A study of one Neal Caffrey spanning all of S1 to early S4, because I don't want to touch Neal's daddy issues with a stick. It is meant to be pre-slash, with none too subtle one-sided Neal/Peter, that may or may not be reciprocated (in my mind, it is totally reciprocated okay). Note: I haven't written a fic that is longer than 1000 words or so in a long, long time. So, this is something of a feat for me. :)
XXX
time on a continuum (i see infinity with you)
XXX
He can wax poetry on a whim, and he can make wishes on a star. But they are intertwined from the very start.
Instead, Neal counts with his fingers black with crayon wax, and he starts at one (which was actually three months short of four years but he was the only one counting down the days, he got liberty to do as he pleased). Except their story doesn't quite begin like this, doesn't begin with her saying goodbye, him desperate and determined, and a man called to the scene of the crime to pick up broken pieces of a whole.
And maybe for Peter, they don't begin quite like this either.
(For Peter, Neal began as a case file, and then James Bonds, and then it was a rolling snowball of late night phone calls from international numbers, cryptic clues and even cookies and birthday cards that didn't belong in an evidence box. But by the time James Bonds was Neal Caffrey, was just Neal to him, there was a lot of things that didn't make sense to log into evidence.)
The other side of the story doesn't change the fact that, for Neal, it begins with a handshake, a name, and a bright green sucker that he hands over, none too subtle. It's in jest, and he won't admit it but he has always been contemplating between which it was, lime or green apple, all through the years he has chased him.
And if reality is a three dimensional story, he can wonder whether Peter ate it at all.
Neal never does ask though.
(It became something of a regret he didn't quite know how to voice, didn't understand why it should matter at all.)
With this beginning however, he gets a temporary storybook ending with perfect Kate. They share plenty of good bottles of Bordeaux over cold pizza. She kisses him drunk stupid after, two hands on his cheeks, smearing greasy fingerprints across the skin. And as a thank you, he pulls tricks after tricks out from his hat for her amusement only. He listens to her laugh with glitter in her eyes, and it is so good he almost thinks they will last.
000
It starts at the beginning, like it always does.
Because anything otherwise will be too confusing. And so, it starts with one man with one single thought running through his head. No, actually, that is a lie. It is only that single thought that is louder than the rest, louder than the million other ones that run like freight trains through his head.
Peter doesn't ask for honesty, knows that it will always be too much to ask of Neal Caffrey. Instead, Peter asks for a story, gives Neal free reign to spin it however he wants, knows that Neal would be tempted into telling the truth just for spite.
"The bottle means goodbye."
Neal tells Peter, and that is both the truth and only half of it.
What he doesn't say is that 'bottle' is their safe word (though it lost most of its meaning halfway through his prison sentence when she couldn't seem to see pass the thick glass between them to look into his eyes). That the bottle in itself also means there'll be more to come, promises over the mouth of the Bordeaux, a glass O that he once lay his lips to, on top of hers.
Kate's been with him long enough to learn a trick or two, and pulling a disappearance like this is only ever the first act. She's okay, for now.
But because they never stay safe for long, he has to get to her. Neal has to save Kate from her imminent doom because he also knows that a lucky streak is no free get-out-of-jail card. Peter Burke is not a man he can keep in the dark, for long.
So, he shapes himself into someone Peter wants to keep around.
He smiles, and lets him clip his wings.
From one cage to another, and try as he may, green lights are hard to ignore, especially when they have always meant go until they are wrapped around his ankle, snug and tight and insistent in a way not even handcuffs have ever managed before.
He smiles, and his smile is tight.
He lays in bed that very first night, the sound of the city too loud, the air too fresh in his lungs. No other light comes with a weight quite like Peter's, (and maybe that was the factor he had yet to consider). But he has time, Neal's got four years with Peter.
He turns on his side, pulls his legs close until his fingertips can graze just over the top of the anklet. Neal breathes out, and it is unsteady when he repeats to himself that he can stay, with his feet planted on the ground, for four.
000
He's not a dog, and no one gets to teach him any new tricks (not when he could run circles around them without breaking a sweat, not when he could steal the bone from between their teeth and laugh). They have Harvard degrees and he has no high school diploma but three MBAs and two Doctorates and a lifetime of experience off of the Yellow Brick Road to show.
The weeks are slow, and he discovers mortgage fraud is another brand of torture he never thought could bring him to his knees this fast.
So instead, Neal finds tiny pleasures between the files.
He rearranges the case files from '03 to '05 from thickest to thinnest and takes pride in how much more aesthetically pleasing it is during those years he has been on the run from them. He sharpens pencils and turns it into an art, the shavings curling like flowers at the bottom of his garbage can.
With stolen pens, Neal writes in fonts, leaving Peter quirky one-liners that can either mean this or that. Ambiguous in the ways that his methods aren't.
Neal slips them in the deepest folds of his wallet when he is feeling adventurous, tucks it behind his FBI badge when he wants a laugh, and sometimes even finds himself handing them over, like evidence to a long running case (what kind of thrill he was looking for when he did this, he was still in contemplation).
He will watch him unfold a paper crane, gentle in ways Peter has never been. It's not that Peter isn't kind, he is a good man, but he doesn't have quick fingers and a careful bone in him. And that makes Neal uncomfortable and joyous in a way he can't bear to understand. Because there is still Kate, out there somewhere, there's no way his story gets to end here.
So he watches Peter read the note written deep within an undone crane, watches with intent as Peter reads the writing written in Peter's own handwriting, dotted 'i's and crossed 't's even more perfect than Peter cares to do himself.
Neal smiles when Peter finishes, glances up to look him in the eyes.
"Having fun?"
"Not nearly enough."
And then he will turn and walk right back out, maybe buy Peter a latte as a thank you for not saying no just yet.
Neal doesn't ask whether Peter keeps the notes in a box with his name on it (nothing sentimental like Neal, maybe not even Caffrey but that'll be his box to claim when this is all over, when he swears off crime for good. And at that, he has to bite the inside of his cheeks to stop the smirk from overcoming the simple conman smile he permanently has on).
Neal pretends he doesn't care what Peter does with his notes afterwards.
That he is only interested in the immediate display, in the tiny creases of Peter's face when he reads his notes. And they look like the folds and refolds of a paper crane done and undone and then smoothed over again in his hands.
It shouldn't matter what happens next.
His actions say otherwise.
But well, he has always been a traitor, Mozzie is kind, doesn't call him a snitch in his face even though they both know that that word is just itching below the surface of their worst disagreements and so this is nothing new, not really, not when he finally gives it some thought.
"Neal."
He turns back.
"Go on a coffee run."
Peter has that thin frown over his face, the one that says a million things because Peter Burke is a simple man in the most complicated sense. Neal prefers a smile but that frown is good too. It is familiar in the way that it is never going to be.
"I'll be back in 15 then."
"10."
Neal returns half an hour later, but the coffee is good so Peter lets him off with a thin scowl (also, at the very least, Neal isn't looking like he is about to paper cut himself to death with mortgage fraud files).
000
He notices with Kate's death.
And it makes him all twisted up inside, especially when he is still supposedly mourning. He knows he makes a devastating sight, with his shaking hands and haunted eyes, hollow cheeks and it's like he still has ashes in his hair, charcoal smearing over the line of his slacken jaw. The saddest thing of all is that none of it is play pretend, and at some point, he stops trying to hide his tell-tale signs, lets go, and imagines no one will be there to watch when he finally falls.
He knows how naïve (how dangerously stupid) that thought is, but it comes, and it's a freight train he can't stop.
"How long now?"
"I am pushing the release documents through, a few more days at most." Peter doesn't treat him like a convict even though the orange burns like a flare on him. "How're you holding up, Neal?"
"What, Peter, no cowboy ups?"
Peter doesn't laugh and Neal's smile slips.
"I'll live."
His heart doesn't hammer in his chest, it doesn't give him make belief bruises over his ribs. He isn't hurting, he isn't crying. He is barely feeling as they speak. Neal cracks another smile, insistent even as the ground unravels at his feet.
"Don't lie to me, Neal."
"When have I ever?" What he doesn't say is that he trusts him, more than Neal can trust himself. Peter doesn't look away. He stares until Neal can't, his smile falls apart. "Let me have my omissions, Peter. Please, don't take that too."
It is inevitable when he falls, he just doesn't want Peter to see him with bruises around his eyes, hurt lying in waiting on the flat of his tongue. (And he was waiting to hit rock bottom, he was waiting and waiting, and his feet didn't touch the ground.)
He wakes up, in his solitary cell and there are no windows to see the sky. He wakes up, and there are tear tracks running over his face like early spring rain. He wakes up, and wishes that he could stop.
Neal breathes in the stale air and makes a choice in the dark: imagines the plane doesn't go up in smoke and flames and still, Peter manages to change his mind.
000
He gives a ring in exchange for a life.
It is the right thing to do, that much he knows with conviction, but the symbolism doesn't escape him either. Instead, it runs circles around him, laughing as it goes for another round. They don't talk about it but it is there, like that band of silver on his hand.
He never thought he can have an appetite for men in bad suits. But then again, here he is, standing by the coffee machine spluttering brown muck into his cup with a cocked hip. He goes into this with his eyes wide open, his gaze blatant as he stares at Peter pass the glass walls with pure intent in his eyes.
Neal doesn't know how long he has been staring, doesn't even care. And that is the most dangerous thrill of them all. He jumps in, headfirst, and knows that there is no bottom to be reached.
He teaches Peter in broad strokes, with motions made with his body and words told without being spoken. Day by day, Peter learns the language only conman Caffrey speaks and complains.
"It's not even yours."
He can be referring to the suit and the hat, or the money in his offshore accounts, or even the name he is currently using. But at this moment, Peter is referring to the pen and paper in Neal's hands.
"It is now." Neal's mouth can teach a masterclass, that much he knows. And if only Peter allows, Neal would be giving live demonstrations at the head of the table. "Convenient, isn't it?"
He hands over Peter's Quantico pen, and a note pad with a tiny signed Caffrey doodle at the corner of every page. The blue glimmering in contrast to what's to come.
Peter rakes his thumb along the corner of the papers in quick succession and the drawings come alive. A tiny snake that gives chase until it is biting its tail, eating itself until the circle becomes a dot.
Peter looks up, and Neal's gone.
(And like all good stories, the last page was a blank.)
000
Neal takes a shot, and he is as good as he has always been.
Because taking a cold and heavy gun in his hand is very much like riding a bike. You don't ever forget. And Fowler, he has always been a bigger target than he wants to be. His hand shakes, his head shakes, and there is nothing he wants more than Fowler's blood on his hands. Neal's not a bad man, but Neal's not good either. And that has always been a fact everyone is more than willing to forget when he smiles a smile just for them.
He's done almost four years for Kate, he is doing four more in her name, and he can do a lifetime for her again.
And then there is his name in Peter's voice, it's short of demanding and that in itself is practically Peter begging him, on his knees. Neal is angry, that much anyone can see but he knows that Peter can see he nearly flinches.
Just like he's back at the plane hangar all over again, minutes from the explosion. Minutes from resigning that he's ever had a choice in saying no to him.
Peter asks him to look at him.
And Neal knows he'll be dust and bones when he can tell him—
(Please, not this time too.)
The mantra of resounding no comes out silent.
000
He doesn't know why.
But his world always ends in a blaze that seems to burn on forever
A fire burning bright, bright enough to scorch his retinas, bright enough to make him dream of another fire on another day, under the same damn sky. The warehouse burns (the plane exploded), Adler dies (Kate did too), Peter holds him back all the same. And they are parallels that aren't supposed to cross, except they are weaving in and out and he can't quite tell one from the other.
Like he is him, but not quite. Like he is himself, but not completely so.
This time though, Peter doesn't ask him whether he is okay, a warm hand resting over the nape of his neck, the pad of his thumb rubbing away the shocking tracks of tears running down his face. He is gentle and he is afraid (he didn't think of him as a criminal, not even when they put him back in those orange jumpsuits, not for a second).
This time, Peter takes him by the arm and accuses him of stealing the art. His fingers wrapping around his forearm, tight enough to bruise. Gut instincts be damned, Peter has always been one for more evidence, but no, not this time. Neal feels as though the trust and truths he has lay down as the foundation between everything they have been through together, now torn wide open, and he struggles (hurt) to keep Peter from finding out his last shred of vulnerability.
He walks home, and in that moment, he hates Peter just enough to smile at the key and the art that now surrounds him.
It isn't until later that he notices the ring of bruises on his arm, a fading ugly purple-green that wraps all the way around. It doesn't go away for days.
000
He sits, slumped, in the uncomfortable chair, resignation painted carefully over his face. "A polygraph test, Peter, really?"
Peter doesn't reply, just hooks him up to the machine without another word. Jones asks the questions and Neal doesn't lie. But he doesn't tell the truth either.
And that has always been the problem between them.
Peter can make up all the rules and Neal can follow them to a tee. But Peter has never been interested in Neal for how well he follows rules, Peter likes a Neal that pushes until they are bending enough to break, just not quite enough that they can't come back and start afresh. But because Peter can tell when Neal lies, Neal doesn't lie, not to him. But there are more ways to deceit then a simple lie, and Neal just happens to know them all.
"Did you get Mozzie to steal the treasure for you?"
"Unlike me, Moz doesn't have a keeper. He doesn't have to answer to anyone but himself." That's not a yes or no, that's not even anything really but a blind stab at a statement made in the dark.
"Then do you know who did it?"
"No." Neal is bitter, and Peter is relentless. "Jones, ask him how he did it."
"How did you do it?"
"I wouldn't do it in the first place, Peter." It's not nerves, it's all just petty revenge when Neal answers Jones' questions without wavering once from Peter's hardening stare. And it's clear that Peter can see the plausible deniability in the way Neal's mouth forms his every reply, each word and letter chosen specifically to get between the cracks.
Peter bites back the snare in his words. "Where's the goddamn U-boat treasure, Caffrey?"
"I don't have it." Neal replies with just as much venom in his voice.
Interrogation is a two men con, and Peter Burke can be his accomplice if Neal has any say. Neal Caffrey has been doing this under different names since forever, he can do this all night, and he can do this for another lifetime more (infinity was okay too).
Neal doesn't lie, but it still comes out tasting bitter.
It's a dance, after that.
A careful one-two step that has Neal attempting to step all over Peter's toes as they turn in place.
000
Neither of them are violent men, but if push comes to punch, they will throw one out to state their piece.
Neal is lying on his back, blood blurring the vision of one eye when he pulls the trigger. Matthew Keller goes down, like he does for Neal's crime.
He sits on the hospital bed, legs dangling, his hands clasped in his lap. There is gauze over his forehead and bandages over his knuckles. He is still strung too high on adrenaline, his heart still beating too fast, too hard in his chest.
The cut anklet is now back on his leg and the constant weight is almost a relief. He breathes, slow, eyes on the white curtains around his bed. He doesn't know what he is waiting for, he is only guessing he will know when he finally sees it.
He isn't surprised when the curtains are pushed back and it is Peter who finally walks in. He isn't surprised, but that doesn't make him any less nervous as Neal Caffrey is allowed to be nervous. Neal holds his breath, Peter doesn't look straight at him, and neither of them are willing to break this too.
Neal guesses he can say sorry, but there are a lot of things that sorry doesn't fix. He can still feel Peter's blunt nails biting into the lapel of his suit as he shoves him hard against the wall, the bricks hard and unrelenting. He can still see that there is nothing but anger in the way Peter's eyes look into his own.
"…Is she okay?"
"Yeah, El is fine, just a bit shaken up."
"I'm so sor—"
"Don't, Neal. Just," Peter looks away, tension in every line of his body, "don't."
"…Is it really so hard to believe that I want to stay?"
"You're Neal Caffrey, I've chased you for three years."
"And you've got me shackled to you for four." Neal extends his right leg to show off the anklet, or the collar Peter refuses to admit that he's got on him, his dress pants slips up further when the bottom of his shoe scuffs at Peter's knee.
Neal only looks up then, "is that not enough?"
He slides off of the bed, takes the medications and the doctor's approval for release from Peter's hands, lightens him of his burdens. Neal doesn't wait for an answer, doesn't actually think he will ever be ready for one. He gives him a smile that is halfway remorseful and turns to go.
"…Nothing's ever enough when it comes to you, Neal."
Peter doesn't catch him around his wrist and his eyes are never as telling as Neal would like them to be, but his words are enough to keep him still. Neal imagines Peter means exactly what he says, that there's never enough of Neal for Peter to have. That there's even a little bit of Neal that Peter would want.
Neal drops his gaze and he is made in the image of a smiling Michelangelo when Peter offers.
"Come on, I'll drive you home."
But just when they think they can try, once more, from the start, his commutation comes down from Peter's bosses' bosses.
000
The room is white, it's very white.
It's the kind of white that reminds him of hospitals, or the sand on the beaches of the Balearic Islands off of the coast of Spain where he'd dug his toes in the grains and smiled with Kate stretching out beside him. He smiles and balances the perfect amount of charm and sincerity, enough to prove that he is the conman Peter caught the same time he reminds them that the con is now reformed.
He's good, he's better now, and he has always been the best at what he does.
This is no exception.
They interview him for a good hour, and he walks out like he's done a dance all around the room, changing partners and they'd clapped every step of the way. Peter gives him a sideways look that he pretends he can't see.
(But he'd known him for so long, known about him for even more. There was nothing that he couldn't see at this point, nothing he tried to hide that he wouldn't suspect in the next. He liked them like that.)
"Confident?"
"Peter, don't doubt me, you know that's my trade."
Neal tips his hat back on his head with his worn old trick and Peter lets out a laugh, the same one from the very first time he's seen this same trick, the one that sounds just like a scoff. He lets Peter guide him out, hand on the small of his back, like he wants to pull him into a dance that has them facing each and everything that this commutation will eventually lead to.
He doesn't actually like to dance. People just assumes he does, like with everything else. But if it is with Peter, Neal thinks he doesn't mind. If it is Peter, Neal doesn't think he minds anything, really.
He likes to sketch with charcoal, and loves it when the black gets engrained into his fingerprints, deep within the crevices until it is a part of him. He likes writing letters, and love notes, and sentences with codes embedded into every other line. He likes that only the one he's written it to can understand.
He likes Peter, and admits this without fear. After all, he has written that out in so many different ways. It is in the green of the sucker he hands him, the drawings he signs with his full name, and the guns he does and doesn't pull.
In the end, it is not even all the truths he's told, it is the anklet he has him collared with. It is the reluctance when he finally cuts it for one last time.
So it feels almost as though someone has stolen his secrets, all the ones he have been keeping next to his heart, when he sees Peter shaking his head, Kramer standing on the steps with his back to Neal. It is the smoothing out of the folded and unfolded lines of his old love letters for eyes that aren't meant to see. It is saying goodbye without thinking that this too is a possible ending to their story.
Like he has always known, he can wax poetry on a whim, and he can make wishes on a star. But they will be intertwined until the very end.
Neal looks up, and then he's gone.
000
Peter isn't out of breath but his eyes are telling, expressive in ways that Neal is a mirror. They painfully want to smile when Neal offers up Peter's wallet like it is another one of his origami cranes with yet another cryptic quote tucked within. Ones that Peter accepts with indulgence in the lines around his eyes.
Ones that are looking more and more like amateur love letters. They don't know it then, they are only beginning to figure it out now. They are coming full circle on foreign land, in Cape Verde, a place just a little closer than halfway around the world.
Peter takes the wallet from his hands and pulls Neal into his arms.
"You aren't supposed to catch a man that you told to run, you know."
Neal says into Peter's neck, his voice muffled by the tightness of their hug. Peter laughs softly and for a moment longer, Neal holds on because Peter hates confrontations and Neal is just as eager to slip under the radar for this one too.
His time on the island resets his years.
And he wants to tell Peter that he's back for good, four years is nothing, but he still can't see what the future holds. He isn't about to make a promise he can't keep. Neal refuses to make a promise he has to break. He's made enough empty ones to fill up a sea, he gets on the plane and hopes that this one doesn't extinguish into ash and bones.
Kate is buried, a marked grave with flowers and no body, and he hasn't been caught red-handed in a long, long time. Neal only hates that his definition of freedom is skewed to a two miles radius around Peter.
But there are worse things.
He counts to four, opens his eyes, and starts at one.
Peter only finds the paper crane in his wallet when they land in New York, a simple thank you Neal writes in his own handwriting, something he hasn't done since before James Bonds has appeared on a surveillance photo. Neal watches as Peter refolds the tiny crane without a word, his fingers smoothing over the lines and creases before offering it back to him.
"…You do know what this means, right?"
"And I thought you were the smartest man in the room, Neal."
"…I try, but it's just a little hard sometimes."
When Neal takes the paper crane from his hand, Peter tilts his head to look at him with a smile, and there, in Neal's eyes, he sees a ring of blue.
XXX Kuro
The little flippy-animated drawing that Neal made for Peter was of an ouroboro, this is a reference to Ouroboros by wistful_joy on AO3, it is, hands down, one of my favorite Peter/Neal fic I've read.