The Prestige

by MaxsMusings

"You can either be a con or a man. You can't be both." Who is the con and who is the man? Peter or Neal? Neither or Both? Can Peter forgive Neal? Can Neal forgive Peter? What do Special Agent in Charge Kyle Bancroft and Former Assistant Special Agent in Charge Reece Hughes have to do with this con v man dilemma?

12. The man or the one behind the mask?

A/N: Top of the Day Readers! This is a little FYI for those of you wondering about the extended delay in the posting of this chapter. I tried unsuccessfully to post several times over the last month and a half. After much discussion and many requests for assistance progress was made.

A/N 2: I would like public thank my mentor jeanie2914 for her kindness, generosity and most importantly her friendship. Without her support this chapter would not have been made possible. If y'all are looking for super amazing fan fiction to read, she has 21 spectacular pieces to choose from!

TRIGGER WARNING/READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED: This chapter may not be suitable for all audiences. This chapter contains VIOLENT and MATURE themes.

"Which one am I, the man or the one behind the mask?

Which comes first, the courage or the fall?"

~ Civil Twilight, The Courage or The Fall

December 6, 2013, 351 Riverside Drive, (June's Apartment), 8:31PM

"Tá a fhios agam cad a chiallaíonn sé chun páirt a ghlacadh." (I know what it means to play a part.) Neal replayed the conversation with the woman who bound his wounds from early in the week over on the movie projector in his sable colored head, "tá a fhios agam cad a chiallaíonn sé a bheith agat do chuid féin a cheilt. Do chuid féin fíor. Nó cad atá fágtha de do chuid féin fíor." (I know what it means to have to hide yourself, your true self, or what remains of your true self.)

The man in the remnants of a Tom Ford suit was sitting outside in the falling snow looking like the bronze sculpture of John Harvard in the yard of the Cambridge Massachusetts university, a frozen sunken shell of meat suit in a metal coffin. A seemingly forgotten wine glass (if the frost about the rim was any indication) teetered like a high wire acrobat in his left hand.

A bottle of 2001 Shafer Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select stood partnered with the left leg of the scrollwork-covered chair. "Agus tá a fhios agam cad é cuid de tú féin a cheilt. Cuid, mar sin mared, ní féidir leat a leigheas riamh." (And I now what it is to hide a part of yourself. A part so mared, you can never heal.) Bloodshot blue eyes stared off into the night sky; he had provided her a private viewing of the delitescent intaglio about his alabaster marble.

However he had been expecting the lady near always in black (not that night) to respond to his canvas, it was not meet his show for her tell. The residuum's of ticks along the five foot five ladies back were as deep as they were plentiful. The trancheur (artistic carver) had worked themselves into a frenzy as they slashed into her with a cacoethes fury, that his nursemaid suffered no spine damage was a wonder.

When his pants pooled around her in a wave of cotton the first thing he focused his lens on was the crimson transversal that lay along the inside of her ivory thigh. The earth was scorched; as if the tablelands of lava erupted from the volcano and had freeze framed in place.

Absently the man whose toes had become one with the red tiled deck ran his fingers along his inseam where the area had been near to deflagrated from a heated lug wrench. That day had started out so calm wandering up and down the aisles of the museum taking in the irresistible pulchritude of the art on display prior to his return to the palladium silvicolous dwelling.

The five foot eleven man remembered the moment his skin started to molt as if he were left forgotten on the barbeque all day to blacken and burn. The smell the seared flesh gave a sickeningly sweet mix of smoldering fat and almost melting plastic. The smoke that rolled off the inside of his thigh was the reason he never used candles in the bathroom. Nineteen-year-old Neal held strong when the phantom man in the dingy feted bathroom found him with iron and chain.

A clonus tintibulated in his right palm, his eyes locked on the open area. He could still feel the grime seeping into his digits burning into the skin like toxic waste, feel the cracks in the hexagon tile digging into the tips of his fingers as he gripped it searching for anchor against the euthermic ansate merging into the muscles and tendons resting so close to his packaged twins the hairs about them curled into the skin.

His right hand reached molders fingers down to his most private area fingering the indents and ridges along the top of the clay. The woman who showed him more grace than her name bore certain kindred stops on her treasure map of torture. It wasn't just the plats of land about her apex that mirrored his. The mountain regions of her landscape had railroad tracks permanently etched into the topography.

He had tried not to drink in the sight of her enbowments as if she were the first step towards salvation for a sinner. For the barest hint of seconds he debated on moving his eyes away from the expanse of her breasts as she stood before him her head bowed but her body uncowered. In eloigning her covering she had provided him her permission to take in her bountiful assets or the visible part of her twin hills.

Stormy blue eyes continued their nomadic trek across the New York skyline in hopes his mind wouldn't focus on the memory of seeing more of her than intended. She was far from the first woman who had removed clothing for him, nor was she the first woman to propound her undraped canvas for his inspection.

Ms. Carney however, was the first woman who had shared of themselves so completely. It was not about the nakedness of her skin. It was about the campestral of her soul. She fed not only his stomach but also his the perdu flinders of his soul. Despite his insensate actions the lady who was more filled with mared parts then smooth helped him remove his armor. She tended to his wounds, not all of them physical. More than all though she wanted him to know he was not alone.

The wine drink swallowed as the snapshots in his mind moved onto the way her hips lay snug into the sides of his pants as if she needed a shoe horn to fit them in, the small stamp of a tattoo at the base of her back and how the every inch a woman fullness of her backside strained against the trappings of the soft cotton blockade her mounds calling to him as a siren to a lost sailor adrift at sea.

The left hand holding the stemware tightened as the zipper of his pants suddenly stretched across his presently unattended growing need. Neal worked at his breathing. In through the nose, hold for eight, out through the mouth, hold for eight. His right hand carded his hair the lone curl that state atop of the hackly lines of the long healed over scar bounced against the movement and the fustigating winds about the deck.

Neal watched the sky cry, snowflakes falling obliquely against the moonlight. The shards of winter tickling at his exposed skin like whisks of a broom along the floor. Frost found his feet encasing them in fluffy white clouds of frozen flecks of ice.

The near frozen man sitting ensconced in the chair like a cupcake liner to a metal pan could still feel the warmth of the lady in his workout wear as his right hand protectively cupped about the roundness of her callipygian. Her chestnut waves of grain had teased about the unclothed parts of his skin, setting his body on fire, each little hair a match and he the tinder.

Her brown eyes blinked slowly as her body rustled like leaves on a tree against the cocoon of calefacience his body offered. Instead of pulling back she simply settled into the flames emanating just below their merged surfaces. The concupiscence filled smile that found its way to her wind chapped lips roused (not the only body part to register that look) one from his. For those few seconds they were just a man and a woman nestled together like the missing pieces of a puzzle.

His fallen chin rested right above her ear as she resettled, the ragged and cruel tip of the line along her neck visible out of the corner of his eye. Her small hand with its sprinkling of freckles had found its way during their slumber to rest upon his taut abdomen. The heal had come to a full stop along the crest of his sleeping pants, the tops of her fingers sussurrused like a wayward stream just beyond the elastic towards his rocky crag. Quite without his permission his anatomy reacted to the nearness of her.

Storm clouds and lightening found her eyes as he shifted his weight the surface that lay below her hand spasmed involuntarily like waves crashing against the rocks during a squall. The tintibulating in his heart was akin clangs from a bell tower like the opening from The Great Gate of Kiev from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. The rhythmic humming along under the flannel matched the overtones emanating from his own bell tower.

As her near spelunking digits climbed their way back up his mountain with a slowness that made his toes tighten into the table below them the lady awash in his personal scents rolled her head into the curve of his neck, each exhalation of her breath on his exposed canvas was sweet sweet agony. His fingers dug into her hipbone and the dough below hands, absently kneading it.

He had not been able to contain his hearty chuckle as their alarms heralded the end of the quiet moment in the cresting of the morning light. The drum duction to Master of Puppets from Metallica bounced Grace's phone across the table in kitchen where it lay in forgotten isolation throughout the night.

Her laugh joined with his as she eased off his side inch by tormenting tarigrade inch. The man of the apartment took in one last inhale of their amalgamated scents tangoing about the air before the lady with the chestnut hair shuffled without out urgency over to bunny hopping iPhone in its sunflower covered case silencing James Hetfield just as the singer started with the opening words 'end of passion play.'

The Missouri matriculant had wondered if his sans extra sartorial choices overnight guest would attempt to make it home, where ever that may be prior to their required arrival at 26 Federal Plaza to trudge away another day for the man. All she did after turning off the dulcet sounds (to her) of the heavy metal song was to continue her lumbering pace of a shuffle ball chain over to the coffee maker. Sleep had been skint and the call of the nectar was considerable. His suspiration matched her's as the St. Helena coffee permeated pungent caramel smokestack's about the air of the rooftop apartment in the Upper West Side.

Snow continued to assault the outside sitters chiseled cheekbones as if it pearlized bullets falling rapid fire from the sky. The wind danced a crazed can can through his curled sable locks. His toes frosted over in continued fusement with the terracotta tile, he could feel the scrollwork of the metal chairs imprinting into his heels where they as if in a lovers embrace.

The sommelier merged the rim of the Waterford stemware with his lips. The swallow of the near frozen sauvignon felt as if rime topped shards of glass imbedded into the path on the way down. Neal welcomed the swinging swords of pain as they lashed into his throat, a tangible representation of confirmation that he could still feel. That he would not go gentle into the night. Artist's fingers lowered the crystal ware down as his elbow perched in a dangerous teeter on the arm of the metal chair.

Bloodshot eyes skittered about the outside space finding the place where they had bowed. The file maven had stayed with him in companionable venerated silence long into night. The ghost of a smile fleeting past his face as the memory the softness of her lips upon his cheek before she took her leave.

Neal found his throat tightened as his mind traveled much farther back in time when no one had sat with him in silence venerated or otherwise. His ichor-imbrued knees had found the ground for his Uncle. The brutality of that decades past December night no match for the violent disturbance of the atmosphere as the snow raged with the fury of cluster bombs exploding across the Midwest landscape, the gale force winds punched at his body just as the man (if you could even refer to him as such) he had buried some few minutes previous had.

Born out of unconscious tradition the Traveler in him had merged the dirt with his face and with his blood meshing the worlds together in terrene union. His spin cycle on the washing machine shaking fingers, two of which hung to the side in a macabre dance of wayward string puppetry had scrubbed as hard as the swelling would allow. To this day he could still taste the dirt as it melded like metal under a torch into the multitude of splits that made up the shredded surface of his lips.

Neal wrestled a fluctuant hand through his raven highlighted with chiffon hair purposely engaging the roots in a game of tug of war. Memories of his uncle stirred themselves up in the soup pot of his mind. The words and images were as overwhelming as they were sadistic. Maybe if just tugged hard enough Cairbre would settle back down into the recesses where he had lain dormant.

The five foot eleven man fused into a borrowed chair on a borrowed deck located just outside a borrowed apartment could still feel the spring of that odiferous grease filled bench seat, how every single time the wheels slid across ice covered roads like a beer glass on an uneven bar surface the jagged edges of the metal coil scourged the muscle and tissue that made up the thin barrier to his all ready swollen marbles filled sack.

Enervated from the all that had taken place in the barn and unable to keep his arms up or his any part of his hands on the wheel for an extended period of time the illegal driver pulled into an obscured stretch of woods near the Susquehannock State Forest in Pennsylvania. 30,000 acres of Wild Area that would hopefully conceal his broken and bloodied carcass from the world.

It was only when his hands folded in on themselves resting across the broken zipper of his pants amid a pool of dried blood that the sole occupant of the stolen vehicle (was it really though if the owner had passed on) realized he had not offered a prayer in what should have been a trifurcate after the kneeling and scrubbing.

Neal had made a conscious effort while leaning against the door of the old gray Ford truck, really the only thing keeping him from collapsing against the pain of flindered ribs not to pray. His last stand against the man who beat him like a ragdoll he sought to destuff. Who the hell would have listened anyhow he wondered? No one that was who. He had prayed his whole life for someone or something. A person to love him or a light to guide his way. Apparently he hadn't done it right because he came up short on both accounts.

As if to laugh at him like a maniacal clown on a rampage the universe provided him what he sought most though he hadn't known it at the time or in the way he thought still in those coming months he would learn the first touches of love, what it meant for someone to show you the way and what an education it would be.

George had wrapped his tree trunk notch sized knuckles on the glass with an insistent staccato thinking the person in the rusted F250 was sleeping off a bender and he would need to rose them from their alcohol induced slumber. The arch of Acebeam flashlight seemed like a spotlight to the occupant who startled from his resting place against the dirtied glass of the window.

Neal honed in his sightline as much as the swelling the littered the crests and valleys of his face would allow. With trepidation in his gut and an unsteady breath compliments of a near collapsed lung he watched the green eyes assessing him like a hawk watches it's pray. The Forest Ranger on his nightly patrol of the wooded area felt his heart jump to his knees as he realized Neal was just a young teenager who had taking the beating of his life.

As if he had used a megaphone the older man's baritone voice carried through the glass barrier separating the law from the runaway. George had been efficient in his kindness when warned Neal he was going to open the door. He requested that the teenager not fight him, his voice broke on the please, rallying for a more balanced delivery when he went on to say he meant him no harm.

Absently he took a sip of the near frozen wine as he loosened his tie down towards the ridges of his breastplate akin to a noose waiting to be tightened. The barefoot man felt the chill of the red as it settled into the lapping pool of his stomach.

His mind refocused on that night in Pennsylvania and the first person who ever showed him kindness expecting nothing in return. His body landed with a heavy thunk into the Greek mans sizeable arms like slab of meat tossed down on the counter. The older man caught him easily as if he were a tadpole on a hook.

Neal had opened his mouth to provide éclaircissement, his fine-tuned (even at that age) conman's tongue failed and words escaped him, the only the found its way from his lips was the remnants of a shattered canine and premolar. He had tried to rescue the fallen dental shards; his palming technique failed him as he focused all his attention on the man in the uniform. To him the law was a harbinger of doom, with all that had transpired in that Missouri barn fear was shorting his brain like lightening to a junction box.

The former Bennett's body on instinct bowed into protect himself from what he figured to be the cold hardened steal of handcuffs as the federal law enforcement officer took in the blood spatter pattern across his torso. His blue eyes locked on the gun resting on the ridge of the towering mans left hip.

With gentle hands and measured movements George lowered him to the ground as if he were a porcelain doll that might shatter on roughed impact. The oversized hands of what Neal would come to find out was the excommunicated son of the Pittsburg Mafioso were unflinchingly steady as he felt over the length and width of his fuselage with a well practiced hand.

The older man had taken in the way the sable hair agglomerated to the teenager's forehead with a paste of blood and exposed matted tissue. His large fingers the size of Ball Park franks scudded the obstruction in one swift movement so that he could see all of the boy's eyes. The red of subconjunctival hemorrhage mixed with blue sky regarded him with an equal mixture of physical wariness and emotional exsanguination.

The boy in the tattered and torn gray tee shirt tie dyed with ichor and ripped along the inseam pants had yet to speak. George rested a gentle non-confrontational hand on Neal's shoulder he could feel the uncontrollable trembles of the mountain below his palm. "I mean to help you son. If you will let me." Wary eyes ran the length of the man in the uniform again resting on his firearm. The man in green swallowed down the rocks in his throat at the unadulterated fear radiating with the fire of a thousand and one suns at the edges of the brave facade the abused teenager wore.

"Listen, I can see that someone gave you quite the beat down…" let the sentence hang hoping that the boy would fill in the blank with his name. When that request had not materialized an answer the knelling gentleman continued on undeterred, he knew what it meant to broken, bleeding and without anyone.

"I only mean to provide you help." The word help hardened the steel in the bloodied back (if the reddening of the snow beneath it were any indication.) Whoever had done this to him; they had done so much more than punch him with fists. "Clean and patch you up a bit. Maybe some food and nice warm place to bed down for the night?"

Though the blue eyes that watched him were surprisingly alert, the older man knew it was adrenaline keeping the boy conscious. At some point soon the adrenaline would give way to shock, the Ranger knew he had to break through to the supine in the snow prior to the kids systems shutting down. Worried about the trifecta of blood loss, below freezing temperatures and the inevitable shock, George perpetrated the one action he thought might break through the diming light of the young mans soul and hopefully garner him an ounce of trust (and in hindsight he had told Neal not a knock to the back of the head.)

The lawman rose from his crouching position and offered display of the ragged, angry scars that ran along his back and onto his hips. The minimal light provided by the headlights on his jeep framing the hulking form in a dark shadowy glow. George needed the broken body of the boy merging with the ice and snow before him to understand that he did know even if he didn't know his story.

The White Collar CI could smell the many mixtures of wood and coal fireplaces as their smoke rent the sky almost like the physical representation of Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee as he forced his thoughts from the first lawman to show him kindness. Neal could feel the crispness of the New York air as wind sliced into the nape of his neck with wroth. Angry pellets of snow landed on his exposed throat running like a leaky faucet down his chest halting only at the obstruction of his belted waist.

The man ensconced in the metal chair felt more than heard when a presence invaded the solitude of the contemplative evening. "Mon Frere," (my brother) Moz yelled out as he opened the door to the rooftop apartment at 351 Riverside Drive on the Upper West Side, the balding man he been expecting to find the man of the apartment, well inside the apartment safe from the winter and her furious white tears.

When the closed the door with a resolute click the bespeckled man realized that Neal was not sitting on one of the stiff backed dining chairs while he skimmed through one of the numerous tomes that lined June's bookshelves. Nor was snuggled in the warm embrace of the library area watching the History Channel. Moz tossed a glance over to the ornate wooden bed frame, nor was his young friend lounging against 600 hundred-thread count covered pillows.

From his vantage point near the table Moz could just make out the silhouette of a man in a metal chair on the balcony. The young man looked like a bronzed sculpture at the park frozen in time and space. Moz moved his eyes down the back of his friend coming to rest on a bottle of red standing sentry next to the chair leg; it was nearing the halfway mark.

The older man knew he had to tread carefully; the statuary didn't often drink to excess. Moz's monochromatic Chucks carried him towards the heap of bones and blood. Light blue eyes zeroed in on the glass about the DC natives hand, it was nearing snowman statues.

"Hey Moz," Neal whispered out more than a little scratchy on his delivery as he acknowledged the Friday night visitor. The visitor continued his assessment of his young friend. Neal's feet such as he could see them through the thick pearl blanket of winter weather pooled about were bare. The felon's Ermenegildo Zegna dove gray tie with the light white dots was loosen half way down his chest as if tugged as hard as he could and that was the haphazard of angry tug.

The top buttons undone on the five foot eleven man's Tom Ford Poplin dress shirt. The once finely pressed Italian cotton garment was untucked and wrinkled; the right cuff was haphazardly rolled up to the sitters elbow. The left looked like Neal tried to match it with the left then just gave up after two rolls; it sat just past his wrist.

It was then the follically challenged man noted the sodden white bandages around the Missouri matriculations wrists. Moz felt his heart rate increase as if he were skydiving without a backup chute those cloth bracelets were indicators of only one thing. Neal's words from the previous month echoed in his head. "I would do it Moz, if that is what he wanted. I would hate the smallness of my box. But I would do it. Maybe I even deserve it." Moz fingered at his rings in an effort calm himself and maybe in hopes they would provide him the right words for the interlocution ahead.

Given everything that occurred recently with the Suit spending time in the Big House and ALL that they had done in the last few weeks he didn't understand, to think the Suit would have cuffed their friend, their brother maybe even returned him to that small box hurt his (larger than he cared to acknowledge) heart in a way he didn't even know was possible.

"Neal," Moz worked to keep his voice even at the thought that Neal could have spent time back in Sing Sing and he wasn't here to provide assistance and support. There has to be a reason that would make sense, that would provide an answer he could process, the Suit was NOT that could an actor, he would NEVER have gone to that blood soaked barn, he would have NEVER asked him for help.

Moz breathed out his growing anger and asked, "What happened to your wrists?"

The chair sitter's ocean blue eyes tried to focus on the gauze dressing about his cuffs. After a few seconds of taking in the white swathe his red rimmed eyes skittered off into the night in search of a different landscape to study.

At first the Dentist of Detroit thought his friend was drunk, but Neal's eyes were much to grounded, his dancers body the very definition of tense. The reclining Irishman looked as if one well-placed finger might shatter him into a million pieces of Caffrey confetti.

The older man took in the rumbled gray Tom Ford pants how they creased into the thighs, the young man always took care to smooth out the plains and valleys. Moz eyed the wetness about the hems; the color difference spoke to a great passage of time in the winter weather. He couldn't see Neal's feet they were submerged below the snow that gathered about the chair.

His eyes traveled back up to his Mon Frere's (brothers) face. Neal was sad, well more than sad. He was what happens when sad has no place to go. It just builds and builds until every part of your body can't handle the weight of the emotion suppressed within its core and the sad just leaks out like a spilled glass of water.

Neal's normally well coiffed sable hair was soaked through curling ever which way, the tips of his ears crimson under the weathers assault, his body a sunken pirates chest empty of treasure. "Oh Neal." The man in the blue neck scarf needed to relocate the indomitable snow person from the balcony to the warmth of the inside.

With determination in his movements Moz leaned down and pried the forgotten wine glass from the frozen hand with the blue fingers. "It is time to come inside." After a few tugs the balding man finally succeeded in separating the wined duo.

"I don't want to come inside Moz," The taller man sung out his refusal as if center stage at The Met, "I want to stay out here were the wind blows and the snow falls." Neal took in the fall of his friends face, the way Moz looked as he had been punched in the stomach and kicked in the nuts. He relented on his stance of becoming a snowman.

Neal tried to let the Michigan native help him out of the metal coffin, both found the five foot eleven man's gelid limbs just would not cooperate with the request at first, it took a couple of heaves to finally jack his bean stalk. The pace was as laggard as it was uneven, eventually the duo made it inside the heated apartment with sighs of relief.

Moz fought against the raging of the wind almost having to slam the doors shut. His shaking hand rested against the pane of glass near the door handle in an effort to calm the storm brewing inside him. What happened to his Mon frère? (Brother) The Suit had provided no information relating to irons and Sing Sing or any reasons why their young friend looked lost on the road of haunted memories.

Neal looked he table where the medical supplies had been, where she eased the shards out of his wrists with a kindness unknown to him since George had stitched his ragdoll stuffing back inside. His eyes washed over to the couch where she had snuggled against him warming him in a way that nothing else could, his body slunk over to the leather furniture on autopilot.

The barefoot man forced himself down in the same spot he had fallen into a peace filled slumber with the lady with the chestnut hair as if he were impaling himself on needles of nettle and fire. The older man watched Neal with a keen eye he was staring at the couch as if he were seeing a ghost. Something was not right with his friend. Not right at all.

Neal's flat words broke the bespeckled man out of his disquieted contemplation, "you have been gone a long time Moz." Neal tried to focus his eyes on his friend who named himself after a (then) Cyclopes teddy bear. "A really long time." The visitor swallowed at the raw hurt that surged to the surface like a submerged piece of the flotsam that broke through the waters edge.

Neal continued, "I didn't think you were coming back." The unfettered recrimination emanating forth from the simple statement of fact was hard to miss. As much as the DC native might not say it out loud, both knew he suffered from feelings of abandonment. Moz knew he had been gone much to long.

"Time is an illusion." The man still in his walking coat said to the room at large as he availed the rescued bottle of a glass of red; he sipped at the vintage noting pencil shavings and cedar wood. When Neal didn't even say Albert Einstein to his softball throw of a quote Moz knew that the man on the couch was not all in the present. He responded to quotes on autopilot, it was one of the odd little pieces of the puzzle that made up their friendship.

The traveler had checked in with the Suit on his way over to Junes' house. The fed said it had been a tough week. The man who he had traveled to the Midwest with might have undersold just how arduous. Light blue eyes ran over the folded state of his friends body, his back might have been straight but his shoulders had rolled in like magnets in search of each other, his legs were bowed in at the knees as if to protect from a direct attack, even his hands had crossed over the zipper of his suit pants.

The older man knew he needed to try and push the man on the couch to share what happened with the Suit, to help remove the bricks he had been mortaring in the wall he was erecting to protect himself against the recrimination, the failing someone he so obviously loved.

Neal wasn't alone in the world anymore. The depth of the Suits feelings for his CI equaled that of the CI's for the Suit. Moz took a thoughtful sip of wine, with Neal he couldn't perpetrate a center mass hit. All the younger man would do would be to batton down the hatches harder against the squall battering against his ships hull. So round about it was.

"Mon Frere." (My Brother) Moz waited a beat for Neal to acknowledge his presence. The couch sitter nodded absently. The Dentist of Detroit grimaced; he would take what he could get at this point. "Why were you sitting outside like something out of Joe Conrad's Heart of Darkness?"

The quoter made his way over to the chair easing himself down careful to keep a perspicacious eye on the man in the sodden men's wear. When Neal brought his gaze over to the man across from him Moz could tell whatever or whomever his friend was seeing in the chair, it wasn't him. They all had demons, the balding man knew the parts they were playing had rattled a few of the felon's lose.

"Neal?" He urged gently.

"I'm not alone in the wilderness Moz. I was drinking alone on my balcony." The emotional exhaustion in the younger man's voice was hard to miss it leaked out of his pores like loose flour through a sift. Neal ran his hands through his wet hair appreciating the pull against his scalp. When his fingers joined themselves in his lap his could see his bandages were wet. They were tightening into his skin as if manacles of over exuberant shrink-wrap. Neal raked his nails under the edges, he ripped the sodden cotton off with a strangled cry, and they fell silently to the floor in a heap of red, white and soggy mess.

The wine sipper swallowed the red before responding to the half Conrad quote half statement of fact. "Ok Mon Frere. (My Brother) Why were you drinking alone on your balcony?" Neal just stared at him, his face a violent playground of rampant memories and discordant emotions.

Then as if he flipped a light switch his face weltered into the vacant smile of a sable head Ken Doll. Before him was Neal Caffrey conman, not his Mon frère (brother) or the ghost of the man that had been there mere seconds ago. The Converse wearer felt his heart slide out of his chest. His Neal, not the actor on a stage sitting before him now, never felt the need to try and con him. He missed his friend.

"Where were you Moz?" Blue eyes flashed with the fires of unstrained sadness. "Why were you in the empty immensity of earth, sky and water?" Moz felt his soul constrict with an unnamed emotion, his Mon frère (brother) felt abandoned with the extended absence. He had known he was taking a gamble when he decided to accept the job he had been working on. There was no doubt in rapid-fire mind that this was the most important work of his life. Moz welled up like a damn packaged with branches and bramble at the continued use of the Heart of Darkness.

His light blue eyes swept over the healing wounds about his friend's wrists. Barbaric tell tale signs of being fettered in handcuffs. Moz forced the debris caught in his vocal chords passed the bend with a resolute swallow, "Did you do a little time while I was gone?"

Neal looked down at his wrists, flashing on her easing the healing ointment in vigilant in her quest to not play his raw nerves like a violin, the gentle way she held his palm while she wrapped injuries. How the lady in black was careful to add extra padding where the metal had removed more than its fair share of dermis. The couch sitter rubbed an absent hand over his left wrist. He hadn't seen her and found he missed her.

"What can I say Moz? I love a little shackle time." Though Neal's delivery was meant to infer wink wink nudge nudge about sex games, the light in his blues were not just dimmed they were extinguished. The balding man raised an eyebrow as if to call monkey uncle pants to bedroom shennigating being the reasoning behind the remnants of 'shackle time.'

When Neal knew he hadn't succeeded in deterring his friend's inquisition, he resolved it better to just get it over with and be done with the how I would up in handcuffs education. "Peter wanted to teach me a lesson." Sculptures fingers rubbed at his left wrist in an effort to silence the random shotgun firing of raw nerves. The injured man rested his hand over the bruised area of tenderized meat.

It was the timbre of the recently restrained man's delivery that scared the bespeckled man more than the explanation, it was void of any emotion, it was as if he were relaying something mundane like tax law or the uses of peat moss. Mozzie's eyes grew wide as his young friend continued in that fake plastic tree voice, "It was an erudite week."

"The Suit," Moz pointed his index finger towards the thinning bracelets around Neal's wrists. The entire landscape a kaleidoscope of primary colors. Enraged crimson pulsing like a sign in the red light district, the battered blue of a ships hull crashed one to many times against the rocks, some jaundice yellow and the fading greens of a muted leprechaun.

The shorter man could make out a few spots were the cuffs had carved deep like a Thanksgiving turkey of a few weeks past below the surface, "did that?" The recently returned traveler shot up out the chair like a firecracker released from the barge. "Mother of Pearl Neal. Why?" His voice cracking like cup fallen to the ground as he questioned, "What lesson did you have need to learn?" Moz paced the small space from the entrance door to the patio doors he wanted to explode anger filled his insides like jam to a jellyroll.

All that he had done in service of the Suit these past weeks. ALL. The agent had offered him assurance that no harm would come to their mutual friend, brother really. Well, more. There wasn't really a word to describe how bonded they were with the young man with black hair, chiseled cheeks and alabaster skin.

His light blue eyes regarded the shattered shell of the man sitting on the couch, the way his body sought to protect itself from impending harm from others and the way he wanted to continue to heap it on himself. The Suit had lied.

It wasn't the physical damage. That in time would heal. It was the lack of fight left in the bag of bones across from him; the emotional devastation that littered his landscape in flints and shards was hard to miss. Even thought Neal knew it to be a play where he was a supporting actor on a stage, part of him, a larger part than Moz originally thought felt he had failed the Suit and thus deserved the savage opprobrium.

"Who holds the leash." Neal was extremely impressed he was able to relay those words with a smooth like butter on bread voice, there were no fissures along the fault lines not even a rock in the pathway as the slid out.

Moz was his friend, his best friend. It was his mission to protect the man in Converse from becoming a player in the White Collar production of To Catch a Criminal Boss. It was best that the balding man thought Peter was still angry over his brief albeit pain filled incarceration.

The pacer halted in his guard on watch pacing. He removed his brown quilted corduroy jacket folded it over the back of a kitchen chair a large victrola patch just visible across the fold. The Detroit native felt his heart tighten in his once shot chest. Moz fought to keep his voice even keeled, "I would say your lesson was learned." The wine lover topped off their glasses and they sipped in silence long into the night.

December 7, 2013, 351 Riverside Drive, (June's Apartment), 6:45AM

Neal woke up to Civil War soldiers firing off muskets and cannon's in his head. He looked over to the couch expecting to see his balding friend supine on the comfortable expanse of tufted leather. The couch was without companion. The bottle of red emptied of its contents removed from the table and placed (he assumed) in the recycling bin. The duo had barely found slumber around 4:00AM, how had Moz found the strength to rise? When had he taken his leave? Where had he headed to at such an early hour?

Blue eyes honed in on stitching along the edges of the leather seat. That morning seemed so long ago. He had welcomed the pail to the sand digs on the couch as he had given his body a few moments to settle back down before rising to silence the church bell clanging of his alarm clock. His eyes gently skirted over to where she had stood still in his borrowed clothing her hair in tumbles and waves of mussed chestnut grain before his fridge in contemplation. Moments later she held tomatoes, spinach and eggs in her hand with a whistle and a victorious smile.

While he had seen to his morning ablutions, she had worked her wizardry in the kitchen all the while listening to her Spotify on random. He remembered shaking his head as some of the music made its way to the bathroom then the dressing area. It would seem Ms. Carney had an eclectic taste in score. Pieces ranged from Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy, which was what happened when symphony went on an acid trip to the old school rap of Wreckx-n-Effect's Rumpshaker that true to its chorus made you want to "Shake your rump."

When the man of the apartment made it back to the main area the cook had redressed in her clothes from the previous day, her hair once again locked and secured in a tight bun, her feet protected in her trusty worn Doc Marten's with the pink rivets. The lent pieces of workout wear neatly folded at the foot of his bed. Neal looked over from his place on the bed to where they lay unwashed on the small shelf in his dressing cabinet.

His blue eyes found the open space before the door. The lady in her armor had not wanted to accept his offer of additional pieces of battledress. He wondered in that moment why it was that she was reticent to accept his extension of kindness when she shared it so readily. Neal swung his eyes to the space affront the bed, he could still see her unbutton his shirt, one by one by one.

Again the bed recliner found the front door. The lady with the bun shook her head no. Knowing any verbal argument would be futile he simply placed the scarf around her neck with flourish then wound it as valet would his Lord's cravat.

Ms. Carney's glare could have ignited a candle without the need of matches. When she threw her hands up in exasperation he had slipped his woolen gloves on them. She went to remove the hand coverings. He had held her hands tight in his; the pleading in his eyes wore her down. Her head had turned to the side while a sigh as deep as the Long Island Sound escaped her. There had been no further commentary on the subject as they took their leave.

Neal looked over at the clock on the bedside table. Had he really only been asleep for two hours? Despite the skint amount of rest he knew his body would not find slumber again. The White Collar CI gingerly rose from the safety of his prone position on the queen sized bed; he waited till his stomach halted the tuck and roll of summersaults.

With grim determination of the damned he placed his feet on the rug after his ankle jewelry caught on the flannel sheets. His blue eyes wandered down to the cuff of his sleeping pants stuck just inside the rim of Tupperware for work released felons; he released the tuck with a groan. Once he was certain his leaden legs would hold him without crumpling like a deck of cards in a tsunami wind, the five foot eleven man shuffled like an octogenarian with a double hip replacement over to the kitchen area. Ready to leap from tall buildings, tunnel the catacombs, hang from a high wire or even fold laundry he was not.

His eyes washed past the double bowls of dirt and water sitting in silence atop the wine rack. Wine. The former Bennett's stomach hopscotched at the very nearness of the grape offerings. Neal brought his hands to his head massaging his temples in an effort to mediate the scrimmage being fought with gusto on the battleground below his sable colored locks. He eyed the bottles with bloodshot eyes. He was not Moz. He could not drink as they had without repercussions.

His painter's fingers found the raven Smeg coffeemaker without even looking he flipped the switch to on. He smiled a little smile as he heard the water steam into the Peaberry blend with a welcome snap crackle and pop.

Neal trudged towards the room with the large waterfall, which would restore his dehydrated body and ease the pounding of the thousand and one steeple bells ringing in his head. The pull of the hot water was like a magnet to metal. The tile felt cold beneath his sore bare feet. They had still not recovered from his tango with the metal legs of the balcony chair.

By route he found the faucet and turned the water on full blast to the left before he dropped his needed desperately to go to the dry cleaners work pants to the floor his belt buckle landing just inside a pocket. His formally finely pressed shirt joined the pants now a roadmap of potholes and cracks. Soon the slacked noose that once lay in refinement against his chest found the wheat colored bathmat affront the tub the rumpled tie missed the menswear mountain completely.

Neal sighed as he tried to work his undershirt off with little success. Where were his lightening fast zippty do da reflexes? He smiled when victory was his and the white cotton Hanes crew neck finally found its way to the haphazard mound of clothing growing on the floor.

Light from the ornate sconce of iron and stained glass bounced off the dulling merlot rings about his wrists. A cascade of bruises littered the landscape surrounding the area where Peter's very special metal bracelets had sliced and diced into his skin and bone. He closed his eyes momentarily against the brightness of the light while he peaked the summit with his simple soft blue boxers.

The native of DC was about to step into the welcomed cascade of firewater when something flickered just under the crest of the antique tub. With great care not to lose his balance or throw a hitch into his gitty up the dancer sank down on his haunches to improve his vantage point. The object resting just inside the front leg (with the special hiding hole) was a small earing, he palmed it in his right hand, while his left rested upon the ridge of the white cast iron.

It took the frog a few seconds to leap from his place near the floor. Neal rolled the ear piece over in his hand before placing it with exaggerated care on the little shelf above the sink as brown eyes bounced through his head. An idea was formed and settled all before his aching frame found the water.

Blue eyes found tile as the steam formed an early morning layer of fog over it. It dawned on him as he eased himself over the tub side and under the showerhead why he never spent any great amount of time looking at the hexagon pattern that covered the expanse of the floor.

Neal's hand found the inside of his thigh the same time his eyes did, he fingered along the fault line, feeling the crater marks left by the weapon of opportunity, a lug wrench heated to the point of becoming a branding iron. The naked man in the shower had not revisited that night in the gas station in a very long time. Yet in the last week the images from the Lavatory of Horrors haunted the house in his mind like a ghost getting paid overtime.

His eyes took in his private space and the scar that diagnaled across the roughened ridges of the terrain. Neal had heard the door behind him open with a bang the wood splintering against the graffiti filled wall. He worked to turn off his personal faucet before the cam chain from a Kawasaki Z1 landed on his member with such force blood instantly sprayed across the cracked urinal in a torrent of red red rain.

His knees had found the sticky grime filed tile seconds later. He remembered as the second hit found his back with the driving force of an NFL linebacker, it was the first time he ever wanted to offer thanks to his mom. Grateful he was for the fact his she literally malleated into him that the more he showed he felt the pain the more she would increase the duration and fever of the opprobrium. He never once broke from his blank face facade with the man who beat up near to death.

As the masked man in the bathroom kicked him in the chest with his large steel-toed boots, the teenager had found need to also offer gratitude to his uncle for reinforcing the Caffrey Campaigns of Sadism. It better prepared him for surprise attacks from unknown gladiators.

The glee filled laugh as his back slammed against the trashcan toppling the contents over him in a rain shower of crumbled paper and he didn't even want to know what shorted the circuit in his brain just as when Cairbre sent him flying towards the tractor the night in the barn. Blood ejected turbulently in intermittent discharges from his personal geyser. Still he lay quiet as a church mouse.

Enraged by the lack of fear and cowering response the abuser had gripped his hair back as if he were preparing to remove his scalp then punched him with the fever of a five year old trying to gut a piñata for treasure. Neal knew well the consequences for real displays of emotion, they would only encourage the towering man to increase the pain, masks were what you wore to keep the world at a palladium distance.

His body may have reacted without his consent with random synaptic twitches and grunts as nerves were impaled and skin flayed. Still the teenager with the leaking private member never gave his abuser the reaction he so maliciously sought, he simply took the attack in stoic silence. It wasn't his first beating, not even close. And somehow sadly, he knew it wouldn't be his last.

When the gloved hands yanked his pants down to his knees that was it. That was the moment in time when the world paused as if someone had hit the button on a remote. The boot that found the space between legs inched right up to the splayed and wounded extension, yet the man never made a further move towards it.

The man in the shower laid the entirety of his hand on the healed over skin of his thigh he could still feel the skin smoldering beneath his fingers. His eyes closed at the memory of towering bell tower of a man in his wrangler blue jeans, simple black tee shirt and worn leather jacket and how produced a heavy metal bar with a hook from the back of his thick double wide black as night belt.

The man in black waved around lug wrench like an evil wizard would a wand then the prestidigitator slammed it down into his shoulder so hard Neal had blacked out. The unmistakable combination of ammonium carbonate and alcohol found his ichor-impacted nose some few minutes later. He could almost hear the sound of the acetylene torch as it as it hissed to life like a cobra ready to strike.

Neal removed his hand from his thigh, ran his fingers one last time over his marred member before he set about the task of washing away the violent memories of the masked man in the urinal on the back roads. No matter how much sandalwood soap he used he didn't feel clean, no matter how many times he scrubbed at his body he still felt the dirt tracked in from the road out side grinding into his backside, he still felt the blood as it ran in ribbons and waves over him on to the floor below.

The naked man in the shower save for his governmental jewelry stayed in the shower until it ran cold and still sometime after that. When he finally alighted from the water the near prune dried off with purpose. Neal changed into a pair of jeans, an old boots hidden in the back of his closet one of the only physical reminders of a life past, a dark gray Henley and an unadorned black Brunello Cucinelli western style shirt that he left open against the under layer more so because the buttons required effort to join then any sort of fashion statement.

He grabbed his dark gray Berluti men's leather and shearling jacket with its asymmetrical zipper and headed back out to the kitchen area. He drank his first cup of coffee straight down without any embellishments, trying not to gag as the unlaced caffeine mixed with his stomach fluid.

Absently the work-released felon realized that he had not eaten since lunch the previous day. Jones and Diana had been smiling ear to ear when they lay what they knew to be his favorite sandwich a smoked caprese Panini with eggplant and prosciutto on his desk. He forced himself to eat the first half and enough of the second they would know he was appreciative of their thoughtful gesture. With the turning of the Peter tide, the duo of agents found subtle ways to relay just how much they genuinely cared for him and more importantly (to them at least) respected him.

Neal's fingers grabbed at the to go cups he kept stored under the sink, he was going to need coffee reinforcements for his morning battle ahead. His blue eyes worked past the metal pail that lay snuggled in the recess of the cupboard. He could just see the flinted edges of the matches peaking out.

His knees were shaky as the five foot eleven man swallowed down the bile that threatened to erupt the Blue Mountain Peaberry from his system. Neal was almost robotic as he poured the coffee in the newly rescued travel cup. So he wouldn't lose the next battle of caffeine v stomach he added a little oat milk and a spritz of brown sugar before mixing it with a fork. He hadn't even realized it wasn't a spoon till he laid the utensil in the sink.

With resolute movements, the man in the rooftop apartment sleeved his winter coat, snapped the top onto the to go mug and turned on shitkicker boot covered dancers feet towards the small shelf that rested above the sink in the hexagon tiled bathroom. Graceful hands swept the earing from its perch and carried it into the safety of the right front pocket of the 3sixteen jeans that hugged at his hips.

December 6, 2013, The Burke Residence, 7:47AM

The work-released felon stood outside the townhome in Clinton Hill a soft wind tickled the hair at his neck like they were keys on a piano. Beacons of sun found the lens of his Mount Blanc sunglasses. The five foot eleven man was grateful for the barrier between the harsh ray of hell and his tender bloodshot eyes. With the patience of a monk at vespers he waited for the clock to tick down to 8am, an early but socially expectable time to knock upon the agents door. Neal knew that El was to return home from her New Jersey soirée and he feverently wished to miss her.

The empty coffee cup in his hand found the near to overflowing trash can at the corner. Unconsciously his stomach threatened to eject its meager contents as the smell of fetid feces and rancid kielbasa found the air about him. Unsteady hands found his hair as he eased it off his forehead beads of sweat were started to meld the sable locks into his skin.

Blue eyes found the vintage Zenith watch resting just under the cuff of the bond forger's winter coat. While not particularly expensive, it was a sentimental piece that made his wrist feel cocooned as opposed to encircled. The timepiece showed 7:59AM.

His steal toed covered feet progressed the length of the block with purposeful though paced intent. No need to pass out in a heap of bones and clothes before reaching his intended destination. Neal allowed his hand to hover above the entrance door waiting until the 1940's watch signaled it was 8:00AM. His ungloved knuckles rat a tat tatted upon the glass with determination.

A few moments later unkempt Peter materialized, his sandy brown hair askew, his sleep pants rumbled, his gray shirt twisted at angle that highlighted the fact it had recently been donned with haste. His brown eyes scanned the length of the man standing in front of him; the homeowner wasn't able to conceal the distress in his voice when he whispered out the visitor's name, "Neal."

The older man ushered the CI in out of the crispness of the morning, not before noting the darkness of the sunglasses and the small tremors that were firing like rockets through his normally unflinchingly steady hands. Peter blinked the away the sleep he had just found not more than an hour previous. Neal (for him) was very subdued in his sartorial choices. The fifty year old took in the plain jeans and simple coat.

The agent's appraisal dipped lower to the footwear that housed the feet capable of amazing feats. The never ever seen before boots showed catastrophic signs of abuse, they had long since lost any of the polish and sheen their owner was known for. The toe box on the right foot displayed a two inch gash the sliced the leather to grain. The shank of the left was depressed at such a degree it was a wonder the Neal was able to walk straight. Simply put the footwear was old, worn, scuffed and well ugly.

Peter wanted to interpellate the visitor about the out of character shitkickers, but the fact that his friend was there so close to the rooster call (ok not really but he was working an maybe an hour of sleep) on a Saturday when they didn't have an active case near to when he thought El to arrive meant it whatever the reason it was serious.

"I think I am going to need coffee for this." The pajama clad man turned around on his bare feet fixing the packaging on his Fruit of the Loom undershirt as he ambled towards the kitchen expecting the younger man to follow him. The homeowner wasn't disappointed when he heard the felon remove coffee cups from the second shelf, nor was he disappointed when he saw he pre mix their expected ratios of additives into the mugs.

Peter poured the much-required caffeine in some few minutes later. They both took long unisoned sips of their beverages; the six foot two man ran a few fingers through his hair, hoping to wrangle the locks into the carrel. Peter walked a fair bit steadier and peppier over to where the little paper clip box was fiddling with it for a moment before sitting down at kitchen table. Neal joined in his regular chair. The white-collar men nursed their mugs in a comfortable silence for a few minutes.

"All right Neal, I am sufficiently caffeinated." Peter tilted his head and tipped his glass towards the uncharacteristically mute man at the table. Neal remained unmoving and unmotivated to speak. The fifty year old knew the man whose eyes still hid behind the safety of the aviators was cycling through whatever speech he had prepared.

"Neal." The older man worked to keep his voice kind not wanting to startle the contemplative native of DC. When the call of his name didn't elicit a reaction, the homeowner reached a hand over to the man in jeans. His touch was gentle as it found the inter phalangeal joint crease of the artists thumb. "Neal," he repeated with the same care.

The agent watched as the felon slowly removed his glasses placing them on the nicked surface just to the right of his hand. Blue eyes mixed with a cocktail sauce of red raised from where they lay locked on the table. The last time they had been sitting in these positions Peter had shared Grace's file with the angered young man. Peter placed the coffee cup gripped so tight he saw the skin turn white in his knuckles down on the table.

"Oh Neal." The man in his bare feet felt his throat bob a few times as he pressed the emotion threaten to erupt like a no longer dormant volcano down into the depths of his soul. "Please don't ask me to see it again." Neal's eyes closed for the barest of seconds seeing her hanging from that hook like a discarded carcass of meat (in fact what she was) before reopening.

"No Peter. I am not here about the file." The older man visibly relaxed back into his seat and took a steading sip of coffee as the man across from him continued without preamble or warning towards his intended goal, "I need you to extend my radius." Whatever the agent had been expecting his friend to say, it was not about the lengthening of his electronic leash.

Brown eyes ran over the face across from him there were an intense exhaustion that frayed the edges of the normally smooth marble and the desperate need for something. Whatever that something was remained to be seen. Neal's face bore none of his trademark conman features; it was simply put awash in anguish.

The man in the old boots could feel his toes scrunch under the assessing gaze of the man in his pajamas. Neal carded a hand through his hair to calm the raging tornados striking down in stomach. His jacket and shirt pulled up off his wrist enough Peter could see the colors highlighting the area.

The homeowners stomach threatened to evict the Italian roast so recently settled there in a pool of warmth and welcome. The younger man noticed the heaviness of the quiet that had descended on the table in a blanket of despair and locked eyes with his friend. It was then he realized he could feel the coldness of the table of his wrist.

The five foot eleven man understood the clouds that obscured the light in Peter's normally warm brown eyes. His crestfallen face cascaded in waves of grief that beat at the reefs of his soul. "They don't hurt anymore." Neal offered the man who had become the most important man in his life hoping to calm the fustigating lightening striking at the other man's heart.

Neal could not and would not let Peter continue to turn the abuse inwards upon himself. They were in this together. "Peter." The older man's jaw tighten to the point the younger worried the pin might pop at the stress about the hinge. Peter made no move to look at or even otherwise acknowledge him. "Please look at me." The agent forced his brown eyes to meet the blue ones across from him when he heard the unshed tears in the other man's voice.

When Neal was certain he held the fifty year olds attention he pleaded with Peter to understand to know beyond a shadow of any doubt, "I am not mad at you." The orator paused for a moment allowing the words to sink into the marsh surface of the man across from him. "I do not blame you, this…" the young man took his jacket off and tossed aback his chair, then pushed the edges of the sleeves off his arms, "is just the cost of what we are doing."

The older mans eyes locked on the ugly bruising and fading bracelets he brought about to the one man who meant more than any other to him. "Peter." The man in question heard the break in the visitor's voice. The young man in the shitkickers was nearing the end of his reserves. Peter knew he had to respond or Neal would continue to beat at himself causing more damage than the agent ever could have rent.

"Neal." Peter swallowed down the emotions that battering against the trap door. He watched as Neal physically flinched like he had been slapped across the face upon hearing his name. Start as you mean to go on Peter ground a sharped toenail into the pad of the opposite foot. "Its a high cost." The agent shuttered when he saw the other man shrug as if to say, 'yeah, so and.'

"What it they leave scars?" The man in his pajama's voice was rough with the knowledge that he would be the reason behind permanent reminders of violence. Peter's brown eyes dipped low towards those hideous boots before trailing over the younger mans body, a man who he might never know the age of. He knew deep in his heart some sliver of his friend felt he deserved what came to him. He had failed Peter and there were consequences to be paid for that failing. Peter bit the inside of his cheek. It was he who failed Neal.

"Then they leave scars Peter." The man in the blue jeans and black western button up waved his hand over his body as if a lasso at rodeo, "they will have plenty of company." Neal took a long drink of the cooling coffee savoring the taste of the Italian roast mixed with almond milk and two healthy scoops of raw sugar.

Peters head dropped forward his chin almost resting on his chest would there ever be a time when Neal felt worthy of kindness and of love? The homeowner let out a sigh that magnitude of which would register earthquake status on the Richter scale. His slowly brought his head back up remembering the reason for the early morning drop in, "why do you need your radius extended?"

The work-released felon had expected a flat out no as Peter's first response on the subject; he thought he would have to start the fight below the dirt. The conman had made no contingency plans for an open to the idea agent. So prickly like a desert cactus was the lawman about certain things.

The sable haired man made a conscious effort to be open and honest in his answers. Neal set the red with white polka dot's mug down on the wooden table momentarily flashing to Ms. Carney's tea cup sliding towards him, he reached a hand into his pocket and in the most unguarded delivery offered, "I need to return something to a friend."

Peter's eyes watched the heaviness of the movements with a measured look. If it were Moz all Neal needed to do was summon him, the balding man would find his Mon frère, (brother) Sara had returned to her post overseas. He had no idea where Alex was but she had not popped on any watch lists.

Who did that leave? The barefoot man supposed he should be surprised when the answer presented itself in the form of a little sunflower. His brown eyes widened a bit when he saw Grace's earing. The older man drummed his fingers on the table for a second and watched a small smile and a wee bit of happiness appear on the face across from him while he processed his response.

The agent stood up and snagged his official phone off the side table (the previous temporary home of the file) where he placed it before the duo had headed into the kitchen for much needed coffee. Peter checked the time before he headed up the stairs with a Jack in the Box spring in his step leaving the younger man alone at the table to contemplate just what Peter intended.

When George had helped him off the ground and into his Jeep Neal hadn't know what to expect. His only experience thus far with authority figures or adults who should be trusted in their roles to lead and care for were so filled with violence and vengeance that he spent the whole ride mentally preparing his physical body to run when the vehicle stopped.

Only that isn't what happened. What happened was they hit a patch black ice while attempting to not impale Bambi on the curved mountain road littered with trees that lead to the Rangers cabin. The older man's first instinct was to reach his hand out in an effort to protect the boy from sliding off the seat into the dashboard. Neal remembered how unconscious his reaction was, he saw a raised hand out of the corner of his eye and he flinched waiting for the fist to fall.

It was a quiet night in the fall just as the leaves left the warm embrace of the trees when George sat him down. Neal had known something had changed when he saw the leather-traveling bag at the foot of the neatly made bed. He watched as the ranger brewed them their favorite midnight cup of coffee before he moved the satchel over and sunk his towering trunk down into the feather mattress bringing his left foot up to the stool the heel of his boot resting along the roughened edge.

With the cup balanced on his knee George motioned for Neal to join him. The young man always in his old worn boots found what he had come to think of as his chair an old leather recliner that in its heyday might been a chocolate brown. He had eased himself down on the padded seat and waited patiently for whatever thoughts the older man needed to impart.

The man with the grass green eyes smiled his snaggletooth glinting under the lantern light. The time had come for him to be with his love, the person who brought light to his dark world. Much latter in a different time and space Neal would get a chance to meet that person, to tell him of all the beautiful gifts the man with the grass green eyes had given him.

He wasn't lying when he told George's lover Mateo that the man they loved so much there just weren't words had saved his life. There was no doubt in his mind he would have died that night sitting alone in the old beat up rusted truck with a near collapsed lung, what they would come to find out was a dislocated hip, multiple contusions and severe blood loss surrounded by the angry winter storm.

George had provided him a great many sage words that night under the flicking light. Among them "Neal. I won't be the only man in your life." Neal laughed in the Burke coffee mug snugged in his hand as he remembered how serious George had been in his delivery. It wasn't until he focused his attention on the older man's face that the young man knew him to be using the phrase as an icebreaker.

"One day when you have gained some years and hopefully so more wisdom," they had both chuckled at that. George often told him he had a gloriously smart mind and one day when the seeds planted in his garden grew he hoped that the wisdom would spread like wild flower. "There will be a man you can call friend, that you can finally trust, with all of you."

Neal swallowed the last sip of the Italian roast. The teenager hadn't understood the gravitas of what the well-lived man had been trying to explain to him that night. For all the life he had lived up to that point, he just hadn't been lived enough to process all that simple statement meant. To the orphaned in a sense young man the fact that he trusted the lawman not to hurt him seemed to fit the bill.

The man who had lived enough life to know the difference sitting in the chair in at 106 Cambridge Place heard the creak of the floor boards above him a few seconds later. George would have like Peter his blend of love and strong set of ethics and morals. And Peter would have liked George his quiet unassuming way of seeing to the needs of others, his unparalleled sense of right and wrong.

Bare feet found the stairs the wood gave a low moan as the lawman made his way off the last one the visitor took in the different phone clasped in Peter's hand. This one looked worse for wear with cracked sides. Neal watched the thumb movements the older man still in his pajamas made before a small cat that ate the canary grin appeared on the homeowners face.

Peter then picked up his work phone; hit number 3 on his speed dial. The work released felon listened as the agent relayed an address to the United States Marshal Service. The FBI man provided assurance and endorsement as he asked to add an address to list of places safe for Neal's to travel to outside his radius. While his heart processed the fact that Peter permanently placed the lady near always in black on the list of places he could go, his mind stored the address in his memory rolodex.

The upstate native smiled his first real smile at the Missouri matriculant all week, "I'd ask if you wanted breakfast to go with the coffee." Peter laughed before continuing, "I gather the cooking at your next destination is far preferable to mine."

Neal fought the chuckle that bubbled forth with a rumble and tumble, just like he fought the smile that threatened his lips, really he did. "Thank you Peter." The Irish man in the shitkickers and his regained winter coat found his friends face, locking eyes with him trying to explain all that was in his heart, "thank you for trusting me."

The homeowner felt his cheeks flush with an emotion he had no idea how to name. "Go." He nodded towards the door his wayward sandy brown locks slid over his forehead. "Enjoy your day." Peter moved to take the empty cup from the tightened vice grip of the man he prayed would have a peace filled day.

Blue eyes held conference with brown. The younger man willed the older man to know that he understood the magnitude of the gift just provided him. It wasn't that he allowed him to see the woman whose earing rested along the seam of his pocket; it was the simple without need for verification trust.

The fifty year old felt his ears join in the oh so red Rudolph contest, "go." He again urged Neal to take his exit.

The lawman watched the former Bennett from the safety of the living room window as Neal walked almost at a run towards the subway station that would take him part of the way to his island destination.

Peter ran a hand over his face before he turned towards the stairs that would lead him to a shower. He had his own meeting with a lady to prepare for. Just as he reached the landing his phone beeped announcing the imminent arrival of his beautiful wife.

December 6, 2013, Grace Carney's Loft, 9:04AM

The knock at the sliding metal door was soft, much fainter than the woman in her favorite soft jeans with the frayed hems expected of the man with the kind hands and gentle soul. Grace took a deep centering breath before sliding the barrier open. The man who she shared various scars and states of undress with would be the first person to come here not out of obligation.

Neal felt more than heard the scream of agony the riveted door provided as it opened to allow him entrance. The white collar CI noted how the sound bore a striking resemblance to the one provided by the elevator that traveled to the subterranean office at the Federal Building.

"Good Morning." The lady in an old worn yellow three quarter sleeve baby doll shirt a white tank top that peaked out from underneath the small ruffles about the bottom bid the man in his leather and wool jacket entry as she stepped back into the warmth of the loft.

"Breakfast is on the stove," the chef re-laid as her eyes danced across the face of her newly arrived visitor. With a welcoming smile and a playful tug on his coat hem, Grace shared with the man in what had to be the ugliest state of boot affairs she had chance to see, "please feel free to hang your winter wear."

The Irish woman then spun on bare feet towards the kitchen not wanting the pan to overheat and thus ruining the morning meal. The former Bennett unzipped the winter wear while he took in the sway of the lady of the lofts hips in her well loved jeans if the small rips and tears about the distressed denim were any indication and the way her braids bounced a long in tune.

Heeding the offer of the woman in the apron adorned with sunflowers of crimson and gold, the newly arrived man in 3sixteen jeans hung his coat on the one of the metal hooks that had been drilled into a cedar plank mounted on the small entrance wall next to the door. Neal then rolled the train car like door back to close with a cacophony of subway along the rails sounds clawing at his ears finally locking it with a click boom.

The man in the simple no frills black Brunello Cucinelli western style shirt noted that his scarf hung on the first hook next to her favorite winter coat and a black (of course) sweater he had not chance to view previous. Neal couldn't contain the silly little grin that found his face when he touched the angora neckwear.

On the last hook was her old worn leather messenger bag with its muted yellow stitching and a small black (because what other color would it be?) cross body purse. What did she store in them he wondered? Lady business things like a compact and well lady business stuff? Or a lock pick set and a pocketknife? Pictures of people from her past, or present?

The thief's well practiced hand found its way to the bottom of the raven messenger bag fingering along the lumps he could just make out the lines of her wallet and a small zippered box. Blue eyes traveled the truncated distance back to his borrowed scarf. He shouldn't do this, the woman humming softly in the kitchen had gone out of her way to treat him with unvarnished dignity and unfettered respect, and there were just some lines you shouldn't cross. His shitkickers made quick work to the food preparation location.

Coffee met the wayward visitor at the butcher-block counter. Absently Neal wondered just how many cups of java might be too much caffeine for his heart, before ultimately sipping the steaming liquid out of a nitid yellow mug. The felon rolled the cuffs on his black over shirt and Henley up. Then asked to help assist in preparing and or cooking whatever smelled like angels sprinkled fairy dust in the deep frying pan.

Grace's throaty laughter rang off the walls. As she shook her chestnut head no, her right braid slipped over her shoulder like an acrobat to a trapeze. With a this happens all the time giggle the lady in yellow nudged the vine aback with her chin.

Neal persisted almost as if to plea at being her sous, "please, I would like to help."

"I do appreciate your offer of assistance." Something in her smile indicated that his help was about to be declined, "It is very most kind of you."

Her brown eyes twinkled with merriment as she looked over the gentleman standing before her. Neal held out his hand in hopes the cook would allow him to use her knife to start chopping the remaining additives for the culinary delight. Or maybe the almost derited brown spatula to move things already hopping and popping around the cast iron pan.

The visitor watched in amazement as the five foot five lady with the bare feet twirled the knife in the air before catching it and repeating the process. She winked at him as she questioned, "Would you let me paint on your canvas?" Neal felt a clonus deep in the valley of his jeans at the memory of her hands painting across his undraped skin. He could feel heat rising on his face that had nothing to do with the meal cooking on the stove.

The confidence man smiled a well-practiced blank smile to mask the hurt ping ponging across the walls of his heart. Neal sank down on the stool at the island in submission, as if a sack of onions finally found comfort at the bottom of the bin. He worked to make his delivery light and joking, "point made."

Brown eyes washed over the man leaning on his elbows she took in the uncovered angry welts about his wrists, the rainbow colored bruising that must smart something fierce. For one morning she just wanted to be a woman cooking for a man, she could see the dispiritedness in the plains of his face. He just wanted to be the man helping the woman in kitchen.

What was it Mr. Hawthorne had written? No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which many be the true.

While each of the players in the play had to play their parts, it was the man with alabaster skin and downcast eyes that bore the brunt of the acting. He needed a tether, a tangible to connection to the world, something normal, even if it was just preparing a meal with a barefoot woman in the kitchen.

With purposeful flourish and showwomanship Grace flipped the knife high in the air catching it with an ease born out of years and years of practice (all while maintaining eye contact with him) then presented the utensil to him handle first with a curtsy and a "your blade sir."

To ruin the effect her errant right braid swishing over her shoulder like a swashbuckler to his sail. This time the smile that found the edges of his lips was true and infectious, the cook found herself grinning as she asked, "how about you show your skill with a knife and make quick work of the peppers and the onions?"

His skill with a knife? His repertoire was filled with talents some upstanding, many underhanded, always useful, even if mundane and oft obscure. Still if he tried doing what she just did with a blade and without even looking at the sharpened metal while he tossed and caught it, he would accidentally slice a jugular vein or send the knife flying like the man on the trapeze without the greatest of ease… Not for the first time to he think there was a fair bit about the alluring Ms. Carney he didn't know.

As the slicer and dicer was working his way through the veggies at his right he found himself sniffing at the air like a dog in the park. The scents of the spices and sauces the chef added to the meat were intoxicating, the more the pan cackled and popped the deeper the smell permeated the air like food at the fair, "that is…" the visiting sous chef inhaled deep, "resplendent."

The smile that illuminated the woman in the flower covered apron with oversized pockets face made the commenter reach for the yellow mug to take another sip, unabashed awe tinged with excitement gave way to uncertainty. His hands tightened on the ceramic.

Kate never engaged in domestic tasks, the idea of idle to her was the kiss of poison. She never noticed how much he craved early Saturday morning coffee or late Thursday night snuggling or just honey don't forget the milk. With a considerable contemplation and sadness, he had come to terms with the fact that the lady with the blue didn't love him; she just appreciated what he could bring to her.

All he ever would be to anyone was a useful tool. His mom used him as a prop in her schemes, then as he aged her own personal shopper without the paying portion. His uncle used him as the decoy and then as the errand boy for he breaking and entering.

Mozzie saw him as a way to expound on his wild and crazy schemes. A person with whom he could mold like clay to fit into the missing pieces of his life. Elizabeth found him a food tester and someone to speak with about art when she needed to bolster her business and repartee. Sara saw him as the bad boy art thief who could engage her mind and her sex drive. Who could make her feel like she was skating along the wrong side of the law all while trying to bend him to her will.

And then there was Peter. To the FBI agent he was a way to increase the White Collar closer rate. He was someone with whom the lawman could bounce ideas off because he appreciated how fast his CI's brain worked, despite the fact as Peter reminded him every chance he could with no small amount of cruelness that he would ALWAYS be a criminal. He would always be a felon and the person ultimately responsible for making the agent question his credendum in his much loved system.

Even June saw him as a tether to a life past, a person with which to discuss the good old times, to create scenarios with, even see out a few just so she could relieve the thrill even if for a few moments in time. If Neal looked closely he could see how the woman who welcomed him into her home in some ways looked upon him as a surrogate son.

His mind flashed on the memories of the lady next to him joking in the elevator as it crash-landed with a nut-jarring thud. The way she feed him without words. He could see the glow of her hair as she bowed affront him to remove his armor. How she cleansed his blood-soaked wounds; binding them with gentle firmness. His heart increased in speed as he saw the image on her kneeling with him on the balcony in vernation with the bowls.

His pants tightened about his apex as his view master showed the way his pants pool around her feet, how he could see the little scalloped edging along her undergarments. The nakedness of her back and the more than silhouette of her enbowments. The strain against the jeans pulled tighter… He could see her hand balanced along the precipice of his sleepwear.

He wondered in that moment, how did the knife juggler see him?

Neal shook his sable color head to clear the wayward thoughts as he aphonicaly questioned the cook if he should add the recently minced garden pieces to the pan affront her? She nodded in the positive while she stepped the barest of hints to the side so that he might complete the action.

Her warm brown eyes were filled to the brim with understanding when she found his. Without ever saying one word, the lady with the scared wrists and tattooed back told him she knew what it meant to play a part in service of the cause (whatever that may be,) to perform because is what was required of you.

Her head tilted as her eyes softened against the glass that found his ocean of blue. "You matter." Her heart told his. Grace watched his throat bob and for one quick second she thought she might have said the words aloud. Then they both stepped back, the man towards the island and the lady to the stove.

His blue eyes scrutatored the back of her neck as she fluffed and folded his additions into their repast. The longer his eyes held the nape of her neck the more his lens focused there was a diminutive embedment just atop of the first thoracic vertebrae. How her spine escaped permanent damage from the night with the meat hook?

The man in boots from another life and another time searched for another task to assist in. Seeing that her visitor needed to keep occupied the lady in the thrift store jeans suggested with the aid of an old wooden spatula "maybe you can grab the dishes" she point to the cupboard door "and set the outside table" her head nodded towards the French doors near the rear of the room, the meddlesome right braid again bounced over her shoulder.

Only seeing the swift swish of the spatula, Neal momentarily flashbacked back to when his mom slapped him across the face with large olive wood utensil. He could still feel the sting of the hit and the burning of the hot oil as it ran down his cheek like rain to a windowsill. He sat up all night that night with an ice pack on his face sending wishes to the moon out the window.

Grace watched the man in his old worn footwear and his simple coverings travel another place in his mind. Wherever it was he went had been filled with opporobium and a resolved sadness. Her eyes moved from her sometimes coworker to her shelf along the wall. She knew what it meant to just exist in a life you had no control over.

Her gaze refocused on the man in her kitchen, the way his back was straighter than the board she used to make her sewing table, yet his shoulders rounded in, the way his hands gripped the cupboard door and his eyes stared at the plates without seeing them, the way his blue eyes swung like a missile locked on target towards her brown.

All the years of pain, of abuse, of feeling like unwanted trash stared backed at her. Continuing on the morning's theme of talking with out words the lady in the loft let all him see just how very much she understood. Neal raised a tentative hand to her face and held her flushing cheek before turning on his old broken-down heels towards the outside. "Thank you…" Grace found she didn't know how to continue. After that night in his apartment and this morning in the kitchen he could not longer just be Mr. Caffrey.

The man in the rolled cuffs with his handcuff related bruises and cravings visible headed towards the deck. Neal felt a small pang in his heart pop like a balloon deflating. The lady in braids had censored him. Her words trailed off as her focus found the cast iron pan. The chef was going to say something else instead she halted before bringing further words to voice. The table setter gripped the plates against the sadness that sprung up like an unwanted garden weed.

As he headed down the path to the outside (i.e. the main living space) Neal swung his pendulum from side to side with honed in on the hidden prize interest, the praxis of taking in a space was so long engrained in him that the thief wasn't even aware that he was cogitating as he went along. Sussing out and reconing a space was as much a part of him as his often talked about cheekbones.

The work-released felon descried a reclaimed wood-shelving unit along the large wall that housed the entrance to the balcony. The handmade pieced was crafted with love and precision, the joints were crosslaped in a common woodworking practice where two pieces are joined by removing material from each point of intersection so that they snugged over each other in a treene tango.

Blue eyes bounced over the curious assortment of debris that littered the shelves like flotsam from the cracked haul of a ship. As outré as the pieces might appear to an outsider observer Neal knew had no doubt they all held specific meaning and sentiment.

The more he absorbed the collection of knick-knacks along the planks the more evidence he garnered about the history of lady in yellow humming Pecker Dunne's A Tinkers Lullaby. A smile found the Travelers face as he unconsciously mouthed the words in duet. If he had any doubts about what the pieces of her puzzle suggested the song choice rasured them all.

Along one of the inside walls another handcrafted wood piece. A six-foot worktable with a self-healing cutting mat that covered the entirety of the surface like a box lid. Underneath the table an open cart with a sewing machine and serger laid snuggled together like threaded lovers. That Ms. Carney had a designated sewing area didn't surprise him one bit. The discourse of quilting that occurred between her and Sara was as in-depth as it was long. Clearly both women enjoyed the fabric arts.

Continuing on with his appraisal of the loft the visitor moved his gaze onto to the next item for his assessment. The occupant of the wall cornering the sewing area called to him like a Selkie to a sailor. An antique carriage trunk, circa the 1800's. The treasure chest was aged patina with a dome top, dressed with wood staves and decorative embossed panels overlaid with Celtic knot detail. The hand-stitched thick leather carry handles were in pristine condition; with what he was certain was the original cast metal hardware. And if he knew his carriage trunks which he did hidden casters about the bottom to make moving it easier.

More than any of the cultch and orts that lined the wood aback him, Neal knew the portmanteau would provide a portal to the here to unknown parts of woman putting the finishing touches on their forthcoming meal. His blue eyes stayed on it for a second longer than polite contemplating what recondite information lay in the vintage most likely inherited travel case.

The shitkickers finally found their way back to the yellow brick road that led to the Emerald City or in this case the yellow throw rug lead to the covered deck streaming with foliage. The breakfast guest placed the sunflower covered plates down with nary a sound. Then he quick like a gazelle on the plain headed back in to secure cutlery, napkins and other sundry pieces for their repast.

As the lady who had her loft and items assessed watched her guest reenter the main space she extended an invitation, "feel free to look around" a smile teased at her chapped lips as she continued "no need to be on the down low, I give you permission to search at will."

Neal felt his cheeks redden. He had the grace to look chagrined at being caught in the act of investigating. He headed back to the kitchen with all possible haste. His face cooled as he saw the lady in yellow wasn't in the least bit upset at his scrutinous perusal of her living quarters. He could see it in the way her brown eyes twinkled like the Christmas lights outside on the railing.

"Utensils?" The table setter questioned the lady in braids trying to sidestep acknowledgement of his underhanded grid search of her living room. Her chuckle let him know she was wise to his shenanigans. The lady in the apron nodded to a large yellow handled drawer next to the sink her feisty right braid swung back over her shoulder she grimaced at it but let it be.

Neal pushed his errant curl out of his eyes as he grabbed the forks and knives taking in the fact that she only had two of each. This is not a woman who entertained guests. The man in the black western shirt processed the fact he was special enough to by pass that full stop thinking.

His eyes found the knife at rest on the cutting board. The pugilist held no doubts little Ms. Carney could handle herself. His gaze again found her body, there was no tension in her back, she was rolling her foot as if there were a ball underneath, her legs and shoulders were relaxed, she felt safe in his presence.

Given his cruel almost threatening treatment of her in the basement, how he shunned her on their travel to the Burkes and his raving words to her while sitting at the table with Peter, Neal couldn't contain the wave of happiness that washed over his soul at such a magnanimous if undeserved (in his eyes) compliment.

Now that he had the lady of the lofts verbal permission to snoop like a burglar assessing his prey, the white collar CI set a sedate and leisurely pace for his return trip towards the French doors. He made a point to look for little details he missed on the first go around. There was a little table (made of reclaimed wood, this time it look to be of old flooring pieces) next to the trunk that housed an old record player, her collection in an old wooden apple crate tucked underneath.

Neal rubbed at his left wrist; the nerves were jumping like popcorn on a skillet. The examiner took in the bookshelves that lay on either side of the shelving unit. The veracious reader noted a variety of titles both in English and Gaelic, most were familiar to him, and a small percentage was not. Neal was about to move on when he noticed that a few of the tomes were in Latin, he looked over his shoulder watching as the chef as she stood stirring some magic potion into her cauldron. The lady in the kitchen was an enigma.

His shitkickers made offered no auditory evidence of movement as they shuffled over to view what would be the first of many historical artifacts in the history of Grainne he didn't know her middle name Carney. The top shelf of the hand made shelving unit housed an old metal Ferris wheel partnered with a derited, losing it paint slightly tarnished big top circus tent.

Continuing onto the geographical center of the shelf a hand whittled covered wagon with actual strawed bushels of hay leaning against the rear wheel. The last piece along the high shelf was a barn fashioned out of mismatched sticks and twine, the body painted red and the doors a steely gray. Neal turned on his heal with an audible sigh (so loud the lady looked up from her stirring) at the reminder of the wooden nuraghe nested in Lake Annette, Missouri splayed with blood and other bodily by products. Some memories were best left in the past.

Moving away from the shelving unit, the loft surveyor again found his attention entranced by the trunk. How the five foot eleven man longed to know what lay inside. Neal did some quick math in his head. The chest of treasures could hold any number of knives, books or even a robust skeleton of the bone (not figurative) variety. The thief noted the lack of lock on her vintage information portal before forcing his surveillance to the alternate destination of the outside.

The inquisitors booted feet swerved out into a welcomed gust of cold air; he needed to fight the sirens call of her beautiful scroll covered trunk. He longed to know more about the woman who shared with him the gifts of unconditional kindness, generosity of soul and unmitigated gentleness. He breathed in the smell of the sea just off in the distance allowing the salted air to calm the electric humming in his veins before returning into the loft once more.

When the morning meal visitor found the chef the stove was off and the last of the contents of the pan were being transfer into a large saffron-serving bowl. Grace handed him one while she palmed the other one already filled with fresh cut fruit. The smell emanating from the stoneware nestled in his grip made him salivate like a dog in the summer longed for water.

Before exiting the diminutive kitchen space the woman in yellow also secured a navy blue coffee carafe with sunflowers painted along the base (definitely her choice flower) and their respective mugs. Grace then nodded towards a covered tray filled with the flaked buttery goodness of croissants fresh out of the oven. This kitchen was filled with food porn at its best.

The duo placed the items down on the handmade table and snuggled into their seats with a comfortable silence. Ever the gentleman Neal spooned the contents of the serving bowls onto their plates. When the man with the exposed wrists finished with his task the lady in braids topped off their coffee mugs.

The gambler eyed the caffeine then his hands he felt the erratic beat of his heart. Just how much coffee was too much coffee? The intoxicating spices the witch stirred in the brew found his nose with a wiggle and tickle. The java lover decided to live dangerously and took a welcomed sip off the top sighing with contentment as the liquid pulsed through his veins.

Once they were settled at the table Grace rushed out "I don't know what to call you" without any preamble or warning to her booted tablemate. Neal tilted his head as to ask for elucidation on the appellative related statement. Her brown eyes beseeched him to provide her an answer "I find I don't know how to address you anymore." The lady in yellow took a bolstering sip of coffee before continuing on undeterred in her quest "Mr. Caffrey seems a bit formal outside of work now."

There was no actors mask on his face and the smile that found his lips was genuine as he processed her words. He reached a hand towards her in understanding. They had shattered the protective bricks in the wall, stripped away emotional and sartorial barriers. At this juncture in their road the use of Mr. did in seem more than a bit formal.

The former Bennett listened with rapt attention as the lady who helped him strip those remove those bricks and strip those barriers (even if she wouldn't see it as so) away continued on with her name discourse, "Neal seems foreign." His ears startled upon hearing it cross her lips for the first time. He would never be Neal to her. Neal was who he was to them.

"Niall seems like something you might not want to hear." For years and years he would have readily agreed with her observation. So long had the name on his birth certificate been spit out like rancid food or ground out in shame. He smiled to himself, when she said Niall it sounds like lyrics to a well-known song.

The man at the table regarded the lady in the apron and sweater left braid had found itself lonely in the battle for swinging. It made it way's over her shoulder and rested haphazardly over the top of her décolletage. The resolute and swerving look about her freckled features stated all her words could not.

Above all she respected him. She had a keen understanding to the dilemma. Names held power. You could wield the puissance like a sword slicing into a person's heart scathing their soul. You could toss the appellation out like garbage to the curb or douse one out as if adding gasoline to an already fueled fire.

The man sitting in the reclaimed chair with the circus tent fabric covered pillows stared back at the woman with the kind face and keen eyes. Neal had no clear answer to provide her regarding his moniker so he met her with, "I wondered the same thing."

The twinkle that found her brown eyes made him smile. "What I should call you?" Grace challenged him knowing that what he really meant was he had no idea how to address her now. Now that she had shared of herself with him. Heat spread across her expanse like sun in summer to wildflowers in the desert when he had inspected her canvas. His touch felt like a branding iron when his hands found the nakedness of her skin.

The artist extraordinaire was drawn to her scars like a needle to thread. It was the railroads tracks that littered the landscape across her breasts (not that fullness of muscle and tissue) that pulled his attention like a moth to a flame. While he worked to keep his gaze underscored when studying them, he was not as successful as he would like to think.

She wondered if one of the scars about his person she had yet to view matched the chain indents in her enbowments. There was no other discernable reason that she could think of that would explain the level he had in the heavy handed carvings about her private marbled mountains.

It took the hostess a moment to realize she had zoned out watching the artist and his branding iron like hands. Her body reacted to the memory of his touch. She felt fire flame across her décolletage. With a small tightening of her feet against the sides of the chair Grace forced her gaze back towards his face, the talented hands was talking. She really aught to be paying attention.

"What I should call you." The way he said the statement, the lady in her favorite soft jeans it must have meant it was a repeat. Neal found he couldn't contain the almost playful smile and low throat chuckle as he took in the way the woman across from him blushed like all the colors at the makeup counter.

He continued on amusement at her out of the normness prevalent in his voice, "Ms. Carney works for the FBI building."

Yes if the work released felon broke from calling her Ms. Carney people would make note of the change and the last thing they needed at this stage in the play was to be noticed. Ms. Carney seemed the height of overly formal and out of place for their personal slightly clandestine meetings.

"Grace is what they call you." They. The woman with the Arabic wrist tattoo rolled that over in her head and heart. They as in Peter and Reece. Her heart hurt for the man still twirling the fork like a baton at parade. She knew their relationship to be damaged. She also knew there to be so much love. Still they were men folk and men had there own way of retrofitting bridges damaged by fire.

"You might not want to hear Grainne." Her brown eyes darkened as if an enemy had stormed the gates. It had been a long time since anyone had called her Grainne. A very very long time. Memories of the last night spent at camp whirled through her head like disfigured images at the funhouse mirrors.

"Tá tú bruscar Grainne." (You are trash Grace.) Anger enraged spittle ran down her fathers chin as he held hers in a vice lock. She could still see her blood as it ran over his lacerated fingers like a crimson waterfall. "Tóg tú féin amach." (Take yourself out.)

The crunch and munch her hip gave as it exploded on impact with the metal stake startled him quiet. He had picked her up by her neck and dragged her like a ragdoll across the entrance line and dropped her like the broken bag of bones she was without a backwards glance. Yes it had been a very very long time since anyone called her Grainne and meant it.

Her eyes washed over the absolute and undeterred unction in his face. The man with his own family demons was seeped in exhaustion if his bloodshot eyes and turtle like reflex's had anything to say about it. This was ALL much to heavy for a Saturday breakfast. They needed some peace, some laughter a break from the forthcoming category five hurricane about to tear their worlds apart.

"Cerberus, " she offered with a smile. Her unexpected response caught him off guard till he flashed back to their first day in the morgue. The lady in braids was not disappointed when the man who had just been about to sip at the spiced brew laughed so hard he had to settle the mug back against the wooden table.

Her voice ameliorated a slight bit so that the man in the rolled sleeves would know she was amenable with whatever option of moniker he landed on, "you have leave to call me whatever feels comfortable to you." Grace made sure to hold his gaze only dropping her attention to her coffee when he nodded his understanding of the gift he had been provided. Names had weight looked off towards the sky with a heavy heart. Some were heavier than others.

Neal thought about what felt comfortable for an extended duration. Well really four bites of the grilled pork with red and yellow peppers, mixed with green and sweet onions, fluffed with basmati rice, infused with soy sauce and fig balsamic about his response.

"You may address me how you see fit." The man about the table was so ruminative in offering his extension of what he considered to be an equally sincere offering that he missed the maniacal twinkle that flashed across the five foot five woman's brown eyes.

"Really?" Her voice was deep almost seductive in its delivery. "Nothing is off limits?" She questioned raising the stakes along with her unvarnished hands as if setting the bar towards infinity. Neal didn't know how comfortable he was with the timbre in her voice or the laughter rumbling forth from the lady in yellow like thunder in the valley.

His suddenly unsteady hands worked to find the banana colored mug, swallowing a welcomed sip of the coffee before responding with, "the sky's the limit." When her eyebrows rose supernal towards the sky he just offered Neal saw the merriment dance across her like a marionette, the twinkling stars in her laughter filled eyes. In retrospect, the sky might have been to Brobdingnagian a sovereignty.

"Get out of the garden!" Grace chuckled as she played with her edges of her left braid before slipping aback the handmade deck chair. "The sky's the limit?" Neal couldn't help the smile that found his face when he heard the old world phrase he heard all the time growing up.

The sable haired man rapidly depreciated his limit to a land option "ok, maybe a mountain." Neal with his lightening fast mind and MENSA level of intelligence really should have known right then and there how the barefoot lady intended to address him. Grace made no moves to hide the conclusion on what to call her visitor.

His sculptures hands pointed upwards towards the morning sun, "I get the feeling that maybe the sky might have been a little to much leeway."

As Neal lowered his arms back towards the table where they had been resting in between bites the lady in yellow was able to see the deep bruising from Peter's rough handling and the attenuating valleys still in various stages of healing. Grace felt her heart rate increase erratically almost as if the in between moments were caught in a rockslide. She found her wrists and the permanent reminders of the night spent with the Sadistic Butcher of Brooklyn.

The barefoot woman offered intercession to Saint Brigid. That the Patron Saint of Travellers would show the man across from her grace and allow the remnants of the metal scrimmage to fade without adding to his roster of cicatrix. Such an immutable reminder of the battle would continue to deride his soul and that of the agent who brought the markings about.

"I imagine the bruises smart a fair bit." The almost omniscient understanding in her face was his undoing. The man with the bruises could feel his body humming as if a live wire set to strike with a pool of water.

The felon nodded his hair bouncing as the winter winds rustled past the table with unrestrained gusto, "that they do." Neal rubbed at the bruises with the determination of a baker to dough, random nerves kept firing off shots in sporadic intervals. Maybe if he could massage at the ugly reminders of failing Peter long enough they would cease to exist.

Neal found the previously rescinded sky as he expounded on his answer, "and they still sting haphazardly since I uh…" his words momentarily ran off as he took in her arched (that he just realized bore a scar though it) eyebrow. She waved her hands like a magician over his open-faced top hat urging him to continue.

"…Ripped the bandages off last night…" The injured party rushed through the explanation like a stream to the river.

Grace rolled her lower lip in while she contemplated what brought about the angry removal of the padding? She bit her lip before untucking it. The answer to her unvoiced question was all over his face. In fact it was akin to a flashing billboard in Time Square, his credendum that he belonged in fetters and chains. He didn't deserve the comfort of a barrier between skin and pain.

The lady of the loft was chary in her approach to the injured knight. "A girl puts in all the hard work!" Blue eyes drifted down from their sky gazing to the lady still in her garden filled apron's face flushed with reproach.

"She cleans, she disinfects, and she varnishes." (Dramatic pause.) His eyes widened as she continued upon her giving him a sound what for. "She pads and she wraps." (Longer dramatic pause.) "Vigilant in her quest not to snag skin or pull any little hairs along the way!" She raised the other chestnut eyebrow, "and what does she get?"

The man receiving the dressing down tightened his hand into his knee as she repeated his earlier words; "I ripped them off last night!" Her head shook, her braids bounced around like fireflies.

When he finally looked his nursemaid in the face it dawned on him what she was trying to do. She meant him to be at peace not in pieces. Neal rested his palms face down on the table enjoying the cold of the wood as it seeped into skin sending chills down the river ways of his veins.

He opened his mouth to respond his personal Florence Nightingale. Her hands found the air halting him from his intended path. Her smile was as gentle as the fingers that wrapped themselves around his wrists. His body calefaciented to her touch like fuel to a fire. Grace rubbed at the bruises with care. The five foot eleven man in the 3sixteen jeans found he missed the feel of her skin on his when she removed her hands to her lap.

To give his digits something to do other than reach towards the lady like salvation to a sinner the former Bennett found his mug and massaged at the sides before ultimately uniting the rim with his lips for a sip. The lady sitting cross-legged in the chair stretched her back like a braided Gumby before continuing, "It is ok Sléibhe (mountain) I understand."

The spiced coffee had just eased into the passageway of his throat; Neal forced it down with a strangled cough. The woman in yellow sipped at her brew with such a practiced ease that her Cheshire cat grin almost (almost) eluded the seasoned confidence man. The wink she tossed him like dart to a board however, he caught with ease.

"I ndáiríre?" (Seriously?) Was the only reply the man could squeak out after he regained sufficient air in his lungs. Neal felt his jaw loosen its hinges like the cargo bay opening on a plane. He could feel the tips of his ears redden as if Rudolph's nose traded places with them and his art forger hands gripped at the silverware a bit to tight.

Suddenly he felt as the touch of her skin refound his. Her fingers ran along his easing them from the fork and the knife. Seeing the downcast sky upon his crestfallen landscape her levity abated. With kindness that was almost his undoing Grace asked the injured man, "would you like me to tend to them after the meal?" She wanted him to know above all else that he was not alone.

The lady of the loft's hands gently made the climb from Neal's digits to his wrists. She rubbed her thumbs along crimson bracelets hoping to ease the pain in his heart, to warm the hidden parts of him that were cold from unuse. The pulse under her fingers jumped as if it were trying to become a champion hopscotch player. She continued her ministrations. From experience the tortured woman knew that physical wounds in time heal over, the inside scars like beacons in the night remain.

Neal acknowledged all the lady in the braids said without using his vast and varied lexicon. She saw the lacerations about his person and not just the ones as a result of his latest tango with federal handcuffs. The ones that came as a result of the words Peter hurled at him with fists of unrelenting fury that cut so deep in his soul that they might never bind.

Neal had allowed himself to not only like the agent and enjoy his company he forged on bond with him (not that kind he was sentenced to prison for.) He loved the older man and in loving him he provided Peter the ammunition and the power to hurt him. Which gave the agent the power to hurt him.

Her thumbs were still playing Ernest Bloch's 'Nigun' on his wrists. The man in the 3sixteen jeans felt his heart do ce do as he responded with a barley audible, "yes please." Grace squeezed the surface below her hands gently before returning his borrow limbs to the wooden table below them. Her right hand found his wind-chapped cheek; she held his gaze and nodded. The man in the shitkicker boots shifted to allow for the growing need at his apex.

He forked another bite of the culinary delights so he wouldn't appraise the lady in yellow of the change in his weather patterns. He needn't have worried she was already cognizant of the altered state. Not wanting to further disrupt his apple cart she regained her hand to the table. Then palmed her yellow mug and sipped at the cooling java.

After the man in the gray Henley and simple black over shirt washed down the bite peppers and onions with the spiced coffee he held worked to find and hold Grace's gaze. Neal poured all he had into his skint on words but not on sentiment reply, "go raibh maith agat." (Thank you.)

For the remainder of the meal and quite some time after the Irish duo rested their weary bones and dolorous hearts in a companionable silence filled with memories of times long past. Each fighting demons and chasing angels in their minds, neither deck occupant felt the need to say anything.

Eventually Neal found his mind wander towards the puzzling conundrum of what arcana lay dormant in the treasure chest along her muted corn silk wall. Grace sensing his unrequited love for her family heirloom, wandered down the maudlin path of what happened when the man across from her was in possession of the knowledge hidden in the catacombs of the trunk he was so entranced by.

As the snow found its way over the railing and onto the boards below their feet the woman of the loft rose to clear the table and relocate them to the warmer destination of her sitting area which just happened to have an unobstructed line of sight to her portmanteau.

The man with the sable hair was just that much quicker scooping them up. Reiterating her earlier grin and wink Neal sashayed through the open French doors with exaggerated flourish. He could her the dulcet sounds of her throaty chuckle in the background as he waltzed like Matilda all the way to the sink.

After completing the simple albeit welcomed domestic task of cleaning and rinsing the daisy colored dishes. The injured man turned to the lady in the jeans that hugged her callipygian like butter to bread had. All the necessities for rebandaging his physical wounds had been splayed across the island in methodical order. As his eyes washed over the ointments, wraps and tape then towards the dishes drying in the rack and finally her adeptly tossed knife it occurred to him that the enigma of bare feet before him was helping him to heal so much more than the circles around his wrists.

It was as if she could materialize and dematerlize at will. The back of Neal's 3sixteen jeans found the seat of the stool the nursemaid had thoughtfully pulled out. How had his well-honed thief senses not detected her presence? Silent running he mused. Ms. Carney was very adept at the submarine stealth tactic known as silent running. Often confused with the 1958 black and white war film titled Run Silent, Run Deep.

Neal shook his head of the errant silent thoughts and placed his hands out palms down on the counter. He pressed his skin down with negligible pressure more so to stay the random bursts of nerves twitching through his fingers like rocks in an avalanche than out of self-flagellation. The lady still attired in her garden filled apron eased ointment along the parts of his skin that still weltered like a rock-lined stream.

So little experience had he with genuine physical kindness offered without ulterior motives that the man being attended to found he could not break his focus with the procedure. She was hyper vigilant in her quest to minister without adding additional pain or harm. Neal pushed his steal-toed boots into the facing on her island as he blinked to break the trance.

Without warning or preamble the District of Columbia Native whispered out, "I wish I had known you years ago."

When Neal finally mustered up the testicular fortitude to look the lady in yellow in the face he saw the unvarnished looking of understanding, he could barely hear her reply, "if there was one immutable truth about life Sléibhe (mountain), it was often more cruel than it was kind."

When she finished with the binding his external wounds Grace placed her right hand in his now upturned palm noting the small white lines that littered the space like tick marks on a wall. Her left found the bruised area about his forearm, careful to not increase pressure along his fault line.

"I am honored to know you now." When the nursemaid felt the muscles beneath her tense she eased her violin solo-playing thumb into the chords right below his rolled cuff. Her body automatically pressed into his side unconsciously hoping to provide comfort. The smell of his sandalwood soap permeated her senses like exotic spices at a market.

Neal felt his heart rate increase as if he just jumped off a skyscraper. He tried to control his breathing to no avail. The breaths shot out of him in random bursts of air like steam from a boiling pot. The sous chef found he did know what to do with the air hovering around them. It was as if they were teetering along the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Neal Runs. That is what his FBI file said. He could feel the need to run so deep in his gut that his hand fisted around her digits without informing him of the action. The man on the stool with his shitkickers resting against the bottom of the reclaimed wood island didn't know how to process visceral reactions firing off like canons in his soul.

He had to move now; he could feel his volcano threatening imminent rupture. Suddenly he shot up of the stool as if someone had jabbed his haunches with a red-hot poker. "Would you mind if I saw to some other needs?" The gentleman rushed out with the speed of an auctioneer at Tiffany's. Neal jerked his head towards the ajar bathroom door with more a spasm than a nod. Realizing he was still tethered to the lady in braids his released the vice grip on her hand with all possible haste. It wasn't the farthest destination the work released felon had every scampered off to, it was just all available to him at the moment.

Grace stepped back her arms open as she bid her guest, "take all the time you need Sléibhe." (Mountain.)

The five foot eleven man unconsciously wrinkled his nose at the moniker. He needed to regain his composure the barefoot woman could see it in the way the man's shoulder bowed in towards his chest. In the way his walk was uneven; his feet turned in just the barest hint of hints towards each other and his hand clenched at his sides as if he pushed the air down to keep him alighted.

Grace's inspection stayed downward her brown eyes focused on the old worn Harley Davidson boots upon her visitor with the bloodshot eyes and need to flee the scene's feet. The fact that a man known for cutting a fine swath, for his dapper attire and debonair flare wore ugly ass footwear that should have been put to pasture ages and a day ago was telling. What message they needed to relay remained to be seen.

As the fleeing convict was about to close the barrier between maintaining a facade and his world collapsing he heard a voice from the kitchen, "and remember to put the seat down." Neal couldn't contain the nervous laugh the bubbled forth at such a simple domestic request. He shut the door with a click before sinking down on the rim of the tub like rocks to the forest floor with an enervated sigh.

Upon his exit from his extended bathroom stay Neal saw that all evidence of her patchwork supplies had been removed. In their place two newly cleaned buttercream mugs waiting for steaming hot contents. "What do you say to some cocoa?" Her hand was already at the kettle checking the water levels.

"I think cocoa sounds like the bees knees," the former Bennett offered with a genuine smile. Neal had been able to calm the raging waters that churned in his soul while holed up in the safety of the water closet. He had been able to submerge his face in water and scream. It helped him tremendously.

As much as he had wanted to be a sneaky sneak from sneakerville, the thief in him fought the urge to riffle through her personal affairs. When he looked for an extra hand towel he came across her lady business things and well it set him straight about not investigating any further.

While awaiting the lady of the lofts arrival the man in the custom made jeans absently teased at the sleeves on his shirts while having an underscored stare off with the chest that called to him like a lighthouse to a lost sailor.

Grace patiently observed him from a spot behind the couch. His attention was locked on target with her family heirloom. She wondered what in blue corn blazes he expected to be in there. The way he stared at the chest like a lover ready for bed she thought about offering them some alone time.

"Sléibhe," (mountain) the culinary cognoscente of chocolate whispered as she slid around the furniture towards the five foot eleven mountain resting in her plain. Startled by her sudden appearance next to him the normally unflappable thief near jumped at the unexpected interruption to his ocular combat with scroll lined antique traveling case.

Neal found her face with aphonic interpellation, "how are you able to appear and disappear?" Her eyebrows raised and for the split second of time it takes the grain of salt in the hourglass to tick the man thought he had lent actual voice to the question. Her hand was warm from the mug she held out for transfer. As his fingers graced along side hers to receive the witch's brew he saw her glance back at the shelving unit along the wall. Had he provided words to air?

Appariationing as she was able to do was a learned art. Someone or multiple someone's had educated her on the ways of the phantasming. Neal rubbed his shoulder at a memory that sprang for from the recesses of his mind. It had been a cold day in September; they had been in the middle of a lesson. His Uncle the prizefighter snapped him back against the wall with the force of a ship to a piling, thus scudding the joint out of socket.

He hadn't lent tears tracks to cheeks that day. It was a sad accomplishment to be proud of yet his ten year old self was. He felt like the like a messed up version of the Johnson and Johnson slogan, No More Tears. Somewhere inside the younger (and present day) Caffrey knew if he had cried his Uncle would have provided him a much harsher gateway to make the tears fall.

Long after his Ma had found slumber, he hugged his one working arm around his knees, replaying the older man's monition in his head, "caithfidh tú do cheachtanna a fhoghlaim." (You have to learn your lessons.) One of the lessons he learned that day was how to enter and exit a building with no one the wiser. Another was how to due it in pain.

Out of his periphery Neal saw Grace snuggle down crossed legged in the chair astride the coffee table. Her cocoa found partnership with the swirls and whirls about the varnished wooden surface. As the five foot five woman wiggled her toes the blue-eyed observer espied a meandering riverbed that covered the base of her foot. That scar was antique compared to most previously viewed ones.

The artist lowered his bag of bones onto the couch with a weary sigh of the damned. The preceding week had been rife with battle and bloodshed. While he and Peter endured the campaigns with fortitude and an unflinching credence in the other, it didn't mean the hits didn't leave marks.

Neal sat his cocoa down and simply sat in silence. He knew he should try and fill it, there was so much he wanted to say and maybe even (if he were ready to admit it to himself) needed to say. Or really (if he were also ready to admit more to himself) ask. His eyes found the wall across from the couch. He didn't so much stare at it as avoid staring at the trunk.

Grace sat cross-legged in the chair quietly sipping as the man on the couch rested his gaze on the unadorned walls across from him. The lady in her favorite old worn jeans and bare feet could see it was not the blank space that held her visitors attention. It was a video reel for his eyes only.

Later than sooner his eyes weltered over to the woman who had welcomed him into her home. The smile that met him calefaciented through his veins like lava crashing from a volcano. Neal could feel a clonus in his heart. His long fingers grabbed at the mug like a life raft to a drowning man. The man on the couch forced himself to break contact with the lady in braids.

The woman in the chair took no offense to aborted eye anchoring. It had been tumultuous week filled with one performance after another. His mind must be whirling like a tornado about to ravage the field. His soul a battered ship against the rocks. She found his boots wondering not for the first time why it was important to him that she had chance to see them. Grace could discern no other logical reason for such hideously ugly footwear. Her focus lifted supernal. His blue eyes were back at her trunk. Really maybe she should secure the two of them a room.

When Neal finally broke the silence of the sipping it was to question the lady of the loft. "Why are your walls bare?" Her toe flexed in the air as she sipped at her cocoa thoughtfully weighing whatever it was she was going to say. His hands unconsciously tightened on the ceramic cocoa dispenser.

The lady across from him still felt the need to censor herself. Neal found his heart hurt more than he thought possible at the fact she might need to edit with him. Even after allowing him into her home, even exposing near all her expanse to him, even after calling him Sléibhe. (mountain) The bond forger swallowed down the building pressure in his throat it was like a geyser ready to blow.

Neal took a steading breath allowing the agreement to wash out to sea. There were many parts of his past he wasn't ready to share with anyone even himself. Allowing someone into the recesses of your soul was exposing a nakedness unlike that of skin, once done there was no amount of covering that would recloak it into the safety of the unknown. His bloodshot blue eyes found the trunk again.

All his lover in the nighttime looks at the scrollwork-covered portmanteau and the man on the couch wanted to know about her lack of wall covering? Grace fought the urge to ask him if they needed some private alone time. Instead she replied with an earnest, "I do have art on the walls."

Blue eyes moved around the room at the speed of a geriatric sloth on sedatives. The artist made sure to look up and down and side to side, just in case the he missed a painting, a sculpture, a picture, anything on the still clearly empty walls. When Neal finally finished his reassessment of the continued unadorned walls he rested his gaze on her freckled face. He might not have challenged her with word. The look on his face required no voicing to understand, 'really?'

The lady with art on her walls felt a tintibulation in her neck. Her pulse was pounding like federal agents were at the door. The mug in her hand felt like an anchor keeping her grounded. If she provided him a private viewing of the artwork there was no going back. Whatever he thought he knew would be confirmed beyond a shadow of doubt.

The yellow mug landed center a notch on the coffee table with nary a sound. Her feet found the rug as her body alighted out of the chair with the grace of someone who knew exactly how to control the movements of their body. Her feet so littered with permanent reminders of battles past that the unmarred parts were what seemed out of place almost floated as they found the path that led towards the rear of the loft.

Neal observed the way she placed her feet almost over each other as if she were walking on a tight rope. His eyes traveled up her backside watching as her callipygian swayed and her hips moved as if listening to the beat of a song and she needed to keep in step. His private affairs reminded him of their presence about the time his eyes made it to the braids that danced a jig about her back.

Not knowing if he should follow the dancer on her path or not Neal beat feet to join Grace. His Harley Davidsons made a slight scuff sound as they merged off the rug onto the hardwood floors. Cairbre Caffrey's training seeped back into the balls of his feet. The man who had survived the winter siege in the Missouri barn followed the tightrope walkers path in equal silence.

Her hand hovered over the doorknob as a feather might dance in the wind. Despite the taciturn manner with which he moved Grace could sense the man behind her. The slightly uneven fall of his feet thanks to the government shackle about his ankle.

When the former Bennett partnered the current Carney at door it dawned on him that what lay behind the barrier was the barefoot woman's bedroom. Neal felt his haunches tighten in consternation. This had to be the first time in the history of his adulthood he hesitated to enter a boudoir.

No matter this sojourn wasn't to involve the carnal arts, she was still demur in her decision to invite him pass the threshold. It was the nervous intake of breath he gave, the minute tremor in his hand, the barely perceptible widening of his eyes upon recognition of what was beyond the door. She worked the handle (that sometimes stuck like an over jellied jar lid) and eased the barrier back.

Neal's shitkickers halted at the framework as if an invisible force field locked in place. The lady of the bedroom turned at the man stopping short as if a magnet pulled him away from the entrance with force. He shook his head no to her. Her eyes were overflowing with understanding and something neither of them could give name too. The man in the black western shirt and bound wrists was showing deference to the woman who showed him dignity and a grace that far exceeded her name.

Her head inclined towards a near threadbare, torn and frayed lap quilt festooned with braided cording from another time and another world. Most of the patch worked squares mimicked the old, worn oft-antique cargo strewn about the wooden shelves in the main area. An unconscious grimace found his features as he honed in on the barn in the corner.

Neal closed his personal windows for a moment before reopening them to the hand embroidered wagon wheel that took up the four squares in the center. His eyes moved to the lady of the bedroom. They stayed on hers for such an extended duration that the man felt the earth move beneath his feet.

Neal tilted his head towards the quilt owner he felt his errant curl slide over forehead before obscuring his vision as a storm cloud might block out the sun. There was a heaviness in the air a cyclone that whirled around them as if safeguarding them in a cocoon.

The five foot eleven man in the 3sixteen jeans didn't know what to do with the level of faith afforded him. The gift the lady in braids proffered him in allowing him a private viewing of the quilt above the bed was more prized than anything she could offer on the mattress below it.

Not a single other person in his life had provided him something so sacred. Not Kate who would have thought this heirloom old, raggy and not worth the tacks it took to mount. Nor Sara who would have wondered why one would have kept something so obviously threadbare and haggard in appearance.

Despite his early uglier ponderings he knew that Mozzie loved him. Moz meant it when he called him Mon frere. (my brother) To the Dentist of Detroit the young man from District of Columbia by way of Missouri was his brother, end of story. Still the man was a con at heart and there would always be a lack of trust despite the funny man in glasses ready, willing and able to go to the mattresses for him.

Faith might ride shotgun when trust found the trunk. He knew in his heart of hearts that Peter trusted that no matter what Neal would protect him, much to the lawman's dismay his CI had proven that beyond question. The felon also knew that the federal agent would go to the ends of the earth to save him and that the man whose sole philosophy on expressing emotion could be summed up in the two words Cowboy Up cared for him as more than property he could return at anytime.

This was something all together different. The man with the extensive lexicon couldn't remember a single time in his life he was so without words to express the depth of what he was feeling at being afforded such an unparalleled offer of there wasn't even a word for it. When words finally found him all he could offer was, "yes I can see that you do."

His steel-toed boots braced against the wooden framing of the doorway while his body filled the framing. Neal scanned the room as if he were recording it onto a camera phone not just in his memory palace for later viewing. He watched as the Traveler touched the corner of the fabric with a sweep of fingers.

Blue eyes passed over the queen sized bed centered to the back wall and the simple no frills dark gray (curious it wasn't black) flannel comforter a top it noting the two beside tables with the small handcrafted lamps. Resting on the one closest the window was a book; the pages were turned to him so the recorder wasn't able to make out the tittle.

There was a recently recovered chair by the window. The tapestry that bound the overstuffed armchair was a forest resplendent with trees. Along the wall to his left shoulder there was a dresser that complimented the lines of the pieces that hugged her pallet. A small hand carved box rested in the center with a wooden bowl on either side.

When Grace's bare feet made tracks towards the doorframe he rested in Neal could feel the barometric change in her. He could see the crimson flush across her mountainous expanse, the clouds hovering in her brown eyes, the way she rubbed at her wrists.

"Ní i bpíosaí,"(Not in pieces) the words left him before the man in the rolled cuffs knew what he had said. His hand found hers in an effort to provide an anchor to the storm rusticating in her heart. The man in the 3sixteen jeans stepped closer into her space asking without words to share more of her, without pausing to debate her body weltered into his.

The man with the bound wrists remembered the first time he had chance to view a Tesla Coil, the resonant electric currents with their lightening snapping at the air in an iniquitous macabre dance of eburnean light. The coil produced high voltage, low current, and high frequency alternating streams, a transmission of electrical energy without the use of wires.

Neal could feel the flow of charge in one or more directions, as his body became a conductor for the energy coursing through her like shockwaves. Every nerve in his body fired simultaneously as he absorbed her currents like a wet sponge soaked in water. He knew the exact moment she registered his private affairs becoming public to her knowledge.

"Ní i bpíosaí,"(Not in pieces) she mussed out to the area below her lips, his rapidly beating heart.

An alarm (not Metallica he noted) on her phone choose that exact moment to announce itself from the safety of the handmade worktable in the main area. Neal almost jumped out of his skin when Casta Diva from Bellini's Norma surged through the air shattering the quiet between them that might not have been as peaceful as it was peace filled.

Maria Callas continued singing about faithful primal love oblivious to the discomfort of her listeners. His body instantly missed hers as she eased past him to bring lown to the space once more. The startled man ran a hand over his apex in an effort to push down all that occurred while standing in the in between. The symbolism of the doorframe was not lost on him.

The seasoned burglar's feet were heavy as they trudged towards the chocolate colored couch. Neal collapsed into the cushions his body a depined grenade ready to explode on impact. His eyes found hers as he questioned the Italian Opera excerpt interrupting their time under the wagon wheel. "Do you have an affinity for Opera in the cresting of the sun?" He might have lent humor to the delivery but the darkness of his eyes let her know the gravitas of the question.

The couch sitter watched the lady standing against the table with her hand hovering over the harbinger of song. Her brown eyes were still filled with the lightening storm that had ravaged their landscapes. The lady in yellow balanced, measured and mixed her words before pouring them out into the space between them.

"Yes I do." She smiled out with a small laugh hoping to ease the tension that blanketed the room like haboob of emotion filled confetti. Her hands were clasped so tight in prayer the bracelets around her wrists glowed like crimson manacles trapping her to where she stood. Her body wound so tight she was like an overheated light bulb ready to burst.

Knowing the concupiscence shooting through the air like fireworks on the Fourth of July would only increase the longer they stayed locked in the confines of the unadorned walls room the lady of the loft headed towards the front door where the coat rack pegs were. Grace worked to settle her ragged I just hiked the summit breaths.

Neal looked over at the woman by the door then towards her trunk finally his gaze settled at the center of nothing on the singly of art wall affront him. The native of DC felt a pressing need. His eyes did an about face to where the door of retiring room stood closed. With a hop and a pop the work released felon's feet found the plush rug before he scampered over to the one place in the loft he could secure privacy.

Upon his exit the man with the newly splashed face found the lady of the loft wrapped up in her favorite wool winter coat, her ungloved hands resting inside the pockets. Her freckled face (her cheek scar visible with close inspection) awash in the effulgent sunlight of a smile.

Grace tapped her foot in tune to music only she could hear. Neal's blue eyes honed in on the never before seen footwear (apparently the day for it.) The kitchen magician had traded in her trusty Doc Martins with the pink laces for an old worn pair of black (because of course) Ariat muck boots.

The man in the 3sixteen jeans racked his eyes appraisingly over the rest of her body. The lady in the worn blue jeans with the frayed hems was all woman. She had curves for miles and miles. He swallowed at the memory of her melting into his body like butter to a hot pan just moments ago. In an effort to dull the flashback the man continued his inspection.

The appraiser noted a knitted black cap sans puff that snugged over her head and pierced ears. He took in the way her left braid rested over her overtly erect back while the naughty right one rested along her coats buttons. As he inched closer to her Neal could make out the weaves of his borrowed scarf. The angora neckwear was secured around her still flushed though obscured neck.

The newly returned gentleman inched toward the lady until they were standing booted toe to booted toe. His twinkling blue eyes found her dancing brown ones. Without looking at the hook Grace's ungloved hand found his Berluti Men's Leather and Shearling jacket with the asymmetrical zipper.

She held the coat open for him to slip his arms into. As the five foot eleven man was sliding his limbs down the Sherpa lining he felt the warmth of her silhouette behind him. As the covering found his shoulders, her hands found the back hem pulling it down into place right above the crest of his hills. His mind flashed back to the in-between where she had melted against him like a rushing river to rocks. An errant nerve akin to a random Tesla lighting strike jumped along the length of his private affairs.

Neal waited for his wave to recede back into the ocean before turning around to meet his companion with a hoarse, "where are we off to?" Her eyes twinkled flashed radiant sparkles under the rays of the recessed lighting. The visitor waited for the lady to open the door aback her. His ears prepared to hear the agonizing scream of the damned as the door inched along the track.

When she stepped away from the door towards the hall that would lead to the recently occupied bedroom Neal brought a hand out to stay her in question. Thinking she might lend a worded answered or at the very least point or nod to where they might be headed the sable haired man couldn't contain his momentary shock when her ungloved hand found his. Grace left it unmoving allowing him the choice to release her grasp or close in on it. His artist's fingers slid through hers.

"Come Sléibhe, (mountain) let us explore." The in the wool head covering noted the wrinkle of his nose at the sobriquet she had levied upon him. Her freckles danced a jig at the laugh she gave. Grace squeezed his paw in her mit before letting the digits fall. Without needing to see behind her the lady walked a perfect line backwards towards the end of the walkway all while maintaining eye contact and a huge smile. Neal cocked his head in question.

The Ariat boots halted in front of a here to fore not seen door just off the back hallway. Her hands pulled at a diminutive lever. Unconsciously Neal's ears prepared for a cacophony of sound while his eyes followed as the metal barrier rolled back into the alcove of the wall. The burglar in him eyed the delitescent access point with the keen interest of a structural engineer.

Another part of him, the latent section of his soul that longed for someone to simply trust him found the bricks that held that protective barrier upright were crumbling. He watched as she practically skipped to her Lou down the first few stairs. Her voice traveled up, "I know it's not the underskirt of my trunk Sléibhe." (mountain) Neal's nervous laughed bounced off the brick walls lining the space, "its only a hidden stairwell" she offered as her boots continued their obmutescent decent towards an unknown to the man aback her's destination, "don't you want to see where it leads?"

December 6, 2013, The Burke Residence, 1:34PM

Peter sat at his kitchen island a smile played at his lips while he watched his official phone spin around like a mop in Fantasia. Round and round the ma bell connector went like a ballerina at center stage still he made no move to interrupt the pirouette. His hand balanced in the air above the device waiting for the spin right round to halt.

The agent held off checking the electronic tracking data through the Marshal service. First by doing the small pile of waiting dishes in the sink (he may have let them pile up while El was away.) Then by preparing another pot of much needed coffee and his famous in the Burke Household French toast (his one claim to breakfast cooking fame) for his soon to be arriving spouse. Then by a little one on one wink wink nudge nudge time.

The man perched on the center of the stool was more interested to see if his young friend was still on the island than to verify he had actually made it to the destination. There was no way the man who left him some few hours ago with a hop skip and jump in his step didn't head straight to the lady with the beautiful brown eyes.

Peter couldn't contain the ear-to-ear grin that found his face when Grace Carney's address stared back at him. Neal had made a friend in her a true friend. A small part of him worried what would happen when more of her history (and present) came to the former Bennett's attention. Peter flashed on the waiting room right after she had been admitted; he shrugged to himself while he continued with his grin. That was another challenge for another day.

The homeowner heard the telltale creak of the townhome's stairs. The cacophony heralded the entrance of his resplendent amazing wife.

"Hon, you look like the cat who found the canary," El laughed out as she ruffled the back of her husbands neck, teasing along the edges of his hair knowing it would drive him to distraction. Peter snagged his wife's hips pulling her in close. The lady with the blue eyes and over kissed lips smiled as her task had accomplished its intended goal.

El nestled down between her husbands open legs snuggling in close. She rested her newly showered forearms on his shoulders as her fingers tickled at his the haunches of his shoulder blades. She smiled wide as he breathed in the scents of her mint shampoo before she asked, "What has you so happy?"

"I spent the entire morning with my wife." Peter replied his face full of a raging fever only one drug could cure. His eyes weltered over her the curves of her breasts as they strained against the camisole trying to contain them. His hands moved playfully off her hips his fingers slid under the hem of the cotton blockade easing their way towards the mountainous region of her landscape. Elizabeth's body reacted on instinct to her husband's well-honed touch.

"Thats nice hon." El mussed out in a rushed breath.

Peter watched as his handling of her enbowments encouraged a flush across her body. He smiled smugly as he continued on with his kneading. He could see her sea blue eyes glassing over as he continued his ministrations to her erogenous location.

"And I quite enjoyed spending the entire morning with my husband," the spouse made sure to match the inflection on entire as her husband did, "still that is not what that first smile was about." Elizabeth felt her toes dig into the kitchen flooring. Her sneaky husband knew exactly how to work her system.

El's thighs rested against Peter's. He could feel the quiver and shake they gave as a low throat moan escaped her reddened lips. He smiled at his wife, their special smile. There was a comfort in having someone know the insides and outsides of you as El did him. The man on the stool shifted to allow her body more access his boxers sliding with ease across the polished surface.

"No hon, it wasn't," the agent replied his brown eyes darkened as his wife's fingers ran down the length of his chest he hoped she would inch lower towards a more Southern location. Peter made no move to further expound on his answer and smart woman that she was El made no move to push. They both knew he would share when he was ready.

Much to Peter's dismay El's fingers stopped at his waistband then slid back up his chest and eventually rested for a moment on his shoulders. She kissed him quickly before waving her hand in the air like a magic wand over his less than expecting visitor's sartorial choice, "aren't you expecting a knock at the back door Mr. Suit?"

Peter smiled at his wife before tugging her down into a deep end of the ocean kiss. When the raven haired beauty stepped back her cheeks flush and her eyes smoldering with campfire heat she patted the inside of his thigh promising things to come after their yet to arrive visitor took his leave.

The fifty year old looked down at his lack of proper for anyone but his spouse covering. "Right," he chuckled full of mirth and bedevilment, "Moz probably doesn't want to know if I am a boxers or briefs man." Peter hopped off the chair with a bit too much bounce in his step.

It was the wife's turn to laugh, "Probably not Mr. Suit," El smiled as she watched the sway of her husband's hindquarters as they progressed across the living room floor. The six foot two man could still hear her giggling as he mounted the stairs towards a much-needed shower.

At 6:00PM on the dot there was a knock, soft knock, knock at the back door of the brownstone at 106 Cambridge Place. The homeowner answered the request with a wide open door, a smile and a welcoming glass of red wine for the entrant. Moz looked at the wine with pause, then at the man holding it with question, then the wine before releaving the agent of the Sine Qua Non Dark Blossom.

"Thank you Suit, such service!" The newly arrived Michigan native went to take a sip of the Syrah known for its blend of blackcurrants, pepper and Peking duck he hesitated. With a stone cold serious face and nary a twinkle in his eye the balding man asked "wait did you mix in arsenic?"

Peter simply laughed at what he knew to be good-natured ribbing as he shut the back door to the raging winter winds of the outside. After the funny little man with glasses had drained the stemware of its licorice rich contents he turned to face the man in jeans and a faded baseball tee shirt.

With a voice thick with worry though no recrimination the older man noted the younger stated, "I saw his wrists."

Moz watched as the Suit's face drained of all color, the laughter and teasing of the moments before dissipated into the air hovering about them like fog at midnight in Hunts Point. Clouds rolled past the window aback him, half shadowing the lawman in darkness. The wine drinker found that an apt representation of the man in front of him, always half in the shadows.

"It got out of hand, " The agent started to respond to the statement that was clearly a question.

"I think you mean it got in his hand Suit," The Dentist of Detroit finished with more kindness than the abuser felt he deserved. That the little man who was so distrustful of the government he had a dozen safe houses, an armory of burner phones and several identities would allow him grace, Peter didn't even know what to say. Somewhere in the past few months they had gone from being adversaries in the age old battle of the law vs. the con to what one might consider friends.

Moz shuffled over to the island at a sedate pace. He uncorked the resting bottle with a corkscrew hooked onto his messenger bag and poured another glass of the Ventura County wine before continuing on his course of Neal investigation, "I stopped to see him today. I found he was not in residence at June's."

Peter found the handle of the refrigerator; his eyes looked in the visitor's general location before he opened the door and secured a beer bottle from the top shelf. The agent knew the man in Converse was fishing with what little bait he had available. The bantam man had no idea where he Mon frère (brother) was.

"Where ever he is Moz." The beer drinker popped the cap off the bottle his brown eyes watched it arc in a perfect rainbow before landing in the sink. "He is in his radius." Peter offered noncommittally to an answer as he took a much-needed drag of the Belgian White by the Matt Brewery.

The lawman was not aware of any disclosure made about the lady on the island and her association with the man in the tracking anklet to his guest. If Neal had not shared about Grace it was not his place too either. Though he imaged sooner rather than later that would become in material. All the worlds a stage and they were all players in it. Even if there were in different acts a forth-coming table read seemed inevitable.

Sensing his round about way of securing the information was not going to provide what he was searching for the bespeckled man was more direct, "Why did you place him in irons Suit?" Mozzie needed to know if it was part of the act or if something else had transpired causing the man with the blue eyes to wind up in handcuffs. The response he received would be the guide for how he handled the next few minutes and the parceling out of all that he had learned on his hunting expedition.

The sigh that escaped Peter, the collapse of his erect back and straight shoulders, the low-key shaking of the beer bottle in his left hand advised the balding observer that whatever had occurred to bring about the bruises and blood aggrieved them both. Moz found his often joked about small heart soften at the distress and heartbreak that littered the expanse of the agent across from him.

Peter took a sip of the upstate New York brew, letting the liquid coat his throat and work at settling the shark chummed waters of his stomach. He took a deep bolstering breath of air before finding the visitors face "it was all part of the charade at the office."

The homeowners empty hand found the safety of the counter to rest on, his index finger absently picking at splintered piece of wood. "We had discussed what was to happen prior to the enacting of the events."

Moz regarded the sight of the emotional insanguinated man before him; the Suit's eyes were locked on an image only he could see. The man still cocooned in outwear needed to fend of the winters screams of white agony was firm but gentle so as not to startle the man in the worn tee shirt, "Neal knows how not to hurt himself in cuffs." Sadly, both men standing in the Burke kitchen knew this to be an indisputable fact born out of the inordinate amount of time their friend spent in shackles.

"It was part of the show." Estelle's owner stated more then interpellated.

Still pealing away the layers on the table as if he could just dig deep enough maybe he would remove the mark on his heart the man in the blue jeans finished off, "Yes Moz it was part of the performance."

The beer drinker took a small sip before adding, "We had an unexpected complication." Peter could still see the former Bennett's blood pooling on the table… "Because of that his wrists slipped and what you saw was the result." That was as parallel to the truth without exposing that with which Neal might not want disclosed at this juncture in their road as the brown-eyed man could offer.

The blue eyed man paused for a second swirling the crimson liquid about the Burke's stemware. It was evident, highly evident how sick with shame the Suit was. That he brought about damage to the young man they cared so much for was written so clearly on his face it was like a bus stop bench ad for a man hunched in dolor. Whatever had happened was not planned and the two men still continued to beat at themselves long after the incident had passed.

Making a decision the man in his favorite monochromatic footwear with the double laces set his wine glass down on the surface affront them, "I come bearing gifts."

Moz pulled out a small stack of files. At the agents raised eyebrow, the profferer of the cumshaw tapped the folders adding almost under his breath "there will be more of these. Until then."

The recently returned hunters face weltered into a mask of excitement at having discovered the treasure tinged with the fury of knowing that the lagniappe would bring about war not peace. His hands once again delved into his Army green messenger bag with the patch of a pigeon stitched into the bottom left hand corner of the flap. Ever the showman the shorter man took his time pulling out his visual aids. Moz let a loose a little drumroll sound then splayed the high resolution color photographs across the table as a magician would a deck of cards, before doing the razzle dazzle ta-da with his hands, "many many gifts."

The lawman in Peter wanted to take the time to look over all the thief in the night secured for his appraisal, yet it was the photo at the center of the fan that was the cynosure of his focus. The friend and whatever else he would never be able to name to Neal in Peter felt his nuts clang like Newton's cradle. His brown eyes found Mozzie's blue. The shorter man understood all the man in jeans was trying to say without ever lending voice to one word.

Peter brought his gaze back down to the information in front of them. He couldn't seem to break his attention for the image of the warm handshake of the men in the photo. The disjecta membra of past events were starting to form a larger image at the end of the evidentiary kaleidoscope.

Moz was talking, the lawman knew he should be listening, "There are hours of tape I have yet to transcribe Suit."

The agent nodded absently while he knew whatever was recorded, as being said between the two denizens of Hell would lend credence and support to their quest. It was the ramifications of what these two people knowing each other meant that was foremost in his mind. And how he and Moz should approach the sharing of this newly garnered information with their shared friend.

As the starting pistol at a race had been fired in the air of the kitchen Peter broke from his entrancement of the photographic evidence. His hands rubbed together while a smile found his face. He turned a warm look at the bespeckled man, "Mozzie this is…" the agents voice trailed off he wasn't sure how to describe the important discovery. He was sure however, on how much effort went into securing it, "… you are brilliant!" Peter reached over to the visitor and squeezed the shorter man's shoulder.

Moz could feel his face blushing in crimson heat as if he stood affront a fiery furnace. He was unaccustomed to praise or displays of affection from people. Most especially from the resolute almost unswerving in his alpha maleness FBI man. Regaining some composure and his own brand of wit, the man in the overcoat replied, "yes well there is no need to yell it out."

Needing to focus on something calming for a moment the Michigan native stepped back and removed his harbinger of informational tidings. Then set about the arduous task of removing the many layers of his winter coverings. Specks of pearlized winter tears fluttered to the ground as he laid the clothing along the back of a kitchen chair.

After Moz had divested himself of the unneeded clothing, he carded up all he had laid out on the island. He welcomed the blast of heat from the radiator grill before he relocated the photos to the larger welcoming surface of the kitchen table.

His ring adorned hands pulled out the chair in front of him. The metal jewelry knocked against the wood as if to say 'honey I am home.' The right foot of the man in the Charles Barkley footwear kicked the chair to side with a bit of flourish, his eyebrows raised with his hands as he found the homeowners face, "Suit we have work to do."

When work released felon first joined the white collar division the agent checked his tracking data as a way to confirm his control over the young man's errant ways. As time passed Peter found he checked it to make sure his friend had not decided to step away from their life together. At that present the man in his kitchen checked to make sure the man with the blue eyes hadn't strayed from what might be his last peace filled day for sometime.

With one last look at the blinker in the same place it had been since leaving the brownstone hours and hours ago Peter smiled at he placed the phone face down on the table, tapping the top for good measure. A steady hand found his hair as the homeowner pushed the lose wisp's that sought to obscure his sightline out of his way.

The fifty year old nodded at the photo that lay atop the recently relocated pile, the wheels in his brain whirling at the speed of a twin-turbocharged direct injected V8 Ferrari F154, "yes Moz." He placed his beer bottle down with a resolute clink. He reached his hand towards the picture of the smug smiling bastards, "it appears we do."

A/N: Just in Case…

Irish to English Translations Are As Follows:

Tá a fhios agam cad a chiallaíonn sé chun páirt a ghlacadh. = I know what it means to play a part.

Tá a fhios agam cad a chiallaíonn sé a bheith agat do chuid féin a cheilt. Do chuid féin fíor. Nó cad atá fágtha de do chuid féin fíor. = I know what it means to have to hide yourself, your true self, or what remains of your true self.

Agus tá a fhios agam cad é cuid de tú féin a cheilt. Cuid, mar sin mared, ní féidir leat a leigheas riamh. = And I now what it is to hide a part of yourself. A part so mared, you can never heal.

Tá tú bruscar Grainne = You are trash Grace

Tóg tú féin amach = Take yourself out

Sléibhe = Mountain

I ndáiríre = Seriously

Go raibh maith agat. = Thank you

Caithfidh tú do cheachtanna a fhoghlaim = You have to learn your lessons

Ní i bpíosaí = Not in pieces

French to English Translations Are As Follows:

Trancheur = Artistic Carver

Mon Frere = My Brother