White Collar fic - Crosswell
Fandom: White Collar
Summary: Neal sees something that jogs his memory. Mild OFC. Not romance.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to their respective owners.
Warnings: None
Pairings: None, gen.
Words: 1,637
Notes: Revised November 6, 2011.
Crosswell.
Neal hadn't thought about her in years. She had been left behind, along with everything else in his old life. But the minute he saw the name, memories flipped through him so fast it took his breath away.
He sucked in an escaped breath, muttered something to Peter about an appointment and somehow found himself on the street.
There were times when he hated the city, all the noise of thousands of people going about their daily business. There were times when he longed for the country of his childhood, when the only thing you could see for miles was the flat prairie with an occasional tree or rock. This time, he was thankful for the ever present crowd. It didn't take any effort to blend in, walking down the street, nobody around him taking any notice to him.
He walked for miles within his two mile radius, going around the same block for what seemed like hours. His thoughts went back to her, even though he tried to force them away. There are many things that Neal regretted about his life, and losing track of her was one, but he had never realized it before. He hadn't thought about her in so long, and part of him didn't even want to go back there.
Eventually he ended back up at June's, because, really, where else could he go? He had his old haunts and hangouts, but he wasn't trusted since it was commonly known he was working for the Feds. He suddenly craved a beer, but he didn't keep any in the apartment since he usually preferred wine.
A knock came at the door, and he knew it was Peter. He also knew that Peter would wait at the door until he answered. That was one thing he could say about his partner, he was like a dog with a bone, he would never let something drop. He sighed, but opened the door, allowing enough space for Peter to slip through, before closing it again.
"How was your appointment?" Peter's face was expressionless, and his voice held question and concern. Neal usually didn't make mindless excuses to get out of work, or zone out the way he had back in Peter's office. The uncharacteristic behavior had Peter following Neal. He had almost given up, as Neal circled the block over and over again, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that something was bothering the younger man and he was reluctant to let it go.
"I'm fine, Peter."
"Sure you are."
Neal suddenly turned, running his hand through his hair. "Don't you have something to do back at the office? It's in the middle of the day; you're not supposed to be here." He didn't want this to happen, and Peter's presence just added to the confusion. These memories were supposed to be buried deep down; he wasn't supposed to think about them anymore. Not even Mozzie knew about her, or about his life before he had run the streets. Nobody knew.
"Neither are you." That was one thing about Peter; Neal's emotions never threw him off. Even at the beginning of their partnership, he had always been calm, ready to take anything his new partner threw at him. "What happened, Neal?"
Neal suddenly didn't have the energy to dodge Peter's questions. The agent had never pried into his past even though Neal knew he was curious. Usually, he was kind of amused by it, and occasionally dropped facts of non-importance just to frustrate Peter, but it suddenly required too much to spin tales. He huffed a laughed as he dropped on the couch. "It's so stupid. It shouldn't even matter."
Peter sat across from him and a bottle of beer appeared from nowhere. Neal peered at his partner.
"How do you do that?"
Peter just smirked and Neal sputtered another laugh. "Okay." He opened the beer and took a long swallow. They sat in silence for a while, Neal hesitant, Peter just waiting. And then Neal just started talking, not stopping to see if it made sense.
"It was in Kansas, before everything. She was beautiful, but not in the I-want-you-in-bed kind of way, in a simple way. She had this really long hair that she always wore down because she always said she was too lazy to put it up.
"We spent hours together, because there was nothing else to do." Neal took another swig of beer and glanced at Peter. "Don't know if you've ever been to the Midwest, Peter, but there's nothing there. It's just all prairies; it's cold, and there are a lot of farmers. But Jessie and I would roam all over the place. There was this pond not far from her house and we used to go and swim in the summer, or slide across the ice in the winter. Sometimes," he smiled at the memory, "we'd just skip rocks across the surface. She was actually that one that taught me how to do that."
"Who was she, Neal?" Peter's voice was soft, scared he would break the moment and Neal would clam up, but he was curious. This wasn't Neal craving after a lost love - he'd seen that more times than he could count. This was something different.
Neal didn't answer for a long time, and Peter was afraid that he ruined it. Neal opened up so rarely, the last time he had it was too admit that his father was a bad cop. After that revelation, Neal went silent and neither of them ever mentioned it again.
"Her name was Jessnah. She was beautiful."
Peter looked at Neal, but it didn't appear that Neal knew he repeated himself. His eyes had a glaze, lost in some memory that Peter wasn't privy to.
"I used to tease her all the time about her name. I'd ask her 'What kind of name is Jessnah?' And she'd answer 'The same as Neal.' It was years later that I found that she was named for her two aunts, Jessica and Nina and that she hated it."
Neal went silent again, and Peter was left to process the information. He had never known that Neal had lived in Kansas, in the country no less. He had assumed that Neal was native to New York, but then again, there was so much about him that Peter didn't know. He still didn't know anything about his mother, and knew little about his father.
Peter had always assumed that Neal would open up when he was ready too. Neal trusted him, Peter knew, but he wasn't much to look at the past. Neal always looked toward the future, constantly making plans and thinking ahead.
"She had an older brother, Corey." Neal continuing brought back Peter's wandering attention. "Corey was only a couple minutes older, they were twins, and those two were really close. I remember wishing that I had a little sister just like Jessnah."
The mood was broken moments later when Mozzie came in, and he and Neal disappeared into Neal's closest for some secret conference that Peter really didn't want to know the meaning of. Peter left and went back to the office. He hesitated for a bit before running a search for Jessnah in his database. Neal hadn't given him a last name, but he had worked with less before.
Surprisingly, the story of Jessnah continued to spill out over the next couple of months. Something had jogged Neal's memory of her and the facts spilled out at random times. Peter began to feel like he had known this mysterious friend from Neal's equally as mysterious past.
After passing a candy shop on Hoover's Avenue, he found out that Jessnah had hated chocolate but loved caramel. A clothing store had brought out that she had always wore jeans and T-shirts - "She had no fashion sense at all" - and she was exactly two years, two months, twelve days and twenty-three minutes older than Neal. The Blockbuster by the office reminded Neal that she had loved watching movies, but also enjoyed certain types of books. It was a random day at the office when Neal had been doodling that Peter had found out that Jessnah couldn't draw anything more the stick figures, but loved to write and had always carried a disposable camera with her.
Peter had tried asking his own questions about Jessnah, but whenever he did, Neal would clam up. He had learned to simply listen to Neal and he did, filing back the information about himself that Neal would drop and waiting for him to give him Jessnah's last name to help him in his search. But Neal never did, whether that was intentional or accidental, Peter never knew.
It was Wednesday and Peter had just found out that Jessnah had always been a neat freak when he finally asked the question that had been burning inside of him for months. "Don't you want to find out what happened to her, Neal?"
That brought Neal out of his memory glaze and he looked at Peter hard for a long time. Peter met his stare and didn't back down, waiting for Neal's answer. All this time, Neal had never made a move to find out what happened to Jessnah even though he clearly had been close to her when he was little.
Neal finally blinked, chucked his apple core in a nearby trash can and picked up his jacket. "No." It was one word and Neal left the building and Peter didn't see him at work for two more days.
When he did finally come back, he picked up where he had left off, and Peter never heard anything more about Jessnah. But Peter never forgot and occasionally he thought about Neal's friend from so long ago.