Chapter Text
Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland
Given the quality of the places they had stayed so far, Sara expected, or perhaps hoped for a good sized chalet. Now, standing in front of their accommodations, she realised she should’ve taken Eliot’s personality into account.
It turned out that what he meant by “I’ve got a place,” was small cabin.
“Should be ok,” he mentioned as she followed him inside. “I had someone come by with some food and prep it for us.”
Sara assessed the darkened room, glancing around skeptically. A main room comprised both the kitchen and living area. The furnishings were well kept but everything from the yellow and brown patterned couch to the pale green stove indicated it was dated. The doors on other side of the room were propped open revealing a single bedroom with an attached bathroom and a small office space.
“Seriously?” Hardison complained, flicking at one of the curtains. “This is like the murder cabin from hell.”
Sophie wisely did not say anything but her pursed expression indicated she agreed.
Eliot turned to him. “Do you wanna sleep outside? Because I can make that happen for you.”
“Outside? With the bears?” Hardison gestured towards the open door.
“You think there’s bears in the Swiss Alps? Dammit, Hardison.”
“Hey some help out here would be nice,” Nate chastened, pushing through the door with a bag in each hand. He dropped them just inside the door with an exasperated glance at Sophie. Neal followed with several more.
“We’re coming,” Eliot headed back outside, a grumbling Hardison on his heels.
“Do they need more help?” Sara asked, taking one of the bags from Neal.
“No I think they’re fine. It’s just a few monitors and a bag. Do you normally travel with this much?” He asked Sophie.
She shrugged. “I picked up a few things in Prague. And this one is yours,” she kicked a familiar looking suitcase towards him.
He looked to Sara who shook her head. “Like I went through your underwear and packed for you? Thank Sophie.”
He threw Sophie one of his thousand watt smiles. “Thank you, Sophie.”
“It’s nothing.” She waved a hand. “I know how you are about your suits.” She assessed the space carefully, then glanced between Sara and Neal. “The sleeping arrangements are going to be tricky.”
“I bet there’s a crawl space I can sleep in,” Parker offered, glancing around.
“No one is sleeping in the crawl space,” Nate entered, with the last of the bags. “Sophie and I are claiming seniority and taking the bedroom. The rest of you can fight it out.”
“Did Nate just admit he’s old?” Hardison asked, he and Eliot followed with a computer monitor under each arm.
“Not old, just older than you.”
“Are you sure you should be carrying that? I wouldn’t want you to damage your old back.”
Nate dropped the bag inside the bedroom as if claiming the space. It landed with a rounding thud.
“There’s a pull out couch in the den,” Eliot offered, “And I think this one pulls out too.”
An awkward silence descended as everyone sized each other up.
“Parker and Hardison should take the den,” Neal finally said after a beat. “Sara and I can sleep in here.”
Sara arched an eyebrow.
“I’ll take the floor,” he finished hastily.
“But where will Eliot sleep?” Parker asked with a frown.
“I’ll sleep in the van.”
“But it’s too cold,” Parker protested.
“I’ll be fine. You know I don’t sleep much anyways.”
“But-”
“Parker, why don’t you come help me with the monitors?” Hardison asked pointedly. He picked up a monitor and thrust it into her arms. “We’ll set these up in the den.”
Parker followed him, her eyebrows knit together in a concerned scowl.
“Great,” Sophie interjected. “If that’s sorted, I’m starving. Eliot, please tell me there’s food here that doesn’t come out of a packet.”
Eliot rolled his eyes, moving towards the kitchen. “You’d think none of you had ever camped before.” He started pulling items out of the cabinet.
“Camped?” Sophie replied, horrified.
Eliot pulled out a bottle of wine and handed it to her. “Glasses are in the cabinet on your left.”
“God bless you.”
She had just started to pour when there was a shriek from the other room.
Hardison came barreling back into the main space. “Dial-up? You have dial-up internet?”
“We’re in the mountains, Hardison.”
“We’re in the twenty-first century, Eliot.”
Eliot crossed his arms. “So you can’t make it work?” He quirked an eyebrow in challenge.
Hardison bristled. “Oh I can make it work. But I shouldn’t have to.” He stormed back into the other room grumbling about AOL.
Eliot ignored him and started organizing the groceries.
“Do you want some help?” Neal offered.
“Only if you can take direction and make a decent marinara sauce. Otherwise you can help by staying the hell out of my kitchen.”
Neal grinned. “I make fantastic marinara sauces. Do you have any fresh basil?”
Eliot looked surprised but moved aside. “Start chopping tomatoes, would you?”
Dinner, despite everyone’s collective crankiness about their accommodations, turned out to be lovely. Eliot and Neal prepared a simple but delicious pasta dish and the team took turns explaining to Neal the finer points of his rescue mission. Sophie took particular enjoyment in describing how they had tricked Woodford by leading him to the vault across the hall from where Neal had been held and trapping him with the looted art residing in it.
The wine flowed and so did the stories, Sara laughed at Hardison’s retelling of the time he landed a plane.
Soon though, the day began to catch up with them. Sara, Parker, and Hardison made quick work of the dishes while Neal and Sophie polished off the wine. Before she knew it, everyone else had gone to bed and Eliot was handing off a pile of blankets and stomping off to the van.
Neal silently started pulling at the bottom couch cushions. “I can get this set up, if you want to use the bathroom first.”
Sara’s mouth twisted. This wasn’t how it had always been. Once they’d moved around each other with little awkwardness, brushing their teeth side by side and falling asleep in a pile of tangled limbs. They’d never fought about things like wet towels and dirty socks, just stolen treasure and Neal’s great disappearing act. She closed the bathroom door behind her and brushed her teeth alone.
When she came out, Neal was sitting on the still together couch. He’d turned off all the lights but the lamp on the table next to him.
He smirked and quickly covered his mouth.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She put her hands on her hips which just made him laugh harder. “Nothing?”
“It’s just this is only the second time I’ve ever seen you in real pajamas and they’re so...pink.”
She glanced down at her silk pink pajama set, patterned with cherry blossoms. The whole thing was a bit girlier than her normal clothing, but she liked them and had packed them assuming no one would see them.
“I like pink.” She draped the dress she’d been wearing over one of the dining chairs to return to Sophie.
He gave her an appreciative once over. “I do too. And it’s nice that you don’t have a gun to my head this time.”
“The police took my baton back in London and Eliot doesn’t like guns.”
“So it’s down to your scary shoes then?”
She wiggled her bare toes. “For the moment.”
He tugged on one of couch cushions. “We seem to have a problem. This couch doesn’t fold out and the cushions are attached to it.”
That was indeed a problem. She’d had no intention of letting Neal sleep on the floor. But that had been with the assumption the couch folded out and they could sleep fairly comfortably in separate corners.
“Why don’t you go change,” she suggested, thinking. “I’ll see what I can sort out.”
“Save me a blanket, would you?”
She eyed the hardwood floor as Neal took his bag and closed the door behind him. There was a rug but it was threadbare and offered little cushioning. She yanked at the couch cushions for good measure but they didn’t budge.
Neal emerged from the bathroom in loose pants and a sleeveless shirt. She remembered this outfit quite well. His arms looked very toned for someone who had been running for his life. Had he he been swimming since he “died?”
She looked down, busying herself with folding the blanket. “I think we’ll have to share the couch.”
“I can sleep on the floor.”
“It’s hardwood and there’s not any cushioning.”
“I spent four years in prison Sara. I think I can sleep on the floor for one night.” He tugged the blanket from her. “And we both know I deserve it.”
“Neal...”
“You’re angry with me,” Neal pointed out. His voice was low and gravely.
He was right. It had been shimmering under the surface all day but every minute they were alone together she could feel it rising. “Observant as always.”
“You deserve an explanation.”
“You’re damned right I do. But do you really want to do this here?” She gestured to the room around them. “Like this?”
“I think we agreed to be part of a team and it’s better for everyone if you and I have it out while we can.”
“Ok then, where was that team spirit when you abandoned your last team in New York?” Her words were biting and cut straight to the bone. He swallowed, taking her verbal spar without complaint.
“I don’t know what you think you left behind,” she continued. “But people actually came to your funeral, Neal.”
He nodded. “I know. And I know I can’t expect you to ever trust me again. But Sara, I need you to know that I never ever meant for you to get hurt in this.”
She sat, burdened by the metaphorical weight of all of she’d been carrying. “It’s not about me. What about Peter? And El and June and everyone else you left behind in New York.”
“Are they alright? Peter and El...the baby?”
She nodded. “Baby’s healthy and happy but they...they miss you.” She wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of telling him what they named the baby. “They were all...heartbroken.”
She paused, remembering Peter’s ashen face, how he felt like he’d failed Neal. What was worse was the resignation in June’s voice when she told her she was closing up the house and moving in with her daughter. “It’s just too quiet now without Neal,” she’d said. “Cindy is done with school and...well I’m an old woman living alone in this big empty house.”
“You weren’t heartbroken ?” Neal prompted gently.
She gave him a hard look. “I’m used to the disappointment.”
He winced and they settled into an uncomfortable silence.
Neal knew a lot more about her than most people. Between his easy smiles and open ears, he had a way about him, as El used to say. He was good at getting her to open up, which both delighted and horrified her. The day she’d told him about Emily, she’d surprised even herself. Later, when he asked, she’d given him the short version of what happened to her parents, who had been killed in a car accident right before she graduated college.
But even still, there were things she had kept back. He surely knew she was lying when she said she was from San Diego, but he never pressed the issue and in truth she was from near San Diego. She’d never told him about Sam, and she preferred to keep this last, and most terrible loss to herself. He was not her son after all, she owed it to Maggie to keep her grief private.
But then, Neal had his secrets too.
“Why’d you do it?” She finally asked.
He took a seat on the other end of the couch, looking down at his hands as he gathered his thoughts. When he finally spoke he didn’t look at her. “I got in over my head…flew to close to the sun as Mozzie likes to say. The Panthers...I didn’t know how ruthless they were at first. And even once that became clear I kept going because I couldn’t let them win. And then Peter went under with me and El was pregnant...I couldn’t risk that they’d retaliate by hurting them.”
“So your solution was to fake your death and disappear forever?”
“I didn’t see any other way. I know the risks of the life I lead. But I could never forgive myself if something happened to people I care about.”
She tucked one of her legs under her, head bent towards him. “I would’ve helped you, Neal. If you’d asked me.”
“And risked your entire career?”
“Do you really think your life is worth less to me than my career?”
“No that’s not what I—”
“We were a team,” she cut him off sharply. “No matter what was going on between us personally we always worked well together.”
“I know, I just—”
“Jones and Diana filled me in on everything that happened while I was in London.”
“Everything?” He flinched, a very un-Caffrey like gesture.
“Everything that went down with your dad and Peter getting arrested. All of it probably happened before I even made it to the airport. Why didn’t you call me?”
“If I’d called, would you have gotten on that plane?”
“Of course not.”
“And you would’ve derailed your whole life.”
“Peter was in jail.”
“And were trying to leave. You said that was what you wanted. I was trying to respect that.”
Her face softened. “Neal.”
“I’m sorry.” He looked up at her, earnest. “Believe me, I didn’t do any of this because I didn’t care. If I had to do it again, I would have stayed away from the Panthers. But Sara, you did help me. When I needed you. Thank you.”
She took a deep breath. “I think this enough for tonight. We should get some sleep.”
He let out a half laugh. “How is that going to work again?”
Sara tossed him one of the pillows stacked on the floor. “You take that end, I’ll take this one.”
They settled themselves head to toe. It was a tight fit but they were both fairly small people and managed to make it work.
Neal reached up and clicked off the light.
“Sara?”
“What?”
“I know this was hard but I think we should keep talking.”
She shifted, burying her face in the couch. It smelled faintly of cigarettes. “I’ll try. Go to sleep Neal.”
Sara awoke with a jolt, unsure if the noise she’d heard was a fragment of a dream or something in her environment. Whatever she had been dreaming was slipping away from her with each second of consciousness, even as she tried to hang on to it.
“Ow,” exclaimed the other end of the couch.
She half sat up, glancing around the darkened room. By her best guess she’d drifted off for a few hours or minutes but it wasn’t close to dawn. “Did you hear a noise?”
“All I heard was the sound of you kicking me in the head.” Neal sat up, rubbing the space just above his left ear. “It was probably just Eliot sneaking back in.”
“Why would Eliot be sneaking in? This is his house.”
Neal slumped back down. “Never mind.”
She nudged his shoulder with her heel. “You can’t just drop something like that say never mind. What did you mean?”
He sighed and lifted her feet, moving them to drape on the top of the couch so they were no longer in his face. “Look it’s none of my business, or yours but I’m pretty sure Eliot, Hardison and Parker are a…I think the correct term is throuple.”
“Oh.” A number of things dawned on her, the significant looks, the weird behavior about where Eliot was sleeping. She wasn’t bothered by it, but she felt a bolt of embarrassment, had she done something that made them feel they had to hide it? “They didn’t…”
“I wouldn’t take it personally that they aren’t open about it,” Neal finished her thought. “It’s none of our business and I’m sure some people can be pretty judgmental about it.”
“True.” She settled back down into the couch, trying to find a comfortable position. It hadn’t been so bad before, she’d been so tired. But now the lack of space, the lumpiness of the couch, the fact that she had the option of either Neal’s feet or a cushion in her face suddenly rankled. She turned on to her side, adjusting herself so her head fell below Neal’s ankles.
“Sara?”
“What?”
“Could you not knee me in the groin? If you’re looking to hurt me, I’d prefer it if you just kick me in the face again.”
“I did not.”
“You just came very close.”
She sighed, shifting again.
“You know there is an obvious solution to this.”
“One of us sleeps on the floor?”
“Or you come up here.”
“Neal…”
“I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”
She snorted. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”
“You have. Right before you climbed me like a tree.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”
“Because it’s true?”
She picked up her pillow and whacked him across the legs with it. He grabbed for it, wresting it out of her hands. “You’re violent tonight, Ellis.”
“I’m tired. Give me back my pillow.”
“Come get it then,” he teased playfully.
She knew she was getting into dangerous territory, the kind of territory that led to her climbing him like a tree. “Neal, I mean it,” she said sharply. “I’m tired. Give it back before we wake everyone up.”
He held it out to her and she snatched it out of his hand. She crammed it in between his feet and the couch and punched it a few times before she lay back down.
“Do you want me to go?” He asked. “I can sleep in the van.”
“This is fine.”
“Clearly it’s not.”
She waited a beat before she replied. Feelings were really not her strong suit. “I don’t know Neal. This is all just really difficult.”
“I know. I’m not trying to force myself on you. I’ll leave if that’s what you want.”
The silence between them fell thick. “It’s not,” she finally let out quietly. “And you may have a point have a point about this sleeping arrangement.”
Neal grinned into his pillow. “So?”
“So move over.” He scooted to the edge of the couch obediently and she arranged herself, fitting herself between him and the cushions and resting her head on his shoulder.
“Better?” He asked. He brought his arm down so it draped over her.
“Chivalrous as always, Caffrey.”
He began drawing a soothing pattern on her arm, one that was slowly lulling her to sleep.
“Sara?” He said a moment later.
“What?” She mumbled sleepily.
“I’m going to make this up to you, promise.”
“You could start by letting me sleep,” she said into his shoulder. “And Neal Caffrey doesn’t make promises.”
He lay thinking about this as her breath evened out and she drifted to sleep. This comment hit harder than anything she’d deliberately said to hurt him.
He glanced down at her sleeping face. “Maybe it’s time to start.”