[Fic: White Collar] Know Me (Not) 2/6?
Fandom: White Collar
Title: Know Me (Not) [2/6?]
Genre: Drama, H/C
Word Count: 677
Rating: PG
Notes: Outsider POV
Summary: There’s nothing like a crisis to bring out the truth. Five hints, and one time the Burkes didn’t realize they figured it out. (AU in which Neal is Peter’s son, but only Neal knows the truth.)
Leverage
It was late afternoon, less than twelve hours before the worst of the hurricane would reach New York. Sean hadn’t slept in his own bed in two days, the accident rate several times normal with people in a panic, unaccustomed to driving in such poor weather. EMTs were taking double shifts and this next site he was riding to sounded like a doozy.
The accident was reported in lower Manhattan, the severity of it surprising considering how slowly traffic was moving as the roads bottlenecked out of the island, the crowding exacerbated with the subway shut down. Four-car pile-up with a sedan pinned between an SUV and a semi-truck. They weren’t far from the hospital, but Sean was summarily anxious and frustrated as they crawled through traffic, the windshield wipers working overtime to the rhythm of flashing red lights.
An officer hustled over to meet them when he and the other paramedics finally tumbled out of the ambulance. His body was momentarily shocked by the cold, wet wind whipping at his windbreaker.
“What’s the situation, officer?” Sean asked loudly, grabbing his kit.
“Smart car got wind-swept into the SUV and the whole thing just dominoed,” the officer answered tersely, gesturing towards the crash site.
“Injuries?”
“In the sedan. Man, mid-forties, unresponsive. SUV side-swiped him into the semi. He’s the most critical. Otherwise minor all around: scrapes, whiplash, some head trauma…”
Sean nodded in acknowledgement and thanked the Lord it wasn’t as bad as he'd expected. “Hank, Reagan, grab the gurney!” he called to his teammates and radioed the other unit as he rushed over to the pinned car.
The rescue team was just pulling the unconscious man out when his team rolled up with equipment and made quick work checking his vitals, setting the neck brace, and lifting him onto the gurney. They found swelling in his abdomen where the car door depressed into his side and a nasty welt blooming on his forehead from whip-lashing into the window.
During the regimen, a second man staggered out from the wreck. Sean glanced up for a quick assessment. Smart suit, leather shoes - not ideal for a storm, but perhaps they had just come from work - and bleeding from his right eyebrow. Probably a concussion. The man looked disoriented and struggled against the ERTs trying to help him.
“Peter!”
“Sir, let them work, they’ll take care of him.”
Sean signaled to his teammate. “Reagan, we got this, check on the other guy,” he said, nodding at the zootsuit who was now favoring his right side. He seemed unaware of the elements, his hands running through his hair, looking lost and shaken.
“Sir, what’s your name sir?” Sean heard Reagan say, her voice firm and simultaneously gentle.
“Uh…Neal. It’s Neal. Please…”
“Neal? Neal. Okay Neal, your friend is okay, we’ll take care of him. Let us have you looked over first…”
The wind was picking up, whipping the stinging rain at him sideways. Hank had finished securing the man - Peter - to the gurney and they jogged him to the ambulance.
“Peter! Peter!”
Sean turned and saw the man struggling with an officer while Reagan urged him to stay calm. He wriggled his way past to the ambulance and held the doors open with a white-knuckled grip just as they were about to leave.
“Sir, please, you can meet us at the hospital.” Sean raised his hands up chest-level, ready to bodily restrain him if he needed to. He'd seen this countless of times before: friends, lovers, colleagues, and even strangers who suddenly felt responsible because they called 911, insisting on riding in the van.
“Please, I’m his son. I’m his son. Please.”
There was a wild desperation in the man’s eyes, and though he was probably Sean’s age, old to be Peter's son, with water plastering down his hair and running off his nose, his clothes clinging wrinkled on to his shivering frame, he looked every bit a scared child too big in his father’s clothes.
“Please,” he pleaded again. “He’s my dad.”
Sean nodded.
“Get in.”
---
Previous Parts
(Freudian Slip)
A/N Thanks for all the encouragement so far! *SPOILER FOR FIC* Just to clarify, this isn't a Peter-finds-out fic. As suggested by the summary, it's more like a collection of moments in which the truth manifests itself during/because of some crisis. Each part can be read as separate one-shots, but they are tied together by the five-times theme, similar to dragonfly's 5 Missing Pieces. Hope that's not too confusing!
If anyone has ideas on how to better represent this in the summary, I'm open to suggestions.