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Peter wasn’t exactly surprised that he had never seen the inside of Neal Caffrey’s apartment except once. The criminal was known for being secretive, and Peter didn’t mind giving him a little bit of privacy as long as he wasn’t acting suspiciously. But one day, when he showed up to June’s to pick Neal up and he wasn’t waiting out front, he wasn’t sure what to think. He waited for five minutes to see if Neal would call, and then another five. After that, he strode to the door and knocked purposefully. He was let in by a uniformed maid, who directed him upstairs.
The door to Neal’s apartment was open, but no one was inside. He heard noise down the hall and followed it to an open door, where he was surprised to see Neal sitting on the edge of a bed next to a clearly sick child.
“How do you feel, Dami?” Neal asked quietly, his voice softer than Peter had ever heard it.
“I’m fine,” said the kid, immediately proving himself wrong with a loud cough.
“Dami,” said Neal sternly.
“My head hurts, my throat hurts, and my eyeballs are attempting to detach themselves from my ocular nerves,” said the kid petulantly. He spoke with a slight accent that Peter couldn’t place.
Neal sighed, then pressed his lips to the child’s forehead. “Yeah, you definitely have a fever. Let me go get a thermometer.” He stood up and turned, freezing when he saw Peter. “Oh. Um. Hi, Peter,” he said, haphazardly pasting on his signature conman grin, which Peter didn’t buy for a second.
“Do you need a day off?” Peter asked, bypassing the obvious questions.
“Am I allowed days off?” Neal asked, startled.
“As long as they’re for a good reason, yeah,” said Peter. He hadn’t realized that Neal had thought that their deal was so strict.
“Come on, walk with me,” said Neal, dragging Peter back towards Neal’s room. Peter followed him to the bathroom, where he started rummaging through the medicine cabinet.
“Is he—your son?” asked Peter, uncertain.
“Yeah,” said Neal, as if it weren’t the most important revelation Peter had had about his partner. “His name’s Damian and he’s thirteen,” he said fondly. Neal collected two bottles of pills and a thermometer, and he grabbed a glass of water on the way out.
Peter trailed behind him on the way back to Damian’s room. “Why didn’t you mention him?” he hissed, just before they turned the corner to enter the room.
“The fewer people know about him, the less danger he’s in,” said Neal sensibly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Peter hadn’t thought that Neal Caffrey had that many violent enemies.
Peter watched as Neal took his son’s temperature and gave him a few pills, watching as he reluctantly drank the entire glass of water. “I’ll make sure you get a few days off,” said Peter. “Let me know how he’s doing, and tell me if you need anything, okay?”
Neal nodded. He looked like he had expected Peter to respond differently, which made something ugly twist in Peter’s stomach. Had people reacted badly to him having a kid previously? Had Peter given him reason to believe that he wanted anything but the best for him and his son?
Neal followed him back up the hall to refill the water glass, and as he turned back, he looked at Peter. “Thanks,” he said quietly.
“Prioritize him, okay?” said Peter. “I’m not going to send you back to prison for being a good dad.” He clapped a hand on Neal’s shoulder and watched him go before Peter turned and left the house.
His mind was spinning as he drove to work. How had he managed to not know about this? What was he supposed to do now? He wanted to support Neal and his son, but he wasn’t sure Neal wanted him to get involved. He arrived at the office with a pensive look on his face, nodding to the people he saw as he went up to his office.
“No Caffrey today?” asked Diana curiously as Peter was halfway up the stairs.
“He has the day off,” said Peter. Diana raised an eyebrow, then shrugged when Peter didn’t offer any other explanation.
When he finally was seated at his computer, he put the name “Damian Caffrey” into the database, curious if it would find anything. He felt silly for being disappointed when the search turned up empty, but it was still the result he had expected.
Peter made his way through the day in a haze, trying to reconcile the caring, fatherly Neal Caffrey that he’d met that morning with the brash, flirty Neal Caffrey who came to the office every day. He didn’t say anything to Hughes, not yet, not until he thought through what that would mean for Damian.
When he arrived home, he met El with a kiss, but she immediately realized that something was wrong. “Is everything okay, honey?” she asked worriedly.
“Um, yeah,” said Peter. “I think so. Probably.”
“That’s not very reassuring,” said El, slightly teasing.
“I just found out something about Neal that doesn’t really line up with everything else I thought I knew.”
“Oh?” she asked.
“He has a kid,” said Peter, deciding to trust her with this. “He’s thirteen.”
“Oh,” said El. “Wow. I was not expecting that.”
“Me neither!” said Peter, relieved to have someone to talk to. He explained how the morning had gone, and then he described the decision he was being faced with. “I can—well, I should—tell Hughes, but I’m worried about whether it will affect Neal’s work-release deal. On one hand, maybe they’d give him a larger monthly stipend if the knew he was raising a child, but on the other hand, what if they tried to separate them? I can’t let them do that, El.”
El hummed thoughtfully. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to take some veggie soup out of the freezer for me to reheat, and after that, we’re going to bring the soup and a bottle of wine over to Neal’s. Hopefully we’ll be able to find out more about the situation, but even if not, at least he’ll know we support him and his son.”
This was why Peter had fallen in love with El. She took the most complicated problems and found easy solutions, and she made it look effortless. “Okay. Yeah. I can do that,” he said, giving her another quick kiss before he went to the freezer. When he came back, El had taken out a pot, and before long, they had a container of warm soup. El picked a bottle of wine, and then Peter drove them to June’s.
Peter was ready to just knock on the door like he had that morning, but El stopped him. “Call first. Show you’re respecting his boundaries.” Right. Yeah.
The phone rang for a few seconds before Neal picked up, sounding slightly out of breath. “Hi, Peter!” he said.
“Neal, hey. I mentioned Damian to El and she wanted to bring by some warm soup for him. So, um, we’re outside your place right now…” He trailed off, not sure how to continue.
“Oh, thanks!” said Neal. “You can go ahead and come on up.”
“Okay, see you soon,” said Peter. After the phone hung up, he turned to El. “He said we can come up.”
He carried the soup while she took the wine, and they walked carefully up the stairs after being let in, trying not to make much noise.
“Peter!” said Neal, ducking his head out of Damian’s room. He turned back and said softly, “I’ll be right back.” He came out of the room fully, giving Peter and El a nervous smile. “Why don’t you come with me to the kitchen?” They followed like lost ducklings, still not exactly sure what to say.
El offered him the wine, and he grinned. “Thanks, El. I’ve needed this.” Proving the truth of his statement, he immediately took a wineglass from the cabinet and filled it all the way.
“I have soup,” said Peter. “It’s always what I like El to make me when I’m sick,” he explained.
“Thank you,” repeated Neal.
Peter wasn’t sure whether they should leave then, but El answered that for him by turning to Neal and asking, “How’s Damian doing? Peter said he had a fever this morning.”
“He still has a fever, but it’s gotten lower,” explained Neal. “I think it’s just a virus, probably something he caught at school.”
“Do you need another day tomorrow?” asked Peter.
“Would that be okay?” asked Neal, fidgeting. “His mom’s not really in the picture, and his biological dad is really busy. I have other family I could call, but they’re not close. Plus, it’s—it’s just nice to be able to spend time with him.” Well, that answered several questions Peter had had.
“Of course!” said Peter. Be supportive, he reminded himself. “Oh, I remembered today, there’s an FBI family picnic coming up two weekends from now. If you and Damian want to come, you’re more than welcome.”
Neal’s eyes widened. “Oh! That sounds fun. I’ll ask Damian when he’s feeling better and I’ll let you know.”
“Sure, sounds good,” said Peter, feeling like he’d depleted his meager store of conversation topics. As always, El was his savior.
“Well, we’d better be going,” she said. “We’ll let you get back to Damian.”
“Thanks,” said Neal, giving them a more genuine smile than Peter had ever seen from him. “For the soup and the wine, and, you know, for coming.” He looked almost shy, which seemed very out of character, but he’d seemed a little out of sorts since Peter’s surprise arrival that morning.
Peter wanted to say something else, but before he could put his foot in his mouth, El was dragging him out the door. “It’s no problem at all,” she said. “Let us know if you need anything else.” Neal smiled and waved as they left. When they got to the car, they sat quietly for a second. “That was sweet,” said El. “You were right, he didn’t seem all, you know—”
“Neal Caffrey?” asked Peter dryly.
“Yeah,” agreed El. “Do you think he’ll come to the picnic?”
Peter shrugged. “Honestly? I have no idea.”
“I hope he does,” said El. “I really want to meet Damian!”