosher.
(It took Neal a while to figure out that not only do most people not play by the same rules he does, they were playing an entirely different game.)
It had been part of the plan for Neal to get caught, but neither Neal nor his partners—two grizzled conmen, both in their sixties, who said that they wanted to take Neal under their wing, show him the ropes—had counted on Delauney being armed and dangerous.
“You stupid fuck,” Delauney says, stepping over to Neal, who’s crumpled on the floor, his back pressed against the wall, the safe’s open door swinging over his right shoulder. “You are going to regret this.”
Delauney puts the heel of his shoe against the entry wound in Neal’s thigh and presses down on it until bright explosions streak behind Neal’s eyelids and he passes out.
*
Neal comes to soon after, as Delauney drags him down the hallway, apparently unconcerned about the trail of blood they’re leaving in their wake. He throws Neal into the small, closed off room that isn’t on any architectural plan for the house, but which Neal had figured out was there from his nighttime reconnaissance of the premises. Neal had put most of this job together—identifying the safe, predicting Delauney’s actions upon finding an intruder, and doing the majority of the grunt work. The fence is someone he doesn’t know, but he works across state lines, which will help keep the cops off their trail.
When the door shuts behind him, Neal tears his shirt off and ties it around his thigh. It soaks through almost immediately. He pulls it tighter, then takes off his belt and wraps that around it, too. He passes out again when he pulls it as tight as he can.
He doesn’t know how much time passes in that tiny little room, but eventually, he realizes that it has been too long.
Either something else in the plan had gone wrong, or—or his partners had changed it.
There is a small metal plate in the ceiling. By the time Neal works it open with the tiny lock pick set that he always carries with him, hidden in the waistband of his slacks, there’s a puddle of blood around his feet.
When he reaches the outside of the building three hours later, he can barely breathe.
He doesn’t know where he gets the strength to keep moving. Doesn’t know if it’s bile or blood or pain that keeps stinging the back of his throat. The sun is creeping over the horizon by the time he hotwires a car and leaves Delauney’s mansion in his rearview.
When he gets back to his apartment, all of his valuable belongings are gone. The phone numbers he had for his partners are no longer in service.
It’s a full month before his leg will support his weight again, and it’s a full year—until his first meeting with Moz—before he works with another partner. It’s nearly nine years before he trusts anyone again.
*
Unfortunately for Neal, there’s a breakthrough at the office, so it's Elizabeth who comes to check on him. It’s somehow worse than if Peter had come. Peter's already seen him at his weakest—in prison, after Kate, drunk and sad and tired. Neal's still a little in awe of Elizabeth, still a bit wary around her. She's not a type of person that he's come across very often before. He has a hard time figuring out what she wants, other than Peter, so he has no idea how to handle her.
It doesn't help that he's sweating about a gallon of water a minute at this point, and that the sweat dripping into his eyes is blurring his vision, and that he feels like maybe he really is dying.
She gasps when she sees him, which, really? He can't look that bad.
The first thing she does is help him stand up and walk to the bathroom. He catches a glance at himself in the mirror and, yes, he does actually look that bad. Pale and waxy, dark circles around his eyes, his hair plastered to his head.
She helps him into the bathtub, where he sits cross-legged, his knees banging against the porcelain tub. His legs barely held him long enough to walk to the bathroom, there’s no way he’d be able to stand for an entire shower. Elizabeth gets down on her knees next to him and, despite his protests, washes his hair for him, gently moving his head from side to side, one hand cupped over his forehead to keep the shampoo from getting in his eyes. He has to constantly stop himself from leaning against her. It is so nice to have someone touch him. She's careful, gentle, her voice moving at the same slow, constant pace as her hands.
She directs the flow of water over him one final time to wash him off, and he closes his eyes and ducks his head forward so that his bangs will stream over his face. It's as close as he can get to hiding, with her only a few feet away.
She's seen him naked enough times that he's not embarrassed by the brief glimpse she gets before she wraps the towel around his waist. "Let's get you back in bed," she says, lifting one of his arms so that she can slide underneath, against his side.
"You're getting wet," he says, his whole body giving a startled quiver. He is very aware that he is not supposed to touch Elizabeth like this. He is a fuckbuddy and a friend, but she doesn't owe him anything; there's no reason to be here, except for Peter, and Neal owes Peter too much. All his accounts are getting out of balance.
"I'll dry off," she says, walking him forward. His bed's been made, the green sheets that were buried at the back of the linen closet (there's a bleach stain in the corner) look inviting and soft. She sits him down and he lists to the side; she eases him onto the mattress as gently as she can.
"You can leave now," he mumbles, turning his face into his pillow, which smells like laundry detergent instead of flopsweat. "I'll see you later. Thanks." She says something that he doesn’t catch. It was nice of her to stop by. He’ll figure out how to repay her later.
He doesn't know if he just blinks or if he falls asleep, but the next time he pries his eyelids open, Elizabeth is sitting in a chair at his bedside, reading Moz's annotated copy of Slaughterhouse Five. Or maybe Neal's still dreaming. Maybe he's hallucinating that she's there, her lips moving every so often as her eyes flick across the page. Probably he is making this up because he is lonely and he would really like for someone to be with him.
He fumbles, pulling his arm out from under his body, but when he reaches for her, she's already reaching for him. She holds his hand, her book folded and forgotten in her lap.
Even if she is real, he’s going to pretend that she isn’t, because there's no way he could ask the real Elizabeth for this. To stay while he sleeps, to wake him up if he gets worse, to do nothing except take care of him.
He doesn't know how it's supposed to happen. He doesn’t even know how it happened for Peter and Elizabeth. They take care of each other without keeping score. There's nothing expected in return, there's no trade, there's no need to feel guilty that someone else had given their time and attention to you.
Neal's got no idea how to ask someone to take care of him, and no idea how to con it from someone without having to ask.
When he falls asleep Elizabeth is still holding his hand.
*
It's lights-out and Neal's puking into his toilet, grateful for once that it's only a foot away from his bunk. The cafeteria meatloaf is even less appetizing coming up, and the smell of it makes him puke even harder.
It's two days away from Christmas. He's sent out all of his holiday cards—to Moz and Kate and Peter and Ellen—and gotten a little extra money transferred into his account, to give out later as a bonus for the two guards who help him out the most. And that's all Christmas is going to be this year. Paying other people, and a visit with Kate that will last for an hour, time that they’ll spend looking at each other through bullet-proof glass.
Happy fucking Holidays.
A new round of heaving wracks his body. At least there's nothing coming up anymore. His stomach muscles are starting to hurt and the cons in the nearby cells are yelling at him to shut up.
He spends the rest of the night wrapped around his toilet. The guards don't let him go to the infirmary until the next evening, insisting that he go to the yard and the common spaces at the appropriate times with everyone else. By the time they let him see a doctor he's too weak to walk there, and is dragged there by his elbows, his chains scraping along the floor.
They think he's faking.
The nurse handcuffs him to the bed, gives him two aspirin, and tells him that he'll feel better in the morning. He drifts in and out of what is almost sleep, but wakes every time he pulls against the restraints.
He spends Christmas tied spread-eagled on a thin mattress, in clothes that he's been wearing for four straight days, being told by his doctor that, if he hadn't made such a big deal out of things, he would have been allowed visiting hours.
He doesn't get any Christmas cards. Ellen probably never got the one he wrote for her, since he'd sent it to a PO Box that he doesn't know if she's still using, Moz doesn't believe in the holidays, and Kate had planned on meeting him in person. He doesn’t know what Peter thinks of the cards.
He’s seven pounds lighter and maybe a little smarter when he finally gets released.
He gets sick two more times before Kate runs. Each time, he buys black market pseudoephedrine and antibiotics, and doesn't say a word about it to anyone but the dealer.
*
He feels slightly more human the next time he wakes up. The sunlight doesn’t hurt his eyes, and the sheets around him aren’t sticking to his body with sweat. He doesn’t see Elizabeth at his bedside, which makes him feel better. Except then he sees Slaughterhouse Five on his bedside table with a coaster tucked in it as a bookmark.
He pushes himself up onto his elbows and sees both Elizabeth and Peter sitting at his dining room table. His stomach sinks. He doesn’t feel ready to pretend that he’s fine.
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” Elizabeth says, standing up and walking over to the bed, sitting down on the mattress next to him. “How are you feeling?”
“Good,” he says, even though he still has to concentrate to keep his eyes open, and everything hurts. Peter walks over to the bed and looks down at him, his hands on his hips. He doesn’t look happy.
“You were pretty out of it for a while,” Elizabeth says, drawing Neal’s attention back to her. “At one point you actually told me to leave.”
Neal smiles uneasily when she doesn’t continue. “And…?”
“I mean—you told me to leave,” she says again. He tries to remember if he’d been rude, or if he’d maybe sounded angry. “There’s no way I would have left you,” she says softly.
Neal glances over at Peter, whose face is pinched and stern. “Of course,” Neal says, trying to catch up in the conversation, unsure how to play along. “I can’t even remember half the things I said.”
“Do you remember asking us to stay?” Peter asks. Neal slowly shakes his head. “Yeah. Me either.”
Elizabeth’s got her hand over her face, and Peter still looks angry, and Neal’s too worn-out for this. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I mean—thank you, for coming over, and for taking care of me. I know you’re both busy, I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for you to rearrange your schedules at such short notice—”
“Shut up,” Peter says, spitting the words out between gritted teeth before stalking away from the bed.
Neal’s breath hitches in his throat. He tries to sit up, to follow Peter, to apologize again, but Elizabeth’s hands are on his shoulders, holding him down. “I’m sorry,” he says, and, Jesus Christ, there are tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. “I tried to take care of it on my own, but Peter—Peter didn’t let me.” And now Peter’s mad, because Neal fucked up again, and he’d dragged Elizabeth into the whole mess.
He almost wishes that he was a kid again, when there hadn’t been anyone around to take care of him and make him pay for it.
Peter comes back over and Neal tenses to keep from flinching again.
“What do you think is going to happen?” Peter says. “If you admit that you’re not perfect? If you have a bad day, or forget about an anniversary, or get sick? What do you think we’re going to do?”
The answer is so big and obvious and unvoiceable that Neal just shakes his head. If he doesn’t keep giving them good reasons to stay, if he can’t convince them that he’s worth the trouble that he inevitably causes, they will leave him. It’s simple logic. But it doesn’t matter now, because Neal is determined not to fuck up like this again. He’s lost his parents, Ellen, Kate, even Moz—he couldn’t stand losing anyone else.
“Please don’t leave me,” he whispers, hoping that they’ll understand that he’s promising to try his best not to push them away. It’s the biggest thing he’s ever asked for without having done anything to earn it.
“We won’t,” Elizabeth says. She’s crying. Neal doesn’t know if that’s good or bad.
“We’re partners,” Peter says. “It’s our job to take care of each other.” It takes Neal a minute to realize that Peter’s not just talking about himself and Elizabeth.
Maybe that’s it. The expectation that one day, Neal will return the favor; he’ll take care of them the same way they’re taking care of him, so they’ll all end up breaking even. And Neal will pay them back, he wants to, even though he doesn’t quite know how. He’ll take care of them, too.
It’s confusing, because when he thinks about Peter or Elizabeth being sick, he almost wants to take care of them. There’s no reluctance or resentment. The thought that Peter and Elizabeth might feel the same way about him is overwhelming.
Peter climbs into bed on Neal’s right side, opposite Elizabeth, even though the bed’s full of germs and the sheets need a good wash. Peter ruffles Neal’s messy hair and then presses his hand over Neal’s chest.
“No one’s ever wanted to stay with me before,” Neal whispers, staring straight up at the ceiling, not moving a muscle.
Peter inhales sharply before putting a hand on Neal’s chin, which is rough with stubble, and tilting his head to the side so that Peter can kiss his cheek.
“Now you have two people who want you,” Elizabeth says quietly. “We love you. We’re not going anywhere.”
*
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Date: 2012-08-07 12:20 am (UTC)