Fic: Silver Linings
Title: Silver Linings
Author: reve_silencieux
Rating: PG
Characters: Neal, Peter
Spoilers: None
Warnings: None
Word Count: 4,106
Beta: sapphire2309
Summary: Where he once read body language to see if someone was lying, now he read lips and closed captioning. Neal adjusts to a life of silence.
Author's Note: This is a sequel of sorts to qwertyfaced Fool's Gold, part of her Senseless exercise where she whumped poor Neal pretty hard. I wanted to comfort Neal and show him adapting to his new world. I also want to thank her for graciously allowing me to play in her sandbox and continually encouraging me.
NOTE: Now, despite my name, this is NOT an autobiographical fic. I only lost 50% of my hearing as a child, but deafness is a topic pretty near and dear to me. I took sign language classes in college and had Deaf friends. I cannot attest to what living totally deaf is really life, so if I got anything wrong, I apologize. But I did find it important to show that deafness is not debilitating and have yearned for years to read a realistic deaf fic portraying that. So I finally sucked it up and wrote it after qwertyfaced did the hard part. I'm also in the process of writing a timestamp, however it's gotten so long that it will be posted separately.
*~*~*
Some of the greatest films in history had no sound. Neal could expound on their brilliance to Peter any day of the week, listing off films that ranged from the light-hearted and campy Charlie Chaplin to the bitterly real and provoking tales of life, love and poverty that Japanese filmmakers excelled at. While Peter would probably think Neal would favor The Thief of Bagdad, with tales of flying carpets and a cloak of invisibility, his personal favorite had been The Last Command. It told the story of an ousted Russian general who lost his life, his love, and became so desperate that he took on a job playing a part in a movie-and not just any part, but one of his own life. Lost in his memories and his grief, he died in shock, only thinking about saving Russia.
You didn't need sound to appreciate the artistry or depth of human emotion those actors portrayed. It was about life, and ordinary people, and they crossed the boundaries of language and culture.
Only now, Neal was wondering how close his life was to becoming his own silent film. And whether he still felt the same way about them.
He'd always been one to read a person's body language, knowing when to push and when to pull away. It was a necessity in his line of work. But now he had to rely on that skill. Like a silent film, there were some people who were easy to read, and others, not so much.
There were the Charlie Chaplin types who over-exaggerated and mimed a great deal when they found out he was deaf, much to his annoyance. Others acted naturally, or simply forgot he was deaf, which could be equally frustrating.
Then there was the fact that you needed an in-house interpreter and title cards to fully understand the plot of the film, no matter how good the actors were.
Neal's life required subtitles now. And he wasn't lucky enough to have a live score, complete with sound effects, accompanying his life.
The glamour and novelty of a silent film had lost its charm for Neal.
But Neal was slowly learning to adapt to his new stark, black and white world. He was deaf, but he wasn't Deaf, something he'd learned was more cultural and he would never be a part of. He was considered a late deafened adult who straddled both the hearing and the deaf worlds. Neal didn't feel like he belonged to either.
However, there was something to be said for looking out in quiet oblivion as people walked down the street below him-it took him some time to see this. Neal would give anything for the cacophony of noises that was New York City, but when the sun set and he watched the clouds turn pink and purple, a sense of peace washed over him. The city and its people hadn't changed; they still went out for the night, excited and dressed to the nines, or quietly made their way home to loved ones.
He knew he was lucky. The friends that surrounded him kept him from slowly sinking to a place too difficult to come back from, a depression he was so close to giving in to when the world was moving on around him and he was stuck watching it in silence. They all helped him in so many ways, and he was grateful. Life would never be normal again, but it was feeling more normal than before.
There were still days when he got frustrated, wanted to forget, and just run away from it all. But he couldn't-not from his life with Peter and the FBI... or the fact that he was deaf. It took over his life.
Every day there was a new challenge to tackle.
Satchmo picked up on the changes and stuck to his side whenever he visited the Burke household, which annoyed Peter to no end, but Neal found comforting. He started bringing treats for the dog more and more often, and El joked that Neal might as well adopt him the way Satchmo tended to favor the con man more than them. He was just grateful of the fact that he didn't have to worry about how to communicate with him and enjoyed the dog's affections.
Three months after the accident, everyone was called into the conference room. A woman in her early thirties was patiently standing at the front, and for a brief moment Neal felt frustrated that he had not noticed her arrival. He’d always watched people and places (and exits and shiny things), but since the accident, he’d found himself surprised when people were right next to him one moment and inexplicably gone the next.
Once everyone settled into their chairs Hughes started to talk, and Neal looked to his right where Blake was transcribing. The probie had taken the task upon himself, boasting of his 80 words per minute typing speed and together they had cobbled a shorthand that made the process even quicker and easier for Neal to follow. If they also had a few inside jokes, and made bets how many times Peter would say “we need more evidence,” well... they would never tell.
He was surprised when Hughes introduced the woman and explained her presence. She was there to teach them some basic sign language. Neal had only just started to work with a tutor, recognizing the need for a way to communicate outside of the office. It was never going to be easy, and certainly he would never find people that knew American Sign Language as easily as people who knew English in a foreign country.
But it was a start.
Catching Peter’s eye, he smiled and Peter nodded back. Neal knew this was Peter’s doing. His friend had been there for him every step of the way, and while it had been suffocating at times in the beginning to need so much help, Neal knew he couldn’t have done it without him.
It would be a slow process for everyone involved, but Neal was just thankful that everyone was so willing to learn. He was cut off from everything otherwise, and having the people around him want to communicate with him made life just a little bit more bearable.
Over the next couple of months, the ASL instructor came two times a week for an hour to work with the small White Collar unit on basic words, phrases and anything else they felt would be appropriate to communicate with Neal. They would never be fluent, but it felt like the biggest show of acceptance from the group of agents who had taken him in as a member of their family.
The first time he caught a group of them practicing, he’d stared at them in shock, but soon it became commonplace to see people signing to each other slowly and he laughed when they had finger spelling contests. Learning signs were one thing, but comprehending someone else signing was another thing entirely. Those who caught onto finger spelling blew others out of the water with their speed. Neal had to admit that it was the hardest thing to learn.
His personal instructor worked with him three nights a week. But even still, it was like diving into the deep end conversing with Mozzie, who apparently spent his own time learning from books and videos. Having perfect recall, he could memorize hundreds of signs a day, but they both had to practice with each other, trying to grasp the grammar structure and short staccato nature of ASL.
Instead of asking “What are you eating?” he had to sign “You eat what?” It took time for his brain to wrap around what was essentially a new language to him.
Neal had to chuckle at the look of pain on Mozzie’s face one day when he tried to convey some winding story or conspiracy theory, only to throw his hands up in frustration when he couldn’t adequately get it across. Normally it would hurt, having a conversation cut short because it took too much effort to communicate, but for as much as he enjoyed his friend’s company, sometimes Neal secretly enjoyed the fact that he didn’t have to listen to long rambling rants about the government and their oppressive ways.
Six months later, he was comfortably having conversations with Mozzie without resorting to pen and paper. His lipreading skills were better, helping to fill in the gaps with Peter’s still limited grasp of sign language. Although there was still a misconception that he could understand everything a person said by lipreading. In truth, he could only 'read' about 30% of speech and had to fill in the rest just by guessing from the context of the sentence and conversation. It took a lot of effort, more than anyone knew, and by the end of the day he went home exhausted.
Neal also couldn't count how many times he got things wrong. Who knew that the word 'read' looked the same as 'drink?' (Jones cracked that Neal obviously had other things on his mind after that incident.) At first it had been embarrassing, but now he knew to ask pointed questions to clarify or have them fingerspell a word out.
Out of everything, what he missed the most was the ease of a simple conversation, especially with Peter. The two of them used to just talk, and it hurt that it wasn't like that anymore. They tended to keep their conversations short and to the point, and Peter's infamous puns rarely translated well into sign language.
“Well, that’s a load of Pollocks” would go down in history as the joke that took three attempts in sign language and two failed attempts to lipread, before Neal finally made him write it out and merely rolled his eyes once he read it.
Peter, though, continued to take sign language classes on the weekends with Elizabeth. They still couldn’t hold long conversations, but Neal appreciated their effort. It would just take time.
And time was his best and worst enemy.
In the beginning, he could 'hear' his friends' voices in his head, but as months passed, he started to forget what they sounded like. He was afraid he'd forget the sound of his own voice one day, which scared him. It was as if he losing a part of himself. Who was he now? He could talk, but he never knew how he sounded anymore. Could he project a charming tone or did he sound monotonous? He'd screamed over and over in his apartment only to have a sore throat afterwards, and no idea how loud or angry he sounded.
He described it to Peter like drawing blind. He'd done enough blind line drawing exercises as a kid in art class to know it never turned out like you expected. You could visualize it in your head, and guide your hand over the paper, but in the end, it was a shaky line that at best held a slight resemblance, or at worst looked like a two-year-old's attempt at cubism.
Peter paused, and made sure he spoke slowly and clearly. “Neal, I would take one of your blind drawings over your flawless forgeries any day.”
It made Neal's heart swell. He swallowed a lump in this throat and nodded. “Thank you.”
They shared a smile and he'd gone home that evening relieved that at least their friendship hadn’t changed.
After their talk he went to a speech therapist and worked on controlling his voice and emotions.
Even then, signing started to feel more comfortable than talking. He knew he was lucky that he could talk-it certainly made life easier when ordering a cup of coffee at Starbucks. But signing was just becoming second nature to him. Maybe because he was a visual person, and he felt like he was painting a story with his hands. Honestly though, it was just easier. He knew what he was conveying and there were no dangers of miscommunication.
More and more, he signed back to his friends instead of talking. It helped him as much it helped them, he rationalized. Like any foreign language, you had to use it daily or you forgot it.
Angry gestures and emphatic signing also gave him a release that he didn't feel even if he yelled at the top of his lungs.
However, Neal worried that by signing he was giving up, crawling into a cave, unwilling to associate with the rest of the world. He could only communicate with a few people. Lipreading only got him so far, and he was lost in crowded situations. Team dinners were a nightmare unless Peter could interpret. Even then, it was hard to keep up. He consciously had to think and work to make sure he was talking at an appropriate volume when he did try to take part in conversations. Sometimes he found himself signing at the same time, or completely switching over to sign language and having people stare at him confused.
One night he went out to a bar, and while he remembered to verbally order his drink, he’d automatically started signing to a woman who’d sidled up to him and started to talk. Thankfully he’d been observant enough to turn and face her, otherwise he probably would have ended up with a drink in his face. He'd wonder later if he'd been subconsciously pushing her away, not quite ready to date yet, but more and more he found himself keeping to himself.
He was fine at the office, with friends around him and work to keep him busy. Peter was probably happy since he didn't goof off as much, but the silence wasn't as suffocating as it was at home. Mozzie came over frequently enough, but it wasn't the same as a lazy evening drinking wine over a philosophical discussion when you had to stop and fingerspell every fifth word. He'd nearly thrown a book at Mozzie's head after having to fingerspell 'Machiavelli' one too many times.
Neal spent more of his time reading than anything else. Before, he would have painted in silence in order to concentrate, now it felt stifling, as if to remind him that he was alone.
Then one day Peter asked him if he wanted an interpreter. Neal hadn’t known how to respond. Everything that the FBI had done to accommodate him, from transcribing the meetings to teaching the unit sign language, had gone above and beyond what Neal had ever expected of them.
Peter explained that they were technically required to accommodate him with whatever he needed to perform his work, but since he was a ward of the state, the agency had been working with legal and human resources to figure out what exactly that entailed.
Neal raised an eyebrow. “They didn't know what to do with me, did they?”
Peter sighed. “Not really. You have to admit, it's a unique situation. But now that you're signing more, this is an option they're willing to offer.”
Grinning, Neal leaned back in his chair. “It pains them to do this, doesn't it?”
“I'm sure,” Peter replied wryly. “But it's better for everyone involved.”
Neal just shrugged.
For safety and liability reasons, the interpreter could only be used at the office, so Peter and Neal would continue their hodgepodge method of communication out in the field. Not that Neal went out in the field much anymore. He went along to interviews and crime scenes, and unfortunately spent more nights in the van than he wanted, but his undercover days were over. It had been a hard pill to swallow, but in the beginning Neal couldn't even contemplate how to get around by himself, much less maintain his image as the suave and charming con man.
As he finally got used to his new world, it became harder to stay at the office and work at his desk, especially when opportunities arose where he was needed. Instead he just smiled and offered his insight, and watched as Diana or Jones went in his place.
Only one time had one of his aliases come up in a case. He had to conduct the business through the telephone-on speaker, of course. Blake transcribed and Neal frantically worked to keep up and stay composed. It had been nerve wracking for everyone involved, but it ended well. Mozzie, much to his chagrin, even played his middleman so Neal wouldn't have to show up in person.
The interpreter, he found out later, was a federal employee who had worked with the FBI and other agencies before. It made him feel a little better, like he wasn't inconveniencing the agency by having to hire someone just for him. Her name was Keira, and she was in her late thirties, with long deep brown hair that she always tied back in one way or another. He supposed it was better to not have it in her way while signing, but it made her appear too serious.
She took a very business-like approach, signing and interpreting with efficiency, but it left Neal feeling cold. Having her there in the meetings was helpful, but Neal started to resent her presence. It felt like having a middleman in his life. People in the office stopped signing to him and sought out Keira to interpret their conversations. It didn't matter if he could lipread and they'd been getting along fine until then, they'd talk to Keira instead of him.
In a move uncharacteristic of him, one he would later regret, Neal lost his cool and blew up at Peter in his office.
"They don't even look me in the eye anymore."
Afterwards, they sat down with Keira and had a long discussion. It was decided that she would interpret in the meetings, but would only help out around the office if Neal asked for it. Peter and Hughes would have a talk with everyone to make sure they understood. He felt like a tattletale, the kid that was picked on in the playground, but he knew there was no way around it.
Keira pulled him aside later and apologized. Neal knew it wasn't her fault, but was thankful that she understood his situation. Some people might appreciate her help, which he did, but Neal was a people person. He was used to interacting one on one, and struggled with the fact that he was dependent on someone to help him with something that used to come so naturally to him.
With that out of the way, they relaxed and found a rhythm together.
After a couple of weeks, he finally got her to smile and laugh at his jokes. Peter thought he was flirting with her, but Neal just wanted her to lighten up. They were stuck with each other for the foreseeable future after all and he couldn't imagine working with someone so closely without being friends. It was the reason why he and Peter worked so well together.
And if he and Blake had inside jokes, that was nothing compared to the joking and mocking he and Keira secretly shared during meetings. They'd made up sign names for his coworkers, and Neal had to keep his face straight when Peter had asked about his. Neal had come up with it, a combination of 'cowboy' and using the letter 'P'. It was rather obvious with the gun slinging motions, but it had been the first thing to come to Neal's mind.
Before long, Keira was unofficially a member of the team, sometimes offering her own contributions, and Neal felt that life was returning to normal.
Over the Fourth of July weekend, Peter and Elizabeth had everyone over for a barbecue at their house. It was a laid-back and festive atmosphere with many agents from the office mingling and chatting over margaritas and beer. Mozzie, despite his aversion to the government and the FBI, was there and fervently discussing the plausibility of some crazy conspiracy theory with Blake and anyone who would listen to him. Neal just smiled and watched from a distance, playing with Satchmo and enjoying the summer day.
It was June's surprise appearance that afternoon, along with a small black Labrador, that made the day memorable for Neal. Peter and Elizabeth had shared with June how well Satchmo adjusted to Neal, and she had taken it upon herself to get Neal his own hearing dog. Unfortunately, she'd learned that one had to be on a waiting list-for at least a year, to get one through an organization. So she found a dog herself and had it privately trained.
She'd chosen a black lab since they were smart and often used as service dogs. The black hair also wouldn't be too obvious on his suits, she added, and winked at him. They all laughed, and Neal knelt down to meet Colby as June explained that the trainer would come to his place and help them both adjust to Neal's needs.
Neal found Colby to be very well mannered, despite his youth, and couldn't help but grin when Satchmo started sniffing out his competition. He thanked June profusely and found himself wiping away tears when he looked back up at his friends. They continued to amaze him and he didn't know what he'd do without them.
He later changed Colby's name to Rembrandt, or Remy for short, much to Peter's amusement.
“Elizabeth named your dog after a jazz musician. I'm not allowed to name mine after one of the greatest painters of the 17th Century?”
“Remy is a rat,” Peter deadpanned.
“A French rat, with rather impeccable taste, I might add.”
With the trainer's help, Remy soon learned to alert Neal when someone knocked on his door or rang his doorbell (which until then had flashed a light in his apartment), woke him up if he slept through his vibrating alarm clock and got his attention if someone called his name. The trainer stressed that Remy should not be considered a pet, but a working dog. However, that was hard when everyone wanted to pet him-he was just too darn cute.
Neal took him out walking on the streets, acclimating him to the crowds of people, but he had already been trained well, and stuck to his side obediently. Following his trainer's advice, he bought a bright blue service vest for Rembrandt to wear that allowed Neal to take him everywhere. At work, he would lay down in the corner behind Neal's desk and only got up when a loud noise echoed across the office.
While Neal had adapted to his silent life and had various means to overcome most problems, he would admit that having Rembrandt allowed him to relax. The fear of being taken unaware, especially at night, melted away. Remy might not be a guard dog, but he was always on alert and Neal felt safe with him.
Rembrandt also quickly became his companion, filling the emptiness of his apartment with boundless energy. He found himself painting again now that he had something or someone there to keep him from going crazy from the loneliness and silence.
But there were also times when he found the silence beneficial, if not desirable. One Saturday afternoon, he was over at the Burke's, and Peter had turned on the baseball game. While the closed captioning was on (technically it was never turned off anymore), Neal found himself conversing more with Elizabeth than watching the game. When Peter's head fell back and his mouth opened, he'd had to grin when she rolled her eyes and kicked her husband in the shin to jerk him awake. His snoring, she confided in him, was so loud she had to sleep with earplugs.
Peter, for his part, just stirred and blinked wearily, then fell back asleep. And the snoring resumed.
Sometimes there were perks to a life of silence, he mused.
By the time one year had passed since the accident, Neal found himself at peace, something he didn't think would happen in those first few terrifying weeks. He still missed the chaotic noise of the city, or the soothing sounds of a violin concerto, and the soft bristle of his paintbrushes as they hit canvas. But he had a good life and friends that would do anything for him, so he didn't look back with regret or anger anymore.
Maybe one day he would hear it all again, but if he didn't, at least he could still laugh with Peter over beer and bad wine. That was really all that mattered.
Author: reve_silencieux
Rating: PG
Characters: Neal, Peter
Spoilers: None
Warnings: None
Word Count: 4,106
Beta: sapphire2309
Summary: Where he once read body language to see if someone was lying, now he read lips and closed captioning. Neal adjusts to a life of silence.
Author's Note: This is a sequel of sorts to qwertyfaced Fool's Gold, part of her Senseless exercise where she whumped poor Neal pretty hard. I wanted to comfort Neal and show him adapting to his new world. I also want to thank her for graciously allowing me to play in her sandbox and continually encouraging me.
NOTE: Now, despite my name, this is NOT an autobiographical fic. I only lost 50% of my hearing as a child, but deafness is a topic pretty near and dear to me. I took sign language classes in college and had Deaf friends. I cannot attest to what living totally deaf is really life, so if I got anything wrong, I apologize. But I did find it important to show that deafness is not debilitating and have yearned for years to read a realistic deaf fic portraying that. So I finally sucked it up and wrote it after qwertyfaced did the hard part. I'm also in the process of writing a timestamp, however it's gotten so long that it will be posted separately.
*~*~*
Some of the greatest films in history had no sound. Neal could expound on their brilliance to Peter any day of the week, listing off films that ranged from the light-hearted and campy Charlie Chaplin to the bitterly real and provoking tales of life, love and poverty that Japanese filmmakers excelled at. While Peter would probably think Neal would favor The Thief of Bagdad, with tales of flying carpets and a cloak of invisibility, his personal favorite had been The Last Command. It told the story of an ousted Russian general who lost his life, his love, and became so desperate that he took on a job playing a part in a movie-and not just any part, but one of his own life. Lost in his memories and his grief, he died in shock, only thinking about saving Russia.
You didn't need sound to appreciate the artistry or depth of human emotion those actors portrayed. It was about life, and ordinary people, and they crossed the boundaries of language and culture.
Only now, Neal was wondering how close his life was to becoming his own silent film. And whether he still felt the same way about them.
He'd always been one to read a person's body language, knowing when to push and when to pull away. It was a necessity in his line of work. But now he had to rely on that skill. Like a silent film, there were some people who were easy to read, and others, not so much.
There were the Charlie Chaplin types who over-exaggerated and mimed a great deal when they found out he was deaf, much to his annoyance. Others acted naturally, or simply forgot he was deaf, which could be equally frustrating.
Then there was the fact that you needed an in-house interpreter and title cards to fully understand the plot of the film, no matter how good the actors were.
Neal's life required subtitles now. And he wasn't lucky enough to have a live score, complete with sound effects, accompanying his life.
The glamour and novelty of a silent film had lost its charm for Neal.
But Neal was slowly learning to adapt to his new stark, black and white world. He was deaf, but he wasn't Deaf, something he'd learned was more cultural and he would never be a part of. He was considered a late deafened adult who straddled both the hearing and the deaf worlds. Neal didn't feel like he belonged to either.
However, there was something to be said for looking out in quiet oblivion as people walked down the street below him-it took him some time to see this. Neal would give anything for the cacophony of noises that was New York City, but when the sun set and he watched the clouds turn pink and purple, a sense of peace washed over him. The city and its people hadn't changed; they still went out for the night, excited and dressed to the nines, or quietly made their way home to loved ones.
He knew he was lucky. The friends that surrounded him kept him from slowly sinking to a place too difficult to come back from, a depression he was so close to giving in to when the world was moving on around him and he was stuck watching it in silence. They all helped him in so many ways, and he was grateful. Life would never be normal again, but it was feeling more normal than before.
There were still days when he got frustrated, wanted to forget, and just run away from it all. But he couldn't-not from his life with Peter and the FBI... or the fact that he was deaf. It took over his life.
Every day there was a new challenge to tackle.
Satchmo picked up on the changes and stuck to his side whenever he visited the Burke household, which annoyed Peter to no end, but Neal found comforting. He started bringing treats for the dog more and more often, and El joked that Neal might as well adopt him the way Satchmo tended to favor the con man more than them. He was just grateful of the fact that he didn't have to worry about how to communicate with him and enjoyed the dog's affections.
Three months after the accident, everyone was called into the conference room. A woman in her early thirties was patiently standing at the front, and for a brief moment Neal felt frustrated that he had not noticed her arrival. He’d always watched people and places (and exits and shiny things), but since the accident, he’d found himself surprised when people were right next to him one moment and inexplicably gone the next.
Once everyone settled into their chairs Hughes started to talk, and Neal looked to his right where Blake was transcribing. The probie had taken the task upon himself, boasting of his 80 words per minute typing speed and together they had cobbled a shorthand that made the process even quicker and easier for Neal to follow. If they also had a few inside jokes, and made bets how many times Peter would say “we need more evidence,” well... they would never tell.
He was surprised when Hughes introduced the woman and explained her presence. She was there to teach them some basic sign language. Neal had only just started to work with a tutor, recognizing the need for a way to communicate outside of the office. It was never going to be easy, and certainly he would never find people that knew American Sign Language as easily as people who knew English in a foreign country.
But it was a start.
Catching Peter’s eye, he smiled and Peter nodded back. Neal knew this was Peter’s doing. His friend had been there for him every step of the way, and while it had been suffocating at times in the beginning to need so much help, Neal knew he couldn’t have done it without him.
It would be a slow process for everyone involved, but Neal was just thankful that everyone was so willing to learn. He was cut off from everything otherwise, and having the people around him want to communicate with him made life just a little bit more bearable.
Over the next couple of months, the ASL instructor came two times a week for an hour to work with the small White Collar unit on basic words, phrases and anything else they felt would be appropriate to communicate with Neal. They would never be fluent, but it felt like the biggest show of acceptance from the group of agents who had taken him in as a member of their family.
The first time he caught a group of them practicing, he’d stared at them in shock, but soon it became commonplace to see people signing to each other slowly and he laughed when they had finger spelling contests. Learning signs were one thing, but comprehending someone else signing was another thing entirely. Those who caught onto finger spelling blew others out of the water with their speed. Neal had to admit that it was the hardest thing to learn.
His personal instructor worked with him three nights a week. But even still, it was like diving into the deep end conversing with Mozzie, who apparently spent his own time learning from books and videos. Having perfect recall, he could memorize hundreds of signs a day, but they both had to practice with each other, trying to grasp the grammar structure and short staccato nature of ASL.
Instead of asking “What are you eating?” he had to sign “You eat what?” It took time for his brain to wrap around what was essentially a new language to him.
Neal had to chuckle at the look of pain on Mozzie’s face one day when he tried to convey some winding story or conspiracy theory, only to throw his hands up in frustration when he couldn’t adequately get it across. Normally it would hurt, having a conversation cut short because it took too much effort to communicate, but for as much as he enjoyed his friend’s company, sometimes Neal secretly enjoyed the fact that he didn’t have to listen to long rambling rants about the government and their oppressive ways.
Six months later, he was comfortably having conversations with Mozzie without resorting to pen and paper. His lipreading skills were better, helping to fill in the gaps with Peter’s still limited grasp of sign language. Although there was still a misconception that he could understand everything a person said by lipreading. In truth, he could only 'read' about 30% of speech and had to fill in the rest just by guessing from the context of the sentence and conversation. It took a lot of effort, more than anyone knew, and by the end of the day he went home exhausted.
Neal also couldn't count how many times he got things wrong. Who knew that the word 'read' looked the same as 'drink?' (Jones cracked that Neal obviously had other things on his mind after that incident.) At first it had been embarrassing, but now he knew to ask pointed questions to clarify or have them fingerspell a word out.
Out of everything, what he missed the most was the ease of a simple conversation, especially with Peter. The two of them used to just talk, and it hurt that it wasn't like that anymore. They tended to keep their conversations short and to the point, and Peter's infamous puns rarely translated well into sign language.
“Well, that’s a load of Pollocks” would go down in history as the joke that took three attempts in sign language and two failed attempts to lipread, before Neal finally made him write it out and merely rolled his eyes once he read it.
Peter, though, continued to take sign language classes on the weekends with Elizabeth. They still couldn’t hold long conversations, but Neal appreciated their effort. It would just take time.
And time was his best and worst enemy.
In the beginning, he could 'hear' his friends' voices in his head, but as months passed, he started to forget what they sounded like. He was afraid he'd forget the sound of his own voice one day, which scared him. It was as if he losing a part of himself. Who was he now? He could talk, but he never knew how he sounded anymore. Could he project a charming tone or did he sound monotonous? He'd screamed over and over in his apartment only to have a sore throat afterwards, and no idea how loud or angry he sounded.
He described it to Peter like drawing blind. He'd done enough blind line drawing exercises as a kid in art class to know it never turned out like you expected. You could visualize it in your head, and guide your hand over the paper, but in the end, it was a shaky line that at best held a slight resemblance, or at worst looked like a two-year-old's attempt at cubism.
Peter paused, and made sure he spoke slowly and clearly. “Neal, I would take one of your blind drawings over your flawless forgeries any day.”
It made Neal's heart swell. He swallowed a lump in this throat and nodded. “Thank you.”
They shared a smile and he'd gone home that evening relieved that at least their friendship hadn’t changed.
After their talk he went to a speech therapist and worked on controlling his voice and emotions.
Even then, signing started to feel more comfortable than talking. He knew he was lucky that he could talk-it certainly made life easier when ordering a cup of coffee at Starbucks. But signing was just becoming second nature to him. Maybe because he was a visual person, and he felt like he was painting a story with his hands. Honestly though, it was just easier. He knew what he was conveying and there were no dangers of miscommunication.
More and more, he signed back to his friends instead of talking. It helped him as much it helped them, he rationalized. Like any foreign language, you had to use it daily or you forgot it.
Angry gestures and emphatic signing also gave him a release that he didn't feel even if he yelled at the top of his lungs.
However, Neal worried that by signing he was giving up, crawling into a cave, unwilling to associate with the rest of the world. He could only communicate with a few people. Lipreading only got him so far, and he was lost in crowded situations. Team dinners were a nightmare unless Peter could interpret. Even then, it was hard to keep up. He consciously had to think and work to make sure he was talking at an appropriate volume when he did try to take part in conversations. Sometimes he found himself signing at the same time, or completely switching over to sign language and having people stare at him confused.
One night he went out to a bar, and while he remembered to verbally order his drink, he’d automatically started signing to a woman who’d sidled up to him and started to talk. Thankfully he’d been observant enough to turn and face her, otherwise he probably would have ended up with a drink in his face. He'd wonder later if he'd been subconsciously pushing her away, not quite ready to date yet, but more and more he found himself keeping to himself.
He was fine at the office, with friends around him and work to keep him busy. Peter was probably happy since he didn't goof off as much, but the silence wasn't as suffocating as it was at home. Mozzie came over frequently enough, but it wasn't the same as a lazy evening drinking wine over a philosophical discussion when you had to stop and fingerspell every fifth word. He'd nearly thrown a book at Mozzie's head after having to fingerspell 'Machiavelli' one too many times.
Neal spent more of his time reading than anything else. Before, he would have painted in silence in order to concentrate, now it felt stifling, as if to remind him that he was alone.
Then one day Peter asked him if he wanted an interpreter. Neal hadn’t known how to respond. Everything that the FBI had done to accommodate him, from transcribing the meetings to teaching the unit sign language, had gone above and beyond what Neal had ever expected of them.
Peter explained that they were technically required to accommodate him with whatever he needed to perform his work, but since he was a ward of the state, the agency had been working with legal and human resources to figure out what exactly that entailed.
Neal raised an eyebrow. “They didn't know what to do with me, did they?”
Peter sighed. “Not really. You have to admit, it's a unique situation. But now that you're signing more, this is an option they're willing to offer.”
Grinning, Neal leaned back in his chair. “It pains them to do this, doesn't it?”
“I'm sure,” Peter replied wryly. “But it's better for everyone involved.”
Neal just shrugged.
For safety and liability reasons, the interpreter could only be used at the office, so Peter and Neal would continue their hodgepodge method of communication out in the field. Not that Neal went out in the field much anymore. He went along to interviews and crime scenes, and unfortunately spent more nights in the van than he wanted, but his undercover days were over. It had been a hard pill to swallow, but in the beginning Neal couldn't even contemplate how to get around by himself, much less maintain his image as the suave and charming con man.
As he finally got used to his new world, it became harder to stay at the office and work at his desk, especially when opportunities arose where he was needed. Instead he just smiled and offered his insight, and watched as Diana or Jones went in his place.
Only one time had one of his aliases come up in a case. He had to conduct the business through the telephone-on speaker, of course. Blake transcribed and Neal frantically worked to keep up and stay composed. It had been nerve wracking for everyone involved, but it ended well. Mozzie, much to his chagrin, even played his middleman so Neal wouldn't have to show up in person.
The interpreter, he found out later, was a federal employee who had worked with the FBI and other agencies before. It made him feel a little better, like he wasn't inconveniencing the agency by having to hire someone just for him. Her name was Keira, and she was in her late thirties, with long deep brown hair that she always tied back in one way or another. He supposed it was better to not have it in her way while signing, but it made her appear too serious.
She took a very business-like approach, signing and interpreting with efficiency, but it left Neal feeling cold. Having her there in the meetings was helpful, but Neal started to resent her presence. It felt like having a middleman in his life. People in the office stopped signing to him and sought out Keira to interpret their conversations. It didn't matter if he could lipread and they'd been getting along fine until then, they'd talk to Keira instead of him.
In a move uncharacteristic of him, one he would later regret, Neal lost his cool and blew up at Peter in his office.
"They don't even look me in the eye anymore."
Afterwards, they sat down with Keira and had a long discussion. It was decided that she would interpret in the meetings, but would only help out around the office if Neal asked for it. Peter and Hughes would have a talk with everyone to make sure they understood. He felt like a tattletale, the kid that was picked on in the playground, but he knew there was no way around it.
Keira pulled him aside later and apologized. Neal knew it wasn't her fault, but was thankful that she understood his situation. Some people might appreciate her help, which he did, but Neal was a people person. He was used to interacting one on one, and struggled with the fact that he was dependent on someone to help him with something that used to come so naturally to him.
With that out of the way, they relaxed and found a rhythm together.
After a couple of weeks, he finally got her to smile and laugh at his jokes. Peter thought he was flirting with her, but Neal just wanted her to lighten up. They were stuck with each other for the foreseeable future after all and he couldn't imagine working with someone so closely without being friends. It was the reason why he and Peter worked so well together.
And if he and Blake had inside jokes, that was nothing compared to the joking and mocking he and Keira secretly shared during meetings. They'd made up sign names for his coworkers, and Neal had to keep his face straight when Peter had asked about his. Neal had come up with it, a combination of 'cowboy' and using the letter 'P'. It was rather obvious with the gun slinging motions, but it had been the first thing to come to Neal's mind.
Before long, Keira was unofficially a member of the team, sometimes offering her own contributions, and Neal felt that life was returning to normal.
Over the Fourth of July weekend, Peter and Elizabeth had everyone over for a barbecue at their house. It was a laid-back and festive atmosphere with many agents from the office mingling and chatting over margaritas and beer. Mozzie, despite his aversion to the government and the FBI, was there and fervently discussing the plausibility of some crazy conspiracy theory with Blake and anyone who would listen to him. Neal just smiled and watched from a distance, playing with Satchmo and enjoying the summer day.
It was June's surprise appearance that afternoon, along with a small black Labrador, that made the day memorable for Neal. Peter and Elizabeth had shared with June how well Satchmo adjusted to Neal, and she had taken it upon herself to get Neal his own hearing dog. Unfortunately, she'd learned that one had to be on a waiting list-for at least a year, to get one through an organization. So she found a dog herself and had it privately trained.
She'd chosen a black lab since they were smart and often used as service dogs. The black hair also wouldn't be too obvious on his suits, she added, and winked at him. They all laughed, and Neal knelt down to meet Colby as June explained that the trainer would come to his place and help them both adjust to Neal's needs.
Neal found Colby to be very well mannered, despite his youth, and couldn't help but grin when Satchmo started sniffing out his competition. He thanked June profusely and found himself wiping away tears when he looked back up at his friends. They continued to amaze him and he didn't know what he'd do without them.
He later changed Colby's name to Rembrandt, or Remy for short, much to Peter's amusement.
“Elizabeth named your dog after a jazz musician. I'm not allowed to name mine after one of the greatest painters of the 17th Century?”
“Remy is a rat,” Peter deadpanned.
“A French rat, with rather impeccable taste, I might add.”
With the trainer's help, Remy soon learned to alert Neal when someone knocked on his door or rang his doorbell (which until then had flashed a light in his apartment), woke him up if he slept through his vibrating alarm clock and got his attention if someone called his name. The trainer stressed that Remy should not be considered a pet, but a working dog. However, that was hard when everyone wanted to pet him-he was just too darn cute.
Neal took him out walking on the streets, acclimating him to the crowds of people, but he had already been trained well, and stuck to his side obediently. Following his trainer's advice, he bought a bright blue service vest for Rembrandt to wear that allowed Neal to take him everywhere. At work, he would lay down in the corner behind Neal's desk and only got up when a loud noise echoed across the office.
While Neal had adapted to his silent life and had various means to overcome most problems, he would admit that having Rembrandt allowed him to relax. The fear of being taken unaware, especially at night, melted away. Remy might not be a guard dog, but he was always on alert and Neal felt safe with him.
Rembrandt also quickly became his companion, filling the emptiness of his apartment with boundless energy. He found himself painting again now that he had something or someone there to keep him from going crazy from the loneliness and silence.
But there were also times when he found the silence beneficial, if not desirable. One Saturday afternoon, he was over at the Burke's, and Peter had turned on the baseball game. While the closed captioning was on (technically it was never turned off anymore), Neal found himself conversing more with Elizabeth than watching the game. When Peter's head fell back and his mouth opened, he'd had to grin when she rolled her eyes and kicked her husband in the shin to jerk him awake. His snoring, she confided in him, was so loud she had to sleep with earplugs.
Peter, for his part, just stirred and blinked wearily, then fell back asleep. And the snoring resumed.
Sometimes there were perks to a life of silence, he mused.
By the time one year had passed since the accident, Neal found himself at peace, something he didn't think would happen in those first few terrifying weeks. He still missed the chaotic noise of the city, or the soothing sounds of a violin concerto, and the soft bristle of his paintbrushes as they hit canvas. But he had a good life and friends that would do anything for him, so he didn't look back with regret or anger anymore.
Maybe one day he would hear it all again, but if he didn't, at least he could still laugh with Peter over beer and bad wine. That was really all that mattered.