White Collar Fic: Provenance (Peter & Neal. PG. Future!fic.)
Title: Provenance
Characters: Peter & Neal gen.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: “You know this isn’t goodbye, though,” Neal says. “You really don’t think I’ll just fade away, do you?” 4500 words. Set four years in the future.
A/N: Writing in a new fandom is scary. Many, many thanks to octette for being willing to beta this for me and also for getting it back to me so quickly. Any remaining errors are, of course, my own.
This story can also be found at AO3 here.
Four years and three days after their arrangement becomes official, Peter and Neal sign their names about fifty different times on the bottoms of a whole ream worth of papers, Jones cuts Neal’s ankle tracker for the last time, and Neal is officially a free man.
They throw him a party in the office: cake, balloons, a card. Thanks for all the help closing cases. Good job not doing anything so illegal we had to arrest you for it over the last four years. Aside from, well, the three times you were framed, and that other time. But no hard feelings about that, right?
And when the time comes for Neal to actually leave? Well, he sits down in what’s become his chair in Peter’s office, balances his elbows on top of a stack of file folders, cases he won’t be involved in, and says, “So.”
“So,” Peter says.
Peter’s been in his office for about half an hour at this point, finishing up paperwork, watching Neal make the rounds, say his goodbyes. He’s trying not to think that tomorrow or the next day, or next week at the latest, he’s going to be doing those same rounds, introducing the new kid at his shoulder to everyone. The probie, he’ll probably say, though the kid’ll probably want to call him or herself Peter’s partner.
“So,” Neal says again, and then he grins, blinding. “This is it, huh?”
“Yup,” Peter says, and he cringes because it sounds so cliché, like a hundred different conversations in a hundred different movies. Neal laughs at him, shaking his head fondly, and says, “You’re sort of terrible at this ‘saying goodbye’ thing, aren’t you?”
“I am,” Peter agrees. “I really, really am.”
Mostly, though, Peter blames it on himself. Because how is he supposed to handle this situation? He should be thrilled that Neal served out his sentence without getting into more trouble. He should be happy that his name is no longer tied to that of his ex-con partner, and that now, any time said ex-con ex-partner does anything out of line, Peter’s name won’t be sullied, too. He should be relieved.
Except he spent three years chasing Neal, another four years ignoring the birthday and holiday cards that Neal kept sending him, and then the last four with Neal at his side, through ups and downs, case after case, and dinner at Peter’s house at least once or twice a week.
“You know this isn’t goodbye, though,” Neal says. “You really don’t think I’ll just fade away, do you?”
“Don’t-don’t say things like that,” Peter says, because seriously. That’s what he’s afraid of. He’s afraid that Neal is Neal, and he’ll wake up next week and hear about a painting walking out of some swanky pad on the Upper East Side, or wake up two months from now with a lead on some truly excellent fake bonds, or rumors of the next map of Vinland forgery. Because while he trusts Neal to watch his back-especially when Neal’s restricted by the ankle tracker- Neal on the outside, free, is another creature entirely. Peter spent seven years of his life learning about that Neal Caffrey, and honestly, as much as he wants to, he’s still not sure that he can trust him. Because Neal is Neal-and always will be.
“I meant,” Neal says, “that I’ll send you a postcard. One from Paris? Or Athens? Which would you prefer?”
“Neal,” Peter says, and he knows that he sounds unintentionally pained. He’s quite well aware of that fact, thank you very much.
“Or maybe I really have learned my lesson,” Neal says, looking amused. “I guess you’ll just have to wait and find out.”
With that he stands up and extends his hand to Peter, and Peter has no choice but to stand up, too, taking Neal’s hand and shaking it.
“I won’t say that it’s always been a pleasure,” Neal says, finally, after the handshake has gone on for just a few moments too long. “But… thank you. For everything.”
“Right,” Peter says. “Absolutely. You’re welcome.”
If El were here, she probably would have rolled her eyes at Peter about five minutes ago, and would already have her arms wrapped around Neal, squeezing him as tightly as she could. Peter’s also pretty sure that it wouldn’t be good form for him to do anything remotely similar in the middle of his glass-walled office at the FBI.
Because of that, Neal’s the one to sigh, then walk around the desk and pull Peter in for a hug. Quick, manly, and totally inappropriate, Peter thinks, given the nature of their working relationship, but then Neal’s pulling back, saying, “And with that, I’ve got a plane to catch.”
“Okay,” Peter says. “Okay then. So I guess I’ll see you around. Um. Have a good trip, wherever you’re going?”
“I will,” Neal says. Then, as he heads out the door, he looks over his shoulder, grins that dangerously wide grin of his, and says, “You’ll be hearing from me.” And with that… he’s gone.
*
Except Peter doesn’t hear from him.
Not that he really expects to, not that first week, because Neal has been tethered to New York City for four years and was incarcerated for the four before that, so Peter figures he’s probably eight years beyond ready to go sow his wild oats or something. And, you know, going wild and crazy as a free man does not usually involve sending postcards or making phone calls to say hi to the FBI agent who latched onto you eleven years ago and refused to let go.
The thing is, though, that Peter doesn’t hear from him during the second week either. Peter mostly doesn’t notice, though, what with the mortgage fraud case that he and Jones are working.
He’s really only forced to acknowledge that he’s noticed after the third week has come and mostly gone, when Elizabeth sits down at the dining room table next to him, wraps her arms around his neck, and says, “Oh, honey.”
She sounds sympathetic and understanding enough that Peter is forced to explain that he’s not worried and he’s not upset that Neal hasn’t been in touch, really, El. Really. It’s just…
“He’s our friend,” El says. “You miss him.”
Peter snorts at that, but he also nods, because it’s true. The Neal who worked with Peter for the last four years was his friend, his partner, and Peter got used to having him around. That’s all. And, you know, he still occasionally finds himself thinking of things Neal would find amusing or interesting, so he keeps looking for Neal, or pulling out his phone to call Neal, or-
Not that the girl who they’ve assigned him, Alison Eden, isn’t as sharp as a tack and miraculously not a Harvard grad, but she hasn’t worked with him long enough to know the ways that Peter’s mind works yet, and-
“He’ll be back,” Elizabeth says. “You know he’ll be back.”
Peter wants to believe her, he really does. He just hopes that if Neal does come back it will be in the way that Peter, El, and the Bureau want him to-not in handcuffs, or behind bars.
*
All of which is to say, Peter’s not expecting the phone call when it comes.
Okay, that’s not true. He was honestly never expecting this phone call to come, because this phone call never should have come.
Still, three days into week four, Eden pokes her head into his office and tells Peter that he has a phone call on line three: a Mrs. Frank Morris? About a missing Manet?
See, Peter first met Mrs. Morris nine years ago, when he’d discovered that she had quite the private art collection. He’d been pretty much in awe the first time he stepped into her apartment and saw the paintings plastering the walls: the Degas Dining Room, Picasso’s Purple Parlor, etc. The first time he’d talked to her, she’d been reeling from the theft of a Manet still life, sobbing quietly on her couch, saying, “How? Why?” The picture itself had been simple enough: a small picture of two pears, Deux Poires, but even at the time it had been worth upwards of a million dollars.
Mrs. Morris had been patient with their investigation, trying as hard as she could to remember everything she could about the last several days, about anything unusual that might have happened, and it had only taken a few hours for Peter to suspect that there was a link between the missing painting and the nice young man who had been by to work on her cable TV just the week before. Even though Peter had never been able to prove it then-and still couldn’t, for that matter-he was sure that the nice young man had been Neal.
Which is to say that he’s pretty sure that he is totally justified in murmuring, “Neal, what have you done?” even as he picks up the call.
“Special Agent Peter Burke,” he says, trying not to sound wary, even when he feels his heart sink lower still at the sound of Mrs. Morris crying on the other end of the line.
“Oh, Agent Burke!” Mrs. Morris says, and Peter can definitely still hear the tears in her voice, but she also sounds jubilant, which is… unexpected. “You dear man, you will never believe what’s happened!”
He thinks: I probably won’t.
Before he can say as much, though, or even just encourage Mrs. Morris to spit it out, she’s saying, “Today Hebert-you know, the nice young man who works our front desk? Well, he called and told Frank that we had a package waiting downstairs and asked if it would be a convenient time for him to bring it up? And since it was, he brought it right upstairs, the dear boy, and when I opened the paper, do you know, my heart just about stopped? Because it was the Manet, right there in front of me, looking just as she did the day she disappeared. Oh, Agent Burke!”
Peter studiously does not drop the phone, but it’s a close thing. He does cough out his surprise, though, which makes Mrs. Morris laugh, or maybe she’s crying even more forcefully, and.
And.
And Peter is actually speechless.
Well, for about ten seconds, until he fumbles his way through the necessary niceties: getting Mrs. Morris’s permission to come examine the painting, to verify that it’s actually Deux Poires and not a clever reproduction.
And the thing is, once he gets there, he knows that it’s the real thing. Years on the job and you get an instinct for these things, and the little truth bells start ringing in his head the moment he looks at it. Still he waits while the Christie’s appraiser does her thing, isn’t at all surprised when she gives him a nod-yes-and then gingerly pats Mrs. Morris on the shoulder when she bursts into tears yet again.
“Thank you, thank you,” Mrs. Morris keeps saying, like Peter had any hand in getting it back at all, and Peter can’t say anything but, “Well, I’m just glad that it’s back where it belongs.”
*
Two weeks later, there’s another phone call: this time from the Phoenix field office, one of their agents saying, “So, Burke, do you remember that Wyeth watercolor that disappeared ten years ago? The one you thought might have been a Caffrey job? Well, it’s turned up. It was delivered back to the owner earlier today in a FedEx box. I thought you might want to know.”
He sounds just as baffled as Peter was two weeks before, and this time, Peter’s the one who wants to laugh, because Neal couldn’t be-he wouldn’t be-would he?
“Neal,” he says as soon as he hangs up, and heads down to the supply room to pick up another recovered item form. Then, on a whim, he takes an entire stack of them, because if Neal is doing what Peter thinks he might be doing, well. Peter’s going to need them.
*
A week after that, he gets a call from an insurance adjuster with Lloyds of London, asking if he knows how a set of 15th century gold candlesticks-the ones that Lloyds had paid a £15,000 policy on eight years ago-might have ended up in a box on his client’s front doorstep that morning?
Three days after that, the two missing love letters from George Washington to Martha turned up in an acid-free file folder left behind in the Reading Room of the University of Virginia Special Collections.
When he tells El about that one, as soon as he gets home for dinner that night, she says, “Maybe he really has turned over a new leaf?”
“I can hope,” Peter says. “But-but I still feel like there’s some angle here that I’m just not getting.”
Because Neal is Neal and…
Still, Peter wants to believe.
*
Hughes apparently has the same worries as Peter, though, because when the Rodin bronze makes its way back to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, he pulls Peter into his office and says, “What the hell is going on, Burke?”
Peter doesn’t have an answer for him, except El’s, which he gives, looking off to the side like he can’t quite believe he’s saying it. Except: why shouldn’t Neal be able to change? Why shouldn’t he have learned his lesson? Maybe actually working for the good guys had rubbed off with him?
“Or maybe he’s rubbing our nose in the fact that the statute of limitations on all of these pieces expired a year ago,” Hughes says, “and that we can’t do anything about it.”
And he could be. He could be.
Or he could actually be going legit, which, yes, is something that Peter has to keep reminding himself of, because he’s pretty sure that having valuable works of art being returned to their rightful owners is actually supposed to be considered a good thing.
“Keep an eye on it,” Hughes says, before shooing Peter out of his office, which is why the next day Peter adds a new folder to the Caffrey file and starts making a list of people to call. When Jones and Eden ask, he says he’s just putting out feelers, which Eden mostly buys, but Jones just raises an eyebrow at. He doesn’t question Peter any more than that, though.
So, Peter makes his calls.
Two-Tongue Willie is no help at all. “Nothing brewing, boss,” he says, but only after Peter’s bought the coffee. “Nada, zilch, zip.”
Bernie the Pawn is more help, if only because he at least admits to knowing what Peter’s talking about.
“The punk is giving the rest of us a bad name,” Bernie grumbles into his fruity something or other at his dive bar of choice. “Whoever heard of fucking returning the actual pieces of art to their rightful owners?” He scoffs, like this is most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard.
Peter actually agrees.
From there he spreads his feelers out across the U.S., then down to South America, then to Europe when a Renoir appears back at the little museum in the Alps it had disappeared from twelve years before. France first, then Switzerland. Spain, too.
And still Peter’s getting calls: the Wentworth diamond making its way back to Texas; a set of silverware once owned by Napoleon ending up at the house of the curator of the palace of Versailles; a long-missing Goya sketch ending up back on the wall from which it was stolen in Madrid.
But no matter how many calls Peter makes, no matter how many meetings with informants he sets up, there’s no sign of Neal. Probably because cooperating with The Man is always more enticing when doing so might shave a few years off of your own sentence. Agreeing with your friendly neighborhood FBI agent that yes, some schmuck really is forgoing the 10% fencing fee to do the Right Thing just doesn’t have the same weight.
So, basically, Peter casts his net wide, but Neal keeps swimming right on through.
*
Time passes. Three months, six months, a year.
A Tiffany lamp returns home to Hollywood, a hand-drawn map of the then-so-called “New World” shows up in Boston-a crime which Neal had never even been a suspect in-and a missing 400 carat emerald ends up in Santiago, and then, after that, the calls to Peter’s phone start trailing off. First it’s a few weeks between the calls from surprised agents/insurance companies/victims. Then a month, then two.
When he finishes a third month with no call, Peter pretty much decides that that is probably that. Neal Caffrey, he of the new leaf, has gone completely off the grid.
He tells himself that he’s glad.
He tells himself that he much prefers this silence to a phone call telling him about a painting walking off of a wall in Louisiana in broad daylight, or a forged bond showing up in someone’s safe in Maine, the details of the crime matching Neal’s MO to the dime. Because he does.
But still. Sometimes, in quiet moments, he finds himself looking at the phone and wondering.
All of which is to say, he’s not expecting the knock on his door at nine a.m. that Saturday morning in May, and he’s really not expecting to pull back the curtains and see Mozzie on the other side of the glass, holding an envelope.
He opens the door more warily than he’d like to admit to, and says, “Haversham” slowly, carefully, because he may not have seen the man in nearly a year and a half, but there are some habits he’s incapable of breaking.
“Mr. Suit,” Mozzie says, sounding just the same as ever, and then he’s holding out the envelope for Peter to take. “Neal wanted me to give you this. You and your lovely wife are cordially invited.”
Before Peter can do more than look at the envelope in his hand and ask what he and Elizabeth are cordially invited to, Mozzie is halfway down the stairs and he doesn’t turn around even as he calls out, “Read the invitation!”
So Peter carefully opens the envelope, gently working the flap open with his finger. Inside he finds an expensive piece of cardstock embossed with gold lettering: Grand Opening Celebration! N.C. Gallery: Specializing in unique local art and high quality reproductions.
“Neal,” Peter says, sounding despairing even to his own ears, despite the fact that what Neal’s apparently doing isn’t illegal. Not if he doesn’t try to pass the paintings off as the originals. Not if that’s all that Neal’s doing.
And, oh, Peter wants to believe.
*
Which is why Peter takes off work half an hour early the next Tuesday, so he can get home in time to pick up Elizabeth, looking lovely in black and burgundy Verrier dress, and change into a suit that isn’t the cousin of the one that he arrested Neal in the first time around. From there, they drive back to Greenwich Village, navigating the streets until they find a little storefront located three windows down from the corner.
Peering through the window, Peter can see that it’s one of those narrow, long rooms, and although it’s probably not as small as it looks, there are also clusters of people spilling out onto the street, muted Wes Montgomery filtering out through the open door.
El threads her fingers with Peter’s, then leads him through the door, and it takes Peter less than thirty seconds to spot Neal standing near the back of the room, the center of the largest cluster of people. June, he sees, is planted firmly at his side. Perhaps feeling someone watching him, it only takes Neal a few seconds longer than that to meet Peter’s gaze.
His smile is blinding.
Peter watches him excuse himself from his group of people so that he can make his way over to them-although it takes him awhile to actually make it to them, what with all of the well-wishers who apparently feel the need to stop him on his way.
“El,” Neal says, leaning in to kiss her cheek. Then, “Peter.”
Peter extends his hand, but Neal only takes it so that he can pull Peter in for a hug.
“It’s been awhile,” Peter says when Neal finally lets go.
“I did stay in touch,” Neal says, his eyes crinkled up around the edges. “You didn’t get my messages?”
“Oh, I got them,” Peter says, and he can’t help letting just an edge of a growl slip into his voice, because he’s spent almost a year and a half wondering what Neal’s game is, and now Neal’s right here, standing in front of him, like it’s been no time at all.
“And here I thought you’d be pleased,” Neal says. There’s a twinkle in his eye when he says it, though, playful enough that Peter feels like he should be making some crack about Neal ending up behind bars again… but. Well. It’s been a year and a half and no matter what Peter’s wondered about, there are no signs that Neal actually stepped across any line.
“Mrs. Morris was particularly pleased,” Peter says, at which point Neal looks over his shoulder, a smirk on his face, and when Peter follows his gaze, he sees Deux Poires on the wall behind them.
“Neal.”
“Peter,” Elizabeth says, sounding rather exasperated, but Neal shakes his head.
“Did you not read the description of my business?” he asks. “It says it right there on the window: high quality reproductions. Come on, I’ll even show you where I signed this one.”
Then, before Peter or Elizabeth can protest, he leads them through the crowd over to the painting of the two pears. He points to the upper left hand corner and yes, when Peter leans in, he can see the subtle ‘NC’ worked into the background. He looks at Neal for a long moment, then walks three feet further down the wall and looks closely at a Wyeth-esque watercolor, and sees another NC.
“I learned my lesson,” Neal says. “Really.”
“They’re lovely, Neal. Really,” Elizabeth says, which has Neal grinning again, but before he can say more, or before Peter is forced to praise them, too, June comes up to them and tells Neal that a Mr. Finnegan just arrived and Neal absolutely must meet him, right this instant.
El shoos Neal away when he looks at them apologetically, then guides Peter to the hors d’oeuvres table. Which, of course, is where she finds one of her friends from the event planning circuit, and while he stays at her side for quite awhile, he eventually begs out of the conversation and wanders the gallery alone, finding himself simultaneously relieved that Neal is back and worried about what exactly it means that he is.
He takes his time looking at each and every painting, finds Neal’s initials worked into each one, and then finally heads upstairs to the upper balcony for some comparative quiet and air.
Which is where Neal finds him, maybe fifteen minutes later.
“I’m glad you came,” Neal says, by way of opening, handing Peter a glass of wine. Peter nods. He’s glad, too. He knows that El will be, because she loves having the opportunity to mix and mingle and meet new people.
“I don’t know what you’re doing here,” Peter says finally, which is maybe not what he meant to say, but it’s also true.
“I’m putting my talents to good use,” Neal says. “I mean-“ Then he stops, laughs a little, mostly sounding amused. “You broke me.”
That makes Peter choke, because what? “What?”
“I was in Paris,” Neal says. “I went to Paris first, then north, and there was this Matisse, okay? A really lovely piece that I’ve admired for years. I went to go look at it, at the whole Matisse exhibition this little out of the way museum was having, and it was such a little place that the security was a joke, and I could have… It would have been so easy. But then I thought, what would I do with it? Stick it in a storage locker? Never look at it? And then I saw on the placard that it was on loan from a private collection, probably someone like Mrs. Morris, and I…” He pauses, swallows, then continues more softly. “So I bought a postcard of it in the gift shop and left. It was a rather tragic moment of self-discovery to realize that I’d apparently played on the right side of the white coats for too long.”
“I bet it was,” Peter says.
“Plus,” Neal continues, “if I had taken it, you would have been giving me even more of a disappointed look than you are now." He grins Peter at that point, quick. Peter can’t help but smile back. "So I kept thinking-and, well, you know the rest. And here I am.”
“Here you are,” Peter repeats and he shouldn’t be happy that Neal’s admitting to nearly taking a Matisse a whole week after he’d left FBI custody, but. But at the same time, something’s loosening inside of him, because suddenly it feels like there’s a link between the Neal he chased for so long and the Neal he grew to know so well. Like maybe this whole new leaf that Neal’s working on really isn’t just some elaborate scheme, building up to something that Peter has no wish to deal with, but is actually something Neal has made a conscious choice about.
Then, on an impulse-perhaps because, for the first time since the tracking anklet came off, he feels like he knows Neal still, or maybe because he sees June’s granddaughter coming up the stairs, presumably to herd Neal back to the party-he says, “You should come over for dinner tomorrow. Maybe then you can explain to Elizabeth and I why we’re still waiting for that postcard you promised us.”
Neal’s grin is wide.
“Absolutely,” he says. “But it will have to be a late dinner, if that’s okay. I am an honest working man now, you know.”
Peter laughs. “That you are.”
*
Still, the next day, he’s not surprised when one of the security guards calls up to tell him that someone has left a letter for him at the desk. When goes down to pick it up, though, he finds that the guard was wrong: it’s not a letter, it’s a postcard.
Of a Matisse, to be exact.
“Neal,” Peter says under his breath, and when he turns the card over he sees the words ‘Happy now?’ scrawled on the back. He doesn’t let himself laugh out loud there, then, but he does think: yeah, yeah I am.
End.
Characters: Peter & Neal gen.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: “You know this isn’t goodbye, though,” Neal says. “You really don’t think I’ll just fade away, do you?” 4500 words. Set four years in the future.
A/N: Writing in a new fandom is scary. Many, many thanks to octette for being willing to beta this for me and also for getting it back to me so quickly. Any remaining errors are, of course, my own.
This story can also be found at AO3 here.
Four years and three days after their arrangement becomes official, Peter and Neal sign their names about fifty different times on the bottoms of a whole ream worth of papers, Jones cuts Neal’s ankle tracker for the last time, and Neal is officially a free man.
They throw him a party in the office: cake, balloons, a card. Thanks for all the help closing cases. Good job not doing anything so illegal we had to arrest you for it over the last four years. Aside from, well, the three times you were framed, and that other time. But no hard feelings about that, right?
And when the time comes for Neal to actually leave? Well, he sits down in what’s become his chair in Peter’s office, balances his elbows on top of a stack of file folders, cases he won’t be involved in, and says, “So.”
“So,” Peter says.
Peter’s been in his office for about half an hour at this point, finishing up paperwork, watching Neal make the rounds, say his goodbyes. He’s trying not to think that tomorrow or the next day, or next week at the latest, he’s going to be doing those same rounds, introducing the new kid at his shoulder to everyone. The probie, he’ll probably say, though the kid’ll probably want to call him or herself Peter’s partner.
“So,” Neal says again, and then he grins, blinding. “This is it, huh?”
“Yup,” Peter says, and he cringes because it sounds so cliché, like a hundred different conversations in a hundred different movies. Neal laughs at him, shaking his head fondly, and says, “You’re sort of terrible at this ‘saying goodbye’ thing, aren’t you?”
“I am,” Peter agrees. “I really, really am.”
Mostly, though, Peter blames it on himself. Because how is he supposed to handle this situation? He should be thrilled that Neal served out his sentence without getting into more trouble. He should be happy that his name is no longer tied to that of his ex-con partner, and that now, any time said ex-con ex-partner does anything out of line, Peter’s name won’t be sullied, too. He should be relieved.
Except he spent three years chasing Neal, another four years ignoring the birthday and holiday cards that Neal kept sending him, and then the last four with Neal at his side, through ups and downs, case after case, and dinner at Peter’s house at least once or twice a week.
“You know this isn’t goodbye, though,” Neal says. “You really don’t think I’ll just fade away, do you?”
“Don’t-don’t say things like that,” Peter says, because seriously. That’s what he’s afraid of. He’s afraid that Neal is Neal, and he’ll wake up next week and hear about a painting walking out of some swanky pad on the Upper East Side, or wake up two months from now with a lead on some truly excellent fake bonds, or rumors of the next map of Vinland forgery. Because while he trusts Neal to watch his back-especially when Neal’s restricted by the ankle tracker- Neal on the outside, free, is another creature entirely. Peter spent seven years of his life learning about that Neal Caffrey, and honestly, as much as he wants to, he’s still not sure that he can trust him. Because Neal is Neal-and always will be.
“I meant,” Neal says, “that I’ll send you a postcard. One from Paris? Or Athens? Which would you prefer?”
“Neal,” Peter says, and he knows that he sounds unintentionally pained. He’s quite well aware of that fact, thank you very much.
“Or maybe I really have learned my lesson,” Neal says, looking amused. “I guess you’ll just have to wait and find out.”
With that he stands up and extends his hand to Peter, and Peter has no choice but to stand up, too, taking Neal’s hand and shaking it.
“I won’t say that it’s always been a pleasure,” Neal says, finally, after the handshake has gone on for just a few moments too long. “But… thank you. For everything.”
“Right,” Peter says. “Absolutely. You’re welcome.”
If El were here, she probably would have rolled her eyes at Peter about five minutes ago, and would already have her arms wrapped around Neal, squeezing him as tightly as she could. Peter’s also pretty sure that it wouldn’t be good form for him to do anything remotely similar in the middle of his glass-walled office at the FBI.
Because of that, Neal’s the one to sigh, then walk around the desk and pull Peter in for a hug. Quick, manly, and totally inappropriate, Peter thinks, given the nature of their working relationship, but then Neal’s pulling back, saying, “And with that, I’ve got a plane to catch.”
“Okay,” Peter says. “Okay then. So I guess I’ll see you around. Um. Have a good trip, wherever you’re going?”
“I will,” Neal says. Then, as he heads out the door, he looks over his shoulder, grins that dangerously wide grin of his, and says, “You’ll be hearing from me.” And with that… he’s gone.
*
Except Peter doesn’t hear from him.
Not that he really expects to, not that first week, because Neal has been tethered to New York City for four years and was incarcerated for the four before that, so Peter figures he’s probably eight years beyond ready to go sow his wild oats or something. And, you know, going wild and crazy as a free man does not usually involve sending postcards or making phone calls to say hi to the FBI agent who latched onto you eleven years ago and refused to let go.
The thing is, though, that Peter doesn’t hear from him during the second week either. Peter mostly doesn’t notice, though, what with the mortgage fraud case that he and Jones are working.
He’s really only forced to acknowledge that he’s noticed after the third week has come and mostly gone, when Elizabeth sits down at the dining room table next to him, wraps her arms around his neck, and says, “Oh, honey.”
She sounds sympathetic and understanding enough that Peter is forced to explain that he’s not worried and he’s not upset that Neal hasn’t been in touch, really, El. Really. It’s just…
“He’s our friend,” El says. “You miss him.”
Peter snorts at that, but he also nods, because it’s true. The Neal who worked with Peter for the last four years was his friend, his partner, and Peter got used to having him around. That’s all. And, you know, he still occasionally finds himself thinking of things Neal would find amusing or interesting, so he keeps looking for Neal, or pulling out his phone to call Neal, or-
Not that the girl who they’ve assigned him, Alison Eden, isn’t as sharp as a tack and miraculously not a Harvard grad, but she hasn’t worked with him long enough to know the ways that Peter’s mind works yet, and-
“He’ll be back,” Elizabeth says. “You know he’ll be back.”
Peter wants to believe her, he really does. He just hopes that if Neal does come back it will be in the way that Peter, El, and the Bureau want him to-not in handcuffs, or behind bars.
*
All of which is to say, Peter’s not expecting the phone call when it comes.
Okay, that’s not true. He was honestly never expecting this phone call to come, because this phone call never should have come.
Still, three days into week four, Eden pokes her head into his office and tells Peter that he has a phone call on line three: a Mrs. Frank Morris? About a missing Manet?
See, Peter first met Mrs. Morris nine years ago, when he’d discovered that she had quite the private art collection. He’d been pretty much in awe the first time he stepped into her apartment and saw the paintings plastering the walls: the Degas Dining Room, Picasso’s Purple Parlor, etc. The first time he’d talked to her, she’d been reeling from the theft of a Manet still life, sobbing quietly on her couch, saying, “How? Why?” The picture itself had been simple enough: a small picture of two pears, Deux Poires, but even at the time it had been worth upwards of a million dollars.
Mrs. Morris had been patient with their investigation, trying as hard as she could to remember everything she could about the last several days, about anything unusual that might have happened, and it had only taken a few hours for Peter to suspect that there was a link between the missing painting and the nice young man who had been by to work on her cable TV just the week before. Even though Peter had never been able to prove it then-and still couldn’t, for that matter-he was sure that the nice young man had been Neal.
Which is to say that he’s pretty sure that he is totally justified in murmuring, “Neal, what have you done?” even as he picks up the call.
“Special Agent Peter Burke,” he says, trying not to sound wary, even when he feels his heart sink lower still at the sound of Mrs. Morris crying on the other end of the line.
“Oh, Agent Burke!” Mrs. Morris says, and Peter can definitely still hear the tears in her voice, but she also sounds jubilant, which is… unexpected. “You dear man, you will never believe what’s happened!”
He thinks: I probably won’t.
Before he can say as much, though, or even just encourage Mrs. Morris to spit it out, she’s saying, “Today Hebert-you know, the nice young man who works our front desk? Well, he called and told Frank that we had a package waiting downstairs and asked if it would be a convenient time for him to bring it up? And since it was, he brought it right upstairs, the dear boy, and when I opened the paper, do you know, my heart just about stopped? Because it was the Manet, right there in front of me, looking just as she did the day she disappeared. Oh, Agent Burke!”
Peter studiously does not drop the phone, but it’s a close thing. He does cough out his surprise, though, which makes Mrs. Morris laugh, or maybe she’s crying even more forcefully, and.
And.
And Peter is actually speechless.
Well, for about ten seconds, until he fumbles his way through the necessary niceties: getting Mrs. Morris’s permission to come examine the painting, to verify that it’s actually Deux Poires and not a clever reproduction.
And the thing is, once he gets there, he knows that it’s the real thing. Years on the job and you get an instinct for these things, and the little truth bells start ringing in his head the moment he looks at it. Still he waits while the Christie’s appraiser does her thing, isn’t at all surprised when she gives him a nod-yes-and then gingerly pats Mrs. Morris on the shoulder when she bursts into tears yet again.
“Thank you, thank you,” Mrs. Morris keeps saying, like Peter had any hand in getting it back at all, and Peter can’t say anything but, “Well, I’m just glad that it’s back where it belongs.”
*
Two weeks later, there’s another phone call: this time from the Phoenix field office, one of their agents saying, “So, Burke, do you remember that Wyeth watercolor that disappeared ten years ago? The one you thought might have been a Caffrey job? Well, it’s turned up. It was delivered back to the owner earlier today in a FedEx box. I thought you might want to know.”
He sounds just as baffled as Peter was two weeks before, and this time, Peter’s the one who wants to laugh, because Neal couldn’t be-he wouldn’t be-would he?
“Neal,” he says as soon as he hangs up, and heads down to the supply room to pick up another recovered item form. Then, on a whim, he takes an entire stack of them, because if Neal is doing what Peter thinks he might be doing, well. Peter’s going to need them.
*
A week after that, he gets a call from an insurance adjuster with Lloyds of London, asking if he knows how a set of 15th century gold candlesticks-the ones that Lloyds had paid a £15,000 policy on eight years ago-might have ended up in a box on his client’s front doorstep that morning?
Three days after that, the two missing love letters from George Washington to Martha turned up in an acid-free file folder left behind in the Reading Room of the University of Virginia Special Collections.
When he tells El about that one, as soon as he gets home for dinner that night, she says, “Maybe he really has turned over a new leaf?”
“I can hope,” Peter says. “But-but I still feel like there’s some angle here that I’m just not getting.”
Because Neal is Neal and…
Still, Peter wants to believe.
*
Hughes apparently has the same worries as Peter, though, because when the Rodin bronze makes its way back to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, he pulls Peter into his office and says, “What the hell is going on, Burke?”
Peter doesn’t have an answer for him, except El’s, which he gives, looking off to the side like he can’t quite believe he’s saying it. Except: why shouldn’t Neal be able to change? Why shouldn’t he have learned his lesson? Maybe actually working for the good guys had rubbed off with him?
“Or maybe he’s rubbing our nose in the fact that the statute of limitations on all of these pieces expired a year ago,” Hughes says, “and that we can’t do anything about it.”
And he could be. He could be.
Or he could actually be going legit, which, yes, is something that Peter has to keep reminding himself of, because he’s pretty sure that having valuable works of art being returned to their rightful owners is actually supposed to be considered a good thing.
“Keep an eye on it,” Hughes says, before shooing Peter out of his office, which is why the next day Peter adds a new folder to the Caffrey file and starts making a list of people to call. When Jones and Eden ask, he says he’s just putting out feelers, which Eden mostly buys, but Jones just raises an eyebrow at. He doesn’t question Peter any more than that, though.
So, Peter makes his calls.
Two-Tongue Willie is no help at all. “Nothing brewing, boss,” he says, but only after Peter’s bought the coffee. “Nada, zilch, zip.”
Bernie the Pawn is more help, if only because he at least admits to knowing what Peter’s talking about.
“The punk is giving the rest of us a bad name,” Bernie grumbles into his fruity something or other at his dive bar of choice. “Whoever heard of fucking returning the actual pieces of art to their rightful owners?” He scoffs, like this is most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard.
Peter actually agrees.
From there he spreads his feelers out across the U.S., then down to South America, then to Europe when a Renoir appears back at the little museum in the Alps it had disappeared from twelve years before. France first, then Switzerland. Spain, too.
And still Peter’s getting calls: the Wentworth diamond making its way back to Texas; a set of silverware once owned by Napoleon ending up at the house of the curator of the palace of Versailles; a long-missing Goya sketch ending up back on the wall from which it was stolen in Madrid.
But no matter how many calls Peter makes, no matter how many meetings with informants he sets up, there’s no sign of Neal. Probably because cooperating with The Man is always more enticing when doing so might shave a few years off of your own sentence. Agreeing with your friendly neighborhood FBI agent that yes, some schmuck really is forgoing the 10% fencing fee to do the Right Thing just doesn’t have the same weight.
So, basically, Peter casts his net wide, but Neal keeps swimming right on through.
*
Time passes. Three months, six months, a year.
A Tiffany lamp returns home to Hollywood, a hand-drawn map of the then-so-called “New World” shows up in Boston-a crime which Neal had never even been a suspect in-and a missing 400 carat emerald ends up in Santiago, and then, after that, the calls to Peter’s phone start trailing off. First it’s a few weeks between the calls from surprised agents/insurance companies/victims. Then a month, then two.
When he finishes a third month with no call, Peter pretty much decides that that is probably that. Neal Caffrey, he of the new leaf, has gone completely off the grid.
He tells himself that he’s glad.
He tells himself that he much prefers this silence to a phone call telling him about a painting walking off of a wall in Louisiana in broad daylight, or a forged bond showing up in someone’s safe in Maine, the details of the crime matching Neal’s MO to the dime. Because he does.
But still. Sometimes, in quiet moments, he finds himself looking at the phone and wondering.
All of which is to say, he’s not expecting the knock on his door at nine a.m. that Saturday morning in May, and he’s really not expecting to pull back the curtains and see Mozzie on the other side of the glass, holding an envelope.
He opens the door more warily than he’d like to admit to, and says, “Haversham” slowly, carefully, because he may not have seen the man in nearly a year and a half, but there are some habits he’s incapable of breaking.
“Mr. Suit,” Mozzie says, sounding just the same as ever, and then he’s holding out the envelope for Peter to take. “Neal wanted me to give you this. You and your lovely wife are cordially invited.”
Before Peter can do more than look at the envelope in his hand and ask what he and Elizabeth are cordially invited to, Mozzie is halfway down the stairs and he doesn’t turn around even as he calls out, “Read the invitation!”
So Peter carefully opens the envelope, gently working the flap open with his finger. Inside he finds an expensive piece of cardstock embossed with gold lettering: Grand Opening Celebration! N.C. Gallery: Specializing in unique local art and high quality reproductions.
“Neal,” Peter says, sounding despairing even to his own ears, despite the fact that what Neal’s apparently doing isn’t illegal. Not if he doesn’t try to pass the paintings off as the originals. Not if that’s all that Neal’s doing.
And, oh, Peter wants to believe.
*
Which is why Peter takes off work half an hour early the next Tuesday, so he can get home in time to pick up Elizabeth, looking lovely in black and burgundy Verrier dress, and change into a suit that isn’t the cousin of the one that he arrested Neal in the first time around. From there, they drive back to Greenwich Village, navigating the streets until they find a little storefront located three windows down from the corner.
Peering through the window, Peter can see that it’s one of those narrow, long rooms, and although it’s probably not as small as it looks, there are also clusters of people spilling out onto the street, muted Wes Montgomery filtering out through the open door.
El threads her fingers with Peter’s, then leads him through the door, and it takes Peter less than thirty seconds to spot Neal standing near the back of the room, the center of the largest cluster of people. June, he sees, is planted firmly at his side. Perhaps feeling someone watching him, it only takes Neal a few seconds longer than that to meet Peter’s gaze.
His smile is blinding.
Peter watches him excuse himself from his group of people so that he can make his way over to them-although it takes him awhile to actually make it to them, what with all of the well-wishers who apparently feel the need to stop him on his way.
“El,” Neal says, leaning in to kiss her cheek. Then, “Peter.”
Peter extends his hand, but Neal only takes it so that he can pull Peter in for a hug.
“It’s been awhile,” Peter says when Neal finally lets go.
“I did stay in touch,” Neal says, his eyes crinkled up around the edges. “You didn’t get my messages?”
“Oh, I got them,” Peter says, and he can’t help letting just an edge of a growl slip into his voice, because he’s spent almost a year and a half wondering what Neal’s game is, and now Neal’s right here, standing in front of him, like it’s been no time at all.
“And here I thought you’d be pleased,” Neal says. There’s a twinkle in his eye when he says it, though, playful enough that Peter feels like he should be making some crack about Neal ending up behind bars again… but. Well. It’s been a year and a half and no matter what Peter’s wondered about, there are no signs that Neal actually stepped across any line.
“Mrs. Morris was particularly pleased,” Peter says, at which point Neal looks over his shoulder, a smirk on his face, and when Peter follows his gaze, he sees Deux Poires on the wall behind them.
“Neal.”
“Peter,” Elizabeth says, sounding rather exasperated, but Neal shakes his head.
“Did you not read the description of my business?” he asks. “It says it right there on the window: high quality reproductions. Come on, I’ll even show you where I signed this one.”
Then, before Peter or Elizabeth can protest, he leads them through the crowd over to the painting of the two pears. He points to the upper left hand corner and yes, when Peter leans in, he can see the subtle ‘NC’ worked into the background. He looks at Neal for a long moment, then walks three feet further down the wall and looks closely at a Wyeth-esque watercolor, and sees another NC.
“I learned my lesson,” Neal says. “Really.”
“They’re lovely, Neal. Really,” Elizabeth says, which has Neal grinning again, but before he can say more, or before Peter is forced to praise them, too, June comes up to them and tells Neal that a Mr. Finnegan just arrived and Neal absolutely must meet him, right this instant.
El shoos Neal away when he looks at them apologetically, then guides Peter to the hors d’oeuvres table. Which, of course, is where she finds one of her friends from the event planning circuit, and while he stays at her side for quite awhile, he eventually begs out of the conversation and wanders the gallery alone, finding himself simultaneously relieved that Neal is back and worried about what exactly it means that he is.
He takes his time looking at each and every painting, finds Neal’s initials worked into each one, and then finally heads upstairs to the upper balcony for some comparative quiet and air.
Which is where Neal finds him, maybe fifteen minutes later.
“I’m glad you came,” Neal says, by way of opening, handing Peter a glass of wine. Peter nods. He’s glad, too. He knows that El will be, because she loves having the opportunity to mix and mingle and meet new people.
“I don’t know what you’re doing here,” Peter says finally, which is maybe not what he meant to say, but it’s also true.
“I’m putting my talents to good use,” Neal says. “I mean-“ Then he stops, laughs a little, mostly sounding amused. “You broke me.”
That makes Peter choke, because what? “What?”
“I was in Paris,” Neal says. “I went to Paris first, then north, and there was this Matisse, okay? A really lovely piece that I’ve admired for years. I went to go look at it, at the whole Matisse exhibition this little out of the way museum was having, and it was such a little place that the security was a joke, and I could have… It would have been so easy. But then I thought, what would I do with it? Stick it in a storage locker? Never look at it? And then I saw on the placard that it was on loan from a private collection, probably someone like Mrs. Morris, and I…” He pauses, swallows, then continues more softly. “So I bought a postcard of it in the gift shop and left. It was a rather tragic moment of self-discovery to realize that I’d apparently played on the right side of the white coats for too long.”
“I bet it was,” Peter says.
“Plus,” Neal continues, “if I had taken it, you would have been giving me even more of a disappointed look than you are now." He grins Peter at that point, quick. Peter can’t help but smile back. "So I kept thinking-and, well, you know the rest. And here I am.”
“Here you are,” Peter repeats and he shouldn’t be happy that Neal’s admitting to nearly taking a Matisse a whole week after he’d left FBI custody, but. But at the same time, something’s loosening inside of him, because suddenly it feels like there’s a link between the Neal he chased for so long and the Neal he grew to know so well. Like maybe this whole new leaf that Neal’s working on really isn’t just some elaborate scheme, building up to something that Peter has no wish to deal with, but is actually something Neal has made a conscious choice about.
Then, on an impulse-perhaps because, for the first time since the tracking anklet came off, he feels like he knows Neal still, or maybe because he sees June’s granddaughter coming up the stairs, presumably to herd Neal back to the party-he says, “You should come over for dinner tomorrow. Maybe then you can explain to Elizabeth and I why we’re still waiting for that postcard you promised us.”
Neal’s grin is wide.
“Absolutely,” he says. “But it will have to be a late dinner, if that’s okay. I am an honest working man now, you know.”
Peter laughs. “That you are.”
*
Still, the next day, he’s not surprised when one of the security guards calls up to tell him that someone has left a letter for him at the desk. When goes down to pick it up, though, he finds that the guard was wrong: it’s not a letter, it’s a postcard.
Of a Matisse, to be exact.
“Neal,” Peter says under his breath, and when he turns the card over he sees the words ‘Happy now?’ scrawled on the back. He doesn’t let himself laugh out loud there, then, but he does think: yeah, yeah I am.
End.