All You'll Ever Be
"You're sulking, Neal," Peter remarked sternly from his side of the car on the way back to the Bureau.
Neal fidgeted slightly, shuffling his feet, and kept his gaze fixed pointedly out the window. "I'm not."
Peter rolled his eyes, Neal aware of the gesture even though he wasn't really looking at it. "Care to tell me why?" Peter asked, ignoring Neal's denial.
"Not particularly."
"That's too bad, because you have to anyway."
Neal glanced over toward the driver's side of the car, frustration overriding his stubborn resolution not to look at Peter. "Then why'd you bother giving me an option?"
"Before I was asking as your concerned friend. And now I'm asking as-"
"Agent Burke, I know."
"So talk." Peter smiled victoriously across at Neal, his face exultant.
Neal shook his head slightly and returned to looking out the window, clearly regarding himself above succumbing to such a blunt maneuver. "That's the best you have? Shouldn't you be trying to get it out of me more subtly?"
"I'll let you be the master of subtle," Peter said, his tone full of satisfaction. "I'll stick with what's effective."
"Please tell me that five years of training at Quantico gave you persuasion tactics a little better than that."
"Neal, stop stalling."
"That was good thinking back there - firing me to make our suspect bid. I owe you one for saving Moz," Neal said obscurely. He took the opportunity of Peter's distraction with a lane change to cast him a sideways glance, trying to evaluate whether or not Peter would make the connection to his seemingly irrelevant comment.
"You can repay me right now by answering my question." So apparently he hadn't.
"I am answering you."
"Maybe I should have been more clear - don't be the master of subtle right now. And leave the riddles to your little guy. I'm not in the mood to figure you out."
"You obviously are, or you wouldn't have started bothering me in the first place."
"It's my job to bother you. I have-"
"Isn't that my job?" Neal interrupted, flashing Peter a cheeky grin.
"No. You're just unfortunately convinced that it is."
"You know what they say about old habits."
Peter gave Neal an exasperated look as he slowed to a stop before a traffic light, and chose to ignore the remarks. "Like I was saying, I have to know what you're thinking. You might have an anklet, but you've proven thoroughly that you can outsmart it when you decide you want to. So I have to know what's on your mind if I'm going to stay a step ahead of you."
Neal arched his eyebrows, letting his surprise show. "I'm not plotting anything."
"You sound innocent."
"Because I am." Neal watched Peter curiously out of the corner of his eye, running through the day's events in his mind and wondering what from his behavior would give any indication of a secret agenda. He thought he'd made it fairly apparent that all he wanted to do was keep Mozzie safe.
"You're never innocent, Neal. Least of all when you sound like you are." And there it was again, the lack of trust, tossed out in trivial little comments that Peter barely seemed to be conscious of making. "Especially," Peter added, seeming to take particular relish in clinching his argument, "when you've got something on your mind that's worth sulking over. So unless you want to be the one doing my files for the week, talk."
"Peter, I sulk over everything."
"Right, so it's a good thing I'm used to it by now. What is it this time?"
Neal gave a long-suffering sigh, knowing even as he did so that Peter was seeing right through his buy for time. "You don't like my hats?" he settled on asking, echoing Peter's words from their false argument during the operation.
Peter's face was devoid of recognition as the traffic light changed to green and they started moving again. "This is about my comment on your hats? While I was fake-firing you? Really?"
No. "You don't like them."
"I can't believe this," Peter said, chuckling. "You're pouting because I'm not impressed by your inexhaustible collection of fedoras and the little twirling trick thing you do with them."
"It is not a twirling trick thing!" Neal protested, genuinely affronted and using it to steer Peter away from the real problem while he was already distracted.
"So you have a problem with something I said during a fight that wasn't real," Peter concluded slowly, unhurried and undeterred.
"The best cons come from a place of truth."
"Fine. So you really want me to tell my hot wife to call you the next time she's lonely?"
Neal had the grace to look somewhat embarrassed, and he laughed nervously. "That wasn't one of my best cons."
"Are you telling me that you're losing your touch? Nice try, but I'm not letting my guard down that easily."
Peter's voice was clearly joking, but Neal snatched the chance to satisfy Peter's insistence for an answer without telling him anything that Peter hadn't already said. "I know you're not. Makes sense for you not to, right? Since cons are who I am, and they're all I'll ever be?"
Neal felt, more than saw, recognition click together on Peter's face. "You're upset because I acknowledged the fact that you're a conman."
In Peter's voice, it sounded particularly ridiculous, but Neal couldn't stop himself from insisting, "I'm not just a con."
Peter seemed to be taking pause, as if to assess Neal's sincerity. "That really is what's upsetting you," he finally realized, his tone bordering on incredulity, a chuckle in his throat, as if such a thing was ludicrous.
Neal's silence spoke volumes more than any actual confession could.
"I thought you were proud of being a conman."
"I am," Neal said, his voice full of steadfast certainty. "But I'm also proud to be a CI." He stared back out the window, the line of his mouth thinning and his eyes narrowing just enough to reveal that he thought he'd said too much.
"I know that," Peter answered, as if such a thing ought to have been obvious.
"Really? Could've fooled me. I guess they taught you more at Quantico than I gave you credit for."
"Neal, come on now. Be serious."
"I'm being serious."
"Do you want me to pretend you're not a convict?"
"Ex-convict."
"What's that?"
"I'm an ex-convict. Same difference, right?" Sarcasm coated Neal's voice lightly. "Once a conman, always a conman?" Neal flashed Peter a bright, disingenuous smile.
Peter sighed, shaking his head. "Neal. You're the reason I have a ninety seven percent closure rate. But that's because you're a conman. You give us ins that an FBI agent could never get. You're important. God knows you remind us just how important you are every chance you get."
"Nice to know I'm appreciated."
Neal returned to staring out the window as they neared the Bureau's offices, concealing his disappointment in Peter's answer. Apparently not concealing it well enough, because a moment later Peter exhaled in an impatient huff and said, "What? I thought you'd like to hear that."
"I do."
"But you're not satisfied." Peter gave Neal a long, pensive gaze before turning his eyes back to the road and saying, "Don't make me guess, Neal. I'm clearly not going to get there."
"Eventually I'm going to get off my anklet, you know. Four years can go by fast when you keep busy."
"And this is relevant how?"
"I'll get to have a life. And I know - I have a life here already," Neal caught the beginnings of Peter's usual response before he could actually voice them. "But I mean a real life, one where I'll make my own choices about what I become."
"I see why that would be a concerning prospect. And I'll keep your file handy just in case."
Neal laughed as a formality because he knew Peter expected it, though every step he took towards being honest seemed to be met with a similarly discouraging rejoinder. "I could still work for the FBI," he forged ahead, the prospect all the more appealing and, simultaneously, frightening now that he'd voiced it aloud, and to Peter, of all people. "I'd be just as much an asset as I am now."
Peter's expression sobered and softened as he realized that Neal was being sincere. "I don't doubt that you would be. What does this have to do with what I said to you?"
"You're right - cons were my identity. And I was proud of it; I still am. And I get that I'll still be a criminal for as long as I have my anklet. But I'm not going to have my anklet forever. A con isn't 'all I'll ever be.'" Neal's tone formed quotation marks around the words.
"Okay, that was harsh. I didn't mean that," Peter said, finally understanding.
"Yeah, you did." And in spite of his injured words, Neal suddenly smiled, the gesture like a light switch turning on, illuminating his entire face and sparking something lively and thrilling in his eyes. He met Peter's gaze as they parked in the lot at the Bureau, and he knew that Peter was remembering the same thing - their first ever stake out together, driving through the rain at night on wet, slick city streets.
"At least my wife didn't change her identity and flee the country to get away from me," Peter had said, making an insinuation about Kate, and Neal, having found his and Kate's once-shared apartment bare and empty only days earlier, had looked out the window and sulked, and then shared the exact same apology and rejection of it with Peter that they'd just voiced now.
Peter and Neal burst out laughing simultaneously at the memory, and Peter clapped a hand on Neal's shoulder fondly. "Prove me wrong, then," he said, and the words were somehow encouraging instead of challenging. "I can count on you to do that - you've never failed me there in the past."
"I will."
"I know."
"Thanks for saving Moz today." Neal's voice was earnest, and they both knew that he wasn't expressing his gratitude only for that.
"I'd say anytime," Peter grinned, "but I don't want him taking me up on that offer too often."
A/N: I know that one conversation in a car isn't much to constitute a story, but this started as just a character study for me to explore the flow of dialogue between Neal and Peter, and turned into something that I figured I might as well post here. Hopefully you liked it, despite its lacking plot line. Review, please? :) I'm still fairly new to the White Collar fandom so I'm not sure about how realistic my characterization is yet.