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Peter calls Neal immediately. He listens to the line ring out twice and hangs up before his voicemail starts. The marshal said the alert was most likely a bad battery or an issue with the wiring. He gets in the car at 10:48 PM.
“Neal’s okay?” El asks, because she always knows, and it’s always Neal.
“Should be. There’s something up with the monitor.”
“And… it can’t wait til tomorrow?” She yawns and puts her book aside. Her hair pools loose on the pillow.
Peter shrugs as he puts on his coat. They both hold the quip between their teeth, “Another day on the job.”
Neal’s tracking data says he’s in his apartment and he’s been there all night. He’s barely moved from the exact center, once or twice stepping into another room or out into the hall. In the car Peter calls him again. He doesn’t answer.
The drive over isn’t bad. The Pepsi-Cola sign glows warmly from across the river. He cracks the window for a breeze and cuts through the park on his way uptown. It could be like he’s on the way to pick him up for work if the sky wasn’t black and the streets so much emptier.
Peter pulls into a spot down the block and turns off the car. For a few minutes he sits there and watches the light through the loft windows before calling. Voicemail again. He sighs. “Neal.”
June answers the door, eyebrows raised. She’s still in her day clothes and doesn’t have a lot of words for him. “Good evening, Agent Burke.”
“He’s upstairs?”
She opens her palm. “Last I heard. Though, surely, you would know better than I?”
Peter bites back another sigh. The whole way up he itches to take out his gun but he can’t really place why. None of it feels right.
“Neal?” He knocks. When there’s still no reply, he pushes the door open and steps inside.
The shower runs loud enough to be heard from the doorway. Peter lets out his breath and scans the room. The easel’s set up but there’s no canvas, and the brushes have been cleaned and laid on a towel to dry. A bottle and a glass still sit out on the table beside it, the dregs stuck to the bottom.
“Neal?” he calls. “It’s—”
“Peter?!” There’s a clatter from the bathroom. “What in the goddamn hell—”
“You didn’t answer my calls.”
“I’m in the shower!”
“What’s going on with the light on your anklet?”
A pause, then, “It’s flashing yellow.”
“Yeah. The marshals called.”
“Jesus Christ, give me a second. I’ll be right out!”
Peter hears the water run for another minute or so before it shuts off, then the soft muffled sounds of Neal moving around. He opens the door, one towel around his waist, another around his neck, water still clinging to his skin. It trails down his neck and pools in the divots of his collarbone.
He shoves past. “You came all this way for a low battery?”
Peter follows him to the bedroom. “You haven’t been messing with it, have you?”
Neal stills, his jaw tight. “Really?”
“The marshals called it in. Said it’s a little early for the battery to be low, they want me to send it back.”
He looks okay. Flushed from the shower, hair wet and combed back from his face, body tense with anger. “To see if I—if I tampered with it?”
There’s no dark bruising down his chest, no hidden gunshot wounds, no cracked ribs. No ragged breathing. No broken fingers.
What had he been expecting? He’s not sure now. Maybe the place wiped clean in his wake. Maybe the phone with a ransom note taped to it. Both are always possible. They’ve happened before in some form.
“Or, to check to see if there’s a defect with the manufacturing.”
“Right. And this couldn’t wait…” Neal frowns at the alarm clock, “Nine hours? You had to come make sure I wasn’t, what, sawing through it?”
“No, Neal.” Peter keeps his voice even and sets his bag down at the foot of the bed. “I had to come because you weren’t answering my calls.”
Neal rolls his eyes and grabs his phone from the sheets. It looks like he just tossed it at his bed before getting in the shower. He silently clicks through his missed calls. Peter expects him to shoo him out while he dries off and changes, but instead he sits down next to his bag and arranges the towel over his lap. “Inspect away, Agent Burke.” He looks up expectantly. “I would never do anything so crude.”
Peter rolls his eyes back at him. He takes out the replacement anklet and kneels on the rug. “You didn’t dry off at all.”
“You barged into my apartment while I was in the shower, remember?”
“I called.” He unlocks the old one and rests it on the floor. It looks fine, not even a scratch. “Multiple times. And I don’t need a warrant.”
“I was showering.”
He dries off Neal’s ankle with the cuff of his sleeve. The skin is paler under the band, the hair shorter. He says nothing about how wasteful a forty-minute shower is.
“Wait, can I switch ankles? Or does that violate some law too?”
Without arguing Peter dries off the other ankle and clips the new monitor on. A green light glows cheerfully back at them. “I’m sure it’s just a flaw in the machinery. Maybe a wire got loose.”
“And better safe than sorry.”
“When it comes to you? Uh, yeah.” Peter slips his fingers under the band to make sure it isn’t too tight. He turns Neal’s calf and sees a puckered red scar he can’t remember noticing before. “What’s this from?” He’s been trying not to look at the red line cutting across his opposite thigh from the warehouse fiasco, conveniently not covered by the towel around his hips. “Looks painful.”
Neal pulls his leg away. “It was. You don’t remember? That private collector in Maine?”
Peter winces as the memory comes back. “Birdshot. I was trying to get you to go to a hospital.”
“Yeah, a prison hospital.”
“Did it get infected? Is that why it’s so…” Gross? Red? “Raised?”
“I was fine. In a prison hospital I would’ve gotten gangrene and lost the whole leg.”
Peter shakes his head. “I don’t know about all that. Your thigh looks nicely healed.”
“Yeah, I’ve been—ah, shit.”
He looks up sharply. Neal is clasping a hand over his face. Blood drips down his chin. Peter gets to his feet.
Neal tries to wave him off. “This happened earlier.” He leans forward slightly and pinches his nose. His fingertips and lips are stained red. “I figured the shower would help.”
“Here.” Peter grabs a few paper towels from the roll in the kitchenette so he doesn’t have to ruin a towel. “You know, if the water’s too hot you could end up drying out your sinuses even more.”
Neal frowns under the wad. “Now you tell me.”
“I could’ve told you earlier if you answered the phone.”
“Peter, please!” Neal doesn’t raise his voice often. His face is creased with frustration. “I was dealing with this, and then I was in the shower washing off.” He catches himself, glancing up quickly and back down again. “I was a little busy.”
“You didn’t notice that the light on your anklet was flashing?”
He still manages to look disgusted, half covered in blood. “Why would I notice anything about it? I don’t exactly pay a lot of attention to—” He wipes at his nose. Fresh blood spots the napkins. He shakes his head. “Thanks for your help, Peter. Let me know when they find out what went wrong with it. Maybe they used the wrong chemical in the plastic and something melted. I should really get to bed.”
“Are you trying to dismiss me?”
“You got what you came here for. We both have to work tomorrow.”
“Neal.”
“Sorry I didn’t answer the phone.”
“You’re bleeding.” Blood is starting to drip down his wrist again.
“I dealt with it before.”
“Uh huh.”
Peter goes to get more paper towels. When he turns back, Neal is on his feet, one hand holding the towel at his waist and the other holding the wilting napkins to his face. He’s staring straight at Peter, eyes wide, the dark smudges on his body appearing almost black in the low light. He takes a shuffling step back. Peter abandons the roll. He grabs his arm as he half falls, half sits on the edge of the bed. He almost misses the mattress.
“Shit.” Neal sticks his head between his knees.
“You gonna puke?”
“Hope not.”
“When did you last eat?”
“Hi, trying not to puke here.”
“Yeah, trying to figure out if you’re gonna pass out on me here.” His grip tightens on his shoulder. Peter swallows down how fast his heart is beating.
Neal sits up slowly and pinches his nose. “I think passing out in your own bed is called going to sleep.”
Peter presses his palm to his forehead and neck. His skin still feels warm and clammy from the shower. “Hey.” He wracks his brain but nothing of the past week’s events stick out as particularly significant. They worked long hours and closed the case this afternoon. Neal seemed fine. His usual self—Ah. Of course. Peter fell for it. “What’s going on with you?”
Neal shrugs but doesn’t pull away. “Just tired. I’ll be fine at the office tomorrow.”
“If you needed a break you should have said something.”
He bristles. “I'm fine.”
“Neal.”
“Peter, if I needed a break, I would have asked for one.”
“So what’s this?”
“What’s what?” He checks the napkins. The bleeding seems to be tapering off.
“Seriously? Not answering my calls, two nosebleeds? You almost keeled over.”
“You’ve never gotten dizzy after a shower before?”
“No, I haven’t. You can take a break when you need to, you know.”
“Can I?”
“Of course. Everyone on the team can, we’re only human.”
“And that break, just out of curiosity, would that be here, or in a cell at Rikers?”
“Come on, Neal—”
“You are the one who stormed in here in the middle of the night because you thought I was messing with my anklet!”
“Were you messing with it?”
He recoils. “I know better than that.”
“We both know that’s not true.”
“I know better than to get caught.”
“Every time?”
Neal wipes at his face but it does nothing to get rid of the blood. “Peter.”
“And are you going to be okay tomorrow, or are you going to pop a blood vessel in the middle of a meeting and start hemorrhaging through your eyes?”
“What is your problem?”
“My problem is that you didn’t answer your damn phone. What’s your goddamn problem?”
“My problem? My problem—I show up. I do the work, I close cases, and I’m just trying to take a fucking shower, and I don’t answer the phone one time and you come in here strapped?” There’s a hoarse edge to his voice. “You and everyone else get the benefit of the doubt, get to be human, but I’m a criminal. So, can I take a break, Peter? Are you going to storm in at eleven-thirty to make sure I’m not—”
“If I decided to wait until tomorrow before checking and you actually did mess with your anklet, you would be in Belarus by the time I showed up in the morning.”
“—But I didn’t mess with it, and I’m not stupid, and now we’re both tired and pissed off, and Belarus is a twelve-hour flight so I would still be in the air anyway.”
“At least I got you out of the shower before you started bleeding and passing out everywhere.”
“I’m not passing out everywhere. I just got a little dizzy.”
“Sure.”
His mouth tightens. “If I’d made it to bed early like I wanted to, I’d never forgive you for waking me up.”
“Eleven is pretty late for a shower.”
“I only got back at eight forty-five.”
“I offered you a ride.”
“We already worked a twelve-hour day together, God forbid I want—” He stops suddenly.
Peter frowns. He looks pale but not pale like he’s going to pass out. “What do you want, Neal?”
“I want to go to bed.”
“Me too.” He turns to the wardrobe and fishes out a black tank top pair of shorts and leaves them on the bed next to him. “We all worked our asses off this week. There's only some paperwork left, let’s just come in after lunch to finish it.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m tired too, damn it. We could all use a break. And tomorrow’s Friday anyway.” And even at this hour it’s still a thirty-minute drive back to Brooklyn, and he’ll probably wake up El when he gets back into bed, and she’ll probably want to hear what happened, and he’ll want to tell her about it. He wants to tell her about the blood and the forty-minute shower and taking the morning off.
In the bathroom he dampens a washcloth with hot water and squeezes it out so it won’t drip. Neal doesn’t say thank you when he takes it, but his eyes are huge. He immediately starts soaking his nose while Peter heads back to the kitchenette.
There isn’t much in the fridge. Two opened bottles of wine, one red, one white, three beers, a stick of butter, a bunch of green grapes, half an apple-shaped bottle of Martinelli’s juice. There’s a baguette in the breadbox that’s a little stale, but not too bad, and an orange on the counter.
“Mozzie came over for dinner?”
“He was here for a quick bite, yeah.”
Peter takes out the grapes and Martinelli’s and mixes the rest of the juice with some water in a glass. “Yeah, I saw you answered the door around nine-thirty. What’d you have?”
“Italian. Pasta with clams.”
“No leftovers?”
“I let Mozzie have ‘em.”
“Even the cheese packet?”
“Even the cheese packet.”
He puts the glass on the bedside table and hands Neal the plate of grapes. Neal just stares at it. “My blood sugar isn’t low. I was going to have those for breakfast.”
“Consider it a midnight snack.” Peter pulls two off the vine. The taut skin cracks under his teeth. “Sleep in, alright? I’ll come by around ten-thirty, eleven. I’ll call when I leave.”
“I know the way to the office.”
“Take the ride or don’t, but I’ll be here anyway. The coffee’s good. And I’m not arguing with you after you’ve been bleeding.”
Despite scrubbing with the washcloth, there are a few coppery splotches and drying blood caught in the stubble on his face. “Great, guess I need another shower.” He gathers the towel up, but Peter puts a hand on his shoulder.
“I don’t think that’s the best idea right now.”
“Better than sleeping like this.”
“Let me get you another washcloth.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Hey.” His fingertips dig into muscle. “This is not an argument. I am not giving you a choice because I am not going to listen to you collapse in the shower and I am not calling an ambulance to this apartment tonight. Sit down.” He presses his palm to his forehead again. “You didn’t eat with Mozzie, did you?”
Neal turns into the touch. “I didn’t have much of an appetite.”
“You drank with him, though.”
He shrugs. “Not much of an appetite.”
“Drink the juice.”
He takes a sip and winces. “You watered it down?”
“Drink.”
Peter replaces the bloodstained washcloth with a fresh one. Neal takes it gratefully and hands him his empty glass. While he’s cleaning up Peter gets a peroxide soak going. When he comes back Neal’s managed to pull on the shirt and the contrast brings some color back to his face, but that could also be from the scrubbing.
Peter shuts the lights in the main room. “It’s not forever, you know.”
Neal looks up. He’s managed to pull the covers around himself and stack the pillows against the headboard. “What? Oh, the…” He kicks his foot out.
“All of it. This apartment. My position. Our contract.”
“I know, Peter.” He leans back and shifts under the blanket. “I lived a hundred lives before any of this.” His dark hair pools on the silk pillowcase. “I’m going to live a hundred more.”
“I want to be able to see them.” He wants to run his fingers through his hair. So he does, once. “I really do not want to see your brains splattered against tile and porcelain because you felt dizzy after a shower.” He does it again.
“I can’t believe you’ve never felt dizzy after a shower before.” Neal’s voice is curious but low.
“I have a normal blood pressure, thank you very much. You’re kinda skinny, you know that? I’ll bring lunch tomorrow.”
“I’m particular about my bagels.”
“I only go where June tells me. Hey, get some sleep, alright?”
“Yeah. Peter?”
“Yeah?”
“You too.”
The ride to Brooklyn goes by quicker, but maybe he’s driving a little faster. He needs the ride. Visiting Neal was supposed to settle him but he just feels more riled than before. El is asleep when he gets back and despite trying to be as stealthy as possible she still wakes up when he slides into bed. Even though he attempts to shh her back to sleep, she opens her eyes and pulls him close to her.
“Late,” she mumbles. “Neal okay?”
“Yeah. He was in the shower.”
“Mmm. And who brings their phone in the shower…”
“Right.” He swallows.
“What? Y’Okay?”
“Yeah, fine. I’m giving the team the morning off.”
“Oh,” she breathes. “I’ll take the morning off too!”
“Thank God.” He kisses her palm.
“What’s wrong?”
“What?”
“Did something happen?”
He half shrugs. “Neal got a nosebleed. He was a little woozy after. I told him to sleep in.”
El winces. “It's been rough. You guys worked late every day this week.”
“It was worth it, for today.” He brushes her hair back from her face. Maybe the paperwork could wait until Monday. Maybe it could wait until Tuesday. Maybe it can wait forever.
“What is it?”
He kisses her neck. “I missed you.”