jadesfire | White Collar fic: Man of Means

My first White Collar fic, and first fic of any kind for an embarrassingly long period of time. Did you miss me? ;)

Title: Man of Means
Author:

jadesfire2808
Rating: G
Word count: ~2,600
Spoilers: None. Set somewhere in the first half of S1, roughlyNotes: With huge, huge thanks to

miss_zedem for ninja beta skills and extreme hand-holding.

Summary: Sometimes, even when cases go wrong, they go right.

ETA: The following day. It's been pointed out to me in comments that the tracking anklet doesn't work the way I thought, so I've corrected this story to take account of that. It doesn't make any substantial difference to the story I was telling, so hopefully no one will see the join. Thank you, anonymouse!

Man of Means

You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun.
Al Capone

By the time they got back to Federal Plaza, Neal was more or less incoherent with laughter and he accepted Jones' hand on his elbow as he and Peter squelched their way into the building.

"That's enough, Caffrey." Peter started towards the lift, caught himself and headed for the basement instead. "It's not that funny."

Waving a hand wordlessly, Neal steadied himself a little, managing to make it all the way across the lobby before he cracked up again.

"Neal." It took considerable self-control not to administer a sobering slap upside the head, but having conquered the urge, Peter settled for barring the way to the stairs with one arm. "Get a grip, would you? You look ridiculous."

As the words left his mouth, he knew they were the wrong ones, because even Jones smirked at that one. Neal got enough control of himself to point to himself, then Peter.

"Pot. Kettle, " he managed before losing it again.

Rolling his eyes and knowing when he was beaten, Peter slammed his hand into the door instead, opening it and gesturing for Neal to go first. The worst of his glare was lost on the back of Neal's head, so he reserved a little of it for Jones. "Don't even-"

Jones held up his hands in surrender. "Hey, I never said a word." The expression and gesture were far too familiar.

"You're spending too much time with Caffrey," Peter muttered, giving in and following Neal down the stairs. By the time he reached the locker room, Neal seemed to have gained at least some control of himself, and was sitting on one of the benches, wheezing gently. Pausing in the doorway, Peter caught sight of himself in the mirror at the far end of the room, and yeah, okay, Neal had a point. In his favour, he had less hair than Neal, which meant the mud wasn't making it stick up quite such ridiculous angles. On the downside, he'd gone in face first. Letting himself smile a little, and feeling the mud by his ears crack as he did so, he said, "So. I guess the tie is a total loss."

"Probably." Neal leaned back on his hands and looked at Peter appraisingly. "Wouldn't give you good odds on the shirt either."

"But we got the cameos."

"That we did. Although next time, if we could manage not to take mud bath afterwards, I'd appreciate it." Neal stretched, mud flaking off the back of his jacket. "Although having said that, it's not an entirely bad idea, as long as it's a bit warmer than that. There's this new girl over at the Great Jones Spa who-" He broke off as he caught Peter's eye. "You...really don't need to know that, do you?"

"I guess my wife might be interested." Peter stopped himself before he could run his hand through his hair, although at this point, it probably wouldn't make much difference. "Cruz is going to my place, then to June's, so we should have fresh clothes soon. In the meantime, it's not exactly the Mandarin Oriental, but the FBI has plenty of hot water you can use."

For reply, Neal tilted his head a little, then stretched out his leg a little further, coughing pointedly. Even under the mud, Peter could see the light of the anklet blinking away. When his only reply was to raise an eyebrow - seriously? - Neal pulled a face.

"Come on, man, where am I going to go? It's a whole building full of law enforcement."

"Didn't stop you in Tulsa." Unimpressed, Peter began peeling off his jacket. "You shower with it on every day, what's the big deal?"

"It itches." Neal bent over his foot, tugging at his shoe laces. "And it's covered in mud. I'm never going to get it all off like this."

"Sorry, princess, you'll just have to manage. There's no way I'm phoning the Marshalls and explaining that one to them." Peter's tie was putting up a fight, the combination of damp and encrusted mud apparently making a superglue-like paste. Wonderful.

Neal's laces seemed to be as stubborn as Peter's tie, and he swore at them, pulling a few more times before theatrically slumping forwards, hands dangling towards the floor. "Maybe I should just shower like this," he said, voice muffled by his knees.

"If that suit shrinks any more, we'll have to cut it off you, then June will charge the FBI for it. We can't afford Devore." Still wrestling with the knot in his tie, Peter headed back towards the door, yelling up the stairs, "Jones!" Turning back to Neal, who had turned his head but was still bent in half at the waist, "Fortunately, we have the technology."

Two minutes later, Jones came back with a pair of scissors, and Peter decided he really didn't like the look of anticipation on Neal's face.

"What?"

"Are you really going to cut that tie up? For real?"

Peter looked down. "Yes. Why?" When he looked up again, Neal was standing up, actually bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"Can I do it?"

"No!" He was ticked off enough at losing it, without Neal insulting his taste in clothes again. But there was something in Neal's hopeful expression that was getting to him. "Is it really that bad?" It was blue. Blue went with everything, didn't it?

The light that went on behind Neals eyes was seriously disconcerting. "If I say no, will you re-think taking this thing off my ankle?"

Sighing, Peter cut through the material just above the knot and tried to throw the sodden mess at Neal's head in annoyance. Neal caught it deftly, then held out his other hand for the scissors.

When he'd finished cutting through his laces and peeled off his shoes and socks, he looked up again. Somehow, silent, hopeful Neal was a hell of a lot more annoying than 'I'm doing my best to be good' Neal, and all Peter really wanted to do was go wash the mud out of his...well. Everywhere. But still, there was no way he was going to call the Marshalls and explain that his consultant wanted to take off his tracking device so that he could have a decent shower. He could already hear them laughing down the phone.

"Shower," he said, pointing and ignoring the kicked-puppy look Neal was giving him. "You're worse than my dog."

"I bet the dog gets to take his collar off when he baths," Neal muttered, but went anyway, leaving a trail of muddy footprints behind him.

Peter shook his head. "Definitely worse than the dog."

~~~~~

Of course, Caffrey sang in the shower. Despite the Rat Pack outfits, he didn't have a fantastic singing voice, but he could carry a tune well enough, and he sounded obnoxiously happy. Peter grabbed the shower gel and moved so that his head was back under the spray. The water at his feet was running clear at last, and one final scrub would leave him feeling human again. Mud seemed to have seeped right under his skin, cold and itchy all at once. His feet were still chilly, but the rest of him was buzzing, the adrenaline rush not quite worn off yet.

He'd reacted without thinking, knowing as soon as the gun appeared that the man holding it wasn't going to give any warnings. Pulling the weapon hadn't been an empty threat, something that didn't happen that often on Peter's cases. Most of the criminals he dealt with were better with computers than guns, and although he sometimes got hostage situations and wild shots fired during a pursuit, they were usually the result of panic and desperation. The pure, cold murder in the forger's face when he'd looked at Neal was something Peter rarely saw, and when the gun appeared, thought had gone out the window.

He was still trying to work out if they were lucky or unlucky that that dug-out foundation behind Neal had been full of mud. Stone would probably have been worse, he supposed, and there'd been too much rain lately to hope for a dry landing. He was also really starting to understand why Neal had always conducted business in such high class locations. A cushy hotel room or nice restaurant had way more places to take cover than a building site.

The singing had stopped by the time Peter stepped out of the shower, and there was no sound of water from along the corridor. Reminding himself that a)he'd told Jones to wait right outside the door and b)if Neal was going to run, he would have to do it nude, Peter took his time getting dry. Not too much time though, because option b) wasn't that much comfort really. Someone had put his own clothes right outside the shower, and as he buttoned up his shirt, it occurred to him that in all the years of chasing, and the three times he'd arrested Neal, not once had he had to physically grab him. It wasn't Neal's style, not when it put his nice suits at risk. Peter suspected the irony wasn't lost on Neal, either.

Back in the main locker room, Neal was sitting on the bench again, a towel wrapped around his waist. He was also bent over and doing something to the anklet, making Peter's stomach flip over for a second until he realised Neal was just trying to get it clean. He appeared to be using the remains of Peter's tie to do so.

"Told you it'd be difficult to get clean." Turning his foot a little, Neal ran a finger along the inside of the band. It came up spotless.

"And yet somehow you managed," Peter said, noticing that Neal hadn't been kidding about it itching, the red line clear around his ankle. Still, it was a hell of a lot better than a maximum security cell, and he was fairly sure Neal knew that as well. "Congratulations. Don't you have a suit to put on?"

"Didn't want to get dirt on the pants." Neal gave the unit a final wipe then sat up to admire his handiwork, an odd sort of half-smile on his face. "You know, people used to point a lot fewer guns at me when I didn't work for the FBI."

Peter snorted. "Is that why you're so bad at figuring out when people are trying to kill you?" He spotted the suit hanger on the wall and jerked his head towards it. "You need to learn to duck. Come on, recess is over."

"No one used to try to kill me before I worked for you," Neal grumbled, heading back to get dressed.

"New Jersey, oh-one."

"That was an accident."

"I saw the medical files. Or rather, I saw Ben Franklin's medical files. What's with the name, by the way?" It was one of a long list of questions that he'd always meant to ask.

In the tiled room, Neal's bark of laughter echoed oddly. "A friend's idea, and I wasn't exactly up to arguing."

With extensive bruising, a broken collarbone and a severe concussion, Peter supposed he wouldn't have been. He wondered vaguely if the 'friend' had been Kate at that point - the Bureau was still a little hazy about when the two of them had hooked up. Aloud, he said, "So if someone wasn't trying to make a point, how exactly did you get that beaten up? Museum curators and art collectors aren't normally noted for their violent tendencies."

There was a long enough pause that Peter began to think, as usual, that he wasn't going to get an answer, then Neal came back around the corner, knotting his tie and with a wistful smile on his face.

"Hypothetically speaking," he said carefully, "if I were to be making a quick getaway with a medieval censer, and if I'd wrapped the chain around my wrist so that I could retrieve it if I dropped it, I might find that running down stairs two at a time would make me lose my grip on it, and when I picked it up again, I might find that the chain had got caught around my ankle."

"So that when you tried to run again-"

"Headfirst," Neal said, looking as though he didn't know whether to be amused or embarrassed. "Three flights."

Unable to help himself, Peter laughed, shaking his head and sitting down on the bench. It wasn't just the mental image of the suave Neal Caffrey getting tripped up by the proceeds of his own crime, it was the abashed look on Neal's face as he admitted it. "Did you dent the censer?" Peter asked, figuring it was worth a shot. Not that it had ever worked in the past, but if the near-death experience had rattled Neal enough to make him talkative, Peter was only going to feel a little ashamed of himself for taking advantage of it.

He needn't have worried. It wasn't so much that Neal's expression shut down, more that the mask came back into place, the knowing grin and gleam in his eyes seeming so real that Peter automatically dismissed them as fake.

"What censer?" he asked, and went to get his jacket. He came back looking as smooth and polished as always, only his wet hair suggesting that his afternoon had been other than perfect. Something was bothering him though, as he fussed with his tie and brushed invisible dirt from his shoes. He'd get there in the end, and Peter leaned back on his hands, crossing his ankles in a deliberate imitation of Neal's pose earlier, and waited. Neal didn't look up, apparently addressing his cuffs as well as Peter. "Nice reflexes, by the way."

Knowing a 'thank you' when he heard it, Peter waited for Neal to meet his eyes before saying, "You're welcome." He smiled as Neal nodded jerkily, adjusting his tie one more time and almost visibly getting a grip on himself. Of course, it might be that Neal wanted Peter to think he was only now getting a grip on himself, but Peter also suspected that untangling Neal's real motives from his claimed motives was something even Neal hadn't mastered, and Peter wasn't about to drive himself crazy trying to work it out. "Come on," he said, stretching a little as he got to his feet. He was going to have bruises on his elbows tomorrow, and his right knee was already starting to hurt. "I've got some nice, safe paperwork you can fill out upstairs."

"I nearly get shot and you want me to fill out a form about it?" Neal fell into step as they headed for the door.

"There's always a form." Holding the door open and nodding to Jones who was still waiting patiently outside, Peter waved Neal through, but Neal paused in the doorway, looking thoughtful for a moment.

"I think I preferred the guy with the gun," he said, taking his hat from Jones and bounding up the stairs two at a time.

Gesturing for Jones to get after him, Peter shook his head and let the locker room door shut behind him. "Welcome to the FBI."

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