#white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen

[white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen]

Heaven Can Wait

Summary: Neal and Y/N Caffrey have an idyllic domestic life until a terrible accident threatens to rip it all away.

Words: 1,957

I can’t find it in my ask history but it was definitely requested.

            Some women dreamed of being stay-at-home mothers. It had been nice for a couple months, until the itch in your legs started and you couldn’t think straight. Before the kids were on solid foods, you were back at work, Neal taking over as a stay-at-home father. Truthfully, you considered as you cooked breakfast, this was probably the best solution for everyone. You made more and had more upward mobility, since you didn’t have a felony record. Still, you were glad that he was happy. Neal hadn’t struck you as a stay-at-home anything while you were dating, but he was an amazing father. It was as if the little ones you welcomed a year ago had cured his fear of staying put.

            Knox couldn’t get enough over-easy eggs, and Ellie seemed to think breakfast was for chumps. You looked over at them both after flipping the pancakes with a tender smile. Your son’s shirt had been on him for less than twenty minutes and it was already gross and smeared with egg yolk, while your daughter’s fingers were already covered in a thin layer of crayon wax. Ironically, the child who loved to make art wasn’t the one named after an artist.

            Neal came into the kitchen with fluffy, towel-ruffled hair, halfway through a yawn. “It smells delicious,” he said, predictably lured by scent straight to the still-hot coffee. He paused by the children to ruffle his son’s hair and kiss his daughter on her head.

            “Da,” Ellie complained about being distracted from her drawing.

            He chuckled before leaving them alone. “Do you want coffee, love?”

            “I assume you do want to eat today?” You checked rhetorically.

            Neal laughed again. “Got it.” He took down two mugs and started pouring one for each of you while you finished the pancakes and plated the scrambled eggs that were just for the two of you. “Same as usual today?”

            “I’ll be home by four,” you promised, reaching over and giving his free hand a little squeeze. As you did, you stole a quick look at the glinting silver band on his ring finger and smiled brightly at the sight of it, suddenly delightfully conscious of the weight of your own.

            “We can last until four,” Neal said, looking back over at the twins. You hadn’t been trying, exactly, but you hadn’t not been trying, and you’d both been thrilled by the news. Your son had been a surprise, but for however hectic life had been with two newborns, it was also that much more rewarding. “I think Ellie’s ready for watercolors, don’t you?”

            “Neal,” you said, giving him a playfully warning look. She’d barely stopped putting crayons in her mouth. Did he really want to start with thin wooden brushes? “Only if you’re careful,” you agreed, seeing the adorably pleading look in his big blue eyes.

            The two of you sat close together at the table, the side of your left leg touching his right one as you both ate, yourself in a rush with half your mind on the time. The pancakes were probably the best you’d made in a while, and Neal appreciatively thanked you for the meal with a kiss on the cheek right before letting you get up and take your plate to the sink.

            “I’ve got it,” he said before you could turn on the water. “Don’t worry about it. You have to go.”

            Smiling gratefully, you downed the rest of your coffee and put the mug down in the sink. “Thank you, darling,” you said, bending over the back of his chair to hug him tightly from behind. He raised a hand to stroke your arm and you kissed his temple before moving on to your little ones. Knox babbled at you a little, not quite ready to say “mama” yet, and Ellie only reluctantly turned her head to you long enough for a kiss before going back to her coloring. “I love you both,” you cooed, stroking her dark hair down the nape of her neck.

            “Love Ma,” Ellie said with a pout, the V coming out a little blunted.

            You grabbed your bag and took one last look at your little family around the table, thanking the stars that you’d been able to hold onto this wonderful man and that you’d been blessed with healthy, sweet children. Now you couldn’t imagine being anywhere else, and looked forward to every time you got to spend time together as a family. Then you were out the door before you got too emotional and went back in for a second round of hugs.

            The route to work was so familiar that you could probably have done it blindfolded, barring other pedestrians. You took the A train downtown and then went a few blocks eastward. Once out of the subway, you only had to walk for about four minutes to get to your job. It was a pretty convenient location and you liked that it was also near a few good restaurants and a pharmacy.

            You stopped at an intersection to wait to cross, the red hand blinking at you from across the street. The building was in sight, and your mind was transitioning into work mode. Already you were reviewing what you’d done the day prior and thinking over the next steps – what could you get done by lunch? The boss had been in an unusually lighthearted and laissez-faire mood lately, and you had no idea why, but it was nice to work at your own efficient pace without feeling heat at your heels-

            The light turned to the white walk sign. You stepped off the curb after checking the coast was clear and headed across the crosswalk. There was at least one pretty big thing that you could finish by the end of the day if you kept your foot on the gas. A loud screech and the blare of a horn made you turn your head around, but you barely had time to understand what you saw before the car slammed directly into your side and sent you flying away and to the ground.

~~~ Heaven Can Wait ~~~

            Neal had been mopping up the mess Ellie made when she knocked over the little water cup for painting when the phone rang. He couldn’t explain how, but he felt his stomach drop right in that moment. Something was deeply, horribly wrong. It took a beat for him to unfreeze his muscles and answer. The nurse making the call confirmed his bone-deep fear when she said she was at a hospital. He nearly threw up.

            Ellie was crying, and Knox not much better, only kept on this side of docile by a stuffed green monkey. He kept trying to shush Ellie on the subway because he knew people were giving them baleful stares, but his heart wasn’t in it. All he could think of were horrible, unwanted images of his wife laying lifelessly on a stretcher. A car accident. Jesus, what were the odds when you didn’t even drive? Neal kept running his paint-stained hand through his hair, and on occasion bent down over the handles of the twin stroller as his breath hitched to force himself to keep calm for his kids.

            He got looks for bringing two babies to the emergency ward, but didn’t bother trying to explain himself, and when he said your name in an urgent panic, the irritable gaze of the receptionist softened a touch. A nurse was paged. They said words he didn’t understand and a few he did that he wished he didn’t, and finished by pointing him to chairs to wait. His knees nearly buckled as he found a place to sit, the stroller just in front of him.

            Transverse fracture. Fractured hip. Two broken ribs. Internal bleeding.

            Severe head trauma.

            A woman in scrubs came into the room, but not from the direction of the operating theaters. Neal looked up with red-rimmed eyes at the cop, at first not understanding what was happening as the nurse directed the policeman towards him. He distractedly started to push the stroller a few inches back and forth, keeping Knox as calm as he could in the foreign environment with his father so clearly distressed. Ellie, thankfully, had gone to sleep after tiring herself out with tears.

            The policeman explained, briefly, what had happened and gave him papers. A man ran the red light to turn and claimed he hadn’t seen you until it was too late. He said he laid on the horn but you didn’t move. A fury started to bubble in his chest at that, burning brighter than any rage he’d felt since confronting Fowler at the Russian Consulate. He knew damn well that his wife hadn’t just not moved. You hadn’t been given a chance. That pathetic, bullshit excuse ensured Neal would be going after his blood however he could – as soon as his family was taken care of.

            Next of kin notified, and a copy of the incident papers and contact information given, the policeman gave his token condolences with a sympathetic glance at the twins in their stroller. Neal didn’t read the papers. He knew he’d do something stupid if he had the man’s identifying information. Instead he stuffed them into the empty pocket of the babies’ diaper bag in the bottom tray of the stroller.

            It felt like it took hours before he was finally called back to see his wife. A nurse offered to stay with the stroller, but Neal couldn’t bear losing track of his children while he was so affected by nearly losing his partner and refused. She didn’t press, and instead led the three of them down a few halls and to a room with low lights. She held the door for Neal to push the twins inside, and he leaned heavily on the handles as he saw you, the love of his life, lying broken in the bed. The thin blankets laid awkwardly over bulky bandages and a cast around your left arm. Part of your head was wrapped tightly, and as nausea turned his stomach, he couldn’t bring himself to ask yet exactly why. Half of your face was scraped to hell and purple and black bruising had already spread deeply across your cheek.

             “She’s stable,” the nurse said, her eyes looking briefly to his violently shaking hands. She was just repeating what she’d already said now.

            Neal moved the stroller to the side of the bed so that when you woke up you’d be able to see your kids right away. He cautiously bent over the side of the bed, hovering his hand gingerly over the mostly unharmed side of your face. “Y/N,” he whispered, his sight blurring briefly before he blinked and let the tears start to fall.

            You didn’t stir.

            “Sir,” the nurse said softly, about to repeat herself again. “Y/N is in a medically-induced coma.”

All the cautions in the world couldn’t have reached his brain in the waiting room, when all he could hear was his heartbeat and blood rushing in his ears, desperate to see with his own eyes. Neal furrowed his eyebrows, trying to tune her out, hoping not to hear. He couldn’t hear it again. He was barely holding on, barely telling himself over and over again that you were okay now, that your mangled body wasn’t dead before him.

            It was a few minutes before it really hit him that, wherever he put the kids, however gently he touched you, whatever he said to plead with you to wake up and tell him yourself that you were okay – you weren’t going to wake up. And, if he was deeply, devastatingly unlucky, you might never wake up again.

#white collar lawmen and conmen #white collar #white collar x reader #neal caffrey #neal caffrey x reader #reader insert #reader #kids #family #drama #accident #car accident #coma #requested #oneshot #heaven can wait

[thelibraryoflily]

Recommendation Masterlist

Blackkatmagic’s AO3.  Kat writes primarily in the prequel section of Star Wars, and has a phenomenal (and devious) mind on how to give both comfort and terror to characters!  I also really love their Luminous Beings series, so I definitely suggest checking that out!  Fandoms: Star Wars (The Clone Wars), and many others.

Clonesandmoans’ Mastertags.  I really love the clones, and the mods of Clonesandmoans write purely for the boys who deserved better.  Fandom: Star Wars The Clone Wars.

Shenanigans-and-Imagines’ Masterlist.  Annie is an incredibly talented writer, and I truly believe that everything she writes is blessed.  Fandoms: Marvel, Star Wars (prequels, sequels, originals, and spinoffs), Star Trek (TOS), and MASH.

Tropes-and-Tales.  A phenomenal author, who gets way too much hatred from anons.  Will be updated if their fics return!  Fandoms: Law and Order: SVU, Trouble in the Heights, Star Wars.

Nellblazer’s Series Masterlist, Mini Fics/One Shots/Challenges, and AO3.  Nell is not only a talented writer, she is also a fantastic cosplayer and technically an aspiring voice actor.  She writes a lot of dark!character AUs, and tends to write on the darker side of fiction.  Fandoms: Marvel, DC (Constantine/Hellblazer), Supernatural, American Gods, Harry Potter, and many more!

White-Collar-Lawmen-and-Conmen’s Masterlist.  Writes purely for White Collar, and is one of the only people who produce content for such a wonderful show.  Fandom: White Collar.

#blackkatmagic #star wars #star wars the clone wars #clonesandmoans #shenanigans-and-imagines #marvel #star trek #mash #tropes-and-tales #law and order svu #trouble in the heights #nellblazer #constantine #supernatural #american gods #harry potter #white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen #white collar

[super-marvellous-reads]

Masterlist - May 2020

Links to every single one of the amazing stories I’ve read in May 2020.

Summaries have been provided if the author has written one.

* 1 May: Stark 2.0 by @moonlit-imagines (Tony Stark x Daughter!Reader).  Summary:  Y/N is basically Tony 2.0, but when you put two Tony's in the same building, chaos ensues.

* 2 May: Pay Attention by @chloe-skywalker​ - Derek Hale x Reader (Teen Wolf).  Summary: Derek and y/n have been together for a long time. Just some of the people around them haven’t noticed.

* 3 May: Bite - Part One by @white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen​ - Neal Caffrey x Reader (White Collar).  Summary: Peter’s team is invited onto a big case in which their involvement will have serious consequences. (Part 1/3).

* 4 May: No Promises by @manawhaat​ - Steve Rogers x Maria Hill (Marvel).  

* 5 May: A Novel by @bolontiku​ - Clint Barton x Reader (Marvel).  Summary: Stopping for coffee & scones leads to a little bit of romantic fiction.

* 6 May: Kiss Cam Rules by @jayankles​ - Dean Winchester x Reader (Supernatural)

* 7 May: Sword of Glass by @manawhaat​ - Geralt of Rivia x Reader (The Witcher).

* 8 May: Chance Meeting by @imagine-all-the-imagines​ - Clint Barton x Reader (Marvel).

* 9 May: It’s Not My Party & I’ll Dance If I Want To by @peterman-spideyparker​ - Pietro Maximoff x Reader (Marvel).   Summary: It’s your birthday, but not the party you hoped for. A certain Sokovian Speedster has a plan to change that.

* 10 May: Bite - Part 2 by @white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen - Neal Caffrey x Reader (White Collar).  Summary: Peter’s team is invited onto a big case in which their involvement will have serious consequences. (Part 2/3).

* 11 May: Prime Time - Part 1 by @hlkwrites - Chris Evans x Reader (RPF).

* 12 May: Prime Time - Part 2 by @hlkwrites - Chris Evans x Reader (RPF).

* 13 May: Prime Time - Part 3 by @hlkwrites - Chris Evans x Reader (RPF).

* 14 May: Prime Time - Part 4 by @hlkwrites - Chris Evans x Reader (RPF).

* 15 May: Prime Time - Part 5 by @hlkwrites - Chris Evans x Reader (RPF).  

* 16 May: Prime Time - Part 6 by @hlkwrites - Chris Evans x Reader (RPF).  

* 17 May: Prime Time - Part 7 by @hlkwrites - Chris Evans x Reader (RPF).

* 18 May: Prime Time - Part 8 by @hlkwrites - Chris Evans x Reader (RPF).

* 19 May: Prime Time - Part 9 by @hlkwrites - Chris Evans x Reader (RPF).  

* 20 May: Thinking Of You by @arrowsandmixtapes - Bucky Barnes x Reader (Marvel).  Summary: A tipsy text leads to an unexpected confession from Bucky.

* 21 May: 7 Minutes In Marvel Heaven by @corrupted-doe - Johnny Storm x Reader (Marvel).   Summary: Picking the famously hot Human torch to go into the closet with, what could possibly go wrong?

* 22 May: Home To Her by @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan - Steve Rogers x Reader (Marvel).  Summary:  Steve won’t let something as insignificant as severe bodily harm keep him from her.

* 23 May: Closer (Across The Hall Part 8) - Poe Dameron x Reader (Star Wars AU).  Summary:  You come face to face with the notorious Senator Hux at the hospital and make Poe proud when you do, bringing you even closer together.

* 24 May: Locked Doors & Keys (Across The Hall Part 9) - Poe Dameron x Reader (Star Wars AU).  Summary: Dr Ren finally gets you alone after your interaction with Hux, and Poe has a question for you

* 25 May: Buddy System by @white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen - Neal Caffrey x Reader (White Collar).  Summary: You and Neal have an arrangement of the comforting variety.

* 26 May:  The One with the Embryos (or The One Where They Lose the Game)  by @captain-rogers-beard - Steve Rogers x Reader (Marvel).   Summary:  You and Wanda play a friendly game with Steve and Bucky, but the stakes are far higher than you realize.

* 27 May: Learning to be Intimate by @life-is-hella-unfair - Carol Danvers x Reader (Marvel).  

* 28 May: Even Dead Dinosaurs Have Feelings by @imanuglywombat  - Ransom Drysdale x Reader (Knives Out).  Summary: Your arrangement with Ransom is pure and simple: you hate each other and sleep with each other because hate sex is the purest cure for all the ailments. Pure, unadulterated hot sex without feelings. Or so you thought.

*29 May: Magic Dick by @imanuglywombat - Ransom Drysdale x Reader (Knives Out).   Summary: A little drabble from Love In A Time Of North Korea in which Ransom has the perfect cure for a bad day.

* 30 May: Falling For You by @jayankles - Nurse!Dean Winchester x Reader (Supernatural AU).   Summary: Y/N falls in the middle of the street and an off shift nurse helps her out. He takes her home to make sure that she’s okay.

* 31 May: Protection on Vacation (Part 1) by @jayankles - Dean Winchester x Reader (Supernatural AU).   Summary: Your father, the king, gives you permission to go on vacation, only if you take your personal bodyguard with you.

#Becca's Reblog Challenge

[supernaturallymarvellous]

It Started With Coffee....

A/N: Shanna, the wonderful owner of @sdavid09 decided to host a “What if…” challenge.  This is my third entry out of three prompts that I requested.  My prompt was “What if you were a secretary at the FBI and Neal goes overboard while trying to impress you?”.  This is my first foray into writing for White Collar so be kind to me with any criticisms please!

Word Count: 835

Pairing: Neal Caffrey x Reader

Warnings: None.

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Your role as a secretary within the Department of White Collar Crime brought you into daily contact with Neal Caffrey. You often found yourself assisting him when he stood in front of the file cabinets, staring at them as if he had no idea of how the system worked. You typed his reports, helped him fine tune his understanding of how the team functioned and, more importantly, treated him as more than just an ex-con. You saw him for the wonderful man that he was - the man that, without fail, made you smile each and every day.

It seemed obvious to everyone, including you, that Neal had developed somewhat of a crush on you. You’d have been lying to yourself if you said you didn’t feel the same way. You were, after all, of a similar age to him and your interests ran along the same lines; art, foreign travel, good food and drink…..all things you and Neal could wax lyrical about for hours on end. His feelings towards you soon became the highlight of office gossip and impossible for others to ignore. Working in a relatively small team came with its downsides as well as its benefits, one of those downsides being that everyone knew everyone else’s business! The fact that Neal had taken an interest in you, and that you weren’t exactly pushing him away, was all that anyone seemed to discuss over the water cooler.

It started with coffee. Over the course of the first few weeks, ever since Neal had joined the division, you had bonded over your love of good coffee and now, every morning saw a travel mug filled with a delicious Italian roast placed on your desk, waiting for your arrival. More often than not, it was also accompanied by some form of delicious pastry treat.

You tried not to read too much into this sweet gesture, not wanting to let your small crush develop into something more. The thought of falling in love and getting your heart broken by the charming and charismatic man you worked alongside terrified you more than you would ever confess to anyone. Neal however was of an entirely different mindset. Determined to win you over, he began to set in motion a series of increasing elaborate declarations of love that he knew you wouldn’t be able to resist.

From that moment on, it seemed as though everything Neal did was in an effort to impress you. Simple lunchtime trips to the nearest deli turned into short dates before you both had to rush back to the office. If Neal was called out of the office on a case with Peter and couldn’t be there for lunch, a meal would arrive at your desk - the most delicious food would be delivered by an exhausted looking bike courier, sometimes even hand-cooked by Neal if he’d had the time.

Elaborate bouquets of flowers found their way to your workstation on a weekly basis. Each time a new bunch arrived, they were accompanied by a personalised message; usually a meaningful quote but sometimes a poem, and always written in Neal’s perfect flowing handwriting. For Neal it was a natural progression from flowers to jewellery. Nothing too extravagant as he knew you favoured a more simple and elegant style, but always something incredibly beautiful - like the delicate bracelet he had given you a few days previously, adorned with tiny diamonds!

Despite your intentions, you quickly found yourself hoping that Neal’s crush was more than that, hoping that the gifts he was giving you and the time he was spending with you meant that you were more than just a way of passing his time until someone better suited to him came along. Surely no one would try so hard unless they were serious in their intentions? However, self doubt left you questioning your thoughts and hoping that everything would become clear soon.

Things were clarified for you when you walked into work early on a Monday morning. A crisp white envelope lay on top of your computer keyboard, your name printed in sharp, black ink. Smiling to yourself, you glanced around the office, noticing that you were alone and glad of that fact as it spared you having to explain why you were blushing. You knew it was from Neal and at first, thought that it would just be tickets to an opera that you had been discussing with him not long ago. It wasn’t until you slipped a finger under the flap of the envelope and pulled out its contents that you realised just how much Neal cared for you.

Inside were two small laminated rectangles, one bearing your picture, the other Neal’s. They were lifetime membership cards to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a place that meant so much to both of you and where you had spent many happy afternoons wiling away the hours. What made the gift even more special however was the note that was attached:

“Say you’ll be mine….forever.”

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Tagging: @waywardimpalawriter   @eileenlikesyou-maybe   @hexparker   @zepppie   @helvonasche   @mysteriouslyme81   @everything-but-the-not-natural   @white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen

#TaleTeller's What If Challenge #Neal Caffrey x reader #Neal Caffrey #White Collar #White Collar reader insert

[parker-peterparker]

Tagged by my queen @aromaticpurple

Relationship Status: single like Sun

Favourite Colour: green! (slytherin yeah)

Lipstick or chapstick: chapstick

Last song I listened to: Love Is Never Asking Why by bvdub

Last movie I watched: Brick

Top 3 shows: I WILL CRY

QI

Rick and Morty

my mad fat diary or black books

Top 3 characters: I WILL DIE

i cant choose between kai parker and peter parker. But i know its parker

john wick

A LOT OF NERD BOYS OR CUTE BOYS OR JUST BADASS BOYS

Top 3 ships:

i dont like canon ships and ships between characters. I like only reader/character ship lol 

Books I’m currently reading: gone with the wind by margaret mitchell

5 things in my bag:

pens

money

rough book i dont know this word i just use old notebook for stupid things like scetching or writing an anwer for question

thin book to read

phone

5 things in my room:

a mountain of books

bed

computer

desk

floor i like lying 

5 7 things on my to do list:

write imagines more often ahahhaha i hate myself

finish all old shows and catch up new shows

check tumblr every day and reblog all cute things on my side blogs

learn spanish in duolingo

do exercises

make friendship bracelets

prepare my mind for september and new school year

5 things I’m into:

PETER PARKER!!!

jOhN wiCk

BEAUTIFUL PICS WHICH I CANT COPE

tumblr

books

tagging @dailygubler @imaginesofeveryfandom @flowerpot101 @chris-woods @white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen @hcllland @parkerbpete @bookofreid

#ask #i like it #list

[archivistsrock]

what are some good white collar blogs to follow?

Awesome tumblr peeps who produce White Collar and/or Matt Bomer gifs/edit:@mabesies@kanarek13@jonny-august@onlymattbomer@tissueoflies@fearwill@shadwhunter@ellalovesmattbomer@teamdekay for Tim stuff

In terms of Matt Bomer news/info, there’s @mattbomeritalia

A few peeps who I believe reblog a lot of WC (but I’m not sure if they create art/fic??):@whitecollarobsession@bomerworld

I am not clued in to current fic writers on tumblr (EEEK I’m SORRRRY), but I do know there’s @white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen. 

I know I’m omitting people, and I feel super bad about that! If you’re a WC blog, please leave a reply on the post so Anon (and others!) can follow you! And this goes for people who don’t create art/fic – any heroes who reblog a lot of WC, feel free to raise your hand!

#i always get so stressed answering this bc I don't want to forget someone or not list someone and make them feel bad #:(((((( #I promise I'm not intentionally leaving anyone out!! #ask #Anonymous

[white-magician]

@archivistsrock, @white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen, brace yourselves Matt is coming! :-D I’m nearly done with the collar and the left part of the suit, I just need to do some more shading and lighting! white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen​ when I’m finished with it, could I make you a masterlist banner with it? :-)

#God I love that guy #and those guys #White Collar fans #check their blog!! #White Collar #Mine #Matt Bomer #Series #Neal Caffrey

[hollywritesinstardust]

please please please can we have a sequel to 100 dollars! There is so little white collar fan fiction and I have a DIER NEED!

Hello! Thank you so much for your enthusiasm! I will think about it and see if I can’t come up with a sequel. In the meantime, I’ll plug my side blog, Lawmen and Conmen, which is a fanfiction blog dedicated entirely to White Collar content. :) Enjoy!

[sci-fimagines]

Please check out my new page on Ko-Fi and commissions here: https://chuckversusthefanfiction.tumblr.com/kofi

Other fanfiction blogs of mine are mentioned. Lawmen and Conmen (White Collar) has been running for about three years now and is my oldest fandom niche blog. CMagines and ImagiNCIS are both new blogs. The links are real but it’s midnight and I’m tired so the blogs aren’t furnished yet. If you like Criminal Minds or NCIS, please check them out in like a day or so. :)

My new Ko-Fi will explain what it is and why I’m using it. I do want to emphasize here that although for the foreseeable future, requests are now commissions, I will fulfill requests I’ve already accepted without Ko-Fi.

[white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen]

Imagine Neal Sharing His New Year's Resolution

            “Any resolutions for the new year?” He asked, one brow cocked, his voice as smooth as the wine in his cup.

            You gave him a small smile. It was hard not to be completely see-through with Neal, especially when he asked such a cliché question. Didn’t everyone make resolutions? But they were always the same, in your experience. Every year you told yourself you’d start saving more of your paycheck, or lose the few pounds that you’d gained when winter set in. But those were habitual changes in your year, now – not the kind of thing that you’d say really, actually mattered when it came to ringing in a brighter and more colorful future.

            “I bet you have a good one,” you said instead of answering, looking meaningfully down towards his shoes.

            Neal chuckled and shifted his weight so he could idly swing his left foot a bit, consciously feeling the weight of the anklet. “Yeah. This one’s a long time coming.”

            “Four years, almost,” you agreed. It was hard to believe it had only been four years. At the same time, it was hard to think back on how it had been four whole years since you’d met this wonderful, infuriating man. “You can get a whole new start, if that’s what you want.”

            Neal didn’t answer right away, instead lifting his cup to his lips and sipping on the dark red. You sent him a short glance, admiring for just a moment how the light caught the angles of his face. There was just enough light to clearly see him, but it was low enough to make his profile almost dreamlike, especially as your mind briefly wandered to the year after next and wondered if he’d still be around to celebrate.

            The party behind you made a loud cheer, bringing you back to the present and reminding you that this was a good night. A Sunday evening with friends and colleagues, just happily enjoying life and marking the change in the calendar. It was arbitrary. And because it was arbitrary, it was meaningful – because it put some purpose and some love back into a day you otherwise would’ve spent alone. Standing out here on the deck, with a chilly breeze sweeping your hair from your forehead, the warmth of family had started to fade. The sounds of a winning hand indoors brought it all back, and you breathed in, deep and content.

            Neal lowered his glass and stepped a bit forward, turning to look at you. You tilted your head curiously and fought the impulse to move a foot back. The depth in his eyes had caught you off guard – you were so used to his playful and charismatic personality that it surprised you when he was truly serious.

            “I’ve spent the better part of four years wanting a new start, as a free man,” Neal said, each word tinged with equal parts regret and nostalgia. “But lately I think – I know,” he graciously amended, “I don’t need to run to feel free.”

            For a second you stared, searching his eyes for the caveat or the condition. You couldn’t find one. “You’re going to stay?” You whispered, keeping your voice low like it was a secret. Maybe it was – the way Peter occasionally looked at Neal, you knew the man was making a mental scrapbook of last times.

            “I think my resolution is to stop running,” Neal whispered back.

#white collar #white collar x reader #neal caffrey #neal caffrey x reader #fic #not requested #imagine #new year #friendship #romance #character development #lawmen and conmen #holiday #x reader #reader insert

[white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen]

Bodyguard

Summary: There’s immediate chemistry when Y/N works as Neal’s bodyguard.

Words: 2,569

Requested by anon

            “I didn’t know there was a whole gym,” Neal commented, looking around with some interest at the exercise equipment. He almost considered asking if he was allowed down here without supervision, but then decided communal equipment probably didn’t meet his standards of cleanliness.

            Peter had brought him down to the basement floor and into a large, open room with black mats. One agent was running at a treadmill, another two were working at ellipticals, and a fourth was doing some push-ups in athleticwear. Lastly, on a slim side of the room without any extra equipment, but on a gymnastics mat, a pair of agents were working hand-to-hand training.

            “It’s not exactly here to be an amenity,” Peter pointed out, slowing down as they approached the agents working hand-to-hand. “We’re not here to work out, anyway. Jones says our guy’s reportedly quick to jump the gun. Possibly literally. I’m not having you go in alone.”

            They stopped a couple yards from the mat. One of the fighters was a tall man with arms that could give Jason Momoa a run for his money. The other was a woman with sweat dripping down her face and hell in her eyes. Neal was enchanted by you straight away. While they watched, the older man came at you to pick you up as if in a fireman’s hold, but you slammed her body weight right into his mass, tightened each fist around the opposite side of his shirt collar, and pulled your arms back across each other as hard as possible. Although the male agent was, in fact, able to grab you the second time, he couldn’t pick you up without choking himself harder, and he stomped his foot twice to reset.

            “I told you it would work,” you said smugly, releasing his shirt while he rubbed his throat. You turned and your eyes slipped right past Peter and Neal, zeroing in on your bottled water and hand towel at the edge of the mat.

            “Only in one-on-one,” your coworker cautioned, rubbing his throat with one hand. “And only for you would I ever bet on that one.”

            You wiped off her forehead and then gave Peter and Neal both a bright smile, holding the water bottle against her neck as if it were still cold. “Hi,” you said cheerfully. “You must be Burke. Lovely to meet you. I’m L/N.”

            “Neal,” the thief interjected himself, giving her his most charming smile. “That was very impressive.”

            “I’m sold,” you said to Peter straight away before turning back to Neal. “You can call me Y/N. I’ll be your bodyguard for your undercover operation.” You lowered her water bottle and gave him a short curtsy. “I’ve been with the bureau about two years, but aced weapons training and have been studying martial arts since I was a kid. You’ll be in good hands.”

            “Evil hands,” your coworker huffed, drinking water himself and still rubbing sorely at his neck. ���Evil, evil hands.”

            Peter chuckled while Neal gave you a warm smile. “I already feel safer.”

            He didn’t feel threatened at all, really, and some traditional, gentlemanly part of himself didn’t love the idea of a female bodyguard. Not that he didn’t appreciate strong women; it could be argued he appreciated strong women a bit too much – but it felt different, somehow, to go in expecting a woman to take a hit for him and hit back on his behalf, compared to simply going in with a female partner and trusting her to have his back. Bodyguard had a different connotation he didn’t like so much… but, bodyguards had their place in the environment he’d be trying to blend into.

            Y/N smiled back at him. It could’ve been just his imagination, but he thought you were charming him, too. Maybe flirting a little. Just as he thought you were having a moment, Peter ruined it by interrupting to talk shop.

            “We’d love to get you up to white collar and run down the plan early,” he said. The smile slipped off of your face, replaced immediately by a completely professional and solemn expression. Peter continued, “Let you sleep on it, and give an opportunity to think of any questions before we officially get started.”

            “I just need twenty minutes and I can be in your division,” you said, pointing over towards the door that Neal presumed led to the showers.

            “Take thirty,” Peter said kindly, then sending a playful look over Y/N’s shoulder. “You alright there, Chris?”

            Chris, who had started cooling off while they talked, gave a thumbs-up. “I’m just going to miss her so much,” he said sarcastically, making you smirk. “Who else is going to make me look average?”

            “I’ll be back to combat training before you know it,” you promised him teasingly, giving Neal a lingering look of what he decided was friendly interest before heading to the showers to clean off.

            Neal watched you go, mindfully keeping his eyes up north. It wasn’t often he met agents who were so willing to broadcast friendliness towards him, much less ones who were willing to be a little bit flirty. And, he had to admit, he liked that athletic look you had.

            “Eh,” Peter said, making the noise sharp in his throat like he did at Satchmo. Neal startled and Peter shook his head. “Don’t even think about it.”

            “Never,” Neal agreed, inwardly rolling his eyes. No point in arguing when Peter had already decided he was misbehaving. “Just-“ His agent made the noise again and Neal’s lips tightened in irritation. “That’s so rude,” the thief scolded.

~~~ Bodyguard ~~~

            “Don’t worry,” you said, misinterpreting Neal’s long look at the wire being fastened on the inside of your button-down shirt. “This isn’t my first time.”

            It was low-hanging fruit, so to speak, but the joke was impossible to pass on when you were standing there with the top buttons undone. “I’ll still be gentle,” he joked, chuckling when you stuck your tongue out at him.

            “I won’t,” you retorted, grinning when he was pleasantly surprised.

            With the wire in place, you pulled on a black blazer that you wore open. It looked amazing, framing your waist and hugging your shoulders. He had to remind himself that if he flirted too hard, Peter might send him to the HR department. Not that he was worried, because you weren’t being too shy about your attraction to him, either. Neal was a very handsome man, and you knew he was very smart on top of that. Smart, hot guys were kind of a weakness.

            But attraction or a conflict of interest was also a weakness – and that was the type of weakness that you had been trained to avoid. While you worked together, you could be friendly, but professional. When the operation was done, though… you were in different divisions, with different specialties. You didn’t see any reason why you couldn’t offer to take him for coffee once you were done working together. Work just had to come first.

            In theory, the operation was a very simple one for you. You just stood slightly behind Neal, looking intimidating and watching his back. Agent Burke didn’t want him to be unprotected, but the odds of Neal actually being attacked were slim, between the FBI’s top-notch forgeries for his fake ID and his proven track record of de-escalation. Still, you looked the part and made sure he had someone. And you were glad that you did, because it turned out that this was one instance where even Neal couldn’t settle the ruffled feathers.

            Neal saw from the start that everyone was on edge. It wasn’t the great beginning that he had hoped for, but it was the worse case scenario that he had planned on. He turned up the charm to eleven, settling smoothly into his role as a proud but amicable thief, hoping that if he didn’t act like anything was amiss, neither would the armed men around him. With Y/N behind him, although he wanted to feel safer, he also knew that they were outnumbered – and he would much rather no fight started anyway. Even if you could guarantee his safety, he’d feel awful if anyone were hurt over him.

            Unfortunately, the worse scenario turned to the worst. The mark had already decided he didn’t trust Neal, and by extension, didn’t trust you. It didn’t matter how much of a smooth talker anyone was when your guilt was already decided. They looked for reasons to lash out, going as far as to search Neal’s person for a wire. Fortunately, he wasn’t wearing one because the bureau had stuck with the recording counterfeit watch. If it worked, why change it? But he could feel his heart speeding up even as he kept his breath even, knowing that if they didn’t find what they were looking for on him, they would check you next.

            “Alright,” Mark snapped, gesturing roughly at Neal to be moved away from the table. The cards were left shuffled but unfinished and Neal gave them a forlorn look as he was yanked away by one of the guards. “Her next.”

            The other one had shuffled into place behind you. By the rigid way you’d been standing ever since, Neal knew you were aware. You moved forward before the man had a chance to push you, but you left your jacket on and gave Neal a small look with a simple little nod as if telling him it was okay. Although he knew better than to look nervous, he couldn’t lie to himself that well – not with one gun in sight and finger-shaped bruises forming on his upper arm.

            Mark made the other guard take your jacket off from behind. You forced your shoulders to stay down and not look defensive. It also served the double purpose of not telegraphing your move before you made it. Just before Mark started patting you down, you whirled around, kicking your leg out and striking him in the groin. While he involuntarily went backwards while doubling over, you delivered a hard strike to the guard’s face with one hand and went straight for his gun with the other. In maybe five seconds, you had a firm grip on the weapon and were stepping away from both men, bringing the gun up to the other guard.

            As soon as the guard behind Neal realized what was happening, he’d hurriedly let go of the con artist and gone for his own sidearm. “Y/N!” Neal yelled in warning, throwing himself against the guard to throw off his aim.

            A bullet fired, but lodged itself firmly in the wall. The puffed loudly at being shoved aside and turned the gun back to Neal. Now you were pissed. You took a shot as the guard did. Another side of the room let out a crack from a stray bullet, his aim thrown – again – this time by your shot to his arm. He dropped the gun and Neal, who’d doubled over holding onto his arm, hurriedly scrambled to cover the grip with his shoe.

            “You okay?” You barked, rushing to him and hurriedly taking the gun up from the ground. You put the safety back on, tucked it in your empty holster, and put an arm in front of Neal, ushering the thief gently back towards the wall to have a more defensible point. By now, you were sure that backup was rushing in.

            “It grazed me,” Neal hissed, turning to look at his arm. The sleeve was ripped and a two-inch stripe over his arm was raw pink speckled with red. You took it in during just a glance and dropped your shoulders again, relieved.

            “I’ve seen much worse grazes,” you said reassuringly, but scolded, “You shouldn’t have gotten in the way. I had it handled.”

            Neal grimaced, replaying it in his head. You’d already been looking at the guard before he slammed his body into the man. He’d been so focused on the gun being raised towards you that, at the time, he hadn’t processed that you already had yours levelled at the man. You would’ve gotten the shot off first, and neither of you would’ve ended up hurt if Neal hadn’t jumped in in a momentary panic. When he did, you hadn’t had a clear shot until the guard was already aiming at him.

            “My bad,” he said pointedly, pushing his elbow out as if to remind you of the graze. It burned fiercely.

~~~ Bodyguard ~~~

            “I gave you a bodyguard specifically so this wouldn’t happen,” Peter complained when he had Neal sitting down. He didn’t seem to care that Neal’s seat was the back of an EMT van while a man quickly but carefully disinfected his arm.

            “She was outnumbered,” Neal said defensively. He already felt bad enough, but he’d genuinely feared for her life at the time. “I was trying to help.”

            “Next time help by trusting our professionals to do our jobs,” Peter rebuked. His eyes softened when Neal looked away from him. “This was too close,” he said more gently. “The worst outcome of a case is one where my people don’t come back in one piece. I know you were trying to help, but this is what she was trained for. I wouldn’t send you in with someone who couldn’t manage… I’m glad you’re okay.”

            Neal looked up reluctantly and saw nothing but sympathy and concern in Peter’s eyes, so he drew himself up a bit and nodded understanding. “Thanks,” he said quietly, and then dismissed the sentimentality of their exchange by complaining, “No one ever said how much this hurts.”

            “Pain is a good teacher,” Peter said dryly. “Don’t do it again.”

            After checking with the EMT that Neal didn’t need a hospital after Neal himself turned down the offer of a ride, Peter gave him a pat on his uninjured side and went back to the agents cleaning up the crime scene. He’d barely been gone a minute when you came to join Neal, hands in your pockets, stolen weapons surrendered.

            “You did good,” you said with a small smile. “I appreciated your intent. I’d call it a learning opportunity.”

            “Yeah, consider it learned,” Neal sighed. He was also going to hear about this from Jones and Diana, without a doubt. “Thanks for having my back.”

            “It’s what I’m here for,” you said courteously. It was hard not to point out that if he’d been alone, they wouldn’t have found a wire and a fight wouldn’t have had to happen. Still, the fact that they’d been itching for a reason made you glad he hadn’t gone alone. “I guess they’re arrested for shooting at us.”

            “The exact things we wanted access to were in the office,” Neal said, summarizing Peter’s initial glee when he’d arrived. As he did, the EMT put a light dressing on his arm. “By making it a crime scene, we got legal access to everything. They practically built our case for us, and got more charges against them.”

            “I guess the case is basically over, then,” you said with a cheery smile. “That means I can ask you out for coffee. Ill-advised or not, trying to save my life was rather attractive.”

            Neal chuckled, moving his elbow back to his side and standing up. “I’d love to get coffee, though I hope I didn’t just set too high a bar for myself.”

            “You absolutely did,” you teased.

~~~

A/N: I’m still working on the NCAC sequel, but I wanted to get something out sooner than later, so I made this. I hope you enjoy :) Don’t forget to comment or send a message if you want to be added to this blog’s Discord server!

#white collar #white collar x reader #lawmen and conmen #oneshot #bodyguard #fluff #casefic #reader #reader insert #second person #neal caffrey #neal caffrey x reader #peter burke #fic

[white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen]

Marbles

Summary: Ellen isn't the only person who knew Neal Caffrey before he became Neal Caffrey.

Word Count: 7,333

Requested by anonymous; photo credit is Jeff Eastin's Twitter

St. Louis, 1984

            Kids at school called you Marbles because you always had a little bag of them with you. You knew even then that the nickname was supposed to be mean, but it had never gotten under your skin. You just laughed along, because, yeah, it was kinda weird that you carried marbles, but you played with them all the time and loved it. And before long, they were calling you Marbles because it stuck, not because they were laughing at you.

            Marbles were just great fun. And in second grade, whenever you had extra time, your teacher would let you play with them and a classmate or two so long as your other work was already done. After a couple of weeks into the school year, you had a few people you would regularly play with. Danny was one of them. His bright blue eyes made him stand out from the boys at his table. He was cute, but at seven, you still preferred puppies to boys.

            The first day he talked to you, you’d been bouncing some marbles on the carpeted floor to stay quiet, staring at them intently and trying to devise a new game in your head. Danny sat cross-legged and asked if he could play. Abandoning your half-baked game, you reached up to your desk and grabbed a piece of paper from your class folder, quickly drew the circles to represent a mancala board, and divided the marbles. Danny beat you on his first try. That was when you knew you liked him. You gave him a bag of your marbles so he could make new games, too.

            From then on, you played together whenever you could, but scarcely stuck with one game for very long. You were both easily bored by the simple games that marbles allowed, so you fiddled with the rules, tampering with the game play to see what would happen. Sometimes you created entirely new games, sometimes incorporating other tools that were easy to carry in school or to the park, like a set of dice or an origami fortune teller.

            By Christmas that same year, you’d started to exhaust your options and branched out into other ways of entertaining yourselves. Cards were good for quick games, and the randomness of a good shuffle kept games interesting for longer. Puzzles were great for you both, but they took too long to do at school and you could only play them when you had a playdate or sleepover. Eventually, you settled on codes and ciphers as your mutual favorite activity. You could create them when you were together and have secret communications, or you could create them separately and challenge each other to solve them. You liked to base yours on symbols and books. Danny liked incorporating math. By the end of the school year, you had a collection of codes of varying complexity.

St. Louis, 1986

            After nearly two years of friendship, you and Danny snuck downstairs to his aunt Ellen’s TV to watch a new movie. It was called The Color of Money. With a shelf of adult movies in front of you, you were way more interested in the popular titles you recognized, like Ferris Bueller and Top Gun, but Danny convinced you to give Scorsese a try and you never regretted it. That movie introduced you two to the world of gambling. As cynical nine-year-olds, you weren’t really interested in the idea of gambling so much as the behavior of people who did it – and the methods behind milking out the most rewards for the least risks.

            It took some needling and permission from your parents, but Ellen finally agreed to teach you both how to play poker. One Friday, she picked you both up from school, took you to the store to pick out a box of your favorite candies, and used the chocolates in place of money. With bowls of candy at stake, you learned what cards you wanted, when to fold, and how to count the multicolored plastic poker chips. Initially, Ellen hadn’t wanted to teach you to bluff on principle of not encouraging children to lie, but they had bluffed in all the movies, so you and Danny both tried it without her suggestion. She was exasperated, but amused by your complete failure. Danny had much better results, and when Ellen went to bed and left you to either play cards or watch a movie, he told you that when you lied, you always lifted your chin, like you were daring someone to call you on it.

            You both had detention the next week for trying to use poker to win your classmates’ brownies at lunch.

St. Louis, 1989

            When you were twelve, Nintendo came out with the Game Boy. Neither of your families had the kind of money to spend on a game system like that, so you and Danny decided you could team up to buy one for yourselves to trade back and forth. It was better to have the hot new thing sooner than later, even if it meant taking turns. You took out a sheet of paper to figure out how long it would take if you pooled your money together; even with the little bit of spare allowances you had socked away, you both still needed to save over thirty dollars each.

            In hindsight, what happened next was probably your parents’ first red flag.

            Sixty-four bucks, for a couple of kids in the late eighties, was a lot of money, and you were both too young to legally get jobs. Divide and conquer, however, had already demonstrated merit when it came to convincing your parents of letting you go to the fair or the movies, so why not divide and conquer to raise cash? All you needed was enough people contributing. But then came the problem that if they contributed, they’d feel entitled to your Game Boy. It was for the two of you, not anyone else. So they would need to be paid back by money you got from somewhere else.

            To summarize a long story, and explain many angry phone calls from your peers’ parents, you and Danny essentially ran a pyramid scheme to raise the money for a Game Boy, enticing kids in your old elementary school to pay forward their allowance to your first- and second-round financiers in your middle school. When you were caught, you were grounded for months – but by this point, you were both well-practiced at sneaking between each other’s houses and hiding things in your rooms, and you had a Game Boy.

            Your parents’ anger and the way your little sister’s friends’ parents treated you made you realize you’d done something morally wrong. It was humiliating and shameful to be looked at that way. Danny didn’t take it as hard as you did. It rolled off his back once Ellen was back to treating him the way she always had. Danny needed to be liked, and he was liked a lot, because he was cute, and smart, and didn’t bully girls at school, and now he had a Game Boy, so he didn’t mind that kids in a different school and their parents he never saw thought badly of him. It didn’t affect him day to day the way that the guilt started to carve into your self-esteem.

            In hindsight, that was your first red flag that there was something a little bit off about Danny. When you brought it up to him, he genuinely didn’t see why you felt so bad. You hadn’t lied to those little kids, and after all, each one only sacrified a couple of dollars. You couldn’t articulate just why, but you needed to make it right. In the end, Danny helped you make it up to the kids by handing back out a portion of your allowances for a few weeks and helping out with their homework, but you knew he’d only done it because he was sad to see you so upset.

            You couldn’t deny how great it had felt to accomplish something so quickly, and Danny had boasted for weeks about how persuasive he’d been, but you made an agreement that from then on you wouldn’t hustle kids anymore. Danny pouted about it a little because they were such easy marks, but he agreed to keep you happy. When your wrongs were righted, you felt restored, and you got back to your regular mischief – but you were much more cautious of whether you were being clever or just unethical.

St. Louis, 1992

            High school was an entirely different beast from middle school. You and Danny kept sending each other coded letters and hanging out on the weekends, but he was the one who got caught up in how girls looked twice at him and how guys wanted to be his friend. Danny joined the cross-country team, partly to spend more time with those friends and partly to keep in shape to apply for the police academy after high school, and started to pursue girls. He had a new girlfriend every other month. And it meant, altogether, that there was less time for you – so you followed his lead and joined your own clubs, made your own friends.

            In freshman year, there had been a rumor that you were dating. You’d loudly opposed it. You had eyes and could see that he was hot, and you didn’t think you’d ever be happy with anyone less smart, or less kind to you, but the idea of kissing Danny just made your stomach turn. There was one time when he started dating a cheerleader who made the mistake of threatening to “ruin” you if you didn’t back off of “her” Danny – he dumped her as soon as you told him what happened. So, although you didn’t have as much time to spend with each other, there was never any doubt that you were still best friends.

            You still liked friendly competitions, and found ways to work together to make quick money or convince your parents that what you wanted to do or see was a good idea. But something about high school flipped a switch in Danny. Maybe it was all the teachers saying now was the time to shape up. Suddenly, everything he did was in light of being like his father. Danny had always idolized his dead dad, and you couldn’t bring yourself to criticize him for that, even when it made him sort of a buzzkill. Did he really think that none of the city cops had ever snuck some liquor from their mom’s freezer? And goodbye to any manipulative schemes – even if your conscience hadn’t stopped you, Danny’s ambitions would have. He still had no moral compunctions about taking from people who didn’t need what they had, but for the fact that it was illegal and could jeopardize his future as a cop.

            “Cop this, cop that,” you complained once, playfully shoving at his arm. “Am I gonna have to become a criminal to force you to loosen up?”

            “You wouldn’t dare,” Danny responded with absolute confidence. “You wouldn’t like prison.”

            You’d scoffed. “You’d turn in your best friend?!”

            He gave you a cheeky grin. “If my best friend’s not smart enough to get away with crimes, she shouldn’t be committing them.”

St. Louis, 1995

            You weren’t sure what you wanted to do after high school. Your parents were supportive of whatever you wanted to do, but they hoped you’d at least give college a try; but without any idea what you wanted to actually do, you couldn’t justify spending that much money on it to yourself. The more you thought about what you really loved to do, you kept coming back to games and puzzles. It had been years since anyone called you Marbles, but the passion that bonded you and Danny had persisted.

            It was when you were watching the new Will Smith detective movie that you realized maybe you and Danny had this in common, too. He wasn’t just going to be a great cop because of his father; it was because he had a knack for solving puzzles. Maybe investigating was your great calling in life. How cool would it be to be detectives together??

            You sat on it for a few weeks, thinking it over before telling Danny you were going to apply, too. That way he wouldn’t know to be disappointed if you changed your mind. In the end, you never did get to tell him. You were still thinking about in by his eighteenth birthday.

            You’d already agreed to go to the mall together so you could buy him dinner, but he never came to get you like he’d said he would. You called his home, but no one picked up, so you called his aunt’s neighboring house instead. Ellen had answered and tiredly said that it wasn’t a good time. Assuming they’d had a fight, you let it be and minded your business, changing your plans when it became clear that the mall was off.

            The next morning, you left to go get him before walking to school, just to make sure he was feeling okay. He and Ellen rarely fought; Danny tried so hard to be on his best behavior for her, even before he’d straightened up to make sure he got into the police force. You noticed the post on your mailbox was up and detoured, and took out a piece of folded paper. No envelope and no stamp – just your name on one of the trifolds.

            Assuming it was another coded letter, you eagerly unfolded it to see what kind of patterns you were working with and mull it over on the way to school. To your disappointment, it was plain English. And, to your horror, it was an apologetic goodbye note.

            You sprinted several streets away to the Brooks house and pounded on the door. No one answered. You were almost panicking, considering grabbing the extra key Danny had told you about, before Ellen next door caught your eye, waving for you to come over. You jumped off the porch and ran in, dumping your backpack by the doorway to show her the note. The blonde woman barely glanced at it before saying, “I know. I’m so sorry, Y/N.”

            It was surprising how clearly you could remember that moment all these years later, especially when what came next felt like a blur of colors and motions melting together. You think Ellen sat you on her couch and poured you some tea. She made you sit and breathe before she explained to you that she’d caught Danny – Neal – signing an application for the police. He was so eager to do it the moment he’d turned eighteen, that Ellen hadn’t had a choice. She’d had to tell him he couldn’t, because Danny Brooks wasn’t his real name; and even if it were, he needed to know that his motivation, the story he’d been telling himself for years, was a lie.

            Ellen told you that the Brooks family were actually in Wit-Sec. That Danny’s real name was Neal Bennett, and that his father had been a cop, but a dirty one. That Ellen wasn’t really his aunt, but his corrupt dad’s police partner, who had testified against him and asked to be relocated near Neal, just to make sure the little boy grew up safely. That Neal had been too young to remember. That he had run away, and she didn’t think he was coming back.

            Ellen – you still didn’t know if that was even her real name – let you sit on her couch for hours, staring at the floor, drinking the tea she poured mindlessly after it had gone cold, and crying with grief. It was the one and only time she’d ever condoned playing hooky from school. She rubbed your back for a little while, and then let you sit in silent shock while she went about cleaning. It took you an embarrassingly long time to realize that she wasn’t just cleaning, she was packing. Packing to leave. Because people were going to wonder why Neal had disappeared, and maybe the cops would get involved, and maybe her and Neal’s mother would both be in jeopardy.

            Ellen gave you a small box of Neal’s belongings that she thought you’d want. In the bottom was the bag of marbles you’d given him in second grade.

            Life was never the same after Neal left. Your best friend was gone. You figured, hey, he’d always been street-smart, the odds were pretty good that he was still alive; but the way he disappeared, the odds were also pretty good that you would never see him again, so to you, he may as well be dead. You thought of him sometimes (often) and hoped he was okay, when you weren’t wishing he would come home or cursing his fake name for making you care and then abandoning you without the decency to say goodbye to your face.

            You had so many questions in the coming weeks, but the day after Neal had vanished, so had Neal’s not-aunt, along with any opportunities for closure. Once, a few days later, you scraped up the guts to use that hidden key he’d showed you and let yourself into his and his mom’s house. It was completely empty, but left in disarray, with scraped paint, peeling wallpaper, dust settled deep in the rug corners. It had been a long time since you’d spent time together there, rather than in Ellen’s, and now you knew why. With hindsight, and a psychology degree, you were reasonably sure that Neal’s mother had been fighting depression his whole life, and most of the house felt the same.

            To make it worse, Danny had been such a beloved part of the school community that in the two months between his disappearance and your graduation, everything under the sun passed under the rumor mill. At first the cops investigated. They talked to you, interrogated you. One of them made you cry by insinuating you were secretly in love with him, and killed him because he’d been dating some chick on the track team. Another rubbed your shoulder and offered you cocoa because he “couldn’t possibly imagine how cofused you’re feeling”. And the whole time, you felt compelled to lie, choking on your tongue and stumbling through how he missed your plans on his birthday and left a note the next morning. You left out the part where you’d talked to Ellen, because what the hell were you supposed to do? Out her as a witness? Admit that Danny Brooks was such a deep lie that even he hadn’t known about it?

            Whatever the correct procedure was, no one had bothered to tell you about it. But you were reasonably certain that whoever was in charge of securing the Bennetts, and Ellen, they had caught wind of the investigation, because rather suddenly, all the police activity stopped. You were left alone, and so was his girlfriend, and the guys he played soccer with. The only way they would drop a missing persons case that hard and that quick was if the feds stepped in and told them to back off.

            Your parents, and even your little sister, knew that something was off about you. You’re reasonably sure that your entire family knew you knew something you weren’t sharing. But after weeks of trying to comfort you and get you to open up, they started to let go, trusting that if you knew anything actionable, you would have shared to protect your friend.

            The police letting it go didn’t end the nightmare for you, though, because the talk at school continued. The US Marshals couldn’t tell everyone to shut up and mind their business. Some people thought Danny had run away from his mother, others thought he’d been kidnapped and trafficked. Some thought he’d knocked up a girl and they ran away, but that one ended when the girl came back to school, and it turned out she’d had the flu. Some people thought you must have had something to do with it, because you’d been so close for so many years. Those people really got to you, because in truth, you could hardly believe you’d known the boy for most of your lives and never suspected he was anything else.

            March trudged into April and April slipped into May, and your graduation crawled closer. You were announced as valedictorian. When you went to get the honors sash to wear over your gown, the administrator compassionately told you that Neal would have been valedictorian, had he been there, so though they knew it must be hard, you should keep your head up and be proud enough for the both of you. That just made it even harder to get through. What was supposed to be one of the best days of your life was one of the darkest. A huge shared milestone was lonely. Neal had run away, left you picking up the pieces in a shattered social circle, and now you were taking his place, and somehow someone else had figured out he had that tiny edge over your GPA, and a picture of you in your cap and gown giving your speech was put on a blog along with an accusation that you killed him or threatened him away so you could be valedictorian.

            You had to get the hell away. Every unnecessary second you spent in your neighborhood, in your school, in the city you used to share felt like it was scratching at your skin. The application cycle for colleges was long closed, but you took your savings, promised to call your parents every day, and moved to California, as far away as you could get. There, you got a job, found a shitty apartment to share with a girl who minded her own business, and scraped by until you could apply to college.

Palo Alto, 1999

             High school valedictorian had felt like a hollow and bitter loss more than anything, rubbing salt in the wound that Neal was gone. In the four years of college since, you’d made plenty of friendly acquaintances, and even some good friends, but none as good as Neal.

            You’d visited the school counselor a few times. Told her, minus what you knew about Neal and Wit-Sec, what had happened to drive you all the way from St. Louis to Palo Alto for school. She’d been incredibly sympathetic, even as she suggested that perhaps there had been some trauma mixed in with the grief. Looking back, you could accept it for what it was. You lost your best friend, on multiple levels, and then members of your community turned on you, accusing you of the worst. And, though you were still the only one who knew, the whole time you’d been holding onto a secret boring through your soul that you couldn’t share with anyone.

            College graduation felt… much different. Like a success. You were proud of yourself. Sad to see it go but happy you’d made it out the other side, not just of a program but of the grief that had clenched you so tightly. This was what graduation was supposed to feel like. You weren’t valedictorian – or whatever the university equivalent was – this time, but you were graduating with honors, and had an acceptance to a graduate program in hand, so there was that.

            Your whole family made the trip to see you graduate. As you walked across that stage, receiving a piece of paper bound in ribbon, you wished once again that Neal would’ve been there to celebrate with you, and hoped that he was okay, then found your family in the crowd and beamed at them brightly, tears pricking in your eyes with joy. Your sister was doing her best to be both supportive and embarrassing by wearing an obnoxiously neon shirt with your name on it.

            You faltered in your steps across the stage, just for a second, when you saw the face in the crowd grinning from behind your father. They were so far away, it was kind of hard to see, but for just a second, you could’ve sworn…

            You got nudged from behind and had to look down to safely get off of the stage steps. When you were out of the way of the procession, you looked for your family again and stood on your toes to see around your parents. The face you thought you’d seen was gone. You looked down to the rolled paper in your hand, proclaiming you’d earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and shook your head; you, of all people, should know the power of wishful thinking.

            Your parents took you back by your apartment to change out of your regalia before going for a celebratory meal. You hurried up the steps in your dress heels, eager to get out of the heavy robe, but stopped cold just on entering the front door. Sitting on the cheap kitchen table was a bouquet of flowers and a little bag of marbles.

            Your gut response was to clear the apartment like they did in the cop movies, but you didn’t have a gun or a taser or even pepper spray, so if you searched and found someone, you were really just putting yourself in more danger. Cautiously, you inched towards the table, along the way recognizing the flowers as the kind that you used to admire while walking to school. When no one jumped, and you didn’t feel unsafe getting closer to the table, you slowly picked up the bag of marbles. The little beads clinked together. You held them up for inspection and realized that they were color tinted, but still mostly translucent, and inside each was a clay creature. Your favorite animal, sculpted and suspended in resin.

            No one had given you marbles, or called you by that name, in years. You hadn’t carried them anywhere since middle school. And you certainly couldn’t have told anyone what your favorite flowers were when you didn’t even remember what they were called.

            The marbles, the flowers, and the face you thought you’d seen at the ceremony all added up to mean one thing to you, and instead of changing your clothes, you sat at the table with the marbles in your hand and had a good, solid cry for a few minutes. Then you stored your new marbles with shaking hands in your so-called Neal Box and put the flowers in some water. You couldn’t decide if you were happy, sad, or furious, but it all boiled down to one thing: he was alive. And still thought about you, just like you still thought of him. And that was something to celebrate, even if your family didn’t know it wasn’t just your graduation that you were happily crying over.

Quantico, 2001

            Completing your Master’s degree was your new proudest achievement, but though there wasn’t anything bad about that graduation, when you walked the stage, you’d hoped to catch another glimpse of a familiar face. No such luck. You still weren’t too worried. Ever since getting those beautiful marbles, you’d gotten an anonymous postcard every once in a while. There was usually a little note on them in one of your oldest, simplest ciphers. Nothing complex, but enough to let you know that he was okay, and he was thinking of you.

            Sometimes you wondered why he didn’t ever just come say hello if he missed you. Yes, you were a part of Danny Brooks’ history. But if Neal Bennett had had to reinvent himself out of a lie, did that have to mean shunning everything about who he’d been?

            Still, a note once in a while was better than the four-plus years you spent with radio silence, hoping he was alive, knowing it was even probable, but with no proof and no way of verifying.

            Shortly out of your Master’s program, you were accepted into the FBI. A couple of internships during school had showed you that you weren’t interested in clinical practice, nor did you think you really had the drive to push through a doctorate program, so you looked for ways you could use your degrees to solve puzzles, returning to that lifelong passion for an intelligent challenge. You found the bureau, and other members of the alphabet soup, but especially the bureau. It was probationary, but you were in, and it was time to head to Quantico.

            The physical exercises were draining. You’d never been so active in your life. Still, the mental exercises were more entertaining than not, so long as they didn’t get so repetitive. Your very favorite instructor took the class of recruits through prolific cases that hadn’t quite become public knowledge, or cold cases that still had yet to be solved. Unlike a documentary, instead of telling you step-by-step what had happened, he prompted and prodded at the agents in training to work their way through themselves. You excelled at this exercise and it proved to you that, although you’d have to work hard to secure a role where you could choose to work on these types of cases, the opportunity was there. That was what you wanted to work towards.

            At least, it was your favorite class. Your emotions changed the day that you were shown pictures of inductees into the FBI’s Most Wanted ranks. Because, to your horror, you recognized one of those faces. He was six years older, but there was no chance you wouldn’t have recognized him. Not him.

            “Not him,” you nearly whispered out loud, barely catching yourself before your tongue moved in your mouth. You drank in all the information they had on him – suspected of bond forgery, along with a litany of other crimes, and dubbed James Bonds, because they had no clue what his real name was.

            You had a split second choice to make, and you felt the pressure beating down on you. Either betray your best friend and turn him in to the FBI, or betray the moral conscience you’d long since sworn to live by – along with the bureau you were about to swear to serve.

            It was an easier choice than it should have been. It would haunt you, but you couldn’t fathom for a second turning your back on him. For as long as you stared at the list of things he was wanted for, there was nothing in that list that could make you hate the man he’d become.

            The instructor had noticed you stopped at Neal’s image. “Is there a problem?” He asked you expectantly.

            Shit. Every game of poker with Neal came to mind and you controlled all the tells he had ever warned you of, making your decision and committing to it. “No,” you said, looking up and putting on your best amused face. “Sorry, Sir. It’s just… James Bonds?”

            You sold it so well that you should’ve been ashamed. The senior agent chuckled and shook his head a bit. “I guess the opportunity felt too good to pass on,” he said, picking up the flyers from your row to share with the next group.

Quantico, 2003

            You weren’t capable of turning on Neal, but you also couldn’t bring yourself to follow his case. The conflict of interest was too strong in your gut, so you just turned a blind eye to any flyer you saw, or a deaf ear to any curious chatter about James Bonds and his globetrotting stunts.

            You kept an eye out for postcards and anonymous letters, but they’d become less frequent. Either Neal had been keeping tabs and learned you joined the bureau, or he’d realized sending mail was becoming more hazardous. In either case, you still got some once in a while, so if it were the former, he was trusting you.

            Over the years, the more you heard about him, the more impressed you were. But also the more… saddened you became. Neal had strayed so far from the man he had wanted to be when you’d spent so much time together. You had to wonder if he were truly happy. At this point, his face was plastered anywhere law enforcement could be assed to look, and you had to hope that he was, because you feared it was too late for him to change course, even if he wanted to.

            At some point, you’d begun to realize that you were technically aiding him just by keeping in touch. You didn’t have a way to send messages to him, but however he’d found your address repeatedly, he really was trusting you – it took over a year, but between bits you overheard and images on postcards, you realized that he was actively sending you clues as to where he was. Now, you doubted that he was doing so with that actual intention. More likely, he was just sending you the postcards because he knew you’d always liked their pictures and wanted to travel. But there was an additional professional boundary being crossed when you knew that the agent in charge of his case was searching for him in Germany or Iceland when you’d just gotten a card from Cape Town or Tehran.

            It also occurred to you that he wouldn’t be an anonymous James Bonds forever. Sooner or later they would figure out who he was. They’d trace him back to either Neal Bennett or Danny Brooks. Both names would flag with the Marshals, and the FBI would learn all about how he disappeared overnight from St. Louis. The FBI would also learn all about how the police had questioned his best friend, Y/N Y/L/N, for days. And then they would have a lot of uncomfortable questions for you that you still had no idea how you were going to answer.

            Then, one day, James Bonds had a name. Neal Caffrey. You didn’t recognize his last name, but it was instantly committed to your memory. Now you knew what he was going by. It was another hit to your heart. He didn’t keep either of his last names. But he had kept his birth name – which had been foreign to him when he learned what it was. It was hard to tell what was going on in his head. You hoped he knew what he was doing. And you hoped that whatever he was choosing, he was happy and safe.

            From the moment he’d been named, you kept waiting for the agents you worked with to turn on you, ask you those awkward questions, but the time never seemed to come. For a second, you had considered running, but you didn’t have the knowledge or connections to get very far or hide for very long. No, the best option for you would be to bow your head and accept the consequences. But those consequences didn’t come for you, and when you saw the updated flyer, you saw why. They had him listed as born in Texas during February. The bureau had a whole fake identity that they fully believed; they had no idea who he really was.

            “You astound me every time,” you’d muttered to yourself, closing the browser window.

Ossining, 2005

            If you ask someone where Sing Sing is, they’ll probably just say “New York”. If pressed, they might even say “New York City”. Very rarely do they actually realize it’s about thirty miles upstate in a little town called Ossining. You’d never been, and had no reason to go, but when you saw the email memo that Neal Caffrey had been apprehended and was awaiting arraignment, you didn’t think you had much of a choice in the matter. You filed for a transfer, ostensibly for a change in scenery, and fortunately, it was granted. Your new home was New York City.

            Your shoes and your conscience itched to guide you upstate straight away, but as much as it pained you, you forced yourself to stay away until after he was convicted. Neal was considered an extreme flight risk; any interactions he had were extremely closely monitored. No matter how loyal you were, you were still afraid of being in trouble for failing to give up his name and whereabouts. And while that made you feel quite selfish, there was also the detail that he’d been “caught” by voluntarily walking into a trap to protect his girlfriend from taking the fall for him. It comforted you that he was still the same softhearted man you’d always known and loved – but, since he’d always been fiercely protective, you weren’t sure if he’d welcome you jeopardizing your good standing to see him.

            Well, too bad. You winced. Okay, maybe a little more sympathy for the guy in prison.

            You signed in a civilian, not an agent, in the hopes that the bureau was less likely to be notified. You weren’t sure what you’d say, but you couldn’t just leave Neal to rot alone in here. The place looked like the place of nightmares, and you were free to just turn around and walk out the door. Your heart ached. God, Neal…

            They searched you quite invasively, but that bit of your dignity was a small price to pay. Once satisfied you weren’t using your body to smuggle a nail file or the like, the guards had you wait while they fetched Neal for visitation and put him in a small monitored cell, then allowed you to be led back the same way. The moment you realized he had to have visitors in a cell with him, it felt like your heart skipped a beat. You knew his containment orders were serious, but to not even be permitted to use the visitation room? This was the kind of restriction that was usually placed on quite dangerous felons.

            There was already one guard standing inside with Neal, close to the door but warily watching. You could tell from his profile, in the ugly orange jumpsuit, that his wrists and ankles were manacled together and locked to the metal table. As the guard who’d led you back let you enter, the guard already inside gruffly barked the rules: fifteen minutes, follow the tape on the floor to your seat (rather than take a shortcut which passed closer to Neal), and absolutely no touching.

             You ventured in as Neal turned around as well as he was able to see you. The surprise in his eyes was quickly taken over by delight and he started to stand, only to get yanked down by the links around his wrists. That sight alone nearly killed your excitement to see him, but he remained undeterred. “Marbles!” he cheerfully chirped your old name.

            You forced a little laugh, loosely sticking to the tape and hurrying to your side of the table, swinging your legs in comfortably to sit across from him. “You are such an ass, Neal,” you complained with a small smile.

            There was almost a little look of shock when his chosen name came out of your mouth so casually, but before you could respond to it, it had melted into a soft smile that lit up his eyes. He looked at you like you’d put the sun in the sky for a long minute. “I’ve missed you,” he said quietly.

            “I’ve missed you, too,” you risked answering, not daring to look to the guard. Hopefully he wouldn’t remember this bit. “When you… well, I thought for years that was it.”

            “It wasn’t meant to be,” Neal admitted. It was easy to say that now that it was in the past and you’d gotten back in touch, but you couldn’t help but trust him. Neal had never told you an outright lie before, not for any reason. “Things just… is it too cliché to say I needed to find myself?”

            You hesitated, but shook your head. “No,” you said haltingly, “But there were better ways to do it than becoming a milk box picture.” You’d imagined screaming in his face for it, giving him a real what-for over the way he left you to pick up the pieces he left behind. But now that you were here, in a prison where he’d be spending the next half decade of his life – well, it was hard to hold onto any anger. Neal was paying for his mistakes. You didn’t need to pile on with trauma you’d already processed. “Did you?” You gently prompted, sensing that if you didn’t, he was going to wait for you to say what you’d thought about.

            His smile tightened into something wistful. Your heart sank a little for him. “I think I got close at times,” he allowed. You didn’t quite buy it, but thought if he needed to believe it, it wouldn’t hurt to let him tell himself that all of this was worth it. Like he’d always done when he was unhappy, he turned the subject around back to yourself. “I’m so proud of you, Y/N. I knew you’d make something good for yourself.”

            We could’ve done it together. You thought back to his eighteenth birthday. You’d been so close to telling him you were going to take that next step with him. Maybe if he’d known it wasn’t just his journey… well, it didn’t matter now. It was ten years in the past.

            “Stop talking like we’re in retirement,” you accused lightly. If it weren’t for the guard who felt very strongly about touching, you’d have nudged his foot under the table. “We’ve got ages to make more out of ourselves yet still.”

            “You do,” Neal disagreed graciously.

            “No, we do,” you argued, saying it so firmly that he wasn’t allowed to disagree again. Then you softened your tone, because you knew he already knew how bad this was going to be. “Four years… it’s gonna be hard. But one day it’ll be done and you’ll have a whole life in front of you to do something new.” It was the twenty-first century. When he got through his sentence, he’d still have more than half his life expectancy ahead. “And we’re gonna make it good. Got it?”

            Neal’s expression had hardened a bit, for a moment showing his anger. When he was Danny, he’d been good at concealing anger, but when it did come out, it was volatile. Ellen wanted to put him in therapy to better manage it, but his mother had never gone through with it, so Neal had been left learning to self-soothe and manipulate his own emotions until he could explode in private. It wasn’t pretty. And, unfortunately, based on that familiar expression he’d made, that habit hadn’t changed. But when you were done, he seemed to assess what you were saying and judge it on the merits of your own belief in it, because he studied your face as he slowly nodded, and the anger slipped away, either unwinding from his joints or being masked by something else. You hoped for the former, but truthfully, it had been ten years. You’d once known him better than anyone. While you still suspected that that was largely true, you couldn’t be sure this hadn’t changed.

            “We will,” he echoed after you. “You’ll be here?”

            You nodded with certainty. If nothing he’d done so far had gotten you fed up with him, there was probably nothing he could manage from inside a prison to change that. “I will.”

            You put a hand down on the table. The guard locked his eyes on it and you barely refrained from rolling your eyes. Symbolically, you were offering Neal a hand to hold. Judging by how exasperatedly he glanced at the guard, he understood as he made an exaggeratedly slow motion, mirroring your hand but not reaching across to you.

            “It’s gonna be a long four years,” Neal grumbled under his breath, shooting an irritable glare in the guard’s direction.

~~~ ~~~

A/N: Wow! This ended up twice as long as I planned because I got really into it and carried away a bit. I might even be open to a continuation... Anyway, if you liked it and want to get announcements about stories and chat about what's coming up, leave a comment asking to join the Discord and I'll send you a link!

#white collar lawmen and conmen #white collar #white collar x reader #neal caffrey #neal caffrey x reader #platonic #x reader #friends #reader insert #oneshot #fic #requested #anonymous #james bonds #neal bennett #danny brooks #pre-series #marbles #fbi reader

[white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen]

The Transfer

Summary: Sometimes it takes an outside eye to spot when something's going wrong inside a team.

Word Count: 4,801

Requested by @twistedtooth

            White Collar wasn’t your idea of the dream, but everyone had to start somewhere. You were just glad that you’d made it to a real office where something exciting happened once in a while! You weren’t sure exactly where you were heading next, but from the moment you transferred into the WCCD, you knew it was a place where you could happily bide your time and learn from senior agents. There was a sort of camaraderie on the twenty-first floor that had been absent in your previous position, and you were welcomed into it by new agents and twenty-year vets alike.

            Within a couple of weeks, you were on a first-name basis with almost everyone on the floor, from Peter Burke himself down to the probationary agent who usually worked in the archives. And of course you met Neal. He was just as charming as everyone had made him sound. You admit it; you were charmed, too.

            It was hard, at first, to forget who you were talking to. You’d gone through Quantico in the last five years, and then you’d asked around about the division once it was set in stone that you’d be working there. Neal Caffrey’s reputation preceded him; in all honesty – and you would never admit it to his face – you were a bit starstruck the first time you saw him striding in beside Peter, coffee in one hand, anklet on one leg, hat jauntily perched on his head. This was James Bonds himself, in your new office, sitting barely fifteen feet away from you and even using the same coffee pot. It felt a little bit like a fresh-blooded actress being cast alongside Meryl Streep.

            But, truthfully, the stars blinked from your eyes pretty quickly. Working in the same space, even if you didn’t work on the same cases together, took apart whatever larger-than-life image you’d built of him in your head. Talking to him – shyly at first, getting more comfortable as the days went by – humanized him, until, yeah, it was still pretty cool that you were sharing water cooler gossip with Neal freakin’ Caffrey, but he was also the guy who infamously got the double-finger-point from Hughes every other week and was sent to fetch coffee from outside the building whenever he pissed someone off by complaining too much about the instant mix in the kitchenette.

            As weeks went by in your new division, you actually started striking up something with Neal. You weren’t quite ready to call it sparks – for a few reasons, you weren’t willing to go there just yet, even in your mind – but you did think it could be friendship. You started taking coffee breaks together when you were both able to step away from work. Sometimes, Neal even finished with what Peter had given him and wandered over to your desk to pull up a chair and help you look at your cold cases of the week, seeing if a fresh pair of eyes couldn’t make a difference. They usually couldn’t, but that one time they had? Oh, boy. You hadn’t felt a rush like that since the one and only time you’d taken the free fall at the amusement park.

            After months in the division, there was truthfully only one thing you still complained about to yourself and your non-bureau friends. It wasn’t the cheap coffee; you were more than welcome to use your breaks to go get better stuff from a café. Nor was it the sometimes long hours; you’d known those were coming, and you had the security of salaried pay to make the few instances worth the exchange. Even the boring cases, you had, in a sense, signed up for. No, what still really bothered you, months in, was the way one specific coworker was treated by everyone with authority.

            Neal brushed it off and never let it get him down. He was like a smiley, cheerful duck in that it all rolled off his back, barring the few comments where he made a mocking face of hurt or sarcastically clapped back. Most of the time, he just let it go as if everything were warranted; and it wasn’t. Because, the thing was, he’d been sentenced to four years in prison. Between actual prison time, and his time on parole, he’d served well over four years. Sure, he’d gotten that additional four for breaking out, but time and hindsight had proven that the girl he’d broken out for had, indeed, been in danger. She’d wound up murdered by the people who’d pushed her to go off the grid. Personally, you were pretty sure Neal had more than made up his debt to society, especially since the man whose company he’d stolen from gave him the moral all-clear after the kidnapping debacle.

            It wasn’t your call to make, and you weren’t going to delude yourself into thinking it was, but all that left you with a bad taste in your mouth when Neal was treated poorly by figures of authority in the bureau simply because of his record; the record that he had paid for dearly with whole years of his life. No, he didn’t serve out that second sentence in full yet, but he was working for the bureau in a capacity that often put him in mortal danger; didn’t that at least earn him the respect of the people he worked beside? If they were comfortable enough entrusting him with civilian and agent lives alike, you thought they should be plenty comfortable going more than a single day without a jibe meant to put him back in his place.

            “Trust you? I don’t think so,” Jones would say in all seriousness with an amused chuckle when Neal encouraged him to take a leap of faith.

            Diana wouldn’t even look up from her desk before issuing mild-mannered threats about Neal attempting to manipulate her – before even letting him say hello or approach why he was at her desk to begin with.

            Even Peter would make the jabs on occasion. One time Neal had been admiring a car and they used its lo-jack to identify a suspect. Neal made a comment appreciating that it came with a GPS, and Peter made a cheerful quip of, “Just like you!” That seemed innocent enough on its face, but it became a lot less innocent when he would make very casual references to having looked at Neal’s tracking data, or reminding the artist that Peter could chuck him back in jail when he thought Neal was being annoying.

            All the little things like that added up to you, and you started cataloguing them with your head down and a frown replacing your neutral, preoccupied expression. You told yourself you worked with good people, and they wouldn’t constantly put a man down like that – especially a man who was on their side, ostensibly their friend. Maybe it sounded bad to you, but was all in good fun – like the way you insulted your best friend if she dared to touch your French fries. You started glancing at Neal afterwards to see if he seemed upset. He never seemed to let it get to him, but you did notice that if he’d been acting playful or particularly friendly before, that seemed to put an end to it. So there went that theory of it being appropriate in context.

            As a junior agent, barely out of your probationary timeframe, it was absolutely none of your business how Diana or Clinton interacted with Neal – much less how Peter did. And, since Neal didn’t make a fuss about it, you didn’t either. Maybe that was cowardly of you, but you didn’t want to stand out at work for any of the wrong reasons. Instead, you just tried to be a good friend to him at work, showing him the respect of not automatically assuming he was constantly out to manipulate, trick, lie to, or otherwise scam you. Likewise, you never tried to guard your phone, jewelry, or other personal effects from him. You hoped that if he noticed that behavior from some of the less confident agents, he would also notice and appreciate the opposite from you.

            Silent support seemed to be working pretty well, because you picked up on how often Neal would come to you to socialize or help out with cold cases when he didn’t have something else to work on or anywhere to be. And in addition to having the clever blue-eyed boy keep you company, it brought an unexpected upside of drawing positive attention from the older agents, who, after several months of no incidents between you and Neal, appeared to believe that you were capable of handling yourself. Between your composure and Neal’s favorable attention, Peter’s team started to loop you in on cases when they needed more manpower. Being included, in whatever capacity, in the larger-profile cases was a huge professional boon.

            That was how, on a Thursday evening, you found yourself in the van with Neal and Peter. It was far from your first surveillance operation, but it was your first time on one of this caliber. Fortunately, there was very little pressure; it being late evening, the suspect was more likely than not to head to bed soon and then be unconscious for most of your shift. Still, the van needed people in it, so you traded places with Clinton for a staggered watch and joined the infamous crime-solving duo with fresh coffee and a deck of cards.

            Both men started grinning, albeit for different reasons. Peter reached for the coffee you offered him with an almost reverent tone of gratitude, while Neal started to grin widely and rolled up his sleeves. “Finally, a way to pass the time.”

            “Nertz is off the table,” you said regrettably. “But anything where we can check the cameras every few seconds is fair game.”

            You handed him the deck since he was so excited. Neal popped it open and started shuffling the cards with the ease of a practiced magician. He caught your eye and grinned as you watched him bridge the deck against his thigh without dropping any.

            “Y/N doesn’t know how to play the usual card games,” Neal said sideways to Peter, shuffling without even looking. Now that was unfair. You sipped at your coffee, made a face, and put it to the side to cool off. The equipment on the table was taking up most of the space, so you’d have to make smart use of the flat tops, too, but it was going to be wholly doable. “I promised I’d teach her some.”

            “Got an extra deck, if you wanna play,” you offered. Truthfully, you didn’t know how many decks most games needed, so you’d just grabbed two to be safe.

            “We’re gonna start with poker,” Neal said brightly.

            You chuckled quietly, already quite certain that in any game of bluffing, you would lose to Neal. Still, you’d never had a reason to bluff to him before, so maybe you stood a slim chance that he wouldn’t know your tics right away.

            Peter made an almost incredulous face at you, and then looked at Neal, then back to you. “You’re teaching Neal to teach you poker? You know what he does for a living, right?”

            “Peter,” Neal objected gamely, giving him a scolding, but not very serious, frown. It was a token objection, if that.

            “Works for the FBI,” you said at the same time, giving Peter a pointed look. It was the quickest and bravest you’d dared to be about one of those snide little remarks. But the fact was, Neal didn’t make his living hustling people at cards. He earned his stipend by working for the bureau, just like you and Peter both also did. The only difference was that the two of you were actually paid a living wage, whereas it was somehow fair for the bureau to not only demand Neal’s compliance with life-threatening demands, but also to pay him less than poverty wages.

            “Before that,” Peter said, smiling a little like you’d made a funny joke. He elbowed Neal, but Neal didn’t play along with him. Instead he straightened the edges of the cards and deliberately didn’t look at Peter.

            “He’s my teammate,” you said, frowning at Peter fully. “I trust him. I’ll continue to do so unless he gives me a reason not to.”

            The senior agent looked almost shocked that something he’d meant as a joke had been responded to so seriously. Did he really not hear how mean-spirited it had sounded? At least he now seemed to see that it wasn’t taken as one, and that you weren’t the only one upset. He looked at Neal again, but then looked away, frowning to himself. You could see gears turning in his head. While he reflected, you changed the subject back to friendlier waters, encouraging Neal not to mentally retreat.

            “What’re we playing for?” You asked him, opening up the small bag you’d brought with you. “I brought chocolate. Or, we could go for coffee-fetching.”

            The stakeout passed uneventfully. After a few minutes, you’d drawn Neal back out into the playful mood he’d been in before, and once a respectable amount of time had passed since you’d very politely told off your boss, Peter asked to be dealt in. As predicted, both of them wiped the floor with you, but you’d had a good time and the foresight to bring spare chocolate.

            Another few weeks passed uneventfully. You were pleased to note that, at least in front of you, Peter made fewer snarky comments about Neal. Something about that night – whether it was being called on it, or actually seeing that Neal wouldn’t look at him after – showed the older agent that his jokes weren’t actually funny. Not that you spent that much time in his presence, granted. That case was closed a couple days after you helped to surveil, and you hadn’t been recruited for anything by their team since. You still said your friendly hellos and made conversation with Neal almost every day.

            There came one interesting day when organized crime popped in. It wasn’t unusual for agents from other divisions to wander through for some reason or another, but when a whole trio of them came in doing the strut together, you tended to take notice. They went straight to Hughes’ office, and when the white-haired ASAC came out, he did the double-fingered point at Neal before turning straight back into his office. Neal looked like he had no idea what was going on, but was just happy to be invited, and went on up to Hughes’ office on the mezzanine with a bit of pep in his step.

            The pep was gone when he came to see what you were up to later on in the day. “Special assignment?” You asked him curiously before he had the chance to say something to you. When you looked to his face, his expression was glum. “Oh. Not in a good way.”

            “I’m getting loaned out,” he complained, filling one of Peter’s mugs with coffee. By the amount of cream he put in it, you strongly suspected it wasn’t for Peter. “Ruiz doesn’t even appreciate my expertise.”

            “Not all agents can be as cool as I am,” you said sympathetically. “I’m sorry. It’s not for long, I hope?”

            “This case they’re on could be a few days,” Neal predicted. Then he confirmed your suspicion about the coffee by taking a big sip from the rim, settling his hip against the counter to make himself more comfortable as he spoke to you. The artist scrunched up his nose adorably; you weren’t sure whether it was about the coffee or about the division’s visitors. “He said I’m a tool in his belt.”

            You snorted. “From what I’ve heard, Ruiz is the tool.” He was a passable agent, but not well liked by any stretch of the imagination.

            “Not Ruiz,” Neal corrected you, still just as displeased. “Hughes. He can loan me out because I’m a tool. And not even a good enough one to want to keep on, apparently.”

            This was the first time you’d ever heard Neal voice his issues with being spoken down to in that way. You wondered if it was because you’d demonstrated that you were in his corner about it already, but brushed it off; this wasn’t about you. That said, there really wasn’t anything you could do when Hughes had already made a decision. He outranked you by miles.

            “Well, if you were on my team, I’d be fighting to keep you put,” you said, trying to bolster his mood without stroking his ego – or sounding too much like a heartfelt cheerleader. “I’m sorry Hughes still talks to you like that.” Really, you’d think someone as experienced as your division chief would know better than to paint people with such broad strokes. Especially when those strokes were demoralizing, and, dare you say, dehumanizing.

            “If I put together my own crew, you’ll be on it,” Neal promised in solidarity.

            Your lips twitched up, but you tried not to actually smile. This was the kind of good-natured joking Peter thought he was doing. “Team.”

            “Crew, team. Same thing,” Neal said innocently.

            Neal was with organized crime for three days and part of a fourth before you got him back. When he did return, he arrived to a little bit of well-intentioned fanfare from you, Peter, and (albeit more sarcastically) Diana. He caught you all up to speed on his week with a quick sum-up that amounted to “murder bad, guns ick, Ruiz boo” before immediately pouncing on Peter’s newest case.

            To be clear, it wasn’t like you were waiting on the edge of your seat to be brought into another of the big cases. You knew exactly where you sat in the pecking order, and you knew that if you were patient, and continued to show your merit, you would eventually earn some better files. That said, you were not going to turn down an opportunity, so when Neal indirectly asked if you’d like to join the team on a counter-smuggling operation, you excitedly let him lead you to the floor’s biggest conference room.

            The way that the team talked about everything going into their sting made you almost buzz. It was all so normal to them – they did it, or something like it, so often that the novelty had worn off. But for you, there was a thrill to what you were doing and what you were aiming to accomplish. Your role was small, but crucial; you were inwardly delighted that they trusted you with it, even if only because their small team was too small for the operation they needed to pull off.

            After the whole team disbanded, Peter led you and Neal down into the evidence warehouse to select and familiarize yourself with the props you’d be using: precious gems. The idea was to flash valuable stones enough that your display would be targeted when your back was turned. Little did your thieves know, but you were replacing the real ones shown for appraisal with cheap facsimiles in the case. Clinton and Peter would be making sure to keep the heat on your bad guys, so they wouldn’t have time to stop and appraise the fakes in the dark before leaving – and taking a tiny GPS tag with them. The act of stealing the fakes would, itself, be a crime, and hopefully lead back to the pure emeralds stolen from a gallery.

            With a careful, gloved hand, you picked up a vaguely oval-shaped stone from a small blue felt tray where the bureau’s confiscated mid-range gems lay. “This is gorgeous,” you admired, turning it slightly and seeing how the colors seemed to shift from a ocean blue in the center to a faded pink on the edges.

            Neal looked at what you were appreciating for only a couple of seconds before he identified it. “Alexandrite,” he said. “We’re looking for something a bit more valuable.”

            The other stones were pretty, too, but you loved the alexandrite. “Value is subjective,” you sighed softly before putting it back down.

            Neal ran a gloved fingertip gently over some of the stones on the tray, making them move and seeing how they changed under the light. Peter sighed while he waited for the two of you to make your picks, but you ignored him – neither of you knew what you were doing, so you were going to defer to the man who actually had professional expertise on the subject of gemstones. After a moment, Neal seemed to zero in on a couple before choosing a relatively small one to hold up. At first, you’d thought it was a diamond like some other pieces, but when he held it away from the blue felt, you could see it had a soft purple tint to it.

            “Amethyst?” You asked skeptically.

            Neal smiled at you, amused by the guess but not being rude that you were wrong. “Taaffeite. First found in Ireland, valued at up to thirty-five grand per carat.” You eyed it skeptically. The artist quietly chuckled. “You think the alexandrite is prettier, don’t you?”

            “I do,” you confirmed.

            Neal gently put the taaffeite to the side and picked up the alexandrite you’d put down. You perked up. “Alright. This isn’t a rare coloring, it’s got a flaw running the side. But something like this, it could still go for fifteen, maybe twenty.” He put it with the taaffeite, which made you smile excitedly. You were allowed to be excited about holding pretty gems. This was probably the only time you’d ever be able to so much as look at them for free, much less model them on your body.

            Since he’d been sweet enough to bend his criteria just a little to let you wear your favorite one, you shut up and smiled at all of the others he selected, too. In the end, you had realized there were well over a million dollars there on that tray, hence Peter’s presence and the antsiness of the agent against the wall who’d brought them out. Neal chose a little over a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of gemstones to attract smugglers of this particular tier.

            “You’ve been holding out on me, Peter,” Neal said with obvious glee as he stripped off his gloves, all the gems safely stored in soft velvet bags.

            “I’d hoped I’d never have to tell you this stash exists,” Peter moaned. “Next thing we know, we’re robbed blind and you’re halfway to India.”

            Neal looked up and shot Peter a glare. It was almost alarmingly quickly that Neal’s aggravated expression turned much lighter and almost exasperated, but you hadn’t missed that split-second before he covered it up. The artist didn’t appreciate the accusations. At all. And hell, you couldn’t blame him – Peter didn’t sound like he was joking, because he wasn’t laughing with Neal, he was just shoving his nose back in the fact that he had a record and his own coworkers didn’t trust him.

            Catching that look on your friend’s face, finally, after months of looking for it, made something held tight inside of you snap. Your friend was hurting. Neal hated that the people he had no choice but to be around treated him like he was going to do exactly what Peter said: rob them blind and run to the other side of the planet. You’d known him long enough to know that the artist valued his own integrity. His moral code was a little different from yours, but he had no interest in backstabbing the people he had worked with for years. And in those same years, he had proven the same, despite every opportunity to make them look bad – only for the accusations never to stop. For the trust never to be earned. For the respect to be revoked the moment they felt irritated or embarrassed.

            “Why do you always have to hold his conviction over his head?” You blurted out hotly, fisting your hands at your sides. “Exactly what does he have to do to prove he’s not looking to screw you over at any chance? Because I’ve only been here a few months and I’m sick of it – and none of the snide little comments are even directed at me!”

            “Y/N,” Neal said, voice as soft as his expression as he looked towards you and warned you down.

            “No,” you said to him, firmly. “It’s okay.” And then, so he didn’t feel like you were making some grand gesture, you made it clear that, although you cared about Neal and were upset on his behalf, this wasn’t some show of loyalty or concern. “We’re supposed to have principles. Treat people as innocent until proven otherwise. The one thing Neal was actually convicted of is someone the one thing I haven’t heard anyone accuse him of! Is that really the dynamic we want the bureau to share with our consultants? Jeez, Peter – if the bureau’s supposed to operate as a bunch of overpowered bullies, I’ll surrender my badge and gun right here!”

            The words were out of your mouth before you thought them through, but, you realized, you fully meant them. You loved the work you were doing. You couldn’t imagine doing anything else. But you’d seen your friend be nearly shot or stabbed or even speared with an arrow that one time, and Neal didn’t have a say in any of it. Not only was he not treated with the basic respect and autonomy of a civilian, but he was constantly harangued and picked at over water that should’ve gone under the bridge ages ago. If you were him, you would’ve lost your mind long before now, and this had presumably been going on long before you transferred into the division.

            “Y/N,” Neal said, again, with quiet dismay.

            Peter looked absolutely startled that you were arguing with him, especially over what he’d thought was a one-off complaint. As you went on, particularly nailing him on the argument of moral behavior, he almost went pale, eyes looking to Neal with concern. You knew that Peter truly cared about his CI. Maybe getting snapped at in turn was what it would take for him to see that he wasn’t acting like a friend or a mentor at all.

            “I –“ Peter stopped, paused to think intently to himself, and shook his head slightly. He cleared his throat. “You’re right. That is how I’ve been behaving, and it isn’t the way this is meant to be.” He turned to Neal, seemed to fumble for a minute like he wasn’t sure what to say, and then tightened his jaw, figuring it out. “Neal. I’m sorry if how I’ve behaved has hurt you. There’s a difference between keeping you in check and putting you down.”

            On your part, you were surprised, albeit very pleasantly so, that Peter was owning up to it like a man instead of retaliating against a junior agent. Neal looked stunned that anything had come of this comment at all, and answered as if dazed. “I never said…”

            “You shouldn’t have had to,” Peter said emphatically. “Y/N is right. I’ve been beating a dead horse. I don’t think I’m the only one. That needs to stop… you’re part of this team, too.”

            The rest of the day was indescribably awkward. Peter authorized the agents in evidence to keep the gems that you would use for your op separate from the rest so that you could easily retrieve them when they were needed. Then he called Diana and Clinton into his office for a couple minutes, leaving yourself and Neal in the bullpen. It was only for a couple of minutes, but by the subdued way that both Diana and Clinton made their way to Neal one after the other, you could surmise Peter pointed out exactly what you had. It wasn’t the whole division, but it was a start. A good one, too – it was heartening to know your coworkers were the kind of people who would apologize for poor behavior.

            Neal came to you before the end of the day. He had this look on his face that you’d seen in a mirror when you couldn’t quite believe what had happened. “You didn’t have to do any of that,” he said quietly, leaning over your desk to you and putting a hand lightly on your knee.

            You gave him a small smile. It had been weighing on you for a while, so it was a relief to have it off of your chest – and all the better, it looked like it actually made a difference and improved the workplace for him. “I’m glad I did, though.”

~~~

~~~

A/N: Whew, glad to have this request out! I don't know why, but I kept getting stuck in places. Anyway... drop a comment if you want to join the Lawmen and Conmen Discord, and keep an eye out for more stuff soon!

#oneshot #the transfer #requested #lawmen and conmen #white collar #white collar x reader #peter burke #neal caffrey #neal caffrey x reader #x reader #reader insert #fbi reader #friendship #definitely could be read as more

[white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen]

Booksweet

Summary: Neal loses your page in a book and spends two weeks making it up to you.

Word Count: 4,417

Requested by anonymous

            The air was so smoky it was cloying, sandwiching layers of cigar ash and cologne with the bitter punch of a whiskey sour drifting from the fan. The caress of Dixieland jazz danced through your ears while your eyes peered through a thin veil, just heavy enough to render your face unidentifiable in the sexy orange lighting. Everything was so much, you could hardly bear to breathe in fully. What if, once you welcomed the otherworldly life into your body, you could never turn back to what you’d known before?

            Who were you kidding – your fate was already sealed with the same wax that had stamped his letter. To turn back was to turn your back on the man who’d shown you what heights you could dare to rise to; was to return to a lifetime of shoes you’d long outgrown by walking miles in the paces of bolder women.

            Heat rose to your face in a flush as the scotch settled in your stomach, and a likewise warmth made itself known just to your left as you’d turned your head to the right. “Almost didn’t pick you out, darlin’.”

            His rich Irish tone had you suck in on the smoke and bite your lip. You hoped gloss didn’t rub onto your teeth. You were suddenly all too conscious of the liquor heat and prayed that it didn’t travel further south. A voice like that could deafen a lady to that of reason.

            “How’d I give myself away?” You replied quietly, tilting your head to look longingly at the saxophonist, watching his long fingers climb skillfully up the length of his instrument. The airs of the South didn’t come naturally – each word was an act of theater as it slid off your tongue.

            “Well,” the gentleman – certainly not the most fitting title for him, if he was who you thought – paused for a moment, ensuring you hung on the edges of his words. “You should look up once in a while.”

            What? Where had his accent gone? That’s not in the book.

            The inner world you’d painstakingly constructed page after page was ripped away as your book was pulled from your hands. You lifted your head to demand it back and found Neal closing it to read the front. The ribbon bookmark that came with the hardback copy was left dangling down the back.

            “Neal!” You snapped, coming back to reality with an embarrassed flush. As a child, you’d mastered the skill of daydreaming vividly while your body worked on autopilot, and it appeared your coworker saw fit to thrust you back into manual command on the elevator.

            “Wildflower Trails,” Neal said the name of the book out loud, glancing back at you with an eyebrow raised in playful judgment. “Going for a leisurely jaunt in the roaring twenties?”

            “I was, until some clown stole it out of my hands and lost my page,” you fumed, grabbing it by the spine and forcefully taking it away. You usually got on great, but you couldn’t get your mind around how rude it was to yank your book right out of your hands like that – and to lose your page on top of it! He didn’t even have the decency to mark it for you?

            To his credit, he let go of it immediately when you took it back, but it was too little, too late. The thief leaned in towards the gleaming silver of the elevator doors to vainly look at his reflection. “Clown?” He repeated jokingly. “So you’re saying I overdid it with the concealer?” Instead of playing along, you just glared at his face reflected in the doors. Neal stopped, stood straight, and looked down the couple of inches at you with surprise. “Are you really mad about this?”

            “I was in the middle of an important scene,” you said hotly in answer.

            The blue-eyed man put both hands up in a gesture of innocence. You knew him, and what had just happened, well enough to see right through it. The elevator slowed as you reached your floor and you ground your teeth together, sliding your book back into your bag. Now you wouldn’t be able to find your page, much less reconstruct your jazz venue and find out what happened, until at least your lunch break. There had only been a couple of pages left, too!

            As soon as the doors parted, you were striding through to get away from Neal. The conman-turned-consultant called a meek apology to you as you left, but you pretended not to hear. You had a playful relationship, but he took it too far. Until you knew whether or not Eva found the lost diary, you had no interest in making things square with the guy who ruined it for you the first time around.

~~ Booksweet ~~

            Although you forgave Neal for his transgressions by the end of that day, and apologized for overreacting at the same time, he was distant from you for the rest of the week. It was a sad realization you’d come to on a Wednesday afternoon, when he turned down your offer to have lunch together at the bistro with the paninis he liked. It surprised you, too, that he was upset with you still, when so much seemed to just roll off, like his jacket was covered in invisible, streamlined feathers – but he was entitled to be upset with you after how angry you’d been over what, with hindsight, you knew was a small thing.

            You missed his company more than you thought you would. The two of you were playful, usually teasing and ribbing each other whenever you had to interact, but also genuinely friendly. You were friendly with other people at your job, but it would’ve been a lie to say that you didn’t have a particular favorite. And that favorite spent the week keeping to himself, occupying the free time you might’ve spent talking with a small Kindle that kept him notably busy whenever you thought about approaching.

            There were days when you thought – hoped – that maybe the reason he was your favorite was because there was a spark between you. Chemistry. For every logical part of you that said you shouldn’t nurture a crush on a coworker, the part of you that wanted company and imagined having a romantic partner increasingly fantasized about a template molded around Neal. That was probably why it stung when he kept away from you. Stung so much, in fact, that someone else noticed, to your utter mortification.

            Diana was even sharper than tacks, to modify the phrase, and nothing ever seemed to get past her. She leaned over the counter of the kitchenette, her elbow on the surface and her arm curled around her coffee to mind the mug. Casually, she said as you entered, “I see your playdate’s been cancelled.”

            Internally, you swore and tried to threaten your cheeks with dire consequences if they turned red. Professionalism, woman, you scolded yourself. “Sorry?” You said, hoping against hope that Neal’s ease at convincingly lying had rubbed off on you.

            By the roll of her eyes, it didn’t. “A few girlfriends and I are going to go check out the new exhibit in the Met. One of Christy’s invites got scheduled on call tomorrow. Do you want to fill the slot for us?”

            Pity invites were the last thing you needed. In fact, it was even more embarrassing. Did the office think you’d been dumped? On the other hand, you’d spent the week feeling guilty and lonely, eating lunches at your desk or at a two-top table without a number two. Getting out of your apartment over the weekend could only be a good idea.

            “Come on,” Diana said before you answered, seeing you pause and giving you a coaxing smile. “We made reservations already, you’ll round out our party.”

            “Sure I won’t be cramping the style?” You asked good-naturedly, forcing some cheer and playfulness into your voice to match hers.

            “Please,” she said, waving off the concern and blowing steam away from her mug. “If you don’t come, I’ll be the only fed. That’s a cramped style.”

            You let her get a real grin out of you at that. You knew all too well how awkward that could be when conversations turned towards work lives. If the crowd was hyper-critical of law enforcement, or even just if you were the only one with a job outside of their industry, it stemmed the chit chat.

            With that decided, Diana made sure you had each other’s phone numbers and promised to text with details of when and where to meet on Saturday. You got your salad out of the communal fridge and went back to your desk with a smile, glancing only briefly at Neal when you passed his desk. He was still deeply focused on his Kendle while munching on a sandwich. That was okay, you told yourself optimistically. You could be patient until he was ready to talk and put it in the past. In the meantime, you didn’t have to be lonely and sorry for yourself.

            The week ended without much, if any, improvement on the front with Neal, but he did text you to see if you got home safely on Friday, which you took as a small win. Then you enjoyed a calm night in your favorite fashion: a warm bath, a soft robe, and a good book. That novel carried you into the early hours of Saturday morning, when you crashed hard and slept in until brunch. After a hearty breakfast, you caught up on your favorite shows that had aired new episodes over the week while playing some idle games on your phone. When it was finally time to go meet with Diana and her friends, you’d started to get restless to leave the apartment again, so the timing worked out pretty well.

            You met Diana and four other women by the Sabrett stand that was almost always parked outside the museum’s grand front steps. There was Christy, who you’d met once before; Laura and Anna, both nurses at the same hospital; and Erin, a friend of theirs from med school who’d become a clinical researcher. Christy and Diana naturally stuck together, but you found that you and Anna had some shared interests and Erin’s work was pretty interesting, so you had a good time walking through the museum, reading the plaques, sharing commentary, and getting to know them.

            The dinner afterwards wasn’t what you’d envisioned when you pictured a restaurant that needed reservations, but the staff had to push two tables together to accommodate a party of six. It turned out to be Laura’s suggestion, and they had some pretty great food. The portions were small for the price, in your opinion, but the food you had tasted so good that you’d be willing to come back. For the most part, the discussion went around travel and culture, referencing back to the exhibits and the desperation for a vacation that you all apparently shared.

            All in all, it was a lovely evening, even if it had pushed you out of your comfort zone to be so social with so many people you barely knew, and you thanked them all for letting you fill in, but especially Diana for inviting you. After dinner, they added you to a group text so everyone could check in when they got home safely. After you sent that message, still with your back leaning against the inside of your front door, you checked your notifications for anything else and tried not to be disappointed that there was nothing from Neal.

            You sighed, immediately disappointed with yourself. You went and spent an entire day giving yourself a decompression and reboot treatment, and couldn’t even get to bed without worrying again about the guy who wasn’t even your boyfriend, and might never be. A small voice in your head told you that it shouldn’t be a problem to worry about a friend, no matter how else you felt about him, but you also knew that he was occupying far more of your emotional energy than any other friend would.

            “Ah, well, try again tomorrow,” you said to yourself quietly, locking the door and heading into your studio, where you stopped short at the view of your coffee table.

            Sitting in a vase you definitely didn’t own was a bouquet of flowers you definitely didn’t order. Six thornless roses, petals pressed together beautifully so their varied colors complemented one another; orange, lilac, light and dark pink, the classic red, and a lovely yellow with crimson tips. They made you gasp quietly, recognizing the custom bouquet by its description in a book. In Better Liars, the main character McKenna is given specially dyed roses by her soulmate in an artistic and subtle show of love.

            The roses weren’t all that sat in the vase, though. Tucked alongside the stems was a short, thin branch with long and narrow leaves, dotted with small grapes. You reached out very gently to touch the petals of the roses, and as you ran the tip of your finger along the feather-soft tips, you realized that they weren’t grapes. They were olives. It was a literal olive branch. That wasn’t part of the gesture in the book – it was especially for you.

            There was only one person who would go to the lengths to do this, and you shook your head fondly as you thought of all the time he’d been avoiding you. You took out your phone and pulled up your text history to write a new message: I forgave you ages ago. Lunch Monday?

            A moment later, you received a smiley emoticon in response and grinned to yourself, sinking down onto the couch to stare at the multicolored roses with adoration. Your heart fluttered. He must have gone so far out of his way to do this – remembering the name of a book he’d seen you with, reading or skimming it himself, and then jumping through the hoops of actually getting the roses dyed the right colors… it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for you. It didn’t matter that it was a copy of someone else’s gestures because it was copied from a book, derived from a passion that you held close to your chest. If anything, that made it more romantic.

            If only he’d meant it to be romantic. You’d have been thrilled even if he’d left the olives out of the arrangement.

~~ Booksweet ~~

            Come Monday, everything was back to normal. Neal still stuck to his desk and read on his Kindle when he finished the work he’d been assigned (until Peter noticed he wasn’t working, of course), but you started taking lunches together and talking on your way into and out of the building. That evening, Neal waited while you stayed a few minutes late to finish the document you were editing so he could walk with you to the subway station.

            “That story you were reading last week,” he said conversationally as you exited the building. The thief was walking on your left, and his right arm came up around your lower back to rest his hand very gently on your sweater. “Did you know there’s a sequel?”

            You grinned sheepishly. “Riverwalk. Yes, I may have read it over the weekend.”

            Neal hummed, starting to smile down at you. He looked away as if to stop you from seeing his pleased expression, but it was too late.

            “Why?” You asked, almost hopeful. “Did you want to read it?” You loved sharing books and being able to talk about them.

            “I’m working through it,” he answered, taking out his Kindle. He unlocked the screen and showed you the page of a digital book; Riverwalk was written across the top, along with a page number in the low nineties. “What’s with you and dramas?”

            You shrugged. “Your life’s more exciting than mine. I use fiction to get a fix.” You’d worked some memorable cases, but rarely did you have the seniority or the skill to be in the heat of things. Besides, you didn’t pick a favorite genre based on what was already in your life. You liked the vicarious emotional experiences just as much as the sense of adventure.

            “I could use a little less excitement sometimes,” Neal said with a wistful sigh. As you left Federal Plaza behind, the sign for the subway drew closer, and unfortunately, you had to get on different trains. Anticipating your different paths, Neal put his Kindle away and brushed his hand across your back again. You couldn’t quite tell if he was being so touchy deliberately or not. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Y/N. Ride safely.”

            “You, too,” you said, fastening your grip on your bag, unsure what else to do with your hands. Your feet itched to follow him, or to go up on your toes to kiss his cheek goodbye. Instead of either, you did nothing except watch him swipe his MTA card and take a sharp turn towards the subway line heading northwest.

~~ Booksweet ~~

            At home, you perused your bookshelves, looking for another title to pull out. Your eyes glanced over the paperback copy of Riverwalk where it sat next to its prequel. It was still surprising that Neal had already bought it, and presumably finished Wildflower Trails – and, based on the roses, possibly read Better Liars, too. Was that what he had been doing all week during his lunch breaks? You couldn’t lie – your heart sped up a bit at the possibility that he had been putting so much time into your interests, particularly with the end goal of making the sweet gesture he had.

            It couldn’t have been the end goal, though. If it had been, he wouldn’t still be working through the two-part series. You pursed your lips in thought, but decided it wasn’t up to you to overanalyze. He had upset you and more than made it up to you. He probably just got hooked on the premise, just like you did; after all, you had excellent taste in novels.

~~ Booksweet ~~

            Another week passed at work, much faster and brighter than the last. Diana gave you a knowing grin when she saw you and Neal eating at his desk while talking about the ending of Riverwalk on Thursday afternoon. The conman was reluctant to admit, but he saw what enthralled you so much with the story – but made sure to make the point that he thought the first book was better.

            “Writing on the water?” He said skeptically, giving you a judgmental look. “It’s not a still body. By the time you could use jet wake to leave the letters, they’d have been distorted or washed away already.”

            “Lakewalk didn’t have the same ring,” you said smartly, rolling your eyes. “That’s not the point.”

            “It’s ridiculous,” Neal insisted.

            You shook your head. “I’m revoking your ‘hopeless romantic’ card,” you announced.

            The man chuckled, his cheeks dimpling adorably. You smiled across the desk at him and tried to force the expression away before it turned from a fond look into a longing stare. Neal polished off his soup and started collecting your trash for the bin by his desk, and you grabbed a spare napkin to wipe all crumbs and drink condensation off his table. Even once he had a clean workspace again, you lingered, hoping to prolong your break just by a couple more minutes.

            “Hey,” he said before you had to start improvising. “Samantha has a soccer game on Sunday. Care to be my plus one?”

            The idea of Neal sitting in the park during midday heat was too good to pass up. Had you ever seen him in clothes that didn’t come with a tie pin? Surely he wouldn’t wear a full suit to a soccer game. Would his hair product even survive? There were too many questions to miss out on the opportunity, even if you hadn’t already been looking for an excuse to spend more time with him.

            “Sure,” you said gamely, giving him a big smile. “I’ll keep the soccer moms off of you.”

            “Oh, they wouldn’t want me,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “I’d be a bad influence on their children.” He bounced his knee obnoxiously to indicate the ankle monitor strapped around his leg. “But if you’re there, I won’t be the only one who doesn’t know what the rules are.”

            “That’s true, I’m not very good at following sports,” you conceded.

            With the plans made, you went back to work in good spirits. Friday passed almost the same, except your lunch was cut short when Peter took Neal out of the office to pursue a lead. They didn’t come back until it was less than an hour until official work hours ended, and both looked very intent on whatever they had found, so you didn’t try to interrupt. You had his phone number and could talk over the weekend.

            A week after you’d first received the roses, it was about time to admit that they were looking worse for wear. The bright dyes had helped disguise some of the wilting, but it was starting to look more obvious. That little bouquet had brought a smile to your face every day for a week. It was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for you, and it had been done for you by Neal. Putting the flowers in the trash was going to be a hurdle, so you plucked the most ragged petals off and put it off for a couple days longer. At least you could keep the vase indefinitely.

            On Sunday, you arranged to meet on the sidewalk by the subway station near the park. When you showed up in a light, comfortable outfit with sunglasses and sunscreen, you were nearly blown out of your socks to see Neal was wearing a tee shirt. Well, that was one question answered. He made it look effortlessly good. It almost made you jealous. Thankfully, he was waiting with a couple of iced coffees, and one of them literally had your name written on it.

            “You’re actually my favorite person,” you gushed gratefully, taking a long, cold drink.

            “You’re in my top five,” he replied with a completely straight face. When you were done drinking, you gave him a scowl and he broke into a sweet grin, nudging you with his elbow and falling in step at your right. “Alright, top three.”

            “You’re no longer my favorite person,” you bluffed.

            “We’ll see.” Neal said, sounding unbelievably smug. As he started moving further to the right, you followed, and he led you onto a paved walkway that led away from the street and into the green park that stretched between Riverside Drive and the Hudson. “I have an ace up my sleeve.”

            “You’d need sleeves for that,” you said, prodding his bare arm pointedly.

            Neal gave you that mischievous little grin that always scared Peter a little bit, but didn’t answer. He took you on the very first right into the path. The greenery sloped downwards towards the river, so you could see all the way to the parkway from where you were standing, give or take some trees in the way. The grass had been painted on, probably by some kids, in bright blues and purples. A little more than halfway to the river, the slope evened out, and that was where a line of fields and sports courts rested, flanked on both sides by walking trails. The basketball field only had a couple of kids playing on it, but the soccer field and baseball field both had small teams and some people setting up picnics and lawn chairs around the perimeter. You couldn’t make out any of the individual spectators or players from where you were.

            “Are we early?” You asked, making to look at your watch before remembering that you hadn’t worn it today. Instead, you took Neal by the arm to turn his wrist and check his.

            “A few minutes. There’s no rush,” he said, even as he let you see the time. “I wanted to make sure you saw this first. Look down.”

            Frowning with confusion, you followed his instruction to look down. But there was nothing at your feet, and you still couldn’t make out anything on the fields. There was nothing except the paint sprayed onto the grass – which, now that you really looked at it, you could see spelled out letters. They were upside down, painted to be seen most easily from the playing fields, where the entire slope could be more easily seen, but they were also big enough to read upside down from where you were.

            And they spelled out your name.

            Y/N, DATE TONIGHT?

            You covered your mouth with your hand, rereading the huge sign over again to make sure you were really reading it correctly.

            Neal laughed quietly at your surprise. “Can I have my ‘hopeless romantic’ card back?”

            “This-“ There were so many things you itched to say that you had to take a second to settle on just one. “Yes!” You said, nearly dropping your coffee in your haste to turn to him and grab his arm excitedly, linking your elbow through his. “And yes – but you said this was ridiculous,” you reminded.

            “No, I said writing on river water was ridiculous,” Neal specified, gesturing with his coffee cup down at the grass. “Grass is perfectly usable.”

            You started to giggle happily. Scratch the roses, this was the most romantic thing, and it was for you, from Neal. He’d never been avoiding you, he’d been reading the same books as you specifically to be romantic. How precious was that? You had to be the luckiest girl in the city, even if just for this one day.

            “Not that I would personally vandalize city property,” Neal said after giving you a few seconds to bathe in the positive feelings. He sounded entirely too conversational. “I’m an upstanding citizen.”

            “Right,” you said, nodding along, leaning your head against his shoulder for a moment. “Hypothetically, if you did, the paint would be eco-friendly, though, wouldn’t it?”

            “Hypothetically, I would use a water-based chalk spray that will wash away on its own with a couple rainy days,” Neal replied.

            “I love a hypothetically ecologically-conscious man,” you said solemnly, before looking back up to his face and smiling adoringly. This time, you didn’t hesitate to go up on your toes and kiss his cheek.

~~

~~

A/N: Wildflower Trails, Better Liars, and Riverwalk are all made up! However, Better Liars was an alternative name for my White Collar OC fic, Lie a Little Better; the rose bouquet is the arrangement Neal gifts to McKenna in several chapters. If you would like to check out that story, please check out the series here.

#lawmen and conmen #white collar #white collar x reader #neal caffrey #neal caffrey x reader #fanfic #oneshot #requested #anonymous #fluff #romance #books #booksweet #diana berrigan #reader insert #x reader

[white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen]

Imagine Learning to Scuba Dive

“How did it go?” Neal asked as soon as you entered the door. The man’s face was lit up with secondhand excitement, even as he carefully slid his fingers down from the knife and julienned a bell pepper.

“It was great!” You chirped happily, immediately unzipping your windbreaker. Your skintight one-piece bathing suit was still damp against your body, but most of the water had dried out during the commute back home. “Kind of weird, though. But I signed up for the full certification course!”

“That’s great, Y/N,” Neal said, smiling and sweeping his chopped vegetables into a sautee pan. He turned the burner on low and came over to you to wrap his arms around you, not seeming to care that you were still wet with pool water. He very sweetly ducked his head down to press his nose against yours. “My very own sexy mermaid.”

“Oh, no, mermaid swimming is a whole specialty, but I appreciate what you’re going for,” you said, shutting your eyes contently to hold him close. Something was already in the oven, and it smelled tasty – doubly so, because you’d worked up a hell of an appetite. “I wish you could do it with me,” you added wistfully.

Neal nodded, his nose rubbing softly on yours. He was also deeply curious about the underwater world, but scuba diving was simply out of his reach for as long as he was on his anklet. “Me, too. Maybe you can teach me next year,” he agreed teasingly. “Did you learn how to breathe underwater?”

You nodded proudly. It was still saddening to talk about it knowing he couldn’t experience it with you, and you almost wanted to wait until he could. In fact, you’d intended to do exactly that, but Neal had gently pushed you to start now, as you had the desire, the time, and the money to spare. Scuba was an inherently social activity. Although communication underwater was limited, every diver had at least one dive buddy to stay safe in case of an emergency, and instead of buddying up with your partner, you’d have to pair with strangers until he could join you with swimming fins.

Thinking about this took your mind off the question, but Neal prompted you back to it as if to prove he really didn’t mind being left out of this particular adventure. “How deep did you get?”

“Only to the bottom of the pool,” you said, putting a hand above your head and making a grasping motion. “Even standing, I was a few feet under the surface in the deep end, though. You know, they make you learn how to remove your regulator while underwater?” Vehemently, you shook your head. “I needed a couple minutes to build up my nerve.”

The artist’s laugh was light and low. “I bet. I’m glad you had fun.” He gave you a soft kiss right on the forehead. “You know, I did think of a way to share this while you were out.”

“Oh?” You asked curiously, and then excitedly remembered June’s pool. It wasn’t open water, but it would still be fun to play together.

“You could take reference pictures for me.” Neal suggested, grinning at the idea, swaying you a bit as his arms moved a little lower down your sides. “I’ve never drawn any underwater scenes before.”

He didn’t even finish talking before you were nodding eagerly. Why hadn’t that occurred to you? Sure, it was small, but it still included him in your new hobby in some way. “Soon enough you’ll be seeing your references yourself,” you reminded him encouragingly, giving his hips a little squeeze.

“And soon enough, you really will be my sexy mermaid,” Neal replied mischievously. “I really want to see that.”

~~~ ~~~ A/N: My parents started diving last year and have been urging me to try it ever since. I had my first class today! Needless to say, I've been quite distracted by my own excitement.

#lawmen and conmen #white collar #white collar x reader #neal caffrey #neal caffrey x reader #imagine #fic #reader insert #x reader #scuba #diving #not requested

[white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen]

Bite (Part Three)

Summary: Peter’s team is invited onto a big case in which their involvement will have serious consequences. (Part 3/3)

Word Count: 5,077

Warning: Some violence and not-so-subtle PTSD

Additional Note: Some prison slang is used in this chapter and explained here for clarity. Shiv = stab, smokes = cigarettes, “a dime” = ten years.

           “I want you to know that I didn’t intend for this to happen,” he said finally, lifting his head. His usually kissable lips were frowning. “And I tried resisting.”

           That made you frown. What was there to resist? Coercion? “Resisting what?” You asked him worriedly.

           That worry only increased tenfold when he answered, “Blood.”

~~~ Bite ~~~

           Of the hundreds, even thousands of things that you knew Neal could have said, what he actually did say hadn’t even made the list – but it sure was eerie, and if his goal was actually to pull your leg, set you off-kilter, then he had succeeded without a doubt.

           “Blood?” You echoed, recoiling and leaning away from him in your chair. His eyes darted briefly to your shoulders as they moved back before he looked to your face again, his mouth tightening unhappily. “What the hell, Neal, I’m being serious!”

           “So am I,” he responded, looking momentarily hurt. “I told you, I didn’t want this.”

           You still didn’t understand. “This – this being what?”

           Neal licked his dry lips and looked over your shoulder, his eyes fixated on a spot on the wall. “This goes back to the Brady case,” he admitted. You leaned back towards him, both to hear his quiet speech and because you had realized you’d moved away. No matter how unsettled you were, you knew your friend would never hurt you and there was no need to put distance in the way. “The last operation.”

           “The one that failed.” You remembered it well. The concern and fear when your team stopped responding, the anger towards Brady, and the sympathy and worry for Neal and Peter, who had both been through an awful experience. Not to mention the paranoia and distrust that had rocked the office in the immediate aftermath. “Someone had tipped him off.”

           “No,” Neal corrected you quickly, and you looked to his eyes sharply. How could he know what had happened? Not even OPR had managed to figure out why the operation took a nosedive. “There wasn’t a mole. Brady had already made us himself from the second Peter went to scare him.”

           How? Peter had worked many high-profile cases, but was careful to stay out of the spotlight, and the bureau had liaisons who did their best to make sure agents didn’t get their pictures out in the media. Did they miss one? Was that how Brady recognized Peter? But then, how had he tied Neal to Peter, and why risk going to prison when he could have simply cut ties with Nick Halden and fled the country?

           “If he knew it was a setup, then why did he call you back to his office?” You questioned.

           Neal sighed softly. “Spitefulness. Pettiness. Malice.” You took in a breath as you understood. It wouldn’t have been enough for Brady to just not fall into the trap. He had to make the feds regret trying to trick him. Neal looked down at his hands and stroked the thumb of one hand firmly against the palm of the other while he kept calm and recounted what had happened. “Peter could have been a cop doing his job. Me, I was clearly undercover, manipulating him.”

           You cut in with another question. “What I don’t get is how he knew you weren’t Nick.” You were very careful in the bureau to keep the identities of Neal Caffrey and Nick Halden separate. “How did he make the connection?”

           Neal hesitated and he looked down again, his beautiful blue eyes training on the repetitive movement of his hands. You decided to give him a count, and if he didn’t answer in ten seconds, you were going to say his name in a stern tone. You only got to eight before he looked up, mouth open to talk. He stopped himself short, swallowed, and turned his head to look towards the glass doors before he started again.

           “He knew I wasn’t who I said because he knew Peter and I had been spending time together.” Neal was shifty in a way you hadn’t seen before. There was his usual fashion of shiftiness, quick and deflective, when he was trying to get away with a lie of omission, particularly when he had come to a case lead through not-so-scrupulous ways. Then there was this – shifty out of discomfort, unease, like he felt squirmy just for thinking about it. “When Peter went to his office, Brady could smell me.”

           Neal stopped, giving you time to think, to catch up, and to understand. You looked at him and he was still facing away from you, so you just saw the hardness in his jaw as he gritted his teeth.

           “Neal, we aren’t dogs, people can’t smell other people,” you exasperatedly started to say, but slowed down. This wasn’t just Neal trying to spin a story. It was his freedom on the table, and if he wanted to lie then he could be much more convincing. It was true that people couldn’t smell other people – but maybe Brady wasn’t a person, wasn’t a human.

           Blood.

           “No,” you whispered, feeling petrified. Had Brady-?

           “People can’t,” Neal agreed softly, looking to his hands again. You could see his knuckles whitening as he pressed into his palm harder, relieving his stress and anxiety with pressure. “Vampires can.”

~~~ Bite ~~~

           Something had been off from the start, but Neal didn’t want to be hasty and pull the plug on a good operation. Though he was guilty of pressing Ruiz’s buttons, Neal understood the agent’s desperation to catch this shady businessman and wanted to do what he could to hold Brady accountable for murder. Brady didn’t have any extra muscle with him, nor did he change the meeting place to somewhere without people in shouting distance, so Neal thought that even if he was twitchy, he wasn’t completely sold on his paranoia. As long as he was careful, he would get out unscathed.

           It didn’t take long for Brady to bring up Peter, which surprised Neal slightly. Maybe the man was jumpier than he had thought. Neal was being cautious and calculating, but on the outside he made sure to be flippant and unruffled, like a pestering FBI agent was neither new nor troubling. Brady didn’t take the offered bait in Neal’s response, though, and instead asked a very pointed question.

           “And what experience would you happen to have with the feds, Nick?” Brady had asked testily, staring down at Neal from where he was sitting on the edge of his own desk. The man’s hazel eyes looked dark and thin around the wide pupils, and Neal decided right then that it was too close of a call. There was too much excitement in his system for it to be a hypothetical question, and a person couldn’t dilate their eyes on will.

           He almost missed the businessman’s hand moving into a desk drawer while formulating a response. “I’ve met a few,” Neal replied evenly, scowling, in character, not appreciating the insinuation that he cooperated with feds. “But none were a very hard sell.” He did see the motion as Brady took his hand out of the desk drawer, holding onto nothing. He was curious what it had been for, but mostly he was grateful that Brady hadn’t taken out a gun.

           “Is that so?” Brady asked, easing himself off the desk. He put his back to Neal, and while he wasn’t looking, Neal let out a slow breath, sure to keep it silent so that his relief wasn’t heard. The company founder circled his furniture and Neal willed him to stay on that side of it and keep the three-foot piece between them.

           “It is,” Neal said, cocking his head to portray Nick’s (earned) arrogance. He just had to wait another thirty seconds, maximum. The phrase ‘hard sell’ was the safe word. There would be at least one, but probably two or three, agents storming in before Brady had a chance to even go for the gun safe Neal knew was behind that framed picture on the wall.

           “Mm. Funny.” Brady commented coolly, staring at Neal like he thought the conman would be easily intimidated. It was almost insulting, really – if a good stare were all it took, Neal would still be a starving street scammer. “Because, see, I know from a reliable source that you’re all buddy-buddy with Agent Burke.”

           It was truly a test of self-control not to give away the mounting anxiety. Neal played it off while counting down in his head. “Sounds to me like you need to get better sources,” he snarked. Twenty seconds.

           “Based on what you’re saying, I can’t trust anyone these days.” Brady just sounded angrier now. Neal wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have just made a move to excuse himself and taken his chances, but it was too late now, and Brady had less than twenty seconds left.

           “It’s a very disappointing world we live in,” Neal hinted stoically. Fifteen seconds.

           Brady opened up a desk drawer and Neal shifted his feet slightly, prepared to get up if the businessman took out a firearm. “Not even myself,” Brady growled lowly, and Neal did hear a growl under the words, like he was in the room with an angry bear and not just a slighted crook.

           “What are you saying?” Neal challenged him coolly, and immediately regretted it, because Brady took out a long dagger with a curved scythe on one side. Suddenly, ten seconds seemed like an awfully long time to wait, so the conman decided to give his team an incentive to hurry up. “That’s an awfully big knife you have there,” he casually remarked while standing quickly from his seat.

           Brady shut the drawer by hitting it with his knee. “I could smell you on him the minute he walked into my office,” the man hissed, a low, animalistic growl emanating from his throat between words. “You’re working for them. You came in here thinking you could take me? I’m the one doing the taking.”

           “Who said anything about fighting?” Neal put his hands up to show that he was unarmed and harmless while backing away. The man was inching around the desk and Neal was still counting two seconds in his head, but now he couldn’t afford to wait patiently. “Listen to yourself. This is insane!” He laughed nervously. Anyone would be nervous when someone was angrily threatening them with a knife that looked like a cross between a dagger and a filleter. “I’m in cahoots with him just because we wear the same cologne?”

           “It wasn’t cologne!” Brady shouted, his forehead turning pink as it crept up his ears and the side of his neck. He took a sudden, lunging step forward and Neal dropped his arms, pivoting on his heel to sprint for the door.

           He hadn’t cleared three paces before a hand caught the back of his shirt and yanked him by the collar. The pressure of his tie knot yanking up into his throat made him cough and splutter while being manhandled towards the left wall. The artist stumbled, feeling an ankle slip and twist, and Brady, who had somehow moved twice as fast as Neal, threw the younger man to the ground with strength not remotely suggested by his frame.

           A kick to the side had Neal on his hands and knees, groaning through gritted teeth and trying to focus on the way out. It had been long enough. There were three agents already in the suite – if they weren’t here yet, then it had to be either they couldn’t hear or they had been trapped, too. Neal prayed for the former. If they heard radio silence for too long then they would know something had happened. Wouldn’t they? Right?

           “It’s not a bad plan,” Brady chuckled, seeming to be over his sudden rage. The growling sound had stopped. “Might’ve worked, too, if I didn’t have this extra ace.” He moved his right hand with the dagger.

           Neal flinched back, ducking his head to protect his face, waiting for the sting of a cut or the pierce of a stab. Neither came, and the apprehension had his hands trembling on the low-height rug. He looked up despite his better judgment and dropped his jaw in shock. Brady had sliced open his own wrist and was letting his blood drip down his hand.

           The man gave him a nasty smile when he saw Neal’s surprise. “This?” He waved the knife carelessly. “It isn’t for you. This is.” He put out his bleeding hand near Neal’s head and he cringed away, keeping far from the blood.

           “What kind of sick game are you playing?” Neal panted, eyes going to the office door, begging it to open. He didn’t care who was on the other side – just someone sane. Someone who would help him.

           “Don’t be such a priss,” Brady snapped irritably. “You’ll have to get used to blood.” He put the dagger slowly down towards Neal’s right side, holding the blade uncomfortably close to the artist’s cheek. Neal gritted his teeth. “This’ll be for you if you don’t. Make the better choice, Nick. Survive.” Neal didn’t answer. He didn’t know what he was supposed to be choosing and didn’t want to give Brady the satisfaction of knowing that he was ignorant and confused. He just stared down at Brady’s hard, polished shoes. “Come on,” Brady coaxed lowly, the growl beginning again. “Play along. It’s eat or be eaten.”

           Neal swore his heart doubled in pace right then as he understood, no further questioning necessary. It was all lining up. It was impossible. It was obvious. The sense of smell, the growl, the speed, the strength, the blood. What did he want more? To stay human or stay alive? Did he even fully know what it meant, to be something other than human in this time? Surely the last time a person made this choice, it was in the days of Salem.

           “Tick, tock.” Brady’s voice had a chilling edge that Neal had only heard come from Adler before. The cold flat of the dagger was pressed into Neal’s shoulder and the clinging drops of Brady’s blood soaked into his suit jacket. “It’s been a long time since I was this generous. I don’t like being ignored.”

           Life or death. Half-life or death. Whichever it was, it was something other than death. Neal didn’t want to die. He had the home he was making for himself during his work-release, and he intended to keep it once he was free. The entire world was waiting for him when he was free. He had friends, good ones, people he loved, that he wanted to see again. Neal didn’t understand why anyone would ever choose death, so truly, regardless of what Brady said, it had never been a real choice to begin with. He had to accept that help wasn’t coming. Not this time.

           Neal didn’t choose to live. He had to live, and he did what he had to for survival. Brady kept the knife on his shoulder with the scythe turned towards his neck, just in case he got any ideas.

           How much? How long? He felt choked by the thick blood in his throat. “Stop,” he pleaded in a cough, muffled by the vampire’s split skin. “No, no.” He started to turn his head but a hand grabbed his hair and yanked him back while the wrist at his mouth pushed harder on his lips. The pain lancing through his skull made his eyes water. The flat of the knife pressed harder into Neal’s shoulder, reminding him how close the blade was to his throat, forcing his obedience.

           As he drank more blood, Neal felt increasingly sick. Like he was forcing down spoiled milk, his stomach twisted and clenched. His face felt hot. This was supposed to turn him? It felt more like poison. The cramping was so bad that it made him lightheaded and he could almost stop tasting the iron on his tongue. The slamming open of the door didn’t register at all in the side of his vision, but Neal did hear Peter’s voice from far away.

           “Drop the knife!” His partner was screaming. The knife pressed harder into Neal’s shoulder and the artist felt the hand leave his hair. “Drop it!”

           The wrist was moved at last. His lips still felt wet. Neal swallowed and gagged, shutting his eyes tightly and pressing his hand into his abdomen in pain.

           “Should’ve known you’d come back for more, Burke. You don’t know when to quit,” the vampire snarled above him.

           The pressure at his shoulder was released and suddenly the legs were gone from in front of him. Neal slouched forward, barely catching himself with his free hand. The colors were blurring and turning feverishly bright. Whatever Brady did whilst Neal was staring sickly at the carpet, Peter didn’t like it; the gunshot sounded like a bomb, like another exploding jet, right in his ears. Neal screamed as he collapsed onto his side. It was too loud. Too loud. No more bombs. He was so hot. The white of the walls was so hot. It all burned his eyes.

           Peter’s voice was angry – no, well, yes, angry but also scared – and there was another bomb right behind him. Neal sobbed, curling in as much as he could to protect himself. His insides felt like they were on fire and he could see, again, the flames of the jet on the backs of his eyelids. He thought he could smell smoke. Explosives.

           All he could think was how it was happening again. He had lost Kate and now he was losing the people he loved, again, in more explosions. They took Y/N, they must have, that must have been the first – now second – bomb. And he couldn’t hear Peter anymore, not since the second – third overall – why did this keep happening -

           “Neal. Neal!”

           A hand shook his shoulder, digging in as tight as claws. “Peter,” Neal gasped, barely able to breathe through the pain and the grief.

           “It’s me, buddy.” His partner’s face was suddenly there and Neal realized he’d opened his eyes. When had he closed them? Peter was swimming. His skin was all bright. Something was very wrong and even though his brain felt like it was baking, Neal knew the problem was with himself. “Keep your eyes on me, okay? Help is coming.”

~~~ Bite ~~~

           Vampires were largely thought to be extinct. If they had survived the periods of hunting and slaughter, then they had opted to keep to themselves in remote locations. Brady must have been one of the few left, and somehow slipped under the radar for decades to avoid being detected. That explained why he was so hard to find a history on. While they were best known (and most feared) for relying on the blood of others to survive, most folk stories said they had superhumanly keen senses. Some reported abnormal speed and strength, but those accounts were relatively new to the folklore; whether or not they were true was anyone’s guess.

           Except for Neal, who didn’t need to guess. Who had learned, firsthand, how quickly those keen senses had set in, and who had torturously learned while his mind was suggestible, terrified, and hazy from the illness and agony of an unwanted mutation. You couldn’t even imagine how horrifying must have been to smell the gunpowder, hear the explosions so intensely, and attach a feverish heat to the brightness of the colors. It was no wonder Neal had called out in the following days.

           “Help did come,” Neal murmured, not meeting your eyes. “But I don’t remember much after that. My memory’s in and out until a couple days afterwards.”

           “So… you’re a vampire now?” Was the first thing you quietly asked him. Neal looked at you and nodded once, jaw tight, eyes looking dark. You couldn’t imagine how angry, scared, cheated he must feel for having this virus shoved onto him. “So that means you need blood,” you continued, talking through your train of thought. Neal had seemed to rebound awfully fast between the first and second weeks after the incident – maybe because he had stopped starving. “The prostitutes,” you realized. “You’re not paying them for sex, you’re paying them for blood.”

           “There’s mutually-assured destruction if they report me,” Neal claimed almost defensively. His shoulders were still open but you could see how badly he wanted to just turn away and fold his arms protectively around himself. “To say how they know what I am, they’d have to admit I hired them. Sex work is still criminal. And, because of their work, most of them get screened every three months.”

           “But you don’t know what they’ve caught in the meantime, or what they might do to you or tell other people,” you said, dismayed. Neal was putting himself at risk in many different ways, and the worst part was it wasn’t his regular brand of headlong overconfidence. He truly did not feel he had any alternatives. “Neal, you could have told us, we’re your friends, we could have helped.”

           “Helped how?” Neal scoffed so harshly that it sounded like it hurt his throat. “This isn’t reversible. I have to live with this for the rest of my life. If I told, and the bureau decided that being this thing makes me a liability, or a public safety issue, then I go back to prison. Being a snitch and a vampire? The first guy to shiv me would win free smokes for a dime. I wanted my friends. I hate what I have to do. None of it was a gamble I could afford to take.”

           You looked down for a minute, understanding. It hurt that he thought his team, you included, might do anything that put him at risk. The last thing you wanted was to see him in prison. He had to have been scared. Upset. Angry. Frightened for his safety and his future, and his health. And what was he going to do if he couldn’t afford a hooker’s prices every week? You were so hurt that he didn’t trust you enough to come to you after you had been so close to taking that step into being more than friends, but as you tried to see it from his perspective, you couldn’t fault him for it.

           “I wanted my friend, too,” you admitted to him, looking up guiltily. If you had pressed sooner, maybe you could have convinced him to tell you everything weeks ago.

           Neal’s face softened in response as he finally loosened up. Strands of dark hair tumbled out of his coif and into his face as he shook his head gently and reached for you, putting a hand on the side of your thigh and leaning towards your chair.

           “It isn’t your fault,” he promised you in spite of his frown. “No one would have guessed. How could you? Vampires are supposed to have died out. I didn’t want to risk myself, and I didn’t want to scare you.”

           “You wouldn’t have scared me,” you promised immediately. There wasn’t even a thought behind it. Neal had never, could never scare you; this you had known for what felt like forever. Even when you finally connected the pieces and knew what he was telling you, there hadn’t been fear in your system. Just shock, and fear on his behalf, and so much sympathy that you almost cried.

           “I scared myself,” he disagreed, implying that you would have been scared, too. He stroked his fingers down to your knee before pulling his hand off. “That first week, everything hurt so badly I could barely speak. Everything was so much brighter and so much louder. Nothing I cooked satisfied the hunger, and then I had to spend eight hours a day surrounded by dozens of bodies of fresh blood.” The conman swallowed hard while thinking about it. “It would be like if you hadn’t eaten in days, then sat for hours in a steakhouse and couldn’t order anything.”

           It should have been chilling to hear Neal compare his coworkers – yourself presumably included – to steaks, but oddly, it wasn’t. You couldn’t pull a Dahmer comparison out of your hat and you still didn’t feel remotely threatened. However desperate he may have been, Neal had never caved. He had never hurt anyone. You had always loved his pacifism and no matter how his biology may have changed, his recount only seemed to prove that his self, Neal, had not.

           “Every time I think I know how strong you are,” you told him, amazed and impressed. “It turns out that I’m still underestimating you.” To be so hungry and so in pain, and to keep to himself for fear, and still be able to function in the office? He had been quiet, sullen, out of character, but functional. That was a feat.

           Neal’s eyes widened just a touch before he blinked and tried to reign in his surprise. The more you talked, now, the more you could see the tension draining from his body. The negative reaction he had anticipated failed to occur, and the artist was beginning to see that there was no need for all his anxiety. His shoulders and back were less straight and he sat more comfortably, more openly, to continue conversing.

           “Ah…”

           Unsure how to respond to your compliment, Neal looked at the matching mugs of coffee still on the table. You now wondered why he had brewed himself one when he had already said that he needed blood to be sated, but then again, Neal had always been a creature of comforts, not just necessity.

           With his left hand, he rubbed the back of his neck. The informant had to think for a moment and figure out where to resume his story. “Right, well…” Neal looked so young with relief and uncertainty on his face. It took a lot of self-control not to just reach out, cup his cheeks, and kiss his forehead with a promise that everything would be okay. He cleared his throat. “At the end of that first week, I realized I couldn’t put it off any further. Nothing was working, and I don’t think I could forgive myself if my stubbornness and my hunger meant I lost control and hurt someone. I found a streetwalker for discretion, and…”

           You put your hand up there. He was clearly uncomfortable with what he had resorted to, and you had already covered his means of sustenance. Neal moved around in his seat to reposition himself.

           “They’re not all willing to be bitten,” Neal said warily. “But someone I talked to knew a friend who charges extra for people who like blood.” You raised your eyebrows. Something told you that the kind of work she charged extra for was different from what Neal was asking, but at least he had found a source. “She was willing, and she’s who you saw last week, too.”’

           “I’m so sorry you were alone,” you told him, reaching out yourself. Neal didn’t pull away from your hand, but he eyed it until you had been touching his arm for a few seconds without moving. “But you were alone. You aren’t now.”

           “I’m used to keeping secrets… keeping to myself… because of my choices.” The artist lifted his head and looked up your arm to your face. He chose his words carefully and spoke haltingly, worrying his bottom lip between phrases. “I’m used to choosing a guarded life... there’s no choice in this.” His eyes looked so deep and so sad. “But I can choose not to bring you down with me.”

           Before you could object that Neal would never “bring you down”, as he put it, or even say that he still had choices he could make to keep his life his own, Neal looked down from you and his shoulders shuddered noticeably while he inhaled an uneven breath. He had to work hard for it, and couldn’t keep it, and had to try again, keeping everything he was feeling held at bay long enough to keep up his strong face and hold a level tone. You wanted to surge forward and wrap your arms around him and hold on until sunrise, and you equally wanted to scold him for acting like a martyr. Before you could choose which to do, he looked up again and his expressive eyes were filled with water that just hadn’t fallen yet. The air was punched out of your sails by that vulnerable, lost look. It was the look of a man who had had everything ripped away from him.

           “I wanted our later,” Neal whispered sadly with a quaver.

           “Later.”

           “I’m going to hold you to that.”

           If Neal thought all it took was one tragically traumatic, life-changing event to rip that away, then he must not realize how serious you had been when you acknowledged his promise and made it your own. You couldn’t fix everything that was broken, but you weren’t leaving him alone. He had made a promise, one he still wanted to keep, and like hell were you going to let him decide for you that the promise needed to be broken.

           His health, safety, security – the two of you were clever, resourceful people. You would find a way. As for his found home, though he thought he was helplessly losing everything, Neal had every right to the life he had earned and he was surrounded by people who cared for him more deeply than he realized.

           You squeezed his arm gently while taking his other hand. Eyes on his, you said solemnly, “I still do,” and forced his hand open so that you could interlock your fingers with his. “And you know what?”

           Neal swallowed and his voice scratched in his throat while he struggled to hold back the tears. “What?”

           You stood up from your chair, took a step to his, and bent down to his level. Neal lifted his head as you moved to follow your actions and when he blinked up at you, his eyes cleared and teardrops swiftly rolled down his cheeks. Ignoring them, you tilted your head to press your forehead tenderly to his. Neal blinked again before shutting his eyes and tightening his grip on your fingers.

           “Later is now,” you told him quietly.

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