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Neal knows why he’s there.
He knows why he’s facing the wall and why he’s supposed to stay still and not talk.
And he knows what he’s supposed to be doing.
He's supposed to be reflecting on the bad thing he did.
The problem is that he already knew what he did was wrong before he even did it. He wouldn’t have gotten the rush otherwise.
So, he’s sitting there, facing the wall, for no reason. He knows he shouldn’t have stolen the painting, his mind told him, Mozzie told him, Peter told him, even Elizabeth told him.
It only takes seconds before he starts fidgeting with his hands and tries focusing on the wall’s defect, some dots and some texture. It's easy at first because he can hear them talking, El is putting away the rest of the clean dishes while Peter explains “how stupid Neal has been” in his own words, it’s ushered but since he’s focusing on it, he can still hear them pretty well.
The noise of plates being carefully put in a drying rack only serves to remind him of his own dirty plates and utensils from the week waiting for him back at June’s. He usually does them after every meal because it’s easier but these last days he’s been struggling with his executive dysfunction. In short, a joy.
But then they step outside to continue talking, even taking Satchmo with them, and he is left in nearly complete silence.
Of course, nowhere is ever really completely silent, he can still hear the cars outside, the sound of water running through house pipes because El was washing dishes when they arrived, the noise of the frige and the faint but constent buzzing of light bulbs.
He doesn’t do well in silence when he isn’t focused on something, so he isn’t doing so good right now.
He can work in silence, he likes to paint in silence while having only the sound of the city to listen to, he likes to sleep with the same thing but it’s not the same because then he’s capable of focusing on more or less specific things.
He knows that he could use this time to his advantage and try to find a plan on how he’s going to deal with the painting without getting sent back to jail but he just can’t. His mind isn’t there enough for him to be able to think about something so complicated right now and to be honest, the fact that he’s alone is really putting him on edge.
And he understands why Peter doesn’t want to talk to him right now, and he also understands why he doesn’t want to hear Neal talk either but it’s still hard. He also knows that it’s just for a bit of time, minutes, an hour at most, but his mind can’t escape the thought that maybe Peter just won’t talk to him anymore after that.
Okay, he can’t deny the fact that he does have his own lot of emotional baggage, but they usually don’t attack him like that. So quickly. But now it does.
The though that maybe once he’s done, they’ll just open the door and tell him to leave and never talk to him again and then bring him back to prison where he rightfully belongs and-
Okay now he needs to calm down.
He needs to calm the hell down because he can feel himself starting to hyperventilate.
He needs to.
But he’s not able to.
He's not able to calm down because his mind keeps circling back to what could possibly happen.
He’s not able to because his mind works faster than light speed and he's too stressed to even realize that he’s probably overthinking it.
That's why he always needs to move, because when his body moves, his mind is forced to move at the same pace. At least it works most of the time.
His brain is wired differently than the average and he wish he could unravel and reconnect the wires differently for his mind to work like anyone else’s, but he can’t. He just has to deal with it.
And right now, he has to deal with the fact that the only thing he wants to do right now is to get out of this chair and be with them.
He can’t really explain why but he needs to know they’re still there and he needs to see and hear them to be sure of it. But the only way for that to work is if he goes to get them.
He is a bit scared to leave the place he currently is at because he was put there by Peter because he was angry in the first place.
Something to which he had quickly responded “Peter, I- I-” but had been quickly shut off by the look the agent had shot in his direction. What he originally wanted to say was “Seriously, Peter, something so childish, what even is this supposed to be? A punishment?” but as things were, even if he hadn’t been stopped by Peter his sentence would have come out way differently because he was already nervous.
Elizabeth had only given him a half-apologetic look telling him to comply before hurrying her husband into the kitchen to try and at least ease his nerves a little bit.
If he’s honest with himself, the worse thing he thinks about isn’t even going back to prison, it’s losing another family.
A family where he actually felt cared about.
He's scared that they aren't here, even if they're just outside, because it brings him back to his childhood.
Back when his mother wouldn’t talk to him for weeks on end. When he needed to take care of himself because she couldn’t, Ellen was working, and he had no dad.
If he had been able to pay attention to himself a little more, he probably would have been able to notice he was slipping, or rather crashing with the speed it too, in little space. But he wasn’t and he didn’t.
And now the taughts are getting too loud when he makes a sudden decision to bolt out of his chair. He runs, and nearly trips over, across the living room and kitchen. He struggles with the doorknob before finally opening the door and looking at the Burkes with wide gray eyes.
When the back door opens Peter is quick to reprehend him, still on edge from the whole situation.
“-Neal-” Peter quickly stops himself when he sees the current state of his CI. He has no idea what lead to this, especially in so little time because it’s been less than fifteen minutes.
“-Please come back inside.” He nearly begs, his voice cracking over the simple words “please just come inside. I’ll- I’ll sit still, I won’t say anything just please-” he needs to stop because he can’t get enough air and he’s hyperventilating and the lump in his throat makes it hard to talk at all without breaking in a sob.
Elizabeth is the first one to speak and try to calm down the panicked boy.
“-Hey, Neal, sweetie, listen to me, can you do that?” She grabs his hand and softly brushes her thumb over his knuckles and a first tear escapes his eye. “I want you to try and take deep breaths with me, alright?” She takes his other hand in her’s as well and starts taking deep breaths, making them more rapid at first so Neal could reproduce them more easily with how quickly he was currently breathing and slowly making them last longer.
When he finally calms down enough to speak again, she asks. “Can you tell us what triggered this? It’s alright if you can’t.” Peter is glad she’s so good at dealing with people’s emotions because he’s still pretty much shell-shocked.
“-I- I just- I thought you wou-wouldn't want to talk to me anymore, o-or see me.” As he talks some more tears manage to escape and run down his cheek and he roughly wipes them off with his sleeves.
Peter then stands up and walks to him to put a hand on his shoulder, trying to ignore when the conman flinches slightly to the contact.
“-Neal, I need you to listen to me closely, okay? Yes, I’m mad that you stole the painting because it will get you into trouble and I don’t want you to go back to prison, do you understand that? But I won’t just stop talking to you because of that. I like having you around, we like having you around and I-” His sentence is interrupted when Neal suddenly hugs him and puts his head in the crook of the agent’s neck and lets out a sob and some more tears. “Okay, it’s alright kiddo, it’s okay.” He says as he rubs the kid’s back in circles.
El watches her boys with a soft little smile on her face and Peter catches a glimpse of it.
Things will never be easy with them, but they can go through it together. As a family.