8This was so beyond stupid that Peter couldn't believe Neal had agreed to it. Neal was a smart guy and while yes, he could act as a reckless teenager sometimes, most of times, by now the agent would have thought that messing with drugs was not something he would try. Yet he did and was now lying on his couch, deeply asleep. Mozzie had kept hovering on the entrance for some time, still undecided if leaving his friend at the Suit's place was a good idea, but Peter had unceremoniously ushered him away before El came back from the kitchen and offered him something to eat too. Dinner with the Small Guy and a drugged Neal on his couch was a bit too much for his night.
Or it could be worst… like no drugged Neal on his couch.
"Honey…" the repressing stress voice of his wife called from the kitchen "Could you help me with something here?"
That something was fumbling around, perhaps trying to help Elizabeth or looking for a glass of water, either way all he was doing was to open and close drawers looking for something that he himself has already forgot about.
"I thought you were sleeping, White Beauty"
"Cinderella" corrected him Neal, at which Peter didn't bother to find any sense "I need water. It's hot, god, it's really, really hot"
It was a warm night indeed; warm enough not to need anything beyond a light shirt, but Neal looked as if he had just run a marathon, with his own gray t-shirt damped in sweat, the skin of neck and chest red and the brown curls glued to his forehead. Elizabeth sent a concerned glance at Peter, unsure of how to react, even unsure if she should consider Neal somehow dangerous at this point. But her motherly vein won over her fears and she helped the young man with a big glass of water just poured from the fridge. She wasn't sure if to trust Neal with the glass, so she helped him to drink without letting go and securing his hands.
"Neal, you are trembling" Elizabeth alarms were starting to beep all over the place "You should really go back to rest" but she hadn't even finished her sentence when the consultant jerked to the side and threw up all the water mixed with whatever he had eaten before on the dishwasher, after which it was like if all his energy had suddenly vanished and he just let himself slide down to sit on the floor, mumbling something that sounded like an apology.
"I should have known… and Neal too" sighed Peter. "He has weird reactions to drugs. Do you remember when I brought him here after the case with the organs trafficking?" He added for his wife.
"He looked pretty miserable back then" agreed Elizabeth.
"Yeah, they gave him something to sleep and instead he was singing Sinatra and opening his heart."
Peter kneeled next to Neal to coax him into getting back to the living room, but the kid's gaze was lost somewhere in the opposite wall and he would not look at him even when Peter put a hand over his shoulder, his normally light eyes looking scarily dark with the pupils too dilated for the well illuminated kitchen.
"God El, you are right, he's trembling" Slight tremors ran over Neal in waves, not like when someone is cold and trying to warm himself, but more like if all his muscles were contracting in weird and chaotic patterns. "And he IS hot" Peter cupped Neal's chin on his hand, hoping his CI would at least look at him "Caffrey, you with me?" but the conman's mind, tough awake, seemed somewhere on his own world"
Elizabeth approached and put her own small hand on Neal's forehead, though it was kind of a moot point, the heat the man irradiated being able to be felt without need of touching him.
"Do you think we should take him to a hospital?"
It was a hard question, the actual situation something that even for an ASAC would be hard to explain, but the fast and shallow breathing of the man slumped at his feet was getting into Peter nerves.
"Neal, Neal, help me here. You are a lot heavier than what you look on those cartoon suits of yours." Grumbled Peter while putting Neal's arm over his shoulder and hauled him upright. The ex-con made the first sign of consciousness and somewhat let his boss guide him back towards the couch, managing to more or less put a foot in front of the other. Haversham had said all he needed was a good nap, but Neal's exhausted expression looked more like about to pass out than actually going to sleep.
"Neal, how do you feel?"
"Fine." Sure, dumb Peter for asking the question in the first place, when it was obvious what the answer was going to be.
"How many fingers?" Asked Peter, holding his hand in front of the CI.
"Four-…" Relief was short lived "-teen?"
"Wrong answer."
"Not my fault, you are the one who is blurry."
Peter smiled. His consultant mathematics may not be what they used to be, but at least he was answering questions, which was a big improvement from a few moments ago, still far from fine, but better.
Elizabeth sat next to Neal on the couch with a couple of icepacks and put one against her friend belly while she held the other against the back of his neck. Neal leaned back with a purr of satisfaction against the welcomed coldness, somehow trapping El's hand between him and the couch. She looked at Peter with a raised eyebrow, but didn't attempt to try to retrieve her pinned limb.
"I remeb'r more stuff from the session" Muttered Neal with his eyes closed. Peter leaned forward, expecting more info from the case. "She said I'll never be normal and that I'm a sociopath"
Of course… too much for being a wall. Summer had not only drugged him but managed to mess with his mind. Peter felt almost guilty for trying to squeeze information about Siegel's death before. Almost, his thirst for truth being too big to suppress.
"A criminal, that's what I am"
The words hang in the air while Peter's stomach clenched into a knot. He really wanted to say something, but it was hard to find the words without sounding cynical… without being actually cynical.
"Yes, you are" Said Peter, in that deep and slow way he used to say things that were really important "But you are also a lot more than that. We don't expect you to swipe off your past nor forget who you are, but we expect you to move forward." He didn't noticed how he had inadvertently included El in the conversation, perhaps Jones and Diana and even Hughes too.
"Yeah, old Rafiki" Sighed Neal, but then he opened his eyes and sit upright, tightly grabbing the icepack to his chest as he had done before with the small cushion and started to rock again in the same way than when he had just arrived, only stopping to look deeply into Peter eyes. "I'm so tired! I'm so, so much tired!"
"You should really sleep, buddy"
"You have this leash attached to my neck and it gets tighter and tighter and then He has this other leash and He's yanking on the opposite direction and the both of you are strangling me…"
"Who has other leash on you, Neal?"
"I'm… I'm… running… out of air…"
"Caffrey, who's the one with another leash?"
"Honey!" It was Elizabeth the first to notice that Neal's distress was more than metaphorical.
While the young conman had been breathing fast for the last minutes, now it seemed like he was really hyperventilating. Neal made an attempt to get up but swayed visibly forward. El knew that she was not strong enough to stop him so she only attempted to stabilize him and prevent him to land on the coffee table while Peter rushed to their side. He arrived just in time to not so gently push Neal back on the couch before the ex-con eyes rolled back and started to trash arms and legs, convulsing violently against the furniture while El moved quickly out of the way, barely fast enough to avoid being kicked by Neal's legs. For the next forty seconds, which felt like hours, Peter only concentrated on keeping Neal from falling off the couch, worry escalating to fear. When his partner seizure stopped he tried to bring him back to consciousness, but Neal was still too out of it to acknowledge any of his question nor his pleas to wake up, a little thread of saliva hanging from his semi-open mouth. Even still, the young man's body looked like a bomb about to explode. The agent pressed two fingers against his neck and looked at his wife with horror at the feel of the crazy speed and force thumping of Neal's pulse.
"I'm calling 911" Said Elizabeth with the phone already dialed on her hands and this time Peter only nodded in agreement.
Elizabeth stood from her chair when she saw her husband walking tiredly towards her and gratefully let him embrace her in a hug.
"What did the doctors said?"
"They just did a gastric lavage and are still trying to low his temperature back to normal"
"Did they tell you if we can see him?"
"No, no yet" answered Peter with a sigh "His heart almost stopped on the way here and they want to keep him tightly monitored until they're sure he's stable. I'm afraid it's very Touch and Go by the moment and they prefer to keep us out of the way in case anything happens.
"So he could…" El was a strong woman and she didn't let her eyes betray her, though they were more watery than she wanted.
"No, Honey, no" Peter tightened his hug and let his chin rest on her head. "The doctors are taking good care of him, but the next six hours are still touchy." He wished he could feel as confident as his words. "El, I need to contact Mozzie, the doctors need to know exactly what Neal consumed. Do you still have his phone number?"
"No, I haven't talked to him in a couple of months" She had not realized it, but she had not seen Mozzie since she asked Neal not to involve Peter in the James quest. She couldn't say she didn't miss the chats they used to have. "Did he overdose Neal?"
"Apparently not, nothing in his bloodstream is high enough to cause this. That's why they need to know, the doctors believe Neal may have had some sort of paradoxical reaction to one of the components of the solution" Burke clenched his jaw "Which doesn't mean I'm not going to strangle Mozzie if I see him."
Hours went by, slowly one after the other. Peter drove Elizabeth home to let her have some rest and check on Satchmo, but he went back to the hospital as soon as he finished changing clothes. When dawn broke he had not slept a minute in all night and had already made several dozens of phone calls. As predicted, this was going to be a lot to explain to a lot of people, but at least it kept him occupied enough not to have to think too much every second if his best friend's heart kept beating or not.
After the change of nurse shifts he was allowed to visit Neal. The consultant had been drifting in and out of consciousness, temperature, blood pressure and heart rate still too high to doctors liking and they preferred if someone the patient knew was with him to calm him down when he finally awoke on an unknown place. The beeps of the machines worked as a lullaby to Peter, who even let himself to have some sleep, knowing everything was working properly inside the pale, prone figure attached to those machines. He woke up from his doze feeling observed, a pair of glazy, with still dilated pupils, eyes looking at him.
"Hey, Sundance, how you feeling?" Peter asked a bit groggily, rubbing his eyes.
" .ever"
Peter smiled and had to resist the urge to chuckle, despite how miserable Neal actually looked.
"You have it deserved; seizing on my living room is very bad manners"
"I'm sorry, Peter"
"For almost having a cardiac arrest on my couch or for being a reckless stupid?" The relief of seeing Neal awake was quickly giving space to the anger he had been suppressing all night. "You are lucky your doctor forbade me to lecture you until the red numbers on that thing turn green."
Neal smiled feeble. His head hurt too much to endure one of the proverbial Peter's lectures, but he was still happy to have had him next when he awoke, disoriented and a bit scared, still remembering the calmness that he felt when he saw the agent snoring slightly next to him. He remembered Mozzie, the drugs, the cab to Peter house, but the details after it were a little fuzzy. His relief soon changed to worry, the monitors beeping in reaction to his anxiety.
"What did I tell you?"
"Nothing Neal, seriously, you need to calm down" Peter glanced at the hallway, but at least no nurse was in her way to the ICU bedroom to kick him out.
"Now I'm going to need more drugs to remember what I told you"
"Not even joking!" And oh, god, his boss really meant it!
"Peter, please, what did I tell you?" Neal looked so vulnerable, pale and tired, and feverish and probably still a bit drugged. The FBI agent in Peter knew that this would be a perfect occasion to get more information if he played a bit with Cafrey's mind, but the pain of the guilt he had felt for asking a drugged Neal about Siegel when only a few hours ago the doctor had been telling him to expect the best but prepare for the worst… that wound was still raw and bleeding.
"You said a lot of things, my friend." Neal looked at him like a bunny about to be run over by a truck. "But I'm afraid it's a bit too late to ground you for picking that purse on seventh grade." Peter enjoyed the sigh of relief of his partner.
"So nothing that will land me in jail?"
"Not in this country"
Peter was about to comment how the use of drugs was a flagrant violation of Neal's parolee and how that alone could have landed him back to jail, but the consultant had his eyes already almost closed and his vitals where better than what they had been all night. Perhaps it was time to loosen that leash by now. They had time to talk about leashes later, at least they had time.