i'll save myself (you'll save me too)
prompt: bloody knife
whumpee: neal caffery
fandom: white collar
it's been a minute since i've hurt neal but he remains so very whumpable :) hope you enjoy!!
The knife clatters to the ground, impossibly loud in the complete stillness of the night. The blade is shiny and red with his blood and beneath the feeble glow of a single streetlight it’s almost iridescent.
He can’t stop looking at it, even as he presses his hands against the hole in his stomach hard enough to make spots appear in his vision.
He sinks to the ground in an uncoordinated manner, back to the rough brick of the wall behind him, legs splayed out in front of him. His blood is warm against his palms but with every second that passes he feels colder and colder.
He should get up. Find someone to help him. But he isn’t strong enough for that. He feels like he is glued to this spot.
He doesn’t want to die here. Alone.
An idea suddenly takes shape in his mind, and once the full force of it hits him he wonders why on earth he hadn’t thought of it at once.
He steels himself for the upcoming pain, then very slowly and very carefully crawls forwards until his hand wraps around the hilt of the knife.
He returns to his position against the wall, presses his left hand back to his stomach and adjusts his grip on the knife with his right hand.
This will be difficult. The knife’s hilt and blade, and his hand, are slick with blood and it is very difficult to maintain a firm grip. But whatever he can manage will have to be enough.
He uses the tip of the knife to lift the leg of his pants, then positions it against his tracker. All he needs is to either cut through the band or damage the tracker itself. From then, it’ll be a matter of minutes - he hopes - until the FBI realizes something is wrong, until they send someone after him - he wants Peter, but he’ll take absolutely anyone, even if they want to arrest him.
He doesn’t much like his chances of sawing through the band of the tracker, and this seems like the option more likely to result in further injury to his person, so he opts instead to simply attack the tracker.
He goes after it with the knife, careful as he can be, striking the thing over and over until bits of plastic litter the ground around him. He keeps at it until the light on it goes out. Please let this be enough, he thinks, letting the knife clatter back to the ground.
He presses his right hand back atop his left, dizzy and trembling from the exertion, and waits.
He’s all but unconscious when he becomes aware of a presence nearby. He opens his eyes with a considerable amount of effort and squints into the shadows near the mouth of the alley.
“Hello?” he asks. His voice barely sounds like his own.
Hurried footsteps, and then who but Peter should step beneath the glow of the streetlight?
“Neal!” Peter exclaims, his eyes going wide as he takes in the scene in front of him. Neal feels the absurd desire to stand up, to distance himself from his own blood spilled across the asphalt.
As it is, though, he can barely remain conscious while doing absolutely nothing but sitting still.
Peter speaks to someone. Neal catches the word ambulance and breathes a sigh of relief. An ambulance means, probably, that he’s not going to be arrested - at least not right now. He’s going to the hospital, which is hardly his favorite place, but they’ll be able to fix him. Stop the pain and the dizziness and all of it.
“Just hold on a little longer,” Peter says, and he’s crouched beside Neal now, hand on his shoulder and looking far too worried for Neal’s liking.
“It’s that bad, huh?” Neal asks. The words jumble themselves together on their way out of his mouth, but Peter understands anyway.
“It’s pretty bad. But you’ll be okay.” He says it so confidently that Neal has no choice but to believe him.
“I’ll be okay,” he agrees, hands slipping off of his torso. He lacks the energy to replace them. His eyes want to close, no matter how much he knows he should keep them open.
“Hey, don’t do that. Don’t pass out,” Peter commands, and then his hands are pressing into Neal’s stomach, far too hard. It hurts, a lot, and Neal’s eyes open again.
“Ow,” he mutters, trying and failing to push Peter’s hands away.
“Sorry,” Peter says. “Just - try to stay awake, okay? An ambulance will be here any minute.”
“Okay,” Neal replies, very quietly. He’s so tired and so dizzy and he wants nothing more than for everything to fade into nothingness, but Peter wants him to stay awake, so he will.
When the ambulance arrives a few minutes later, he’s still stubbornly conscious, and he doesn’t pass out until they’ve reached the hospital and a nurse injects him with anesthesia.
--
He wakes up with a dull pain in his gut and a floaty sensation in his head. Memories float to the surface of his mind - blood, brick, pain - and he doesn’t bother trying to latch onto them.
He’s in the hospital. He knows that much. When he opens his eyes he finds himself in a small, dark room. There is a chair beside his bed and a figure sitting in it, slumped to the side in a way that will surely cause problems when he wakes.
It’s Peter. He’s asleep, snoring occasionally, and there’s a book lying flat on the floor as though it’d slipped out of his grasp when he’d fallen asleep.
A warm feeling forms in his chest at the thought that Peter is here, that he’d stayed. That he is not alone.
He falls back asleep with a soft smile on his face.
thanks for reading!!! hope you liked <33333
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