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Title: Sentimental
Rating: G
Characters: Neal, Peter
Summary: It's not like Neal materialized out of thin air. Though edited gratuitously, this is not beta'd. Please don't hold that against me.
A/N: White Collar keeps eating my brain! Why! This is just a little something that popped into my head and refused to go away until I wrote it.
Sentimental
About three months after taking Neal on as a CI, Peter receives a call that sounds like the start of a joke: Neal walks into a bank then walks out five minutes later looking nervous and hiding something in his jacket. Seeing as how banks and Caffery belong in the same sentence about as much as classical art and Caffery, Peter feels it a good idea to pay Neal a visit, just to make him sweat.
Neal's loft has changed.
Peter is FBI, trained to take in details at a glance, honed to a knife's edge thanks to Neal's love of cat and mouse games. There's not a lot he misses when it comes to Caffery but it takes him a moment to pinpoint what doesn't belong. Like looking for Waldo in a room full of the rich and famous, he spots it pretty quick on the counter next to the small wine rack.
A lion. A little stuffed lion with a matted mane, slightly stained, slightly patched and a perfectly good waste of the fifty cents it probably took to fish it out of a box full of toys using a twitchy crane.
Peter wanders idly to the counter and picks the lion up. It's light weight, yet despite looking off-colored it smells clean. He holds it up for Neal to see and smiles, perhaps a little too sweetly. The lion is worn and well-used, and if it were worth millions (or was the hostage in a scam to con millions from some sentimental rich guy) then it wouldn't be sitting in plain sight.
“So just how much 'classic' does Kate prefer, exactly?”
Neal frowns, clearly confused. “That's not Kate's.”
Peter looks at the thing. Maybe it's unfair to think, but he's always pegged Neal as the kind of guy to see possessions as either an anchor pulling him down or a status symbol; that if he was going to keep something, risk dragging it around (or keep it tucked away in a safety deposit box) then it would have to be worth something.
Neal plucks the lion from Peter's hand while giving Peter a flat look. He holds the lion carefully, protectively, even, as he moves away, putting distance between it and Peter.
It is unfair, because everyone has a sentimental side.
Everyone has a past.
Neal didn't grab the lion in time for Peter to miss the tag, the words “made in china” hidden mostly by messily scrawled letters in black sharpie, written during a time when a child was just learning to spell and trying very hard to do it on his own; a backward N, a crooked L, and two squiggly Es in between
The end
Rating: G
Characters: Neal, Peter
Summary: It's not like Neal materialized out of thin air. Though edited gratuitously, this is not beta'd. Please don't hold that against me.
A/N: White Collar keeps eating my brain! Why! This is just a little something that popped into my head and refused to go away until I wrote it.
About three months after taking Neal on as a CI, Peter receives a call that sounds like the start of a joke: Neal walks into a bank then walks out five minutes later looking nervous and hiding something in his jacket. Seeing as how banks and Caffery belong in the same sentence about as much as classical art and Caffery, Peter feels it a good idea to pay Neal a visit, just to make him sweat.
Neal's loft has changed.
Peter is FBI, trained to take in details at a glance, honed to a knife's edge thanks to Neal's love of cat and mouse games. There's not a lot he misses when it comes to Caffery but it takes him a moment to pinpoint what doesn't belong. Like looking for Waldo in a room full of the rich and famous, he spots it pretty quick on the counter next to the small wine rack.
A lion. A little stuffed lion with a matted mane, slightly stained, slightly patched and a perfectly good waste of the fifty cents it probably took to fish it out of a box full of toys using a twitchy crane.
Peter wanders idly to the counter and picks the lion up. It's light weight, yet despite looking off-colored it smells clean. He holds it up for Neal to see and smiles, perhaps a little too sweetly. The lion is worn and well-used, and if it were worth millions (or was the hostage in a scam to con millions from some sentimental rich guy) then it wouldn't be sitting in plain sight.
“So just how much 'classic' does Kate prefer, exactly?”
Neal frowns, clearly confused. “That's not Kate's.”
Peter looks at the thing. Maybe it's unfair to think, but he's always pegged Neal as the kind of guy to see possessions as either an anchor pulling him down or a status symbol; that if he was going to keep something, risk dragging it around (or keep it tucked away in a safety deposit box) then it would have to be worth something.
Neal plucks the lion from Peter's hand while giving Peter a flat look. He holds the lion carefully, protectively, even, as he moves away, putting distance between it and Peter.
It is unfair, because everyone has a sentimental side.
Everyone has a past.
Neal didn't grab the lion in time for Peter to miss the tag, the words “made in china” hidden mostly by messily scrawled letters in black sharpie, written during a time when a child was just learning to spell and trying very hard to do it on his own; a backward N, a crooked L, and two squiggly Es in between
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 03:18 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 04:12 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 03:35 am (UTC)From:Actually this isn't so strange. I know of a Mr. Popularity in high school who took his stuffed bear, torn, patched up, one eye missing, and washed till the encasing fabric was falling away, to college with him. But he was the type of guy that others followed and so before long it would have been the "in" thing for fratboy college guys to have a stuffed teddy bear on their beds, if they made their beds that is.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 04:13 am (UTC)From:There's just something about reminders of childhood that are hard to let go ;)
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Date: 2010-08-31 03:36 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 04:17 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 06:05 am (UTC)From: (Anonymous)*melts*
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Date: 2010-08-31 06:24 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 01:18 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 07:32 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 04:15 pm (UTC)From:I love that Peter saw that Neal had written his name on the lion when he was a child. Very sweet.
Thank you!
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Date: 2010-08-31 07:32 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 08:42 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 07:25 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 08:57 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 07:27 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 11:17 am (UTC)From:Cat
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Date: 2010-09-01 07:27 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 11:31 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 07:28 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 12:04 pm (UTC)From:omg this is beyond adorable! love it so much :D
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Date: 2010-09-01 07:28 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-04 04:20 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-04 07:44 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 10:12 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-06 08:11 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 01:49 am (UTC)From:That was too cute for words!!!
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Date: 2010-09-08 03:18 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 02:35 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 01:49 am (UTC)From: