FIC : Stop and Go (White Collar, rated T)
Title : Stop and Go
Fandom : White Collar
Characters/Pairing : Neal, Peter, Elle, Kate; pre Neal/Peter
Rating : T
Warnings : **SPOILERS** for 1x07. Written before 1x08 aired, so AUs from the end of "Free Fall".
Word Count : 2594
Summary : Set during & after the end of 1x07, Neal finds out what Peter's been up to.
A/Ns : Part three of the 'Driven' verse, and longer than the first two put together; read parts one and two if you haven't. Written for the prompt "Peter/Neal, deductive skills" at smallfandomfest and crossposted to whitecollarfic. this 'verse continues to be for laulan, who also beta'd this chapter. <3!
---
In the end it was a simple enough answer. It just took Neal a while to get there.
To be fair, it hardly took him any time at all to arrive at the first part of the equation; Fowler was investigating Peter, not him, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to put two and two together to make four. Peter was hiding something, and hiding it well-- from everyone, including Neal.
That realization stung, and he had to work to keep Fowler from seeing the reaction cross his face. His brain was working a mile a minute, following threads of thought and trying to find the one that connected everything, ideas flashing through his head faster than light. Elle-- he thought of how she'd been acting lately, no sign of worry, which made him almost sure she didn't know whatever it was either. For Peter not to tell him something was one thing-- he didn't have the right, yet, to expect Peter's trust, much less his confidence. But to think he might not have told Elle-- that was actually frightening in a way Neal wasn't entirely prepared to deal with.
He was sunk so deep in thought he was barely paying attention to anything-- his mind racing, wondering what Peter could be doing, what could possibly be so bad he had to keep it from everyone? Even his quick thinking couldn't supply him with an answer, and he discovered he'd let Fowler hustle him out of the hotel room and into the elevator before his brain woke up to his surroundings. He punched the button for the top floor of the hotel, then hit the button for the lobby, giving him some time to think while he rode.
Mozzie had been sure Kate was in the hotel, and at least when it came to conspiracies, Mozzie wasn't usually wrong. The elevator stopped on the ground floor and Neal smacked the button for the top again, fishing his cell phone out of his pocket as an idea occurred to him, a way to find out what he needed to know. He 411ed the hotel and told the operator to connect him.
His luck was in-- it was a woman who answered. When he spoke, he started pacing the elevator, his voice high with unfeigned panic. "Hi, I know you guys don't usually do this sort of thing," he blurted out with barely any space between the words; an accurate reflection of the urgency he was feeling, at least, even if the premise was a lie. "But my wife moved out last week, I know she's in your hotel but she wouldn't tell me the room number and it's Ben, it's our son, he's allergic and I don't know where she keeps it, the insulin, he's choking, can you please just put me through--"
"Calm down sir," she said, and he did a silent fistpump when he heard the alarm in her voice. "What is your wife's name?"
"Kate, it's Kate, Purdue but she might be using her maiden, it's Dumas." After the author of The Count of Monte Cristo; Neal remembered finding her a copy printed around the turn of the century once. The elevator paused at the top floor and began its journey back down, while Neal breathed and tried to stop his heart from beating so fast it burst.
There was silence on the other end of the phone, and then the woman said, "Alright sir, I have a Kate Dumas here, I'm going to put you through." She paused, and added, "I don't need to add that should you call back, you won't be put through a second time." Covering her bases in case he was some sort of abusive jerk; Neal understood, and didn't have to fake the relief in his voice as he assured her he was grateful.
Another silence as she transferred his call. The phone rang once, then twice, and Neal had to hold himself back from punching the wall of the elevator. "Come on, Kate," he muttered over the third ring.
She picked up on the fourth. "Hello?"
He had just sucked in a great lungful of air, and made himself let it out slowly before he answered. "Don't say anything," he said first. "It's me. Quick as you can, is he there-- is he in the room with you." As if in slow-motion, he heard her draw a quick breath to answer, but before she could, the question was answered for him. A voice spoke in the room somewhere behind Kate.
"Put that down, would you," said Peter, dimmed but unmistakeable. "We're not finished with our discussion."
Neal dropped the phone as if it burned him.
He didn't move from where he stood pressed against the wall of the elevator until it stopped at the first floor and dinged as it slid open. A few people started to shuffle in; barely even seeing them, Neal snapped into action. He scooped up the phone from the floor and left the elevator practically jogging for the front desk, where he pulled out his FBI Consultant badge and flashed it for the concierge.
"I need whatever room Kate Dumas is in," he said, his voice rasping his throat like broken glass.
Less than thirty seconds later he was walking back to the elevator, flashing his badge everywhere to get people the fuck out of his way. It felt good, sort of, to be able to go where he wanted for once, to know there was nothing between him and what he was after. He wasn't thinking. Wasn't feeling or processing, either; on some level he was aware that the part of him that wanted to be shouting and cursing like a madman had simply shut down, to be accessed and possibly given free reign later.
The chime of the elevator was really starting to grate on his nerves. Room 448, the man had said; Neal jogged toward it, feeling absurdly vulnerable, buzzing with adrenaline and fear. The keycard the concierge had given him was getting warm in his palm, and he dropped it into the slot, barely waiting for it to beep before yanking it back out and shoving his shoulder against the door.
A flat hollow feeling-- not surprise, but something else-- socked him in the chest. The room was empty.
He was inside in a second, the door banging shut behind him. He briefly entertained the idea of leaving, going down the stairwell and looking for Peter's car in the lot, but instinctively he knew there was no reason to; Peter would've known it was him on the phone, and gotten out of there while Neal was still downstairs waving his badge around.
He went through the room picking up everything that had been left. It wasn't much, by most standards, but for Kate it was a lot. Some things hidden, some just forgotten-- a tiny external hard drive tucked behind the VCR; stubs from three plane tickets and a few crumpled receipts from gas stations in Philadelphia and New Jersey; a red sneaker under the bed; a register book from a Swedish bank shoved under the mattress.
He took the bank book and the hard drive and scooped the plane ticket stubs out of the drawer. At the last second he grabbed the sneaker too, and carried it under his arm as he ran downstairs, to the parking lot and his waiting car. After the second time his eyes were drawn to the shoe where it sat on the passenger seat, he made a frustrated sound and threw it in the back seat.
The heat had barely even kicked in when Neal whipped into a parking spot outside the Burkes' house and yanked up the complaining e-brake. No longer caring if Peter was home or if he was trespassing on Elle's hospitality, he took the front steps two at a time and tried the knob. It didn't turn, so he rang the bell. Twice, for good measure.
Footsteps on the stairs brought Elle to the door, looking wide awake despite the pajamas and bathrobe. "Neal," she said, and he was too keyed up to process the lack of curiosity in her tone.
He brushed right past her into the foyer, and then into the living room. "Where is he?" he demanded, whirling to face her. She opened her mouth and he cut her off quickly. "I'm sorry to barge in on-- you know what actually, I'm not sorry this time. This time I deserve some goddamn answers, Elle, and I'm not leaving here until your husband shows up to give them to me."
She closed her mouth and pointed to the kitchen table. Only one of the lamps over it was lit, but the dim glow was enough for Neal to make out the file sitting askew on one of the placemats.
"What's that?" he asked, monotone.
"Peter called about twenty minutes ago. He said you'd come-- said I should give you that when you did." Her voice was much less tender than the hand she laid on his arm. From in the kitchen, the kettle started whistling, and she squeezed his elbow, urging him to sit. "Just honey in your tea, right?"
Neal didn't want a cup of goddamn tea. He could recognize this plain as day-- this was good cop bad cop, this was both sides against the middle, and he didn't want to be anywhere near it. He wanted to take the file and go-- back to June's, where he could read it while he packed and figured out where he could run to that he'd never see Peter or Elizabeth or Kate ever again.
Instead he found himself sitting at the table without having made a conscious decision to do so. He laid a hand on top of the file, but didn't move until a hot mug appeared next to his elbow; Elle vanished, he heard her footsteps on the stairs, and he slid the file toward him.
A picture of Kate was stapled to the inside of the front cover, on top of a picture of her and Neal from before he went to prison.
The top page of the file's contents was a transcript of a phone conversation. Dated November 9th, 2008. A certified FBI wire tap had been placed on Peter's cell phone-- but this time, Neal was willing to bet Peter had been the one who put it there. It would've been worth it, Neal realized, having the FBI hear a few of his mundane conversations with Elle about what to bring home for dinner, if the upside was that something like this would end up in an evidence report.
"You've been on the FBI's list for six months," Peter had told Kate barely a year ago. "But you've been on mine for a lot longer. You've been putting your fingers where they shouldn't go, Kate. Didn't think you wanted to end up in prison like Neal." As Neal read, the panic threatened to come roaring up again, but he beat it grimly back, sucking in a tight breath through his teeth and forcing himself to let it out slow.
"Don't talk to me about Neal," she'd replied. Protective or dismissive? Hard to say. He flipped up the page, flattening his free hand against the table to keep it still. Behind the first page were more calls, more reports of stakeouts, more photos.
The story pieced itself together slowly, and mostly without Neal's participation. It was all he could do to sit still and keep breathing. Kate had spent one day a week visiting Neal the entire time he was inside-- the other six days, it seemed, she'd been busy. Trips overseas, trips to California, credit cards showing up in Cairo and Moscow; and more dubious stories, reports of stolen objects in Japan and Turkey, some of her known aliases turning up in Rio and Paris.
Whatever she was doing, she'd been doing a lot of it, and she hadn't so much as hinted to Neal that anything was going on. He finished the last page and turned them all back over to the beginning, no longer able to keep his fingers from trembling. He squeezed his eyes shut and ground the heels of his hands against his eyelids, trying to think of a way that this could make sense and not be as devastating as it seemed, to convince himself that she'd been in trouble, in danger, for longer than she'd let on.
But Peter hadn't been lying; he'd been keeping tabs on Kate for a long time. Neal suspected this file wasn't even all of it. "How long?" he murmured to himself.
"Long enough." Neal was on his feet in a split second, turned to see a silhouette that could only be Peter standing in the shadows of the kitchen doorway.
"Why?" he gritted out, harsh and demanding, stumbling backward to put the table between him and Peter.
"Why'd I start watching her or why'd I hide it from you?" Peter's voice was measured, almost careful. Trying to soothe him so he didn't spook, Neal thought, and almost laughed.
"Take your pick, Peter," he said. The words were sharp, nothing like their usual banter, but Neal could hardly register the change. Thoughts kept running through his head, panicked and fleeting, the need for answers warring with his body's adrenaline-fueled desire to run. He'd never been alone in a room with Peter and felt trapped before, and it was making him sick. There was too much to process-- too many questions, a simple answer hovering just out of reach-- Peter was here, which meant he wasn't the one with something to hide, not anymore. But Neal's mind rebelled-- if Kate had been hiding all of this from him-- he didn't want to think it, but it wouldn't leave his mind until he'd given it air to breathe-- how was he supposed to believe anything she'd told him about why she'd left?
He looked at Peter as he came further into the room, glad the table was between them, still choking on the urge to flee. Another step, and Peter's face passed out of shadow and into the dim gold light. Neal could see the tension, could read as easily as he always had, that Peter was just as strung tight with nerves as he was. He really was afraid Neal was going to spook; it was written all over him, and Neal didn't know what to think of Peter having his game face on, the face that said Run and I'll catch you. He didn't want that to calm him, to make him feel better-- but the next breath he took was steadier, and he already knew he had pulled back from the edge where he might've broken and run.
Peter ran a hand through his hair and then shoved both hands in his pockets. "You mean you haven't figured it out yourself?" He seemed curious and a little surprised, and Neal rolled his eyes, making an awkward little sound that was not a laugh, but something somewhat close to one.
"Yeah... I guess there's a reason you're the detective and I'm the consultant," he said. He didn't move-- except, finally, to reach out one hand and swivel the folder around so it was facing Peter's side of the table. "Wanna clue me in?" he asked, and when he pulled his hand back he put it in his pocket, shrugging his shoulders to ease some of the tension out of them.
The relief that crossed Peter's face was lightning-quick, and so keen Neal almost felt guilty for noticing. Peter closed the final step to the table and slid into a chair, pulling the file toward him without taking his eyes off Neal. "Wanna sit down so I don't put a crick in my neck?" he countered, sounding almost as sure of himself as usual.
Neal took a breath, and then another. He sat back down and reached for the mug of tea, wrapping both hands around it to still their shaking.
"Tell me," he said, and Peter did.
. on to part four.
Fandom : White Collar
Characters/Pairing : Neal, Peter, Elle, Kate; pre Neal/Peter
Rating : T
Warnings : **SPOILERS** for 1x07. Written before 1x08 aired, so AUs from the end of "Free Fall".
Word Count : 2594
Summary : Set during & after the end of 1x07, Neal finds out what Peter's been up to.
A/Ns : Part three of the 'Driven' verse, and longer than the first two put together; read parts one and two if you haven't. Written for the prompt "Peter/Neal, deductive skills" at smallfandomfest and crossposted to whitecollarfic. this 'verse continues to be for laulan, who also beta'd this chapter. <3!
---
In the end it was a simple enough answer. It just took Neal a while to get there.
To be fair, it hardly took him any time at all to arrive at the first part of the equation; Fowler was investigating Peter, not him, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to put two and two together to make four. Peter was hiding something, and hiding it well-- from everyone, including Neal.
That realization stung, and he had to work to keep Fowler from seeing the reaction cross his face. His brain was working a mile a minute, following threads of thought and trying to find the one that connected everything, ideas flashing through his head faster than light. Elle-- he thought of how she'd been acting lately, no sign of worry, which made him almost sure she didn't know whatever it was either. For Peter not to tell him something was one thing-- he didn't have the right, yet, to expect Peter's trust, much less his confidence. But to think he might not have told Elle-- that was actually frightening in a way Neal wasn't entirely prepared to deal with.
He was sunk so deep in thought he was barely paying attention to anything-- his mind racing, wondering what Peter could be doing, what could possibly be so bad he had to keep it from everyone? Even his quick thinking couldn't supply him with an answer, and he discovered he'd let Fowler hustle him out of the hotel room and into the elevator before his brain woke up to his surroundings. He punched the button for the top floor of the hotel, then hit the button for the lobby, giving him some time to think while he rode.
Mozzie had been sure Kate was in the hotel, and at least when it came to conspiracies, Mozzie wasn't usually wrong. The elevator stopped on the ground floor and Neal smacked the button for the top again, fishing his cell phone out of his pocket as an idea occurred to him, a way to find out what he needed to know. He 411ed the hotel and told the operator to connect him.
His luck was in-- it was a woman who answered. When he spoke, he started pacing the elevator, his voice high with unfeigned panic. "Hi, I know you guys don't usually do this sort of thing," he blurted out with barely any space between the words; an accurate reflection of the urgency he was feeling, at least, even if the premise was a lie. "But my wife moved out last week, I know she's in your hotel but she wouldn't tell me the room number and it's Ben, it's our son, he's allergic and I don't know where she keeps it, the insulin, he's choking, can you please just put me through--"
"Calm down sir," she said, and he did a silent fistpump when he heard the alarm in her voice. "What is your wife's name?"
"Kate, it's Kate, Purdue but she might be using her maiden, it's Dumas." After the author of The Count of Monte Cristo; Neal remembered finding her a copy printed around the turn of the century once. The elevator paused at the top floor and began its journey back down, while Neal breathed and tried to stop his heart from beating so fast it burst.
There was silence on the other end of the phone, and then the woman said, "Alright sir, I have a Kate Dumas here, I'm going to put you through." She paused, and added, "I don't need to add that should you call back, you won't be put through a second time." Covering her bases in case he was some sort of abusive jerk; Neal understood, and didn't have to fake the relief in his voice as he assured her he was grateful.
Another silence as she transferred his call. The phone rang once, then twice, and Neal had to hold himself back from punching the wall of the elevator. "Come on, Kate," he muttered over the third ring.
She picked up on the fourth. "Hello?"
He had just sucked in a great lungful of air, and made himself let it out slowly before he answered. "Don't say anything," he said first. "It's me. Quick as you can, is he there-- is he in the room with you." As if in slow-motion, he heard her draw a quick breath to answer, but before she could, the question was answered for him. A voice spoke in the room somewhere behind Kate.
"Put that down, would you," said Peter, dimmed but unmistakeable. "We're not finished with our discussion."
Neal dropped the phone as if it burned him.
He didn't move from where he stood pressed against the wall of the elevator until it stopped at the first floor and dinged as it slid open. A few people started to shuffle in; barely even seeing them, Neal snapped into action. He scooped up the phone from the floor and left the elevator practically jogging for the front desk, where he pulled out his FBI Consultant badge and flashed it for the concierge.
"I need whatever room Kate Dumas is in," he said, his voice rasping his throat like broken glass.
Less than thirty seconds later he was walking back to the elevator, flashing his badge everywhere to get people the fuck out of his way. It felt good, sort of, to be able to go where he wanted for once, to know there was nothing between him and what he was after. He wasn't thinking. Wasn't feeling or processing, either; on some level he was aware that the part of him that wanted to be shouting and cursing like a madman had simply shut down, to be accessed and possibly given free reign later.
The chime of the elevator was really starting to grate on his nerves. Room 448, the man had said; Neal jogged toward it, feeling absurdly vulnerable, buzzing with adrenaline and fear. The keycard the concierge had given him was getting warm in his palm, and he dropped it into the slot, barely waiting for it to beep before yanking it back out and shoving his shoulder against the door.
A flat hollow feeling-- not surprise, but something else-- socked him in the chest. The room was empty.
He was inside in a second, the door banging shut behind him. He briefly entertained the idea of leaving, going down the stairwell and looking for Peter's car in the lot, but instinctively he knew there was no reason to; Peter would've known it was him on the phone, and gotten out of there while Neal was still downstairs waving his badge around.
He went through the room picking up everything that had been left. It wasn't much, by most standards, but for Kate it was a lot. Some things hidden, some just forgotten-- a tiny external hard drive tucked behind the VCR; stubs from three plane tickets and a few crumpled receipts from gas stations in Philadelphia and New Jersey; a red sneaker under the bed; a register book from a Swedish bank shoved under the mattress.
He took the bank book and the hard drive and scooped the plane ticket stubs out of the drawer. At the last second he grabbed the sneaker too, and carried it under his arm as he ran downstairs, to the parking lot and his waiting car. After the second time his eyes were drawn to the shoe where it sat on the passenger seat, he made a frustrated sound and threw it in the back seat.
The heat had barely even kicked in when Neal whipped into a parking spot outside the Burkes' house and yanked up the complaining e-brake. No longer caring if Peter was home or if he was trespassing on Elle's hospitality, he took the front steps two at a time and tried the knob. It didn't turn, so he rang the bell. Twice, for good measure.
Footsteps on the stairs brought Elle to the door, looking wide awake despite the pajamas and bathrobe. "Neal," she said, and he was too keyed up to process the lack of curiosity in her tone.
He brushed right past her into the foyer, and then into the living room. "Where is he?" he demanded, whirling to face her. She opened her mouth and he cut her off quickly. "I'm sorry to barge in on-- you know what actually, I'm not sorry this time. This time I deserve some goddamn answers, Elle, and I'm not leaving here until your husband shows up to give them to me."
She closed her mouth and pointed to the kitchen table. Only one of the lamps over it was lit, but the dim glow was enough for Neal to make out the file sitting askew on one of the placemats.
"What's that?" he asked, monotone.
"Peter called about twenty minutes ago. He said you'd come-- said I should give you that when you did." Her voice was much less tender than the hand she laid on his arm. From in the kitchen, the kettle started whistling, and she squeezed his elbow, urging him to sit. "Just honey in your tea, right?"
Neal didn't want a cup of goddamn tea. He could recognize this plain as day-- this was good cop bad cop, this was both sides against the middle, and he didn't want to be anywhere near it. He wanted to take the file and go-- back to June's, where he could read it while he packed and figured out where he could run to that he'd never see Peter or Elizabeth or Kate ever again.
Instead he found himself sitting at the table without having made a conscious decision to do so. He laid a hand on top of the file, but didn't move until a hot mug appeared next to his elbow; Elle vanished, he heard her footsteps on the stairs, and he slid the file toward him.
A picture of Kate was stapled to the inside of the front cover, on top of a picture of her and Neal from before he went to prison.
The top page of the file's contents was a transcript of a phone conversation. Dated November 9th, 2008. A certified FBI wire tap had been placed on Peter's cell phone-- but this time, Neal was willing to bet Peter had been the one who put it there. It would've been worth it, Neal realized, having the FBI hear a few of his mundane conversations with Elle about what to bring home for dinner, if the upside was that something like this would end up in an evidence report.
"You've been on the FBI's list for six months," Peter had told Kate barely a year ago. "But you've been on mine for a lot longer. You've been putting your fingers where they shouldn't go, Kate. Didn't think you wanted to end up in prison like Neal." As Neal read, the panic threatened to come roaring up again, but he beat it grimly back, sucking in a tight breath through his teeth and forcing himself to let it out slow.
"Don't talk to me about Neal," she'd replied. Protective or dismissive? Hard to say. He flipped up the page, flattening his free hand against the table to keep it still. Behind the first page were more calls, more reports of stakeouts, more photos.
The story pieced itself together slowly, and mostly without Neal's participation. It was all he could do to sit still and keep breathing. Kate had spent one day a week visiting Neal the entire time he was inside-- the other six days, it seemed, she'd been busy. Trips overseas, trips to California, credit cards showing up in Cairo and Moscow; and more dubious stories, reports of stolen objects in Japan and Turkey, some of her known aliases turning up in Rio and Paris.
Whatever she was doing, she'd been doing a lot of it, and she hadn't so much as hinted to Neal that anything was going on. He finished the last page and turned them all back over to the beginning, no longer able to keep his fingers from trembling. He squeezed his eyes shut and ground the heels of his hands against his eyelids, trying to think of a way that this could make sense and not be as devastating as it seemed, to convince himself that she'd been in trouble, in danger, for longer than she'd let on.
But Peter hadn't been lying; he'd been keeping tabs on Kate for a long time. Neal suspected this file wasn't even all of it. "How long?" he murmured to himself.
"Long enough." Neal was on his feet in a split second, turned to see a silhouette that could only be Peter standing in the shadows of the kitchen doorway.
"Why?" he gritted out, harsh and demanding, stumbling backward to put the table between him and Peter.
"Why'd I start watching her or why'd I hide it from you?" Peter's voice was measured, almost careful. Trying to soothe him so he didn't spook, Neal thought, and almost laughed.
"Take your pick, Peter," he said. The words were sharp, nothing like their usual banter, but Neal could hardly register the change. Thoughts kept running through his head, panicked and fleeting, the need for answers warring with his body's adrenaline-fueled desire to run. He'd never been alone in a room with Peter and felt trapped before, and it was making him sick. There was too much to process-- too many questions, a simple answer hovering just out of reach-- Peter was here, which meant he wasn't the one with something to hide, not anymore. But Neal's mind rebelled-- if Kate had been hiding all of this from him-- he didn't want to think it, but it wouldn't leave his mind until he'd given it air to breathe-- how was he supposed to believe anything she'd told him about why she'd left?
He looked at Peter as he came further into the room, glad the table was between them, still choking on the urge to flee. Another step, and Peter's face passed out of shadow and into the dim gold light. Neal could see the tension, could read as easily as he always had, that Peter was just as strung tight with nerves as he was. He really was afraid Neal was going to spook; it was written all over him, and Neal didn't know what to think of Peter having his game face on, the face that said Run and I'll catch you. He didn't want that to calm him, to make him feel better-- but the next breath he took was steadier, and he already knew he had pulled back from the edge where he might've broken and run.
Peter ran a hand through his hair and then shoved both hands in his pockets. "You mean you haven't figured it out yourself?" He seemed curious and a little surprised, and Neal rolled his eyes, making an awkward little sound that was not a laugh, but something somewhat close to one.
"Yeah... I guess there's a reason you're the detective and I'm the consultant," he said. He didn't move-- except, finally, to reach out one hand and swivel the folder around so it was facing Peter's side of the table. "Wanna clue me in?" he asked, and when he pulled his hand back he put it in his pocket, shrugging his shoulders to ease some of the tension out of them.
The relief that crossed Peter's face was lightning-quick, and so keen Neal almost felt guilty for noticing. Peter closed the final step to the table and slid into a chair, pulling the file toward him without taking his eyes off Neal. "Wanna sit down so I don't put a crick in my neck?" he countered, sounding almost as sure of himself as usual.
Neal took a breath, and then another. He sat back down and reached for the mug of tea, wrapping both hands around it to still their shaking.
"Tell me," he said, and Peter did.
. on to part four.