Chapter Text
When Diana cuffs him, Neal fights against the urge to squirm away from the blinding pain in his ribs.
He’s pushed against the askew doorframe, listening to Peter chat with Fowler. Chat, because he’s not exactly speaking with any urgency or anger, and for the first time since Neal thought he was the Man with the Ring, he regrets signing the contract with this particular agent, or even signing the contract at all. And then his ribs flare up and the glass in his arms sting, and all bitterness flees from his mind as he grimaces.
“Let’s go,” Diana says, nudging him out the kicked-open door, oblivious to his pain. Neal flicks his eyes at her—he thinks she’s oblivious, but she might just be pissed. The prison guards did that after fights sometimes: feigned cluelessness at existing injures when breaking up the prisoners, but throwing their batons around in a very calculated way, believing cruelty to be some sort of grand punishment. Well, Neal thinks, feeling the bones of his ribs, bruised on impact with the window, creaking as he moves, Peter’s gonna have to try way harder than that to make me regret this.
But then he feels a rivulet of cold blood, previously hidden underneath his jacket and behind the shard of glass imbedded in his shoulder, slip down his elbow, across his downturned arm, and fall from the skin of his wrist to the floor.
Diana pauses in taking out her cuffs when she catches the movement in her periphery, looking down at the stain on the floor, and then at Neal’s hands. More blood follows from the glass in his shoulder, too dark to be from an artery but disturbing in its quantity alone. Diana pushes him forward and pulls his arms back, and Neal flashes his teeth at the door in pain. “Neal,” Diana hisses, pushing his sleeve up, and Neal feels Peter’s gaze, previously occupied with Fowler, turning to fall on him.
Neal turns his head and suddenly wants to snarl. He wants to throw the blood in Diana’s face, into her eyes; to slip the cuffs; and to punch that surprised look off of Peter’s face. Isn’t this what you wanted? he wants to shout, because everyone he’s ever known understands pain as a punishment and going by the rage on Peter’s face in that van, in the office, just moments ago when he stormed the door—don’t you want me to feel this? Won’t I finally learn my lesson now?
Something about his derisive thoughts must show on his face, because Peter’s jaw tenses, but instead of turning away like Neal expects him to, instead of saying something flippant like a little glass won’t kill him, he abandons a cuffed yet infuriatingly unrepentant Fowler and steps to Neal’s side.
Peter’s mute when he appears in front of Neal. Diana is still searching for the wound on his arm, no doubt finding more glass shards the whole way up, but Peter’s not distracted by the wounds. Neal does his best to look him in the eye when the agent’s hand flicks up, but when it flashes in his periphery, too quick, he flinches. “Oh, we’re hitting now?” Neal growls, a little shaky on the vowels, but instinctive, flat, and as sarcastic and mistrusting as he intends it.
“No, Neal,” Peter replies, hushed, and then his hand moves past Neal’s face and pries his jacket from the large piece of glass there, the source of most of the blood. Neal hears Diana inhale sharply, but he’s too busy assessing the look on Peter’s face to consider it.
In his exhausted mind, anger had been the only thing that made sense to Neal after Peter talked him out of killing a man. He could understand anger, could manipulate and predict it. But the emotion Peter’s feeling—Neal’s only ever seen it after being captured or mortally wounded. Peter is worried.
Maybe he thinks it’s worse than it is, Neal thinks, leaning back and trying to shrug Peter’s hand off his shoulder uncomfortably. That’s a mistake—his ribs scream at him to straighten, to sit still, and he curls around them just a fraction, enough for Peter to catch. “What?” Neal asks stiffly as Peter abandons his shoulder and presses down on one of his ribs. Neal barely controls his gasp, turning it into a sharp inhale and then a tense “Get off’a me,” thinking all the while there it is, finally.
Peter glances up at Neal’s eyes and then his brows drop in concentration and his hands return to Neal’s bruised and broken side.
“Stop,” Neal hisses, struggling in earnest now, lunging back to elbow Diana in the face. She grasps his arms and twists them just a fraction, stressing his ribs, and Neal’s knees almost buckle.
“Neal,” Peter reprimands, briefly distracted into looking up.
Neal stiffens at the faint irritation in his voice, considering the value of keeping his ribs semi-functioning at least. But the look in Peter’s eyes, staring at him with something like bewilderment, pisses him off too much to keep quiet. “Get your fucking—” Neal successfully bucks Peter’s hands off of him and stumbles back, Diana carefully holding him up. “Don’t you fucking dare look at me like that,” he says tersely, discreetly shielding his ribs in the meantime, preparing. “What’re you gonna do? Send me back? Lower my radius to twen—twenty fuckin’ feet? Yeah,” Neal decides, a picture of feral inmate, snarling like a cornered animal, “maybe you’ll keep me from the hospital for a few days, so I’ll learn my lesson, huh? Or maybe you’ll just rough me up a little before we get there—”
Peter’s staring at him with increasing disgust in his eyes and Neal feels his voice growing weaker. He hadn’t prepared any more than this—he’d expected a punch before he even finished voicing the first option.
“Diana,” Peter talks past him, looking at the woman over Neal’s shoulder. Neal bristles at the lack of acknowledgement—not even a threat to shut his damn mouth. “Bring Fowler to the FBI. I’ll take over here.”
Neal watches Diana walk away and thinks damn, I thought you liked me more than that, at least, and also oh, the worry was an act for her.
“Walk with me, Neal,” Peter says, a hand on Neal’s elbow. It hurts just a little that the ease and near-friendship between them is about to be ruined once they walk out the door, but Neal’s used to it. He supposes he should’ve known when he signed that contract which granted Peter absolute power—hell, ownership over Neal, that his situation would invariably turn sour. Too much faith, he reprimands himself, a lesson he hasn’t had to be reminded of since his eighteenth birthday. Disregarding that, since early childhood.
When they pass the door and enter the empty hall, Neal nearly slumps against the wall, shifting away from Peter and watching him warily.
Peter stares at him for a moment. Blood spills from Neal’s wounds, staining the carpet. His ribs roar their displeasure.
“We’re going to the hospital, Neal,” Peter says, slowly as if Neal’s stupid. “Your ribs are broken. There’s, like, a thousand pieces of glass in your arm—”
As he talks, he reaches forward for Neal’s shoulder so he can guide him down the hall. Neal sees this and a brief, animalistic panic overwhelms him; he rears back, his head cracking against the plaster and drywall behind him. He controls his wince and curls again around his ribs, protective and helpless.
Peter seems to consider him. He steps back just a few feet, leaning against the hallway’s opposite wall, and turns his palms toward Neal. “What are you—” Peter begins, and then pauses. He seems to realize something. “That rant earlier? You—you meant all of that?”
Neal tilts his head, but is otherwise silent. He lets some of his tension unspool, but remains ready. There’s stress in Peter’s posture—poorly hidden anger?
“About the—the radius,” Peter says. “And the hospital. You think—”
“You’re a Fed,” Neal snaps, unable to help himself. “A God-damned suit. I have no idea what you’re thinking.”
Peter looks at him long enough for Neal to swallow and avert his eyes. “That’s not what this is about,” Peter observes. “You think I’m gonna—what? ‘Rough you up’?”
Neal just glares at him mulishly. He’s aware enough despite the blood he’s losing to recognize a trick question.
“Neal,” Peter sighs, stepping forward, and Neal tenses. “That’s not what we do.”
Neal glares at him, braced against the wall. “Really? You’re telling me you’ve never gotten a little trigger-happy during a chase? Pure-as-shit Peter Burke’s never punched an innocent man? Hell, never cuffed a guy too hard?” He straightens his spine a bit, despising the instinct to cower. He’s always hated cops. “You’ve got power over me—a whole lot of it. Do you expect me to believe you won’t use it?”
Peter looks him up and down. “Have you thought this,” he begins, strangely flat, “the whole time?”
Neal considers. “You’re a cop,” he decides, “or the equivalent of one. I—I don’t like cops.”
“You don’t like the law in general,” Peter snorts, getting comfortable against the opposite wall.
“No,” Neal agrees, and then, almost unintentionally, “My dad was a cop.”
Peter’s inhale wants to be sharp but isn’t. Neal’s still carefully frozen and angled away from him, his hair falling to his eyes as he—almost subconsciously—awaits a strike, but he relaxes a fraction at the softness of Peter’s voice when he says, “Oh.”
“I didn’t like him,” Neal goes on. “Not exactly the hero type. My mother, she wanted me to believe he was one of the good ones.” He gets lost in the story, doesn’t even notice Peter inching closer. “Even then, I knew there was no such thing.”
“No such thing?”
“As a good lawman,” Neal responds, half-slumped, the blood loss and the pain doubling his vision.
There’s silence in the hallway for a moment. Noise and sight rush in and out of Neal’s senses; the walls charge closer and and recede back, nauseatingly rhythmic. On second thought, his earlier assessment about the integrity of the arteries in his arms might’ve been a little off. Or maybe his ribs are poking obnoxiously at a lung or two.
“There is,” Peter near-whispers, and Neal is startled by the close proximity of his voice. His mind flashes through surprise and pain, quickly settling on fear. Peter is finally seeking his revenge, and Neal—Neal’s breaths are coming laboriously, his ribs are screaming in protest, and, like a sniveling, starving rat caught in the jaws of a trap, he does not want his situation to worsen any further.
In a primal display of human nature unfit for a conman of his social stature, Neal launches his entire weight away from Peter—which ends up being the same direction as the end of the hall and, more immediately, the cold, carpeted ground.
Somewhere during the course of that fall, Neal gets to thinking: he won’t even have to do anything. Landing on his side like this will hurt like all hell, and Peter, in precise mimicry of the thought process of any other self-respecting lawman, might just take this as an indication that he doesn’t even have to get his hands dirty. Just kick Neal while he’s down, take out his grievances on an injured CI instead of a cocky one, and let their relationship continue like that for its remainder—Neal ignoring his orders, getting hurt, and enduring his handler’s abuse on the way to the hospital. It’s chillingly calculated: no one would even know.
But too-early pain lances through him as arms heft him up, rescuing Neal from an agonizing collision with the floor. He bites back a scream and manages to stifle it into a dull whine, but Peter must hear it like a gunshot because Neal feels him shudder a little. “Sorry, Neal,” he says, and then he shifts his hold, adjusting the way he’s carrying Neal.
In the same moment, a heavy weight lands the worst of the mess of Neal’s ribs, and the conman’s consciousness shorts out like a pulled plug, a drowned electrical wire, sending him packing into the airplane-hangar darkness of his own unpleasant dreams.