WC Fic: I Can’t Go Back to Yesterday (I Was a Different Person Then), Part 1/2
Title: I Can’t Go Back to Yesterday (I Was a Different Person Then)
Rating: R for language
Characters/Pairings: Tim DeKay, Neal Caffrey, Elizabeth Burke, OFC; Gen
Spoilers: Mentions canon events up to and including Season 4
Content Notice: NOT RPF, I swear; crack; h/c; casefic; friendship; humor. Also, this probably qualifies as parody. Also-also, this does nothing to dispel certain national stereotypes. Sorry, Canada.
Word Count: 20,500
Disclaimer: Don’t own, don’t profit.
Beta: miri_thompson and my Canadian Connection, ivorysilk
Artist: aragarna
Summary: What happens when TDK gets whomped over the head and wakes up in White Collar Land? A self-love story.
A/N: Follow-up to Stranger in a Strange Land, but it is not at all necessary to have read that. This is set in some amorphous early-Season 4 timeframe.
This story features a fictionalized version of Tim DeKay; other than mentioning his wife’s name and the fact he has two children, I have taken pains not to really go into many of the details of his life that aren’t available on Wikipedia. I have done this on purpose, so don’t feel you must inform me he didn’t really work in a machinist’s shop in college or whatever. Also, what I know about television production I have picked up from watching making-of documentaries on DVDs, so it is bound to be inaccurate. I do not apologize, and there’s no real reason to set me straight. I own my mistakes.
The story’s title is a line from “Alice in Wonderland,” by Lewis Carroll. This story fills the “unconsciousness” square of my HC Bingo card
----
“OK, Tim, you got that? This time, you’re going to pause at the top of the stairs before you give Neal the stinkeye and then come on down towards his desk.”
Tim DeKay looked up from his notes; he was going over all the blocking for the brief scene he was about to shoot. It was a single tracking shot of Peter rising from his desk, moving down the office stairs and across the bullpen to stand at Neal's desk for an exchange of dialogue, which had already been shot. Since this scene was being shot in a single take using a boom-mounted camera, precise timing between Tim and the camera operator was going to be the key to pulling it off. They’d done two run-throughs successfully and now only had to commit the scene to film.
“Got it, Russ.”
His friend and sometime White Collar episode director Russell Lee Fine smiled kindly. “Last shot of the day for you, and I swear we’ll get you on that plane back home to LA on time, OK?”
Tim smiled back appreciatively - his son was graduating from middle school in the morning, and there was no way in hell he was going to miss it.
“OK, take your mark when you’re ready. Clear the set!”
Standing still for a last second wardrobe straightening, Tim took up his position behind Peter Burke’s desk and centered himself. It took him a moment to get into the emotional space he would need - anger, a touch of exasperation - and, having achieved it, he waited for the set to clear and the director to call,
“Action!”
Face stony, Tim rose abruptly - too abruptly, apparently, because the desk chair flew back and away, crashed into the rear wall and ricocheted back at him.
“Cut!” Russell called and the scene was reset.
“Action!”
Face stony, Tim rose abruptly, subtly controlling the chair’s trajectory with his leg, and moved purposefully away from the desk. He was through the office door in two strides, barking out, “Neal!” as he strode to the top of the stairs.
“Cut!” Russell called. “Tim, you were supposed to pause before saying the line.”
Tim groaned in frustration at his misstep. What the hell was wrong with him today? “Sorry, sorry, everyone.”
“Action!”
Face stony, Tim rose abruptly, controlling the chair with his leg, and moved purposefully away from the desk. He was through the office door in two strides, paused for a beat and to breathe out forcefully through his nose, then barked out, “Matt!” and moved forward.
He was to the top of the stairs before he’d realized his flub.
“Tim?” Matt drawled, grinning up at him from his position sitting at Neal's desk, and twirling a pencil.
Marsha and Sharif laughed as Tim gave a frustrated, “Grrrr,” and, backbone going loose as he stopped halfway down the stairs, turned around and dragged himself back to his mark in the office.
“Action!”
Face stony, Tim got up, strode through the door, remembered to look extra imposing when he paused, then yelled, “Neal!” as angrily as he could muster. He noticed that Matt practically jumped in his chair and was secretly pleased with the effect his voice had had on his co-star. He had just hit the top of the stairs when a POP and a flash overhead made him jump. Looking up, he saw a small lick of flame coming out of one of the overhead lights, and the thing was dangling from its rigging directly over where he was standing. Caught mid-stride, he scrambled to try to stop, but lost his footing.
Tim felt his stomach drop as he realized his right foot was coming down where there was no stair. Scrabbling for the railing, he felt his shoulder wrenched as he spun around 180 degrees, but his grip failed and he fell down the stairs on his back, head first. With a sickening THUD, his head hit the floor - the thin layer of carpeting on the concrete floor of the soundstage providing no cushion whatsoever.
“Tim!” someone shouted.
Tim lay there, his legs still on the stairs, wondering how the hell he’d gotten to be on the floor.
“Tim?” he heard a voice call to him, felt a hand on his shoulder. He couldn’t make out whose face was hovering above him from all the lights shining behind their head, but he figured it was probably Marsha or one of the PAs.
“Call an ambulance! No one move him, don’t even touch him!” Tim could hear Matt yelling.
“Ow,” Tim managed to say before everything went a little grey and also a little sideways.
“Mr. DeKay?” another voice said to him, and suddenly there was another light in his eyes, but this one was like a pinpoint, and it seared into his skull viciously.
“Stop that,” he said and then blacked out once more. When he came to again, he felt like he was moving, and there were sirens. Was he in an ambulance? The light around him was strangely diffuse and everything was blurred.
“You’ll be OK, boss,” a voice said, and a hand on his knee steadied him, made the panic subside a little bit. He was trying to open his eyes to see who it was when he passed out again.
When next he woke, he was strangely aware that some time had passed. He was lying in a hospital bed, propped up in a semi-seated position. The lights were very dim, which was a relief, because his head was absolutely splitting.
“Oh, thank god you’re finally awake,” a female voice said.
Tim turned his head to the left. “El…” Elisa, he was about to say - the name of his wife; if she had flown all the way across the country, he must have been hurt pretty badly. But it was not she sitting beside him; instead it was…
“Tiff?”
His co-star Tiffani Thiessen moved towards him, trying to blink back the tears in her eyes and failing miserably. Her small hands fluttered around his arm and shoulder, straightening out his hospital gown's sleeve needlessly. “Tiff? No, Hon, we haven’t had a fight. Don’t you remember? You had an accident at work, at the FBI.”
He blinked at her, not quite understanding her words. “At the -“
She nodded and dashed away the tears that had fallen down her cheeks with her fingers. “Look at me, I’m ridiculous! But when I got the call you’d been hurt -“ Her chin began to quiver as more tears fell, and Tim could see from here that she was trembling.
“Hey, it’s OK,” he said as reassuringly as he could, instinctively holding out an arm to her. She tucked herself into him and sobbed a little into his shoulder and, he noticed with dismay, her trembling worsened. “I’m OK,” he pointed out, patting her on the back lightly and wondering why she was getting this emotional. Sure, they were close friends and even had dinner a few times a year when they were home in LA during hiatus, but surely she shouldn’t be this upset. Unless…
“Hey, I’m not dying or anything, am I?” he asked, suddenly concerned.
She sniffled and stood back from him. “You’re dying?” she asked, face on the verge of utter collapse.
“I don’t know - what do the doctors say?”
“Not that you’re dying, that’s for sure!” she said, slightly hysterical. “They just said you had a Grade 3 concussion and theywantedtokeepyouovernightandtheyneededmoretestsOHMYGOD!” Her voice was hitting dolphin-like levels of shrillness, and Tim winced.
“They said nothing,” he said firmly. “I haven’t even really been awake until now, have I?”
“I suppose not,” she said, sniffling some more. “I don’t like getting those calls, hon, I really don’t.”
“Well, thanks for coming down,” he said, meaning it, but she gave him a look.
They were interrupted as a doctor whose name tag said, “Dr. S. O’Shaughnessy,” entered the room. “Oh, Mr. Burke, it’s good to see you awake and aware,” he said in a lilting Indian accent that made Tim look between his face and his nametag several times, confused.
The Indian man with the Irish name performed some tests on Tim, who was so very confused - was he really so identified with the character he played on a USA Network show that his doctor couldn’t get his name right?
“OK, just follow the tip of my pen with your eyes… good. Now then, do you have any pain?”
“My skull feels like it’s splitting open,” Tim said. Tiffani made a moue of distress.
“How about your vision, any blurriness?”
“Not really.”
“Good. Any halos or bright lights - perception changes?”
“I suppose if I had any changes in my perception, I might not know it, would I?” he said, feeling like a smartass but not really knowing what else to say.
O’Shaughnessy smiled blandly. “All right, Mr. Burke, everything seems to be normal, but we’ll still want to keep you overnight for observation. I’ll just talk to the nurse about getting you some pain meds, all right? I’ll be by in the morning to see how you are doing. Have a good night.” With a smile, the doctor was gone, and Tim stared after him.
“Why does he keep calling me that? Mr. Burke?”
“Well, Hon, you can’t expect everyone to be calling you ‘Agent Burke’ all the time, come on. It’s not like it’s a title like ‘doctor’.”
He looked at her sideways. “Just what is wrong with everyone around here?” he asked finally. He was so damn confused - why was everyone acting as if he was the character he played on television, including the woman who played his wife?
“Aw, I know you’ve had a blow to the head, but let’s leave the ego at the door, huh?” She leaned into him and kissed him rather soulfully on the mouth. Tim blinked at her in astonishment. “I’m off to get some coffee - can I get you anything? Water? Juice?”
He looked at her as if she had sprouted an extra head. Shrugging, she left him alone for the time being.
Tim watched her go then glanced around the room, looking for his cell phone so he could call Elisa - she was probably worried sick, and there was no way he’d make his son’s graduation now. He was disappointed to the point of wanting to cry. All he wanted to do was hear his family’s voices.
He slid over to the side of the bed and looked through the nightstand - no phone there. He got to his feet and swayed dangerously - he was dizzy, but he had to find his phone, had to contact his family and let them know he was all right. When he felt steady on his feet, he crossed to the small wardrobe that stood in the corner of the hospital room. He had just located his pants when a voice behind him stopped him in his tracks.
“Peter Burke, just what the hell do you think you’re doing out of bed?”
He turned around - too fast, because another bout of dizziness overtook him - to find Tiffani standing in the doorway. He swayed on his feet again and she rushed forward, her surprisingly strong hands grasping onto his arm and pulling him toward the bed. He was glad to have her with him, because by the time he made it to the bed, he nearly fell onto it.
“Christ,” he muttered miserably, eyes screwed shut to combat the spins.
“You got that right, mister,” she said angrily. “You’ve had a nasty blow to the head, you need to rest, and you need to stay in bed. God, you are worse than Neal when you’re sick!”
Tim was feeling too sick and weak to give her words much attention for several seconds, but his brain did eventually catch up. “Neal?” he asked.
“He’s worried sick, you know,” she said. “He thought you were dead, I think, just for a second there. Poor thing. And this hospital’s outside his radius, so unfortunately he can’t come by tonight.”
“That’s… too bad,” Tim said, mainly to get her to stop talking. Where was the nurse with those extra pain meds?
His discomfort must have been evident on his face, because she stopped talking and began to fuss over him again, pressing kisses to his face the intimacy of which was altogether more disturbing than any of this surreal experience.
At long last, the nurse came in with the medication. The pills kicked in within fifteen minutes, and he was soon drifting off to sleep.
“You need your rest,” Tiffani said to him. “I am going to head home, Hon.” She kissed him yet again. “I’ll see you in the morning?”
“Sure,” he slurred before passing out for the last time that day.
----
The next day dawned bright and sunny, but Tim was still confused. The name tag on his hospital wrist band read, “Peter Burke,” and, when he’d finally gotten to his pants, so did all of the identification in his wallet. He managed to locate his jacket as well, with his damn cell phone in the pocket, which he frowned at as he scrolled through the contact database. Names like “Neal” and “Diana” and “El’s Mom” stared up at him like they belonged there. Where was his wife’s number? His own parents’? His agent, goddamn it?
An orderly brought him his breakfast at 7:00 am and he asked where he was. “Bellevue Hospital,” the man said, shaking his head as if he wasn’t asked that every day. He probably wasn’t.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Tim muttered. Why was he in Manhattan instead of a hospital near Silvercup Studios in Queens? Why would they take him here and not the hospital nearest the studio? So much of this was adding up to something that didn’t really add up, and if his head didn’t already hurt, he knew it would be anyway. Either he was embroiled in some sort of elaborate hoax - one he wouldn’t put past Willie or Eastin - but would Tiffani take part? It was that or else he was seriously more brain-damaged than they had led him to believe.
His musings were cut off by the arrival of Tiffani, yet again, at around 9:00. She went on a bit about having to postpone some meetings in the city, but it was OK because he was her husband and she needed to take care of him, and really, she was a terrific actress, but there was such a thing as taking a role too far. He’d never known her to be this Method before, not in the four years they had been working together, not even once.
He took a deep breath - even his thoughts were babbling.
By late morning, Dr. O’Shaughnessy had come by yet again and told him he could be taken home by his wife.
“You know, we’re not really married,” Tim said to him, trying and failing to keep the condescension from his voice. “We just play husband and wife.”
The doctor smiled indulgently. “Don’t you worry, Mr. Burke. There is no judging here - you don’t have to explain your lifestyle choices to me. I have a wife and two girlfriends,” he said conspiratorially before taking his leave.
Too exasperated with everyone’s bizarre behavior to put up much more of a fight, Tim gave it up and let the nurses bully him into a wheelchair, then waited curbside as Tiffani went to get the car. But when she showed up in the freaking sponsor-placed Ford Taurus, he thought that might be the last damn straw.
“Just what the hell is going on here?” he said sharply, rising from the wheelchair so abruptly his head spun, but ignoring it.
“I am taking you home,” Tiffani said in a steely tone. He realized she was looking at him with a hard glint in her eyes. “And if you object to my using your car, then you should have thought through using mine as a decoy in that case out in the Hamptons last week. The dealer still hasn’t gotten the fish smell out of the upholstery, you know.”
“Wh-what?!”
“And while we’re at it, Agent Burke, I think it’s high time you act just a little bit appreciatively today. I know you’re hurting, but you’ve been a huge asshole ever since yesterday. And if you don’t want to have to take a cab home, I suggest you rein it in a little, mister.”
Tim had to admit she looked kind of scary in her four inch heels with her hands on her hips, glaring at him, so he shut his mouth and got in the car. He stared broodingly out of the window as she drove through midday traffic, lost in thought, and barely registered that they were heading for the Brooklyn Bridge and not uptown toward his place on the Upper West Side. When they pulled up in front of the familiar house on DeKalb in Brooklyn, he blinked up at the façade, open-mouthed, and wondered when, exactly, this practical joke was going to play itself out.
He fumbled with the plastic shopping bag with his personal effects that the hospital had given him and stood on the sidewalk staring up at the house as Tiffani pulled keys out of her purse and headed for the front door.
“Something wrong?” she asked, and the slightly annoyed, passive face she wore morphed into a worried one. “Can you make it up the steps? Oh, Hon!” She swept down the stairs and took him by the arm, supporting him as he mounted the stairs.
He resisted as well as he could - wouldn’t the Wangs be home? Wasn’t it bad enough that tourists came to gawk at their home since it was featured on a national TV show, and here they were barging in? He was about to say something to that effect when he stepped through the vestibule and into the living room.
Of course it was different from the real house, whose front room was slightly smaller than this one, which was what made him gape. There was more light here than the original house as well and, as he wandered inside, he saw that the kitchen, which had been a tiny utilitarian thing in the real house, had been built out and remodeled - exactly as the one had been on set.
Tim’s eyes boggled as he moved slowly through the house. Yes, it was the set for the Burke home he had become so familiar with - and yet not. The furnishings were much more solid and better-finished since they weren’t parts of a set. Gone, too, were the dings that marred the furniture from being moved and repaired constantly. The place smelled different - homey, with flowers and undertones of old cooking smells like garlic and herbs. And -
“Woof!” came a low snuffling bark of a sound as a yellow Labrador rose from a dog bed near the back door and ambled over to investigate. Tiffani ignored him, but Tim reached down to greet him - he briefly wondered which of the three dogs they typically used to play Satchmo it could be since they all looked alike to him - but when the dog neared him, its head snapped up and he growled.
“Oh!” Tim said, standing up abruptly and pulling his hand away.
“Satchmo!” Tiffani admonished the dog, giving it the stinkeye. Satchmo whined to be held under such scrutiny and avoided her cold stare. Silently, she pointed to the doggie bed and the beast retreated to it, lying down with a complaining whine and a grumble.
“Sorry, Hon, but you know, he’s getting old.”
“I probably smell like the hospital,” Tim said lamely.
She smiled. “You should sit down. Do you want something to eat?”
“Sounds great.” He noticed that she’d taken a lot of stuff from the fridge - which appeared to be filled with actual fresh food and not the past-due horrors it was typically filled with; you only made the mistake of pouring that milk into your coffee once! In the last three minutes she was a fair way towards concocting what looked like a formidable omelet and his stomach growled.
She made him sit at the dining table and they began to eat, she prattling on about the business of running an event management company, and he wondering just when she’d had the time to do all that research, being a working mom and all. By the time they were halfway done with the meal, he’d given it up, and his head had begun to throb painfully, and felt like it was splitting open.
Tiffani seemed to notice. “Oh, Hon, you look so pale. We should get you to bed,” she said, and led him to the stairs.
The bedroom was as he remembered it the last time they’d shot a scene there (complete with the fireplace on the wrong wall given the construction of the place), and the inviting blue bedding that was a lot softer than he remembered. He stripped down to his undershirt and shorts and climbed under the covers, wondering which side he was supposed to take; a pair of reading glasses and the latest James Patterson thriller on one of the nightstands clued him into which side must be “Peter’s,” and he sank down into the fluffy pillows with a groan. Lying on his back, he saw the antique ceiling light hanging just above - not the light rigging he’d have expected to see instead - complete with a very thin strand of a cobweb bobbing gently in the air currents in the room.
“Poor thing,” Tiffani said, sitting right beside him and rearranging his hair to her liking. The gesture was so intimate, so loving, and just so wrong he literally didn’t know how to react, so he just lay there. “Get some rest, Peter,” she said.
“I will.”
She leaned forward to kiss him on the tip of his nose then left, shutting the door quietly behind her.
----
When he woke hours later, the traffic sounds outside lulled him into believing he was in his apartment in Manhattan for just a few seconds - until he opened his eyes. Sitting up in the bed, he looked around the alien-yet-familiar room and yawned. Pushing the comforter off of himself, he got up and decided to explore. The closet was packed with women’s clothes, but one of the dressers in the room clearly belonged to a man. There was a worn-out-looking T-shirt from his own alma mater, LeMoyne, that the wardrobe people had let him use once. Picking it up, he noticed it smelled freshly-laundered. Further exploration of the upstairs showed that most of Peter’s clothes - his suits, jeans, sweaters and such - were in a closet in the guest room across the hall from the master bedroom. He chose a comfy-looking pair of jeans and a soft, cranberry-colored, cotton sweater, saw that they were his size, and pulled them on. Heading up the stairs to the third floor - he’d never been up this far when they’d filmed the Pilot episode - he found an additional guest bedroom that clearly pulled double-duty as a man cave, and a home office.
The man cave was an interesting space. On one wall was a futon that would convert into a Queen-sized bed; perpendicular to this was a very expensive and comfortable-looking Barcalounger-type thing in hand-tooled leather with a perfect view of the rather high-end media center set up along the opposite wall. Another wall was taken up by shelving on which a variety of memorabilia both personal and collectible was to be found, including a few diplomas, some family photos of himself at various ages posing with people he’d never met, the famed ten-year FBI service pin set in a pinky ring he always thought was butt-ugly, and a few baseballs that had been signed by various Yankees, from Mickey Mantle to Don Mattingly to David Cone. There was an old desk beside it with a well-worn chair and he decided to take a seat and explore.
The desk was old and battered - clearly some sort of family relic that had been handed down and actually used. There was an old-fashioned blotter on the top of it, inside of which was shoved a variety of letters and bills; the file drawers were stuffed with personal papers like tax returns and the detritus of home ownership - old mortgage statements and insurance premium notices and the like. Each one was addressed to Peter and Elizabeth Burke. An older model personal computer was stowed beneath the desk, and when Tim fired it up he found a browsing history filled with personal and professional searches - everything from coin forgery to restaurant reviews. The email account was a similarly detailed glimpse into the life of a man Tim embodied but clearly did not know; he opened an unviewed email from an uptown art gallery at random and read through it quickly:
Dear Mr. Burke,
I’m happy to let you know that the space you are interested in for your function is, in fact, available on the 19th of September, and you can call me with a credit card number to secure the reservation. I’m sure your wife will be thrilled with her birthday surprise - I’ve attached a few menus from some of the better caterers we’ve worked with for your information.
Best,
John Witherspoon
Sales Director
Tim shut down the pc and sat back in the chair - if this was a practical joke, someone had gone to an awful lot of trouble, and if it was a hallucination or a dream, it had a lot more texture and reality to it than any he’d experienced before. As crazy as it seemed to him, he found himself now in a place where Peter Burke was real, a place where this man’s life and deeds affected others and had made a real impact.
Hell, maybe he was Peter and had been all along, and Tim DeKay was the dream, the fantasy character, as ridiculous as it seemed to him. At any rate, if he was going to be here, living this man’s life and walking in his shoes, then he’d better at least play along.
He wandered back down the stairs to the second floor and ran into Tiffani - no, her name was Elizabeth - coming up from the first.
“Thought I heard you puttering around up here,” she remarked. “Everything OK?”
“Yeah, I - was catching up on my life,” he said, lamely adding, “you know, email and things.”
“Oh? I guess you’re feeling better after your nap?” He nodded. “Well, come on down and have some dinner. I picked up some steaks from the market.”
“Steak?” he asked, brightening; was it his favorite here, too?
“Don’t get too used to it, Mister, it’s only because you were hurt,” she chided, and preceded him down the stairs.
Dinner was delicious - Elizabeth was a much better cook than he ever remembered Tiffani being on the occasions he’d been a guest in her home - and he helped her clear the table while listening to her vent about a problematic client. She made him sit in the living room afterwards with a cup of herbal tea (no alcohol or caffeine with a head injury) and he flipped through the channels half-heartedly, looking for something interesting. He settled on a rerun of CSI:Miami when he realized it wasn’t the episode he’d done a guest shot on.
Elizabeth joined him minutes later, taking the remote from him when he offered it, and they passed another couple of hours watching nothing particularly interesting. Soon she was yawning loudly. “Gosh, I think I’m going to go to bed, Hon. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
He made sympathetic, apologetic noises as she pushed herself off her end of the couch. She leaned over and kissed him. “You coming?”
Tim froze, then attempted to cover by squeezing her hand lightly. “Nah, I’m not really tired yet - that nap took care of that.”
She shrugged and smiled, then toddled on up the stairs. Tim breathed a sigh of relief to see her go; while she was pleasant company and he genuinely liked her, she was not Elisa, not his wife who he loved, and he couldn’t really share a bed with her, not even just to sleep.
He fell asleep on the couch watching Letterman and woke with a crick in his neck.
----
Tim sat in the living room with the blinds drawn and the TV’s sound turned down low, not-watching a morning talk show that was not exactly, not quite The View. Not-Barbara Walters was interviewing someone that wasn’t at all like Tommy Lee Jones about a movie he was co-starring in with a person that didn’t at all resemble Diane Keaton. His head was thankfully less tender and pained today, with less throbbing and overall agony, but he still felt off, and the bright sunlight filtering through the front windows was giving him a migraine.
He roused himself when there was a knock at the front door. “Ma-Neal!” he stuttered when he’d opened it.
“Hey, buddy! We missed you at the office.”
“I’m on sick leave.” Tim stepped aside and let his friend in; how strange it was going to be to interact with “Neal” and not Matt - would he be all that different?
“You’ve been out for two days.”
“I’ve had a brain injury,” Tim pointed out.
Neal just looked perplexed, then shrugged as he held up a shopping bag. “I brought lunch.”
Lunch was delicious baguette sandwiches with German potato salad and Tim reflected that these people certainly ate well enough. “This is really good,” he commented. “Thanks for bringing it by - it was really generous of you. I mean, you must be on a pretty fixed income, right?”
Neal’s brows furrowed. “I am. Thanks for noticing.”
“And I mean, you came all the way to Brooklyn, and in the middle of the day, too. Traffic must’ve been murder. Did you take a cab?”
“A friend dropped me here,” Neal answered slowly.
“Well, I really am grateful.” Tim shoveled a forkful of salad into his mouth and smiled appreciatively.
“I’m a thoughtful guy. You feeling OK?”
“Still get kinda woozy, but the doc said that’d be normal for another day or two. I don’t think I’ve ever slept this much in my life, either.”
“I’m sure it’s all very restorative.”
“Listen to me talking all about myself - how are you? Gosh, I’m sorry if what happened the other day was scary for you - Elizabeth said the hospital was outside your radius, and you were worried.”
“Well, it was kind of hard to see you that way, Peter. And in the middle of this big case and all…”
Of course, Tim thought, there would naturally be a case-of-the-week. “Sure. The case.”
“Because the Secret Service agents have been running roughshod over everyone, taking over your office, the conference room. It’s driving everyone nuts.”
“Yes. That’s. Unfortunate.” Tim said blandly, wracking his brain for past scripts and plotlines from the series - he couldn’t remember one case, really, where the Secret Service had been that heavily involved. “But you know, they’ve got a job to do, too. So.”
Neal put his sandwich down and stared at him, his blue eyes suddenly shrewd and calculating. Tim felt like the other man was looking right into his soul; he shifted uneasily in his seat and struggled not to look away.
“Tim?” Neal said a full minute later.
Shocked, Tim looked at him with his mouth hanging open for several seconds before he found his voice. “Matt?”
The other man shook his head. “Nuh-uh. Neal. But… shit, don’t tell me this is happening again? Not now, not this week.”
“What do you mean, ‘again’? This has happened to me before?” Tim suddenly felt light-headed.
“Not to you - to me,” Neal said, leaning forward and peering into his face. “Hey, calm down, you look too pale.” He picked up a section of the New York Times that sat nearby and started fanning Tim with it.
“You suddenly found yourself living inside the fictional world of the television character you portray?”
“No, the opposite - I woke up on a set that looked exactly like my apartment.”
“Really? When?”
“I dunno, there was an episode where I was supposed to shoot you with a sniper rifle?”
Tim noticed that Neal was extremely uncomfortable. “I remember that day - you got sick and wound up in New Jersey or something - we had to delay shooting for three days. That was you and not Matt? You coulda fooled me.”
“I guess I’m a better actor than I thought.”
“Guess I’m a worse one. How’d you know I wasn’t Peter?” Tim was disappointed in himself - if anyone ought to be able to nail a Peter Burke characterization, it ought to be him.
“Nothing you did or anything,” Neal replied, clearly backpedalling.
“Come on, I can take it,” Tim said in a surly tone he suspected made it sound like he couldn’t.
“You were too nice to me. And appreciative. Peter’s… not, usually.”
“Oh,” Tim said, brows furrowed. “Nice to hear I take you for granted.”
“Not you! Peter!”
“Oh.”
“And he doesn’t, not really! It’s just - he’s a lot more gruff. Or something. I should shut up now.”
“Great, my character’s a total douche bag.”
“He’s not! He’s my best friend!”
They looked at each other for a beat and then Tim picked up his fork again.
“So… the case?” Neal said.
“What about it?”
“We still need to work it.”
“You need to work it. I need to try to figure out a way to get back home.”
“Don’t be that way.”
“What ‘way’? I’m not an FBI agent, Neal.”
“But you play one on TV.”
“Hardy-har-har. I’m serious - what I know about law enforcement I learned guesting on Law & Order and CSI. You don’t want me anywhere near that office, believe me.”
“But it’s a really interesting case. Counterfeit currency - you know you love it.”
Tim raised an eyebrow. “I know nothing. What else?”
Neal gave him an innocent look. “Nothing.”
“There’s an angle here - you need something else.”
“You’re more like him than you think,” Neal muttered.
“I have eyes, Neal. Spill.”
“Fine. Those Secret Service agents are assholes and they hate me and treat me like a second class citizen.”
“That’s supposed to convince me.”
Neal frowned, as if he was thinking something over. “Fine. Peter needs to be there, Tim. I don’t have to tell you how much being seen to be successful means to a man’s career - you’re an actor, you get that, right?” Tim nodded. “Well, after the whole Cape Verde debacle, Peter really needs a box ticked in the win column. This case could be it - it’s big, a real career highlight.”
Tim squirmed - of course he appreciated how much a moment like this would mean to Peter; he thanked god and his agent every single day that he could be a working actor and make his living doing what he loved so much. “Fine. I’ll go to the office tomorrow morning.”
Neal beamed.
----
Tim got a later start than he wanted to the next morning, having fallen asleep too late on the couch again. Elizabeth woke him with a kiss and a mug of coffee, which he drank too quickly when she made to kiss him again and burnt his mouth. Kissing her still felt like cheating, and while he saw a hurt expression pass fleetingly across her face, he didn’t know what else to do.
He blearily made himself trudge up the stairs for a shower and a shave before getting dressed. He frowned at the contents of Peter’s closet - the suits really were abysmally ill-fitted, and he found himself missing the Hugo Boss ones he was typically given, the ones tailored to his build that fit him like a glove. At least the shoes were comfortable and worn-in.
He contemplated taking the subway, but then thought better of it since he might need the car later. Surprisingly, there was no traffic on his way, and no commercials on the radio when he found a station he liked, and he got a parking spot right next to the elevators when he arrived at Federal Plaza. He wondered if it was always like this here.
Neal was already sitting at his desk when Tim arrived, and he rose with a smile and followed him to his office like an eager puppy. “What?” Tim asked.
“Nothing - I’m just happy you made it.”
Tim gave him a look and surveyed Peter’s office. Where normally it was tidy and orderly, today there were files and papers strewn all over the small meeting table in the corner. “What’s all that?” he asked.
Neal groaned. “Agent Braxton from Secret Service,” he said ruefully. “I told you I didn’t like her, and her lack of tidiness is the least of it. Want me to have a probie get it all out of here?”
“Well, I mean, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience anyone,” Tim said.
Neal gave him a look. “You want me to have a probie get it all out of here, trust me on this.”
“OK, fine.” Tim reasoned the less exposure to other agents while he was adjusting to being Peter Burke the better. When all of the materials had been boxed up and dumped on an unused desk in the bullpen, Tim sat down at the meeting table with Neal across from him and took a deep breath. “Tell me about the script - I mean, the case.”
“Well, it’s a pretty ingenious thing, really, I wish I’d thought of it.” Neal looked at Tim with the ghost of a smile on his face, then looked disappointed when Tim didn’t pick up the bait he’d just laid down. “Anyway, these guys are counterfeiters and they’ve been amassing large quantities of one dollar bills.”
“What for?”
“They’ve been bleaching them.”
Tim was confused. “Why would they bleach money? I mean, I’ve left some in my tennis shorts when they’ve gone through the wash, but -“
“So they have the right kind of paper.”
“But then they’ll be useless.”
“Not if you print on them, they’re not.”
“What would you print on them?” Neal looked at him, slightly amazed, and Tim felt a bit defensive. “Not a law enforcement professional here, Neal!” he felt compelled to remind him
Neal spoke slowly. “If they have an old plate for, say, a hundred dollar bill…”
He looked at Tim hopefully.
“And the right kind of ink…”
Tim’s face remained blank.
Neal rolled his eyes and sighed. “They could print hundred dollar bills on top of the paper they have, Tim, and no one would be the wiser. The paper would be legit, the dates old enough so that the modern security measures won’t be in place, and they’ll be very rich people.”
“Really? People would do that?”
“You are adorable,” Neal deadpanned.
Tim scowled. “Gimme a break, huh? I only just got here. So what’s our involvement?”
“To catch them?”
“You’re going to have to stop being sassy. Plus, I’d have thought that counterfeiting of US currency would fall under a different agency’s jurisdiction.”
Neal smiled. “A good point - you are learning. Counterfeiting money does, in fact, fall under the jurisdiction of the United States Secret Service, which is why the odious Agent Braxton has been darkening our door. She brought the case to us, but since the suspects may be looking for someone to help them with the finer points of the operation, and they appear to be operating in New York, they came to the best person to infiltrate the bad guys’ organization.”
Tim looked at him, a curious expression on his face.
“Me! They need me to go in undercover. Jeez, you sure you’re at all familiar with the central premise of our work here?”
“Sometimes I wonder. But what’s our ‘in’? It’s not like Neal Caffrey was a world class counterfeiter on top of everything else.” Neal's eyes slid to the side. “Is Neal Caffrey a world class counterfeiter on top of everything else?”
“Well, no, but Steve Tabernacle is.”
“Isn’t that convenient.” When Neal made a yeah, well, face, Tim went on, “You are well-rounded. I mean, I always thought it was a little too good to be true, but you forge paintings, bonds, whiskey…”
“Who told you about the whiskey?”
Tim continued, ignoring him, “You’re an accomplished con man and bank robber, and, oh yeah, you fence competitively in your spare time. Now you’re telling me you can counterfeit US currency. When do you take the time to actually sleep?”
“I usually sculpt shirtless to relax. Anyway, Steve’s specialty isn’t the plates, it’s the inks.”
“Naturally.”
They were interrupted by a small commotion in the bullpen. Looking up, Tim saw a petite brunette in a power suit standing beside the desk where Neal had moved all the files from Peter’s office, hands on her hips and tapping a Manolo Blahniked foot on the floor.
“Ugh, the dreaded Agent Braxton,” Neal said, looking genuinely discomfited.
Tim watched as she glared up in the direction of his office and headed for the stairs, teetering precipitously on her five inch heels. “Just what is the meaning of the relocation of my files to that desk, Caffrey?” she asked in a posh British accent as soon as she arrived. They both stood as she entered the room.
“They were taking up room in Agent Burke’s office,” Neal pointed out.
Her large, hazel eyes flashed at him. From this close, she couldn’t have been older than 23; Tim was reminded of his pre-teen daughter. “You think I give a fig? I need somewhere to work, and this was the only acceptable spot,” she said arrogantly.
“Except it’s someone else’s office,” Neal pointed out. “And there’s a bunch of desks available in the bullpen, which you are very welcome to use.”
“The day I take orders from a convict will be the day I die.”
“Tell me how you really feel,” Neal practically sneered.
She stepped into his personal space, about to say something, when Tim cleared his throat.
“Where I come from, it’s common courtesy to respect your hosts,” he pointed out dryly.
She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time and took a step back, composing her expression with obvious effort. “I’m sorry, we haven’t been properly introduced. Amanda Braxton, Assistant SAIC in the Financial Investigation Division at Secret Service. And you are?”
Tim pushed his chest out, freeing up his diaphragm - an old trick he learned in grad school that he knew would make his voice deeper and more resonant. “Special Agent in Charge Peter Burke. I kinda run the place.”
She blinked at him, her eyes going wide. “What a pleasure to finally meet you, Agent Burke,” she said, mustering as much charm as she could, which seemed to be a struggle for her. “Your staff have been - almost accommodating,” she said as she gave Neal the stinkeye.
“They’ve got important jobs to do, Agent.”
“Well, let’s hope catching a violent gang of counterfeiters can be fit in, hmm? There’s a meeting to discuss tactics at 10:00, I do hope you will be able to make it? I understand you’ve been under the weather.”
“But I’m fine now. I mean, what’s a little traumatic brain injury between friends?” Tim said lightly, taking an instant dislike to Agent Braxton; it was like she was drawn from some sort of misogynist’s cookbook of clichés.
“Smashing,” she said. “See you in the conference room in an hour, then.” She turned on her heel - and looked like she’d come unbalanced for a brief second there - then left the room.
“Wow, you didn’t lie about her being unpleasant,” Tim said to Neal.
“I wonder if she’d melt if we threw water on her.”
“Be nice,” Tim admonished. “Now what was that about these guys being violent?”
Neal waved his hand dismissively. “Meh, they may have committed a murder or six down in Miami.”
Tim’s eyes boggled. “Neal! We can’t send you in undercover if you’ll be in danger. Think of the liability! It’s not like you’ve trained for this!”
Neal looked confused. “I do this all the time.”
“Yeah, but, I mean, Diana and Jones and the others - they’ve been through years of on the job training, right? Plus, they’re armed, and they earn hazard pay if they go under cover. What do you get? Does the FBI even provide health insurance?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? How can they employ you and not offer basic benefits? This is a travesty, Neal, honestly.”
“Well, thanks for caring, Tim, but I really - it’s all OK.”
“Is it?” Tim asked, and Neal's face fell - clearly these were things he hadn’t considered.
Tim felt compelled to fill the uncomfortable silence that ensued. “So I guess you need to fill me in on the players in this case, Neal. Wouldn’t want Agent Braxton to have a reason to bad mouth us.”
“No, we would not,” Neal replied, clearly relieved to be on more solid ground. They sat down at the table again and Neal gave him the run down.
----
“So who are we going to meet with again?” Tim asked, hurrying to keep up with Neal, who led him on a shortcut through Central Park at a pretty decent clip; he realized that since there were no cameras to keep track of them as they walked and talked, going as slow as he and Matt usually did wouldn’t have made much sense. He marveled at the pace Neal set.
“Mozzie’s friend, Jimmy Chin. If anyone’s heard about these guys being in town, it’s him. There are only so many guys that can do what he does.” Jimmy owed Neal a favor and Neal hoped he’d be able to persuade him to provide the information they needed.
“Oh? Is he some kind of underworld kingpin?”
Neal gave him a look. “What? No, he’s one of the few guys who still works on the old school presses. Most of them are like, forty, fifty years old, so they take a lot of care. Jimmy - he doesn’t ask too many questions and he works fast.”
“You sure do know a lot about it.”
Neal shrugged. “I get around.”
Tim was going to ask him to explain when his attention was caught by a soccer game going on in a playing field adjacent to the path they were walking. He slowed his pace as he saw the players were young girls. The goalie, a little slip of a girl who couldn’t have been older than nine, was throwing herself after the ball with the kind of abandon that reminded him of his own daughter’s approach to playing the game. His heart clenched in his chest, and not in a pleasant way.
“Hey, come on, we’re gonna be late,” Neal said, having doubled back when Tim completely stopped to watch the girls play.
“Yeah. OK,” Tim said, but made no movement.
“What is it?” Neal asked.
“It’s nothing, I - I was supposed to be at home right now, In L.A.”
Neal looked at the children and then back at Tim and was able to put two and two together. “You’ve got kids?”
Tim nodded. “A boy and a girl. I miss them so much when I’m working and now - am I ever going to make it home?”
“You will, you have to believe that,” Neal said, squeezing his arm. “But we really should be going, because Jimmy closes up shop at 3:00.”
----
“Jimmy!” Neal greeted the unassuming, late-middle aged Chinese-American man warmly as they entered his machinist’s shop.
Tim looked avidly around at the equipment and took in a deep breath, savoring the aroma of metal and grease - he’d worked in a tool-and-die shop in college and itched to get his hands dirty.
“Neal - Moz said you might stop by,” Jimmy said, and eyed Tim cautiously.
“This is my partner, Peter Burke,” Neal said, and Tim was surprised he hadn’t tried to manufacture some sort of alias for him.
“The FBI guy, huh?” Jimmy said, eyeing Tim.
“Something like that,” Tim replied.
“This’d better be good, Neal.”
Neal shrugged. “More like a public service. We’re looking into this new boodle ring that just hit town. You hear anything?”
Tim noticed that the friendly smile had left Jimmy’s face. “Nope. Nothing.”
Neal raised his eyebrows. “Come on, Jimmy, you’ve got the world’s worst poker face; now I know you know something.”
“What if I do?”
“Well, if you do, then you can tell me all about it, maybe introduce me around - that’s how this works,” Neal said reasonably. “Besides, if you do, then maybe there’s a box of Cohibas in it for your trouble and inconvenience.”
Tim thought he could see Jimmy’s resolve falter, but then his eyes turned steely. “No, I can’t - these guys are dangerous, Neal.”
“I know, that’s why we want to get them off the street. Come on, Jimmy - I’ll throw in a bottle of McCann whiskey.”
“Neal, bribing me will get you nowhere - these are bad guys.” He looked around fearfully as if just thinking about it was bad enough.
“Jeez, it sounds bad,” Tim said. “Who are we talking about here, the Russian Mob? Yakuza?”
Jimmy dropped his voice to a whisper, “Worse, man: Canadians.”
“Canadians?! Shit,” Neal said, forming his right hand into a fist that he rapped against the counter. “Well, that complicates matters considerably. Thanks anyways, Jimmy,” he said and moved to collect Tim to leave.
“Hey, Neal?” Jimmy called as they reached the door. Neal turned around. “If I told you where these guys like to hang out, would that help?”
Tim was surprised at the unease on Neal's face as he turned back to face Jimmy - it was as if he now wanted him to come up with nothing now. “It might,” he said reluctantly
“There’s this after hours joint down in the Village - The Beach - you know it?”
Neal's shoulders slumped as he closed his eyes. “Yeah.”
“That’s where you’ll find them most nights.”
“Thanks, Jimmy - look for those cigars in a week or so.”
“Sure thing, Neal. Thanks!”
Neal took Tim’s arm and led him out of the shop and down the street. “So what’s our next move?” Tim asked.
“We report in and -“ Neal stopped suddenly and punch at the air with his fists. “OH GODDAMMIT!! I guess I’m going down to Little Toronto tonight. God!”
Tim stopped walking, shocked at Neal’s tantrum. “We’re talking about Canadians here, right? Canadian Canadians?”
Neal looked at him like he was thick-headed. “Yes, Tim. Of all the factions in the criminal underworld, the Canadians are the last ones you want to piss off.”
“Or they’ll do what? Feed you butter tarts? Polite you to death?”
“I’m pretty sure ‘polite’ isn’t a verb.”
“I know, but I mean, Canadians?!”
“Shhh!! Not so loud! Now come on, we need to get back to the office so we can make a plan.”
----
Tim and Neal arrived back at the FBI before 4:30 and called the “Harvard Crew” plus two of Agent Braxton’s subordinates together in the conference room for a debriefing. Braxton herself was nowhere to be found. But Neal's announcement about the purpose and urgency of the meeting met with only silent agreement, and no one objected to continuing without her. Tim decided to defer to Neal's judgment on this one.
The room fell into stunned silence when Neal broke the news about the identity of their perpetrators.
“So what are we going to do next?” Tim wondered aloud, earning a bit of a glare from Neal. “I mean, er, suggestions? On what we do next?” He looked at the two agents from Secret Service. “We’re very collaborative here at the White Collar division.” They stared back at him blankly.
“As you were suggesting earlier, Peter, I guess it’s another night in the van for you guys while i go down to Little Toronto and try to make friends,” Neal said.
“Probably the best option - good thinking, boss,” Jones agreed. “I’ll get started on the warrant for the wiretap.”
“I’ll call down to tech services for the equipment,” Diana added.
“I guess I’ll see if Mozzie’s turned anything up,” Neal suggested.
“We’ll reconvene here at 9:00 and then head out,” Tim said, and was relieved when everyone seemed to think that was an adequate decision.
The meeting broke up soon after, and Tim walked through the adjoining door into Peter’s office, realizing he ought to call Elizabeth and tell her he wouldn’t be home for dinner. He got no answer and left her a voice mail.
“Agent Burke?” He looked up to see Agent Braxton standing in the doorway.
“I got a tip from one my own CIs - we think we’ve uncovered a potential link to our counterfeit ring.”
“Really?” Tim said, momentarily relieved - maybe they wouldn’t have to go out in the van that night; he didn’t want to think how he’d handle a situation where he would have to command these Federal agents.
“We’ve got the suspect in an interrogation room - I thought you’d like to do the honors.”
“Interrogate the, uh, suspect?” Tim asked, suddenly breathless.
Agent Braxton didn’t seem to have noticed his dismay, luckily. “Of course - your interrogation techniques are famous, Agent Burke - even across agencies.”
Tim glanced at Neal, who had been hanging just inside the doorway from the conference room, and tried not to panic.
“And rightfully so,” Neal piped up. “Just wait’ll you see him in action - it’ll give you chills.” She beamed at Tim. “We’ll be right down, if you don’t mind - I have just one thing to discuss with Agent Burke first.”
She scowled at Neal’s impertinence, but left readily enough.
“What the hell, Neal - I can’t interrogate some suspect!” Tim suspected he was whining, but he didn’t much care.
“Sure you can. Come on, if I remember correctly, events in this reality are pretty much reflected in yours.”
“They are?”
“More or less,” Neal replied with a wave of a hand. “And I’ve seen Peter interrogate a suspect before - hell, I’ve been on the receiving end of it more than once. Don’t you remember any of those scenes?”
“Well, sure, but I mean, it’s all written beforehand, and we rehearse it, and the other guy - he’s an actor too. I can’t do this, Neal, I won’t.”
“You have to do this - for Peter, remember, Tim?” Tim shook his head, not willing to go through with it, and not willing to give the reason why, either. Neal pulled out his smartphone. “Besides, I’ll help you through it - just keep your phone handy and I’ll text you tips if you need any.”
Tim didn’t think it would work, but he didn’t know that he had much of a choice, and let Neal lead him from the office and down the hall to the interrogation suite.
----
Tim entered the room where their suspect - a kid of no more than 18 whose name was McKutcheon - sat at a small, rectangular table around which were arranged four chairs. Like the set back in his reality, this room was inconveniently glass-walled, so anyone could watch what he was doing if they walked by. Neal, along with Diana and Agent Braxton, was standing in a nearby room, watching over the CCTV feed, even if Tim couldn’t see them.
He took a deep breath and wished he’d thought to bring a glass of water with him - his mouth was suddenly dry.
McKutcheon looked up at him warily. Tim slowly removed his watch - he’d seen Dennis Franz do it once on NYPD Blue and it seemed cool at the time - and laid it deliberately at the edge of the table, then set his phone down beside it. He rolled up his shirt sleeves, slowly. McKutcheon licked his own lips, clearly unnerved. Tim picked up a chair and turned it around, intending to straddle it manfully. Unfortunately, it was a wheeled conference room-style chair, bottom-heavy and too wide, so he instead pushed it to the other side of the room and sat himself down in another chair on the adjacent side of the table. This put him, essentially, right next to the suspect, which seemed a bit chummier than an interrogation ought to have been. He hoped it was playing as menace.
He glared at McKutcheon. And squinted his eyes - he thought he looked really calculating when he squinted his eyes. “You have something to tell me?” he asked at last.
“Uh, no?”
“A little birdie tells me otherwise.”
“That birdie’s wrong.”
“You know we’ve got enough on you to convict, don’t you?”
“Like what?”
“Like, um, charges. Of criminal acts.” Damn it, he’d forgotten to ask Braxton exactly why they’d brought the guy in here. Luckily, his cell phone vibrated lightly from an incoming text. Tim wanted to lunge for it to read what Neal had sent him, but needed to keep it cool. He stood abruptly and walked around the room behind McKutcheon, pausing at the far end of the table where the phone was. He glanced down at it quickly.
Tell him you’ll go easier on him if he talks.
“Listen, I’m prepared to go easier on you if you’ll just talk.”
“Uh-uh - no way. I’m no rat.”
“Well, that’s -“
The phone buzzed again.
Tell him you’ll put it out there he talked anyway, then you’ll cut him loose.
Shocked, Tim looked up at the camera mounted on the ceiling in the corner.
Do it!
Tim swallowed. “Doesn’t mean your boss won’t think you’re a rat.”
“What are you saying, Fed?”
“I think you know what I’m saying.”
“No, I really, really don’t.”
Tim put a hand on his hip and explained reasonably, “I’m saying that if you don’t tell me what I need to know, I’ll let all your criminal friends out there think that you talked anyway. Then, when I let you out of here, you’ll be in certain danger of retaliation at their hands. QED.”
“That’s extremely not cool.”
“Yes, well, I’m sorry, but crime doesn’t pay. Also: stay in school.”
The phone buzzed again, but Tim didn’t dare look at it, instead sticking with his dramatic choice to stare the kid down. He was about to think it had been a poor one - his eyes were drying out - when McKutcheon looked away and his shoulders slumped.
“Fine, I’ll talk.”
Tim suspected he failed at hiding his surprise. “You will? I mean, you will!”
After that, McKutcheon gave up not only the name of the head of the counterfeiters - some guy named Roger Campbell - he helpfully wrote down addresses of known haunts for the man and drew an org chart of the parts of their organization he knew about.
Once they were done, Tim left the room feeling slightly proud of himself; Agent Braxton beamed with appreciation at him, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet - it was a big break in the case - and Diana even gave him a thumbs-up. His euphoria was short-lived, however; when he caught Neal’s eye, the conman was glaring at him. Then Tim remembered he hadn’t read Neal’s last text to him, so he glanced down at his phone.
We clearly have some work to do it said.
----
“Peter lessons?!” Tim protested. They had a break for about the next three hours before they’d have to send Neal in to try to set up a meeting with Campbell. Neal insisted they pick up some dinner and head to his place.
“Yes. Peter lessons. You, my friend, are in need of remedial education. STAT.”
“Awww come on! Didn’t I get McKutcheon to spill his guts?”
“I got McKutcheon to spill his guts! Listen, so far we’ve been able to keep your hands off of this -“
“Not from where I’m standing,” Tim interrupted.
“But still, do you really think the real Peter Burke would sit back and let me?”
“Why wouldn’t he? You’re doing really well.”
Neal’s face softened momentarily and he smiled shyly. “Thanks for saying that - it helps to have the validation, you know? But still, we need you to be on point - I’m not always going to be able to cover for you.”
He handed Tim the bag of Chinese takeout and pulled out his keys, letting them both into June’s mansion. Once inside, Tim whistled low as he took in the opulence of the place. Of course, he’d been here before - when they’d shot the pilot, they’d used the actual Schinasi Mansion, and then again when they’d filmed another episode - but it had been over a year since he’d been here, and it always took his breath away. He followed Neal up the stairs to his third floor apartment and took a moment to admire the view - the real one, not the scenery reproduced on the soundstage at Silvercup.
“Wow,” he said as he set the food down. A moment later, Neal handed him a beer and he sat down and began to unpack their dinner.
“So what’s our first lesson?” Tim asked some time later, once he’d downed half his beer along with his eggroll, and felt somewhat resigned to the idea.
“Attitude. Stand up.”
Tim dropped his chopsticks and stood, along with Neal.
“Give me your best ‘dammit, Neal!’ expression.”
Tim scowled at him.
Neal stared at him appraisingly. “That’s a start, but try to look less constipated.”
“Neal!”
“What? You do this for a living - embody this character.”
“I’m not all that Method, honestly. They give me words to say and I say them.”
“But you say them with conviction, don’t you? Isn’t there some inner well of truth you have to pull from or some such bullshit?”
Tim felt his face color - this was no longer a helpful exercise, and they were heading into difficult territory. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” he muttered and turned away from Neal.
“What? Why?”
“I don’t want to talk about this - about my process.” He said “process” like he was inserting air quotes around the word. Suddenly, his shoulders and neck were very tense. This conversation was forcing him to examine insecurities he didn’t want to consider too closely.
“I get it - you don’t think you’re a good enough actor for this,” Neal said sympathetically, and Tim winced.
“I’ve always sucked at improv,” Tim said quietly. “But if I’m honest with myself, I’m just not tough enough to be him. I’m sorry, Neal, I don’t know if I make a very good Peter Burke anymore, or if I ever did at all.”
Tim turned toward the door and left.
Part 2
Rating: R for language
Characters/Pairings: Tim DeKay, Neal Caffrey, Elizabeth Burke, OFC; Gen
Spoilers: Mentions canon events up to and including Season 4
Content Notice: NOT RPF, I swear; crack; h/c; casefic; friendship; humor. Also, this probably qualifies as parody. Also-also, this does nothing to dispel certain national stereotypes. Sorry, Canada.
Word Count: 20,500
Disclaimer: Don’t own, don’t profit.
Beta: miri_thompson and my Canadian Connection, ivorysilk
Artist: aragarna
Summary: What happens when TDK gets whomped over the head and wakes up in White Collar Land? A self-love story.
A/N: Follow-up to Stranger in a Strange Land, but it is not at all necessary to have read that. This is set in some amorphous early-Season 4 timeframe.
This story features a fictionalized version of Tim DeKay; other than mentioning his wife’s name and the fact he has two children, I have taken pains not to really go into many of the details of his life that aren’t available on Wikipedia. I have done this on purpose, so don’t feel you must inform me he didn’t really work in a machinist’s shop in college or whatever. Also, what I know about television production I have picked up from watching making-of documentaries on DVDs, so it is bound to be inaccurate. I do not apologize, and there’s no real reason to set me straight. I own my mistakes.
The story’s title is a line from “Alice in Wonderland,” by Lewis Carroll. This story fills the “unconsciousness” square of my HC Bingo card
----
“OK, Tim, you got that? This time, you’re going to pause at the top of the stairs before you give Neal the stinkeye and then come on down towards his desk.”
Tim DeKay looked up from his notes; he was going over all the blocking for the brief scene he was about to shoot. It was a single tracking shot of Peter rising from his desk, moving down the office stairs and across the bullpen to stand at Neal's desk for an exchange of dialogue, which had already been shot. Since this scene was being shot in a single take using a boom-mounted camera, precise timing between Tim and the camera operator was going to be the key to pulling it off. They’d done two run-throughs successfully and now only had to commit the scene to film.
“Got it, Russ.”
His friend and sometime White Collar episode director Russell Lee Fine smiled kindly. “Last shot of the day for you, and I swear we’ll get you on that plane back home to LA on time, OK?”
Tim smiled back appreciatively - his son was graduating from middle school in the morning, and there was no way in hell he was going to miss it.
“OK, take your mark when you’re ready. Clear the set!”
Standing still for a last second wardrobe straightening, Tim took up his position behind Peter Burke’s desk and centered himself. It took him a moment to get into the emotional space he would need - anger, a touch of exasperation - and, having achieved it, he waited for the set to clear and the director to call,
“Action!”
Face stony, Tim rose abruptly - too abruptly, apparently, because the desk chair flew back and away, crashed into the rear wall and ricocheted back at him.
“Cut!” Russell called and the scene was reset.
“Action!”
Face stony, Tim rose abruptly, subtly controlling the chair’s trajectory with his leg, and moved purposefully away from the desk. He was through the office door in two strides, barking out, “Neal!” as he strode to the top of the stairs.
“Cut!” Russell called. “Tim, you were supposed to pause before saying the line.”
Tim groaned in frustration at his misstep. What the hell was wrong with him today? “Sorry, sorry, everyone.”
“Action!”
Face stony, Tim rose abruptly, controlling the chair with his leg, and moved purposefully away from the desk. He was through the office door in two strides, paused for a beat and to breathe out forcefully through his nose, then barked out, “Matt!” and moved forward.
He was to the top of the stairs before he’d realized his flub.
“Tim?” Matt drawled, grinning up at him from his position sitting at Neal's desk, and twirling a pencil.
Marsha and Sharif laughed as Tim gave a frustrated, “Grrrr,” and, backbone going loose as he stopped halfway down the stairs, turned around and dragged himself back to his mark in the office.
“Action!”
Face stony, Tim got up, strode through the door, remembered to look extra imposing when he paused, then yelled, “Neal!” as angrily as he could muster. He noticed that Matt practically jumped in his chair and was secretly pleased with the effect his voice had had on his co-star. He had just hit the top of the stairs when a POP and a flash overhead made him jump. Looking up, he saw a small lick of flame coming out of one of the overhead lights, and the thing was dangling from its rigging directly over where he was standing. Caught mid-stride, he scrambled to try to stop, but lost his footing.
Tim felt his stomach drop as he realized his right foot was coming down where there was no stair. Scrabbling for the railing, he felt his shoulder wrenched as he spun around 180 degrees, but his grip failed and he fell down the stairs on his back, head first. With a sickening THUD, his head hit the floor - the thin layer of carpeting on the concrete floor of the soundstage providing no cushion whatsoever.
“Tim!” someone shouted.
Tim lay there, his legs still on the stairs, wondering how the hell he’d gotten to be on the floor.
“Tim?” he heard a voice call to him, felt a hand on his shoulder. He couldn’t make out whose face was hovering above him from all the lights shining behind their head, but he figured it was probably Marsha or one of the PAs.
“Call an ambulance! No one move him, don’t even touch him!” Tim could hear Matt yelling.
“Ow,” Tim managed to say before everything went a little grey and also a little sideways.
“Mr. DeKay?” another voice said to him, and suddenly there was another light in his eyes, but this one was like a pinpoint, and it seared into his skull viciously.
“Stop that,” he said and then blacked out once more. When he came to again, he felt like he was moving, and there were sirens. Was he in an ambulance? The light around him was strangely diffuse and everything was blurred.
“You’ll be OK, boss,” a voice said, and a hand on his knee steadied him, made the panic subside a little bit. He was trying to open his eyes to see who it was when he passed out again.
When next he woke, he was strangely aware that some time had passed. He was lying in a hospital bed, propped up in a semi-seated position. The lights were very dim, which was a relief, because his head was absolutely splitting.
“Oh, thank god you’re finally awake,” a female voice said.
Tim turned his head to the left. “El…” Elisa, he was about to say - the name of his wife; if she had flown all the way across the country, he must have been hurt pretty badly. But it was not she sitting beside him; instead it was…
“Tiff?”
His co-star Tiffani Thiessen moved towards him, trying to blink back the tears in her eyes and failing miserably. Her small hands fluttered around his arm and shoulder, straightening out his hospital gown's sleeve needlessly. “Tiff? No, Hon, we haven’t had a fight. Don’t you remember? You had an accident at work, at the FBI.”
He blinked at her, not quite understanding her words. “At the -“
She nodded and dashed away the tears that had fallen down her cheeks with her fingers. “Look at me, I’m ridiculous! But when I got the call you’d been hurt -“ Her chin began to quiver as more tears fell, and Tim could see from here that she was trembling.
“Hey, it’s OK,” he said as reassuringly as he could, instinctively holding out an arm to her. She tucked herself into him and sobbed a little into his shoulder and, he noticed with dismay, her trembling worsened. “I’m OK,” he pointed out, patting her on the back lightly and wondering why she was getting this emotional. Sure, they were close friends and even had dinner a few times a year when they were home in LA during hiatus, but surely she shouldn’t be this upset. Unless…
“Hey, I’m not dying or anything, am I?” he asked, suddenly concerned.
She sniffled and stood back from him. “You’re dying?” she asked, face on the verge of utter collapse.
“I don’t know - what do the doctors say?”
“Not that you’re dying, that’s for sure!” she said, slightly hysterical. “They just said you had a Grade 3 concussion and theywantedtokeepyouovernightandtheyneededmoretestsOHMYGOD!” Her voice was hitting dolphin-like levels of shrillness, and Tim winced.
“They said nothing,” he said firmly. “I haven’t even really been awake until now, have I?”
“I suppose not,” she said, sniffling some more. “I don’t like getting those calls, hon, I really don’t.”
“Well, thanks for coming down,” he said, meaning it, but she gave him a look.
They were interrupted as a doctor whose name tag said, “Dr. S. O’Shaughnessy,” entered the room. “Oh, Mr. Burke, it’s good to see you awake and aware,” he said in a lilting Indian accent that made Tim look between his face and his nametag several times, confused.
The Indian man with the Irish name performed some tests on Tim, who was so very confused - was he really so identified with the character he played on a USA Network show that his doctor couldn’t get his name right?
“OK, just follow the tip of my pen with your eyes… good. Now then, do you have any pain?”
“My skull feels like it’s splitting open,” Tim said. Tiffani made a moue of distress.
“How about your vision, any blurriness?”
“Not really.”
“Good. Any halos or bright lights - perception changes?”
“I suppose if I had any changes in my perception, I might not know it, would I?” he said, feeling like a smartass but not really knowing what else to say.
O’Shaughnessy smiled blandly. “All right, Mr. Burke, everything seems to be normal, but we’ll still want to keep you overnight for observation. I’ll just talk to the nurse about getting you some pain meds, all right? I’ll be by in the morning to see how you are doing. Have a good night.” With a smile, the doctor was gone, and Tim stared after him.
“Why does he keep calling me that? Mr. Burke?”
“Well, Hon, you can’t expect everyone to be calling you ‘Agent Burke’ all the time, come on. It’s not like it’s a title like ‘doctor’.”
He looked at her sideways. “Just what is wrong with everyone around here?” he asked finally. He was so damn confused - why was everyone acting as if he was the character he played on television, including the woman who played his wife?
“Aw, I know you’ve had a blow to the head, but let’s leave the ego at the door, huh?” She leaned into him and kissed him rather soulfully on the mouth. Tim blinked at her in astonishment. “I’m off to get some coffee - can I get you anything? Water? Juice?”
He looked at her as if she had sprouted an extra head. Shrugging, she left him alone for the time being.
Tim watched her go then glanced around the room, looking for his cell phone so he could call Elisa - she was probably worried sick, and there was no way he’d make his son’s graduation now. He was disappointed to the point of wanting to cry. All he wanted to do was hear his family’s voices.
He slid over to the side of the bed and looked through the nightstand - no phone there. He got to his feet and swayed dangerously - he was dizzy, but he had to find his phone, had to contact his family and let them know he was all right. When he felt steady on his feet, he crossed to the small wardrobe that stood in the corner of the hospital room. He had just located his pants when a voice behind him stopped him in his tracks.
“Peter Burke, just what the hell do you think you’re doing out of bed?”
He turned around - too fast, because another bout of dizziness overtook him - to find Tiffani standing in the doorway. He swayed on his feet again and she rushed forward, her surprisingly strong hands grasping onto his arm and pulling him toward the bed. He was glad to have her with him, because by the time he made it to the bed, he nearly fell onto it.
“Christ,” he muttered miserably, eyes screwed shut to combat the spins.
“You got that right, mister,” she said angrily. “You’ve had a nasty blow to the head, you need to rest, and you need to stay in bed. God, you are worse than Neal when you’re sick!”
Tim was feeling too sick and weak to give her words much attention for several seconds, but his brain did eventually catch up. “Neal?” he asked.
“He’s worried sick, you know,” she said. “He thought you were dead, I think, just for a second there. Poor thing. And this hospital’s outside his radius, so unfortunately he can’t come by tonight.”
“That’s… too bad,” Tim said, mainly to get her to stop talking. Where was the nurse with those extra pain meds?
His discomfort must have been evident on his face, because she stopped talking and began to fuss over him again, pressing kisses to his face the intimacy of which was altogether more disturbing than any of this surreal experience.
At long last, the nurse came in with the medication. The pills kicked in within fifteen minutes, and he was soon drifting off to sleep.
“You need your rest,” Tiffani said to him. “I am going to head home, Hon.” She kissed him yet again. “I’ll see you in the morning?”
“Sure,” he slurred before passing out for the last time that day.
----
The next day dawned bright and sunny, but Tim was still confused. The name tag on his hospital wrist band read, “Peter Burke,” and, when he’d finally gotten to his pants, so did all of the identification in his wallet. He managed to locate his jacket as well, with his damn cell phone in the pocket, which he frowned at as he scrolled through the contact database. Names like “Neal” and “Diana” and “El’s Mom” stared up at him like they belonged there. Where was his wife’s number? His own parents’? His agent, goddamn it?
An orderly brought him his breakfast at 7:00 am and he asked where he was. “Bellevue Hospital,” the man said, shaking his head as if he wasn’t asked that every day. He probably wasn’t.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Tim muttered. Why was he in Manhattan instead of a hospital near Silvercup Studios in Queens? Why would they take him here and not the hospital nearest the studio? So much of this was adding up to something that didn’t really add up, and if his head didn’t already hurt, he knew it would be anyway. Either he was embroiled in some sort of elaborate hoax - one he wouldn’t put past Willie or Eastin - but would Tiffani take part? It was that or else he was seriously more brain-damaged than they had led him to believe.
His musings were cut off by the arrival of Tiffani, yet again, at around 9:00. She went on a bit about having to postpone some meetings in the city, but it was OK because he was her husband and she needed to take care of him, and really, she was a terrific actress, but there was such a thing as taking a role too far. He’d never known her to be this Method before, not in the four years they had been working together, not even once.
He took a deep breath - even his thoughts were babbling.
By late morning, Dr. O’Shaughnessy had come by yet again and told him he could be taken home by his wife.
“You know, we’re not really married,” Tim said to him, trying and failing to keep the condescension from his voice. “We just play husband and wife.”
The doctor smiled indulgently. “Don’t you worry, Mr. Burke. There is no judging here - you don’t have to explain your lifestyle choices to me. I have a wife and two girlfriends,” he said conspiratorially before taking his leave.
Too exasperated with everyone’s bizarre behavior to put up much more of a fight, Tim gave it up and let the nurses bully him into a wheelchair, then waited curbside as Tiffani went to get the car. But when she showed up in the freaking sponsor-placed Ford Taurus, he thought that might be the last damn straw.
“Just what the hell is going on here?” he said sharply, rising from the wheelchair so abruptly his head spun, but ignoring it.
“I am taking you home,” Tiffani said in a steely tone. He realized she was looking at him with a hard glint in her eyes. “And if you object to my using your car, then you should have thought through using mine as a decoy in that case out in the Hamptons last week. The dealer still hasn’t gotten the fish smell out of the upholstery, you know.”
“Wh-what?!”
“And while we’re at it, Agent Burke, I think it’s high time you act just a little bit appreciatively today. I know you’re hurting, but you’ve been a huge asshole ever since yesterday. And if you don’t want to have to take a cab home, I suggest you rein it in a little, mister.”
Tim had to admit she looked kind of scary in her four inch heels with her hands on her hips, glaring at him, so he shut his mouth and got in the car. He stared broodingly out of the window as she drove through midday traffic, lost in thought, and barely registered that they were heading for the Brooklyn Bridge and not uptown toward his place on the Upper West Side. When they pulled up in front of the familiar house on DeKalb in Brooklyn, he blinked up at the façade, open-mouthed, and wondered when, exactly, this practical joke was going to play itself out.
He fumbled with the plastic shopping bag with his personal effects that the hospital had given him and stood on the sidewalk staring up at the house as Tiffani pulled keys out of her purse and headed for the front door.
“Something wrong?” she asked, and the slightly annoyed, passive face she wore morphed into a worried one. “Can you make it up the steps? Oh, Hon!” She swept down the stairs and took him by the arm, supporting him as he mounted the stairs.
He resisted as well as he could - wouldn’t the Wangs be home? Wasn’t it bad enough that tourists came to gawk at their home since it was featured on a national TV show, and here they were barging in? He was about to say something to that effect when he stepped through the vestibule and into the living room.
Of course it was different from the real house, whose front room was slightly smaller than this one, which was what made him gape. There was more light here than the original house as well and, as he wandered inside, he saw that the kitchen, which had been a tiny utilitarian thing in the real house, had been built out and remodeled - exactly as the one had been on set.
Tim’s eyes boggled as he moved slowly through the house. Yes, it was the set for the Burke home he had become so familiar with - and yet not. The furnishings were much more solid and better-finished since they weren’t parts of a set. Gone, too, were the dings that marred the furniture from being moved and repaired constantly. The place smelled different - homey, with flowers and undertones of old cooking smells like garlic and herbs. And -
“Woof!” came a low snuffling bark of a sound as a yellow Labrador rose from a dog bed near the back door and ambled over to investigate. Tiffani ignored him, but Tim reached down to greet him - he briefly wondered which of the three dogs they typically used to play Satchmo it could be since they all looked alike to him - but when the dog neared him, its head snapped up and he growled.
“Oh!” Tim said, standing up abruptly and pulling his hand away.
“Satchmo!” Tiffani admonished the dog, giving it the stinkeye. Satchmo whined to be held under such scrutiny and avoided her cold stare. Silently, she pointed to the doggie bed and the beast retreated to it, lying down with a complaining whine and a grumble.
“Sorry, Hon, but you know, he’s getting old.”
“I probably smell like the hospital,” Tim said lamely.
She smiled. “You should sit down. Do you want something to eat?”
“Sounds great.” He noticed that she’d taken a lot of stuff from the fridge - which appeared to be filled with actual fresh food and not the past-due horrors it was typically filled with; you only made the mistake of pouring that milk into your coffee once! In the last three minutes she was a fair way towards concocting what looked like a formidable omelet and his stomach growled.
She made him sit at the dining table and they began to eat, she prattling on about the business of running an event management company, and he wondering just when she’d had the time to do all that research, being a working mom and all. By the time they were halfway done with the meal, he’d given it up, and his head had begun to throb painfully, and felt like it was splitting open.
Tiffani seemed to notice. “Oh, Hon, you look so pale. We should get you to bed,” she said, and led him to the stairs.
The bedroom was as he remembered it the last time they’d shot a scene there (complete with the fireplace on the wrong wall given the construction of the place), and the inviting blue bedding that was a lot softer than he remembered. He stripped down to his undershirt and shorts and climbed under the covers, wondering which side he was supposed to take; a pair of reading glasses and the latest James Patterson thriller on one of the nightstands clued him into which side must be “Peter’s,” and he sank down into the fluffy pillows with a groan. Lying on his back, he saw the antique ceiling light hanging just above - not the light rigging he’d have expected to see instead - complete with a very thin strand of a cobweb bobbing gently in the air currents in the room.
“Poor thing,” Tiffani said, sitting right beside him and rearranging his hair to her liking. The gesture was so intimate, so loving, and just so wrong he literally didn’t know how to react, so he just lay there. “Get some rest, Peter,” she said.
“I will.”
She leaned forward to kiss him on the tip of his nose then left, shutting the door quietly behind her.
----
When he woke hours later, the traffic sounds outside lulled him into believing he was in his apartment in Manhattan for just a few seconds - until he opened his eyes. Sitting up in the bed, he looked around the alien-yet-familiar room and yawned. Pushing the comforter off of himself, he got up and decided to explore. The closet was packed with women’s clothes, but one of the dressers in the room clearly belonged to a man. There was a worn-out-looking T-shirt from his own alma mater, LeMoyne, that the wardrobe people had let him use once. Picking it up, he noticed it smelled freshly-laundered. Further exploration of the upstairs showed that most of Peter’s clothes - his suits, jeans, sweaters and such - were in a closet in the guest room across the hall from the master bedroom. He chose a comfy-looking pair of jeans and a soft, cranberry-colored, cotton sweater, saw that they were his size, and pulled them on. Heading up the stairs to the third floor - he’d never been up this far when they’d filmed the Pilot episode - he found an additional guest bedroom that clearly pulled double-duty as a man cave, and a home office.
The man cave was an interesting space. On one wall was a futon that would convert into a Queen-sized bed; perpendicular to this was a very expensive and comfortable-looking Barcalounger-type thing in hand-tooled leather with a perfect view of the rather high-end media center set up along the opposite wall. Another wall was taken up by shelving on which a variety of memorabilia both personal and collectible was to be found, including a few diplomas, some family photos of himself at various ages posing with people he’d never met, the famed ten-year FBI service pin set in a pinky ring he always thought was butt-ugly, and a few baseballs that had been signed by various Yankees, from Mickey Mantle to Don Mattingly to David Cone. There was an old desk beside it with a well-worn chair and he decided to take a seat and explore.
The desk was old and battered - clearly some sort of family relic that had been handed down and actually used. There was an old-fashioned blotter on the top of it, inside of which was shoved a variety of letters and bills; the file drawers were stuffed with personal papers like tax returns and the detritus of home ownership - old mortgage statements and insurance premium notices and the like. Each one was addressed to Peter and Elizabeth Burke. An older model personal computer was stowed beneath the desk, and when Tim fired it up he found a browsing history filled with personal and professional searches - everything from coin forgery to restaurant reviews. The email account was a similarly detailed glimpse into the life of a man Tim embodied but clearly did not know; he opened an unviewed email from an uptown art gallery at random and read through it quickly:
Dear Mr. Burke,
I’m happy to let you know that the space you are interested in for your function is, in fact, available on the 19th of September, and you can call me with a credit card number to secure the reservation. I’m sure your wife will be thrilled with her birthday surprise - I’ve attached a few menus from some of the better caterers we’ve worked with for your information.
Best,
John Witherspoon
Sales Director
Tim shut down the pc and sat back in the chair - if this was a practical joke, someone had gone to an awful lot of trouble, and if it was a hallucination or a dream, it had a lot more texture and reality to it than any he’d experienced before. As crazy as it seemed to him, he found himself now in a place where Peter Burke was real, a place where this man’s life and deeds affected others and had made a real impact.
Hell, maybe he was Peter and had been all along, and Tim DeKay was the dream, the fantasy character, as ridiculous as it seemed to him. At any rate, if he was going to be here, living this man’s life and walking in his shoes, then he’d better at least play along.
He wandered back down the stairs to the second floor and ran into Tiffani - no, her name was Elizabeth - coming up from the first.
“Thought I heard you puttering around up here,” she remarked. “Everything OK?”
“Yeah, I - was catching up on my life,” he said, lamely adding, “you know, email and things.”
“Oh? I guess you’re feeling better after your nap?” He nodded. “Well, come on down and have some dinner. I picked up some steaks from the market.”
“Steak?” he asked, brightening; was it his favorite here, too?
“Don’t get too used to it, Mister, it’s only because you were hurt,” she chided, and preceded him down the stairs.
Dinner was delicious - Elizabeth was a much better cook than he ever remembered Tiffani being on the occasions he’d been a guest in her home - and he helped her clear the table while listening to her vent about a problematic client. She made him sit in the living room afterwards with a cup of herbal tea (no alcohol or caffeine with a head injury) and he flipped through the channels half-heartedly, looking for something interesting. He settled on a rerun of CSI:Miami when he realized it wasn’t the episode he’d done a guest shot on.
Elizabeth joined him minutes later, taking the remote from him when he offered it, and they passed another couple of hours watching nothing particularly interesting. Soon she was yawning loudly. “Gosh, I think I’m going to go to bed, Hon. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
He made sympathetic, apologetic noises as she pushed herself off her end of the couch. She leaned over and kissed him. “You coming?”
Tim froze, then attempted to cover by squeezing her hand lightly. “Nah, I’m not really tired yet - that nap took care of that.”
She shrugged and smiled, then toddled on up the stairs. Tim breathed a sigh of relief to see her go; while she was pleasant company and he genuinely liked her, she was not Elisa, not his wife who he loved, and he couldn’t really share a bed with her, not even just to sleep.
He fell asleep on the couch watching Letterman and woke with a crick in his neck.
----
Tim sat in the living room with the blinds drawn and the TV’s sound turned down low, not-watching a morning talk show that was not exactly, not quite The View. Not-Barbara Walters was interviewing someone that wasn’t at all like Tommy Lee Jones about a movie he was co-starring in with a person that didn’t at all resemble Diane Keaton. His head was thankfully less tender and pained today, with less throbbing and overall agony, but he still felt off, and the bright sunlight filtering through the front windows was giving him a migraine.
He roused himself when there was a knock at the front door. “Ma-Neal!” he stuttered when he’d opened it.
“Hey, buddy! We missed you at the office.”
“I’m on sick leave.” Tim stepped aside and let his friend in; how strange it was going to be to interact with “Neal” and not Matt - would he be all that different?
“You’ve been out for two days.”
“I’ve had a brain injury,” Tim pointed out.
Neal just looked perplexed, then shrugged as he held up a shopping bag. “I brought lunch.”
Lunch was delicious baguette sandwiches with German potato salad and Tim reflected that these people certainly ate well enough. “This is really good,” he commented. “Thanks for bringing it by - it was really generous of you. I mean, you must be on a pretty fixed income, right?”
Neal’s brows furrowed. “I am. Thanks for noticing.”
“And I mean, you came all the way to Brooklyn, and in the middle of the day, too. Traffic must’ve been murder. Did you take a cab?”
“A friend dropped me here,” Neal answered slowly.
“Well, I really am grateful.” Tim shoveled a forkful of salad into his mouth and smiled appreciatively.
“I’m a thoughtful guy. You feeling OK?”
“Still get kinda woozy, but the doc said that’d be normal for another day or two. I don’t think I’ve ever slept this much in my life, either.”
“I’m sure it’s all very restorative.”
“Listen to me talking all about myself - how are you? Gosh, I’m sorry if what happened the other day was scary for you - Elizabeth said the hospital was outside your radius, and you were worried.”
“Well, it was kind of hard to see you that way, Peter. And in the middle of this big case and all…”
Of course, Tim thought, there would naturally be a case-of-the-week. “Sure. The case.”
“Because the Secret Service agents have been running roughshod over everyone, taking over your office, the conference room. It’s driving everyone nuts.”
“Yes. That’s. Unfortunate.” Tim said blandly, wracking his brain for past scripts and plotlines from the series - he couldn’t remember one case, really, where the Secret Service had been that heavily involved. “But you know, they’ve got a job to do, too. So.”
Neal put his sandwich down and stared at him, his blue eyes suddenly shrewd and calculating. Tim felt like the other man was looking right into his soul; he shifted uneasily in his seat and struggled not to look away.
“Tim?” Neal said a full minute later.
Shocked, Tim looked at him with his mouth hanging open for several seconds before he found his voice. “Matt?”
The other man shook his head. “Nuh-uh. Neal. But… shit, don’t tell me this is happening again? Not now, not this week.”
“What do you mean, ‘again’? This has happened to me before?” Tim suddenly felt light-headed.
“Not to you - to me,” Neal said, leaning forward and peering into his face. “Hey, calm down, you look too pale.” He picked up a section of the New York Times that sat nearby and started fanning Tim with it.
“You suddenly found yourself living inside the fictional world of the television character you portray?”
“No, the opposite - I woke up on a set that looked exactly like my apartment.”
“Really? When?”
“I dunno, there was an episode where I was supposed to shoot you with a sniper rifle?”
Tim noticed that Neal was extremely uncomfortable. “I remember that day - you got sick and wound up in New Jersey or something - we had to delay shooting for three days. That was you and not Matt? You coulda fooled me.”
“I guess I’m a better actor than I thought.”
“Guess I’m a worse one. How’d you know I wasn’t Peter?” Tim was disappointed in himself - if anyone ought to be able to nail a Peter Burke characterization, it ought to be him.
“Nothing you did or anything,” Neal replied, clearly backpedalling.
“Come on, I can take it,” Tim said in a surly tone he suspected made it sound like he couldn’t.
“You were too nice to me. And appreciative. Peter’s… not, usually.”
“Oh,” Tim said, brows furrowed. “Nice to hear I take you for granted.”
“Not you! Peter!”
“Oh.”
“And he doesn’t, not really! It’s just - he’s a lot more gruff. Or something. I should shut up now.”
“Great, my character’s a total douche bag.”
“He’s not! He’s my best friend!”
They looked at each other for a beat and then Tim picked up his fork again.
“So… the case?” Neal said.
“What about it?”
“We still need to work it.”
“You need to work it. I need to try to figure out a way to get back home.”
“Don’t be that way.”
“What ‘way’? I’m not an FBI agent, Neal.”
“But you play one on TV.”
“Hardy-har-har. I’m serious - what I know about law enforcement I learned guesting on Law & Order and CSI. You don’t want me anywhere near that office, believe me.”
“But it’s a really interesting case. Counterfeit currency - you know you love it.”
Tim raised an eyebrow. “I know nothing. What else?”
Neal gave him an innocent look. “Nothing.”
“There’s an angle here - you need something else.”
“You’re more like him than you think,” Neal muttered.
“I have eyes, Neal. Spill.”
“Fine. Those Secret Service agents are assholes and they hate me and treat me like a second class citizen.”
“That’s supposed to convince me.”
Neal frowned, as if he was thinking something over. “Fine. Peter needs to be there, Tim. I don’t have to tell you how much being seen to be successful means to a man’s career - you’re an actor, you get that, right?” Tim nodded. “Well, after the whole Cape Verde debacle, Peter really needs a box ticked in the win column. This case could be it - it’s big, a real career highlight.”
Tim squirmed - of course he appreciated how much a moment like this would mean to Peter; he thanked god and his agent every single day that he could be a working actor and make his living doing what he loved so much. “Fine. I’ll go to the office tomorrow morning.”
Neal beamed.
----
Tim got a later start than he wanted to the next morning, having fallen asleep too late on the couch again. Elizabeth woke him with a kiss and a mug of coffee, which he drank too quickly when she made to kiss him again and burnt his mouth. Kissing her still felt like cheating, and while he saw a hurt expression pass fleetingly across her face, he didn’t know what else to do.
He blearily made himself trudge up the stairs for a shower and a shave before getting dressed. He frowned at the contents of Peter’s closet - the suits really were abysmally ill-fitted, and he found himself missing the Hugo Boss ones he was typically given, the ones tailored to his build that fit him like a glove. At least the shoes were comfortable and worn-in.
He contemplated taking the subway, but then thought better of it since he might need the car later. Surprisingly, there was no traffic on his way, and no commercials on the radio when he found a station he liked, and he got a parking spot right next to the elevators when he arrived at Federal Plaza. He wondered if it was always like this here.
Neal was already sitting at his desk when Tim arrived, and he rose with a smile and followed him to his office like an eager puppy. “What?” Tim asked.
“Nothing - I’m just happy you made it.”
Tim gave him a look and surveyed Peter’s office. Where normally it was tidy and orderly, today there were files and papers strewn all over the small meeting table in the corner. “What’s all that?” he asked.
Neal groaned. “Agent Braxton from Secret Service,” he said ruefully. “I told you I didn’t like her, and her lack of tidiness is the least of it. Want me to have a probie get it all out of here?”
“Well, I mean, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience anyone,” Tim said.
Neal gave him a look. “You want me to have a probie get it all out of here, trust me on this.”
“OK, fine.” Tim reasoned the less exposure to other agents while he was adjusting to being Peter Burke the better. When all of the materials had been boxed up and dumped on an unused desk in the bullpen, Tim sat down at the meeting table with Neal across from him and took a deep breath. “Tell me about the script - I mean, the case.”
“Well, it’s a pretty ingenious thing, really, I wish I’d thought of it.” Neal looked at Tim with the ghost of a smile on his face, then looked disappointed when Tim didn’t pick up the bait he’d just laid down. “Anyway, these guys are counterfeiters and they’ve been amassing large quantities of one dollar bills.”
“What for?”
“They’ve been bleaching them.”
Tim was confused. “Why would they bleach money? I mean, I’ve left some in my tennis shorts when they’ve gone through the wash, but -“
“So they have the right kind of paper.”
“But then they’ll be useless.”
“Not if you print on them, they’re not.”
“What would you print on them?” Neal looked at him, slightly amazed, and Tim felt a bit defensive. “Not a law enforcement professional here, Neal!” he felt compelled to remind him
Neal spoke slowly. “If they have an old plate for, say, a hundred dollar bill…”
He looked at Tim hopefully.
“And the right kind of ink…”
Tim’s face remained blank.
Neal rolled his eyes and sighed. “They could print hundred dollar bills on top of the paper they have, Tim, and no one would be the wiser. The paper would be legit, the dates old enough so that the modern security measures won’t be in place, and they’ll be very rich people.”
“Really? People would do that?”
“You are adorable,” Neal deadpanned.
Tim scowled. “Gimme a break, huh? I only just got here. So what’s our involvement?”
“To catch them?”
“You’re going to have to stop being sassy. Plus, I’d have thought that counterfeiting of US currency would fall under a different agency’s jurisdiction.”
Neal smiled. “A good point - you are learning. Counterfeiting money does, in fact, fall under the jurisdiction of the United States Secret Service, which is why the odious Agent Braxton has been darkening our door. She brought the case to us, but since the suspects may be looking for someone to help them with the finer points of the operation, and they appear to be operating in New York, they came to the best person to infiltrate the bad guys’ organization.”
Tim looked at him, a curious expression on his face.
“Me! They need me to go in undercover. Jeez, you sure you’re at all familiar with the central premise of our work here?”
“Sometimes I wonder. But what’s our ‘in’? It’s not like Neal Caffrey was a world class counterfeiter on top of everything else.” Neal's eyes slid to the side. “Is Neal Caffrey a world class counterfeiter on top of everything else?”
“Well, no, but Steve Tabernacle is.”
“Isn’t that convenient.” When Neal made a yeah, well, face, Tim went on, “You are well-rounded. I mean, I always thought it was a little too good to be true, but you forge paintings, bonds, whiskey…”
“Who told you about the whiskey?”
Tim continued, ignoring him, “You’re an accomplished con man and bank robber, and, oh yeah, you fence competitively in your spare time. Now you’re telling me you can counterfeit US currency. When do you take the time to actually sleep?”
“I usually sculpt shirtless to relax. Anyway, Steve’s specialty isn’t the plates, it’s the inks.”
“Naturally.”
They were interrupted by a small commotion in the bullpen. Looking up, Tim saw a petite brunette in a power suit standing beside the desk where Neal had moved all the files from Peter’s office, hands on her hips and tapping a Manolo Blahniked foot on the floor.
“Ugh, the dreaded Agent Braxton,” Neal said, looking genuinely discomfited.
Tim watched as she glared up in the direction of his office and headed for the stairs, teetering precipitously on her five inch heels. “Just what is the meaning of the relocation of my files to that desk, Caffrey?” she asked in a posh British accent as soon as she arrived. They both stood as she entered the room.
“They were taking up room in Agent Burke’s office,” Neal pointed out.
Her large, hazel eyes flashed at him. From this close, she couldn’t have been older than 23; Tim was reminded of his pre-teen daughter. “You think I give a fig? I need somewhere to work, and this was the only acceptable spot,” she said arrogantly.
“Except it’s someone else’s office,” Neal pointed out. “And there’s a bunch of desks available in the bullpen, which you are very welcome to use.”
“The day I take orders from a convict will be the day I die.”
“Tell me how you really feel,” Neal practically sneered.
She stepped into his personal space, about to say something, when Tim cleared his throat.
“Where I come from, it’s common courtesy to respect your hosts,” he pointed out dryly.
She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time and took a step back, composing her expression with obvious effort. “I’m sorry, we haven’t been properly introduced. Amanda Braxton, Assistant SAIC in the Financial Investigation Division at Secret Service. And you are?”
Tim pushed his chest out, freeing up his diaphragm - an old trick he learned in grad school that he knew would make his voice deeper and more resonant. “Special Agent in Charge Peter Burke. I kinda run the place.”
She blinked at him, her eyes going wide. “What a pleasure to finally meet you, Agent Burke,” she said, mustering as much charm as she could, which seemed to be a struggle for her. “Your staff have been - almost accommodating,” she said as she gave Neal the stinkeye.
“They’ve got important jobs to do, Agent.”
“Well, let’s hope catching a violent gang of counterfeiters can be fit in, hmm? There’s a meeting to discuss tactics at 10:00, I do hope you will be able to make it? I understand you’ve been under the weather.”
“But I’m fine now. I mean, what’s a little traumatic brain injury between friends?” Tim said lightly, taking an instant dislike to Agent Braxton; it was like she was drawn from some sort of misogynist’s cookbook of clichés.
“Smashing,” she said. “See you in the conference room in an hour, then.” She turned on her heel - and looked like she’d come unbalanced for a brief second there - then left the room.
“Wow, you didn’t lie about her being unpleasant,” Tim said to Neal.
“I wonder if she’d melt if we threw water on her.”
“Be nice,” Tim admonished. “Now what was that about these guys being violent?”
Neal waved his hand dismissively. “Meh, they may have committed a murder or six down in Miami.”
Tim’s eyes boggled. “Neal! We can’t send you in undercover if you’ll be in danger. Think of the liability! It’s not like you’ve trained for this!”
Neal looked confused. “I do this all the time.”
“Yeah, but, I mean, Diana and Jones and the others - they’ve been through years of on the job training, right? Plus, they’re armed, and they earn hazard pay if they go under cover. What do you get? Does the FBI even provide health insurance?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? How can they employ you and not offer basic benefits? This is a travesty, Neal, honestly.”
“Well, thanks for caring, Tim, but I really - it’s all OK.”
“Is it?” Tim asked, and Neal's face fell - clearly these were things he hadn’t considered.
Tim felt compelled to fill the uncomfortable silence that ensued. “So I guess you need to fill me in on the players in this case, Neal. Wouldn’t want Agent Braxton to have a reason to bad mouth us.”
“No, we would not,” Neal replied, clearly relieved to be on more solid ground. They sat down at the table again and Neal gave him the run down.
----
“So who are we going to meet with again?” Tim asked, hurrying to keep up with Neal, who led him on a shortcut through Central Park at a pretty decent clip; he realized that since there were no cameras to keep track of them as they walked and talked, going as slow as he and Matt usually did wouldn’t have made much sense. He marveled at the pace Neal set.
“Mozzie’s friend, Jimmy Chin. If anyone’s heard about these guys being in town, it’s him. There are only so many guys that can do what he does.” Jimmy owed Neal a favor and Neal hoped he’d be able to persuade him to provide the information they needed.
“Oh? Is he some kind of underworld kingpin?”
Neal gave him a look. “What? No, he’s one of the few guys who still works on the old school presses. Most of them are like, forty, fifty years old, so they take a lot of care. Jimmy - he doesn’t ask too many questions and he works fast.”
“You sure do know a lot about it.”
Neal shrugged. “I get around.”
Tim was going to ask him to explain when his attention was caught by a soccer game going on in a playing field adjacent to the path they were walking. He slowed his pace as he saw the players were young girls. The goalie, a little slip of a girl who couldn’t have been older than nine, was throwing herself after the ball with the kind of abandon that reminded him of his own daughter’s approach to playing the game. His heart clenched in his chest, and not in a pleasant way.
“Hey, come on, we’re gonna be late,” Neal said, having doubled back when Tim completely stopped to watch the girls play.
“Yeah. OK,” Tim said, but made no movement.
“What is it?” Neal asked.
“It’s nothing, I - I was supposed to be at home right now, In L.A.”
Neal looked at the children and then back at Tim and was able to put two and two together. “You’ve got kids?”
Tim nodded. “A boy and a girl. I miss them so much when I’m working and now - am I ever going to make it home?”
“You will, you have to believe that,” Neal said, squeezing his arm. “But we really should be going, because Jimmy closes up shop at 3:00.”
----
“Jimmy!” Neal greeted the unassuming, late-middle aged Chinese-American man warmly as they entered his machinist’s shop.
Tim looked avidly around at the equipment and took in a deep breath, savoring the aroma of metal and grease - he’d worked in a tool-and-die shop in college and itched to get his hands dirty.
“Neal - Moz said you might stop by,” Jimmy said, and eyed Tim cautiously.
“This is my partner, Peter Burke,” Neal said, and Tim was surprised he hadn’t tried to manufacture some sort of alias for him.
“The FBI guy, huh?” Jimmy said, eyeing Tim.
“Something like that,” Tim replied.
“This’d better be good, Neal.”
Neal shrugged. “More like a public service. We’re looking into this new boodle ring that just hit town. You hear anything?”
Tim noticed that the friendly smile had left Jimmy’s face. “Nope. Nothing.”
Neal raised his eyebrows. “Come on, Jimmy, you’ve got the world’s worst poker face; now I know you know something.”
“What if I do?”
“Well, if you do, then you can tell me all about it, maybe introduce me around - that’s how this works,” Neal said reasonably. “Besides, if you do, then maybe there’s a box of Cohibas in it for your trouble and inconvenience.”
Tim thought he could see Jimmy’s resolve falter, but then his eyes turned steely. “No, I can’t - these guys are dangerous, Neal.”
“I know, that’s why we want to get them off the street. Come on, Jimmy - I’ll throw in a bottle of McCann whiskey.”
“Neal, bribing me will get you nowhere - these are bad guys.” He looked around fearfully as if just thinking about it was bad enough.
“Jeez, it sounds bad,” Tim said. “Who are we talking about here, the Russian Mob? Yakuza?”
Jimmy dropped his voice to a whisper, “Worse, man: Canadians.”
“Canadians?! Shit,” Neal said, forming his right hand into a fist that he rapped against the counter. “Well, that complicates matters considerably. Thanks anyways, Jimmy,” he said and moved to collect Tim to leave.
“Hey, Neal?” Jimmy called as they reached the door. Neal turned around. “If I told you where these guys like to hang out, would that help?”
Tim was surprised at the unease on Neal's face as he turned back to face Jimmy - it was as if he now wanted him to come up with nothing now. “It might,” he said reluctantly
“There’s this after hours joint down in the Village - The Beach - you know it?”
Neal's shoulders slumped as he closed his eyes. “Yeah.”
“That’s where you’ll find them most nights.”
“Thanks, Jimmy - look for those cigars in a week or so.”
“Sure thing, Neal. Thanks!”
Neal took Tim’s arm and led him out of the shop and down the street. “So what’s our next move?” Tim asked.
“We report in and -“ Neal stopped suddenly and punch at the air with his fists. “OH GODDAMMIT!! I guess I’m going down to Little Toronto tonight. God!”
Tim stopped walking, shocked at Neal’s tantrum. “We’re talking about Canadians here, right? Canadian Canadians?”
Neal looked at him like he was thick-headed. “Yes, Tim. Of all the factions in the criminal underworld, the Canadians are the last ones you want to piss off.”
“Or they’ll do what? Feed you butter tarts? Polite you to death?”
“I’m pretty sure ‘polite’ isn’t a verb.”
“I know, but I mean, Canadians?!”
“Shhh!! Not so loud! Now come on, we need to get back to the office so we can make a plan.”
----
Tim and Neal arrived back at the FBI before 4:30 and called the “Harvard Crew” plus two of Agent Braxton’s subordinates together in the conference room for a debriefing. Braxton herself was nowhere to be found. But Neal's announcement about the purpose and urgency of the meeting met with only silent agreement, and no one objected to continuing without her. Tim decided to defer to Neal's judgment on this one.
The room fell into stunned silence when Neal broke the news about the identity of their perpetrators.
“So what are we going to do next?” Tim wondered aloud, earning a bit of a glare from Neal. “I mean, er, suggestions? On what we do next?” He looked at the two agents from Secret Service. “We’re very collaborative here at the White Collar division.” They stared back at him blankly.
“As you were suggesting earlier, Peter, I guess it’s another night in the van for you guys while i go down to Little Toronto and try to make friends,” Neal said.
“Probably the best option - good thinking, boss,” Jones agreed. “I’ll get started on the warrant for the wiretap.”
“I’ll call down to tech services for the equipment,” Diana added.
“I guess I’ll see if Mozzie’s turned anything up,” Neal suggested.
“We’ll reconvene here at 9:00 and then head out,” Tim said, and was relieved when everyone seemed to think that was an adequate decision.
The meeting broke up soon after, and Tim walked through the adjoining door into Peter’s office, realizing he ought to call Elizabeth and tell her he wouldn’t be home for dinner. He got no answer and left her a voice mail.
“Agent Burke?” He looked up to see Agent Braxton standing in the doorway.
“I got a tip from one my own CIs - we think we’ve uncovered a potential link to our counterfeit ring.”
“Really?” Tim said, momentarily relieved - maybe they wouldn’t have to go out in the van that night; he didn’t want to think how he’d handle a situation where he would have to command these Federal agents.
“We’ve got the suspect in an interrogation room - I thought you’d like to do the honors.”
“Interrogate the, uh, suspect?” Tim asked, suddenly breathless.
Agent Braxton didn’t seem to have noticed his dismay, luckily. “Of course - your interrogation techniques are famous, Agent Burke - even across agencies.”
Tim glanced at Neal, who had been hanging just inside the doorway from the conference room, and tried not to panic.
“And rightfully so,” Neal piped up. “Just wait’ll you see him in action - it’ll give you chills.” She beamed at Tim. “We’ll be right down, if you don’t mind - I have just one thing to discuss with Agent Burke first.”
She scowled at Neal’s impertinence, but left readily enough.
“What the hell, Neal - I can’t interrogate some suspect!” Tim suspected he was whining, but he didn’t much care.
“Sure you can. Come on, if I remember correctly, events in this reality are pretty much reflected in yours.”
“They are?”
“More or less,” Neal replied with a wave of a hand. “And I’ve seen Peter interrogate a suspect before - hell, I’ve been on the receiving end of it more than once. Don’t you remember any of those scenes?”
“Well, sure, but I mean, it’s all written beforehand, and we rehearse it, and the other guy - he’s an actor too. I can’t do this, Neal, I won’t.”
“You have to do this - for Peter, remember, Tim?” Tim shook his head, not willing to go through with it, and not willing to give the reason why, either. Neal pulled out his smartphone. “Besides, I’ll help you through it - just keep your phone handy and I’ll text you tips if you need any.”
Tim didn’t think it would work, but he didn’t know that he had much of a choice, and let Neal lead him from the office and down the hall to the interrogation suite.
----
Tim entered the room where their suspect - a kid of no more than 18 whose name was McKutcheon - sat at a small, rectangular table around which were arranged four chairs. Like the set back in his reality, this room was inconveniently glass-walled, so anyone could watch what he was doing if they walked by. Neal, along with Diana and Agent Braxton, was standing in a nearby room, watching over the CCTV feed, even if Tim couldn’t see them.
He took a deep breath and wished he’d thought to bring a glass of water with him - his mouth was suddenly dry.
McKutcheon looked up at him warily. Tim slowly removed his watch - he’d seen Dennis Franz do it once on NYPD Blue and it seemed cool at the time - and laid it deliberately at the edge of the table, then set his phone down beside it. He rolled up his shirt sleeves, slowly. McKutcheon licked his own lips, clearly unnerved. Tim picked up a chair and turned it around, intending to straddle it manfully. Unfortunately, it was a wheeled conference room-style chair, bottom-heavy and too wide, so he instead pushed it to the other side of the room and sat himself down in another chair on the adjacent side of the table. This put him, essentially, right next to the suspect, which seemed a bit chummier than an interrogation ought to have been. He hoped it was playing as menace.
He glared at McKutcheon. And squinted his eyes - he thought he looked really calculating when he squinted his eyes. “You have something to tell me?” he asked at last.
“Uh, no?”
“A little birdie tells me otherwise.”
“That birdie’s wrong.”
“You know we’ve got enough on you to convict, don’t you?”
“Like what?”
“Like, um, charges. Of criminal acts.” Damn it, he’d forgotten to ask Braxton exactly why they’d brought the guy in here. Luckily, his cell phone vibrated lightly from an incoming text. Tim wanted to lunge for it to read what Neal had sent him, but needed to keep it cool. He stood abruptly and walked around the room behind McKutcheon, pausing at the far end of the table where the phone was. He glanced down at it quickly.
Tell him you’ll go easier on him if he talks.
“Listen, I’m prepared to go easier on you if you’ll just talk.”
“Uh-uh - no way. I’m no rat.”
“Well, that’s -“
The phone buzzed again.
Tell him you’ll put it out there he talked anyway, then you’ll cut him loose.
Shocked, Tim looked up at the camera mounted on the ceiling in the corner.
Do it!
Tim swallowed. “Doesn’t mean your boss won’t think you’re a rat.”
“What are you saying, Fed?”
“I think you know what I’m saying.”
“No, I really, really don’t.”
Tim put a hand on his hip and explained reasonably, “I’m saying that if you don’t tell me what I need to know, I’ll let all your criminal friends out there think that you talked anyway. Then, when I let you out of here, you’ll be in certain danger of retaliation at their hands. QED.”
“That’s extremely not cool.”
“Yes, well, I’m sorry, but crime doesn’t pay. Also: stay in school.”
The phone buzzed again, but Tim didn’t dare look at it, instead sticking with his dramatic choice to stare the kid down. He was about to think it had been a poor one - his eyes were drying out - when McKutcheon looked away and his shoulders slumped.
“Fine, I’ll talk.”
Tim suspected he failed at hiding his surprise. “You will? I mean, you will!”
After that, McKutcheon gave up not only the name of the head of the counterfeiters - some guy named Roger Campbell - he helpfully wrote down addresses of known haunts for the man and drew an org chart of the parts of their organization he knew about.
Once they were done, Tim left the room feeling slightly proud of himself; Agent Braxton beamed with appreciation at him, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet - it was a big break in the case - and Diana even gave him a thumbs-up. His euphoria was short-lived, however; when he caught Neal’s eye, the conman was glaring at him. Then Tim remembered he hadn’t read Neal’s last text to him, so he glanced down at his phone.
We clearly have some work to do it said.
----
“Peter lessons?!” Tim protested. They had a break for about the next three hours before they’d have to send Neal in to try to set up a meeting with Campbell. Neal insisted they pick up some dinner and head to his place.
“Yes. Peter lessons. You, my friend, are in need of remedial education. STAT.”
“Awww come on! Didn’t I get McKutcheon to spill his guts?”
“I got McKutcheon to spill his guts! Listen, so far we’ve been able to keep your hands off of this -“
“Not from where I’m standing,” Tim interrupted.
“But still, do you really think the real Peter Burke would sit back and let me?”
“Why wouldn’t he? You’re doing really well.”
Neal’s face softened momentarily and he smiled shyly. “Thanks for saying that - it helps to have the validation, you know? But still, we need you to be on point - I’m not always going to be able to cover for you.”
He handed Tim the bag of Chinese takeout and pulled out his keys, letting them both into June’s mansion. Once inside, Tim whistled low as he took in the opulence of the place. Of course, he’d been here before - when they’d shot the pilot, they’d used the actual Schinasi Mansion, and then again when they’d filmed another episode - but it had been over a year since he’d been here, and it always took his breath away. He followed Neal up the stairs to his third floor apartment and took a moment to admire the view - the real one, not the scenery reproduced on the soundstage at Silvercup.
“Wow,” he said as he set the food down. A moment later, Neal handed him a beer and he sat down and began to unpack their dinner.
“So what’s our first lesson?” Tim asked some time later, once he’d downed half his beer along with his eggroll, and felt somewhat resigned to the idea.
“Attitude. Stand up.”
Tim dropped his chopsticks and stood, along with Neal.
“Give me your best ‘dammit, Neal!’ expression.”
Tim scowled at him.
Neal stared at him appraisingly. “That’s a start, but try to look less constipated.”
“Neal!”
“What? You do this for a living - embody this character.”
“I’m not all that Method, honestly. They give me words to say and I say them.”
“But you say them with conviction, don’t you? Isn’t there some inner well of truth you have to pull from or some such bullshit?”
Tim felt his face color - this was no longer a helpful exercise, and they were heading into difficult territory. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” he muttered and turned away from Neal.
“What? Why?”
“I don’t want to talk about this - about my process.” He said “process” like he was inserting air quotes around the word. Suddenly, his shoulders and neck were very tense. This conversation was forcing him to examine insecurities he didn’t want to consider too closely.
“I get it - you don’t think you’re a good enough actor for this,” Neal said sympathetically, and Tim winced.
“I’ve always sucked at improv,” Tim said quietly. “But if I’m honest with myself, I’m just not tough enough to be him. I’m sorry, Neal, I don’t know if I make a very good Peter Burke anymore, or if I ever did at all.”
Tim turned toward the door and left.
Part 2