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New York, 2014
Peter made an annoyed sound as they inched forward in heavy bridge traffic.
“Just say it,” Neal said.
“What?”
“You’re pissed because we’re in traffic, and we’re in traffic because we left late, and we left late because of me.”
“I’m not pissed.”
“OK.”
Fifteen minutes and three sighs later, Peter picked up the conversation as if there had been no delay: “It’s just that if everyone would move up a little more, then everyone could be that much closer, you know? I mean, what do you get by leaving so much space in front of your car, except for every single car in the right lane getting in front of you?”
“You’re pissed that we left late,” Neal said mildly. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, just –“ Peter cut himself off.
“Be on time?”
“Well, yes.”
“I had to do my laundry,” Neal protested. “I wasn’t going to pack for two weeks without clean laundry.”
Peter didn’t respond.
“OK, so arguably, I should have done laundry over the weekend, but I got distracted by shiny things.”
Still, Peter didn’t respond.
“There was a Douglas Sirk retrospective at the Angelika!”
Silence.
“I’m just one man, Peter.”
Peter gave Neal the side-eye and then laughed. “It’s fine, you know – I’m just happy to be able to do this for you.”
Neal closed his mouth and then looked out the window, and Peter regretted his choice of words immediately. “With you,” he amended quickly.
Neal tensed.
“It’s not every week you drive out to see your Mom, Neal,” Peter added, feeling the flames and trying to at least get back into the frying pan.
“Been a long time,” Neal said quietly, still looking out of the window as he began to gnaw on a thumbnail.
Washington DC, 1981
“Nee-eal.”
Neal opened his eyes and stared up at his Momma, his long lashes clumped together from the tears he’d cried earlier.
“How are you feeling, kiddo?”
He tried to be brave, he really did, but the boo-boo on his belly really, really, REALLY hurt. “Hurts, Momma,” he said, lower lip quivering.
She frowned. “I’m sure it does, baby, and I wish I could make it go away, but we can’t give you any more medicine for another two hours.”
“Hernias is bad,” Neal whined as the tears began to flow again.
“I know, but look – what’s this?”
She reached behind his ear and pulled out a small object, yellow and fuzzy – a toy duck! Neal hadn’t known it was back there – he reached up to touch his ear.
“Haven’t I told you to wash behind your ears?” she teased, and Neal’s eyes on hers boggled. “Where’d it go?” she asked, and when Neal looked at her hands – the duck was gone.
“Here it is!” She pulled it from behind his other ear with her other hand. Neal’s hand shot up to his other ear. “Am I going to be finding a whole flock up there?” she asked, sounding amused. She handed him the duck.
“No, Momma!”
“But what’s this?” she asked, and when Neal looked down, there was a cookie in the palm of her hand.
“Is dat for me?”
“Is what for you?” she asked, moving her hands so fast Neal couldn’t see, but suddenly the cookie was gone.
Neal was so confused. “De cookie, Momma.”
“This one?” she asked, producing an Oreo – the other had been chocolate chip. “Or this one?” Another chocolate chip cookie materialized. “Or maybe this?” A sugar cookie – the kind with sprinkles – appeared out of nowhere and joined the others in the palm of her hand.
“You godda milk?” Neal asked, grabbing them all before they could disappear. His Momma laughed and laughed.
Alexandria, VA, 2014
“Boy, I haven’t seen Shirl in years!” Peter enthused as he and Neal pulled into a tree-lined street, looking for the address.
“Turn left here,” Neal said, consulting his phone’s map application; these suburban streets were damn confusing – and twisty. “I’m looking forward to meeting her,” he continued, looking at Peter with an avid expression.
Since they’d gotten such a late start, they decided to stop off in the DC area for the night instead of Roanoke, VA, as they’d originally planned. Neal had found them a nice B&B in Old Town to stay in, and Peter called his old Quantico instructor and friend, Dr. Pamela Shirley, to see if she was available to meet them for dinner. She’d invited them for a home-cooked meal instead.
“She used to be a psychiatrist at the CIA – practically rewrote the FBI Academy’s curriculum on interrogation techniques when she transferred.”
“Maybe I don’t want to meet her,” Neal said wryly.
“Stop – you’ll love her.”
“There,” Neal said, pointing, and Peter turned into the driveway of a stately old stone house set back from the road. Despite the lowering light, Neal caught a glimpse of a well-maintained lawn and garden, where beds filled with hundreds of colorful tulips peeped up at them. As they left the car and headed for the front door, Peter bent and picked one of the tulips and threaded it through the buttonhole of Neal’s jacket. It was a shade of pink so pale it was nearly white.
“Peter!” Neal hissed, batting at Peter’s hands. “What are you doing?”
“Trust me, she’ll get a kick out of it,” he said confidently, though Neal didn’t look like he believed him.
The woman who answered – short, motherly, and with her greying hair pulled back in a ponytail at the nape of her neck – certainly didn’t project fearsome interrogator to Neal.
“Peter, darling!” she exclaimed, pulling him into a fierce hug on sight. “It’s been so long, my goodness.” She beamed up at him, and grasped Peter’s hand between both of hers.
“Shirl, old girl, you haven’t changed a bit,” Peter said, a large grin on his face.
“Yes, well, there are a few more grey hairs, but grandchildren will do that to you. And who have we here?” she asked, her piercing blue eyes eyeing Neal shrewdly.
“This is Neal Caffrey,” Peter said, adding no qualification at all, making Neal wonder.
“Hello, Neal, I’m pleased to meet you,” she said, holding out a hand. Her handshake was firm and brief. “What a pretty flower you’ve chosen,” she said, but she turned her mischievous eyes on Peter.
Still, Neal felt uncomfortable. “It reflects the gardener,” he offered up, and she laughed lightly.
“Charming,” she said, then led them into the kitchen. “Can I get you both a cocktail?” she offered.
“Nothing for me, thanks, Dr. Shirley,” Neal said politely.
“Please call me Pamela – only that one gets away with calling me Shirley,” she said as she tossed her head at Peter. “Peter? The usual?” She pulled a bottle of Heisler from the fridge.
Peter smiled. “You know me so well.”
She laughed. “I’m surprised I remembered! I don’t normally keep that stuff in the house!”
“What, beer?” Neal asked.
“Cheap beer,” she qualified, and then they were all laughing.
Dinner was a simple yet delicious pasta dish prepared with new peas and prosciutto. When they’d done eating, Neal rose immediately to clear, carefully stacking the plates in his left hand, then went to pick up the large serving bowl the pasta was in.
“I’ve got that,” Peter said, rising as Neal struggled with the combined weight of the heavy stoneware dishes.
“I can do it,” Neal said a bit sharply, but then added a smile, “you drink your cheap beer.” He headed off for the kitchen and lay what he was carrying on the counter.
“I can at least rinse or something,” Peter said, having followed close behind. He put a hand on Neal’s back as he moved past him towards the sink. Neal stiffened but did not respond, then returned to the dining room to retrieve the remaining glasses and cutlery. Leaving them on the counter for Peter to deal with, he went to find containers for the leftovers, keeping the kitchen island between them. Peter glanced at him half-apologetically, half-defiantly while Neal ignored him.
“Can I interest anyone in some coffee?” Shirley asked, breaking the silence.
“We’ll both have decaf,” Peter answered right away.
Neal closed his eyes and sighed. “Yep, decaf,” he said resignedly.
“Don’t sound so excited about it, Neal,” Shirley kidded, and then indicated the Keurig machine on the counter. “Luckily, we can all have whatever we like.”
They settled in the living room with their desserts and coffee a few minutes later.
“Why so tense Neal?” Shirley asked him mildly, after the small talk about recipes and how one took one’s coffee had petered out.
Neal smiled self-consciously, then sat back into the chair he occupied, trying to appear relaxed. “Well, I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Peter mentioned you were a top interrogator at the CIA and that you pretty much reinvented the curriculum at Quantico, and, well…” His voice trailed off sheepishly.
Shirley cocked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes. “Have you done something I ought to be interrogating you for?”
“Not as far as you know, no.”
That got a laugh, but she still eyed him shrewdly. “Well, you needn’t worry – I can turn it off, you know.”
“That’s good to hear.”
They drank their coffee in silence for a few minutes more, Shirley watching them both passively, but not missing anything, either. Neither man looked at each other.
“So Peter, I know you said you were just passing through, but you never mentioned where you were going,” Shirley prompted.
“We’re going to visit my mother,” Neal supplied, setting his dessert dish down on the coffee table.
“Does she live nearby?”
“No, she’s in Santa Fe.”
“New Mexico? That’s an awfully long commute,” Shirley observed, but Neal's eyes flicked away.
“Neal’s a bad flyer,” Peter explained, “and I like road trips.”
“You always did at that. He used to insist on driving us everywhere,” she explained to Neal. “At first I thought it was because he was a little kiss-ass.”
Neal laughed. “Then you discovered he’s just a garden variety control freak?”
“Ah-ha-ha-ha! Yes. But you’d know that as well as anyone, yes, Neal?”
“You don’t know the half of it, Pamela.”
“I think I’m going to regret bringing you here,” Peter said.
“Oh, I don’t,” she said. “Any opportunity to tease you, Peter, cannot be passed up. So Santa Fe – it must be lovely in the mountains this time of year?”
“I’ve never been there,” Neal told her, uncomfortable again. “I haven’t really seen my mother since she moved there.”
“Then it’ll be nice to catch up,” she said, deftly moving on to less touchy topics.
Eventually, Neal persuaded her to regale him with more tales of Peter’s time as a student and, later, when he worked with her on his thesis. They laughed until after midnight, most of it at Peter’s expense.
“My goodness, is that the time?” Neal said at 12:25. He rose and stood beside Peter’s chair. “We need to be going.”
“Do you think we’ll be able to check in at the B&B still?” Peter said in a low voice.
Shirley waved her hands. “Nonsense – you’ll stay here. I’ve got plenty of room, and I’ll love to make you both breakfast in the morning.”
“We wouldn’t want to impose,” Neal began.
“You aren’t. As a matter of fact, you’ll be doing an old lady a favor – just seeing the look on my busybody neighbor’s face when two handsome young men leave here in the morning will make it all worth it!”
----
“Where am I sleeping?” Neal asked Peter as he entered the guest room. He had just taken a shower and noticed that Peter was already sitting in the bed.
Peter looked at the space next to himself in the bed and then up at Neal. “With me. Like always.”
Neal looked over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Peter.” Neal didn’t want to shock Peter’s old mentor – it was one thing for her to extend her hospitality to them on such short notice, another thing entirely for them to expect her to understand their polyamorous relationship.
“Don’t worry about it, Neal.”
“Well, someone should be worried about it, don’t you think?”
----
“You’re an early riser, Neal,” Shirley said, taking a seat on the couch.
Neal looked up from his mug of herbal tea to look at the clock on the wall – it was 6:30. He’d risen before 5:00 and had been sitting in the same chair he’d occupied the night before, but he’d turned it around so he could watch the birds and squirrels scampering around in the garden through the large windows that took up most of the back wall.
“I don’t need a lot of sleep, lately.”
“Peter’s snoring doesn’t bother you?”
Neal looked away, unsure how to answer. “Umm…”
She chuckled, her eyes twinkling. “What are you more shocked by, the fact I knew you were sleeping together, or that I know that Peter snores?”
“The latter, I think? Someone’s been holding back vital information, Pamela.”
“It was a long time ago, shortly after my husband and I separated. Peter was… well, he had a crush, and I needed to feel like I mattered to someone. We both knew it was a bad idea as soon as the sun came up.”
“But you stayed close?”
“It’s hard to leave Peter Burke. I think you know that already.”
A hint of sorrow entered Neal's eyes, which he quickly suppressed.
“He cares for you, you know,” Shirley continued.
“I do. I do know.”
“It’s why he gave you that flower last night – it’s an old joke between us. He did the same when he brought Elizabeth down to meet me.”
“Is that what that was all about? So you knew all about us from the moment we got here?”
She nodded. “Peter’s always been an alpha male in that way – marking his territory as it were. A flower in a lapel here, a hand at the small of the back there. It used to drive me bonkers until I realized he did it with everyone he loves.”
Neal looked down into his half-drunk mug of tea. “I love him too,” he murmured, barely audibly.
She rose and placed a warm hand on his shoulder. “Then what are you holding back from him?”
St. Louis, MO, 1983
Danny sat in the small space on the floor of his closet, next to the laundry basket filled with stuffed animals and the one filled with laundry. He was folded up as small as he could get, his knees hugged tightly against his chest, and his head resting on top of them. He stopped crying a little while ago; now he was just tired.
“Danny? Baby?”
He heard his mother’s voice filter in through the slats on the closet door; when he looked up, he could see her legs through them, the light of the late January sun filtering into his room.
“I got a call from your teacher,” she said, and Danny could feel the tears rise in his eyes again. He didn’t like them, didn’t want them, but it happened whenever he was really, really mad and he couldn’t ever stop them. He hid his face in his folded arms and willed all of the feelings to just go away NOW.
“Ya wanna tell me what happened?” His mother’s voice was a lot closer now – she was resting on her knees just outside the door, her hand resting on the handle.
“Got in a fight,” Danny told her sullenly, his arms muffling his voice.
“So I heard. Why?”
He sighed; it was too big to put into words, really – the sadness and the misery – but what confused him the most was how small it made him feel.
“They were makin’ fun o’ me.”
“Making fun how?”
“They said I was a bastard.”
“What? Why would they say that?”
Danny raised his head and sighed. “Cuz I don’t have a daddy. They said all kids who don’t have daddies are bastards.”
It was Danny's mom’s turn to sigh. “That’s not what that means,” she told him, then sat down with her back against the wall beside the closet. “What did you do?”
“I told them my daddy was a hero and he was dead, but they said it didn’t matter, I was still a bastard.”
“Little assholes,” Regina Brooks muttered, because she didn’t think Danny could hear her. “Then what happened?”
Danny opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. He knew he wasn’t really in trouble, but he still couldn’t say it.
“Danny?”
“Then I punched Tommy Evans and then they jumped me.”
Danny saw his mother’s arm reach up and pull on the closet door, which folded outward on its tracks. Half of the closet was now completely illuminated from the sunlight in the room, including the lower half of Danny's body. He fought an urge to shrink away from it. “You hit first?”
Danny winced – he knew he wasn’t supposed to do that, but he’d been so mad. “I know ‘violence isn’t the answer,’” he replied by rote.
“Too right it isn’t – those kids are a lot bigger than you.” It was true – Tommy Evans was in the third grade. “You draw blood?” she asked after a long pause.
“Knocked out his tooth.”
“Danny!”
“It was loose anyways.”
“Violence is never the answer,” his mom repeated, even though she didn’t sound like she meant it, really.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“I know you are, honey.”
Danny was sorry – sorry he was so much smaller, sorry he wasn’t a big, brave hero like his daddy was. Mostly he was sorry that he might have made his mom sad, because it was hard enough on her, Aunt Ellen always said, raising a little boy all by herself. He didn’t mean to, and that was why he was in the closet hiding, because he was ashamed.
“Why don’t you come on downstairs?” she said, pulling the door out a bit more. She got to her feet and left the room.
Danny unfolded himself from the position he was in and scrambled out of the closet. Closing the door, he followed, finding his mother sitting at the tiny table in their kitchen, a glass of milk and a napkin with two cookies on it waiting for him at the place beside her. She had her sketchbook out and the oil pastels she only used when she was working – Danny's mom was an illustrator and usually only did boring drawings of knees and bones and stuff for a medical publisher, but every once in a while she drew for a kids’ book or a magazine, and that’s when she used the pastels. Danny took a bite out of one of the cookies and then sipped his milk, watching her. There was already an outline of what looked like a man on the paper.
“Whatcha drawin’?”
She didn’t answer him, instead she asked him a question. “Have I ever told you what happened to your dad?” she asked. He knew she knew the answer to that, because she never had. She thought he was too little to understand before, but maybe she’d changed her mind now. He shook his head no.
“You know he was a police officer, and that we had to move away when he… when he was… taken away from us.” She didn’t talk for a few minutes after she said that, she just drew.
“Well, there were some really bad men, and your daddy tried very hard to arrest them, and to make them pay for all the crimes they committed, but in the end he couldn’t.” She didn’t look at Danny, she just kept drawing.
“Did he try his bestest?”
She nodded. “He did, honey, he tried and tried, but sometimes that’s not good enough.”
Danny's brow furrowed in confusion. “But…” he paused, thinking really hard for the right words, “aren’t the good guys always s’posed to win? That’s why they are good.”
Danny's mom blinked really, really hard and kept drawing. “I know that’s what the stories say, and sometimes it’s even true. But other times… at other times the bad people are so good at being bad that they can fool people into helping them, or they can offer them things they’ve always wanted just so the bad people will win. It’s all very complicated – grown up stuff, you know?” She glanced up at Danny and then picked up a brown pastel and began coloring in what she’d drawn.
Danny thought really, really hard as his mother kept drawing. “It’s kind of like… Kyle Washington.”
“Who’s that, honey?”
“He was nice to me when school started, but now he’s friends with Tommy and them.” Danny had thought that maybe Kyle was his friend, but when he’d joined in with all the other boys calling him names – well, in a way, that hurt as much as their fists and their kicks.
“Yes, it is exactly like that.”
Danny finished his milk and watched his mother finish her drawing. When she was done, she pushed back from the table and motioned for him to join her. He hopped down from his chair and went to her, and she put her arms around him as he took in the scene. It was of a tall man in a policeman’s uniform, with a young boy on his shoulders, wearing his cap. Both of them were smiling; both of them had the same blue eyes.
“Is that me and my dad?” Danny asked, reaching out tentative fingertips to touch the figures, but holding back – he didn’t want to smudge it.
“Uh-huh.”
He stared at the picture for a long time while his mom held onto him, her nose buried in his hair. His mom didn’t really keep that many pictures of his dad around, and Danny thought it was because he was gone and she was too sad. “Are the bad men… can they get us?” he asked, giving voice to one of his deepest fears.
“No, honey. They may have taken your daddy away from us, but they can’t hurt us anymore. They’re far, far away.”
“My daddy was a brave man?” Danny just needed to hear her say it again.
“Uh-huh. He was.”
Danny knew in that moment that he wanted to be a policeman, just like his father. “I’m gonna be brave someday, too.”
“You already are, pumpkin,” she said, then pulled away from him and swatted him lightly on his behind. “Now, I’ve got to start dinner – why don’t you go and watch TV for a while? I think Scooby-Doo is on in a few minutes”
“OK, mom,” he said, letting the sketchbook fall to the table and scampering off to the living room.
When he was gone, Regina put her pastels away and stared down at her handiwork. It wasn’t the best likeness of James she’d ever drawn, but it was close enough, and she had gotten his and Danny's eyes exactly right.
“You are the blue in his eyes,” she said to the man in the drawing, wiping an angry tear from her eye before getting up to start making spaghetti and meatballs – Danny's favorite.
Shenandoah Valley, 2014
“What is Skyline Drive? I keep seeing signs,” Neal said, shifting in his seat to take in the rolling countryside outside the window of the Taurus. They had taken their leave from Shirley’s home shortly before 8:00 that morning.
“I think it’s a route along the Blue Ridge Mountains, overlooking the valley,” Peter said.
“It sounds intriguing.”
“You want to check it out?” Peter gave him the side-eye, eyebrows raised.
Neal frowned, mindful of their conversation the day before. “Should we? I know you’ve got all the legs of this trip planned out to the minute.”
Peter shrugged. “You tell me – isn’t your mom expecting us on a certain day?” Neal looked away. “Neal, your mother is expecting us, isn’t she?”
“I thought it would be better if she didn’t have the opportunity to think too much about my coming,” he replied.
“Neal! We’re driving 2,000 miles to see her, and she’s not expecting us? What if she’s not home or something?”
“She’ll be there.”
“What if she moved?”
“She didn’t – that’s a verified address.”
Peter stared at him as incredulously as he could whilst still driving and keeping an eye on the highway.
“So… Skyline Drive?” Neal prompted.
----
“Ooo! Stop here!”
Peter suppressed a sigh as he pulled over into yet another scenic overlook along Skyline Drive. As he might have predicted, when they’d finally arrived and entered the park, each turn of the road had offered up scenery more breathtaking than the last, and this was their sixth stop since lunch. At this rate, they were definitely not going to make it to Nashville, which had been the original plan. So much for the romantic night at the boutique hotel he’d gotten a great deal on.
Peter pulled into the small parking area at the side of the road and opened his door. When he glanced over at Neal, he was staring at the vista of the peaceful valley before them, open-mouthed.
“What?”
“I’ve got to paint this!”
“What? Neal, we can’t stay here all day.”
“Fine then, I’ll just sketch it.”
Neal got out of the car and headed straight for the trunk, where he’d squirreled away a few art supplies; Peter had wondered at it when they’d left, but said nothing – it wasn’t like they didn’t have the room in the trunk. Neal barely took his eyes off the view as he rooted around, then headed for a picnic table and sat atop it, cross-legged. Peter watched with a mixture of bemusement and exasperation and finally grabbed his Kindle and an old blanket from the trunk and sat under a tree in the shade near where Neal was setting up. Rather than read, though, he just watched Neal sketch using pen and ink, his wrist flicking delicately but surely as he worked, his eyes alight with the kind of inner fire that had made Peter fall for him in the first place.
An hour later, Peter cleared his throat and mentioned that they should think about getting back on the road. Neal agreed, but with the air of a child being told it’s time to leave the playground to go home and have a nap. Peter tried to hide his amusement under a gruff exterior, but it was a tough sell. Besides, if he knew Neal, he’d be ordering Peter to pull over at least a dozen more times before getting back on the Interstate – the park had over 70 according to the pamphlet from the visitor’s center.
“We have to come back here in the Fall,” Neal said enthusiastically as he buckled his safety belt. “The lighting then will be so much better-angled for painting, and the leaves – El will love the leaves!”
“She sure will,” Peter chuckled, starting the car. As he glanced at Neal with his bright eyes and anticipatory smile, Peter felt a stab of sorrow that he quickly suppressed. They would come back in the Fall. Neal would make it that long.
They would come back in the Fall.
Kingsport, TN to Memphis, TN, 2014
“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Neal, did you hear that?” They’d been listening to the comedy station on the satellite radio, and it was the classic George Carlin bit about seven words. “God, I love this guy!
“Neal?” Peter glanced over to see that Neal’s eyes were closed, he was hunched down in his seat, and he appeared to be sleeping peacefully. “Neal?” Peter said a bit louder, but Neal didn’t stir.
“NEAL!” Peter said loudly, panicked. He reached out to clutch at his lover’s wrist.
“What? What?” Neal said, waking immediately and looking around. “What happened – did we hit something?”
“No, um…” Peter didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry… I woke you… I…”
“I fell asleep.”
Peter nodded.
“I do it all the time. Fall asleep. Like, nightly sometimes.”
“I know that.”
“No need to freak out over a cat nap, Peter.”
Neal was cranky and Peter supposed he couldn’t blame him, having been so rudely awakened. He hadn’t been sleeping well, Peter knew this, and mentally kicked himself for overreacting. They drove in silence for several minutes.
“I know you’re scared,” Neal said so quietly Peter barely heard it, but it sounded like an accusation.
----
They actually made it to Memphis in time to check into a decent, suite-style hotel and consider dining choices. “Where do you want to go?”
“As long as it’s not an Olive Garden, I’ll eat anywhere,” Neal said, lifting his suitcase onto the bed.
“Barbecue?”
“When in Rome.”
The front desk made some recommendations, and Peter chose one within walking distance. Neal opted for pulled pork, but Peter went for a full rack of ribs that were the best he’d ever tasted – not that he expected any less in this part of the country. They talked about everything and nothing – that is, nothing to do with their current trip or the reasons for taking it. He actually wasn’t all that clear on why they were taking it, but Neal suddenly wanted to see his mother, and who was Peter to refuse him? Besides, he had the vacation time coming, and El thought they’d do well with some “boy time.” They had a good time at dinner.
They were walking back to the hotel when Peter came to a stop, Neal looking at him questioningly. “Beale Street’s not far – wanna check out a few clubs?” Neal’s smile was answer enough.
They found a hole in the wall and ducked into its smoky darkness; it was standing room only for a pair of local acts that clearly had devoted followers. They left around 11:00, and when they were halfway to the hotel on the deserted streets of Memphis, Peter felt Neal’s fingers worm their way into his, and they strolled back slowly without speaking.
They parted when Peter needed to open their door with the key card, and he held the door open for Neal, who walked a few steps inside then turned and took Peter’s hand again. He used Peter’s forward momentum to pull him in closer, their chests bumping. Neal put his arms around Peter’s back and angled his head up, laying light kisses along Peter’s jaw. Closing his eyes and wrapping his own arms around Neal’s shoulders, Peter turned his own head and met Neal’s mouth halfway, the kiss long and slow and needful and everything a kiss ought to be.
“God,” Peter breathed, pulling him in even closer. Neal’s right hand came up and started tickling the short hairs on Peter’s neck, making him shiver. They kissed some more, Peter’s mouth traveling along Neal’s jaw and then to the spot just behind Neal’s ear that made him squirm.
When Neal’s hands came to rest on Peter’s belt, Peter pulled away with a jolt. “We... we shouldn’t.”
“Yeah, we should,” Neal said enthusiastically as he rubbed his crotch against Peter’s hip. Peter could feel Neal’s hard-on, his own dick stirring in answer to it. “Come on!! You’re not going to break me,” Neal said, his fingers trying to worm their way into Peter’s jeans, warm and insistent against his stomach.
Peter stilled and pulled his hips back. “I’m afraid I will.”
Neal stiffened and disengaged entirely. “Dammit, Peter, I’m not dying any time soon.”
Peter didn’t answer, he just looked down at his shoes.
“You’re really doing this to me, you’re really,” Neal gestured vaguely between them, indicating their physical closeness, “taking this away?”
“Neal –“
“Don’t ‘Neal’ me, Peter! Do you know how condescending that sounds?”
“Don’t upset yourself, the doctor said –“
“I am fully aware of what the doctor said,” Neal said coldly. “And I can’t let this diagnosis hold my life hostage. I am not some ticking time bomb.”
“But that’s all I can think about,” Peter said quietly and took another step back, acutely aware of the bulge in his pants and cursing it.
“It’s all I can think about!” Neal practically shouted. He laughed bitterly. “Stupid me for thinking, maybe for the first time since I found out that maybe … that you could help me forget. Just one night, Peter. Just us, back to normal again.”
“Neal.”
“You haven’t touched me in weeks. Neither has El. Do you know how that makes me feel, on top of everything else?”
“I’m sorry,” Peter said, and he was suddenly unsure what to do with his hands. He folded his arms in front of himself, then dropped them, then shoved them into his pockets. Neal was right, it had been weeks. What were they thinking coming on this trip? At least at home they could pretend that the rigors of their daily lives got in the way. Now? Now they were supposed to be on vacation. What the fucking hell?
Peter pulled his hands from his pockets and reached out for Neal, but he backed away. “Careful, Peter, I might shatter,” he said before leaving the room entirely.
“FUCK!” Peter shouted, and he would have punched a wall or something, but he didn’t want to have to explain it to the hotel’s management.
----
Neal sat quietly in the living area of their hotel room some hours later, staring out of the window at the acid yellow lights in the parking lot, and cradling his cell phone in the palm of his hand. He’d walked around the neighborhood surrounding the hotel for over an hour before returning; when he had, Peter had already gone to bed and closed the bedroom door. He felt relieved – he didn’t think he could look at him – but he couldn’t walk the streets of this city all night long, and he could brood just as easily here.
He thought about the twist of fate that had brought them here, the diagnosis that had put his life in what seemed like a state of perpetual limbo. Neal had a “fusiform trifurcation aneurysm” – try saying that five times fast – in his brain, and it was in a place that was generally thought to be impossible to operate on. Ironically, it was found because an overenthusiastic intern at Lennox Hill had ordered a head CT for him when he’d taken a shot to the nose during his last case with the White Collar team.
It was supposed to have been a textbook case of mortgage fraud – a milk run before his sentence finally ended and the anklet was forever removed from his life – but the perp had other ideas when he was being arrested and the fist he’d thrown that Peter had deftly ducked wound up connecting with Neal’s face and he’d dropped like a sack of potatoes. Since he’d been knocked out, and Peter was a born worrywart, they’d taken him to the hospital, where an unnecessary head scan had uncovered the…
Well, the ticking time bomb in his head.
He had shown no symptoms whatsoever before or since, was in no pain or discomfort, but the position and size of the thing made it impossible to operate without an uncomfortably high chance of brain damage or worse, so he really had no choice but to live with it. The doctor said it may have been there for months or years, might last for years more. There was no predicting it. All he knew was he shouldn’t fly, had to avoid alcohol, caffeine, sodium (and most of the things that made life worth living), not exert himself, and eat healthfully. Apparently “not exerting himself” equated to sex in Peter and El’s book, and Neal hadn’t gotten any in the six weeks since the diagnosis. His balls were so blue he wondered if that might be a risk, though if he was truthful with himself, he was afraid to even jerk off.
The fact of the matter was this was the thing that would probably kill him, and there would be no warning at all if it was about to burst, not until it did. And then it wouldn’t matter because he’d be dead.
It was the uncertainty and unpredictability of his plight that was the worst – at least if he had cancer or heart disease or something, he could work out a progression in his head and learn to accept it along the way. All he had to go on now was that he would simply drop dead one of these days.
Except for the experimental procedure his doctor told him about just before he decided to leave New York that had a 31.3% mortality rate for cases like his. His doctor had dropped that little bombshell on him a week ago, and the next day he decided to go and visit his mother. Peter was only too enthusiastic to go along for the ride with him, and El was delighted he wanted to reunite with his mother. They’d begun booking hotels and planning the route immediately. Neal hadn’t told either of them a thing about the operation – he had an irrational desire to keep it to himself that he didn’t quite understand. His doctor kept leaving him messages to try to schedule something – he’d just picked up another one on his cell.
Neal sighed and got up to go to the window, feeling the need to move. The city was quiet – not much happening around the hotel at 2:00 in the morning, apparently. Memphis was definitely not New York in that respect, but he found the quiet soothing.
A few minutes later, the bedroom door opened suddenly and with force, and Peter stood there, rumpled from sleep and with his hair sticking out in all directions. His eyes looked wild, until they rested on Neal, and he relaxed. “You’re here,” he said.
Neal didn’t say anything, just shrugged.
“I dreamt you were gone.”
There was a quality to his voice that pulled at Neal; he took a step forward. “I’m right here.”
Peter ran a hand through his hair. “You were gone and I couldn’t find you. I was so…”
“Mad?”
“Grief-stricken,” Peter said, and now Neal realized there were tears in his eyes. He went to him and wrapped his arms around him; Peter was shaking.
“I’m right here, Peter.”
Peter draped his arms around Neal. “Don’t go, don’t leave us.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Don’t go,” Peter repeated, and Neal led him back into the bedroom and settled him down on the bed. He stripped to his underwear and got in beside him, pulling Peter into his arms and tucking his head under his own chin.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you before,” Neal said slowly.
“I’m sorry I made you feel like you had to.”
Neal sighed and reached his hand up to stroke Peter’s hair. “I hate everything about this, but do you know what’s the worst? The way you act around me. You’re always just there, and you give me these looks, and it’s like...” He searched for the right words. “When you hover over me like that, it’s a constant reminder that something’s wrong.”
Peter took Neal’s other hand and held onto it tightly. “When I hover over you, it reassures me that nothing’s wrong,” he said wryly.
They lay in silence for several minutes. Neal thought that Peter had fallen back to sleep when he spoke again, quietly, “In my dream, you were gone. I was in a big house – ours but then not, you know? And I was going from room to room, and you just weren't there. I kept expecting to see you behind the next door, or the next, but you were gone. And I felt like I had lost you, like physically lost you, and I had to get you back. But I couldn’t find you.”
Peter took a deep breath before continuing. “You always run.”
“Peter, I –“ Neal was about to deny it, but Peter was right – Neal always ran from his problems. He ran to Europe when he lost Kate, he ran after the warehouse exploded, or he intended to; he ran from the knowledge of his past when he was 17. And what was this road trip if not him trying to run away from having to make a decision about his surgery?
“I can see it in your eyes, sometimes, that you want to, and it scares me. Don’t run, don’t leave us. Please.”
In that moment, with Peter’s head warm and slightly sweaty on his chest, Neal realized a truth that hadn’t occurred to him before: he was needed. There were two people who he now knew would be diminished by his absence, just as he would be by theirs. He was responsible for their happiness as much as he was for his own. He felt humbled and a bit overwhelmed by the realization.
“I swear to you that I never will,” he said to Peter, who seemed to be satisfied and soon drifted off to sleep.
St. Louis, MO, Thanksgiving, 1992
“Danny, I don’t want to have to ask you again to pick up all this stuff before your Aunt Ellen gets here, come on,” Regina Brooks said to her son in the slightly condescending tone of exasperated mothers of teenaged boys the world over. She swept into the kitchen to check on the pies in the oven. A surly response, muttered just low enough for her not to hear, made her stop in her tracks. “What was that?” she asked.
“I SAID YOU NEVER LET ME DO WHAT I NEED TO DO!” Danny shouted at her, then he scrambled to his feet from where he was sitting in the middle of the living room and stomped out of the room.
“Lord save me from teenaged drama,” Regina said to herself and went to pick up after him. She was mildly surprised to see a sketchbook, and around it several drawings were scattered that had fallen out of it. As she gathered them to shove them back inside, she noticed they were all portraits of the same person in a variety of costumes – a boy she didn’t recognize – and many of them were surprisingly good. When she opened the sketchbook, there were several more inside, and in the last one, the one Danny had been staring at when she walked through, the boy was shirtless. Also, his face had been nearly obliterated by one of Danny’s discarded charcoal pencils.
Sighing, Regina picked up the sketchbook and walked up the stairs to her son’s room.
She knocked, but the music being played inside was so loud he didn’t hear her, so she was reduced to pounding on the door. “Danny! Come on now, open up the door!” she practically had to shout.
The music cut off suddenly as the door was pulled open, and her son – she was always surprised these days that he was now taller than her – stood glaring at her.
“What?!”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “Tone,” she warned.
“Sorry,” he said sullenly, and his shoulders relaxed marginally.
She handed him the sketchbook. “I think we have something to talk about.”
Danny froze, clutching the thing to his chest. Instantly, his eyes widened, and he began to look panicked. “Mom –“
“I didn’t know you could draw so well.”
“I… um… huh?”
She laid her fingertips on the sketchbook and let them trail down until they were resting on his wrist. “These are very good. I didn’t know you were interested in art.”
“You knew I took it in school,” he said to her warily.
“But I didn’t know you were this good, honey. You shouldn’t hide them all – you should be proud of them.”
“They suck.”
“They don’t.” She smiled at him. “Nice to see the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. If you were interested in art, you should’ve told me. I could help, give you pointers.”
“Mooooom!”
She held her hands up. “OK, OK.” He turned around and returned to the bed, and she leaned against the door frame, crossing her arms. “Who’s the boy in your drawings?” she asked him gently, and his entire body stiffened.
“Just this guy. From school.”
“You like him?”
Danny’s entire demeanor went cold. “No.”
“I could tell, the way you obliterated his entire face.” They stared at each other, and Regina could see the fear in her son’s eyes, the fear of what she would say next. “Never destroy your work, honey,” she said quietly. “You will always regret it.”
She turned around to return to the kitchen.
----
Hours later, after literally the most silent Thanksgiving meal ever served, Regina walked past Danny’s bedroom to find the door wide open and her son lying on his stomach, arms around the pillow his head was resting on. He was facing away from her.
Thinking he was asleep, she went in to turn off the lamp beside the bed.
“Carlos,” Danny said.
“Hmm?”
“The guy in the drawings, his name is Carlos. He’s on the football team.”
She made a non-committal noise, but stood her ground.
“I like him. I mean, liked him.”
“You don’t anymore?”
She saw him shake his head, but still he faced away from her. “He doesn’t like me. I thought he did, but then…”
He sounded utterly miserable, so she sat on the edge of his bed and laid a hand in the unruly waves in his hair, stroking through it soothingly as she’d done since he was a baby. “You want to tell me about it?”
He stirred, and turned to face her, and she could see the beginnings of tears in his eyes. “We used to hang out, mess around, you know – guy stuff, wrestling and telling jokes and stories. And then he…”
Regina felt her heart clench a bit in fear – the boy looked older, and was almost certainly larger if he was on the football team. “Did he hurt you, Danny?”
“He kissed me.”
“Oh?”
“And then he called me a faggot and pushed me away.”
“Oh.”
“I thought he liked me – he said he liked me. Why would he do that?”
“Probably because he’s afraid.”
Danny scoffed. “Afraid of me? He’s a junior and I’m a freshman!”
“No, not afraid of you, Danny, of himself. He’s afraid of what liking you means.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?”
He lowered his eyes. “He’s afraid if anyone finds out. Cuz he likes a guy, cuz he likes me.” He rolled over onto his back, pulling the pillow with him, hugging it to his chest. “It’s not fair, why can’t people just like who they want to like?”
She reached over and laid her hand on his leg, sighing; her son was so sensitive, so open and loving – the traits in him she loved the most, but that would probably get him hurt a lot in his life. He was just like her, and she feared for him. “If only it were that simple, honey.”
He looked at her, blue eyes so wide and innocent. Life was going to eat him alive unless she did something about it. “Danny, there are certain truths in life that you are going to have to learn for yourself,” she said. “People are going to hate you, and they are going to judge you, and they are going to be cruel and hurtful, just because of who you are.”
“Is this supposed to be a pep talk, Mom? Because you’re doing a really crappy job of it.”
She couldn’t help but smile, a little, grimly, and remembered a similar conversation she’d had with her beloved Grandpa Solomon when she was young and being taunted for being different. He was the one who’d taught her sleight of hand, and he’d taught her how to keep her face neutral in the face of some pretty spectacular bullying. She learned later he’d been a magician on Vaudeville as a young man, and, she’d always thought, had probably used those skills for thingsa bit less savory as well.
“It’s supposed to help you cope, Danny. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that if people think they can’t hurt you, they stop trying.”
“How do you do that?” he asked, sitting up.
“Think of it like putting on a mask. I’m going to teach you how to make it so that no one will ever really know what you are thinking or feeling.”
“You think I can do that?” he marveled.
“You can do anything you put your mind to, kiddo. I know you can.”
Memphis, TN to Oklahoma City, OK, 2014
“VIVA LAS VEGAS!!! VIVAAAAA LAS VEGAS!”
Peter sat back in the passenger seat of the Taurus and sang along at the top of his lungs to the new CD he’d popped into the car’s stereo. Neal laughed hysterically as they zipped along the wide expanse of I-40 just West of Little Rock, AR. When the song was over, Peter was laughing too.
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into going to Graceland!” he said happily to Neal.
Neal turned the sound down on the next song – In the Ghetto was not a favorite – and smiled at Peter. “I thought we could use some light entertainment.”
“Well, the Jungle Room is that, indeed,” Peter agreed. “I’m starving to death – can we get some lunch?”
“As long as it’s not the Olive Garden –“
“Hey, what have you got against Olive Garden, anyway?”
Neal shuddered. “You can’t slop Alfredo sauce on everything and call it Italian cuisine, you just can’t.”
Peter thought he had a valid point. They found a Cracker Barrel next to the highway and pulled off. Neal excused himself to the men’s room while Peter perused the game of Chinese checkers at their table, trying to remember the rules. A flash of movement in front of the table caught his attention and when he looked up, he saw Neal standing there, his hair all gelled up into a pompadour, with a classic Elvis sneer on his lips.
“Uhh…” Peter began, astonished.
“Hey, bebeh,” Neal drawled in a fair approximation of an Elvis impression, then he swiveled his hips in an even better physical one.
Peter grinned from ear to ear. “I can see why they called him the pelvis.”
“Thank you. Thankyouverehmuch,” Neal growled and lifted his leg over the back of his chair as he sat down, popping his collar at the same time.
The impersonation lasted through the waitress bringing them their drinks, and then Neal let it go, running his hands through his hair to right its style to something more like he usually wore. They discussed current events over a bacon cheeseburger (“I’m telling El,” Neal said) and a plate of pancakes (“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day – all day,” he added).
Peter was happy to see Neal acting more like his old self, the fight the night before gone, but probably not forgotten. How could they forget it? They’d been tentative around each other all morning, but it had changed when they’d passed the signs for Graceland on the highway and Neal had made an unexpected detour.
Clearly, Elvis fixed everything.
----
Neal took a seat at the desk in their darkened hotel room, staring at the symbol on his phone that told him he had another voice mail from his doctor’s office, and wondering when his insomnia, which had plagued him off and on his entire adult life, had become such a regular thing that he planned for it now. He’d taken the side of the bed nearest the windows when they’d turned in, and despite falling asleep beside Peter with no problem had found himself awake two hours later with no inclination to sleep more.
He wondered if it was a symptom or not. He wondered that about a lot of things, actually, and he was getting tired of it. Each time he woke with a stiff neck, or when his eyes got tired, he wondered if this was it, and he was getting tired of the drama, frankly. He glanced over at Peter and sighed – he wasn’t ready to leave him, not yet. Not ever.
He couldn't wait to see his mother.
He didn’t want to see his mother.
The last time he saw her, he was 17; he turned 36 eight weeks ago. He’d now lived more years apart from her than with her.
Suddenly restless and claustrophobic in the small hotel room, he got up, deleted the voice message without listening to it, and left. He walked aimlessly until he finally felt tired and then headed back to the hotel. When he returned he was surprised to see it was after 3:00 AM.
He crawled under the covers and curled up next to Peter, who he realized was awake when he pulled Neal close to him and buried his nose in his hair with a rumbly sigh. He fell asleep with the sound of Peter’s heartbeat in his ear, and wondered what he’d say to his mother when he saw her the next day.
St. Louis, MO, 1995
Danny stood in the doorway to his mother’s bedroom where she was folding some laundry and waited to be noticed.
“Hey, honey – home so early? Half day at school?”
“I spoke to Aunt Ellen.”
“You always speak to Aunt Ellen.”
“She told me the truth about my father.”
Regina flinched as if physically struck, and Neal could see her shoulders stiffen. “Oh.”
“You let me think he was a hero. You told me he was dead.”
“I said he was taken from us, and he was. The man I knew – the man I loved – was taken away. The day he accepted a bribe, he became a different person, one who put his own greed ahead of his family.”
Danny didn’t understand what she was talking about. All he knew was that the only one he trusted, the person who’d mattered most in his life, had based everything he’d believed about himself and his background on a pack of lies. “You lied to me,” he accused.
“I have never lied to you, Dan, not once. I may have let you draw certain conclusions that weren't correct, but I never actually lied.”
“Is that supposed to make it all right now?” She didn’t answer. “Is it? Why wouldn’t you tell me? Why, Mom, why? WHY?” He was shouting now, shaking, his anger and feelings of betrayal and shame nearly overwhelming.
She shook her head, tears streaming down her face, as if she was denying something.
“Why, Mom?” he asked once more, his own tears blurring his vision until he could barely see her. He blinked them away angrily.
“Because I’m afraid of what that knowledge will do to you, Dan,” she said, the words sounding as if they were being torn from her, as if they hurt. “I’m afraid you’ll be just like him!”
Danny took a step back as if struck.
“You think I don’t know?” she asked quietly. “Did you think your old Mom wouldn’t find out you were pulling Three Card Monty scams and hustling pool after school? Did you think I didn’t know?”
Dan was shocked she knew – he’d only done those things for some pocket money, and he never greased any chumps that couldn’t afford it. He lashed out at her, “Where do you think I learned how to do all of that from? Who taught me how to palm a card in the first place?”
“Those were just stupid party tricks,” she said; it was Regina’s turn to be shocked.
“You said you were afraid I’d become like him? Well, you’re the one who taught me everything I know, so I guess that apple really didn’t fall far from the tree did it?” Dan said and ran to his room, slamming the door behind him.
Oklahoma City, OK to Santa Fe, NM, 2014
“Well, look at that – an actual tumbleweed,” Peter remarked as they raced along I-40 West across the Texas panhandle. They were making good progress, but he didn’t think they’d make it to Santa Fe before as soon as he’d hoped. He wasn’t blind – he’d noticed how much worse Neal's insomnia had become lately, and he had let him sleep in that morning. “I half expect to see a coyote chasing a roadrunner along the side of the road.”
“What was that?” Neal replied a full minute later; he’d been sitting with his knee up, staring out across the scrubby landscape, though Peter doubted he was taking any of it in. Neal had been more quiet than usual today, and Peter understood he had a lot on his mind, not least of which was his health.
The aneurysm in Neal's brain, Peter knew, encompassed two branches of a major blood vessel; that, and its position and size made it extremely risky to remedy surgically.
Peter couldn’t ever shake the feeling they were living on borrowed time. Where Elizabeth’s attitude had been one of unrelenting cheerfulness, Peter’s anxiety had manifested as a tendency to hover over Neal that he did not like in himself – and Neal clearly did not either. But he couldn’t help it.
Every time he looked at Neal, he saw the inevitable grief he fully expected would be the end of him.
“It’s so strange, this part of the country,” Peter said. “I’ve never been through here before – I’ve mostly ever been on the East coast. Seems so barren in comparison.”
“It does seem sort of surreal,” Neal agreed. He turned his head to look at Peter. “But it’s still beautiful in its own way.”
Peter glanced at Neal, took in the care-worn face, the dark circles under tired eyes that were still so blue and vibrant, still took his breath away, and couldn’t agree more. He reached out and caressed the side of Neal's face with the backs of his fingers. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Makes me want to see more.”
----
Neal knew he wasn’t much of a driving companion today, but there was nothing he could do. Today, all his mind could accommodate was the upcoming reunion with his mother. What would he say to her? What would she say back? It had been so long – could they get past the way he’d left, the reasons for it?
When he’d found out about his father, he hadn’t left right away. He’d tried to stick it out, tried to live with the lies his mother had told him, the truth that his father was alive and a murderer, see if he could get past it. But when he found out less than a month later that Danny Brooks wasn’t even his real name, the betrayal had felt so raw all over again, and he had to leave. He took nothing with him but a few clothes, and was living on the street before his 18th birthday.
Now he was going to see her again, and he didn’t have any idea what to expect. Would she be angry at him? Happy? Upset? Images of her reaction played themselves out in his mind. He imagined her hugging him to her, close, like she used to do; crying when she saw him, begging for his forgiveness; slapping him across the face for abandoning her, calling him a coward. In each scenario, at least, she was touching him, reaching for him or slapping him.
It didn’t register when Peter reached for him, but he realized suddenly his hand was being cradled by Peter’s, and it calmed him.
Santa Fe, NM, 2014
The house looked like every other one on the block: small, modest front yard, stucco over adobe. The front windows were shuttered against the setting sun, so they could not see inside; Neal thought that was a good thing, maybe.
Peter put the car in Park and cut the engine, rubbed his palms over his jeans repeatedly, and waited for Neal to do something. Neal hoped he did not appear to be as panicked as he felt, but from Peter’s expression, he was having a hell of a time masking his emotions. He opened the car door and got out.
Peter was a reassuring presence just behind, but Neal still felt utterly alone as he walked up the short path to the front porch. He raised his hand to knock and then froze, suddenly uncertain. Peter’s hand at the small of his back made him jump, but it propelled him into action as well. He knocked on the door.
He felt rather than heard the approach of someone inside, the slight depression of the floorboards extending to the small porch. A lock was unlatched, the door opened, and there stood Neal's mother, blinking up at them and against the sunlight.
She was smaller than he remembered, but he supposed that was to be expected – he was certainly a bit taller. Her auburn hair was a shade lighter, and he could see the greying of it at the roots – she was due for a touch-up. She was barefoot, her fingers stained with paint, Neal noticed. And her eyes… looked up at him politely, expectantly, but without a trace of recognition.
“Yes?” she said, a bland smile on her lips.
“Momma?” Neal couldn’t help but say, reverting to his early childhood name for her. He suddenly felt so small and overwhelmed in her presence.
Her brows furrowed, and she looked slightly worried. “No one has called me that in a long, long time.”
“We haven’t seen each other in a long time,” Neal said, the smile he’d plastered on fading.
“I know you?”
“Mom?”
“I know you!” She sounded slightly triumphant, then her face fell and she looked confused and lost. “You’re…” her voice trailed off and she looked away from him, over his shoulder at Peter standing behind her. “You I don’t know.” She at least sounded positive about that.
“No, Ms. Caffrey, you don’t. I’m a friend of your son’s.” He laid a hand on Neal's arm as he spoke.
“My son’s? I have a son…”
“How we doin’ over here?” a man’s voice said to his left, and Neal looked over to see a man of about 60 striding over to them from the house next door. He was of medium height and build and spoke with a light Native accent. He wore jeans and boots, with an honest to God cowboy hat on his head and a bolo tie clasped around his throat. He stood with his hands on his hips and looked at Neal and Peter shrewdly. “I’m Martin Calderon,” he said, “Detective Calderon with SFPD. You boys friends o’ Regina’s?”
“You could say so. I’m her son,” Neal replied, a bit more defensively than he’d intended.
Martin’s eyes flicked over to Regina’s and then back at Neal.
“He’s my son. He’s Danny,” she said, not at all sounding sure of it.
“Well, isn’t that nice?” Martin said, but he was still giving Neal the stinkeye. “Guess it’s been a while since y’all’s talked?”
Neal opened his mouth to answer when Martin eyed Peter. “And who are you?”
“Special Agent Peter Burke, with the FBI,” Peter answered, and Neal loved him so much right now.
“FBI?” Regina said, and looked like she might panic at that bit of news.
“I’m a friend of Neal's,” Peter said gently. “Er, Danny’s.”
“How nice for you,” Martin said, unimpressed, and walked past them both and up to Regina. He put an arm around her shoulders and eased her into the house. “Come on, Reggie, let’s go and have a seat – looks like you’ve got company.”
Neal watched them go, but couldn’t follow for some reason. He didn’t understand what the hell was going on. Of all the reactions he imagined getting from his mother, this was definitely not among them. When his indecisiveness lasted a beat too long, Peter slipped his thumb and forefinger around Neal's wrist and led him into the house.
Neither Regina nor Martin were waiting for them, so they went into the living room and waited. A moment later, Martin appeared.
“She’s making tea,” he said, then put his hands on his hips and regarded Neal with thinly veiled suspicion. “You really Danny?”
“Neal. My real name is Neal.”
“She always calls you Danny.”
“She talks about me?”
“Of course she does – you’re her only child.”
Neal stared at his shoes, defensive. “I changed my name. Back.”
“What brings you here? Why now?”
“Hey now, hang on just a second,” Peter said, stepping forward. “We don’t mean any kind of harm here. Neal just wanted to see his mother. It’s been a long time.”
“Yeah, it has,” Martin said. “How did you find her? I thought that kind of information was classified or something.”
Neal suddenly understood the hostility. “She’s still in WITSEC,” he said to Peter.
“What? Neal – what did you do to find that information?” Peter seemed angry.
“Nothing illegal. She’s still going by the name Regina Brooks – she wasn’t hard to find. She’s my mother, for chrissakes!”
“I know, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Peter placed a warm hand on Neal's forearm and he calmed.
“She’s my mother and she doesn’t know me,” Neal said as the realization dawned, and he suddenly had to get out of there.
----
“It’s early stage Alzheimer’s,” Peter said as he got into the car a few minutes later.
“I kinda figured,” Neal replied.
“Martin said she’s pretty good most days, but sometimes, at the end of the day or if she's tired or stressed, she gets forgetful. I guess we just caught her at a bad time.”
“Can we go? Can we get outta here?”
“Sure.”
The bed and breakfast they’d booked was just two blocks off the main square of the town, but Neal didn’t even register the quaint shops and historic missions as they drove. All he could see, all he could think about, was the utter lack of recognition in his mother’s eyes as she looked at him. Sure, he must have changed since he was a skinny 17-year old, but he’d expected her to at least know him.
They pulled into the small parking lot and Peter began to unload their luggage. Neal felt itchy, he felt like he couldn’t breathe. But mostly, he needed to be alone – he couldn’t talk about this with Peter, even though he knew that Peter would want to, would insist on it. “You got these?” he asked Peter, indicating the luggage.
“Of course.”
“OK,” he said then turned and walked away.
The town of Santa Fe was beautiful, even in the lengthening shadows cast by the sun as it set behind the mountains. The low buildings housed art galleries and antique shops, restaurants and bars, a historic old movie palace. It was a lovely place – quiet and peaceful this time of the evening when people were just closing up shops but before the dinnertime rush for the many restaurants. Neal could understand how it would appeal to his mother; he wondered if she still painted, if any of her work hung in one of the many galleries he’d passed. Part of him wanted to go back and look, and another part of him mourned for the lost years between them.
He shook his head – he couldn’t think about that, he didn’t want to – so he walked around the town some more. He walked until his legs tired; he walked until he was out of breath. That was how Peter found him, bent over and trying to catch his breath in front of a closed jewelry shop on San Francisco.
“You OK?”
“I think I’m having a panic attack,” Neal gasped.
“That’s just the altitude – takes some getting used to, I hear. I think you overdid it. You want to sit down?” He indicated a nearby bench.
“I want to go back to New York.”
“We can talk about that. Come on.”
They took a seat and Neal realized his hands were shaking; he wasn’t sure why, but he shoved them between his knees to stop it. Peter sat beside him and put an arm around his shoulders and he realized he was just cold.
“She always took care of me,” Neal told him quietly.
“Oh?”
“She had this way of knowing when something was wrong and just…” He sighed, remembering. “You know how I learned sleight of hand? From her. She’d do it whenever I was sick, to distract me. She’d pull coins or toys from behind my ears until I begged her to show me how. Her grandfather worked in vaudeville back in the day.
“And she – well, she always fixed me up, you know? Whether I’d broken my head or my heart, she was always there. We didn’t have a lot of money – she worked two jobs – but she always found money to buy me paints or clay or whatever I wanted because she said I’d be a great artist someday.
“Some great artist, huh?”
“Well, you’ve forged some great artists…”
Neal snorted. “I have at that.”
“You loved each other,” Peter said gently, but Neal stiffened up.
“And I forgot all of it when I found out about who my father really was – what he was. I just… I left. Just like him. Like a coward, I left her. And what happened next? I used the skills she taught me to run cons, to… to scam people and rob them.” There were tears in his eyes now. “She gave me everything I was and I distorted it, exploited it, to hurt people. Amazing what all these years will do for your perspective. Why couldn’t I see it before? Why couldn’t I see what she did for me?
“I was so, so selfish, Peter. She doesn’t deserve an ungrateful asshole like me for a son. I guess it’s just as well she doesn’t know me – it’s not like I’ve done her proud or anything.” Neal got up and walked away, because the sick feeling in his chest was making it hard to breathe. Or maybe it was just the altitude. He was practically running by the time Peter caught up.
“Neal, come on!” Peter said when he had. “We should talk about this. You need to talk about this.”
“What’s to talk about? How to tell her that I turned out to be the biggest disappointment ever, or the part where I’m dying?”
Peter looked as if he’d been slapped. “You’re not… you’re not dying,” he said, looking as stricken as Neal had ever seen him. “Are you?”
Neal immediately regretted his histrionics. “No. No, Peter, I’m not.” He rested his hands on Peter’s chest for a moment to emphasize it. “But it’s all I can think about.”
Peter put his arms around him and held him close, and Neal wished – not for the first time – that it really could mean that everything would be all right.
“You know what she said to me the day I left?” Neal said quietly, into the warm solidity of Peter’s chest. “’Have a nice day at school.’ It was a month after I found out. She probably thought it had all blown over, that I was over it, but I wasn’t. I never caught the school bus that day, just hitched a ride to Chicago and never looked back.”
“Oh, Neal. You were just a kid. A mixed-up kid, and you were hurt and angry.”
“Why did I even come here? She would have been better off without me.”
Peter rested his hands on Neal's shoulders and gently pushed back from him, looking him in the eyes. “You said it yourself, Neal. You came because she will make things better. Deep down inside, you knew you needed her.”
“And now?”
“Well, now she needs you more.”
----
That night, it was Peter’s turn to be the insomniac.
They’d walked back to the B&B with a bag of takeout, and he’d practically fed his dinner to Neal, he was so drained. They lay down together – Peter was the big spoon, like always – and he’d held Neal tightly until his breathing evened out and he was asleep.
Peter pushed up on his elbow and watched his lover sleeping. Neal's face was always untroubled and so open when he slept – he looked about ten years younger, too. It was one of Peter’s favorite things to do, to watch Neal sleep. Lately though, Peter watched Neal sleep to be sure he was still breathing. He knew it was morbid and creepy – Elizabeth caught him at it once and told him so – but he couldn’t help it.
It was well after midnight when he finally drifted off, and he was awake before Neal, who was warm and pliant in his arms. Peter leaned his face forward to nuzzle against Neal's ear, his favorite spot because it was the perfect place to catch the unique aroma that was Neal – part aftershave, part shampoo, part sweat, but all Neal. It was always a comfort to him.
Neal made an “mmm” sound and shifted back, his head resting on Peter’s shoulder. Peter leaned forward more and kissed Neal on the corner of his mouth. Neal murmured something sleepily unintelligible, and pressed his ass back against Peter’s crotch. Neal's proximity was making Peter hard and he couldn't help but rut a little against him. Neal took Peter’s hand and guided it down his own body until he was cupping Neal's hard-on through his pajamas. He stroked him gently, squeezing the way he knew Neal liked.
“Peter,” Neal whispered and made to turn to face him.
“No, just like this, OK?” Peter murmured and reached down to push Neal's sleep pants down. “Let me do this for you.” Peter buried his face in the crook between Neal's neck and shoulder and began to kiss him as he slowly jacked Neal to full hardness. Neal gasped, raised his right arm as he turned his head, burying his fingers in Peter’s hair as they kissed.
Moments later, Neal was trembling beneath him, his breath hitching. “Just let it go,” Peter urged softly and then Neal practically whimpered as he came over Peter’s gentle grip and his own stomach.
Peter found leftover napkins from their dinner the night before to clean them both off and then pulled Neal on top of him and settled his head on his chest.
“How was that?”
“I’m sorry I was so quick.”
“Don’t be – it’s been a long six weeks.”
“For a minute, I forgot everything. Everything. Thank you.” Neal tilted his head back and they kissed until they fell asleep again, missing the breakfast tray that was delivered to their door by their hosts.
----
They returned to Regina’s house in the late morning. If anything, Neal was even more fearful of her reaction this time, and fumbled with the car door handle at both ends of the trip.
Peter met him at the curb as he walked round the car and took his hands, which were both shaking with nerves. “Hey, listen to me. Pretend like it’s one of our cases. Just focus on the now, focus on the moment. The past is the past – there’s no changing it. It’s what you do with the future that matters now.”
Neal smiled wanly and snarked, “You find that on a Hallmark card?”
Peter pretended to be affronted, then raised Neal's hands to his lips and kissed them on the knuckles.
Neal held his breath until Regina opened the door, and when she did, she said nothing. The “Mom?” froze on Neal’s lips.
“Danny,” she said a moment later, and he stumbled forward and fell into her open arms. “Oh, my boy!” she said into his ear as she kissed him there, and Neal lost every ounce of his composure as he began to cry.
“I’m sorry, Mom. So, so sorry!” he barely choked out.
“Oh, darling, shhh,” she said gently, running her fingers through his hair soothingly with one hand as she held him close with the other until he quieted.
Neal felt Peter shift uneasily on his feet behind him, and he pulled away.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to interrupt,” Peter said; there were tears streaming down his face.
“That’s OK. Do you want to come in?” Regina asked, and they followed her into a tiny but homey kitchen where she’d apparently been baking all morning; there were muffins cooling on racks beside the stove, and coffee was already on.
“Now I know I’m very forgetful lately, but I’m certain I don’t know you,” she said to Peter with a smile as she poured them all cups of coffee.
“Mom, this is Peter Burke. He’s… someone special.”
Regina’s eyes sparkled as she smiled; Neal noted there were a lot more lines around them than he remembered, but they only served to enhance the twinkle in her green eyes. “I’m glad to hear you’ve got someone special, Dan.”
“It’s Neal now,” Neal said carefully as he took the mug of coffee she offered from her.
“My apologies. It’s been so long since I’ve thought of you as ‘Neal,’ I think I’d have forgotten it no matter what.” She took a seat and offered them each a muffin from the plate she’d brought over. “You know, ‘Neal’ was the first name of my favorite teacher when I was a girl. It was he who encouraged me to pursue art.”
“Oh?” Peter asked. “Did you have a bit of a crush on him?”
Regina laughed. “Hell no, the man was about 50 and weighed over 300 pounds. But he was a kind, kind man, and a photographer when he was young. That’s one of his pieces over there on the wall.”
Neal craned his neck and took in the familiar black and white photo of a high desert landscape. “I never knew that,” he said, rising to go and look at it. He’d never noticed the inscription on it either, though truthfully, it was in pencil and it had faded: “For Ronnie. Fondly, Neal Larssen.”
“Ronnie?” Neal said.
“Yours wasn’t the only name changed by the Marshals when we entered WITSEC, Neal. I used to be Veronica Barbara Bennett nee Charles. Of the Staten Island Charleses, ah-ha-ha-ha!” Her laugh filled the room, and the sound of it took Neal back to his childhood instantly. There had been a lot of laughter in the house where he grew up.
“Why’d you choose ‘Regina’?”
“I liked having a boy’s name for a nickname,” she said, shrugging, and sipped her coffee. “So how long have you known Neal?” she asked Peter.
“Well, we first met – professionally – about ten years ago,” Peter said. “But we fell in love about two years ago when he went away to a tropical island and I thought I’d lost him forever.” Peter smiled at Neal, and when his face was filled with such pride and love, it made breathing difficult. Peter rose. “What happened in between is a story for Neal to tell you. Without me around.”
“Must you leave?” Regina said.
“It’s probably for the best. Plausible deniability or something.”
Regina looked confused as Peter said his goodbyes, kissing Neal and telling him to phone him when he was ready to be picked up. When he’d gone, Neal turned to face his mother and saw something on her face he’d most definitely forgotten – her “don’t screw with me” expression.
Neal sighed – just what he’d been doing with his life was not a story he relished telling his mother, but there was no way around it. “Peter was the … uh… FBI agent who arrested me,” he said and then quickly ducked, because he just knew she’d hook a muffin at his head, and age had done nothing to affect her aim.
----
It took Neal about an hour to lay down the bullet points of his life over the last nineteen years for his mother. She was most interested in his years working with Peter at the FBI – much to Neal's relief. And she was much less scandalized by the fact Neal was in a relationship with a married couple.
“I lived through the 70’s, Neal, I’m no girl scout!” she said.
By midafternoon, though, she was beginning to tire, and she told him she was going to go and take a nap.
“Do you want me to go?” he asked, rising.
“No!” she said, perhaps too quickly, and she looked embarrassed by it. “I want to get used to expecting you to be here,” she said quietly, and went off to her bedroom.
----
When she emerged an hour later, Neal had found some boxes of his old art projects in a closet and was sorting through them, bemused.
“You kept everything,” he said to her when he realized she was standing there.
“Of course.”
“Even the crap.”
“Most of it’s crap, sweetie,” she said lightly, and he laughed.
He turned around to face her as she took a seat on the couch. “Do you still paint?”
She nodded. “When my hands aren’t too achy from arthritis. Don’t get old, Neal, it sucks donkey balls.”
He laughed again and realized suddenly she was exactly like Elizabeth. He didn’t know if he ought to find that disturbing or not.
“I’ve got a few items in a gallery downtown,” she went on. “I’ve even sold a few.”
“That’s great, Mom. You like living here?”
“I like it fine. I was just telling…” she stopped talking abruptly.
Neal looked up and saw the confused look on her face. “Something wrong?”
“Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue. I can’t remember… I was talking to him just yesterday. My neighbor?”
“Detective Calderon?”
The light dawned in her eyes. “That’s right! I was just telling him that… oh, I’ve forgotten what I was about to say.” She went quiet at that, and Neal didn’t know how to fill the silence. “You know,” she said after several moments, “I know what’s wrong with me, and I know it’s going to just get worse, and I just…” She sighed and looked at him, her eyes angry yet mournful, her voice choking with emotion. “The worst part is that I know exactly what’s happening to me, and there’s nothing I can do. Nothing.”
He went to sit on the couch beside her and took her hand. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry you’ve had to face this alone. I’m sorry I haven’t been here.”
“No more apologies, Neal, please,” she said. “You’re here now, and that makes me happy.”
“I just wish I could help you.”
“You can’t. No one can really do anything.”
“Yeah. I get that,” he said in a low voice, and closed his eyes. “I get it.”
“Neal?” she said after a minute. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. You forget, I know you better than anyone, and you could never lie to me. There’s something you’re not telling me.” She put her hand on his face and he opened his eyes.
“I don’t want to burden you.”
“That’s what mothers are for – to be burdened. Now out with it.”
And then he told her. And she cried for him, and pulled him in close and rested his head on her shoulder as he cried too, his sobs choking and desperate, like the little boy all those years ago who only needed her arms around him to know that everything would soon be all right.
Except it wouldn’t be enough, it couldn’t. He was no longer that boy, he was a grown man and he was broken and there was no running to his mother to make it all better, not really. And she was older now, no longer the inexorable force of nature he’d always recognized her to be, and she could do little for him, could fix nothing, and they both knew it.
It didn’t make them hold on any less tightly.
----
When Peter returned in the early evening, the curtains on the picture window in the living room were wide open, and he could see that Neal and Regina were both drawing. Neal was working on something using pastels, Peter couldn’t see what, and Regina was drawing a portrait of her son in profile. She had another drawing sitting to the side – it looked like an illustration for a children’s book; Peter remembered Neal mentioning that was her profession. But it sat untouched as she quickly sketched Neal in pen and ink; Peter suspected Neal had no idea he was the subject of his mother’s work at the moment.
It was marvelous to watch them, each with heads cocked to the side and tongues sticking out unconsciously as they concentrated. Peter was mesmerized for a moment and found he didn’t want to break up their silent communion with each other. But he must have moved or made a sound or something, because Neal soon looked up and spotted him, the smile on his face broad and almost touching his eyes. He rose to come to the door and greeted Peter with a peck on the cheek before he returned to the living room and began to clean up his work. Regina, Peter noticed, had hidden her sketch away and was working on the illustration again.
“Is it that time already?” she said.
“I’ll be back in the morning,” Neal promised as he gave her a hug and kiss and slipped into his jacket.
“How’d it go?” Peter asked guardedly as they walked side by side to the car.
“It went.”
“How do you feel?”
“I dunno. Relieved I guess? Just talking about it with her makes it less scary, somehow.”
Peter reached for his hand and hooked their fingers together; Neal grasped onto Peter lightly and then they parted to get into the car.
A brief, chiming sounded and Neal reached for his phone in his pocket.
“Someone texting you?”
Neal's brows were drawn together as he looked at the phone, then shoved it back into his pants pocket. “Voice mail.”
“You gonna listen to it?”
“I’ll get it later.”
Peter didn’t think that was an answer, but he left it alone. If it was important, Neal would tell him.
----
Regina was scared to death every time she looked at Neal.
It wasn’t that she was afraid of him – he may have spent the last two decades of his life away from her, but he was still her son and she knew him. It was her lifelong regret that she had hidden the truth from him, and she couldn’t help but blame herself for the bad choices he’d made in his life – where would he be if only she’d told him everything from the beginning?
What she was really afraid of was losing him again, in more ways than one.
Primary among her fears was the medical condition he’d told her about the day before. She didn’t know exactly understand it or how bad it might be, but it was clearly bad enough to drive him all the way across the country to find her. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why he was here – he was afraid to die.
The other thing that scared her was, naturally, her own diagnosis. She knew she would eventually begin to lose more and more of who she was and what she knew about her life over the next few years, and the biggest thing that she was afraid of losing was her memories of her life with her child. It had been the single most joyous time of her life, and the thought of forgetting any of that or, even worse, forgetting Neal completely, struck at the very core of her. She may have screwed it all up, but she was still, first and foremost, a mother. The fact she’d just gotten her son back somehow made her feel that loss more keenly.
God, what she would give to get some small fraction of the time they’d lost back!
It made her want to scream and rage, because she felt so impotent and helpless on both scores. But she learned a long time ago there was nothing to be gained from that. At the time, she’d taken all of her energies and poured them into her son and making sure she raised him right. And now?
Now she’d do exactly the same thing. She might not have a lot of time left to be of use or to do much good for him, but while she could, she would support him and take care of him in whatever way he needed.
There was just one thing left to figure out – there was clearly something Neal was keeping from her. He may be a grown man, but she recognized that constipated look on his face still, and she meant to make him tell her.
She looked up from the table of the restaurant where they’d stopped in for lunch as he made his way back from the restroom. She felt the stab of fear and repressed it as ruthlessly as ever she’d done with her anger at James in the past. She didn’t have time for that, and she could do this – he needed her to.
----
Neal and Regina strolled arm-in-arm along a hiking path in a park in the foothills just north of the city. It was a cloudy, windy day – chilly for June, but Neal expected it was par for the course up here. It was beautiful country – he could see the appeal to his mother in coming here; already he’d “banked” a few vistas to sketch later or when he got home to New York.
As they walked, he kept his hand on his cell phone where it sat in his pocket. IN his last message, his doctor had asked him to call, urgently. Apparently, there was an advantageous window in the neurosurgeon’s schedule coming up and Neal would have to schedule something now or lose the opportunity. Neal owed him a call back, but he still had no decision on the surgery yet.
The walk was bracing, and he needed it. He was just so tired, felt it down to his bones, and it wasn’t as if he could partake of his favorite form of stimulant – caffeine – in his time of need. The night before had been another sleepless one, but at least the subject of his late night worryings had shifted from himself to his mother. He couldn’t bear the thought of what was happening to her, the dread she must be feeling on a daily basis, the weight of that knowledge. He wished he could take it away.
He hoped he’d be around to help her as time went on. This realization hit him, hard, and he couldn’t suppress the small, strangled noise that came from his throat.
“Neal? You all right?” Regina asked when he almost stumbled.
“’All right’ has variable definitions.”
“You’ve got that right. But what’s on your mind? I already know there’s something you’re not telling me. Something about your condition.”
Neal took a deep breath – and marveled at the fact they’d already re-assumed their old roles. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised about her knowing this; no one knew him better than she did. “Yeah. There’s… this operation, actually.”
“What?” She stopped walking and turned to face him. “Neal, that’s wonderful – why didn’t you say –“
“It’s experimental, it might kill me.”
“Oh, well…” She looked away from him and down the path they were on. “Oh.”
“It’s a bypass,” he explained. “Like people get in their hearts, only inside my brain. They’d take a vein from my leg or something and use it to reroute the blood flow. It’s –“
“There’s no need to go into detail,” she said. “My skin is already crawling enough, thanks.” They began walking again. “So this is the big secret you’ve been carrying?”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to do?”
“That’s the thing – I don’t know. The odds of a bad result are just so high, and –“ He ran out of words and looked into her eyes.
She reached up and caressed his cheek. “Oh honey,” she said, then slipped her arm around him and guided him to a nearby bench. “I know you’re scared.”
Neal just nodded, words failing him. Regina encouraged Neal to lay his head in her lap, a gesture that was so familiar to him. She ran her fingers through his hair, as she’d done when he was a child; he soon began to feel sleepy.
“This reminds me of all those ear infections you used to get when you were little,” Regina said, sitting back against the bench while she continued to stroke Neal’s hair. “This was the only thing that would soothe you, you remember?”
“Mmmm.”
“You’d fall asleep every time, too. Sometimes it was the only way to get you to sleep, and I was afraid to move or else you’d start crying again. I used to joke to your Aunt Ellen that I was trapped under something light.”
She kept stroking, and Neal may have fallen asleep this time as well – he was certainly drifting on the edge of consciousness and lost track of the time. When she started speaking again, he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming it or not.
“I wish I could make this decision for you, sweetie, but I can’t. One thing I can do is maybe give you some perspective.” She took a deep breath and began to speak slowly. “I know what’s happening to you is completely different than what I’m dealing with, but you know…” her voice broke as she continued, “you have options.”
He opened his eyes. “Mom.”
“I’m not saying that to make you feel bad, or even to make much more of it other than to say that you have a choice here, honey, and I know it’s scary, but it sure beats sitting around and waiting for things to happen to you.”
He rolled over onto his back to look at her, and she rested her hand on his head.
“I want you to know that whatever your choice turns out to be, it is a valid one, and I will support you. And the people who love you will support you.”
Neal blinked and the tears he didn’t even know were in his eyes fell, and she reached out to brush them away. “Don’t cry, baby – it will all be OK, no matter what you do, because it’s your life, and you’ve come through hell to get here, and whatever you do, it’ll be the right thing.”
She kissed him on the forehead, and he knew she was right.
----
Neal sat in the darkening room he and Peter shared at the B&B. It was a very pleasant space – a small, one-bedroom, stand-alone unit, one of half a dozen on the grounds of the main building, which stood just above the terraced yard beyond. The room was extremely pleasant – light, airy, with a vaulted ceiling and its own fireplace. A good place for thinking.
Peter was still out; he’d wanted to explore the area, so Regina had suggested he drive to Taos. Neal expected him back soon, but in the meantime, Regina had dropped him back off here so he could be alone with his decision.
He hadn’t expected it to be this hard.
Most of him – if he had to apply a number to it, he’d randomly go with 75% - thought that having the operation was the way to go, because having the threat hanging over him of the aneurysm in his head bursting someday soon or, worse, waking up dead one fine morning, was an untenable position to be in. But the rest of him – the most insidious, the 25% that spoke to him in the dark and gave voice to his darkest instincts and advised him to take a hit when he was showing 17 in blackjack – thought it’d be OK to take his chances. He’d lived for who knew how long with this thing in his head; surely it wasn’t that great a threat.
Then he remembered his mother’s words – he had people who loved him, who relied on him, whose happiness depended on him. Didn’t he owe them the attempt to at least fight for his own life? As they’d fought for his? Peter, who had literally saved Neal's life time and again; and Elizabeth who loved him despite all the crap he’d put her through; and Moz, who’d stuck by him as he found his way from the crooked path to the straighter (if not quite narrow). And finally his mother – she’d sacrificed so much for him over the years and though neither of them was perfect, they belonged to each other. She loved him and, despite all evidence to the contrary, saw every bit of potential in him he had or ever would. Didn’t he owe it to her to at least try?
Yes, he did.
He lay back on the bed, his head pillowed on his hands, stared up at the ceiling fan hanging inert above his head, and came to a realization. He’d do this thing for Peter, who looked at him like he was a miracle, and for Elizabeth who got all his jokes, and for Moz who had always stood by him. But mostly, he was doing it for his Mom, so that he could help her as her disease progressed, to give her back some of the time they’d lost over the years. He owed her that much – or that little, as he realized.
In the morning, he’d ask her if she’d come home with him to New York. But right now, he had something else to take care of. Picking up his cell, he dialed his doctor’s office, realizing it was after 5:00 back in New York and hoping they had late hours tonight, because he had a surgery to schedule.
----
“Hey,” Peter said as he came in.
“Hey,” Neal said with a smile. “Whatcha got there?”
“Candy! There was this terrific little old-timey penny candy shop up in Taos and I just knew El would love it! Look – flying saucers!”
“She definitely will love them,” Neal said approvingly
“How was your day with your mom?”
“It was good, I had a nice time. We went for a hike, believe it or not.”
Peter laughed. “You? Do you even own boots?”
“OK, so it was really a park. But there were woods. And creatures.”
“Sounds great.” Peter stowed his packages in the closet and came to kiss Neal. “You hungry? I want to take you out to dinner.”
“That’s nice. But – can we talk first? There’s something I need to tell you.”
A panicked expression stole across Peter’s face before he was able to control it. “Do I like the sound of that?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Neal took a deep breath – there was no way Peter wouldn’t be upset with him for holding this back from him, but he could see no other alternative. “So, there’s this operation…”
“Operation?”
“For my aneurysm…”
“There is no operation for your aneurysm, the doctor said.”
“Well, it turns out there is,” Neal said slowly. “Only it’s experimental and highly risky.”
“Define risky.”
“30% mortality rate?”
Peter began to breathe heavily through his nostrils – never a good sign. “When did you find out about it?”
“Um, a week ago?”
“A week ago.”
“Give or take.”
“Give or take. When… when were you going to tell me?”
“Now?”
Peter nodded, and Neal could see the muscles bunching in his jaw. “I want to understand why you didn’t tell me.”
“I needed to make my decision about it first.”
“You couldn’t have decided before we drove all the way out here?”
“I needed to see my mother.”
Peter was staring at him with that squint in his eyes that always made Neal squirm. “Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive?”
“I don’t know – no? I needed her judgment, I needed her input.”
“All of a sudden? After 19 years?”
“I needed her, Peter. You understand that, right?”
“I do. I do.” Peter turned away and rubbed his hand across his forehead. When he turned back to face Neal, his eyes were stony. “No. No, I don’t. You needed her to make this decision for you?”
“I needed her help, yes. She has a certain perspective, Peter.”
“And I don’t?”
“Frankly, not the one I need right now, no.”
Peter looked stunned. “I can’t believe this. I love you – why wouldn’t you want me to help make this decision?”
“Because I have to trust that the person helping me through this won’t have their own point of view – they have to have mine. Peter, I love you, but you’ll only tell me to do what you want me to do, and that’s not the same thing.”
Peter blinked at him. “You think I’m that selfish?”
“When it comes to the people you care about and life-changing decisions? Yes.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s not supposed to do anything. Peter,” Neal rose from his seat on the bed, walked over to Peter and took his hand; Peter pulled it away, but Neal was persistent, taking it and holding it against his chest, over his heart. There were angry tears in Peter’s eyes. “Peter, I love you more than anyone I’ve ever known, and I appreciate everything you’ve ever done for me, but in this? I couldn’t trust your perspective. I needed hers – I needed my family.”
Peter swallowed, and nodded, but the hurt didn’t leave his eyes. “And what did she tell you to do?”
“Ironically, she wouldn’t. But she helped me see what I had to do anyway. If we hadn’t come here, if I hadn’t seen what she’s going through, I couldn't have made this decision.”
“And what is your decision?”
“I’m going through with it. I’m having the surgery.”
Peter closed his eyes and breathed out a long, slow breath. “The surgery that has a 30% chance of killing you.”
“Yes, that one.”
Peter opened his eyes and they stared at each other for a long minute. “I’m afraid, Neal.”
“I’m not. Not anymore.”
“Really?”
Neal pulled Peter into his arms and held him close. “Really.”
Epilogue
New York, 2014
“He’s waking up!” Regina said, pulling on Peter’s sleeve. The nurses had allowed two people to be in the room with Neal, and they’d been waiting for what seemed like hours for him to wake.
Peter scrambled out of the chair he’d been sitting in and hurried to Neal’s bedside. He’d survived his surgery, but the doctor was very clear that he wasn’t out of the woods yet – the chance of complications like blood clots was still very high.
Neal’s face seemed to be the first thing that woke, becoming increasingly animated and he stirred. A moment later, his eyes opened.
“Neal?” Peter and Regina each said at once, but Neal’s eyes were staring at the ceiling blankly. For a single, awful moment, Peter feared the worst – Neal had had a stroke or any one of a dozen things he couldn’t even comprehend. “Neal?” he repeated.
Slowly, Neal moved his head at the sound of Peter’s voice, and immediately Peter knew he was wrong. Bright blue eyes shone up at him, and a wan smile lit up Neal’s face, and everything was suddenly right in the world. The relief was so profound Peter started to cry.
“Hey, stop that,” Neal admonished gently, but Peter couldn’t. Regina held out a handkerchief for him, and he took it gratefully.
“I’m gonna go tell El and Moz.”
----
Two days later, Neal was much less sleepy from the drugs and able to sit up and allowed more visitors. Peter excused himself to go and get everyone coffee, and when he returned, he found them alone, Regina sitting on the edge of Neal’s bed, talking with him softly. Neal had an expression of sheer joy on his pale face, and soon Peter realized why.
From out of nowhere, Regina had produced a small plastic pig that she held out to Neal in the palm of her hand. Where it had come from, Peter couldn’t tell – she had short sleeves on today. With a flash of movement he couldn’t track, it was gone. Then, she pulled a pink pompom from inside Neal’s bandage and booped him on the nose with it.
Neal took it from her with a grin. “You were always so much better at that than me,” he told her.
“More innate talent,” she said, buffing her fingernails on her blouse.
“Probably. Thanks for coming – this would have been a lot harder without you,” he said sincerely.
She reached out and caressed his cheek. “Aww, honey, I wouldn’t have missed it. And I’ll stay as long as you want me to, though I draw the line at bedpans – my days of wiping your ass are over.”
“Fair enough. But I want you to stay forever – have you given moving here any thought?”
“I don’t know, Neal. I don’t want to be a burden.”
“That's what sons are for - to be burdened. I can take it, Mom. We can take it.” He reached out his hand and motioned for Peter, who’d been standing in the doorway, to enter the room.
“I always wanted a mother-in-law closer to home,” Peter kidded.
“Oh really?” Regina said, laughing. “You want to call me mother-in-law, you’d better put a ring on it.” She hooked a thumb at Neal.
“Mom!”
“I’d do that if I thought he’d take me seriously,” Peter replied with a grin.
“Wait, what?”
Regina flapped her hand dismissively at Neal. “I want to know what your intentions are towards my boy. Fed.”
“My wife and I would make a respectable man out of him. Ma’am.”
“I am sitting right here.”
“Honey, shush – if I play my cards right, I get to plan a wedding.”
“Oh God, what have I done?” Neal said plaintively, but he was grinning from ear to ear.
----
Thank you for your time