Today (Parts 1-3)
Title: Today (Parts 1-3)
Author: nynine
Rating: gen
Fandom: White Collar
Characters: Peter Burke, Neal Caffrey, Elizabeth Burke, Kate Moreau
Spoilers: none
Word Count: 2000-plus (this section)
Summary: Peter Burke observes Neal Caffrey.
Disclaimers: White Collar and its characters are the property of Jeff Eastin and the USA Network. I do not intend any copyright infringement.
The dialog between Peter and Neal in Part 2 is taken directly from the television episode “Forging Bonds.” The portions of the song “Today” are lyrics written by Randy Sparks. You can find the lyrics at http://www.lyricstime.com/the-new-christy-minstrels-today-lyrics.html and perhaps download the song there. The New Christy Minstrels’ version of it is the best one, I think.
Today (Parts 1-3)
1. The Wedding
The first time Peter Burke saw the young man, he and his sweetheart were dancing.
Peter stood against a wall to the right of the refreshment tables and the bar, feeling old, tired, and bored. He knew none of these people. Attending the wedding and the festivities afterward was strictly El’s idea, and if Peter had known it would be such a posh affair, he would have found Bureau business that urgently required his attention this Saturday night. On the other hand, when El asked something of him as sweetly as she had requested him to accompany her here, it was hard to refuse.
The bride was one of El’s friends from college, the only daughter of rich parents. Peter had met El’s favorite roommate and several other of her college friends, and they were plain, ordinary people, just like him and El. Meeting them had not prepared him for this. They did not live in columned houses with grounds and an unsmiling gatekeeper. They did not require Special Agents of the FBI to hold up their walls.
He did not resent rich people, but because he didn’t circulate with them socially, he felt out of place. There wasn’t any beer, only champagne and punch.
He sighed and let his eyes wander across the room, over the heads of the dancers, until they unexpectedly fastened upon the striking couple, the young man and his partner, moving flawlessly around the floor.
Peter examined them more closely. The man-almost a boy-was dressed formally, his matte-black tux probably tailor-made for him. He moved easily, gracefully, and Peter realized that though he was slight, the boy was no wimp. He was one of the slender kind with the wiry muscles that could go and go and go, a runner, a swimmer probably.
Peter thought that the young man and his partner, an equally good dancer though not as inherently graceful, could have performed professionally. She was slender too, but she definitely had the right curves, placed and spaced to please. Her blue eyes were luminous as she and her partner smiled at each other. Their dark hair-almost black in this subdued lighting-caught highlights as they turned in the rhythm of the waltz. Peter watched their dance, and the first thing he knew he had fallen in love with the beauty of it.
He was startled when El pressed his arm. She handed him champagne.
“We ought to dance,” she said. “I love that song.”
He nodded. The simple tune was ending, though.
A million tomorrows shall all pass away
E’er I forget the joy that is mine
Today.
“Well, maybe later,” El said, finding a surface on which to park her drink. Applauding politely, she still kept an eagle eye on the proceedings. She was thinking of starting a catering business. Peter knew she was making mental notes on every detail of this affair.
As the couple Peter had been watching left the floor, the young man cast a casual glance at Peter. It was so strikingly direct in its casual indirectness that Peter drew a sharp breath. He was sure he turned pink, because Elisabeth brushed his arm and said “Hon?” and his face definitely felt hot. In his embarrassment he hurriedly took a gulp of champagne and almost choked.
Then the lights went out.
Predictably, there was rustling and a subdued babble of voices and one or two sharp inquiries. Some of the guests found lighters and flicked them. They did little good, soon grew too hot to hold, and were extinguished. Peter was sure that there had been candles burning on the tables earlier, but if so they had mysteriously gone out.
In the spirit of the Titanic, the musicians struck up another waltz and kept playing bravely for almost a minute, and then, apparently realizing that dancing in the dark was not practical in darkness as complete as this, trailed off.
Neither Peter nor El had a flashlight (who brings a flashlight to a wedding?), but uniformed men at last entered the room with powerful lanterns, and everyone seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Peter grinned. The host’s security men were a bit slow, but they delivered.
The lights came back on a few seconds later. Peter estimated that they had been off a little less than three minutes. Not knowing why he did it, he looked around for the beautiful dancers who seemed so much in love. They were gone.
The universe conspired against Peter that evening. It was well past midnight when, as Peter was driving them home, El was fiddling with the radio dial and chanced upon that song again.
Today while the blossoms still cling to the vine,
I’ll taste your strawberries, I’ll drink your sweet
wine.
A million tomorrows shall all pass away
E’er I forget all the joy that is mine
Today.
I’ll be a dandy, and I’ll be a rover,
You’ll know who I am by the song that I sing.
I’ll feast at your table, I’ll sleep in your clover,
Who cares what the morrow shall bring?
The chorus resumed, and El sighed happily, slipped off her tight shoes, wiggled her toes, and pressed herself against Peter’s arm, her eyelids drooping sleepily. “I’ll sleep in your clover any old time, Mr. Burke. I just wish you didn’t have to leave so early tomorrow.”
Peter nuzzled her hair. “I promise I’ll make up for it.”
“Ooh, tell me?”
“Like the song says, who knows what tomorrow will bring?”
“The morrow shall. I do like blueberry pancakes. So do you.” She giggled at him.
“I don’t think I’ll have time for breakfast.”
“Oh! Well all right then.”
He grinned.
El nipped his ear and paid other attentions to him, with the result that an alert traffic cop took an interest in the Taurus’s slightly erratic course for several blocks before giving up and going after livelier game. Peter temporarily forgot about the stranger and the song, and it was just as well that he did.
2. The Bank
One sunny day months later, Peter stood outside First Unity Bank, where he had been speaking to one of the bank’s officers about keeping an eye out for James Bonds’ artistically rendered forgeries. Though Peter suspected that Bonds was the scamp responsible for a great many white collar crimes, including some very fine art forgeries, the bonds were the first things that had really given the bureau a lead. They had also given the scamp his sobriquet.
The guy with the green sucker in his hand inserted himself into Peter’s space the second the bank official stepped away. Peter was slightly annoyed. He was aware that the good-looking young man had probably overheard what he had said about the bonds, and he had no time for FBI groupies or eager-beaver citizens who didn’t know their rear ends from random holes in the ground. Then he became aware that he was annoyed for a second, unrelated reason. He had seen this man before. He was sure he had, but he couldn’t remember where.
“Excuse me . . . I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but overhear. Are you with the FBI?”
“Special Agent Peter Burke.” He said it with patience he didn’t feel, and with dignity. He considered his a dignified position, after all. He was proud of what he did every day; he was proud of what he stood for.
“Wow. I just took some money out of the bank, and I heard you talking about counterfeiting.”
“Your money is safe. I’m after counterfeit bonds.”
“Well, I have some bonds at home. How would I know if they’re not real?”
“I’m sure they’re fine.”
“Well, thanks again for all your hard work, Agent Burke. That’s for you.” He handed Peter the green sucker, probably given to him by some cashier addled by the winsome charm he couldn’t seem to help broadcasting. “Have a good day.”
Peter looked after him with the feeling that somehow, subtly, he’d been had. Thanks again? The guy only thanked him once. And a sucker? A green sucker? Giving a sucker to a grown man someone just met was a put-down if there ever was one. Was the kid trying to tell him that he, Peter Burke, was a sucker? A green sucker? Well, he’d see about that. He frowned and crammed the sucker into his pocket. He didn’t forget about it.
It was only later, when he realized the young man was in fact James Bonds, aka Neal Caffrey, that Peter understood what Neal had intended by giving him the sucker. It wasn’t a put-down as much as it was a thrown gauntlet. Neal had met his Fed, and he wanted to announce himself. He wanted to play.
3. Enlightenment
When the Bureau got its first good drawing of James Bonds, Peter looked at it, groaned, and let his face fall into his open hands. Everything suddenly clicked in his head. It was the Beautiful Kid. The Green Sucker Pest. The Dancing-with-the-Stars Black Tuxedo Dandy-and-Rover in Love. Yeah, he had seen that kid more than once.
When photographs of Kate Moreau began to come across his desk, Peter saw that she was the woman who had been Neal’s partner at the wedding that night. At that time he’d barely registered the fact that they could have been brother and sister. Both had dark hair, blue eyes, beautifully formed faces, and fine figures. But she wasn’t his sister. No. No, she wasn’t.
Sitting at his desk in the White Collar offices, Peter wondered why it upset him a little that Neal Caffrey had a girl friend. Why shouldn’t he have a girl friend? Most single male criminals had at least one.
Then Peter remembered how he had felt watching Neal on the dance floor. He had completely forgotten about it. Once he remembered, however, he was quick to tell himself that it wasn’t like that.
No. It wasn’t like that. He wasn’t like that. What he felt that night was the same sort of awe he’d felt the first time he looked at a copy of the Pietà or read Wallace Stevens’ “Sunday Morning.” Every detail of Neal’s person and dress had seemed designed to capture and hold the eye as part of a significant whole; everything had fit together perfectly. The man had been a work of art.
Although Peter often pretended indifference toward the arts-it saved trouble and helped keep the peace-he could no more help loving a perfect thing than he could help breathing. He loved El, didn’t he?
He mustered his composure and tried to think. Had anything gone missing during the reception and dancing which followed that wedding? He hadn’t heard of it, or if he had he hadn’t made the connection. What was the name of the girl before she married? He couldn’t remember. Collins? Coussens? Something like that.
He pressed one on his speed dial and El answered.
“Hi, Hon, you busy?”
“Never too busy for you, ” she said. How’s your day?”
“Oh, fine, I guess. Yours?”
“Better if I were with you.”
“Soon.”
“Four hours, thirty-three minutes, and ten seconds,” she said, and he could hear the smile her voice conveyed.
He grinned. She had one of those clocks on her office desk that count down to things, and she had it set to count down each day to the time he usually returned home.
“Can I do anything for you at the moment?”
It made Peter weak-kneed. Dammit, she knew it would when she said it just that way. “Oh. Well. Uh, yeah, sure. Why I called. I need to the names of Stephanie’s parents. Your friend Stephanie. We went to her wedding.”
“I’m not likely to forget that night.” Peter smiled. “Her real dad is dead. The guy you met is her step-father. James and Sheba Kincaid. Why, do you have lead in the robbery?”
“Thanks, H-what robbery?”
There was a slight pause. “You’re kidding, right?”
Peter went rigid. “What do you mean?”
“Somebody stole all of Sheba’s jewelry that night! She had tons of it, really nice things, mainly inherited from her family. Whoever robbed them took the jewelry from a safe in her bedroom. Can you believe it?”
He could. “How come I didn’t know about this?”
El thought. “Well, that next week is when you had to be at those workshops in Virginia. And I guess I just forgot to tell you.”
“Oh. No problem, El.” He swallowed his pride. “Was the jewelry all that was taken?”
“Well, it would have been plenty, but, let me think, they also took three or four paintings and some other stuff. I don’t remember what it was.”
“Let me guess. The paintings were replaced by forgeries, and their thefts weren’t noticed until an appraiser examined the fakes.”
“I-think that’s right, yes! How did you know?”
Dammit, right in front of his nose. Peter drew a sigh from somewhere near the soles of his shoes. “Hon, I’m just that good.”
* * *
To Be Continued in Part 4
Author: nynine
Rating: gen
Fandom: White Collar
Characters: Peter Burke, Neal Caffrey, Elizabeth Burke, Kate Moreau
Spoilers: none
Word Count: 2000-plus (this section)
Summary: Peter Burke observes Neal Caffrey.
Disclaimers: White Collar and its characters are the property of Jeff Eastin and the USA Network. I do not intend any copyright infringement.
The dialog between Peter and Neal in Part 2 is taken directly from the television episode “Forging Bonds.” The portions of the song “Today” are lyrics written by Randy Sparks. You can find the lyrics at http://www.lyricstime.com/the-new-christy-minstrels-today-lyrics.html and perhaps download the song there. The New Christy Minstrels’ version of it is the best one, I think.
Today (Parts 1-3)
1. The Wedding
The first time Peter Burke saw the young man, he and his sweetheart were dancing.
Peter stood against a wall to the right of the refreshment tables and the bar, feeling old, tired, and bored. He knew none of these people. Attending the wedding and the festivities afterward was strictly El’s idea, and if Peter had known it would be such a posh affair, he would have found Bureau business that urgently required his attention this Saturday night. On the other hand, when El asked something of him as sweetly as she had requested him to accompany her here, it was hard to refuse.
The bride was one of El’s friends from college, the only daughter of rich parents. Peter had met El’s favorite roommate and several other of her college friends, and they were plain, ordinary people, just like him and El. Meeting them had not prepared him for this. They did not live in columned houses with grounds and an unsmiling gatekeeper. They did not require Special Agents of the FBI to hold up their walls.
He did not resent rich people, but because he didn’t circulate with them socially, he felt out of place. There wasn’t any beer, only champagne and punch.
He sighed and let his eyes wander across the room, over the heads of the dancers, until they unexpectedly fastened upon the striking couple, the young man and his partner, moving flawlessly around the floor.
Peter examined them more closely. The man-almost a boy-was dressed formally, his matte-black tux probably tailor-made for him. He moved easily, gracefully, and Peter realized that though he was slight, the boy was no wimp. He was one of the slender kind with the wiry muscles that could go and go and go, a runner, a swimmer probably.
Peter thought that the young man and his partner, an equally good dancer though not as inherently graceful, could have performed professionally. She was slender too, but she definitely had the right curves, placed and spaced to please. Her blue eyes were luminous as she and her partner smiled at each other. Their dark hair-almost black in this subdued lighting-caught highlights as they turned in the rhythm of the waltz. Peter watched their dance, and the first thing he knew he had fallen in love with the beauty of it.
He was startled when El pressed his arm. She handed him champagne.
“We ought to dance,” she said. “I love that song.”
He nodded. The simple tune was ending, though.
A million tomorrows shall all pass away
E’er I forget the joy that is mine
Today.
“Well, maybe later,” El said, finding a surface on which to park her drink. Applauding politely, she still kept an eagle eye on the proceedings. She was thinking of starting a catering business. Peter knew she was making mental notes on every detail of this affair.
As the couple Peter had been watching left the floor, the young man cast a casual glance at Peter. It was so strikingly direct in its casual indirectness that Peter drew a sharp breath. He was sure he turned pink, because Elisabeth brushed his arm and said “Hon?” and his face definitely felt hot. In his embarrassment he hurriedly took a gulp of champagne and almost choked.
Then the lights went out.
Predictably, there was rustling and a subdued babble of voices and one or two sharp inquiries. Some of the guests found lighters and flicked them. They did little good, soon grew too hot to hold, and were extinguished. Peter was sure that there had been candles burning on the tables earlier, but if so they had mysteriously gone out.
In the spirit of the Titanic, the musicians struck up another waltz and kept playing bravely for almost a minute, and then, apparently realizing that dancing in the dark was not practical in darkness as complete as this, trailed off.
Neither Peter nor El had a flashlight (who brings a flashlight to a wedding?), but uniformed men at last entered the room with powerful lanterns, and everyone seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Peter grinned. The host’s security men were a bit slow, but they delivered.
The lights came back on a few seconds later. Peter estimated that they had been off a little less than three minutes. Not knowing why he did it, he looked around for the beautiful dancers who seemed so much in love. They were gone.
The universe conspired against Peter that evening. It was well past midnight when, as Peter was driving them home, El was fiddling with the radio dial and chanced upon that song again.
Today while the blossoms still cling to the vine,
I’ll taste your strawberries, I’ll drink your sweet
wine.
A million tomorrows shall all pass away
E’er I forget all the joy that is mine
Today.
I’ll be a dandy, and I’ll be a rover,
You’ll know who I am by the song that I sing.
I’ll feast at your table, I’ll sleep in your clover,
Who cares what the morrow shall bring?
The chorus resumed, and El sighed happily, slipped off her tight shoes, wiggled her toes, and pressed herself against Peter’s arm, her eyelids drooping sleepily. “I’ll sleep in your clover any old time, Mr. Burke. I just wish you didn’t have to leave so early tomorrow.”
Peter nuzzled her hair. “I promise I’ll make up for it.”
“Ooh, tell me?”
“Like the song says, who knows what tomorrow will bring?”
“The morrow shall. I do like blueberry pancakes. So do you.” She giggled at him.
“I don’t think I’ll have time for breakfast.”
“Oh! Well all right then.”
He grinned.
El nipped his ear and paid other attentions to him, with the result that an alert traffic cop took an interest in the Taurus’s slightly erratic course for several blocks before giving up and going after livelier game. Peter temporarily forgot about the stranger and the song, and it was just as well that he did.
2. The Bank
One sunny day months later, Peter stood outside First Unity Bank, where he had been speaking to one of the bank’s officers about keeping an eye out for James Bonds’ artistically rendered forgeries. Though Peter suspected that Bonds was the scamp responsible for a great many white collar crimes, including some very fine art forgeries, the bonds were the first things that had really given the bureau a lead. They had also given the scamp his sobriquet.
The guy with the green sucker in his hand inserted himself into Peter’s space the second the bank official stepped away. Peter was slightly annoyed. He was aware that the good-looking young man had probably overheard what he had said about the bonds, and he had no time for FBI groupies or eager-beaver citizens who didn’t know their rear ends from random holes in the ground. Then he became aware that he was annoyed for a second, unrelated reason. He had seen this man before. He was sure he had, but he couldn’t remember where.
“Excuse me . . . I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but overhear. Are you with the FBI?”
“Special Agent Peter Burke.” He said it with patience he didn’t feel, and with dignity. He considered his a dignified position, after all. He was proud of what he did every day; he was proud of what he stood for.
“Wow. I just took some money out of the bank, and I heard you talking about counterfeiting.”
“Your money is safe. I’m after counterfeit bonds.”
“Well, I have some bonds at home. How would I know if they’re not real?”
“I’m sure they’re fine.”
“Well, thanks again for all your hard work, Agent Burke. That’s for you.” He handed Peter the green sucker, probably given to him by some cashier addled by the winsome charm he couldn’t seem to help broadcasting. “Have a good day.”
Peter looked after him with the feeling that somehow, subtly, he’d been had. Thanks again? The guy only thanked him once. And a sucker? A green sucker? Giving a sucker to a grown man someone just met was a put-down if there ever was one. Was the kid trying to tell him that he, Peter Burke, was a sucker? A green sucker? Well, he’d see about that. He frowned and crammed the sucker into his pocket. He didn’t forget about it.
It was only later, when he realized the young man was in fact James Bonds, aka Neal Caffrey, that Peter understood what Neal had intended by giving him the sucker. It wasn’t a put-down as much as it was a thrown gauntlet. Neal had met his Fed, and he wanted to announce himself. He wanted to play.
3. Enlightenment
When the Bureau got its first good drawing of James Bonds, Peter looked at it, groaned, and let his face fall into his open hands. Everything suddenly clicked in his head. It was the Beautiful Kid. The Green Sucker Pest. The Dancing-with-the-Stars Black Tuxedo Dandy-and-Rover in Love. Yeah, he had seen that kid more than once.
When photographs of Kate Moreau began to come across his desk, Peter saw that she was the woman who had been Neal’s partner at the wedding that night. At that time he’d barely registered the fact that they could have been brother and sister. Both had dark hair, blue eyes, beautifully formed faces, and fine figures. But she wasn’t his sister. No. No, she wasn’t.
Sitting at his desk in the White Collar offices, Peter wondered why it upset him a little that Neal Caffrey had a girl friend. Why shouldn’t he have a girl friend? Most single male criminals had at least one.
Then Peter remembered how he had felt watching Neal on the dance floor. He had completely forgotten about it. Once he remembered, however, he was quick to tell himself that it wasn’t like that.
No. It wasn’t like that. He wasn’t like that. What he felt that night was the same sort of awe he’d felt the first time he looked at a copy of the Pietà or read Wallace Stevens’ “Sunday Morning.” Every detail of Neal’s person and dress had seemed designed to capture and hold the eye as part of a significant whole; everything had fit together perfectly. The man had been a work of art.
Although Peter often pretended indifference toward the arts-it saved trouble and helped keep the peace-he could no more help loving a perfect thing than he could help breathing. He loved El, didn’t he?
He mustered his composure and tried to think. Had anything gone missing during the reception and dancing which followed that wedding? He hadn’t heard of it, or if he had he hadn’t made the connection. What was the name of the girl before she married? He couldn’t remember. Collins? Coussens? Something like that.
He pressed one on his speed dial and El answered.
“Hi, Hon, you busy?”
“Never too busy for you, ” she said. How’s your day?”
“Oh, fine, I guess. Yours?”
“Better if I were with you.”
“Soon.”
“Four hours, thirty-three minutes, and ten seconds,” she said, and he could hear the smile her voice conveyed.
He grinned. She had one of those clocks on her office desk that count down to things, and she had it set to count down each day to the time he usually returned home.
“Can I do anything for you at the moment?”
It made Peter weak-kneed. Dammit, she knew it would when she said it just that way. “Oh. Well. Uh, yeah, sure. Why I called. I need to the names of Stephanie’s parents. Your friend Stephanie. We went to her wedding.”
“I’m not likely to forget that night.” Peter smiled. “Her real dad is dead. The guy you met is her step-father. James and Sheba Kincaid. Why, do you have lead in the robbery?”
“Thanks, H-what robbery?”
There was a slight pause. “You’re kidding, right?”
Peter went rigid. “What do you mean?”
“Somebody stole all of Sheba’s jewelry that night! She had tons of it, really nice things, mainly inherited from her family. Whoever robbed them took the jewelry from a safe in her bedroom. Can you believe it?”
He could. “How come I didn’t know about this?”
El thought. “Well, that next week is when you had to be at those workshops in Virginia. And I guess I just forgot to tell you.”
“Oh. No problem, El.” He swallowed his pride. “Was the jewelry all that was taken?”
“Well, it would have been plenty, but, let me think, they also took three or four paintings and some other stuff. I don’t remember what it was.”
“Let me guess. The paintings were replaced by forgeries, and their thefts weren’t noticed until an appraiser examined the fakes.”
“I-think that’s right, yes! How did you know?”
Dammit, right in front of his nose. Peter drew a sigh from somewhere near the soles of his shoes. “Hon, I’m just that good.”
* * *
To Be Continued in Part 4