jet44

PETER

Peter's head spun, his vision blurring around the edges. He stopped breathing. And everything hit him at once. Horror, shock, pain, fear, guilt, helplessness.

Frantic desire to defend himself, coupled with the inability to form basic words.

His arms were shaking. He couldn't even feel the handcuffs, or his feet, or remember what day it was.

More than anything, he wanted to cry. He kept waiting for it to end, but first the walk through the lobby, past his team and strangers, then the ride to the office, sitting in the interrogation room facing a dirty agent all seemed to stretch on for hours.

And when the cell door closed and no miracles had come for him, when he was finally alone, he did cry. He told himself all the ways it could work out just fine, and tried to silence the horror of all the ways it might not.

When the plane went up, it was so fast, so forceful, so jarring, that for a horrifying second all Peter could see was Neal framed by fire. A second after that, he was clinging to his CI, who was trying to charge straight into the inferno.

It'd hurt in that doctor's office. Drugged out of his mind, he could accept that what he'd just done was going to land him back in prison. Oh well. It'd been a fun vacation, but he'd always known it was temporary.

Neal sat in the FBI surveillance van, playing with a pair of handcuffs. He knew how to use them, how to escape them, and most of all, what it felt like to wear them. There was still a fascination, mostly because of how emotionally loaded they were.

He didn't dodge Peter's amused glance. The agent found Neal playing with handcuffs as entertainingly ironic as Neal did, but underneath it were many of the reasons to love his FBI overlord. Sharp intelligence and perception. Deep kindness and empathy. Uncorruptible authority. Love of life, his own life, as lived.