~ o O o ~

A Place Called Home

Chapter 5

~ o O o ~

The plan had been to stay in his room for an hour or two and then go down to see about that coffee. But Neal must have fallen asleep again—a dreamless sleep, fortunately—because when he woke up again, it was already noon.

He made his way down the stairs and stopped halfway down when he heard Peter's voice.

"Yeah, I know it's Sunday, but . . . Yes, sir." Apparently he was talking to someone on the phone. "Will do . . . What about the kid? . . . Well, yes, but . . . Okay. Tomorrow, then."

Deciding that it was time to make his entrance, Neal took the rest of the stairs two at a time, making sure to make a lot of noise to announce his arrival, and joined Peter in the kitchen.

"Oh, hey," Peter greeted him. "If it isn't the boy who didn't want to go back to sleep. Sleep well?" he added with a smirk and a meaningful glance at the clock.

"Wow. Fed humor. Didn't know it existed," Neal retorted, spotting the coffee machine and making a bee-line for it.

"And how many federal agents do you know?" Peter asked, but when Neal opened his mouth to answer, he held up his hand and added, "Don't answer that."

"So, what do you eat for breakfast around here?" Neal asked, randomly opening drawers in search of something edible. "Never mind," he added, having found the stash of cereals and taking all three different kinds with him to the table.

"What?" he said when he felt Peter's eyes on him, staring at him incredulously. "I'm still growing."

"And Sugar Ohs are the healthy way to help you grow up." Despite his words, Peter handed Neal a bowl and a spoon, before opening the fridge and taking out the milk.

"Any plans for arresting Keller today?" Neal asked casually while he poured some milk into his bowl.

Peter sat down across from him with a sigh. "We can start working on that tomorrow."

Neal's head shot up. He had heard that sentence before. Yesterday, to be precise.

"But in the meantime, you can tell me everything about him that you can remember. Aliases, hide-outs, what he was planning next . . ."

"It won't do you any good. He knows I know. He won't go anyplace I know about or use any of his old aliases."

"That might be the case, but we have to start somewhere."

"Fine," Neal conceded, even though he wasn't thrilled that they'd basically be wasting another day. "But if I have to stay here for another day, we should stop by Keller's old apartment and go get my stuff."

"It's still under surveillance."

"So?" Neal asked, trying to follow the non sequitur.

"So, no."

"Oh come on! It's not like he'd be dumb enough to go back there anyway." It wasn't like Neal had a lot of stuff that belonged to him anyways: a few clothes and the hat that he wore for the occasional street con, and of course his art supplies—even though most of them belonged to Keller, too, and Neal was just allowed to use them.

"We can get you anything you need," Peter brought him out of his thoughts. "As a matter of fact, El is taking care of it as we speak."

"But . . ."

"End of discussion."

Neal looked down at his bowl and finished his cereal in silence.

"Oh, are you going to sulk now?"

"I just don't see why we can't go get my stuff. It'll take five minutes, tops."

Peter sighed. "Give it a couple days. Once we have Keller, you can get it."

Neal decided not to be mad at Peter for telling him no—even though he hated being told no, especially when he knew he was right—because a couple days didn't sound so bad. That was, until Peter said, "So. Let's talk house rules."

"House rules? What, you mean like 'No matter what happens, don't bring the cops back to my place'?"

Peter shot him a meaningful look.

"You just said I'm only going to be here for a couple days. You said, you'd get Keller."

"And we will," Peter affirmed. "But in the meantime—"

"What, you think it'll take you guys longer?"

"That's not what I meant . . ."

"Because I have to say, up till now I'm not very impressed by the level of competence displayed by the bureau. I mean, the infiltration was way easier than I would have imagined . . . Oh, and that reminds me", Neal searched his jeans pockets and took out a disassembled cell. "This is Agent Andrews's, he might want that back."

"You stole that?"

"No, I didn't. Or else I wouldn't be giving it back right now, would I?"

Peter just shook his head disbelievingly. "You stole that."

"I was bored. You took forever to not-arrest Keller, and I wanted to see how hard it was. Turned out, not very."

"Are you trying to get into trouble with me?"

". . . and then you didn't even get the bad guy when you knew his name and where he lived . . ."

"Okay, okay, stop. There's already an APB out for Keller and we highly suspect he's still in the city—like I said, we'll get him. Trust me. In the meantime, just—don't steal anything and we should be fine. Deal?"

"Dunno. Does it count as stealing if I take one of those cookies?" Neal asked, pointing towards a bowl of cookies in the middle of the table.

Peter shot him an incredulous look. "You only just ate."

"Still growing," Neal replied, reaching for one and taking a bite.

Peter just rolled his eyes. "One's enough. Don't want you to have a sugar crash."

Neal grinned around his cookie. "So, what are we going to do all day if we can't work on catching Keller and we can't go to my . . . I mean, his place?"

Peter looked around the kitchen, obviously thinking about what to do. "You can help me walk Satch," he finally came up with.

"Help you? How many people does it take to walk one dog?"

"Wanna stay indoors doing chores instead? Because I can arrange that."

"Walking the dog sounds like lots of fun!" Neal said quickly, an enthusiastic and obviously fake grin on his face.

~ o O o ~

It turned out Neal did enjoy taking Satch to the park a lot. Peter and El were currently watching him run around with Satchmo, laughing and trying to outrun their dog at the same time.

"He sure is a whirlwind," Peter commented, careful to never let Neal out of his sight. That kid seemed to attract trouble like a magnet, and on top of that Peter wasn't sure if he was up to something—which was apparently par for the course with Caffrey.

"So, apart from the whole witness to a murder thing," interrupted Elizabeth his thoughts, "you want to tell me how it came that we have a teenager living in our guest room?"

"Delinquent teenager," Peter corrected automatically and then added, "I'm not helping my case, am I?"

El chuckled. "He doesn't look like he would ever even think of doing anything illegal."

"Yeah, looks can be deceiving. When he looks at you with those big innocent eyes? That's when you have to watch out. That mostly means that he's up to something."

"It certainly seems that you know him pretty well already."

Peter huffed out a laugh. "Yeah. Fool me once . . ."

"Well, I think it's nice that Satchmo has someone to play with. Although, poor Satch—he's not used to that much running around. Neal is really going to tire him out," she added with a laugh in her voice, as they watched Neal throw a stick as far as he could and Satchmo take off after it.

They stayed out far longer than they usually would. Neal had somehow convinced Peter to join in and play a strange game of 'Catch me if you can'—mostly by teasing him about how out of shape he was and that it was no wonder he couldn't catch his suspects. And even though he caught Neal in the end, the kid had given him quite a run for his money, and so Satchmo wasn't the only one who ended up exhausted.

But even though his muscles ached at the end of the day when all either of them could do was sit on the couch not really paying attention to the movie that was on TV, Peter had to admit to himself that he hadn't had that much fun in a long time.

~ o O o ~

Peter didn't know if he only woke up because he had fallen asleep on the couch earlier and his body simply wasn't tired anymore, or if he had heard something that had woken him up—probably the latter, seeing as it was still in the middle of the night. He decided to get up and check on Neal, just in case the kid was having another nightmare.

He opened the door to the guest room as quietly as he could and looked inside. The first glance didn't reveal anything unusual, since his eyes were still adjusting to the dark. But as soon as they did, Peter reached for the light switch and turned on the light to check what he had seen—or more specifically not seen. The window was open. Neal was gone.

TBC . . .

A huge thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter and who kept reminding me that they are interested in seeing this fanfiction continued. I've been thinking about how I could thank you for your reviews that bring me so much joy, and I wrote another fanfiction for you focused on paternal Peter and Neal. So if you left a review on the last chapter and you're interested, let me know and I'll send it to you via pm as a thank you for your review.