Fic (White Collar): In another life (I would make you stay)
Title: In another life (I would make you stay)
Author: cookielaura
Characters: Neal, Peter
Pairings: Peter and Neal UST or pre-Peter/Neal/El, mentioned Peter/El
Word count: 1,237
Rating: PG13
Warnings/spoilers: None
Summary: Peter and Neal spend the evening asking each other questions that don’t mean anything.
Notes: Written for runthecon, and the prompt of ‘The one that got away’. Title from the Katy Perry song of the same name.
‘Best meal you’ve ever had?’ Neal says, then adds: ‘And you can’t say your own pot roast.’
Peter gives him a fake scowl, then laughs. ‘Okay, let me think.’ He taps his finger on the neck of his beer bottle and purses his lips. Neal waits, and watches. They have all night, after all. They’re more than an hour into a game of Ask Me Anything, Neal is near the bottom of his third glass of wine, and there’s a warm, hazy feeling spreading through him that is causing him to be less self-conscious than he should be about how he’s staring at Peter’s jawline. It twitches when Peter’s thinking, and Neal can’t take his eyes off it.
‘It was in Rhodes,’ Peter says finally.
Neal raises his eyebrows. ‘I didn’t even know you’d been to Greece.’
‘It was a couple years after we got married. El wanted to do the whole island-hopping thing. And Rhodes wasn’t my favorite. It was too busy. But there was this one afternoon, when we trekked up into the mountains. It was baking hot, and I was desperate for a drink, and we stumbled across this little restaurant on the edge of a cliff. It was almost falling off the cliff, really, and we were the only people there. We sat outside, overlooking the ocean, and ate lamb kleftiko out of clay pots. It wasn’t anything fussy, but I swear it’s the best thing I ever tasted.’
‘Sounds idyllic,’ Neal says, and it does, so much so that he can almost feel the warmth of the Greek sun. But Peter has a faraway look in his eyes, as if he’s back on that mountain, and Neal has a sudden urge to yank him back into the present. ‘Your turn,’ he says.
Peter takes another swig of beer. ‘Favorite actress,’ he says after a moment.
Neal doesn’t even have to think about that one. ‘Katharine Hepburn. Easy.’ And Peter just nods, as though it’s not a surprise, as though he had already somehow divined who Neal’s favorite actress would be. As though he already knows everything there is to know about Neal and is only asking the questions to keep the game going.
‘Your go,’ Peter reminds him, and then holds up a hand in an instruction to wait as his phone buzzes with a message. ‘Elizabeth,’ he murmurs to Neal as he starts to text a reply.
‘Say hi from me,’ Neal says, then tips the rest of his glass of wine into his mouth. There’s a part of Neal - a heavy, slightly ashamed part - that looks forward to these times when El is away on business. It’s not that he doesn’t love Elizabeth - he does, almost as much as he loves Peter, and occasionally even more - but when she’s at home, the Burkes spend their evenings in Brooklyn, and there are only so many excuses that Neal can reasonably come up with to join them. When she’s away though, Peter will invariably find his way to Neal’s apartment. And he’ll sit on the couch like he is now, sleeves rolled up, legs stretched out, looking as though this is his place as much as Neal’s, as if he belongs here just as much as he belongs in that Brooklyn townhouse, and Neal will pretend that it’s true.
‘Okay, go,’ Peter says, putting his phone down.
‘Strangest place you’ve ever slept,’ Neal says.
Peter screws up his face a little. ‘Um, the living room floor?’
Neal snorts. ‘Exciting. You’re such a daredevil, Peter.’
Peter kicks at him lazily with a socked foot. ‘Hey, not all of us have spent half our lives on the run, living in ridiculous places. What about you then? Strangest place you’ve ever slept?’
‘Hmm,’ Neal says, leaning back on the couch and grinning. ‘You’re off the clock, right?’
Peter gives a long-suffering sigh. ‘Yes. But please don’t tell me anything I’ll have to try too hard to forget.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing too incriminating. Well, it would have been if it had worked, but seeing as it was just a failed attempt at a theft…’
Peter looks intrigued. ‘A failure? You mean there’s something out there that Neal Caffrey couldn’t steal?’
‘I know, it’s hard to believe. And it’s not that I couldn’t steal it, obviously, it’s just that it went wrong and I never got a second chance.’
‘Oh right, of course,’ Peter says magnanimously, and even after the wine Neal can tell he’s being patronized. He ploughs on regardless.
‘It was a painting,’ he says, ‘not even worth much. But I loved it. I wanted it just so I could put it on the wall of whatever place I eventually settled down in.’
‘Who’s the artist?’ Peter asks, and Neal shakes his head.
‘I’m not telling you that. What if I get another chance to steal it one day? I don’t want you suspecting me.’
Peter scowls for real this time, and only partially relaxes when Neal waves a hand and says: ‘I’m kidding, Peter. You know I’m a law abiding citizen now. But still, this painting…it was the one that got away, you know?’
Peter just signals to him to continue with his story.
‘Anyway, it belonged to a private collector, in Latvia. He was away for the night, and I knew I could get past his security system, so I went for it. I just didn’t count on his psychotic Rottweiler interrupting me. He chased me out of the courtyard, halfway up a hill and into a pine tree. I spent the night crouched in the top branches while he hissed and barked twenty feet below. It was quite uncomfortable.’
Peter is smirking by this stage. ‘Serves you right,’ he says. ‘What happened after that?’
‘Well, after about fourteen hours the dog got hungry - or maybe just bored - and ran back home. And I climbed down and went back to the hotel for a very long bath. But hey, it makes a better story than sleeping on the living room floor, right?’
Peter shrugs. ‘It definitely makes a more illegal story. And you never went back to try again?’
‘No… I got called away. There was a job elsewhere, and, well, you know how things go.’
Peter looks at him carefully. ‘So if you could steal anything in the world, would you go back and steal that painting?’
Neal stares back. He’s not sure if Peter’s trying to set some future trap for him, or whether he just honestly wants to know if Neal still yearns for that painting. Which he does. But there are other things he yearns for more now. He lets his eyes drop, and his gaze finds Peter’s hands, folded in his lap, his wedding ring glinting in the half-light, marking him as someone else’s. Marking him as something Neal can’t have.
If Neal could steal anything in the world…
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘If I could steal anything, it would be that painting.’
Peter nods, and Neal wonders if he can feel the thickness of the air, or if it’s only him who’s struggling to breathe.
‘I’ll keep an eye on Latvian crime reports, then,’ Peter says lightly, and drains his beer. He stands. ‘It’s late,’ he says, like he has so many times before. ‘I should go.’
Neal walks him to the door. ‘Good night, Peter,’ he says, and he watches him go, like he always does.