Neal yawned cavernously as he balanced his pen behind one ear. The completed maths exercise lay rumpled on his desk before him, already marked and forgotten about. The exercise had been surprisingly easy. Neal Caffrey surveyed the classroom. The other students in his maths set were giggling and chatting amongst themselves, boys joking around, girls holding whispered conversations of seemingly vital importance. They were all wearing the same blue blazer and stripy tie that was the uniform at Merrinote High School. Everybody hated it. Everybody except Neal. The uniform gave him a sense of belonging, it helped him blend in, and, more importantly, he liked wearing ties.

He had come to Merrinote after pulling the biggest heist of his criminal career, stealing a Raphael and replacing it with one of his forgeries. But the job had gone horribly wrong. His partner, Keller, had screwed things up and killed a man, which had instantly alerted the police to the fact that the Raphael had been stolen. If Keller hadn't been such a bloodthirsty psychopath, Neal knew that the theft of the painting would have gone unnoticed. He rolled his eyes at the memory. Trust an incompetent adult like Keller to blow a million dollar operation to smithereens. As a result of his dumbass move, every police department in the state had suddenly gotten very interested in the missing painting, especially Peter Burke and his gang of angsty agents. With the feds hounding him and NYPD making life rather uncomfortable, Neal had known that he had to go underground. He had always been a firm believer that the best place to hide was in plain sight, so he had devised a plan. Dipping into his funds and tracking down all the necessary documentation for his new alias Nick Halden, he had enrolled himself in a private, mixed high school 3 blocks away from the White Collar Division in the New York FBI building.

"Hey Nick. Nice save with the phone there." A girl's sugary voice interrupted his thoughts. Neal blinked and looked up at her, mentally slipping back into the role of Nick Halden, millionaire schoolboy.

"Yeah. Thought I was going to be busted for sure." He flashed her one of his electric smiles, eyes flickering across her face that was framed by soft, red hair. Sara Ellis. The name popped into his head, supplied by his ever helpful, rhyming memory bank. Sara Ellis eats relish. Neal always made a point to remember names: you never knew quite when they could come in handy. Sara Ellis laughed prettily.

"I don't think that Mr Harris trusts you anymore." She simpered.

"Nah. Well, I don't trust him either. The signature on his driver's licence is obviously forged." Neal stopped himself abruptly. The words had just spilled out – his true, observant personality shining through, seeping out past the lie. It happened when he talked to pretty girls. Sara, however, didn't seem to notice the slip.

She was pretty in a spotty-teenager kind of way. Quick witted, too – Neal had been fairly confident that nobody had seen him slip his phone into the teacher's pocket earlier. Yet her piercing grey eyes had seen right through his ruse. Going out with Sara would be interesting… But she wasn't his type. And besides, he already had eyes for a girl in the year. Kate Moreau. A goddess come to life.

"So…Nick." Sara shot a furtive glance at Mr Harris, then sidled over to sit next to Neal. The space next to him was empty, his maths partner having popped over to talk to someone on the opposite side of the room. "Did you watch Doctor Who last night?" She asked, slightly breathless from the manoeuvre. Neal smiled. Of course he had. He did everything he could to act like a normal teenager and fit in with the other students. Watching TV achieved this aim: it enabled him to spark up a conversation with his classmates wherever and whenever he wanted. Neal had a huge repertoire of conversation topics, but none of them interested teenagers. Not unless they were really into the history behind Picasso's brush stroke technique. Or they felt like discussing the benefits of using a skeleton key over hacking a CCTV feed. Neal's bright blue eyes caught Sara's grey ones.

"Yeah, I saw it." He murmured, soft and sweet. "Great show."

"I liked the part where the two aliens kissed." Sara announced. Neal crumpled his eyebrows at her.

"Seriously? You liked the kissing alien scene?" He laughed, the deep, adorable chuckle of a confident teenager. "The aliens were all like, kiss my… eye stalk… thing." Neal continued, leaning in close to Sara, his head swinging from side to side in a crazy impression of the kissing eye stalk aliens. Sara giggled. Her lips were suddenly very close to his. And very inviting…

"Excuse me, but why are you in my seat? And why are you like, nearly bumping heads with my maths partner?"

Sara and Neal jerked away. Standing over them, glowering up a storm, was Kate Moreau.

"Kate…" Neal started. It sounded weak even to him. "This is Sara Relish – I mean, uh, Ellis."

Peter Burke sat at his dining room table. His wife, Elizabeth, sat next to him.

"Hon, you need to stop worrying about this case. I know you'll catch him. You always do." Her words were like a soft blanket being draped across his tense shoulders, but Peter refused to relax.

"El, you don't understand. This kid isn't like the other criminals. He's smart. And he's damn good at what he does." Elizabeth listened with a loving, though somewhat tired expression. She had heard this all before. But this time, something was different. One word stood out to her, niggled at her thoughts.

"Wait, hon, did you say 'kid'?"

"Yup. Neal Caffrey is some sort of young… criminal… prodigy or something. God, I don't know. All I know is that the Caffrey case is giving me a massive headache. My team at the office has only managed to find one thing this whole week and it wasn't the kid. It was a bottle of aspirin." Peter downed his espresso. Elizabeth bent down to ruffle Satmo's already ruffled golden ruff. She reached across to give her husband a sympathetic squeeze, then resumed her ponderings.

"Define 'kid'." She mused. "How old is Neal? 20? 25?"

Peter nearly choked on his coffee. "What? No! Neal Caffrey is 15 years old!" Elizabeth sat in amazed silence.

"Wow."
"Got that right, hon."

The Burke's sat shrouded in a companionable quiet for ten or so minutes. They knew each other well enough to not intrude on the silence until the time was perfectly right. Quiet is like fruit; it needs to ripen before it can be picked and crushed. Elizabeth cleared her throat.

"You know, I've always wanted to have a teenage son." Peter glanced up at El in surprise.

"Surely you don't want Neal?" He asked, aghast. Elizabeth laughed her tinkling laugh, the laugh that Peter fell in love with.

"No, hon, of course not! Just, talking about this… fifteen year old forger got me thinking. I've being thinking about this a lot recently. There's so much evil in the world, hon. You spend your days at the FBI fighting it. So why don't we end a young person's personal suffering and foster? We've always wanted a child. We've never been big fans of babies. Why don't we foster a teenager?"

Peter smiled softly to himself. The thing about him and his El, the reason they got on so well together and had been happily married for ten years, was that they often shared the same views. Would fostering a teenager be such a bad idea? He would have to put some thought into it, of course, they both would, but it wasn't such a bad thing to consider.

Peter and Elizabeth kissed under the blush of the dimmed kitchen lights.

Hey guys, thanks so much for all the reviews and follows, really appreciate it! Reviews especially make me feel so special and happy hahaha :) If you have a mo, please do a review!

I'm sorry that it took me a while to update this – I was away all weekend doing my Duke of Edinburgh award. Anyway, hope you enjoyed this and I'll post some more this week!