So if you don't watch The Following, the basic premise is pretty much the summary: Neal is a psychopathic serial killer and Peter Burke is the man that caught him. He escapes from jail and Peter is enlisted to catch him again, and just a lot of people dies in the original show despite it being only 5 episodes into the first season.
XXX
and I'd do it all for You
XXX
Kate Moreau is dead, and so are a lot of other people.
But her screams are the loudest of them all, piercingly so in the silence of his head. (It's been a long time since his last crime scene; it's been even longer since Neal Caffrey.) Peter Burke clenches his fists at his side and breathes through his mouth, through the stench of blood and horror and the failure that he couldn't save her in the end.
Now, she hangs upside down, pretty blues carved out of her head.
Each band of muscle at a time, he says. Each deft cut made with his prettier artist hands.
Except they are clean when he walks out into the light and the sight of Neal Caffrey still manages to knock the breath from his lungs (like a well placed punch) even four years later. His smile just as cutting, eyes just as telling, murmuring a trust me around the lies.
"I've been waiting for you, Peter." He greets him like an old friend, eyes sparkling bright, and it's a hundred times worse when his lips are quirking like this is just the reunion he's been planning for since that very first black line he's made on the prison wall.
A drag down, down, down, down. And then across.
Three months short of his execution date. One thousand three hundred and sixty-nine counts of lines later, here he is.
"It's been a while."
"Almost four years," Peter swallows around the bile and it comes easier than he wants it to when he says his name, the word forming around his tongue smoother than it should. "Hello Neal."
"I tried to keep in contact, but you never did reply my letters… You didn't even thank me for the birthday cards. I drew them myself, you know." The man says with a soft sigh, and makes a face when he adds, "and now, you've even brought company."
He turns his head to the door just as the FBI barges into the storage unit with their guns raised and safeties off. Neal Caffrey has his hands up in the air as a sign of surrender; smile a sinister twist as he looks back to Kate.
It is only from this angle that Peter catches the bone-deep romanticism etched in the way he follows the streaks of red, eyes grazing along the curve of her cheek and then the gentle flow of her long dark hair to brush at the concrete floor.
It is the look of an artist to his art. It is him memorizing her.
(The creator and his creation made with love.)
Neal licks his lips, eyes waning blue and says. "Tell them, Peter. Tell them about how much I hate guns."
He has his hands around his back, arms twisted uncomfortably, wrists cuffed painfully tight. But there is still that easy smile on his face when he tilts his head back to catch Peter's gaze.
Like there is nothing else in the world but two.
(Just him and him and a book opened to a shared page of a favourite passage in his favourite prose.
He would wax poetry with scotch on his tongue and memories of blood on his hands, all the while inviting Peter a little further into his artist state of mind when he sketched portraits on napkins to slide to Peter across the table top.
Neal would consult him on the case, looked at the gruesome crime scene photos and blanched before sharing an insight. And then he would pour another finger of fine amber into his glass and asked him to stay, if just for a little while longer, smile on his face.)
"I would much prefer a blade."
"Get him out of here." Peter forces out as he closes his eyes to the flashes of Kate gasping for breath, of a man standing over her and then Neal Caffrey as he twists his knife in his heart.
Except, the collaboration has only started, this is the prologue, the first stroke of paint on a blank canvas. A brand new line on another wall.
Down.
Because when we're done, it'll be a masterpiece for the world to behold.
There is much more to come.
bonus:
"Miss me so soon?"
Neal tilts his head to the side, his lips stretching wide at the sight of his visitor. Peter's hands clench down tight around the newest crime scene photos, of a dozen dead college girls found bled out in their beds, every last one with their eyes carved out. It's only been six hours since Neal's been in lockdown.
The orange jumpsuit, the hands in chains lying docile and cuffed to the table, and it is only then that Peter remembers Neal's endgame once more: it'd all been for you.
Neal Caffrey wants to paint a broken man, and he needs Peter Burke to be that man for him.
"What the hell did you do, Neal?"
And he'll force his hand until he breaks, if only to paint him with his blood.
XXX Kuro
I've been told I have quite the passion for a dark!Neal, I didn't deny a thing. ;D
PS: In the original The Following, after Peter's character puts Neal's character back behind bars, his cult begins his killings for him.