white collar - burnout

[augustbird]

Title: Burnout (Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?)
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 19,281
Characters/Pairing: Neal/Peter, Neal/OMC
Warnings: explicit non-con; general mindfuckery
Summary: It was easy to pretend that it wasn’t Neal Caffrey undergoing this ordeal, just somebody who looked and acted just like him.
Written: post season 1
Author's Note: Written for collarkink for the awesome prompt: Peter and Neal are both taken by a bad guy (new or old) who wants Neal to work for him. Baddie physically tortures Peter so Neal will agree to forge things and help plan cons, even though these cons actually involve violence not just stealing and people are getting hurt. Basically Peter wants Neal to stop helping since he would rather suffer than have them participate in people being hurt - he understands Neal's reasons, but he believes that as an agent he puts his own safety behind the safety of ordinary citizens. So he is sympathetic to Neal but also truly angry that Neal is doing this. Neal sees Peter's pov but when it comes down to it, friends (Peter) come before strangers, so Neal refuses to let Peter get beat on or tortured, even if he feels awful about what he's doing. Bonus if Neal also has to sexually service baddie (otherwise they'll deny Peter food or medical treatment) but then Peter doesn't find out until after the fact. Original posting can be found here. Unedited because I can't look at this thing any more. >_>


The last time that Neal Caffrey spoke to Peter Burke before the incident was on a Thursday evening. Winter was just shifting into springtime, bringing with it the awkward kind of chill that made it too warm for a heavy winter jacket but not warm enough for solely a suit jacket. Neal had long since learned to sacrifice his own comfort for fashion, which was why he was leaning uncomfortably against the wall, peering around the corner of the building with his hands shoved into the pockets of his expensive jacket. His jaw was clenched tight and he refused to shiver as if the cold were a personal affront to his pride.

“Okay,” Peter was saying, reaching into his jacket for the gun he kept tucked between ribcage and arm, “I’m going to check out this scene and I’ll signal you in if it’s clear.”

Neal nodded impatiently, eyeing Peter’s coat with a sort of understated wistful jealousy, before training his gaze onto the warehouse that they were supposed to check out. It was somewhat of a throwback to their very first case together—forged bonds zipping through a printing press that made all sorts of clacking sounds from behind rusted iron doors. The only difference was that it was night and they weren’t particularly sure if there were any angry sentry stationed at any of the doors, ready to shoot at the first sign of movement.

In retrospect, it had been a stupid decision.

If Neal had the chance to do it all over again, he would have insisted that they head back to the office, formulate some form of plan, head back during the daytime when they could make everything out clearly instead of this lurking uncertainty. He wouldn’t have given in to his own insatiable curiosity, wouldn’t have given in to Peter’s display of machismo (“Come on Neal, we can handle this easy”)—would have collected enough evidence for a warrant and stormed in with a full regiment of FBI.

In retrospect, he wouldn’t have walked into the trap. They had been banking on their combined curiosity, arrogance—vices that Neal was sure was going to get them killed someday. And it looked like that day was sooner rather than later.

So Peter stepped away, slipping into the shadow of the two buildings and Neal watched him go, feeling the excited anxiety of a case on the verge of getting cracked wide open. Peter disappeared from view just around the corner and Neal watched the edge of the warehouse, ready to move forward.

Except Peter never came around the corner to signal Neal. Instead, two gunshots were fired and Neal’s already jumpy nerves skipped two heartbeats and a breath before he regained any ability to make conscious movement. There was no chaos, no lights spilled from open warehouse doors—just two gunshots—which meant that—

Peter was down.

In retrospect, at the moment, the smart thing to have done would have been to call for backup before he tried any stupid rescue maneuvers—but Neal had jumped past common sense straight into panicked insanity. Instead, he half flew, half leapt across the open space, around the corner where Peter had disappeared. Two steps forward and he knew exactly that they had been duped—there was no trail, this had all been a setup. He didn’t need to look around to know that there were at least two guns trained on the back of his head—just like how he could sweep a look across the entirety of a room and know every ideal location for a security camera.

Two more steps and the warehouse door opened. Neal would never forget the way that the dirty yellow light poured out from underneath the crack of the door and the thump and rush of blood in his ears and the mantra of no no no no repeating in his head.

Peter was slumped up against the leg of a man who had a gun pressed to the side of his head, hard eyes staring at Neal. Neal’s eyes were drawn the to the crimson blossoming across his shirt—but it had already bled so much already, stained so much of Peter’s shirt that Neal had no idea where the shot had entered. Neal just stared blankly, his normally quicksilver mind having a difficult time wrapping around the fact that Peter, idealized pillar of strength and justice, was lying on the ground, dying if not already dead. And all he could think was that he hadn’t heard Peter cry out, hadn’t heard a single scream of pain and that if he had gotten shot, he wouldn’t have at least yelled.

“Hello Neal Caffrey,” a voice called out from his right. A man emerged a door leading to who knew where (Peter was on the ground and Neal didn’t even know if he was alive), “I’ve been waiting to meet you for a long time.”

“You shot Peter,” Neal said, the tone of his voice caught between a white fury and an indescribable blankness, “You killed him.”

“He’s not dead yet, Mr. Caffrey,” the man replied and Neal finally tore his eyes away from the still form of the FBI agent to the man who was addressing him. He had pale eyes the color of washed out emeralds and a slippery smile that didn’t fit quite right on his face. “Although he will be dead soon. Do you want to save your friend, Mr. Caffrey?”

Neal thought about his phone, thought about tearing off his tracker right now and waiting for the FBI to arrive. He thought about the blood on Peter’s shirt, thought about Elizabeth’s face, thought about Kate’s face framed in an airplane window. And then he swept all of those thoughts away and only understood one truth: he could not lose Peter.

“What do I have to do?” Neal asked, making every effort to keep his voice calm, trying hard to keep the desperation out because if they knew how much Peter meant to him, they would know exactly how much they had the upper hand.

The man was watching him, gauging his expression and body language, the shape of his words. He didn’t say anything at all for a moment—and then he smiled like he was genuinely amused, “Lose the tracker, Mr. Caffrey. We have a plane to catch.” A pause and then, “Your friend has a surgery to undergo. I’m sure you’ll see him soon enough.”

“He’s not—“ Neal swallowed, his hands clenching, “He’s not part of this deal.”

The man’s head tilted slightly as if curious. He stepped behind Neal, walking around him as if he were a particularly interesting specimen to behold, “Neal Caffrey has two weaknesses,” he said, as if lecturing, “One of them was Kate Moreau. The second is Peter Burke. Now, how stupid do you think I would have to be to send Mr. Burke home?”

Neal looked at the man briefly before staring at Peter again. His jaw worked for a moment, and then it was possible to pinpoint the exact moment that he resigned himself, “Okay—he just needs medical attention right now.”

“Of course, Mr. Caffrey,” the man said, signaling to someone behind Neal. It was the last thing that Neal remembered before something heavy hit him on the back of the head and he blacked out.

~

Neal woke up with his cheek pressed against cold concrete, a migraine exerting heavy pressure against the back of his head. He sat up, gingerly touching the back of his head with some hesitance. It didn’t particularly help that the fluorescent bulb that lit his premises flickered irregularly in a way that certainly didn’t help abate his headache.

And it was then that he remembered what kind of situation he had gotten himself into—and in the same thought, remembered the crimson across Peter’s shirt, bleeding on that warehouse floor. He had never really had the capacity for blood and guts—it was a testament to how shocked he was at the sight that he hadn’t emptied the contents of his stomach at some point during the brief exchange he could remember.

Oh Jesus. Neal forced himself to open his eyes fully, dragging his consciousness back into some semblance of alertness as he scanned the room for a possible escape route. Maybe it wasn’t exactly useful at the time considering Peter was probably in surgery—if the man had kept his promise—and would probably need a few days at the very least to recover before they attempted any serious escape plan, but it was a reflex that he wasn’t going to stifle.

He was in a small room with a single fluorescent light fixture, two long naked bulbs flickering in and out. There was a door, predictably locked from the outside. There was a rusted metal stool in the corner—for him maybe? Regardless, it wasn’t interesting. Neal rummaged around in his pockets—they had taken his cell phone and the weight on his ankle was gone, but they had left him with a paperclip he had pulled from a case folder earlier that day (oh god, had it really only been a day? How long had he been out?).

Without further ado, Neal rose to his feet, ignoring the unsettling stabs of pain he felt every time he even moved his head the slightest bit and bent over to examine the doorknob. It was standard, like the kind he might find on any residential house. Within a minute and a half, he had opened the door and peered out, uncertainty weighing his steps. It had been easy to pick that lock—far too easy.

There was only one direction to go since his room had apparently been situated at the end of the hallway—another sign that this was too easy. He didn’t have to choose left or right and risk going the wrong way.

All of the doors leading out of the hall were also locked—he must have been in a basement of some sort. The boiler room was locked and storage rooms one through three didn’t give either. Storage room four was unlocked though—and when he swung the door open—

“Two minutes and five seconds,” the man with the pale eyes was seated inside, looking from his watch up at Neal, “Not as impressive as I had hoped. Perhaps your reputation precedes you by a substantial amount.”

“I’ve been caught twice, you know,” Neal replied—and though normally the joke would have been accompanied by a smile, Neal tried to keep his expression carefully neutral. He didn’t feel much like smiling at the man who had shot his friend. He wasn’t sure why he said the words in the first place; reflex maybe.

“By our friend in the OR, no less,” the man replied. He swung one of the computer monitors that he had been looking at so that it was facing Neal—and Neal found himself breathing an involuntary sigh of relief. Peter looked like he was sleeping—but at least there was color back in his face, no blood on his shirt and a heartbeat measured in visible spikes across the bottom of the screen. Peter was okay which meant that Neal had to figure out where he was, figure out an escape plan from here.

“Who are you?” Neal asked, eyes narrowing now that he didn’t have a friend’s life to plead for.

The man tapped two fingers against his lips thoughtfully, looking at Neal. And then he smiled—bright and enigmatic though it looked synthetic in the fluorescent glare of the lightbulb. It was a contrast to the oily smiles he had seen in the warehouse the first time they had met, this one was all clean angles and bright white teeth.

“My name is of no concern to you, Mr. Caffrey, but you may call me Ashe.”

Neal didn’t miss a beat, “What do you want from me, Ashe?”

Ashe paused again, his placid expression suddenly sharpening with a sort of predatory hunger, the smile going from polite into something feral. His eyes raked down Neal’s body and Neal felt uncomfortably vulnerable under the stare, like he was scanning right past the slick suit, waiting to sink claws into the very core of him, like he wanted to put Neal onto a table and dissect him among other things.

But the moment passed and Ashe was all charismatic smiles again, relaxing against the back of his chair, eyes back on Neal’s face. “I have very many men, Mr. Caffrey. I have men who like to fight, who like to kill. I have men who can hack into secure government databases to retrieve information and never leave a trace,” his voice was smooth, head tilting slightly, hands folding on top of the table, “But I’ve never had a man like you, Mr. Caffrey. I’ve never had a silver tongue among my ranks, never a man with nimble fingers like yours.”

“Who says I’d be interested in working for you?”

Ashe smirked, leaned forward and pressed an intercom button on his desk, “Our friend here would like to know why he could be interested in working for me.”

Immediately, the angle of the camera on the computer monitor shifted. Instead of focusing on Peter’s face, it was moving down his arm, pausing only once it had gotten to his left wrist. There was a thick bracelet circling his wrist.

“Have you ever been tased, Mr. Caffrey?”

Neal’s hands slowly clenched into fists, a deep frown already pulling at his lips—this wasn’t happening.

“Mr. Burke has one on his right wrist too. He tries to take either of them off and he gets subjected to a nice dose of drive stun. If you do anything that displeases me or could be considered as detrimental to my goals, he gets subjected to a nice dose of drive stun,” Ashe smiled pleasantly, “But of course, in my opinion—and my boys would agree with me—there’s nothing better than an old fashioned knife against skin.”

Neal felt sick and angry—angrier than he had been in a long time, “If you touch him, I swear to god I—”

Ashe reached into a drawer and pulled out something resembling a remote control. He located a button and pressed it, looking up at Neal with another one of his goddamned pleasant smiles. On the screen, Peter jerked, hand clenching, and cried out—and even if there was no sound transmitted, Neal could hear the hoarse cry in his mind, no doubt worsened by his weakened state of recovery. His eyes were riveted to the screen and the three seconds that the shock was actually applied stretched out into an eternity, his stomach rolling unpleasantly and threatening to come up.

“The collar hasn’t come yet,” Ashe was saying conversationally, fingering the button again as if he was just waiting for Neal to step out of line again, “But I’m having it express shipped from Thailand. I’m sure that one will hurt more than the cuffs.” A pause, as he looked right at Neal’s face, dragging his following words out deliberately, “And all of that nerve stimulation right next to his spine, so close to his brain. Now I’m not a doctor, Neal, but I really hope he doesn’t suffer permanent damage because of you.”

Neal pulled his eyes away from the monitor, his hands clenching and unclenching spasmodically. He stared hard at the remote, Ashe’s long fingers hovering over the button that could send tens of thousands of volts through Peter’s body.

“Now,” Ashe said softly, “Would you have any interest in working for me, Mr. Caffrey?”

~

The first thing to go was his hair.

Ashe had steered him from the basement, back into the bright sunlight of the real world. He had slipped the remote into the pocket of his trousers, told Neal with a smile that there was no point in attempting to pickpocket him because there were several remotes and even if Peter didn’t get a dose of pain right then, he would make sure that the dosage was doubled later. Neal kept his hands to himself, jaw clenching.

“Neal, relax,” Ashe said afterwards, guiding him into an elevator with a hand almost possessively sliding across his lower back, “Everything will be fine.” Neal stepped away, willed himself not to be sick.

They emerged onto a deserted street. Neal took stock of his surroundings—they were definitely not in New York City any more. It was more of a suburban area, an office space in the midst of residential buildings. He only had a moment to look around before he was ushered into a car.

“Now Mr. Caffrey—can I call you Neal? I feel as if we could become friends, Neal,” Ashe looked at him from across the seat and Neal was aware of that predatory hunger in the gaze again. Neal swallowed his disgust and eased into one of his smiles because that was no doubt what Ashe wanted in a response and Neal wasn’t particularly keen on having him whip out the remote for a second demonstration.

“Excellent, Neal,” Ashe replied, sounding truly pleased, “Now Neal, let’s talk about a few of my expectations. You try to run, I kill Peter Burke. You try to contact anyone through any means—and believe me Neal, I have ways of finding out—I will personally take a scalpel to Peter Burke.” Ashe raised his eyebrows, still looking at Neal, “Now Neal, I don’t think you want either of those things, do you?” And then softly, with just the faintest hint of derision, “You’ll be a good boy, won’t you Neal?”

Neal closed his eyes, briefly, trying to shove down all of the hatred and rage that threatened to break his composure. For the first time, he thought about wrapping his hands around someone’s throat and just tightening his grip—and it was a frightening thought to have.

“Of course,” Neal said—and that was the end of that conversation. Ashe hummed and looked out the window until they reached their destination.

Neal found himself sitting in front of a mirror, staring at himself as the hairdresser busied herself with collecting equipment. Ashe stepped behind him, looking at him in the mirror for a moment before lifting a hand up to drag through Neal’s hair. Neal stiffened slightly and was about to pull away when Ashe’s grip tightened painfully and he leaned down with a purring smirk, note of unspoken threat barely hidden beneath the words, “Relax Neal.”

Neal forced himself to relax, thinking about the jerk of Peter’s body and how he couldn’t have that happen again, thinking about the pain written in the unheard shout.

“I’ve always wondered what it was like to run my hands through your hair,” Ashe mused, carding his fingers through the soft fringe at the nape of his neck, “It’s such a shame it has to go, Neal. But I’m sure you’ll be just as pretty when Claudia is through with you.”

That must have been Claudia’s cue because she stepped into Ashe’s position behind Neal’s chair and ruffled her fingers through his hair. Neal watched Ashe in the mirror, watch him lounge against the wall with his eyes trained on the back of Neal’s head as if he were trying to bore a hole though the back of his skull and sift through the thoughts that seeped out.

Neal would have never suspected Ashe to be the head of an organized crime ring. The most striking feature of his face were his pale eyes—always lit with a sort of morbid curiosity. But that could be overshadowed a charming smile if he so chose to put one on and his mildly attractive features gave him the pretense of being friendly. He was a sociopath if Neal had ever met one.

He hadn’t been particularly explicit in what he wanted Neal to do for him yet, but there was something about the way he acted, the way that he seemed more to emphasize on Neal himself rather than his skills that indicated that Ashe’s motives for capturing him weren’t so clear and simple. Regardless, Neal had to figure out where the hell they were, start on an escape plan, and keep Ashe happy so that he didn’t press that damn button again.

When Claudia finally stepped away, Ashe stepped forward again, appraising Neal from all angles. He ran his fingers through Neal’s short hair, a pleased expression on his face as he regarded Neal in the mirror, digging his nails in lightly for a moment before pulling away entirely.

“You look good Neal.”

Neal stared at himself in the mirror and didn’t reply. He didn’t look like himself. He didn’t feel like himself—and the rational part of him knew that this was exactly what Ashe was trying to achieve.

“Think of this as a new identity for you,” Ashe said, catching Neal’s eye in the mirror as his pale eyes crinkled with amusement, “You’re working for me now.” He slipped his hands into the pockets of his trousers and Neal followed the movement with his eyes. He could imagine the way that Ashe’s hand curled around the remote, teasing the button lightly like some fucked up perversion.

All Neal heard were the unsaid words, for as long as they held Peter, you’re mine.

~

“I have an associate,” Ashe said as they returned to the building in the middle of the suburbs (Neal had already memorized all the street names he could see and the next moment he was alone in a room with a computer, he would know where he was), “He thinks that we have a nice partnership, that we have equal stakes in a mutual project.” The elevator took them up to the fourteenth floor (Neal kept his eyes open for all the possible exits, wanting more than ever to have his usual resources available to him) and Ashe opened the door to what was presumably his office (Neal memorized the faces of everybody he passed, tried to take in as many details as possible in case they’d help him later).

“You seem very distracted, Neal,” Ashe observed casually, causing Neal to snap his eyes back onto Ashe’s face. Ashe smiled pleasantly—an expression that Neal was beginning to abhor, “I hope you don’t need extra incentive to pay attention.” His hand was going for his pocket and it was all Neal could do to stop himself from physically reaching out to still his reach.

“No—I’m listening. Your associate, mutual project, equal stakes,” Neal said hurriedly, leaning forward with a perfectly timed tentative smile and a lie, “Sorry, it’s just this is a big change.”

Ashe looked at him, at the vaguely earnest expression that he had picked to display. He paused a moment before grinning widely, a crocodile opening its mouth wide, “Let’s cut the shit Neal. I know you’re looking for a way out. I’m feeling rather generous today so I won’t bring Peter into this, so you can consider this your only warning. There is no way out, Neal.”

A pause and Neal swore the man did it for the goddamn dramatic effect. The tone of his voice was an afterthought, “Well, I suppose you could always escape. If you notice, we haven’t put a tracker on you or anything. It’d just be a pity that you’d be leaving Peter behind.”

Neal swallowed and resisted the urge to physically maim the man. He was stepping over all sorts of mental lines today because of this bastard. Instead he nodded his understanding and Ashe smiled again, gesturing for him to sit as he pulled a folder off his desk.

“The problem with my situation is that it’s all true,” Ashe said, “But I don’t really like to share, Neal. I’d much rather prefer just taking all of the profits from this project for myself.” He handed the folder to Neal before taking a seat at his desk and setting the remote on the desk in front of him. “This is where you come in, Neal. Make my associate disappear. I want all of his shares transferred to me without raising too much suspicion.”

Neal opened the folder, his jaw clenching. He would have to be blind to not understand exactly what Ashe meant by disappear.

“You have twelve hours to finish this before I start making moves on our mutual friend,” Ashe informed him lazily, tapping the remote for emphasis.

Neal snapped the folder shut and looked up. He paused a moment, gauging the smiling expression on Ashe’s face before asking very bluntly:

“Can I see Peter?”

Ashe looked at him for a long moment. And then he said, with a smile that indicated that he was entirely too pleased with himself, “Can you complete the task, Neal?”

~

It was a plan that was haphazardly thrown together, but at least it didn’t involve killing anyone, which was obviously the plan that Ashe thought was the easiest. It was quite possibly one of the least refined plans that he had ever constructed but he had a twelve hour timeframe, no accomplices he could actually trust, and even if there was no electronic tracking device on him, one of Ashe’s various lackeys seemed to be intent on accompanying him everywhere. He was aware of eyes on him at any given moment, no doubt ready to report back to Ashe the moment that he did something worth reporting. He wouldn’t have been surprised if they had camcorders on them, just so that Ashe could go through the footage himself to look for any sort of obscure signaling.

At least from the folder he learned exactly where he was (outskirts of Boston)—though he still didn’t know where Peter was being held. He wasn’t familiar with the area which meant that he had no idea what medical facilities were nearby (if Peter was even being held in a medical facility).

Edward Macmillan left the office around five-thirty every evening to catch the five-forty commuter rail at South Station after walking from the front of his building a few blocks along Atlantic Avenue. It didn’t take much to convince Ashe to let him into Boston (not without supervision of course) and Neal stayed on the corner of Atlantic and Summer starting at five-twenty. He spotted Edward Macmillan easily at five-thirty-one and bumped into him with a mumbled apology, slipping a piece of paper in the jacket of his coat.

Depending on how stressed he was with the day, Edward Macmillan visited the bar right down the street from his apartment complex starting something between nine and eleven. Neal took a seat at the bar at nine o’clock, trying his best to look unapproachable while Ashe’s lackey sat in the corner with a single untouched beer, glowering at the servers who came too close. Like clockwork, Edward stepped through the door at ten-twenty-two and took a seat at the counter, one seat over from Neal. Neal couldn’t have planned it better.

“Long day?” Neal asked, glancing over from the scotch that he had ordered (and taken all of two sips from), easing into a friendly smile. It was like slipping on a familiar skin—this was something that made him feel more like Neal Caffrey, even with the lightness of his head.

“You have no idea,” Edward mumbled back, attempting to wave the bartender down. Neal grinned sympathetically.

“Nick Halden,” he said, holding his hand out.

The man looked at him for a moment, but must have seen nothing beyond what Neal wanted him to see written all over Neal’s friendly expression, earnest smile. He relaxed, managed a smile of his own and shook Neal’s hand, “Ed Macmillan.”

The bartender turned to them after that, asking them what they wanted to drink.

In the course of two hours, Neal learned that Ed hated his job and the man he worked with, had two failed relationships.

“What’s your business partner’s name?” Neal asked quietly, half covering his mouth with his hand in case Ashe was a lipreader. It was a shame that he couldn’t do anything about the loud disdainful snort that Ed replied with.

“Lennox,” he said, and Neal could detect both hatred and fear in his voice, “Lennox Kensington. He gives me the goddamn creeps sometimes.” And that was all he had to say on the matter. Neal didn’t push it, aware of the lackey in the corner who was still staring at him.

When Ed had consumed over five shots in a span of forty-five minutes, he also confessed to Neal that he was having a crisis with his sexuality (a fact that made Neal stiffen because it made his plan easier to implement, but also changed its character completely). After another three shots, Ed was completely wasted and exactly how Neal wanted him.

“Maybe it’s time we got you home,” Neal suggested when Ed sloshed his drink onto the counter the second time, earning him an annoyed look from the bartender. He motioned for the tab and the bartender looked vaguely relieved before hurrying over with the final bill.

Ed reached into the pocket of his coat, pulling out a wallet and piece of paper that fluttered to the ground. He squinted at it briefly before making an attempt to pick it up—only to have Neal save him from toppling out of his chair. Neal picked it up for him, opening the familiar slip of paper.

“I play the lottery a lot,” Ed informed Neal with a grin and slurred tone as he glanced at the paper between Neal’s fingers, “Have I told you that?”

Neal had seen a month’s worth of Ed’s purchases in that folder so even if Ed hadn’t said anything, Neal would have known.

“These numbers look familiar,” Neal told Ed, “Got a winning ticket there?”

“You think?” Ed asked, surprised as he fumbled in his wallet for his credit card, voice dropping in confession, “I have my AA meetings on Thursdays so I never know if my Thursday tickets win.”

Neal offered him an encouraging smile, “Never too late to check.”

The bartender returned with the receipt. Neal took it because Ed was too busy looking blearily at the lottery ticket in the dim light of the bar. He set the receipt down in front of Ed, who clicked a pen and mechanically scrawled a looping signature across the bottom of the receipt—all muscle memory.

“Wait,” Neal said, sliding the other receipt in front of Ed, “Sorry, you signed the customer copy. This one’s the merchant copy.” Ed looked at him, annoyed but signed it as well. Neal palmed the customer copy and stored the signature away for later.

Turning to pull on his jacket, Neal heard, “Wait,” in a very unsteady tone. He turned back, inquiring look on his face.

“It’s a match,” Ed said uncertainly, and shoved his blackberry at Neal. Neal spent a moment vaguely impressed that the man could even operate the tiny buttons in his state of mind before looking at the screen. The lotto numbers from the day before were pulled up on the screen, matching the numbers that Neal had placed on the forged ticket.

Neal thought about texting Elizabeth, Jones, Diana, Hughes—anybody at all; but he hadn’t memorized any number except Peter’s and his own—and even if the carrier could track the text message, no doubt Ashe was in possession of their cell phones and certainly wouldn’t be fooled by a Boston area code number. He must have stared at the phone for a bit too long because Ed jostled him with a shoulder, his voice suddenly taking on a worried tone, “Isn’t it?”

“It’s a match,” Neal confirmed, throwing him a smile and handing the phone back. The image of Peter’s pained expression was enough to keep him from doing anything excessively stupid.

Ed’s eyes widened comically and he snatched up the ticket, looking at it hard before he began to laugh, shoulders shaking with the effort—and then he was clutching at Neal’s arm with a beaming smile full of confidence that he hadn’t been wearing before and saying, “You, my lucky charm—you’re coming home with me.”

Which was how Neal found himself against the front door of Ed’s apartment, Ed’s mouth against his neck, sucking hard—fuck that was going to leave a mark that he really didn’t need. Not to mention the sensation was going straight south and if he was to keep control of the situation which was absolutely mandatory to the plan, he really needed to keep his libido under control.

Except it was hard when Ed was the same build and height as Peter and in the dim light, their hair color almost matched. It didn’t help that his subconscious was substituting in things he wanted to see, things that he knew he couldn’t have, things that his mind was settling for with second best. And he had been so goddamned good at locking everything up—except it seemed as if his subconscious also possessed thief-like skills to worm its way out at the absolute worst of times.

He wished he could have picked his goddamn marks—he would have picked a fucking petite blonde girl, farthest from anything that he actually wanted. He wanted to slam frustrated fists against the wall—this was so fucking unfair.

Ed pulled away and looked Neal straight in the eyes, allowing him a moment of reprieve to get control of himself before getting control of the situation again. He smiled before leaning forward to leave sucking kisses along Neal’s jawline and all Neal could smell was the alcohol.

“You have,” Ed breathed right into his ear, “Such impossibly blue eyes.”

Neal considered the words for only a beat before grabbing Ed by the tie and jerking him forward so that he was leading him away from the door, towards where the bedroom probably was. He thought about the fact that he was going to see Peter once all of this was over, he thought about the fact that he was doing this to save Peter and then he couldn’t think about it at all except for the mission and what he needed to do to finish it off.

He tried not to think about the fact that Ashe’s lackey was right behind the front door, maybe even watching them now as Neal shoved Ed up against the wall, expertly unbuttoning his pants, sliding long fingers between skin and elastic to wrap a hand around Ed’s hard length, giving one hard stroke as he leaned forward to speak in Ed’s ear.

“Ed,” Neal said softly, his touch easing slightly so that he was running fingers lightly over the head of Ed’s dick, teasing, “You don’t have to worry about money any more and you hate your job.”

Ed groaned, hips bucking into Neal’s hand, a tiny whine at the back of his throat.

“Ed, the rational thing would be to quit it,” Neal said, reasonably, dragging his hand up Ed’s length and twisting his wrist at the top applying just a little bit more pressure, “You hate your partner, you don’t need to do it any more. Lennox terrifies you. You can move away from him, you can move to a house in the Bahamas.”

Ed pressed his hips up into Neal’s hand, breathing heavily into Neal’s ear, “You fucking tease.”

Neal continued, unpeturbed, “You could just leave it all behind. Just let Lennox deal with the project. It’s been stressing you out too much, I can tell.” His grip tightened slightly, his lips brushing Ed’s ear as he quickened his rhythm, “You could sign it tonight. You could sign away all of your troubles.”

Ed made a strangled incoherent sound.

“Are you going to sign it away?”

Ed panted against Neal’s neck before making a low whine, “Nick.”

Neal stopped moving entirely, just tightened his grip at the base of Ed’s dick, his voice a little more assertive than its previous lilting persuasive tone, “Are you going to sign it?”

“Yes,” Ed moaned, fingers tight and bruising against Neal’s shoulders, “Yes, yes, yes.”

Neal gave one last tight stroke and Ed came with a cry before slumping against the wall. Neal pulled his hand out, looking down at Ed’s bowed head and determinedly did not think of Peter. He wiped his hand on Ed’s pants, figuring that they were ruined already before heaving the man back to his feet and dragging him the few feet over to his couch and dropping him on it. Ed palmed the front of his pants weakly before Neal deftly stepped out of reach. Ed looked up at him, confused. Neal gave a somewhat tight smile before taking a seat in the armchair, angling himself carefully away from any windows in case Ashe’s lackey was looking in. He pulled Ed’s blackberry out of his coat pocket. It took all of two minutes to find Elizabeth Burke’s cell phone number off of her catering site and sent her a text consisting of two letters: NC. He erased it from Ed’s history.

Ed was snoring softly. Neal slipped the phone back into his coat pocket and left.

~

Neal handed the contract with the forged signature over to Ashe at seven AM the next morning. Ashe lifted an eyebrow at him and he said simply, “I forged it but Macmillan will think that he signed it.”

Ashe set the contract on his desk, eyes drifting from Neal’s face, to his hands and then back to his face, only this time with a smirk curling at his lips, “I’m not sure I approve of your techniques, Neal.”

Neal ignored him, “You said that if I got you your shares, you’d take me to Peter.”

Ashe slowly rose to his feet, crossing the space between the desk and Neal so that he was standing well inside Neal’s personal space. He lifted a hand so that he could touch at the purpling bruise on Neal’s neck, where Ed had been a little too enthusiastic. Neal pulled away—earning him a flash of displeasure on Ashe’s face. But the displeasure was replaced by a thoughtful expression, a deliberating tone entering Ashe’s voice as he smiled, “I did, didn’t I?”

A good thirty minutes later, after being blindfolded and taken in so many circles that Neal couldn’t keep track of how many left and right turns, Ashe brought him to Peter. The hallway leading to Peter’s room didn’t resemble any hospital that Neal had every visited—more like an office building. Neal briefly wondered if they had left the office at all before he was ushered into the room and he stopped thinking about it entirely.

Peter looked like shit. Ashe hadn’t been bluffing about the collar—there was a strap of thick leather that resembled the cuffs around Peter’s neck. Rusty colored bandages were visible through the thin blanket, dark purple circles under Peter’s eyes.

“Peter,” Neal breathed, stepping forward. All of the fury that he had been barely keeping under control for the past twelve hours bubbled up again—it was Ashe, Ashe and his damn men that did this to Peter. He turned, not even bother to hide his angry expression—

—only to have Ashe tap the remote with a significant look.

Neal swallowed his hateful words, tried to reign in all of his anger.

“Neal,” Peter’s voice was hoarse. Neal turned again, looked at Peter’s face with an expression that must have betrayed all of the guilt and regret that he had been feeling because he felt Peter’s hand reach for his, “Don’t, Neal.”

“Could we—” Neal said to Ashe, pleasantly surprised by exactly how steady his voice was, “—have a few private minutes please?”

Ashe regarded the two of them with something like speculation lighting his eyes but he acquiesced after a moment and stepped out of the room.

“Are you okay, Peter?” Neal asked immediately, “Was the surgeon okay? I don’t know who did it,” and then a little more hysterically, “I don’t even know if they did it in a hospital.”

“I’m fine,” Peter replied, giving Neal an even look, his voice low and soothing, “It’s okay Neal. Calm down.”

Neal swallowed, a weak smile touching his lips, “We should have waited for backup.”

“You couldn’t have seen it coming,” Peter replied seriously, looking Neal straight in the eyes. Neal swallowed—of course Peter would know that he was thinking about Kate, thinking about the months he spent trying to get over his survivor’s guilt, trying to shake the self-blame to little success. Of course Peter would have drawn the parallels too because Peter was like that, because Peter had spent years trying to figure out how his mind worked, then another year as one of his closest friends. And looking at Peter now, listening to his commanding tone—it was easy to believe him, to trust in his words and try to wipe the rest from his mind.

In response, all he could give was something resembling a grateful smile as he bent to examine the cuff on Peter’s wrist. There was a thin line running down one side and a cord leading out of it—obviously the source of the electricity. It meant that Neal could probably cut the cord—

—except Ashe had said something about delivering a shock if they tried to tamper with the thing, which most likely meant that the cuff worked through a capacitor, which made everything harder—

“I’ve already looked at them,” Peter said wearily, “There’s a remote unlocking device—there’s nothing I can do to pry them off.”

Stealing a remote to unlock the cuffs—no, that would be too easy. No doubt Ashe had put a passcode on the unlocking mechanism.

“I’ve learned a bit about our situation,” Neal said, quietly, keeping his voice low in case there were recording devices inside the room. Neal wouldn’t put it past Ashe, “We’re close to Boston. Our captor’s name is Lennox Kensington but he told me to call him Ashe.” A pause and then Neal admitted, “I don’t know where this room is exactly, they blindfolded and disoriented me before they brought me here.”

“He’s banking on you not leaving me behind,” Peter concluded with a note of vague astonishment. His eyebrows furrowed slightly, looking at Neal with an expression of disbelief.

“I’m not—” Neal replied, maybe a little too hotly for what could pass off as his normal tone of voice. He paused for a beat, cleared his throat and said more quietly, more urgently, “I’m not going to leave you behind Peter. Ashe—this guy is dangerous.”

“Promise me,” Peter said, “That the next opportunity you have, you’ll run and call for backup.”

Neal laughed shortly without, “The moment that FBI knocks down the first door, you’ll be dead, I’m sure of it.” He touched the collar on Peter’s neck, eyebrows furrowing at the tiny hiss of pain that escaped through Peter’s nose, before pressing on, “This isn’t just a kinky fashion choice that Ashe likes, Peter—there’s a taser in this collar set to stun drive. I set a toe out of line and Ashe presses a button on a remote and you get shocked.”

“So it’s a shock,” Peter replied, eyes narrowing, “I can take it.”

“Knowing him, there’s probably a syringe of arsenic springloaded in that collar.”

“You don’t know that,” Peter observed.

“Look,” Neal said, his voice holding a note of finality and maybe a touch of anger, his eyes hardening as he locked eyes with Peter, “I’m not willing to take the chance, Peter. I’m not going to do anything that could jeopardize your life. I can’t—” here he broke off for one uncomfortable moment, his words splintering, expression falling as he tried to keep the depths of his desperation from showing. And then he picked back up on the threads of his thoughts, something like a painful smile tugging at his lips, “I’m not leaving here without you.”

Peter watched him, an unreadable expression on his own face. Neal was suddenly afraid that he had given away too much, dropped aces out of his sleeve like a clumsy rookie, because this was all being taped, because if Ashe could see what Peter was seeing now—

“Let me just get more information,” Neal said, “Just give me a little bit of time and we’ll be out of here.”

Peter’s lips thinned for a moment and Neal knew that he hated the condition that he was in, trapped on a bed while he recovered from the gunshot wound, hated that he couldn’t be part of this process. Neal gave him a reassuring smile. Peter closed his eyes and nodded tightly.

Neal was about to turn away when Peter’s voice stopped him, “Neal.”

Neal paused. Peter lifted a hand (Neal didn’t miss the flash of pain that crossed his face) and tapped the side of Neal’s neck. Peter’s expression was dark, “We haven’t discussed one crucial part of this arrangement yet. What does Ashe want from you?”

The touch on his neck made Neal feel ashamed, dirty, like he had been caught doing something that he really shouldn’t have—even in these circumstances but he smiled easily anyway, “Nothing that I can’t give.”

“Neal,” Peter’s voice was low, a warning.

“He just wants the usual,” Neal replied, and if his tone was a little flippant, he couldn’t be faulted for not wanting to think about Ashe’s complicated motives too closely lest he find what Peter was implying, “Been hiring too many incompetent con-men, decided that he needed to add a real one to his payroll.”

Peter’s look said that he didn’t believe Neal was telling the whole truth.

“I had to run a con before he’d let me see you,” Neal finally said, “I had to turn on the charm for the mark.”

Peter’s expression darkened even more, “Neal—“

“I really don’t want to hear it,” Neal interrupted, “There was no other way. I wanted to do it. It was worth it.”

The door swung open and Ashe stood on the other side, smiling pleasantly at the two of them, “I hate to interrupt your conversation, gentlemen, but you’ve got a busy day ahead of you, Neal.”

Neal looked at Peter, his expression tightening at the corners of his eyes, in the line of his mouth. Peter nodded slightly. Neal turned back towards Ashe, stepping forward, hands tucking into the pockets of his pants.

Ashe’s smile only widened. Neal crossed the threshold of the door, throwing a last glance over his shoulder at Peter. Ashe closed the door after him.

They walked a few steps down the hall before Ashe drew out the blindfold and motioned for Neal to stop. As he tied the piece of cloth at the back of Neal’s head, he said casually, “You know, Peter hasn’t been on any painkillers.”

Neal’s thoughts shuttered and it was only the memory of the remote that stopped him from reaching around and asking exactly what Ashe meant by that. He had just been in a room with Peter, talked to him as if everything was normal—

Ashe leaned forward and purred into his ear, “Maybe you’ll be able to earn some for him.”

~

Ashe’s next folder didn’t contain any information about a new mark—just five photographs and a print of Renoir’s Rocky Crags at L'Estaque. Beneath that was an entire sheaf of blueprints, each floor of the Museum of Fine Arts mapped out in architect’s blue. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what Ashe wanted this time.

“Why this one?” Neal asked, forgetting where he was and who he was speaking to, the moment he laid eyes on the print. As far as he could remember, the piece wasn’t even up on display and as far as Renoir’s work was concerned, it wasn’t particularly significant. There was nothing particularly interesting about the painting—just a landscape of grey dotted with shrubs, no focal point, no reason to have painted it; an exercise in futility.

Ashe picked up one of the photos, studying it thoughtfully, head tilting. He smiled widely and looked up at Neal, and for the first time Neal was aware of a certain blankness in Ashe’s expression when his eyes weren’t lit with curiosity—like he had been taught how to smile but never how to be happy. “I like it,” he said simply and set the photograph down.

Neal closed the folder. Ashe looked back at his computer in blatant dismissal of Neal, “You have twelve hours. I don’t want this splashed across the Boston Globe tomorrow morning.”

The lackey of the day was younger than the one had been yesterday and a good deal less confident. Neal flashed him a smile as the man fell into step with him, causing him to scowl somewhat and glance at him distrustfully—but Neal detected a hint of hesitance in the pause before his scowl, a sign of being flustered evident in the clench of his hands. He wondered what Ashe had said to all of his unofficial keepers, how he had warned them about Neal, if he had taught them never to trust the ex-felon.

Still, this was a weakness in the chain of command that maybe he could exploit, pry at slowly, very carefully. His thoughts flashed back to old bandages beneath thin sheets, a wince of pain across Peter’s face and the way he had said, promise me.

“Do you like art?” Neal asked casually, tucking the folder into the crook of his arm as they waited for the elevator. The lackey looked at him suspiciously, but Neal only offered a small grin, like he was letting the man in on a private joke. He didn’t respond at all—but that didn’t deter Neal.

“Not as much as your boss, huh?” Neal asked rhetorically as they stepped into the elevator. The lackey still didn’t say anything.

But he didn’t tell Neal to shut up either.

Thirty minutes later, Neal had set up a canvas stand in an abandoned corner office, rifling through the art supplies that the lackey had procured from somewhere—Neal wasn’t particularly concerned as long as they were the right colors. Years ago, back when he had done all of this for real, had taken painstaking care with every single one of his forgeries, he might have matched the minerals, the exact hues. But once more, he had a twelve hour timeframe, a significant portion of which would have to consist of actually planning the damn heist.

“Your boss is a pretty impatient man, isn’t he?” Neal asked glancing at the lackey out of the corner of his eye, and grinning, dabbing a wide brush in blue oil paint, “What’s your name?”

The man didn’t respond, just looked at him with a skeptically raised eyebrow as if daring him to ask again.

“I get it,” Neal said, swiping blue across the canvas, “No fraternizing with the enemy. Funny how we’re both working for the same guy, right?”

There was a long pause. And then the man said in a tone that indicated that he couldn’t believe that he was actually speaking, “Tim.”

Neal smiled widely, “It’s a pleasure to meet you Tim.”

~

Neal was working on the actual rocks of the rocky crags, detailing shadows with a deep blue when Ashe walked in.

Tim didn’t have a camcorder on him like the pervious lackey who had followed Neal around, just an entirely serious expression and faltering words whenever he replied to Neal, as if he was doing something that he wasn’t supposed to be doing and waiting for someone to walk in and tell him off for doing it. Neal learned that Tim had two daughters at home, one in preschool and the other in kindergarten and a wife who never left the house. Neal learned that Tim was unusually silent on the subject matter of Ashe which meant that he was probably terrified of the man (with good reason). Neal told him pointless anecdotes about his previous life as a con, filling the silence with a low soothing tone, as if they were old friends just catching up on the times.

He had to make Tim like him at least, had to make some sort of connection, make the man trust him a little bit before he could start working on the sympathy card, before he could start showing flashes of vulnerability. And then he’d ask where Peter was, ask for help because he’d have Tim converted to his side. It was easy, he had done it a million times before.

But he had barely finished the general shapes of the rocks, had barely started to forge a connection at all and in the midst of telling Tim about a heist in Rome when the door slammed open and Ashe strode in. Tim jumped to his feet, eyes wide as if expecting the blond man to whirl around on him and demand to know exactly what he was doing—but instead Ashe just stepped forward and grabbed Neal by the upper arm, jerking him away from the canvas.

“It looks like you’ve pushed our schedule ahead by a few days,” Ashe said in a dangerously calm voice. He wasn’t smiling, his normally pleasant expression now replaced with a hard stare, pale eyes glinting like stone knives. Neal’s stomach sank and he thought about Peter—if Ashe was this mad, did that mean he had already pressed the button? And how many times?

Ashe stared into Neal’s eyes for a moment, and if he was relishing in the panic and fear he saw written there, his expression didn’t betray it. And then he turned and jerked Neal forward towards the door, unconcerned at the way that the palette and paintbrush dropped to the ground, leaving painted smears across the carpet. Ashe’s voice was level, almost bored as he addressed Tim the lackey without even looking at him, “Go collect the core group. We’re leaving.”

As it turned out, leaving meant having both hands handcuffed to a chair in a private jet while Ashe sat next to him and snapped orders at everyone around him. It wasn’t until the plane had taken off and they were an hour into the flight did Ashe finally set down his phone and looked at Neal. Neal hadn’t tried to pick the handcuffs—what was the point? Ashe would have noticed if he had suddenly got up and walked away—and where the hell could he walk to?

“Macmillan committed suicide,” Ashe said conversationally.

Neal’s stomach dropped—shit. Was it because of—of course it was because of him. It was because he thought he had won the lottery and because he had been duped into throwing away his entire life—what the hell else could Neal have expected? He might as well as have held a gun up to Edward’s head and pulled the goddamn trigger.

The guilt must have shown on his face because Ashe laughed softly, a sort of mocking sound that was humorless and dry, “If I were you, Neal, I would be more concerned with what I found on Macmillan’s phone than I would be about his death.”

Neal breathed out—he had erased the damn text message, so what the hell?

“I expected a more thorough attempt from you,” Ashe said, “I thought that you would have been smarter than this. So far, Neal, you haven’t been living up to my expectations and that makes me very disappointed.”

He lifted his own phone, showing the screen to Neal. It was Elizabeth’s catering webpage.

Neal hadn’t erased the history in the browser.

There was a long silence as Ashe set the phone back down onto the table in front of him, fingers folding over it. He was doing it just to let the full ramifications of what Neal had missed run through Neal’s head, no doubt. And then he said very quietly, “Do you remember what I said I would do if I ever caught you attempting to communicate with anyone from your old life, Neal?”

Neal didn’t say anything in response to that, sure that if he opened his mouth, he would just empty the contents of his stomach onto the expensive upholstery and no doubt Ashe wouldn’t be pleased with that either.

“Twenty minutes after you left my office, I get the news that my partner hung himself,” Ashe informed Neal eyes never leaving Neal’s face, “Forty minutes after that, I learn that the FBI has launched a full investigation on the circumstances of my partner’s suicide. Could you imagine how surprised I was, Neal?”

Neal didn’t respond, didn’t know what he could say to defuse the situation. Ashe wasn’t dumb, hadn’t particularly displayed any vulnerabilities thus far—just a sadistic streak a mile wide. Any lies he could feed the man could be debunked too easily and he still had Peter—Ashe had the upper hand in this relationship and they both knew it.

“So,” Ashe said reaching into his pocket before setting the remote on the table between the two of them, his voice soft and flat as he repeated his previous words, “Do you remember what I said I would do?”

Silence on Neal’s behalf.

“I’m flying him in after we land,” Ashe said, his voice hardening slightly, “You can watch, Neal.”

Neal shook his head, not wanting to open his mouth, a pained expression on his face.

“I’m sorry,” Ashe corrected himself, “I should have been more explicit. You are going to watch, Neal.”

“I—” Neal said, and he hated how weak he sounded in that moment, the syllable practically breaking even as he said it and he really didn’t need to show Ashe any of this vulnerability. He breathed in once, just to compose himself again and his voice settled into a reasonable tone, “There must be something else you want—” his voice lowered and it took on a suggestive tone as he lowered his eyes, “—something else that might interest you more.”

Ashe looked at him and for a second Neal was terrified that he wouldn’t take the bait—but then he smiled so wide that it resembled a leer. He leaned forward, his head tilting and his voice lilting derisively, “Oh, how noble Neal.” He reached forward, brushing the pad of his thumb across Neal’s jawline, his leer dampening into a smirk, “What makes you think that I would be interested in what you have to offer, Neal?”

Neal turned his head slightly, willing himself to stay sharp, stay focused, not to think about what he was doing but instead to think about what he had to accomplish. Ashe was just another one of his marks—he could do this in his goddamned sleep. He took Ashe’s thumb between his lips, tongue swirling briefly over the fingertip, causing Ashe to stiffen for a moment and for his breathing to still.

“You aren’t saying no,” Neal observed, wishing that his hands were free so he could show Ashe exactly how much he wanted Neal. Neal hadn’t been planning to bank on this until much later, hadn’t been planning to play this game until the scales were tipped more in his favor—but he didn’t have a choice now, not with Peter’s life on the line.

But Ashe laughed softly and he pulled his hand back, touching a finger to the remote. Neal’s eyes instantly tracked the movement.

“Neal,” Ashe said very quietly, giving Neal an appraising look, “Let’s not forget who has all of the power here, shall we?”

Neal’s stomach twisted, the handcuffs chafing at his wrists as he strained out of his seat, eyes intent on Ashe’s face. His expression had gone from the coyness he reserved for marks into a vague sort of desperation, “Please.”

Ashe paused, eyes raking down Neal’s form, the tension in his shoulders, the anxiety in the line of his spine, leaning forward and off balance—the exquisite pain in brilliantly blue eyes. Ashe reached out a hand, tangling it into Neal’s hair before leaning forward, pressing a gentle kiss at the corner Neal’s lips.

Neal closed his eyes, willing himself to relax, not to feel sick, to focus on the game because nothing else mattered.

“You’re so pretty when you beg, Neal,” Ashe told him softly, smoothing back his hair before kissing him on the cheek chastely and whispering in his ear, “I’ve known about you for a long time Neal. I have acquaintances all around the world, Neal. Some of them own very large galleries of art. And some of them have told me about a certain blue-eyed thief who came waltzing into their lives, stealing their hearts along with their expensive paintings.” He had a hand on Neal’s neck, thumb pressing into the bruise that Ed had left.

“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, Neal,” Ashe said, “But then you had to go get yourself caught, didn’t you, Neal?” His fingers slid down, along the juncture of neck and shoulder, slipping under Neal’s shirt, “And I was so disappointed, Neal. I thought I had misjudged what an interesting character you were.”

Neal stayed very still, he needed to relax.

“But then you escaped from jail with four months left? That was quite an interesting feat, Neal. I decided that I hadn’t misjudged you after all,” he started unbuttoning Neal’s shirt, speaking all the while, “I thought about taking Kate myself when you started your work as a consultant, you know. But she got taken care of pretty quick there, didn’t she?”

Neal wanted to snarl, wanted to lash out—Ashe didn’t have to right to talk about Kate so flippantly like that, but he had to play the game, couldn’t change Ashe’s mind about taking him instead of taking a scalpel to Peter.

“I knew that afterwards, the key to getting you to cooperate was Peter Burke,” Ashe slid the shirt off of Neal’s shoulders, leaving his torso exposed without bothering to unlock his handcuffs. Ashe himself hadn’t made any movement to undress himself and Neal understood—this was just another show of power.

“You should see the way you look at him,” Ashe murmured, absently running his thumb along the pulse in Neal’s jugular, “Like he’s your personal salvation and greatest temptation, all wrapped up in one.” He laughed shortly, close enough that Neal could feel the vibration, “How fucked up do you have to be, Neal, to fall in love with the man who took your freedom, who put you in jail?”

Neal had his eyes tightly shut—there was no way that this man, this man who didn’t even know him could see through him that easily. He had never even interacted with this man before in his life, he had to be bluffing, just saying things in hopes that one of them would strike a nerve—

(and it fucking did)

“Do you think—” and Neal heard a rustle and an unzipping—Christ, he knew what would come next. Ashe’s hand shifted from his neck to the back of his head, “Open your eyes Neal.”

Neal hesitated for only a moment before he did as he was told. Ashe was standing before him, pulling a half erect penis from his boxers. He smiled pleasantly at Neal as if this were just a business transaction of sorts—stepping closing and guiding Neal’s head down so that the tip of his dick nudged against Neal’s lips. Neal opened his mouth obediently because that was no doubt what Ashe wanted—only to have Ashe shove the entire length in, causing him to choke momentarily, gag reflex kicking in. It had been a long time since he had given anybody a blowjob and it was taking longer than usual for him to adjust.

“Do you think—” Ashe repeated almost conversationally as if he weren’t fucking Neal’s mouth, “—do you think Peter would let you suck his dick like this? Think he’d let you get on your knees like the whore you want to be and suck him off?”

Neal tried to block Ashe out, blocked out everything that was happening, focused on the fact that he was doing this for a purpose. He didn’t have his hands to work with, just let Ashe violate his mouth however many times he wanted because each time he was saving Peter from a sadistic smile, from the stroke of a knife. He was doing this for a reason.

(Except deep down inside he knew this was how it was always going to play out, Ashe sounded like he knew Neal too well, knew that he would offer himself up instead of Peter and the good mark of a con-man was always getting the mark to want to do everything the con-man wanted all on their own.)

He thought about a white space, an emptiness so vast that it stretched out to infinity. He thought about that white space until Ashe pulled out of his mouth and came, right across his cheekbone, into his hair. And then he thought about it some more, a place where he could lose himself and just not be at all.

Ashe looked at him, smiled, and picked up his phone and remote off the table. Then he said, “Try getting some sleep—you’ve got a long day ahead of you,” and moved away.

Neal had no idea where he went and he was afraid that if he thought about anything except that white space for too long, he would go crazy and do something he’d later regret—and there would be consequences for Peter.

~

They landed somewhere far away—someplace that took at least a good ten hours of air travel. When they unlocked his handcuffs, Neal picked the dried semen from his cheek with a casual movement and shrugged his shirt back on with an absentminded fluid grace. He managed a smile for Tim the lackey when the man held out a coat for Neal, mumbling something like, “It’s cold out there,” when Neal accepted it with quiet words of gratitude.

It was only later that Neal realized with a sort of detached morbid amusement that Tim was trying his best not to stare at the semen still in his hair. He ran a hand through the short locks, getting rid of most of it. He needed to shower.

They didn’t bother to handcuff him to anything during the car ride, nor did they feel any particular need to blindfold him. Neal got a good look at the signs—somewhere in Russia, and by the architecture of the buildings, most likely St. Petersburg. He wondered if Peter had been on the plane that had carried Neal here from Boston, or if he was still in transit. He mostly kept his eyes out the windows because looking at Ashe or anybody else, really, was just uncomfortable for him.

They arrived at a rather dilapidated looking building in the midst of the city. Ashe smiled at the sight of it and said in a manner that didn’t address anybody in particular, “Home sweet home.”

They filed out of the car, Ashe calling out orders in a commanding tone. Neal turned his face into the wind, felt the bite of the cold swiping across his nose, his cheeks, and looked into the clear morning light peeking over the spindles of buildings. For the first time, he became aware of the absence of the weight around his ankle, wondered if he started running now, if Ashe would follow, if anyone would chase him. He could disappear into Russia, pick up on a new identity so that nobody could ever find him again, be a free man and do whatever he’d like.

All he had to do was run. Run and call Jones, Cruz, Elizabeth, anybody at all and tell them to intercept flights landing at St. Petersburg—and then he could disappear forever.

Ashe suddenly glanced over at him, as if reading his thoughts. Facing away from them, hands in the pockets of his long coat, staring blankly at the rising sun—it wasn’t difficult to interpret the thoughts that must have been passing through Neal’s head at that moment. Ashe stepped forward, pressing a hand into the small of Neal’s back, his lips close to Neal’s ear.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

Neal didn’t respond, didn’t give Ashe the luxury of an opening with which to bait him.

“Go ahead, Neal. None of us are going to stop you.”

Neal knew that Ashe was only taunting him to see how he would respond, that they both knew Neal wouldn’t run, not with Peter’s life dangling on a thin wire between the two of them. Because if he honestly ran now—what would be on that second plane landing in St. Petersburg? What would be the first thing to greet the agents as the door swung open? Peter’s corpse, one more fallen in the line of duty (because of Neal’s selfishness, because of Neal’s weakness).

“Come on,” Ashe said, turning back towards the building.

Neal looked one last time at the eastern sky before obediently following.

~

“I have an associate,” Ashe said and Neal got the sense of déjà vu. He had heard this story before, he knew how it ended.

“He’s been trying to play me for quite a while,” Ashe settled into an armchair in the parlor. The building had turned out to be a house, halfhearted refurbishing attempts contrasting disjointedly with the peeling wallpaper the color of sun-faded blue. The furniture was dusty, scorchmarks littered the once-beautiful hardwood flooring and the smell of stale smoke lingered in the air. Neal didn’t sit, just stood off to the side as Ashe addressed him, letting Ashe’s men buffet him around if they needed to pass by him.

“I don’t like him,” Ashe confessed after a moment’s worth of silence, looking up at Neal and smiling as if he had just told Neal a big secret, “Have you ever killed a man before, Neal?”

Neal prided himself on the fact that he could still look Ashe in the eyes, even if it made him uncomfortable.” We both know the answer to that question,” Neal replied quietly, “And I’m not about to start.”

Ashe’s head tilted as if considering whether or not to see exactly how far he could push Neal. Neal stared back, resolution tensing his jaw, arms folded protectively over his chest.

“I suppose that’s why I have hitmen,” Ashe conceded, but he lifted a folder from his briefcase nonetheless and held it out to Neal, “Anton Tarasov likes his thin ballerinas and intellectual conversation.” A sly smirk, “I hear he also has a weakness for pretty boys.”

Neal swallowed, considered not taking the folder for a few moments before he reached out and plucked it from Ashe’s fingertips.

“Bring him around to the Hermitage Theater by nine tonight,” Ashe said, “Front entrance and stay on his left side.” It sounded like a dismissal.

“I need a shower,” Neal suddenly said, and felt absurd for the statement. He didn’t need to ask Ashe for permission to do anything. He hurriedly added, “And new clothes. And I want to see Peter.”

Ashe eyed him with something edging on disdain, a hint of amusement curling at his lips. His pale eyes dropped first to Neal’s mouth and then deliberately, slid across Neal’s cheek, before looking back into Neal’s eyes—and a hot flare of shame curled in Neal’s stomach. Ashe didn’t say anything in response, just waved his hand at Neal as if he were bothering him with too many trivialities, as if Neal were a toy that had lost much of its novelty. This must have been a signal because Tim stepped up behind Neal, settling a hand at the back of his elbow and leading him away, up the stairs. Neal’s jaw clenched.

Tim didn’t say anything, just handed him a towel and a bar of soap before gesturing to the bathroom. Neal managed a smile for Tim before stepping into the shower and closing the door after him. No doubt had it been the other guard, Neal would have been forced to take a shower with the guard in the bathroom, most likely videotaping the entire process. Tim was a stroke of luck in this whole disaster.

Neal turned on the shower and immediately started going through the medicine cabinet, hoping that the ring of the running shower would hide the shifting of bottles. He wasn’t banking on much hope. The bottles were labeled in English, thank god, and he had almost given up on finding anything at all when he found vicodin in the very back, made out to a Richard Francesco, expired for over a year. There were still a few pills left and Neal didn’t wish that there was more because it was a miracle that there had been any at all. He quickly stripped and got into the shower, cleaning himself as quickly and efficiently as possible.

When he stepped out of the shower with the towel wrapped around his waist, he took a look at himself in the mirror. It felt as if a stranger was staring back at him, a stranger with his blue eyes, same nose, shape of mouth. But his hair was gone, emphasizing the line of his jaw, the slope of his forehead. He looked older than he had ever looked—but maybe that was the tiredness in his eyes. It was easy to pretend that it wasn’t Neal Caffrey undergoing this ordeal, just somebody who looked and acted just like him.

Tim was waiting outside with a fresh change of clothes, a suit made by a Russian designer that Neal was too tired to recall. He pointed at a bedroom door and Neal obediently went in to change. Uncurling his hand from where he had been holding his towel up, Neal counted the four vicodin tablets and slipped them into a pocket on his new suit.

When he emerged again, he could detect a certain pity barely hidden in Tim’s eyes and his voice was low whenever he spoke to Neal, like he was afraid that if he talked too loudly, he would bowl Neal over, shatter what he perceived to be fragile nerves. Neal had half a mind to tell him to stop treating him like glass—but remembered he was trying to play the sympathy card and instead spoke just as quietly back.

His plan was starting to look up. The FBI wasn’t stupid—they would track Ashe down, come to St. Petersburg. Neal just needed to bide them some time.

~

Neal truly believed that Anton Tarasov was a bad man—it was the only way that he could justify what he was doing now. He had gone through the folder thoroughly, heard Anton’s speculated itinerary for the day, and was still shaky on how exactly he was going to pull off his plan. And it didn’t help that his mind kept drifting to Peter, wondering if he had landed yet, if he was okay, how painful the plane trip must have been for him.

His first stop was the Hermitage Theater where he purchased two tickets to see Swan Lake. He wasn’t sure if it was luck or Ashe’s planning that there was a showing that night. Tim handed over the money and the teller looked speculatively between the two of them as she handed over the tickets.

There was a dinner party that evening, held at a private residence. Ashe seemed fairly certain that Anton would be in attendance—and a quick glance at what Ashe knew about the guest list revealed that all of St. Petersburg’s most important people would be in attendance, several of whom Neal had stolen from, some of whom, several times. Ashe had been given an invitation, which was now tucked into a pocket on the inside of his suit jacket. Years ago, he would have killed for the opportunity—now he was half dreading the event.

He sat in the parked car and stared at the folder for a good fifteen minutes, rereading the lines about how Anton Tarasov had been the primary suspect in two murders and a kidnapping—but how he had always managed to get charges dropped, slipped away like a magician into the smoke, all evidence vaporized with the power of money. He thought about the girl he had kidnapped, how she must have felt trapped in his home, if she had hoped for a rescue that didn’t come until it was too late.

(and did not think if he was clinging to that same futile hope, didn’t allow himself to doubt for a moment that Ashe had evaded the FBI, that they wouldn’t know to come to St. Petersburg, if Ashe had vaporized all evidence with enough money.)

“Do you need anything else?” Tim asked. Neal closed the folder and looked up with a smile and a shake of his head. Tim started up the car and started driving.

Twenty minutes later, the two of them breezed past the reception with a flash of the invitation. Neal willed himself to relax, to settle back into that familiar persona. If he didn’t think too closely about it, he could almost pretend that he was here on his own free will, trying to charm his way into somebody’s home.

He scanned the crowd for Anton—but didn’t have to make the effort at all. As he was standing at the bar, chatting rather absently with a woman who communicated in flirtatious smiles and broken English, Anton stepped up, wrapping a hand around her tiny waist, giving Neal a searching look. Neal panicked for a moment, unsure if Anton had already prejudged him as an enemy. But then Neal was offering a hand with his most charming smile, “Anton, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Ashe speaks very highly of you.”

Anton’s suspicious expression melted away, a laugh replacing the frown and he shook Neal’s hand. When Anton grinned, it was sharklike, “I have no doubt that Ashe said some interesting things about me. You must be his latest toy.” His eyes swept down Neal’s body, the sharp lines of his suit before looking back into Neal’s blue eyes and his expression was bordering on a leer, appreciation clearly evident in his expression.

Neal’s stomach twisted—Ashe apparently kept similar company and he was even less thrilled about having to charm this man. Anton unwound his arm from around the woman, seeming to dismiss her for the time being, eyes intent on Neal’s face. Neal swallowed though didn’t let anything else betray his anxiety, kept the smile on his face as Anton approached. The woman gave him a look, hurt and confused—and when Anton didn’t make any indication that he was still interested in her for the time being, she slipped away into the crowd, leaving just the two of them.

“Is this just a taunt?” Anton murmured, stepping a little too close for comfort, his nose almost touching Neal’s ear, “Ashe knows exactly how I like my boys and you fit the bill quite well, my dear.”

“He gave me these,” Neal said, fanning out the two tickets to the ballet. Seven PM tickets—no doubt Neal could persuade Anton to leave a little early if necessary.

“What a generous gift,” Anton replied, though his eyes were still on Neal’s face. He hadn’t looked at the tickets at all, “I’ve never known Ashe to share so openly.” He grinned, reaching out to grasp Neal’s wrist and Neal let him. The man didn’t even know his name and he didn’t seem particularly interested in finding out.

Maybe it was better that way.

~

When Neal returned to the house, he couldn’t get the image out of his head.

One moment, Anton had been a man full of life, his lips curling in anticipation, lust darkening his eyes every time he looked at Neal. And he had turned his head to speak to Neal—and there was a gunshot and blood, bright red rising like a halo around the man’s head (later Neal would think that he had imagined the halo, had imagined the blood rising like a shining tide in the gold reflection of the entrance lights) and he was suddenly dead weight, eyes rolling back into his head as he fell and Neal just wanted to be sick.

He had turned and emptied the contents of his stomach, pressing his forehead against the cold wall of the theater as people around him screamed. A moment later, he could hear the wail of sirens in the distance and he knew he had to get going. It wasn’t hard to disappear in the chaos of the moment and Tim was waiting with a car just around the corner.

When Neal entered the house through the front doors, specks of blood on his left arm ruining the suit, trying his very best to minimized the haunted expression that threatened to break his composure, Ashe grinned hugely and held up the blindfold, “Time to visit Peter, Neal.”

Neal wanted to laugh and then be sick again because of course Ashe would time everything like this—because Ashe liked seeing the pain in his pretty blue eyes, had practically explicitly told him. And wouldn’t it be fun to see how Neal try to justify this, try to justify what he had done to the FBI agent? Wouldn’t it be fun to see the FBI agent’s expression go from shocked to hard and angry—and wouldn’t it be fun to watch Neal Caffrey break when Peter Burke ultimately rejected him?

He made a halfhearted attempt at shrugging off the jacket, hide the blood—but Ashe stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, amused smile actually lighting his pale eyes now, “No, Neal, leave it on. You look better with it on.” And then he was being blindfolded and ushered into a car, Ashe’s hand pressed against the top of his head as he helped Neal duck through the door—like he was being arrested all over again.

When they pulled off his blindfold, he was already standing in Peter’s room, a tiny space with just a bed and a chair and a table, lit by the fluorescent glow of a naked lightbulb. Peter was sitting up, eyes going from Neal’s face to his jacket and then back to his face. The door closed behind Neal with a click except Ashe was still in the room, looking from Neal to Peter expectantly, amused expectation written all over his face.

“What did you do, Neal?” Peter’s voice was quiet but not angry, and he asked it in a way that indicated he was afraid of the answer. Maybe not afraid of what Neal had done, but afraid of what it meant for Neal, of the consequences he would have to carry for the rest of his life.

Neal tried to smile. He knew that he needed to downplay the entire situation—

“How does it feel to know that Neal killed two men to keep you alive?” Ashe asked, noting with a sort of satisfaction the immediate way that Neal’s eyes immediately closed, too scared to look at Peter. He stepped forward, hand coming up to rest at the back of Neal’s neck (and was interested to discover the way that Peter’s eyes immediately honed in on that one gesture, the tightening of his jaw as he glared hard at Ashe, even in the face of Ashe’s words). His voice was light, as he added, “Sorry Neal, I lack the virtue of patience.”

“Please,” Neal said, knowing that Ashe would respond well to the desperation in his voice. Even if Peter became more concerned, he had to get Ashe out of the room, “Please, just give me a few moments alone.”

Ashe paused, looking from Neal to Peter as he absently stroked the nape of Neal’s neck with a thumb, not bothering to hide what he was doing. He was delighted with the way that Peter’s face had taken on an almost territorial expression, the fury evident in his eyes.

“Of course,” Ashe purred, letting his hand slide down and linger at the small of Neal’s back before he opened the door and stepped out.

Neal turned his eyes on Peter, something like terror starting to build up on his face and Peter wished that he were in better condition wished that he could stand up, get his gun and kill the man who had put Neal into this position.

“Neal,” he said very softly motioning for Neal to come closer, trying to make it very clear that he wasn’t angry—at least not with him. Neal stepped forward so that he was right next to Peter, his hands at his sides but his shoulders hunched defensively. He looked at Peter like he wanted to tell him a million things, a million justifications but couldn’t say a single one of them, he looked at Peter like he wanted to bolt.

“What happened?” Peter asked because it was less directing than is it true? and he wanted Neal to have every opportunity to explain what had happened without Ashe’s words tainting everything. Except Peter could see the panic in Neal’s eyes, like he already knew that he was condemned without saying a single word.

“My first mark committed suicide,” Neal said very quietly, very carefully, “And I had to bring the second mark to where Ashe was planning to shoot him.”

Peter let out a breath that he didn’t know he had been holding, and it tugged painfully at his stitches. He refused to wince though—whatever physical pain he was going through now was no worse than the psychological trauma that Neal had no doubt undergone.

“Neal,” Peter said, lifting a hand and setting it on Neal’s shoulder, catching his eyes, “Whatever you’ve been doing, whatever he wants you to do—none of this is worth it. Next time you see a chance, call Jones, call Cruz—anybody.”

“We just need a little more time,” Neal replied, the hesitance in his voice shifting into a resolute determination, “The FBI knows we’re connected to the suicide case—I sent Elizabeth a text on his phone—they’ll be here soon and we’ll just put this all behind us, yeah?”

“Neal,” Peter’s voice was patient, “You don’t have any more time. You’re killing yourself—maybe not physically but mentally, you’re killing yourself. You’re doubling back on everything you ever believed in—Ashe is making you help him hurt people. Nothing is worth this—I’m not worth this.”

Neal stepped back away from underneath Peter’s hand, his expression furious and his voice hard, “Don’t you fucking tell me how much you’re worth.”

Peter stared at him, alarmed.

“When Kate died,” Neal said, his voice low and angry, “I thought I had lost everything. And it was you that brought me back, showed me that there was more to life worth living for. You saved me.” His words were terse and direct (how many times had Peter heard Neal wax poetic?) and he stared hard at Peter, hands tensing at his sides, “So don’t you tell me that you’re not worth saving.”

And Peter had no words for that, just felt a tightness in his chest and he held out a hand and said, “Neal.”

Neal looked at him, his eyes bright with some kind of unidentifiable emotion that he blinked away and Peter wanted to reel him in and protect him from the rest of the world. He had never in his entire life felt more helpless than in that one moment.

“I got you this,” Neal stepping forward, angling himself so that his back was blocking the door. He dropped something into Peter’s outstretched hand and Peter closed around it instinctively. “By the time you run out, I hope we’ll be out of here.”

Peter could feel the outline of the pills in his palm. Even out there, Neal had been thinking about him and Peter couldn’t find words to express his awe, his gratitude, this unspoken thing between them, everything he was feeling. And even if he had never been particularly concerned with the fact that he wasn’t very good with emotions before, even if he had always believed emotional intelligence to be reserved for women, he had never before in his life regretted so much his inability to say everything he wanted to.

“Neal,” Peter said again, hoping that Neal could understand with that one word.

Neal smiled at him, and Peter felt a stinging at the back of his eyes.

Neal’s head dropped as he lifted a hand to tip an imaginary hat at Peter, “I’ll be around.”

~

His fourth folder was Matisse: Les toits de Collioure. Another landscape painting, this time located in the Hermitage (honestly the last place Neal wanted to visit at the moment). Neal had never successfully looted the Hermitage before, despite multiple attempts. Security was tight and he still didn’t have any accomplices that he could really trust, and a seventy-two hour timeframe, which meant that he was basically looking at the impossible.

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out,” Ashe said flippantly with a smile before Neal left his makeshift office.

He spread the blueprints across the dining room table and sat in front of them, poring over the layout of each floor, looking for a weak point. He had spent hours doing just this, years ago—and he remembered it being just as frustrating, though he had never felt this anxious, never this disheartened. It was an impossible task and even with his track record of miracle heists, Neal knew when his luck was pushed too far.

It was late at night, when it was just him and Tim sitting in the dining room, the chandelier above the table dimly lighting the papers below when Neal dropped his head into his hands and just sat there, very still. He was tired, hadn’t slept for more than three hours at a time and had to stay one step ahead of his mind in case all of the hysteria, everything that he had been doing caught up to him. And it was hard to keep going, hard to keep working on such an impossible task when he already knew what the outcome would be, when he couldn’t see any way to work the heist to his advantage.

It had been four days since he and Peter had disappeared. He didn’t know much about violent crimes, about kidnappings, but there was that saying, wasn’t there? That after twenty-four hours, the chances of finding the kidnapped dropped to very slim? What about after four days? Was the FBI even still looking for them?

Tim shifted uncomfortably across from him, on the verge of perhaps speaking, maybe reaching out a hand and touching Neal on the shoulder. Because no matter how much Ashe had warned them about Neal Caffrey and his silver tongue, his quick wit, and exactly how he might try to play them, Tim had never signed up for this, had never signed up to watch Ashe break this man.

“Tim,” Neal said, so quietly that Tim was unsure if he had actually heard him or just imagined the word. Except then he was looking up at Tim, his eyes rimmed with red, his shoulders bunched together, hands curled in protectively against himself and Tim couldn’t even look at him anymore and not feel ashamed that he wasn’t brave enough to stop. Neal’s voice was soft, almost broken and Tim didn’t even think for a moment that he was being played because the hurt in his voice, the pain in his voice, it was too real to be faked, “Please Tim, I have to know where he is.”

Tim didn’t respond for a long moment, just sat in his chair very still. Neal thought that maybe Tim hadn’t heard, maybe he was wracked by indecision—except then Tim turned his head just the slightest bit. He didn’t say anything, just stared straight down the hallway at a door to the left—it was the door leading down to the basement—and it was an answer.

“Thank you,” Neal breathed.

~

The morning, Ashe sent word through Tim that he was expected back at the house by ten. He didn’t say for what and Neal spent the rest of his scouting trip to the Hermitage on edge. He wandered along the rows of art, until he found Les toits de Collioure hanging unobtrusively in a corner. Nobody seemed particularly interested in looking at it except Neal. Neal spent a good ten minutes just staring at the painting, taking in the splotches of color, the vivid colors used, the random interspersions of green amongst the orange. He looked at it and tried to think about what the mind of a man who wanted to steal such a painting would be like, why Ashe was so interested in stealing jarring landscapes.

Ashe’s smiles reminded him of white noise, of the static behind every transmission, ground clutter. He had a pleasant tone that lied and lied and lied.

Tim touched his shoulder. Neal turned and left, no closer to figuring out his captor as he had been at the start of it all.

When he arrived back at the house, Ashe was already waiting for him. He looked up from his laptop, surveying Neal for a few moments before saying dismissively, “Take a shower, Neal.” Neal waited for a moment longer, in case Ashe had anything to add before obediently walking up the stairs.

He took a shower mechanically, forehead pressed against the ceramic, thinking about when and if Peter was going to be okay to walk, to get the hell out of there, if taking several vicodin at once would dull the pain long enough to make the trek up the basement stairs. They could do it later today, after everyone had gone to sleep—maybe he could find sleeping pills to slip into Tim’s drink.

There was still the problem of the collar and the cuffs. Neal could steal the one that Ashe kept on him, see what he could do to figure out what the passcode might be. He had been watching carefully the last few days as Ashe typed on his computer, whenever he could and already had a couple of potential combinations. And worst came to worst, he could just cut the cord and hope that Ashe hadn’t really put springloaded arsenic in the collar. With Ashe’s apparent fascination with him, he figured that Ashe wouldn’t be so stupid as to put Peter’s life in such high accidental risk when Peter was the only reason Neal was still around.

He rummaged briefly though the medicine cabinet again, palmed a valium, and pulled on his clothes before turning off the shower.

“Much better,” Ashe said when Neal stepped in front of him a second time. He shut his laptop and rose to his feet, circling around Neal, reaching out and running his hand through the damp hair at the back of Neal’s head. Neal didn’t move, just watched Ashe when he stepped into view and looked out the window when he wasn’t.

“Would you like some brunch?” Ashe asked innocently, taking him by the hand, and pulling him forward, as if he were a child or a lover. Neal was hungry, but he wasn’t particularly interested in eating with Ashe—though he didn’t say anything, just followed Ashe towards the kitchen. Ashe seemed to have something planned and Neal wasn’t particularly keen on finding out what.

There was a basket of fruit in the kitchen along with a bottle of wine. Ashe forced him to sit down before busying himself with opening the wine and pouring each one of them a glass. Neal watched with a crease between his eyebrows as he realized that this was partially the reason why Ashe was so dangerous, this unpredictability. Setting the a glass down in front of Neal, Ashe took a seat across from him, a light smile touching his lips and he looked for all of the world, to truly be in good humor.

Neal didn’t touch his glass, just looked Ashe straight in the eyes and asked, “What do you want?”

Ashe laughed lightly, pale eyes sharpening in the morning light filtering in through the kitchen window, “I can’t treat my guest to a nice meal?”

Neal smiled, though it was thin and humorless, “We both know I’m not your guest, Ashe.”

Ashe’s smile faded only briefly, “Please don’t wound me like that, Neal.”

The irony wasn’t lost on Neal, but he didn’t spend long thinking about the words. He let his fingers curl around the stem of the wineglass, but didn’t lift it to his lips, didn’t want to drink anything that had come from Ashe himself. He looked Ashe in the eyes and repeated his original question, “What do you want.”

Ashe contemplated him for a moment over the rim of his own wineglass before he set it down and said in a low voice, “I want to give you a nice meal at least before I take you upstairs and fuck you.”

Neal dropped his hand from his wineglass, his eyes sliding from Ashe’s eyes to over his shoulder, his jaw clenching slightly. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting. Was no even an option any more?

Ashe pushed a plate of fruit towards him, “Please, Neal, eat.”

Neal looked from the fruit to Ashe’s face, and then he said, “Why don’t we just get this over with?”

Ashe’s head tilted to the right as if not comprehending Neal’s tone of voice. And then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the remote, causing a spike of panic to rise in Neal’s stomach. He looked at Neal very meaningfully and pressed the button for a few moments—leaving only a useless strangled no! caught in Neal’s throat. Maybe he half imagined it, maybe there was actually a sound travelling through the floorboards, but he could have sworn he heard a pained groan.

“Now, Neal, I realize that I’ve been very lenient with you,” Ashe said, and his voice had lost its previous lightness—now Ashe just sounded bored, “But I can assure you that your current attitude is not making me very happy.”

Neal swallowed, his hand clenching and unclenching under the table. And then he said, in a considerably more interested tone, “What makes you happy, Ashe?”

“It would make me happy,” Ashe said very patiently, “If you ate some of this fruit, had some of this wine and told me how much you liked it.”

Neal picked up the wineglass, let himself be immersed by the scent for a few brief moments before taking a sip. It really was good wine—though Neal was in no state of mind to enjoy it. He smiled anyways, the kind of brilliant smile that he was sure Ashe wanted to see and thought about how he was going to steal that remote, how they were going to leave that night. And then he thought about how one day he might come back, only with a gun and absolutely no intention of being friendly. If he had killed two people already, what more was a third?

Ashe smiled at him easily, brushing a thumb over the corner of his lips, “I like your smiles, Neal.”

Neal picked up a piece of cantaloupe and popped it into his mouth, chewing before swallowing. It tasted like sand, like nothing at all. He thought he might throw up, a wave of nausea hitting him in the stomach—but he kept the smile on his face, eyes trained on Ashe’s face.

“That’s better,” Ashe said, his hand sliding from Neal’s cheek down to his neck again, fingertips lightly drawing over the pulse points, “Not too bad, was it?”

“I loved it,” Neal said insincerely, staying very still.

Ashe flicked open the first button of Neal’s shirt before rising to his feet and murmuring, “Come on.”

In the bedroom, Ashe picked up a camcorder, a sleek silver thing that blinked red at Neal. Neal shook his head, backing away, back into the hall, “Ashe, I really don’t—“

“But it would make me happy, Neal,” Ashe protested, before leaning forward, wide-eyed with a curious tone entering his voice, “Neal, do you know how many shocks a person can survive in one day?”

Neal stared, a little wild-eyed, and then his shoulders slumped and he stepped back into the room. Ashe smiled, satisfied, and closed the door after him. He turned the camera on Neal and purred out a command, “Strip, Neal.”

Neal stared uncertainly at the camera for a moment before he undid the rest of the buttons on his shirt and pulled it off. There were still bruises on his shoulders from where Ed had clutched too tightly. He hesitated a moment, fingers fumbling with the button of his pants before he let them drop and stepped out of them. His jaw clenched—a sort of blank unhappiness in his eyes as he slipped out of his boxers. He didn’t bother putting on a show, his movements betraying the vulnerability he felt as he tossed away the rest of his clothes.

Ashe set the camera on the dresser and stepped forward so that he could his hands over the smooth expanse of Neal’s skin. He pressed lips to the junction of jaw and neck, just below the ear and trailed down until he felt Neal’s heartbeat under his lips. His lips lifted in a lazy grin and he let his hand slide down Neal’s chest, fingers splaying against Neal’s navel, pressing against the taut skin there. He could feel the tension in Neal’s body, in the muscles underneath his fingertips, the jumpy pulse beneath his lips.

He pushed Neal onto the bed, glanced over at the camera with a wide smile and then kneeled on the bed next to Neal, fingers skittering across Neal’s hips before dragging a heavy palm across his length. Taking the dick into his hand Ashe started a rhythm, his voice amused as Neal closed his eyes and pretended to be anywhere but where he was.

“You’re getting hard for me Neal—does this mean you really like me?” Ashe slid partially off the bed, head bending as he licked a long stripe up the side of Neal’s dick swirling his tongue over the head and grinning as it engorged under his attention, “If everyone could see you now, Neal, all of those people you cheated and stole from.” He climbed up Neal’s still form, going in for a rough kiss, shoving his tongue into Neal’s mouth before pulling back with a grin, “Do you like how you taste Neal? Have you ever stood in front of a mirror and just masturbated and tasted yourself? Open your eyes, Neal.”

“I’m not a narcissist,” Neal replied, his eyes slitting open just the barest bit, but enough to catch a flash of blue from the morning light. Ashe laughed at him, a condescending sound, and climbed off of him before nudging him with a knee.

“Get on all fours.”

Neal slowly got up—but Ashe nudged him again, a knowing smile on his face and an amused tone in his voice, “No Neal, facing the camera.”

And then Ashe had his hands wrapped around his ribs hard enough to bruise, his teeth scraping along the length of his spine, mouthing at every vertebrae before biting down sharply. Neal closed his eyes again because Ashe couldn’t see him. And then Ashe was speaking in his ear, “I want you to pretend that I’m Peter. I want you to want this, Neal.” There was a pause and then Ashe was pressing slicked fingers into him, stretching him, “Think about him coming up behind you, all of that repressed masculinity. He can be quite the territorial man, I’m sure. Did you catch that glare he gave me when we visited last? The way that he was staring at my hand on your neck?” Two fingers and Ashe was twisting his fingers every time he pressed in, causing Neal’s breath to hitch.

“You’d spread your legs for him, wouldn’t you? Like a horny little slut?” Ashe pulled his fingers out, and there was a moment’s worth of reprieve as Neal heard a condom wrapper being torn. Then the moment was over and Ashe was pushing in, all of it in the first stroke, a painful burn that felt like it was tearing him open. Ashe’s voice floated in somewhere over the pain, “You’d let him fuck you like this, wouldn’t you?”

Neal had his forehead against the arm he had braced against the bed, his brow furrowed in pain—he had never been as good at hiding physical pain as Peter had been so this was why his head was bent, hidden from the camera because this was a moment he never wanted to relive.

“I want you to say his name,” Ashe said, pulling out and slamming back in, his voice caught between a commanding tone and a grunt, “I want you to say his name for me, Neal.”

The pain was slowly starting to meld into pleasure and pleasure was nothing that Neal wanted from this, he didn’t want it.

“Neal,” Ashe snarled, digging nails into Neal’s ribs even as he pushed in, “Neal, don’t make me get the fucking remote.”

“Peter,” Neal said through gritted teeth.

Ashe reached around to touch him, draw rough strokes over his length and he said, “I want you to come with Peter’s name on your lips, Neal. I want you to come screaming his name.”

Neal hated this, hated all of his, wanted to be anywhere except in his skin right now, was trying to fucking hard to distance himself from what was happening. Except this was still his body and it had a mind of its own and it was trying to convince him that he was enjoying this, a sort of urgency brought on by nearly five years of abstinence and Neal hated it for betraying him, had never wanted so much to just scratch himself out of this flesh and bone, disconnect.

“Neal,” Ashe growled into the back of his neck and his body was telling him that pleasure was pooling at the base of his spine, that he was going to come soon whether or not Neal liked it.

And when the orgasm washed over him like a wave, he said Peter’s name into the sheets, the syllables all broken.

Ashe pushed in twice more before he came inside Neal. The hot pulse was a reminder of Neal’s shame, his hate, the promise that he would escape only to return with the upper hand. Ashe pulled out of him and immediately slipped off the bed, tucking himself back into his pants and zipping them back up.

He moved over to the camera, smiling widely into it before pointing at Neal. He nudged Neal with a knee, “Say hello to Peter, Neal.”

Neal’s stomach clenched and all he could think was no, no, no, no.

Ashe swung the camera back onto himself, a smirk on his face and Neal heard him say—

“Just remember Peter. I was here first.”

~

Neal spent the evening looking at the blueprints, on the dining room table, even though he knew he wouldn’t be breaking into the Hermitage, even though he knew he wouldn’t be stealing that Matisse. He spent a long time staring blankly at certain spots on the schematics, intensely interested by blank space. Tim watched him, caught somewhat between alarm and concern, because he didn’t do much except sit and stare. He wished he could be more entertaining for the man, if only because he had helped Neal out, because he wasn’t someone bad, just worked a bad job to keep his family fed—but he couldn’t manage the energy, not any more.

Around eight in the evening, Tim asked if he wanted to eat dinner. Neal gave him a smile and a shake of his head. Tim hesitated a moment, then asked if he was okay. Neal let his smile widen slightly and he had said, yes I’m okay, Tim, and it was the best lie he had told in his life.

Around one in the morning, Neal asked for a glass of water. Predictably, Tim set one down in front of Neal and had gotten one for himself too. Neal smiled and thanked him, and when he wasn’t looking, he dropped the powdered valium into Tim’s glass.

Around one-thirty, Neal listened for sounds of movement in the rest of the house. Tim was snoring quietly with his head on top of the blueprint for floor two. When there was nothing to be heard, Neal picked up a pair of scissors from the kitchen and made his way to the basement door. The door was locked but easy to pick. He flicked on the light and went down the stairs.

There were only two rooms in the basement—one lead to the water heater—and the other was locked. It was easy work to pick this one too, and when the door swung open to reveal the single naked bulb and the chair and the table and bed, Neal could have cried with relief.

Peter was sleeping, circadian rhythm not yet messed up by the constantly lit room. Neal gave himself a moment to compose himself before shaking Peter lightly.

Peter’s eyes opened and he stared blearily at Neal before a confused expression furrowed his brow and he asked, disbelievingly, “Neal?”

“Shh,” Neal replied, and helped Peter sit up, “How many vicodin do you have left?”

“Two,” Peter said, “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

“We’re getting out of here,” Neal said, “I don’t have a remote so we’re just going to have to cut the wires. It might hurt, but you have to be quiet.”

Peter looked at him, still caught in the drowsy state of half-sleep but he nodded as he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, his jaw clenching as he bit back the dull ache of healing wounds. Neal picked up the cord leading into the left wrist, looked up at Peter with something resembling apology in his eyes before he curved the cord around the base of the scissors blade and just cut.

Peter didn’t jump, no wince of pain, no seizing of his arm. Neal breathed a sigh of relief—Ashe had been bluffing him.

“Neal,” Peter said very seriously.

Neal looked up, a line between his eyebrows. Peter hesitated a moment, and then he said, “I’ve been doing nothing but thinking Neal and—“ he paused, swallowing, floundering for words, and then he leaned forward and pressed his lips against Neal’s.

Neal froze, his heart skipping a beat in his chest—and then he was pushing Peter back gently, a sardonic smile crossing his face, something bitter at the back of his mouth, “That’s nice, Peter, but you don’t have to humor me.”

“What? Neal I—”

Neal picked up the scissors and cut the second cord. He looked up at Peter, saw the confusion in Peter’s eyes and paused. He closed his eyes, breathed through his nose and said, “We’ll talk about this on the outside.”

Peter plucked the scissors from Neal’s fingers and cut the third cord himself. His expression had closed down, leaving only an unreadable sort of determination in its wake. He set the scissors on the bed and looped his arm around Neal’s neck as he slid off the bed, slowly easing himself onto his feet. Little splotches of red started to appear on his shirt, where the stitches had ripped and Neal stared. Peter waved him off and popped one of the two vicodin he had remaining.

“Where to, partner?” Peter asked with something like a smile and Neal found himself smiling back, feeling more like Neal Caffrey with every passing moment and not the stranger who had been living in his place.

“You didn’t hear this from me,” Neal murmured, “But I’ve got a cache in St. Petersburg.”

Peter huffed a laugh which turned into a wince and Neal supported his weight all the way up the stairs.

It would have been a perfect escape—

—except Ashe was standing in front of the entryway, his remote blinking a furious red under his folded arms.

“Neal,” he greeted, just as Neal froze, his stomach plummeting.

He turned his attention onto Peter, his voice still pleasant, “And Mr. Burke. How lovely that we’re all reunited in the same scene again.”

How could Neal have been so stupid? He had let everything that had happened cloud his judgment, didn’t think through everything rationally like he should have, should have put it off at least another twelve hours before finalizing his plans. This was his fault—

“Now Neal,” Ashe asked, lifting an eyebrow, disappointment in his voice, “Do you remember what I said I would do if I ever caught you trying to escape?”

The arm that Neal had slung across Peter’s back tightened—there was no way Ashe was going to fucking get Peter without a goddamn fight.

The silence between them stretched into an infinity, Ashe pale smirking eyes in the half-lit hallway, the familiar weight of Peter in his arm.

And then—

A knocking on the door.

And the three most beautiful words Neal had ever heard in his life.

“FBI! Open up!”

~

They took Peter to the hospital. Neal declined to go, insisted that he didn’t have any wounds—which meant automatically that he would be taken into briefing instead.

Peter had grabbed his elbow before they took him, and he had said, “Neal, we’re going to talk.”

Neal smiled halfheartedly.

He spent five hours listlessly giving details about what had happened, repeatedly going over the list of cons that Ashe had wanted him to perform, the paintings he wanted to steal. He spent a while talking about Macmillan because it was technically the circumstances of his suicide that gave them the right to pursue Ashe to St. Petersburg.

And when the five hours were over, Neal asked to be excused with something resembling all his old smile and Jones said, “That’s enough questions for today. Let him rest for god’s sake.”

Neal took the elevator down to the first floor. The doorman gave him a puzzled smile as he opened the door for Neal and Neal stepped outside.

He looked to the eastern sky, where the sun was rising. In the distance there was a smokestack, spewing white steam into the bright morning light. The steam formed shapes before the wisps were blown away by the wind, stallions rearing onto their hind legs replaced by dragons curling around age old secrets. He turned his face into the cold breeze, here in Russia where he could forge a new identity, have a new life.

He didn’t run.