Sometimes it's hard to say goodbye

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It's four in the morning, and Neal can't sleep.

Indicative of the hour, outside is still a pit of blackness interspersed with twinkling artificial lights. Inside the soft glow of moonlight shines down through the skylight, casting concealing shadows around the room. The air is stifling and, wrapped in sweat coated silk sheets, Neal rolls uncomfortably to the edge of the mattress. He closes his eyes, trying to find peace, but noise from the city, courtesy of New Yorkers ignorant of the hour, drifts up through the open balcony doors. No breeze enters, not even a puff of that icy wind travelling over the Hudson. It's too early to get ready for work, too late to attempt a tiring swim at the gym.

If you want to talk…

Frustrated with the heat, the noise and his own tormenting mind, he rolls back again, trying his luck on the other side. Staring into the black abyss formally known as his beside closet, Neal tries to throw Peter's words out of his head. He squeezes his eyes shut, hoping blocking sight will help, but the minutes continue to tick by, the kitchen wall clock audibly chiming every second of every one while his conversation with Peter from three nights ago replays in his head-

I think you deserve some happiness…and whatever I can do to help you with that.

In a fit of excessive energy Neal kicks the slick restricting sheets to the floor, angrily snatches the pillow from under his head and pressing it hard against his mouth, let's rip a roaring scream.

He's not deserving of anything. Not of happiness, or love or… sleep, apparently.

It's not who we are.

Neal wants to kill Mozzie. For the words, for pushing him to leave, for stealing the treasure - all of it. If not for the warehouse blowing up and Mozzie using his art as a substitution for the art on the sub, none of this would have happened. He would never have been taken to a warehouse in the middle of the night, an evening spent with Peter, not in the company of El, a succulent red and tender pasta, but with Jones, freezing cold, forced to answer questions he really didn't have the answers to. He never would have had to pose as an Interpol agent, or use Diana, her girlfriend and Sarah like they were any meaningless mark. And he never would have broken into his friend's home, violated the fragile trust which separates Neal from any other criminal Peter's chased and caught.

You and Peter, enjoy it while it lasts…

Neal releases a distressed sob into the pillow still covering his face. It's stupid. He's stupid. Stupid to think he could build a life here, stupid to believe the lies, the promises and that people can change.

He can't change. Not in the way Peter wants him too, the way Sarah needs him to.

Stupid Peter and his stupid rules and just plain stupidness!

Mozzie wants him to leave and really, would that be so bad? He's never had a problem upping stakes before, why now? Because of Peter? The minute anything happens he's the first person Peter blames - a pink Diamond gets stolen? Neal did it! Peter's mug goes missing? Neal took it! A whole cache of Nazi loot goes up in flames? Neal must be behind it! Fire still fresh and burning, Neal recovering from the shock of a gunshot heard but not felt and Peter outright accuses him of stealing a subs worth of art-

You did this…You saw your chance, and then you took it.

No, Peter is not a reason to stay. Maybe he was once, when another fire, another body lying at his feet caused him pain and heartache for entirely different reasons, but not anymore. Mozzie's plan, it's perfect really, he should be glad of the opportunity to escape this oppression, where no matter how hard he tries, it'll never be good enough. He'll always be a disappointment in Peter's eyes.

You let me down.

Breath coming out fast and heavy, creating a warm damp patch on the slick fabric of the pillow case still covering his face, Neal weakly tears it away, throwing it to the floor. Blinking tired wet eyes, looking up into the still night through the skylight, he listens to the sounds of city beyond those wide-open doors. Watching the shadows shift in the moonlight Neal's mind takes him to places he thought long forgotten, a time he had never wanted to return.

A tear slips out and he instantly swipes it away. Dignity in tatters at feet, lying next to the lingering apparition of Adler's corpse, Neal sits up, throws his feet to the floor.

Four am isn't too early to get up after all.

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"You okay?" Mozzie asks him over wine.

Elbows planted on the table, palms imbedded in his cheeks, Neal stares dead ahead with his back to the best view in Manhattan. "Sure, why wouldn't I be?"

There's no answer forthcoming. He knows Mozzie has no idea why he isn't happy. His friend has delivered a gift for the ages and Neal is being ungrateful by not being the slightest bit excited about it. A lifelong dream fulfilled, apropos their final con would be at Vincent Adler's ill-fated demise.

Only it's isn't their dream.

It's Mozzie's.

Mozzie's dream.

Mozzie's con.

Not Neal's, not ever.

Neal is a thief and a forger and someone destined to never be fully trusted, but he still holds out hope that one day, one day he'll be able to walk freely in the world and not have to look over his shoulder. He wants a home to call his own, friends he can rely on and know they'll still be there the next time. He wants permanence.

He thought he had found that with Peter. A place in someone else's world where no matter what, they'd always be there. Mozzie doesn't understand what a big deal that is and Neal cannot tell him, not because Mozzie will be hurt, which he will be, but because Neal is a coward. He wants to have everything and lose nothing. Live both as a criminal with Mozzie and a good boy with Peter. The ultimate have cake and eat it dilemma, because one cannot be if he is the other.

Staring at yet another empty wine glass, his third in the mere hour since arriving home from the office, he stares at the drop of Merlot congealing in the bottom and reviews the mess he's made of his life.

"More wine?" Mozzie fills the glass anyway.

Neal ruminates on the point of asking the question, that and the likelihood of yet another night with no sleep and plenty of self-recrimination.

"We need to think of a back-up plan."

"We do." Neal agrees.

"If we can't get the list then a fast escape is our next best move."

Neal hums in the right places, or so he believes. Really doesn't care. His focus distracted from the now full glass, his focus turns to the room, his room, where he has a bed with the silkiest sheets, a kitchen filled with the finest wines and a timeless sense of style. A place where people he knows visit him, a place he can always return to and know it'll be exactly as he left it. A home.

"Neal?" Fingers click in front of his face, the kitchen clocks ticks' away another minute. "Are you listening?"

Eyes refusing to meet, the lie slips easily from red stained lips.

"I'm listening."

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The days blend into one another, time moves swiftly on and it gets harder and harder for Neal to keep up his façade, to keep the sadness spreading through his bones like cancer inside. After yet another long day of operating on fumes, running from the bad guys while running rings around Peter, it's June who finally calls him out on his increasingly odd and out of character behaviour.

"You're not smiling." She says with a motherly frown, lifting the gin glass to her lips, ice tinkering against edge.

"I just don't feel like it." Neal tells her straight, eyes fixed to his empty glasses' bottom rim, for June is like Peter in his mind - someone never to be lied too.

The only difference between Peter and June is June will not ask a question she knows he doesn't want to answer.

"What do you feel like, my dear?" She asks with a knowing gleam in her eye, a look that says more than her words ever could.

Her gaze never leaves his, and from that fleeting silent exchange Neal knows she knows the truth. Usually knowing they know is enough and they go their separate ways, understanding what cannot be shared. But tonight? Tonight is different apparently, for she's not as easily appeased with his response, because June can see and hear the truth he is not sharing and that must be what worries her.

"Ever wonder if it's worth it?" He flicks his heavy, rheumy eyes up at her and quickly away again. Afraid of her answer.

She leans forward, stops just shy of touching his nose with hers. "Worth isn't something you can quantify," she covers his hand with hers and the warmth runs through him. "It's different for everybody"

Neal sighs and forces a smile even though his heart isn't in this one and he's sure she knows it. Sliding out of her hold and retreating to his room, Neal stays firm and doesn't slip. He moves about his apartment and readies himself for bed without a quiver. He opens the balcony doors and turns toward his bed without so much as a sniffle. He lays down, wrapping himself in too warm sheets, air dry and suffocating around him and stares up through the skylight. Shadows move across the room as the moon moves across the sky. The kitchen clocks ticks' away the hours. At four am, Neal gets up and gets ready for work.

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It's Sunday. Neal hasn't left his apartment since arriving home from work Friday evening. He hasn't slept since the night Peter offered him the only thing he's ever truly wanted and Neal ruined it before knowing that he had it.

"Neal darling, you're not eating properly," June purrs, appearing in his kitchen, catching him wrist deep in a bag of Cheez Doodles, a travesty of the highest order, given he'd declined her invite to lunch just minutes earlier.

"I'm just not hungry," he whispers, orange dust coating his lips, hoping to seem just the right amount of pathetic as he pops another Doodle into his mouth.

She immediately sticks out her hand, pressing soft delicate fingers to his tension creased forehead and damnit if Neal doesn't have to bite his cheek to keep from breaking. From throwing himself into the embrace he knows she'd freely give if he so much as hinted at wanting it. Rain drums against the window panes, water pooling in the opening of the balcony doors where he'd neglected to shut them when the heat finally broke in the middle of the night and allowed the floods to come.

Sure there's a metaphor in that somewhere, Neal tears out of her grasp and shifts to the other end of the room, indicating the bathroom. It's better this way. She'll see through his lies eventually, the ones he shouldn't be telling and he'll be a thorough disappointment to her.

When he steps back out June is gone. The balcony doors are closed and there's not a drop of water insight.

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Later that evening, when the doodles are nothing but a distant memory and a questionable stain on his fingertips, there's a knock at his door. Light and polite. Neal drags himself up from the couch, sliding socked feet across the floor with all the enthusiasm of a sloth on vacation.

"Neal," Elizabeth greets brightly when he answers it. "Honey, you look terrible." Her tone changes after looking him up and down, in his sweats and crumpled plain tee.

"I'm fine." He nods, forcing another one of those smiles he doesn't feel.

She tuts.

Neal has nothing to say to that. In his night clothes as he is, at not quite seven on a Sunday evening.

Being caught off guard by the unexpected visit, from one of only two woman who can make him talk with nothing more than a disapproving glare, sets the tiny hairs on the back of his neck on edge. That reaction to June Neal can understand. June is the matriarch of a powerful and criminally respected family. She's older, wiser and experienced way more than Neal could ever appreciate in his lifetime. Elizabeth is Peter's wife, and while Neal's come to understand she's pretty much the only person to scare Peter, that doesn't explain why she can put the fear of god into him so easily. Not even his own mother could spark the same level of guilt in him Elizabeth manages to achieve. And he hasn't even done anything to be guilty of recently…. Unless she counts poor self-care, which knowing Elizabeth, she probably does.

"You're not eating, not sleeping and now you're not even bothering to have a social life? That's not fine." She's wearing a frown the likes he can't say he's experienced from her before.

Puzzling over an appropriate response, Neal steps back, over to the fridge and rummages inside. "I like my own company. Privacy isn't something you get much of in prison."

Cheap shot, he's aware, but desperate times and all. Neal can't be done having to explain himself to El. He can't tell her how badly he doesn't want to leave New York. Can't tell how much her husband really means to him, and how much she means, because somewhere along the way his obsession with impressing Peter had developed into a need to impress El too. He sees in her everything his mother was not. When she smiles at him, makes him dinner and asks if he's okay. It's all so damn confusing, because Elizabeth is beautiful and Elizabeth is intelligent and not that much older than him. He should be attracted to her, but he doesn't feel a damn thing like attraction. When he sees her all he wants is for her to be proud of him. He wants from her something he has no right to ask.

"I talked to June."

June. The memory of her sweet, melodious voice breaks through his confused and convoluted mind. That conversation he overheard. And having heard he probably should have seen this coming, but then really the most he expected was an invitation to dinner next week– an olive branch to ensure he eats and is fit and healthy so not to be a liability to Peter in the field.

"Okay." Neal nods. He's not offering more than he's already given. Other than the bottle of ice wine he's holding out like a bribe.

"Neal we're worried about you." El lowers his hand, looks up at him through her lashes.

A cruel and clever tactic, one Neal uses often himself – on Peter. Neal wonders if she uses it on Peter too. Neal wonders how many of the tricks he uses to exude innocence, gain favour or simply elicit sympathy are all also used by El.

"I told you," Neal heaves a heavy sigh, throat tightening. "I'm fine."

"Fine." El repeats, her tone hard, but her face dejected.

Neal's feeling uncomfortable suddenly. She tips her head to the side, keeping both eyes on him. Panic sets in. Something's not right.

"Look El-"

"Peter!" she hollers over her shoulder, eyes turning to stone, any trace of concern he thought he may have seen gone in a flash.

Neal's eyes blow wide at her shout, but his fear becomes reality before he can even process the move.

"He being stubborn?" Peter appears in his apartment, barrelling through to stand behind him, looking as if he'd been there the entire time.

"What's going on?" Anxiety runs through him, making his voice shake and adrenaline spike.

"Get dressed." Peter points towards the backroom, hands on hips, fingers twitching as if resisting a move far more menacing.

Neal slips to the side, widening the gap and forming a triangle instead of being sandwiched between them, his fingers doing a nervous dance of their own mid-air. "Why are you both here?"

"Or come as you are, makes no difference to me." He shrugs, like Neal isn't having a nervous breakdown before his eyes.

"Peter?" Neal whines. He knows he whines, hell he's owning the whine. "I'm fine, really. It's late. I'm just going to go to bed."

"To sleep?"

"Isn't that what people usually do in bed?" Peter gives him a smirk and Neal only just resists rolling his eyes. "I'm tired Peter." He turns on the pathetic, begs with his eyes to let him have this.

There's a second where hard brown eyes soften, then-

"No." El steps between them.

Neal deflates. "No?"

"No." Peter repeats, backing up his wife and moves about his place, disappearing with empty hands and returning with full ones.

"What's he doing?" Neal turns to Elizabeth.

"Packing." She points out like he's being particularly dim. "I'd get a coat on if I were you because the window for changing has definitely closed."

Neal's partway through a disbelieving frown when Peter declares, "all done," and moves to stand by the door. "Let's go." He points down the stairs.

"Go?" Neal blinks. Can't think what he's missed.

"Yes go. Dinner is waiting."

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"Thank you." Neal tells Elizabeth when she places a plate filled with spaghetti in sauce and a bowl of fancy cheese in front of him.

He keeps his gaze down, focus on the table, only raising his eyes intermittently to judge the mood of the room. Sitting at the Burke's dining room table, in his nightwear no less, Neal's unsure how they got to this point.

"You going to eat?"

It isn't a question, not really. Peter phrased it like it might be but it's not.

"Sure." Neal says without his defences fully up.

He has to remind himself not to slip. Not now. He's fell off that hill, dusted himself off and climbed back up again too many times recently. He can't fall now. Neal knows, he knows after everything he's been through this week, he won't get back up.

Something in Peter's expression changes, something sparks and then dulls and here they are, staring at one another, Neal begging through downcast eyes, lashes in full effect, Peter holding all the cards.

"Okay, Neal." Peter nods, voice soft and low. "Okay."

With that they eat, conversation drifting from work to the more personable topics usually engaged in between husband and wife. Neal tries to nod and smile in the right places, adding a word or two when it's clear a verbal response is required. When dinner's finished, El already up and preparing Satchmo for his final walk of the day, Peter gets up, takes him by the shoulders and makes Neal stand too, breaking the awkwardness of sitting at the dining table. He's bundled towards what he predicts to be the couch, but a sharp veer to the right has him facing the stairs. One by one he climbs, Peter's hands in the small of his back guiding his direction.

"You are most definitely going to sleep tonight." He presents him with the bed, a twin pushed flushed to one green and beige wall, covers already pulled back.

"I could have done that in my own apartment." Neal climbs in and lies down anyway, fearful of being pushed.

"Yet you weren't."

No, he guesses not, but then Peter wasn't to know that.

"How would you know?" He challenges, watching Peter reach to pull up the sheets.

Face set, eyes fixed on the wall, Neal remains still and refuses to help. He's in the most vulnerable position he's ever been, and that includes once being buck naked on the ledge of a palace in cold and snowy Surrey.

"I'd know." Peter tells him menacingly and with something almost criminal twinkling in his eyes as he drops the blanket just under his chin.

Neal's momentarily lost for words, debating on what the best course of action is at this stage. Clearly, they are all working against him. June spoke to Elizabeth who told Peter and together they concocted this plan to kidnap and torture him with hot dinners, warm beds and blankets that smell like summer. It occurs to him that he needs a plan to escape, to run from this place of comfort and never look back if he's a chance of surviving intact. Mozzie would not be pleased with his lack of defences, being captured so easily in his own home.

It's a conversation he already doesn't want. So, he's in no hurry to have it. Instead of putting up a fight or coming up with a plan to flee, he does something he'd never thought he'd do. He gives up without a fight, follows Peter's instruction to the letter and closes his eyes.

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Sleep comes easily, too easily, settles over him like a veil, making the world blurry and indecipherable. If all he needed was a change of venue then he would have tried that days ago, but somehow Neal doesn't think that's it. And within seconds of making that realisation, in a blink he finds he's no longer lying vertical, tucked up tight under sheets he did not handle, but standing with bare arms and feet, in the middle of the room in which his most heinous crime to date took place.

Teeth chattering, arms goose pimpling in the cool night air and Neal's left wishing for the warmth of Peter's hand sitting low in his back to return. To guide him back to where he is supposed to be. Rain falls in rivulets down the duel window panes bookending the large unoccupied bed. Peter and El must still be downstairs. He considers calling out for one or both of them, but quickly dismisses the idea as ludicrous. Lightning strikes intermittently outside, leaving Neal squinting against its brightness, but as he turns to head for the door it illuminates a corner of the room. Several flashes, one after the other, and for a brief second during its strobing effect, Neal sees the wall safe door standing wide open and, in his hands, the manifest, slick in its protective cover. All the information he needs for his premature flight to freedom at his fingertips.

Neal stills. As if the very thought of running is a bullet through his heart. Stopping the very thing that keeps the pain and the love and the life such as it is inside of him.

I know your connection to the FBI, but it's not who we are.

Isn't it? Ever since he learnt Peter's name, the FBI has been as much him as they have

You and Peter-

"Sometimes it's hard to say goodbye." Neal whispers, slipping, falling in a heap on Peter's bedroom floor, like all his bones have been sucked out and he's nothing but an empty sack of skin and flesh with no substance. No structure to hold him up.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

The waring voices continue to fill his ears and Neal silently screams at the Mozzie in his mind, for telling him the lies, the things he doesn't want to hear.

Neal?

He hears his name being called as if from a great distance, but it's too late. A single childish wish for things to be different is all it takes for everything he's being holding onto, everything he's been holding in, to spill out. It happens slowly, first one, then another, followed by more traitorous drops of cooling salty liquid that leave their stain on his cheeks and pool in the crevice of his neck, making the collar of his sleep shirt damp. It's an exhaustive moment when he finally calms down, where there can be no more tears because the river has dried and the floods aren't due again for another season.

A surprise hand lands heavy on his back, solid and warm. Neal feels its movement stroking up then down, powered by his own hitching breaths.

"Hey," Peter's deep voice, shushes softy, "it's okay," he whispers as that deft hand moves to run through his hair, "just a nightmare."

His erratic breathing hitches, "a nightmare?"

Shoulders leaving the padded surface upon which he finds himself lying, Neal gaze darts from the wide-open door of the small green and yellow room, to the closed window above him. All damp eyes and heaving chest, nothing but questions lying out bare between them, Neal falls back onto the mattress that has always been beneath him and rolls over to face the wall. Embarrassment is a selfish thing, brought on by self-consciousness and a desperate desire not to appear flawed. Neal does not embarrass easily. He has learnt to turn the worst of his own human nature to his advantage. Peter knows this, and although well aware the burning redness sitting high on his cheeks is not an invite to conversation, he still insists Neal tell him what's wrong.

Ignoring everything about the situation that makes it uncomfortable, and without even trying to put some distance between them, Neal attempts to provide an answer. "I don't want to leave. I want to stay."

"Well of course you can stay."

Neal blinks in the face of Peter's automatic response.

As unexpected as it was, it doesn't take long for him to return to his previous state of melancholy. "I might not have the choice."

Although Neal knows he's avoided the real question and Peter still doesn't have answers, not the ones he wants, the ones that are not Neal's to give. He's been as truthful as he can be and that, that has to be enough.

Peter reaches out a warm hand and runs it through his ruffled hair. "You're enough." The words are whisper soft and said with a wistfulness which invokes a longing for moments past. "Trust me. You're plenty. I couldn't cope with more."

The hand in his hair tightens slightly and Neal loses himself in the security of it, for Peter is stability, he exudes it from his pores as if it's built as a very part of him. Unlike Neal, whose life is a jigsaw puzzle, waiting to be pieced together one section at a time. Only there's pieces missing. Huge chunks leaving gaping holes in need of filling. All his attempts to plug them have failed, because lies are slippery sons of bitches and no matter how hard he tries, they never quite fit.

"I'm going to go back to sleep now." He announces, like Peter would have a choice.

He doesn't stay awake long enough to hear his answer.

A/N: Thanks for reading!