White Collar - Thursday

[kriadydragon]

Title: Thursday
Rating: PG-13 for blood
Characters: Mozzie, Neal
Summary: Neal is hurt, Mozzie makes a choice. Written for laylabinx for collarcorner. Pompt here. Hope you enjoy.

Thursday

Thursday had always felt lucky to Mozzie. It wasn't the biggest of his two storage units, neither was it the most comfortable, but to go inside it was like stepping through a portal, or maybe a karma car wash. Enter Thursday on a bad day, and when you stepped out, everything just seemed to fall into place. Maybe it was the feng shui (Mozzie had decorated the cramped space with loving care), or the location (there was a church next door), or maybe the unit's number (thirty-four, yes, but somewhere out there could very well be an ancient manuscript still undiscovered proclaiming thirty-four the most blessed of all numbers).

Or maybe it was a trap set up to lure Mozzie into a false sense of security. That theory Mozzie toyed with just for the fun of it. Not even the government would go that elaborate, not when shooting someone or framing them for murder was so much quicker.

The long and short of it was that, for once, Mozzie didn't care about the why. Thursday was good to him, so good that of all the storage units and warehouses, Thursday he protected with a passion. No one knew where it was.

Well, okay, Neal knew but only because Mozzie had needed help moving in. And it was so long ago, back when it was nothing but storage units for housing for him, that he highly doubted even that organic hard drive Neal called a brain considered it important enough to save.

So it was quite startling, terrifying even, to hear a fist banging on the metal door. Mozzie did what any self-respecting resident of a storage unit meant to be hidden did – held perfectly still and hoped the knocker went away.

They didn't. They knocked again.

“Come on, Moz, I know you're in there.”

Neal.

It was tempting to sigh in relief and let the tension drain, but Mozzie hadn't survived this long under the radar by jumping to happy conclusions.

“My dog's trying to sleep,” Mozzie called.

He heard a tired whuff of breath, then, “Let him.”

Now Mozzie could relax. Had Neal told Mozzie to wake said non existent dog, then he would have been in trouble. Mozzie hurried to the door and heaved it open.

Neal stood on the other side, hunched against the cold drizzle slicking his pale, wan face with moisture. Despite the lack of people holding Neal hostage in order to get to Mozzie, Neal was looking decidedly unhappy. In fact, he looked sick.

“You need a better password, Moz,” Neal croaked. “Dogs don't usually sleep through people trying to beat your entrance down.” Then he pitched forward.

It was difficult for the tall people of the world to fully appreciate just how disconcerting it was to have them topple like a falling tree. It scrambled the brain, overloaded instinct and was generally not friggin' kosher, man. Mozzie caught Neal easily but at the price of nearly going down with him, which would have been too many kinds of awkward. Neal may be a bean pole but because he was among the tall, with muscle, he couldn't really be called a light weight, not to Mozzie. Then again, no one really could when they were mostly dead weight.

Mozzie was positive he was going to hell for the string of blasphemous petitions to God pouring out of his mouth. He didn't so much carry Neal as drag him to the comfortably long and padded cot at the back between the space heater and small shelf of books. He lowered Neal gently as he could onto the spongy surface, a near impossible endeavor with Neal's scrawny but long legs tangling up in Mozzie's. He had no choice but to drop Neal the rest of the way. Neal grunted, grimaced and curled up with his hand pressed to his side.

Mozzie sighed wearily. “Okay, who'd you piss off this time and how many ribs did they break?”

“Jeez, Mozzie, seriously?” Neal forced through a clenched jaw, his glare of annoyance weakened by the glassiness of pain.

Mozzie folded his arms and lifted his chin. “Tell me I'm wrong.”

“You're wrong, okay?” Neal gasped, a sudden inhale interrupted by a grunt, and clenched his body tighter. “It was a...” the rest of his words were bitten off with a sharp clack of his teeth.

“It was a what?”

If looks could kill and all that, but in his current state Mozzie doubted Neal could so much as squash an already squashed cockroach. Still, weak or not, Neal could do scathing with the best of them.

“A mugging, all right?” Neal said. His gaze darted to the security of the ceiling. “A stupid mugging.”

And despite it being close to midnight, and Manhattan, Mozzie still exclaimed, “Mugged, are you serious?” descending on Neal and the hand over his side. He pulled aside the resisting hand, then the coat, and balked.

Neal's shirt was soaked. In blood. A lot of blood. From armpit to hip.

Neal was very serious.

“Oh crap,” Mozzie squeaked. “Oohhh, crap.”

“You think?” Neal said, and swallowed audibly. “Just... just help me out, here, okay?”

“As much as it pains me to say this, maybe you should call the suit,” Mozzie said, moving to the small cabinet where he kept the important supplies – water, food, and most especially various first aid kits.

“On vacation,” Neal said.

“So?”

“Anniversary.”

“So?”

“Not going to ruin that for 'em for something this stupid.”

“Muggings aren't stupid.” Mozzie moved one kit after another closer to the bed. Neal gave him a pained look that had little to do with actual pain. Mozzie rolled his eyes. “Okay, yes, they're stupid, but serious stupid. The kind of serious that even I have to admit warrants the attention of the police, because anyone that violent and stupid deserves to get caught. You know that.” He then pulled scissors from one of the kits and proceeded to cut Neal's shirt, the final nail to the coffin making Neal groan in lament for what had once been a fine piece of wardrobe. Mozzie, not one for impeccable style unless needed, and with blood getting on his fingers, couldn't sympathize.

Mozzie peeled back the two-halves of ruined shirt. His fight not to be sick was one hell of a battle.

The wound was long, and bleeding, oozing copious amounts of red, sticky germ-filled fluid, drops of it sliding methodically following the grooves between Neal's ribs, drawing lines over his upper stomach and chest, heading for the cot's only blanket. Mozzie's only blanket.

Mozzie swallowed repeatedly. He had to think, he had to focus. Neal's life was at stake and, damn it, he should be used to this. How many times had he had to patch the kid up after a scheme gone wrong? Or himself up? Enough times to lose count, that's how many. Problem was, he could have sworn he was getting less used to it, not more. Because, seriously, that was a lot of blood.

“How bad?” Neal rasped, snapping Mozzie from his disgusted stupor.

“Er...” was all Mozzie could muster. It looked deep but... focus, damn it, focus... if it managed to hit a rib, then looks were deceiving and Neal would be fine as soon as Mozzie got the bleeding stopped. Missed the rib and sank in between... all it would take was one nick to the pleural sack and Neal would be drowning in his own blood.

“Uh... uh... Breathing! How's you're breathing? Can you breathe? Please tell me you can breathe.”

“I can breathe, Moz.”

“Does it hurt? Do you feel any restriction? Any tightness? What about crackling, do you feel any crackling?” Mozzie didn't wait for an answer and rolled Neal enough to put his ear to his clammy, blood-striped chest. He heard Neal's heart beating fast but steady, and heard the clear rush of Neal's lungs.

“Um... no,” Neal said. He sounded anxious. Not good. The last thing the kid needed was any more reason to feel anxious.

“Okay,” Mozzie said, getting his own breathing under control. “Sounds fine, everything sounds fine. I don't think anything was punctured.” But just in case, he felt the area around the wound, staying as far from the wound itself as possible and still be able to determine what he needed to know.

Confirmed, the knife had skittered across a rib, mostly. Either way, nothing was punctured other than skin, blood vessels and muscle. Ew. All Mozzie had to worry about now was stopping the bleeding. Double ew.

“I'm not worried,” Neal said with a pathetic smile on his face. “You haven't tried to talk me into going to the hospital.”

“Yes, well, I'm tempted.”

“So, close to 'that bad'?”

Yes, Mozzie thought, dejectedly. very close. There'd been two times, and only two times, Mozzie had relented to handing Neal over to that government corrupted and disease-ridden cesspool known as the hospital – once when his appendix was about to burst, again when a knife really had punctured his pleural sack. Mozzie might stake his life, literally, on avoiding that which the government or greedy corporations had a foothold in, but he wasn't one of those idiot paranoids who didn't know when he was beat. He wasn't an asshole who put his distaste for the Man above the welfare of his friends. He knew when to make exceptions, and was seriously considering that now may be the time for exceptions.

“Good,” Neal said. “I don't wanna go. They'll call Peter. He'll end his vacation and come back.”

Mozzie sopped up blood with squares of gauze, grimacing. “Even I have to admit that's a lame reason not to get medical help.”

Neal was quiet for a moment.

“I don't want to be handcuffed to the bed.”

That Mozzie could understand. He felt the kid shudder under his hands, heard the quivering quality to the rhythm of his breaths. How fair was it? Neal, the victim, the one brutally assaulted, hurt and helpless, chained to a bed because that's what The Man demanded.

Mozzie found himself suddenly hating Peter; for leaving, for placing himself too far away to come back and tell the doctors that it was okay to leave Neal cuff free. That is, if the Suit did tell them; if he didn't just tell Neal to buck up or whatever and put up with it because it's protocol and they have no choice and blah, blah, blah while Neal lay there helpless, hurt, scared and shackled. Stupid suit.

“It's not his fault, Moz.”

Mozzie, still wiping up the blood, startled. He hadn't realize he'd spoken out loud. He really needed to pay more attention to what came out of his mouth.

“Yes, it is,” Mozzie said. With the area around the wound cleaned as it was going to get, it was easier to see in all its gory glory – about a hand-span in length, from back to front, but the bleeding finally, thankfully, slowing. It would still need to be stitched. “He should be here and he isn't.”

Neal chuckled weakly. “I never took you for a hypocrite, Moz. How many times did we need to be there... and we weren't?”

Mozzie rummaged through the kits until he found a needle, suture thread, and a plethora of alcohol wipes. “Yes, well, it wasn't like we were on vacation.”

“Doesn't matter. We can't always be there. Besides, you're here.”

“And if I wasn't? What then? Stumble around until you bleed to death?”

Neal sighed as though defeated. “Endure being chained to a bed, I guess.”

For once, Mozzie had nothing to say. There was nothing to say. As much as he detested admitting it, sometimes you had no choice. He frowned severely and commenced putting more holes into Neal in order to sew up one big hole. It was disgusting, disturbing and, yes, definitely something he'd never gotten used to beyond honing a skill he didn't want in the first pace to the point that he already knew he wouldn't leave a scar. And all during the process, he cursed the suit for not being here.

If the suit were here, he would have made Neal go to the hospital, and Mozzie wouldn't be the one having to play doctor... again. If the suit were here, he'd hunt down the one or ones who did this to Neal and make sure they never did it again. If the suit were here, life would be easier.

As Neal shuddered, grunted, whimpered and finally passed out, Mozzie cursed the suit for making him wish the suit had stuck around. Mozzie was getting soft, and it scared him.

When Mozzie finished, he took advantage of Neal's unconsciousness, wiping the now closed wound with alcohol, adding a little antiseptic cream for added protection then covering the whole thing with gauze and medical tape – but not before admiring his handiwork with gut-churning satisfaction. He roused Neal by tapping his cheeks, waking him just enough to swallow some antibiotics two months away from expiration. Mozzie added them to his “need to get ASAP” list.

It was exhausting work – panicking, stitching up wounded friends, cursing people who should have been there. Mozzie managed to wrestle the blanket out from under Neal – not soiled after all, saved by Neal's heavy coat – and covered Neal with it. He then crashed in the easy chair adjacent to the bed, and didn't realize he'd crashed until he heard Neal's groggy moan and opened his eyes to the wind-up clock on the book shelf reading five thirty.

Mozzie turned his bleary attention to his infirm friend, and grogginess beat a hasty retreat. Neal was restless, legs sliding back and forth beneath a blanket about three squirms away from falling on the floor. With the battery powered lamps still glowing away Mozzie was able to see the sheen of sweat on Neal's pale skin.

“Oh, crap,” Mozzie squeaked. He lurched from the chair to the cot, placing his hand first on Neal's face, then the area around the wound. Hot skin, not good. Mozzie grabbed the electronic thermometer from one of the kits and stuck it in Neal's ear. One hundred and three, really not good.

“Oh double crap,” Mozzie moaned. He shook Neal, trying to rouse him to no avail. He took a wash cloth from the pile on his little fold-away table, wetted it under the pump of his thirty gallon container of water that always took him forever to refill, then mopped Neal's skin with it. Neal moaned, an unhappy moan every time the cool cloth touched him.

Sometime during all the writhing, a stitch had torn in Neal's side. Blood dotted the once white bandages. Neal whimpered, shivered, panted as though desperate for air, and too out of it to handle swallowing another antibiotic (that wasn't working, anyway). Mozzie took Neal's temperature again – 103.7. He sagged like he was the one burning up and melting, not Neal.

That was it. Time to admit defeat. Mozzie pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed.

-----------------------

Okay, so a taxi wasn't an ambulance, and getting a sick, half-naked and mostly out of it Neal bundled back into his coat and into the cab on a cold drizzly morning the greatest test of Mozzie's endurance, but it was for a good cause. If Neal was so hell bent on letting the Suits have their happy vacation, then so be it. Who was he to rob the kid of even the most trivial peace of mind? The less fuss, the better.

It also had the bonus of keeping Thursday's location under the radar.

But there was still the matter of the anklet, of having to explain why it was on and why it couldn't be removed, dropping Mozzie in that tight spot known as a rock and a hard place. He had no choice but to contact Jones, who, Neal had once told him, saw to ensuring that Neal remained a good boy while Peter was away. For that reason, Mozzie had his number – keep your enemies close and all that.

“This is a compromise,” Mozzie said the moment Jones arrived. “Not a win.”

Jones just gave him a bemused look. “Okay? So how bad is it?”

“The wound itself was manageable, it's the fever that was the problem.” Mozzie sniffed. “The doctor assured me it can be remedied.”

Jones chuffed. “Like you believe them, right?”

“They saved me and I'm still a free man. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt... for now.” He shifted from foot to foot, looking everywhere, anywhere, but at Jones. “I have a favor to ask. Two, actually.”

Jones looked less bemused and more suspicious. “Am I going to regret asking what they are?”

“It's for Neal, not myself. One, you can't tell the suit.”

“No can do. I swore on my career I'd let Peter know if Neal so much as coughed wrong.”

“Well... at least play it down, make it sound less serious than it is. Just... don't give him a reason to come back, yet. Neal was rather adamant that the suits have a good time.”

Jones, sighing, shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged. “I'll try but I can't promise anything. Neal was mugged, Peter isn't going to like that. What's the other thing?”

“That you don't cuff Neal to the bed.”

Jones smiled. “That I can do. Just let me make a few calls, first.”

It was while Jones was making those calls that the doctor came out from checking Neal. The good news, Neal would be fine. They had him on antibiotics and the fever was already starting to come down. The bad news – at least for Neal – they were keeping him for observation.

But Jones had finished his calls, and assured Mozzie that the radius had been modified, temporarily, to include the hospital. Neal could endure his day of being observed shackle free.

Mozzie went in and sat with Neal, not a pleasant experience considering where he was, what it was full of and with an unconscious Neal making for boring company. But, again, for a good cause. After all, Neal would have done the same. Neal had done the same, enduring spine-torturing chairs just to be a familiar face and voice of assurance when Mozzie finally woke up.

Mozzie shifted in his own uncomfortable chair, settling in for what could be the long haul, germs be damned. Ten minutes later, Neal stirred. Bleary eyes blinked and wandered in drugged alarm until finally settling on Mozzie hovering overhead. Neal lifted his cuff-free hand, rubbed his face, and smiled.

“Hey, Moz. What time is it?”

Mozzie checked his watch. “Seven am exactly,” he said. He smiled back. “On a Thursday.”

The End