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White Collar fic: Heart to Heart (Psychic Neal #4)
Title: Heart to Heart
Fandom: White Collar
Word Count: 1900
Pairing: Gen
Summary: "Vital Signs" in the Psychic!Neal universe.
Notes: For the h/c bingo square "insecurity".
Cross-posted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/509059
When Peter discovered that Neal had vanished into the Howser Clinic, he knew immediately that Neal's worst fear had come true. Well, maybe his second-worst fear -- Neal hadn't been disappeared by the government, but by a private business. Which was, in Peter's opinion, infinitely worse. If the government had locked Neal up in a lab somewhere, there were channels to go through. Strings he could pull. Highly-placed friends of friends that he could talk to.
But the Howser Clinic answered to no one. They had contacts and branch clinics around the world. If they managed to get Neal onto a plane, no one would ever see him again, and there wouldn't be a damn thing Peter could do to find him.
Which was why he was currently hiding with a drugged-up Neal in an office-supply closet, waiting for the search to die down so that he could smuggle them both out the back of the building.
He still couldn't believe that he'd done something so rash and, frankly, insane as sneaking into the clinic without backup, without a search warrant ... If only he'd been able to do what he was planning to do, which was sneak in, find Neal, and sneak out again. But no ... they hadn't left Neal unguarded for a second, which had meant overpowering and tying up the guards, and it was impossible to do that quietly. Now the whole building was hunting for them.
He might have known things would go haywire. Things always did, when Neal was around.
"I like you," Neal said, throwing an arm around Peter's neck. On top of everything, they barely had room to move, sandwiched as they were between boxes of paper and stacks of spare printer cartridges.
Peter carefully disentangled Neal's arm. "That's nice. I'll decide whether I like you once we're out of here."
He checked his phone, as if he could conjure messages magically out of nowhere, and tried to think of anyone else he could call who might be able to help. Diana was on her way with a getaway car. She might not know all the details, but he could rely on her to keep her mouth shut. He didn't dare go up the chain of command on this one. Bancroft knew the truth about Neal, but Bancroft wasn't in town, and on top of that, Peter wasn't sure which way he'd fall. As far as most of the Bureau was concerned, Neal was simply a CI on a tracking anklet, and he wasn't supposed to be here. If Peter tipped his hand to the wrong person, Neal would be back in prison and Peter may as well have left him at the clinic; he'd be equally screwed either way. Not to mention that Peter himself would be facing possible career repercussions ...
"Am I in trouble?" Neal asked, as if reading his mind. There were times when Peter had to remind himself that Neal couldn't do that anymore; he still had an uncanny ability to guess what Peter was thinking.
"Maybe. Well, yes, probably. What were you thinking, pulling a stunt like this? Didn't you know what would happen if they caught you?"
"I was trying not to get caught," Neal said petulantly.
"Yeah, how'd that work out for you?"
It was nearly dark in the closet -- the only light came from a narrow stripe around the door, illuminating them both with a twilight glow. In the dim light, Peter could just make out Neal's frown.
"What's gonna happen to me now?" Neal asked after a moment's thought.
"I don't know," Peter said, and wearily leaned his head against the box of printer paper behind him. "The Howser Clinic's going to want to hush this up, so that's a point in our favor, at least. There's no way they'll be able to explain to their financial backers that they locked you up in order to have a telepath of their very own." The fact that they had recognized Neal at all, though, made Peter very nervous. It meant that the secret of Neal and the others wasn't quite as well-kept as Agent Stark always implied. How many other unscrupulous individuals might be hunting Neal and his lab-siblings, even now?
Neal hesitated, perhaps scraping together his scattered thoughts, then spoke in the earnest voice of a drunk about to share a completely inappropriate confession. "Just in case ... in case I go down, in case I can't say this later -- I need to tell you something."
"Can we not do this now?"
Neal shook his head and grabbed clumsily for Peter's arm. "It's important. Important, Peter. I didn't want to tell you this. Because once I tell you, you won't like me very much."
Peter sighed. In the cramped space, they were so close together that their knees were touching. "Neal, even though you're a complete pain in my ass sometimes -- well, a lot of the time ... I do like you."
"Not after this."
Apprehension crawled up Peter's throat. What had Neal done? "Maybe we shouldn't talk about this right now," he said, caught between the burning desire to know, and a stomach-twisting feeling of discomfort at taking advantage of Neal's current state to pump him for information.
"You need to know," Neal persisted. "Nobody knows this. The feds don't know it. Even Mozzie doesn't know it. Remember when I told you about -- how Matthew, how he killed those people, that -- at the --"
Neal floundered to a stop, uncharacteristically for him. "Matthew Keller. At the lab, when you were kids. Yes, I remember," Peter said quietly.
"I didn't tell you how he did it," Neal said in a very small voice.
The crawling nervousness in his throat became a cold hand that closed around his stomach. "Neal, I really think we shouldn't talk about this now."
"But you should know," Neal said. He swallowed. "Matthew, he did it with -- with his mind."
A part of Peter -- the part of him that occasionally paused in disbelief to wonder how this had become his life -- had known Neal was heading there. Still, Peter's lungs seemed to have become paralyzed. Even knowing Neal as he'd come to know him, there was a part of him that desperately wished he had one of the telepathy-blocking caps he'd worn back when Neal's powers were fully functional.
In the dim light, he could see that Neal was huddled in on himself. Peter remembered how withdrawn Neal had become when he'd started talking about it that day in the Burkes' spare bedroom. At the time, Peter had chalked it up to trauma and the fact that Neal was in pain. Now, he could tell that there was a whole lot more mixed up in Neal's reaction. Guilt. Fear. Misery. With the drug wiping out his usual ability to guard himself, all his emotions were plain on his face.
Peter made himself take a breath and relax before he asked, "Can you do that?"
"I don't know," Neal said, so softly Peter could barely hear him.
There was a long silence between them. Then Peter touched Neal's arm and felt him flinch.
"I think I have an answer for you. Remember that day you took down Risetti?" The money launderer had stabbed Peter -- and hit the floor a minute later. Peter had never seen Neal so furious. "If you could, I don't think Risetti would still be alive."
"Oh," Neal said. "Ohhhhh ... you're smart, Peter." Then he frowned, looking troubled. "But I never tried. I was scared to try. Maybe I could learn to."
"Do you want to learn?"
"No!" Neal said quickly. Despite his slurred speech, his sincerity and horror came through clearly.
"So don't learn." Peter's phone buzzed; he pulled it out and checked the messages.
"You're smart," Neal decided. "Smart, and strong."
"And you're high." Peter couldn't help it; he ruffled Neal's hair, then let his hand slip down to Neal's shoulder. "Diana's here; what do you say we try to make our getaway?"
***
Diana dropped them off at the Burkes', and Peter deposited a grumpy and somewhat more compos mentis Neal on the couch.
"My head," Neal groaned.
"Migraine?" Peter asked, and Neal shook his head, then winced.
"No, just a run-of-the-mill headache. Thank heaven."
Neal hadn't had a full-blown migraine since he'd started taking some sort of medication for them -- he hadn't been forthcoming with details, and there were times when Peter could tell he was in pain or at least uncomfortable, but at least he wasn't having to take sick days for it anymore.
"Is there any chance that whatever they gave you might react badly with what you're already taking? Should I call your doctor?"
Neal shook his head again. "If it was going to, I think I'd already know. I just need to lie down for a while."
Peter went and fetched a bottle of aspirin and a glass of ice water. After passing these to Neal, he sat on the edge of the coffee table. "So," he said carefully, "do you remember what we talked about at the clinic?"
Neal had thrown his arm over his eyes; now he lowered it, and the look he gave Peter was guarded, wary. Almost hostile. "Some of it," he said slowly.
"Believe me, I don't want to talk about it any more than you do. But we have to."
Neal closed his eyes. "Damn it. I wasn't ..."
"Wasn't going to tell me?" Peter said sharply. "What if we run into Keller one of these days, and I get on his bad side? What about anyone else who gets on his bad side?"
Neal's eyes snapped open again, and he sat up, wincing. "D'you know what would happen if the feds knew about Matthew, Peter?"
"They'd know that he's even more dangerous than they already thought, and they'd be able to take measures to protect themselves and others."
"I'm guessing those 'measures' would be a sniper at 300 yards," Neal said. He met Peter's eyes with his own -- flat, blue, and cynical enough for a man twice his age. "Peter, we kept a lot of things from our keepers. Not everything is in those files you saw. And that's because if they knew about things like this? They wouldn't be trying to catch us. They'd be trying to kill us."
Peter wanted to protest, but he couldn't even bring himself to say it. He believed in the system, believed in his country, but both of them were run by ordinary men and women, with ordinary human fears and prejudices. He knew some of the things the CIA got up to. He knew better than to believe Neal would be safe.
"But you told me," he pointed out.
"Only under the influence of drugs," Neal muttered. He rubbed his head and lay back down. "Peter, I ... This is something I wish you didn't know about me."
"It's something Keller can do. Not something you can do. You told me that."
"I don't know that I can't learn it, though. I never tried, I never wanted to --"
"So don't learn. Like I said before."
Neal snorted. "Everything always has an easy answer for you, doesn't it?"
"Some answers are easy."
"Only you would say that," Neal said quietly, but there was a lightness in his voice that hadn't been there before. He sounded drowsy. "I wouldn't blame you for being afraid of me."
"I wasn't afraid of you when you could read minds," Peter said. "Annoyed, yes, but not afraid. This doesn't change anything."
And maybe if he said it aloud enough times, he'd believe it.
While Neal drowsed on the couch, Peter went into the kitchen and fixed a pot of coffee for both of them.
Neal was still Neal, he reminded himself. This was another piece of information he hadn't had before, that's all.
And it wasn't as if he didn't know what it meant that Neal had shared this with him. Even Mozzie doesn't know, Neal had said. It was a gesture of trust that Peter did not intend to take lightly.
And somewhere out there was a man who could kill with his mind. A man who'd gone through the same childhood hell as Neal, but hadn't managed to come out of it with Neal's innate sweetness and fondness for people.
A man who was currently running unchecked among a population of people who had no idea what he could do, like a wolf in a herd of sheep.
And, Peter thought, a man who carried in his head a secret that could spell disaster for Neal and the others like them. Keller was dangerous to everyone around him, but he was dangerous for Neal and the other experimental children in an entirely different way. Locked in Keller's head was a secret that could spell doom for all of them.
Finding Matthew Keller hadn't been a priority for Peter before. But, he realized, it had just become one.
~~~~~
Author's note:
There will be a bit of a delay before I post the next installment, because it's quite long (~30K words) and harrowing, and still needs revisions. Also, as Mozzie and Neal quoted in season three: "If you want a happy ending, it depends on where you stop the story." Things take a much darker turn from here on out. You can stop reading here, if you like; it's a nice upbeat place to leave them, and there isn't going to be an unequivocal happy ending at the end of all of this.
~
Fandom: White Collar
Word Count: 1900
Pairing: Gen
Summary: "Vital Signs" in the Psychic!Neal universe.
Notes: For the h/c bingo square "insecurity".
Cross-posted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/509059
When Peter discovered that Neal had vanished into the Howser Clinic, he knew immediately that Neal's worst fear had come true. Well, maybe his second-worst fear -- Neal hadn't been disappeared by the government, but by a private business. Which was, in Peter's opinion, infinitely worse. If the government had locked Neal up in a lab somewhere, there were channels to go through. Strings he could pull. Highly-placed friends of friends that he could talk to.
But the Howser Clinic answered to no one. They had contacts and branch clinics around the world. If they managed to get Neal onto a plane, no one would ever see him again, and there wouldn't be a damn thing Peter could do to find him.
Which was why he was currently hiding with a drugged-up Neal in an office-supply closet, waiting for the search to die down so that he could smuggle them both out the back of the building.
He still couldn't believe that he'd done something so rash and, frankly, insane as sneaking into the clinic without backup, without a search warrant ... If only he'd been able to do what he was planning to do, which was sneak in, find Neal, and sneak out again. But no ... they hadn't left Neal unguarded for a second, which had meant overpowering and tying up the guards, and it was impossible to do that quietly. Now the whole building was hunting for them.
He might have known things would go haywire. Things always did, when Neal was around.
"I like you," Neal said, throwing an arm around Peter's neck. On top of everything, they barely had room to move, sandwiched as they were between boxes of paper and stacks of spare printer cartridges.
Peter carefully disentangled Neal's arm. "That's nice. I'll decide whether I like you once we're out of here."
He checked his phone, as if he could conjure messages magically out of nowhere, and tried to think of anyone else he could call who might be able to help. Diana was on her way with a getaway car. She might not know all the details, but he could rely on her to keep her mouth shut. He didn't dare go up the chain of command on this one. Bancroft knew the truth about Neal, but Bancroft wasn't in town, and on top of that, Peter wasn't sure which way he'd fall. As far as most of the Bureau was concerned, Neal was simply a CI on a tracking anklet, and he wasn't supposed to be here. If Peter tipped his hand to the wrong person, Neal would be back in prison and Peter may as well have left him at the clinic; he'd be equally screwed either way. Not to mention that Peter himself would be facing possible career repercussions ...
"Am I in trouble?" Neal asked, as if reading his mind. There were times when Peter had to remind himself that Neal couldn't do that anymore; he still had an uncanny ability to guess what Peter was thinking.
"Maybe. Well, yes, probably. What were you thinking, pulling a stunt like this? Didn't you know what would happen if they caught you?"
"I was trying not to get caught," Neal said petulantly.
"Yeah, how'd that work out for you?"
It was nearly dark in the closet -- the only light came from a narrow stripe around the door, illuminating them both with a twilight glow. In the dim light, Peter could just make out Neal's frown.
"What's gonna happen to me now?" Neal asked after a moment's thought.
"I don't know," Peter said, and wearily leaned his head against the box of printer paper behind him. "The Howser Clinic's going to want to hush this up, so that's a point in our favor, at least. There's no way they'll be able to explain to their financial backers that they locked you up in order to have a telepath of their very own." The fact that they had recognized Neal at all, though, made Peter very nervous. It meant that the secret of Neal and the others wasn't quite as well-kept as Agent Stark always implied. How many other unscrupulous individuals might be hunting Neal and his lab-siblings, even now?
Neal hesitated, perhaps scraping together his scattered thoughts, then spoke in the earnest voice of a drunk about to share a completely inappropriate confession. "Just in case ... in case I go down, in case I can't say this later -- I need to tell you something."
"Can we not do this now?"
Neal shook his head and grabbed clumsily for Peter's arm. "It's important. Important, Peter. I didn't want to tell you this. Because once I tell you, you won't like me very much."
Peter sighed. In the cramped space, they were so close together that their knees were touching. "Neal, even though you're a complete pain in my ass sometimes -- well, a lot of the time ... I do like you."
"Not after this."
Apprehension crawled up Peter's throat. What had Neal done? "Maybe we shouldn't talk about this right now," he said, caught between the burning desire to know, and a stomach-twisting feeling of discomfort at taking advantage of Neal's current state to pump him for information.
"You need to know," Neal persisted. "Nobody knows this. The feds don't know it. Even Mozzie doesn't know it. Remember when I told you about -- how Matthew, how he killed those people, that -- at the --"
Neal floundered to a stop, uncharacteristically for him. "Matthew Keller. At the lab, when you were kids. Yes, I remember," Peter said quietly.
"I didn't tell you how he did it," Neal said in a very small voice.
The crawling nervousness in his throat became a cold hand that closed around his stomach. "Neal, I really think we shouldn't talk about this now."
"But you should know," Neal said. He swallowed. "Matthew, he did it with -- with his mind."
A part of Peter -- the part of him that occasionally paused in disbelief to wonder how this had become his life -- had known Neal was heading there. Still, Peter's lungs seemed to have become paralyzed. Even knowing Neal as he'd come to know him, there was a part of him that desperately wished he had one of the telepathy-blocking caps he'd worn back when Neal's powers were fully functional.
In the dim light, he could see that Neal was huddled in on himself. Peter remembered how withdrawn Neal had become when he'd started talking about it that day in the Burkes' spare bedroom. At the time, Peter had chalked it up to trauma and the fact that Neal was in pain. Now, he could tell that there was a whole lot more mixed up in Neal's reaction. Guilt. Fear. Misery. With the drug wiping out his usual ability to guard himself, all his emotions were plain on his face.
Peter made himself take a breath and relax before he asked, "Can you do that?"
"I don't know," Neal said, so softly Peter could barely hear him.
There was a long silence between them. Then Peter touched Neal's arm and felt him flinch.
"I think I have an answer for you. Remember that day you took down Risetti?" The money launderer had stabbed Peter -- and hit the floor a minute later. Peter had never seen Neal so furious. "If you could, I don't think Risetti would still be alive."
"Oh," Neal said. "Ohhhhh ... you're smart, Peter." Then he frowned, looking troubled. "But I never tried. I was scared to try. Maybe I could learn to."
"Do you want to learn?"
"No!" Neal said quickly. Despite his slurred speech, his sincerity and horror came through clearly.
"So don't learn." Peter's phone buzzed; he pulled it out and checked the messages.
"You're smart," Neal decided. "Smart, and strong."
"And you're high." Peter couldn't help it; he ruffled Neal's hair, then let his hand slip down to Neal's shoulder. "Diana's here; what do you say we try to make our getaway?"
***
Diana dropped them off at the Burkes', and Peter deposited a grumpy and somewhat more compos mentis Neal on the couch.
"My head," Neal groaned.
"Migraine?" Peter asked, and Neal shook his head, then winced.
"No, just a run-of-the-mill headache. Thank heaven."
Neal hadn't had a full-blown migraine since he'd started taking some sort of medication for them -- he hadn't been forthcoming with details, and there were times when Peter could tell he was in pain or at least uncomfortable, but at least he wasn't having to take sick days for it anymore.
"Is there any chance that whatever they gave you might react badly with what you're already taking? Should I call your doctor?"
Neal shook his head again. "If it was going to, I think I'd already know. I just need to lie down for a while."
Peter went and fetched a bottle of aspirin and a glass of ice water. After passing these to Neal, he sat on the edge of the coffee table. "So," he said carefully, "do you remember what we talked about at the clinic?"
Neal had thrown his arm over his eyes; now he lowered it, and the look he gave Peter was guarded, wary. Almost hostile. "Some of it," he said slowly.
"Believe me, I don't want to talk about it any more than you do. But we have to."
Neal closed his eyes. "Damn it. I wasn't ..."
"Wasn't going to tell me?" Peter said sharply. "What if we run into Keller one of these days, and I get on his bad side? What about anyone else who gets on his bad side?"
Neal's eyes snapped open again, and he sat up, wincing. "D'you know what would happen if the feds knew about Matthew, Peter?"
"They'd know that he's even more dangerous than they already thought, and they'd be able to take measures to protect themselves and others."
"I'm guessing those 'measures' would be a sniper at 300 yards," Neal said. He met Peter's eyes with his own -- flat, blue, and cynical enough for a man twice his age. "Peter, we kept a lot of things from our keepers. Not everything is in those files you saw. And that's because if they knew about things like this? They wouldn't be trying to catch us. They'd be trying to kill us."
Peter wanted to protest, but he couldn't even bring himself to say it. He believed in the system, believed in his country, but both of them were run by ordinary men and women, with ordinary human fears and prejudices. He knew some of the things the CIA got up to. He knew better than to believe Neal would be safe.
"But you told me," he pointed out.
"Only under the influence of drugs," Neal muttered. He rubbed his head and lay back down. "Peter, I ... This is something I wish you didn't know about me."
"It's something Keller can do. Not something you can do. You told me that."
"I don't know that I can't learn it, though. I never tried, I never wanted to --"
"So don't learn. Like I said before."
Neal snorted. "Everything always has an easy answer for you, doesn't it?"
"Some answers are easy."
"Only you would say that," Neal said quietly, but there was a lightness in his voice that hadn't been there before. He sounded drowsy. "I wouldn't blame you for being afraid of me."
"I wasn't afraid of you when you could read minds," Peter said. "Annoyed, yes, but not afraid. This doesn't change anything."
And maybe if he said it aloud enough times, he'd believe it.
While Neal drowsed on the couch, Peter went into the kitchen and fixed a pot of coffee for both of them.
Neal was still Neal, he reminded himself. This was another piece of information he hadn't had before, that's all.
And it wasn't as if he didn't know what it meant that Neal had shared this with him. Even Mozzie doesn't know, Neal had said. It was a gesture of trust that Peter did not intend to take lightly.
And somewhere out there was a man who could kill with his mind. A man who'd gone through the same childhood hell as Neal, but hadn't managed to come out of it with Neal's innate sweetness and fondness for people.
A man who was currently running unchecked among a population of people who had no idea what he could do, like a wolf in a herd of sheep.
And, Peter thought, a man who carried in his head a secret that could spell disaster for Neal and the others like them. Keller was dangerous to everyone around him, but he was dangerous for Neal and the other experimental children in an entirely different way. Locked in Keller's head was a secret that could spell doom for all of them.
Finding Matthew Keller hadn't been a priority for Peter before. But, he realized, it had just become one.
~~~~~
Author's note:
There will be a bit of a delay before I post the next installment, because it's quite long (~30K words) and harrowing, and still needs revisions. Also, as Mozzie and Neal quoted in season three: "If you want a happy ending, it depends on where you stop the story." Things take a much darker turn from here on out. You can stop reading here, if you like; it's a nice upbeat place to leave them, and there isn't going to be an unequivocal happy ending at the end of all of this.
~
no subject
no subject
Drugged Neal declaring that Peter is smart is kind of adorable, out of context. With context... Keller was always scary, but now even more so. And Peter trying to convince himself that what he knows doesn't change his feelings about Neal is well done.
I'm looking forward to the next part, despite your warning.
no subject
I've said it before, and I'm saying it again, I'm continually fascinated by the way this story is both connected to and distinct from canon. Because you have the Howser Clinic, but the stakes are so much higher. Neal doesn't risk going back to prison, he risks being locked in a lab for the rest his life. The version of this scene in "Vital Signs" was unrelated to the larger season plot, here Peter realizes the whole thing has chilling implications for the so called secrecy that surrounds Neal.
And this scene in the original is sweet. There's some tension, yes. How will Peter and Neal get out of this one? But we all know that they will get out of it. And the secret drugged Neal imparts to Peter is touching and emotional.
But here, things are different. Yes, we know that they'll get out of the clinic alive. But that's no longer the point. Escaping the Howser Clinic doesn't ensure Neal's long term safety. And Neal's drugged confession to Peter is something that has to be dealt with.
If I'm remembering correctly, this is the first time that this Neal and Peter have shown the tension that so often comes up in the show. Peter's been frustrated with Neal, and Neal's been wary of Peter, but is the first time we've seen their worldviews come up so completely incompatible. And like the best Neal&Peter tension on the show, neither of them are wrong, at least in my view. Because of course Peter is right. Keller is dangerous, and the people around him are completely unprepared to deal with the threat he poses. But Neal's viewpoint is perfectly clear: his goal is to protect himself and his siblings. Neal can't see Peter's side because Neal is focused on survival, and Peter just can't understand what Neal is going through. He can sympathize; he can care. But he can't know what it's like to be hunted and afraid.
This veers a little closer to stuff I've commented on and wondered about before, which is the bond between Neal and his lab-siblings. They're scattered, Sally is deep underground, Neal and Matthew haven't seen each other in a long time--but can people suffer like that together for all that time and not end up somehow connected? I can't possibly guess where this is going but I wonder if there's going to be conflict there.
I love Peter here, as I always do. He's changed by what he knows now, how could he not be? But concern for others, particularly Neal, is still at the forefront of his mind.
Regarding the authors note: oh, I'm screwed. Because of course I can't stop reading! I'm hooked! I'm fascinated! I've written half a dissertation in your comments sections! But I can be kind of fragile flower, at times. But the plot has me so engaged that I'm looking forward to it anyway.