Disclaimer: I have no rights to White Collar. They belong to USA Network or someone there, I presume.

He woke with a distinct feeling that something was wrong. To begin with, he woke, which meant he'd been asleep. He had been, too, in a dream world not quite faded from his consciousness. Rather than springing to alertness, some caution in him kept him still. He cracked his eyelids and saw his arm draped over the chair, the handcuff dangling free from his own wrist. He heard movement in the room. Slowly, carefully he lolled his head so he could see the room from mostly-closed eyelids.

Keeping his breathing even despite the adrenaline coursing through him, Peter saw Neal, still in the room, thank God. The panic eased in Peter's chest. He decided to watch him. Neal was fully dressed, though without the hat or his tie. He paced, rather as he had earlier, from the room's window to the door and back again. When he passed directly in front of him, Peter saw Neal was barefoot, but wore his socks on his hands with the toes cut out so the material covered only his palms. That was interesting.

On his next pass, Neal stopped at the window and grew very still. Peter prepared to abandon his charade and put an end to whatever Neal was up to, but the opportunity to observe Neal when he didn't know he was being watched was too tempting. Neal stared out the window, though Peter knew there could be little to see in the dark. After a moment, Neal slowly leaned his head forward so his forehead touched the glass. The moment seemed dreamlike, unreal, Neal stopping his activity to breathe and consider. Peter waited, fighting the urge to hold his breath, keeping the illusion of sleep.

Neal closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them and turned to look at Peter. He strode across the room, rounding the bottom of what had been his bed, to Peter's chair where it sat between the bed and the wall. "Peter, wake up," he said, shaking Peter's shoulder lightly. "I can't stay. I'm sorry, I'd like to, but I have to go."

Peter opened his eyes, looking up into earnest blue ones. "That's ridiculous, Neal," he said, his voice rough from sleep and coffee. "You wouldn't wake me up to tell me you're running."

"No," Neal said with an apologetic tip of his head, "but I had to do this." While diverting Peter's attention to the hand shaking his shoulder, Neal grasped the dangling handcuff and snapped the other end onto the bedframe, immobilizing Peter's right hand.

"Neal," Peter yelled, grabbing for the man with his left, a move which Neal anticipated. He ducked back, produced his tie from his pocket, and caught Peter's wrist in a loop of it like a fisherman netting a leaping fish. Moving fast, he dived beside Peter's chair and tied the tie to something Peter couldn't see. "Officer," Peter bellowed, just as Neal came up with the tv remote control and clicked it on. Loud, of course. Peter yelled again anyway, and kicked. His feet were still free, and in the close quarters he connected with Neal's torso, though he hadn't had enough swing to put much strength into the kick.

Unfazed, Neal danced back out of range and past the wall to where he could see the door in the entryway. He watched it for a second or two as Peter yelled for all he was worth, trying to be heard over the crowd of World Wide Wrestling fans. Too late, he realized his position and might have kicked himself if he could manage that. His chair was around the corner from the entryway, with the walls and spaces of the closet and probably the bathroom of the next room between himself and the corridor. The door was heavy and cut sound well. He remembered how little he could hear of the guard outside while standing just on the other side of the door. The rooms on all sides of him were empty, as were the rooms above and below his. No one would hear him there. He hauled on the bed frame, but without leverage from his legs – and his left arm tied to whatever it was, prevented him from standing – he had only the strength of his arm to lift the bed. He raised it a few inches and let it fall onto the carpeted floor, but the sound was muffled and unimpressive. There was no one in the room below, anyway. "Neal, dammit," he swore as he struggled.

Satisfied that the officer outside was not pounding on their locked door (locked and chained! And why exactly had he locked out his only reinforcement?), Neal looked back at him, eyes wide and purposeful. "Don't pull too much on the tie," he said. "The silk will only get tighter and cut off your circulation." Peter craned his neck around to the left to see what he was tied to. By straining and wiggling his chair in its cramped space he managed to see the elbow of a water pipe, unobtrusively near the floor, entering their room for a few inches before turning and passing into the wall of whatever lay behind their closet. He was tied to plumbing. Not good, and indeed, the silk at his wrist cut painfully into him, now. He made himself relax that hand.

Neal pulled up the counterpane on the far bed and muffled his left arm with it. He pulled off the shade of a heavy lamp, and hefted the base.

"Neal, you can't go out the window," Peter cried. "We're nine stories up."

Neal shook his head. "I don't have to reach the ground, I only have to reach another window."

"The windows in this hotel don't open."

"They break, and there's no one in the rooms around us. Besides, the windows in the stairwell open."

"They're tiny."

"They're bigger than that bathroom window you thought I could get out of."

Barefoot and with elastic traction on his palms. Neal really did think he could climb the outside of the building. Remembering Chicago, Peter had to admit that maybe he could. All he could think of to do was stall. "Wait! Before you go, tell me how you did it. How'd you get out of the handcuffs?"

"You want me to stay and gloat? That never goes well for the bad guys in the movies."

"This isn't a movie. Just the 'cuffs. Tell me."

Neal shrugged. "Simple magician's trick."

"Bullshit. Magicians use rigged handcuffs. These," Peter jiggled his right arm, "are real."

"Yeah," Neal smiled at being caught in the lie. He set the lamp back down, and fished in his trouser pocket. He brought out a key. "I lifted Lauren's key earlier." He took a step from the window and placed the key on the desk. "She'll need it back."

Peter opened his mouth for his next attempt to stall, but paused as the cell phone he'd left on the desk buzzed. Both men stared at it as it buzzed a second time. "It's Elizabeth," Neal said. They met each other's eyes for a second.

"If I don't answer, she'll know something's wrong," Peter said, though it wasn't true. Neal could well suspect he was lying; he'd seen Peter ignore calls, even from Elle, when he needed to. "She'll notify dispatch."

In a burst of motion, Neal leaped on the bed, approaching Peter's chair as he unwound the counterpane on his forearm and removed his belt. Staying on the bed, where Peter's feet couldn't reach him, Neal muffled Peter's mouth with the counterpane and buckled it in place with the belt. Peter yelled, mostly as an experiment, and found that he could make sound but no words, and the sound wasn't very loud. He was relieved that, as gags went, this one was easy to breathe through, though the extra material draped around his shoulders in an undignified way. Juggling the phone and the TV remote, Neal retreated off of the bed. He muted the TV and answered the phone.

"Hello Elizabeth," he said, sounding calm and pleased to talk to her. He glanced at Peter with a congenial expression as if everything was normal and they were just enjoying pizza and movies. "No, he can't talk right now. You wouldn't panic or anything if I said he was tied up, would you?" Making it a joke. Ha ha. Peter glared his best glare. "Oh, we're getting along as well as can be expected. He's very bossy."

He listened for a moment, smiling. "Yeah, I know. Say Elizabeth, tell me something?" He glanced at Peter. "What would you say is Peter's favorite TV channel?"