~ o O o ~

A Place Called Home

Chapter 7

~ o O o ~

The next morning, Elizabeth woke him up bright and early.

"He still mad?" Neal wanted to know warily.

"Oh honey. He was just worried. We both were. And he knows that you know it wasn't okay to just leave the house like that. Or else you wouldn't have gone out the window."

His first instinct was to protest, but then he just sighed. "So what do I do?"

"You apologize, of course. And you promise never to do it again, and maybe that will convince him to let go of the plan to install bars in front of the window."

Neal snorted. "Yeah, like that'd hold me," he mumbled.

El, who had already been halfway out the door, turned around. "What was that?"

Neal smiled innocently at her. "I'll be down in just a bit."

A few minutes later, Neal joined Peter in the kitchen, where he was sitting at the table reading the paper. El was sitting next to him, sipping her coffee. When she saw him come in, she quickly finished her coffee, put the cup into the dish washer, and kissed Peter on the cheek.

"Bye, hon. I'm already late."

On her way out, she winked at Neal encouragingly and left them both alone.

Taking a deep breath, Neal decided to get it over with. "I'm sorry you had to send your agents out to search for me in the middle of the night. Must have been inconvenient.—But it was really just a misunderstanding," he quickly went on. "And in my defense, you wouldn't even have noticed that I was gone if . . . you hadn't noticed."

Peter finally put the paper down and looked at Neal. "Caffrey logic never fails to impress," he said dryly. Then he sighed. "Is there anything else you want to tell me?"

Neal furrowed his brow and tried to think of what Peter might want to hear.

"Maybe about doing something you know I wouldn't approve of?"

"It's way too early for riddles," Neal stated, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

"Breaking any rules lately?" When Neal still didn't say anything, Peter put two twenty dollar bills on the table. "Guess where I found these and where I didn't put them?"

"That doesn't count!" Neal protested immediately.

"Oh yeah?" Peter raised an unamused eyebrow. "How so?"

"Well, for one . . . I didn't know you knew about that."

Peter shook his head incredulously. "That has to be the world's thinnest argument!"

"And," Neal continued, "I didn't steal the money. I put it back."

Again, Peter shook his head, this time in an exasperated manner. "I think we should talk about your loose definition of 'stealing.' Also, guess what else I found?"

Neal groaned. "The ten bucks I took from you last week? Because that doesn't count either. We hadn't even agreed on any rules back then."

"What?"

"What?" Neal repeated innocently, who realized quickly that that wasn't what Peter had been talking about.

"Neal!" Peter sure sounded exasperated a lot.

"You can't make me guess this early in the morning!" Neal complained and stifled a yawn. "Why don't you just tell me and be done with it?!"

Peter stood up and left the kitchen—which was fine by Neal. He could eat breakfast in peace. But Peter came back shortly after, Neal's duffel bag in his hands, which he put on the chair next to his.

"Hey! That's mine!" Neal said and tried to make a grab for it, but Peter batted his hands away. Neal hadn't even realized that he had left it behind when he had stomped up to his room the night before.

He was normally never so careless, but somehow, Peter had a way of getting to him, and he had just been so mad the night before. He had actually considered going out the window again, just to show him, but the exhaustion had won and the bed had looked very warm and inviting . . .

While Neal was regretting his own lack of caution, Peter rummaged through his duffel bag with apparently no regard for his privacy and fished out some of his forged documents.

"George Danvary, Charles Fairweather, Sean Cassady," he listed as he threw each passport down onto the table. "Gates, Rydell, Brooks, Armstrong—I really like that one, by the way—Bennett, Monroe . . ."

"You didn't have a warrant."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm just saying, you can't just go through my stuff and . . ."

But Peter wasn't even listening to him. He held one of his fake IDs up and asked, "Nineteen? Seriously? Does anyone even buy that?"

Neal shrugged. "You'd be surprised.—Hey! What are you doing?!" he added alarmed, when Peter took out a huge pair of scissors. Peter raised his eyebrows and sent him a meaningful look, before cutting the first passport into half right in front of his eyes.

"Do you have any idea how long it took to . . . uhm . . . get those?" Neal protested, which of course Peter ignored in favor of destroying more of his aliases.

Neal could barely rescue two IDs by swiping them off the table and putting them into his pockets, while he distracted Peter by trying (and obviously failing) to make a grab for the scissors with the other hand.

Once Peter was finished, he looked at his handiwork contently and then threw the remains of Neal's IDs into the trash.

"Okay, now that that's taken care of, finish your breakfast, we're already late, too."

"I'm coming with you?"

"If you thought I'd leave you alone in my house with the silverware, think again. Don't worry, I'll find something to keep you occupied."

~ o O o ~

Peter wasn't kidding. He sat Neal down at an empty desk surrounded by feds, ordered one of his agents one desk over, "Jefferson, keep a close eye on this one!", and gave Neal a bunch of files to sort. Then, just as he was about to leave him there, he turned around once more.

"Oh, and here's a list of house rules."

Neal stared at the papers in his hands incredulously. "Those are three pages."

"Yes."

"Front and back."

"Yes.—And you better familiarize yourself with those. I expect you to be able to recite them by the end of the day."

"You're kidding!"

"Wouldn't want to have any other misunderstandings because I wasn't specific enough, now would we?" Peter grinned, before walking off to his office. He had clearly won this round.

But Neal grinned, too. It was on. If there was anything he was good at, it was finding and exploiting loopholes. This game was gonna be fun!

~ o O o ~

The day didn't go as smoothly as Peter had hoped. Hughes hadn't been impressed that Peter had brought the kid to work, but had relented when Peter had explained the situation.

Keller hadn't shown up at his apartment, just like Neal had predicted (it had been a long shot anyway), and had apparently gone completely to ground. No leads on his whereabouts whatsoever. So now, they were running the names of some of his associates that Neal had given them, but those were mostly partners Keller had only worked with once, and Neal often only knew their first names or nicknames; so that didn't get them far, either.

Heaving a deep sigh, Peter made his way down to the bullpen to check up on Neal (and more importantly on Agent Jefferson; he felt bad for the guy for having stuck Neal on him). But when he made it to the desk where he'd left Neal, there was no Neal around. Peter felt an all too familiar headache coming on and rubbed his temples.

"Brian just went to the bathroom," a voice brought him out of his contemplations of putting Neal on some sort of leash. Agent Jefferson.

"Where's Neal?" Peter wanted to know, but just as Jefferson asked, "Who?" his sentence fully registered in his brain, Brian just went to the bathroom.

"Never mind." That kid was going to be the death of him. He better not have left the building!

But Peter had just made a few steps towards the exit, when Neal came his way. He slowed down once he caught sight of him, but then he grinned at Peter and continued on his way towards him.

"Hi there, Brian."

Neal flashed one of his trademark smiles. "You like the name?"

"Do that again and I'll make you wear a name tag."

"Wow, you take this whole name thing really serious, huh?"

"It's not your name. You don't just use aliases to introduce yourself to . . . why do I even bother?"

"Beats me," Neal said under his breath.

"Didn't I give you a task?"

"So no bathroom breaks until I'm done?" Neal countered sarcastically.

"Exactly." Peter put his arm around Neal's shoulder and guided him back towards the desk where he had left him earlier.

"Good," Neal said, shoving the stack of files towards Peter. "'Cause I'm done."

"You're . . . what?" Peter looked back and forth between Neal and the files.

"Done.—Oh, and I hope you know that you got the wrong guy here," Neal said, searching for one particular file and showing it to Peter. "I mean, it's not even his signature. It's clearly been forged . . ."

So much for the plan to keep Neal out of trouble by giving him a simple task that would keep him occupied for hours.

This was promising to be a long day at the office . . .

~ o O o ~

For the third time in a row, Peter was woken in the middle of the night by someone screaming for him. He groaned and rolled out of bed.

"Go back to sleep, hon," he said, when El made a questioning sound. "I've got this."

He shuffled to Neal's room sleepily and turned on the light on entering. "Neal, wake up, it's just a . . . FBI, don't move!" he yelled, reaching for a gun that wasn't there.

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