Home-->Mom, Don't Go Here
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“Stop it, Peter, I’m fine.” Neal batted Peter’s hand away as it hovered over his forehead, clearly about to take his temperature like he was a four year old with the flu. “I just want to sleep.” Peter dodged Neal’s arm and completed his move, wincing when Neal did as he brushed the younger man’s thick dark hair away from the impressive bruise on his forehead. Not content with simply wiring Neal up with explosives like some deadly Christmas tree, Moriarty had apparently allowed his men to work Neal over before that, leaving him a bruised and bloody mess. Of course, it wasn’t unlikely that Neal had probably done or said something to infuriate the madman. It was what Neal did. Neal closed his eyes and allowed Peter to indulge himself for a minute more, pretending that he was doing it for Peter’s sake and not his own, and very nearly convincing himself. And then he raised his arm again, and this time caught Peter’s hand in his own. “Seriously.” He opened his eyes to show Peter how serious he was. “We got the Matisse, and the money, and I’m not blown up.” His swollen lower lip made his smile look lopsided. “Now, go be Agent Burke of the F.B.I., and figure out how to catch this son-of-a-bitch so we can go home.” Peter’s smile was quick and pained, but he nodded and let Neal take his hand back. Resisting the urge to hover, Peter backed out of the room and then made his way back down the cramped staircase to the main floor of the apartment. As he gingerly picked his way across a tiny living room littered with files, books, boxes and bags, he wondered, not for the first time, how his contact at Scotland Yard thought this tiny second floor apartment (“flat”, he told himself silently, “they call them flats here.”) would be better for them than the safe house that the S.F.O. had offered them. “Trust me,” Lestrade had said, and oddly enough, Peter did. Now, though, with Neal upstairs looking like a car wreck, his own adrenaline fueled energy bleeding away from him like a femoral artery wound, and his discomfort at being observed by an apparently real human skull on the mantle as he tossed aside a Union Jack pillow to sit down in the chair next to the fireplace, Peter wondered at the wisdom of his choice. Or maybe it was just the odd awkwardness that came from knowing you were a stranger in someone’s home. One of the someones chose that moment to enter the room from the tiny kitchen, two cups in hand. John Watson handed one to Peter, and then sat down across the room from him on the small leather couch. Peter took a sip from the cup—instant coffee—and winced, but only a little. He’d had worse. Hell, he’d made worse, whenever anyone let him near the coffee maker at the office. He glanced around the room, taking in the skull again, and the frankly awful wallpaper behind it and on the far wall. The television near his chair was on a news channel, turned down too low for Peter to make out the presenter’s words, but the picture of the blown up building being projected next to her was chillingly familiar, and suddenly Peter felt a wave of homesickness so strong he had to close his eyes for a moment. “You all right, then?” John asked, sipping his own tea and settling himself firmly in the corner of the sofa. “Sorry.” Peter replied. “Long day.” “Yup.” They shared a look, then, one that spoke volumes about themselves, the other two men involved in their current situation, and just what constituted a ‘long day’ in their lives and how that might compare to a ‘long day’ for the rest of the world. They wound up exchanging tired smiles. There was a moment of companionable silence, and then, when Peter found his eyes drawn back to the stairs, John said quietly, “Quite the smooth talker, your partner.” Peter laughed softly, maybe bitterly. “That’s Neal, all right. Smooth like butter.” *Whipped butter* he thought, but didn’t say. John might not have been the world’s only consulting detective, but he wasn’t the idiot his partner often suggested he was. He could have commented on how well Neal Caffrey had kept his cool despite the imminent death he had been facing. He could have mentioned offhandedly that perhaps waiting for back-up might have kept Neal’s injuries to a minimum. Or he could have stated what was fairly apparent between the FBI agent and his criminal consultant, even to him. But John recognized in Peter Burke a kindred spirit, so instead, he simply said, “He’ll be fine after a good night’s sleep.” Peter gave him a startled look that melted into a grateful one, and then he restarted at a sound from the second bedroom. Sherlock Holmes strode out of the bedroom in a grey v-neck t-shirt, striped pajama pants and his blue robe swirling untied around his legs. He made his way towards the couch and only John’s quick grab kept him from stepping directly into the tea cup as he marched over the low coffee table and sat down next to John. He took the cup from John’s hand, sipped at it, grimaced at the milk in it and handed it back. “While I understand your unique concern for your criminal informant., Agent Burke, I assure you that Lestrade for once was quite correct and that our flat is far less likely to be compromised than the suggested safe house,” he stated, as though Peter had made some complaint. “It’s fine,” Peter assured him. “Appreciated even, really, I just—wait. What do you mean, ‘unique’ concern?” John recognized Sherlock’s patented ‘everyone is stupid’ eye roll, even if Peter didn’t, and tried to cover his smile with a sip of tea, knowing full well what bomb his partner was about to drop. Sherlock’s sigh was just dramatic enough for Peter to pick up on the condescension he had missed at the eye rolling. “It’s quite obvious to anyone with eyes—every action you take clearly indicates that you love Mr. Caffrey.” Peter choked on his coffee. “Look,” he growled, “I don’t know what you’re playing at, but I’m—“ Sherlock interrupted him smoothly. “Of course you’re in love with him. You’ve brought him half way round the globe as a consultant when there are several more suitable candidates at the Yard. Not to mention the paperwork that must have been involved in bringing a criminal informant—regardless of his current role or reliability, he is still considered a criminal—into another country. Once here, judging by your movements prior to our meeting, you deferred to him on every choice of action, whether it was a restaurant you ate in or a lead you were following up. And yet, not only do you argue each of those points with him, you also remind him constantly that you are capable of capturing him in any situation and returning him to prison, should he make a wrong decision. Then there’s the fact that you touched him on seven different occasions during the initial one-hour briefing alone, including twice on the nape of the neck, considered by most to be a possessive gesture. And although your wardrobe, demeanor and rank suggest you are an unfailingly by-the-book agent of your F.B.I., the moment you realized he had been captured, and by whom, you ignored ten different procedural codes including Procedural code 09415 Section 3 Subsection 4 Item 9 which didn’t even give you permission to be in the building, never mind discharging a firearm in same, in order to both retrieve him and harm Moriarty. So, love it is.” And with that, Sherlock twisted his robe around, flopped over with a sigh and completed some sort of oddly graceful contortion that curled him up at John’s side on the tiny sofa, legs tucked up nearly to his chest and his head neatly resting in John’s lap. John watched Peter’s face and wasn’t surprised to see that while the FBI agent was looking likely to argue the point, he didn’t have that glazed-over look that so many times accompanied one of Sherlock’s ‘explanations’. Before Peter could reply, however, John smiled down at his lapful of Sherlock and said, “Sounds a bit familiar, actually.” “Shut up, John.” Fatigue softened the imperial tone Sherlock was going for, and the way he twisted under John’s petting like a cat softened any sting in his choice of words. He thumped his head on John’s leg a couple of times, settling in, and closed his eyes. Peter watched John run his hands through his partner’s thick dark hair and kept his silence, finishing his coffee and mulling over the man’s words until Sherlock’s breathing deepened into something snuffling and rhythmic and not quite snoring. “Is he always like that?” he asked very quietly. John laughed softly “Pretty much, yeah.” He gave the sleeping man in his lap a fond smile and kept on stroking his hair. He turned back to Peter and said, “You might want to try and get some sleep. Lestrade will want some answers in the morning, I expect.” Despite the coffee, Peter could feel exhaustion weighing him down like his suit was made of lead. He glanced up the stairs again but knew, despite what Sherlock had deduced that he wasn’t quite ready to go there. And he didn’t have any idea if Neal would ever even consider it. “Take the bed on this floor. We’ll be fine out here. I can keep watch for now, and I’m pretty sure all of this week’s body parts are in the fridge.” John offered. Peter gave John a skeptical look, trying to decide if he was being mocked, but the doctor’s smile was open and encouraging. “Thanks. Uh, both of you.” Peter stood up, stretched and yawned, and then gave John his serious look, the one that Jones and Cruz lived in terror of. “Give me three hours and I’ll take over. We don’t want to take any chances.” This time the silent look they shared showed they knew that their partners would be taking all the chances they could handle and then some, and even if neither of them were smooth talking like Neal Caffrey, or clever like Sherlock Holmes, they were certainly smart enough to protect the people they cared about. With a final nod, Peter left the room. <> |
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