"Why don't you turn on some lights in here?" I rub my bicep half-heartedly where I'd smashed it into some unknown object. Cursing quietly under my breath, I make my way closer to the bed. There, I can just make out Neal's lean form, outlined softly by the window's moonlight glow.
I can't make out his face, but I can see the smile on it – something small and mysterious, something far away drifting to where I could never hope to follow.
"The dark has never bothered me."
There's something different about his voice…something I can't quite put my finger on. The closest thing that comes to mind is a sense of peaceful melancholy – a sad whimsy, for what could've been, existing paradoxically with a quiet kind of peace made with reality.
I take a closer look. This isn't James Bonds, con man extraordinaire. No, this is something else, something different. This is the man apart from the armor of cocky Caffrey confidence, and the suave con that runs through his veins. It puts my whole world off balance. Suddenly, I am at my most unsure – steady ground is five thousand feet below and a hundred years back, and I don't know what to do anymore.
"Uh…guess so," I say lamely. My arms are held awkwardly away from my sides – I don't know what to do with them. My entire body feels awkward, blundering, and unwieldy. This uncertainty is unsettling. Shaken through the core by nothing more than the tone of his voice, I find myself wanting nothing more than to find my balance again.
He turns to look at me. I see the shift in the way the light plays across the frame of his face, and I can picture the exact look he must be giving me right about now – calm, passive face in contrast with piercing, bottomless eyes that see everything about me but don't see a single thing at the same time. I've never been able to read him – not really, not entirely. There were always so many different dimensions to Neal…I get lost and disoriented just trying to wander through them all. Any attempts to categorize the many facets of him just lead to me pursing my lips in frustration and cursing his name under my breath.
At a lost for what to say, I go with the first thing that comes to mind.
"You know they're going to throw you back in prison for this." A warning. Always my first instinct when it comes to Neal. It shouldn't be. Not anymore, after all he's done for me. I hear the sharp rustle as he faces away from me again. I kick myself. I never seem to be able to break away from old habits, even when I know perfectly well he understands what's at stake here. Whatever mystical moment may have been happening, I'd effectively brought it down to earth with a single sentence.
His tone comes out more hardened, now. More real, and less. Solid, without any traces of the heart of it all left in the music of his voice. It tears my heart to tatters.
"Yeah. I know, Peter."
"Neal…"
"I just don't want to think about it tonight, okay? I can face reality in the morning." He's defensive. He should be bitter. I should be the one trying to defend myself from him.
He's the one who'd saved my life. Reunited me with my wife. Effectively sacrificed himself for us.
I let the silence tick by; uncertain as to whether or not I should leave.
"I knew it would catch up to me eventually. All the stuff I did…" This was worse. I know what he's doing; he's beating himself up, trying to justify it in my head.
"Allegedly?" I half-joke, because I can almost feel the empty space he left at the end of it where the word fit in.
"No, Peter. I did them. Well, most of them…and others you don't know about. It's time I accept that."
This – this scares me more than anything. Neal never admits. To anything.
"Caffrey, none of this is – "
"What? My fault? We both know perfectly well that it is. All I do is screw things up, Peter. That's all I've ever done. You know what I realized today? All my greatest moments…they came at someone else's cost. All those things I told myself to make it okay – that it wouldn't hurt them, not really; that they deserved it, even – they were just lies that let me sleep at night. I shouldn't have been able to, not with the things I've done…the people I've destroyed. I might not have killed anyone, but there's more ways to ruin someone than by pulling a trigger. God, it's no wonder nobody ever stays. I'm not good enough for them to love, Peter. Kate, Sarah…hell, even my friends, the ones who stuck beside me…look what I've done to you." His voice is ground to dust with regret…sorrow…pain...breaking it down to a whisper with pain imbedded in its cracks.
I have no words. I walk over to him, kneel at the edge of his bed like I intend on praying to him.
"Neal…" I say it again, looking for the words to fix the broken man in front of me.
"You know it's true, Peter."
"Neal, just listen to me." Because I'm not me if I don't do my job – and that's to set Neal straight.
"You may have done things in the past I'm sure I don't want to know about. You were a thief, and a con. Stealing from people, and tricking them was in your job description. But you aren't a bad person, Neal. And if you are, it doesn't make you unlovable, it's because you never got the love you needed. Kate didn't die because of you, she knew what she was getting in to. Besides, when are you going to see that she was bad for you anyway? Sarah…Sarah wasn't ready for something so serious when you two started. I don't think you were either, not really. And don't forget who you still have. You have Mozzie, you have June, you have El, and you have me. We all love you, Neal, and we're going to stick with you no matter what. Hell, Jones and Diana aren't here only because I ordered them to finally get some sleep. Don't you see? We need you, Neal. Just the way you are." They may be the cheesiest words I've ever spoken, but they're also the most sincere. Barring, possibly, the wedding vows I made to El.
"I got Mozzie shot, Peter. Almost killed. I got El kidnapped. You and that car crash, then getting locked up…all I do is put you in danger. That's what you get for loving me." Oh, god. He actually believes that…suddenly, it's like something clicks into place, and I finally get a small part of him.
I get it.
"You didn't do those things to us, Neal. Besides, we all still love you anyway. I love you anyway." I'm holding one of his hands in both of mine – when did that happened? I clutch it tighter.
He curls himself around our joined hands in a fetal position. I swear I hear him let out a soft sob. It's small and weak, and it sounds like letting go. My body moves almost without my knowledge…one second, I'm kneeling, the next, I'm pulling him down close, hugging him tight to my chest.
I hold him close as he shakes in my arms, and feel the wet salt of his tears seep through my shirt.
I don't know how much longer we stay like that. At some point, he finally sniffles quietly and looks up at me with something close to a blush kindled on his face. I want to tell him not to be ashamed – not about his pain, not when he's hurting – but suddenly he's moving closer, and it might've been return to my embrace, but all I see are his lips, and all of a sudden mine feel painfully dry.
I must've licked them, because his breath is hitching, and I can feel our pulses racing each other as his eyes lock onto my mouth. I'm abruptly made aware of just how close together we are. The warm weight of him is comforting, resting there on my body, but now it feels tinged with electricity, and the air tastes like tension. I watch the air escape his lips as his eyes flicker between my gaze and my mouth.
One of us makes the first move. Can't remember who, but without warning his kiss is burning hot and heavy into my system, and I can't think…everything else is just background noise and all I hear in my head is static. Kissing Neal…Jesus, kissing Neal is intoxicating.
There's nothing but the feel of him, solid, against my palms. There's nothing but the sound of our labored pants as we devour each other's mouths. There's nothing but the heady-strong scent of him – filling my nose and quickly my soul, and God it's addicting, this divine experience.
Fingers grappling at each other, we kiss as if our entire lives have been leading up to this moment, and I feel like crying because I know this heated desperation means that tomorrow is on both of our minds.
So when clothes start to shed of their own accord and somehow we fall into bed together, I can't feel anything but heartache and pleasure. I finally have this…have him…after so long, but how can I give him back tomorrow after getting what I've wanted for way too long? How can one taste be nearly enough?
I'm finally catching up to James Bonds, so why does it feel like I've lost something devastating?
And when he shudders and cums, he looks like a goddamn angel. But his face is twisted in agony and I know he feels it too. I've seen too many things to go to church every Sunday, but this more than almost anything else makes me question the heavens above us. What God would be so cruel as to give me this…let me witness the utterly soul-wrenching sight of Neal's affirmation…all the while tainting it with Caffrey's impending death?
Because Neal, he'll be locked up, probably for life this time. That isn't where he belongs. And I've trusted in the system above all else, even when I was going against it, but all I can do now is cry that it just isn't fair. He's the brightest man I've ever seen, and the thought of that crazy glint in his beautiful blue eyes dying out in the confines of a cell somewhere wrenches at my bleeding heart. He's Neal. The kid doesn't belong in some super-max, locked in with animals of all different kinds.
And I don't doubt that he can take care of himself. He's had to survive out there in the real world like the rest of us, and good looks and charm got him far but not everywhere. But he just didn't fit in the dank gray pallor of lockup, with the rapists and the cold-hearted murderers and all the other sociopaths. He deserved to shine, out here in the real world. Neal without his freedom was like El without her balanced wisdom.
Wrong.
So that lurked perpetually dark in the back of my mind, even as I bit into the finely crafted muscle of his shoulder and shook with completion. I felt him writhe beneath me in the aftershocks sent rippling through his body at the feeling of glinting white teeth against highly sensitized skin, and I hold back sobs.
Because this all seemed so final. It should've been all the rushed haste and fiery passion of a first time, and in a way it was. But it was also the frustration and heartbreak of goodbye, and that's what had me whispering, sounding to my own ears the most broken I'd ever heard.
"God, what took us so long? Fuck, Neal…"
And the sad, wrecked smile he gave me haunts my mind and my dreams – even as his scent and the stunning shade of blue his eyes hold fade away into the distance, faraway inklings of memories the only things left behind of him.
"…How am I ever gonna let you go?"