Of Ghost Fingers and Wild Cats
(or some other ridiculous title)

It's nature, what Neal does. It's inherent. He was born with fingers like ghosts, quick as a pack of ten wild cats feeding their wants and needs with teeth sharp and weighed down by nothing, not anything, not an ego or a superego or whatever it is, the one that encompasses that moral consciousness that extends to all walks of life, even the rich who need nothing more than what they already have. Neal doesn't know the technical terms or psychological terms or what-have-you – that's for people who graduated high school. These hands build beautiful things from paint and clay, but they never went to college. There's no need for the frivolity of higher education when you have forgery in your blood.

"Peter," Neal says, in a tone that would soothe a colicky infant. "You can't ask me to deny my very nature, can you?" And he smiles a smile like the moon big enough to give sight in the darkness.

"It's not your nature, Neal-"

"Is, too."

Peter clenches his fists and his knuckles pop and Neal loses the smile because his friend is furious, anger coloring the skin around his skull red. Neal drops his eyes and fidgets in his chair, because it wasn't the brightest idea, when he thinks about it. And the wallet wasn't even smooth and supple to his touch – it was python skin, though, in croc brown, with diamond studs singing a price tag of more than ninety-six grand. It was too much. It was too absurd not too. And Neal was bored.

These types of things happen when Neal is bored.

"The suspect's wallet, Neal!" And Neal is glad the door is closed, though it occurs to him for the first time that he doesn't know if its soundproofed. And he wonders if the windows just rattled with the sheer volume of Peter's voice, or if that was just an invention on his part.

"I put it back-"

"The day before we make him!"

Wild cats have no boundaries within the limits of their environment, and if their environment were New York City, they'd be lifting Thomas Vandergrift's wallet in the middle of a case, too.

"He didn't notice," Neal assures Peter. "For a guy who's gotten away with money laundering and potentially murder for as long as he has, he's surprisingly unobservant."

Peter points a finger in Neal's face and it stays there long after the words come out of his mouth: "That is not the point!"

Neal stares at the tip of the finger, his blue eyes crossing. He tries again, "It's my nature-"

"Don't give me that bullshit, Neal! It is not your nature. It's a habit! It's a…a misbehavior!"

The finger is wagging. Neal is caught somewhere between an indignant grown man and a near-contrite six-year-old. Wild cats must exist somewhere on the same plane.

"I-"

"If someone else had seen you, Neal-"

"You didn't even see me," Neal says, affronted.

"If someone else had known you well enough to see that smug look cross your face for a quarter of a second, you'd be in prison right now. To do it while we're watching you…"

Neal shrugs. "I'm confident."

"You're too big for your own goddamn britches."

Neal pats his own leg, corrects, "These are a slim-legged pinstripe trouser, Peter."

Something akin to a growl rips out of Peter's mouth, and Neal begins to realize that he and his ghost fingers aren't the only wild cats in the office. He clears his throat, sits up a little straighter. "I won't do it again."

And Peter's hand finally drops to his side as the agent sighs and shakes his head. "What am I going to do with you?"

Neal doesn't know. There's a lot of things you can do with a person like Neal, but not many things a person like Peter can do. Neal can't exist in the confines of a cage, or the pages of a book, or the limits of the law. Neal is a thief. Neal is a conman. Neal is not a good or an upstanding citizen like Peter. Peter, who has the temper of a wild thing, but knows how to rein it in.

"You are not your impulses, Neal," Peter says, and the lecture proceeds from there, fierce and quiet and disappointed, leaving Neal with a chilled spine and a gushing chest, worried and sad and wanting to send himself to bed early, because he's heard it before and will again, and he doesn't know when it will sink in that mischief can be curbed and that consequences exist outside of his own control, and he may have escaped the supermax this time, but what about next?

And what would Peter do without him?

"C'mon," Peter says and Neal finds his jacket in his lap because Peter's thrown it there. "You're going to come home with me so El can feed you and give you her disappointed look."

That sounds awful.

"June can give me a disappointed look," Neal protests.

Peter snorts. "She can, but she won't. I've been trying to get her to give you a curfew for months now. She's too soft on you."

"Peter…" Neal says, and it's almost a whine, but as he follows his handler out of the office door, he can't help thinking, She's not the only one.