Hello, NaNoWriMo Day 10! I think, emphasis on think, that the angst is over. Because today is as close to pure fluff as I can write. Today's chapter summary: Peter and El are keeping their nieces and nephews over for a week or two. And Neal is now banned from board games.


Neal rolled his eyes as Peter pulled up outside of his house. This was the tenth time he had rolled his eyes in about as many minutes. But, Neal argued, this was warranted. Peter was pulling Neal away from his evening. To babysit Peter's nephew and niece. Neal did not want to be there; he wanted to be in his home with old masters and several glasses of full-bodied reds. And he was here. Dealing with children. That he didn't know.

"Peter," he said (he did not whine). "Why am I here?"

"Because you're good with kids," Peter responded, like it made perfect sense. He put the car into park, but both he and Neal stayed frozen, locked in disagreement.

"Yes, I am." He'd always liked kids and they always related to him. That was no reason to force him to do things he was not meant to do. "But these are your niece and your nephew. I am not related to these people at all."

Peter flashed a smile that was somewhere between devious and sarcastic. "Think of it as babysitting."

Neal gave a flat look. Neal, Peter figured, was the only person who could glare without anger in his gaze. Because this was definitely an emotionless glare. "Am I getting paid?"

"No," Peter said, slowly, like he was speaking to someone who was a little bit slow. At the same time, his face displayed his honest question: are you crazy?

"Then it's not babysitting, is it?" Good point. "I'm being used as a surrogate parent."

Babysitting's out. Next try. "Then it's community service."

Neal rolled his eyes. And that makes eleven. He turned away from Peter as best he could while still seatbelted into a car. Neal decided to try the same argument again. "Is time coming off my sentence?"

"No." Neal couldn't see, but he was pretty sure Peter was giving him the same look.

"Then it isn't community service. At least not the kind you want me to think of it as." Neal took a deep breath before turning back to face Peter. "If you wanted me to help you and El entertain children, you could have asked."

Fine. If that's what he wants. "Neal, would you mind if I-"

Neal cut him off. "You could have asked me before I was forced to come with you against my will," he clarified.

"You weren't forced." Peter's tone was similar to someone desperately trying to argue a losing point. Probably because he was desperately trying to argue a losing point.

Neal raised an eyebrow. "I wasn't given a choice to come. You pulled up outside my house, told me to get in the car, and started driving."

"You could have said no."

"I did," Neal insisted, emphatically and exhausted. "And you told me that I didn't have a choice." He crossed his arms. "You could have told me you wanted me to babysit."

Peter's eyes had a playful spark as he glanced at Neal's posture. "I thought it wasn't babysitting."

Neal huffed and went to cross his arms, before realizing they were already crossed. It wasn't that he minded babysitting children, even if he didn't know the children. What he did mind was being told he had to come and not being told what was going on. Especially because this was not the reason he was released from prison as Peter liked to point out. And now he was stuck babysitting Peter's niece and nephew.

"Come on," Peter said, opening his door. "You can complain to my wife."

If anyone would be on Neal's side, it would be El. And, if not, she'd at least give a better apology than Peter could. Neal wasn't even mad anymore; he was just keeping up the facade as long as he could. The two got out of the car and up to the Burkes' front door. The door opened as soon as they reached it, revealing Elizabeth standing there with a wide smile painted across her face.

"Neal, thank you for coming." Her tone was honestly grateful.

Neal took a few seconds. Did he rant to El about how forceful her husband was? No, that would make more problems than solutions. His face broke into a matching smile.

"It's no trouble, really," was what finally came out of his mouth. "What do you want me doing?"

El gave Neal a strange look, almost like she wasn't sure if he was being honest. It was a strange look to get from El of all people. She usually trusted him. "Do you know how to work with children?"

Neal nodded earnestly. "I had sisters and basically raised them for a few years." Peter and El shared a look over Neal's shoulder. Sisters? They didn't know anything about a sister. Let alone several. Neal continued. "How old are the kids?"

With those words, two children came into the doorway, clinging closely to Elizabeth. They seemed young, definitely younger than Neal was expecting. But no babies or toddlers. Doable. They could have been twins if there wasn't an age gap. Both had El's deep brown hair and intelligent blue eyes. But they didn't have her face. They didn't have the pronounced cheekbones, instead looking rather heart-shaped. In summary, they looked like little cherubs, if cherubs usually looked apprehensive.

Neal smiled widely before crouching down. He knew it was easier to talk to small kids on their level. "Hello," he said, gently. Make yourself look approachable. "I'm Neal. What're your names?"

"I'm John," the older one, the boy, said. He looked about seven, maybe on the younger side of eight. He was definitely confident and was one of those boys who liked to pretend they always knew what they were doing.

"John. And your sister?"

"Izzy," the little girl answered. She looked like an angel, with her brown curls falling down around her heart-shaped face with intelligent blue eyes peering from behind her bangs. She was more shy, but seemed energetic.

"John and Izzy. Nice to meet you." Peter stood back up, continuing the conversation with the adults. Neal looked for a few seconds before taking in El's entire appearance. She was in a tea-length midnight blue gown with diamonds and sapphires glittering on her wrist and neck. Oh. "You have an event tonight, don't you?"

El nodded sadly. "I'm sorry. Peter was left with the kids and, I'm guessing, abducted you to take over for him."

Neal let out a small laugh. "Pretty much. But I don't mind."

El gave a similar laugh. "Great. There's leftovers in the fridge. Make sure the house doesn't burn down."

Elizabeth managed to sound like a mother giving the teenage babysitter instructions when she was, in reality, leaving her niece and nephew in the responsible hands of her husband-the children's uncle-and another responsible ('responsible') man. She ran over the list in her mind. Yep. Everything important was given to Neal, and Peter knew what to do in his own house.

Neal turned to face Peter. "Are you sure I'm not the babysitter?"

Peter had the decency to look sheepish before El pushed past them. "Good luck then. I have to go."

Neal and Peter let her through before entering the house. In the few minutes that had passed since Neal was introduced to John and Izzy, they had already decided to trust him. That was one of the marvelous things about most children, Neal thought. They would trust people almost instantly. Neal couldn't ever remember being that kind of child. He swallowed his bitterness down before putting on a happy face again.

"So," Neal asked, immediately taking control of the whole 'babysitting two children' situation. "What do you want to do?"

"Board games!" John immediately exclaimed.

Neal shrugged. "Okay. Board games. What first?"

John immediately went over to a cabinet that Neal hadn't even noticed existed in the living room. Apparently, there was a board game cabinet. Huh. John seemed to know exactly what he was looking for. Izzy continued looking up at Neal. She was excited, but definitely trying to work out who Neal was and why he was there. Peter, meanwhile, was content to watch Neal take charge of his niece and nephew.

"This," John said definitively before putting a large box down on the living room table.

Okay. Scrabble. A simple enough game. Neal wasn't entirely sure it was fair to play with such a young girl at the table. But, her brother probably knew him better than Neal did. Her brother was with her since her birth. Neal had known both of them for a handful of minutes. Soon enough, all four of them were helping to set up the game. Unfolding the board, setting out racks, mixing up the letters. The four took their places around the table and play started with John putting down the word 'piano.'

They went around and around the table, putting down word after word. There was a brief disagreement on Izzy's ability to play 'cant' (John claiming it didn't count because it needed an apostrophe and Izzy arguing the endless childhood argument 'is too;' ultimately the dictionary was in Izzy's favor). But overall the game was going peacefully. John and Izzy were leading the conversation, and Neal got to know quite a lot about them. They got the child-appropriate summary of who he was from Peter. Neal had already been adopted into the Burke family by Peter and El, but now the children were adopting him as a trustworthy relative. It made Neal feel warm and fuzzy inside.

"Can I have the dictionary?" Neal asked, reaching for the small book anyway.

Peter nodded and handed it over to him. "Why?"

"Want to see if a word's in here before I play it," Neal answered simply, before flipping through the pages. Peter couldn't tell what he was looking for, but at least he was offering to play by the rules. To be fair, it wasn't the law, it was the rules of Scrabble, but still. Rules.

The game continued and, eventually, it circled back to Neal's turn. Playing off of Peter's submission of 'island,' Neal spelled out 'kawaii.' The three other players stared at it. Is that even a word? were somehow the thought that went through all three, despite their age difference.

"Ka-why?" Izzy guessed.

Neal offered a polite smile. "Close. Kawaii." He pronounced it deliberately, kah-why-ee.

"Kah-why-ee," Izzy mimicked.

Neal nodded and gave Izzy a bright smile. "Exactly!"

"That's not a word," Peter dismissed.

"Yes. It is," Neal argued. "Kawaii. It's Japanese for cute, lovable, adorable."

"That's not in the dictionary."

Neal nodded firmly. "Yes. It is." He opened the dictionary and held out the page. "I checked. That's why I asked for the dictionary." Peter took the proffered dictionary and skimmed the open page. "See? Kawaii. 13 points."

Peter put the dictionary back down. "Fine," he said with a sigh.

The game finished soon after that. The final winner was, surprisingly, not Neal. John ended up winning because kawaii was Neal's highest-scoring word the entire game. John ended up with most of the q's and z's, giving him most of the points. Neal congratulated him warmly, making the boy positively glow with pride. An adult, a real live grownup, was telling him he did a good job.

And, consequently, Neal was banned from playing future games of Scrabble for, of all things, rules-lawyering.


In hindsight, Peter thought, playing Monopoly was a mistake. The game is notorious for starting family fights. And siblings, from his understanding, fight by default. But, both John and Izzy had asked, so they were playing Monopoly. The game started out going well. But...then, the first fight broke out. And it wasn't the children.

Peter scanned the board. Half the houses and hotels were built on Neal's property. Which were all high-traffic areas. Which meant Neal was positively swimming in rent paid from the other players. And that wasn't counting the fact that Neal somehow kept landing on Free Parking and taking all the taxes (which was agreed upon at the beginning).

"How are you so good?" he asked, bewildered. An idea crept into his head and Peter narrowed his eyes at Neal. "Are you committing real estate fraud?"

The children looked at their uncle, trying to figure out why their game had paused.

"How would I commit real estate fraud in Monopoly?" Neal retorted, incredulously. The very idea was absurd. "I didn't even commit it with actual real estate!"

"What's real estate fraud?" Izzy asked in her childishly innocent voice. Her eyes were wide and her head was cocked slightly to the side.

"Illegal," Neal and Peter answered in unison. They shared a look and then went back to focusing on the board.

And then the sibling bickering started. Something about John trying to steal a property card and Izzy knocking his piece back and both trying to steal each other's money. Neal looked shell-shocked. For allegedly having multiple younger sisters, he did not seem used to sibling squabbles. Peter stood up.

"Okay, how about we end it here?" he asked in a tone that was more suggestive of a command. "Why don't you two go outside and play with Satch?"

The kids leapt up, running outside to play with the dog. It was amazing, Peter thought, how quickly siblings could make up with each other. The two were fighting five minutes ago, ready to pummel each other. And now they were racing each other. He shook his head.

While Peter was preoccupied with his niece and nephew, Neal began cleaning up. Organizing the cards back into their respective stacks, putting the pieces in the small Ziploc bag they used for pieces, and stacking up the money in the plastic bank. Izzy had been banker, and was quite good for someone so young, but did have an unfortunate tendency to crumple the thin bills. So, Neal was trying to straighten them back out.

"So," Peter said, jolting Neal out of his meditative folding. "How are you so good?"

Neal shrugged. "Got lucky this game, I guess."

"Why are you going along with this?"

Neal looked up, the paper money forgotten. "Huh?"

"Helping me with the kids. Why are you here?"

It was, in Peter's mind, a valid question. He'd been protesting so violently the first time he asked. And then, just one day later, he was ready to go as soon as Peter so much as suggested helping him out. Neal, however, was trying to figure out why he was so willing to help. He couldn't put his finger on it. It wasn't because he was eager to spend time with the children. He liked children, sure, but not quite that much. It wasn't for Peter; he could care less what Peter wanted. (He couldn't admit to himself that that was a lie.)

No, Neal realized. The reason he was helping Peter was because it made him feel like a part of a family. A family that loved each other. That cared about making each other feel supported. That didn't abandon their children when one thing went wrong. However, Neal knew he couldn't say that to Peter. Not only was it too raw to say honestly.

"Oh..." He fumbled for words. "I, uh, thought you could use some help."

And Peter accepted that answer.

And Neal was banned from Monopoly, through no fault of his own and against strenuous protests.


And Neal was brought back for a third day of not-babysitting. John and Izzy had become oddly attached to Neal, much to Peter's dismay and El's joy. It was probably because Neal was able to relate to their experiences (or at least convincingly feign interest) and actually listened to what they said. So, Neal had rapidly become adopted as 'one of the children.' Peter had laughed at that and promptly relegated him to the kid's table, against Neal's protests.

So, this day, the children were occupied with cartoons for a decent bit of the morning, while Neal and Peter were 'having adult conversation.' That was code for Peter was working on case files he brought home for the weekend and Neal was alternating between reading (of all things) a book on the Dutch Renaissance, sketching whatever came to mind (usually landscapes of cities he'd lived in), and engaging in conversation with the children. There was a slowly growing pile of sketches around Neal and a slowly shrinking stack of case files in front of Peter.

"Can we play Operation?" Izzy suddenly piped up.

Neal nodded before Peter could protest. "Of course we can."

Izzy went off to get the box while John tried to pretend he was helping. Peter bit back a smile. Then, he elbowed Neal in the ribs. Neal jumped and let out a squeak before turning to Peter with a question dancing in his eyes.

"I thought you didn't like this?" Peter teased.

"I'm doing better than you," Neal teased back.

The two shared a smile as the kids came back. Izzy took the lid off and put the tokens in the right cavities. She had it all figured out on her own, she insisted, and absolutely didn't need John's help. But if he really needed to help...

The board eventually got set up, cards were dealt out, and cards were drawn. Peter was doing the worst of the four, getting buzzed out almost every turn. John was carrying on pretty well and Izzy wasn't struggling. Neal, on the other hand, was doing perfect. Any card he had drawn, he'd gotten without fail. He also had the good luck to get one of his specialist cards (and thus double the points) on the first turn. Neal bit back the Cheshire Cat grin he wanted to give and encouraged the kids instead. Peter, he decided, could be left alone.

"Neal, how haven't you gotten buzzed?" Peter almost snapped. He only held back the entire force of his irritation because of John and Izzy. Although, to be fair, Peter wasn't irritated at Neal. He was irritated at the case files. And it was getting taken out on Neal.

Neal was set on removing the final piece from the board: Bread Basket. It was his specialist card, 2,000 points to Neal if he could pull this off. He went straight for the top, wedging the tweezers into the notch.

"I'm an artist, Peter," he replied, his voice as calm as his hands. "Of course I have steady hands." And slowly, effortlessly, he removed the piece with a wide berth from the metal that would lose him the game. He put the piece with the collection of pieces he had acquired. "And that's $2,000 to me."

Peter looked over the board. All the pieces were gone. "And that's the end of the game. How much does everyone have?"

John looked down at his cards. Two 200s made 400, two 150s made 300, and one more 150. "$850!"

Izzy looked down at her cards. "Um..." She looked back up. "I don't know how to count numbers this big."

Peter gave a hopeless look to Neal. There were things he was good at. Consoling children, not one of them. Helping children with math, also not one of them. Neal gave Izzy a soft smile.

"Okay, what numbers are they?"

"Um...200 and 600." She sounded nervous, or close to the edge of frustration tears.

"Okay, and you don't know how to add 200 and 600?"

Izzy shook her head. "I'm not good with big numbers."

"Let me teach you a trick," Neal said, moving from his seat to kneel next to Izzy. "Forget about the hundreds. What's 2 plus 6?"

"I don't know." Definitely near tears.

"Okay," Neal said, almost immediately consoling the young girl. "You hold up two fingers-" Izzy held up two fingers on her right hand. "And I'll hold up six." Neal held up six of his fingers next to hers. "Count up. How many is that?"

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight," Izzy counted, tapping each finger. "Eight!"

Neal nodded. "So, 2 plus 6 is?"

"Eight?" Izzy asked more than said.

"Exactly!" Neal was perfectly encouraging, sounding like teaching children basic addition was something he did every day. "Now, we add on the hundreds. You know that two and six make eight, so 200 and 600 make..."

"Eight hundred?" She sounded a little more confident, but still not convinced.

Neal smiled bright enough to light up the room. "Perfect!" He held up his hand for a high-five. Izzy high-fived him, feeling ecstatic about herself. Neal took his seat again before turning to Peter. "Mr. Accountant?"

"300," Peter said. He tried to take the attention as far away from himself as possible. Neal laughed teasingly before bowing his head to double-check his count. "And you didn't have a running tally in your head?"

"Just double-checking." Neal pushed the cards away before beaming at Peter. "2,600."

"Neal wins!" John yelled.

The table dissolved into laughter. Peter could see the eagerness to be accepted in Neal's eyes. And he knew why he kept helping. He got to be part of a loving family, a family that cared about his achievements. A family that loved him for who he was. And he couldn't stop from smiling at the joy painting on Neal's face.

"Let's play again!" Izzy yelled.

All four started to reset the board. This was fun. They were actually having fun doing this together. And El...El could join, too, when she got home.

Neal was still banned from Operation, though. He was too good.


So, John and Izzy come from a Christmas fic that has yet to be completed. Neal's sisters come from another fic that also has yet to be finished. So, if you liked this one, please leave a review! All the reviews so far, I'm so sorry I haven't thanked you yet. Thank you! You have brought me so much joy! And to those participating in NaNoWriMo: a third of the way through!