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White Collar fic: All These Roads Lead Home
The comments on the last story make me warm and squishy and ♥ all over, and I will answer them soon, promise! But in the meantime, I seem to be on a writing roll.
Title: All These Roads Lead Home
Fandom: White Collar
Pairing: Gen
Rating: G
Word Count: 4700
Summary: It's tradition at the White Collar office to do a little something for each agent's birthday. No one's sure if that's supposed to apply to Neal, though. Season one/early season two.
Cross-posted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/344208
It was a tradition at the White Collar office, going back to before Peter's time and before there had been a White Collar unit as such, that when each agent's birthday came up, a card went around. Everyone wrote a little something, from the vulgar to the sweet to the bland and impersonal. Along with the card there was always an envelope, into which each agent would kick a few bucks to buy them a cake, and, with whatever was left over, some sort of suitably vague and inoffensive present -- an Amazon gift certificate or the like.
Also by tradition, the person who kept track of birthdays, bought cards, and monitored the envelope was the juniormost agent in the office. At the moment this agent was Lauren Cruz.
"Question, boss," she said, popping her head into Peter's office the day after the envelope had gone around for Jones.
"You've got questions, I've got answers," Peter said absently, eyes on the report he was typing.
"It's about Caffrey --" Cruz began.
At the word Caffrey Peter sighed, held up a finger, then finished the sentence before giving her his undivided attention. "What did he do?" Looking past her, he saw that Neal was still at his desk, so at least he wasn't doing something right now. Hopefully.
"It's not actually something he's done." Cruz slipped all the way into Peter's office, closed the door behind her, and held up a sheet of paper, its computer-printed text liberally scribbled all over with annotations. "I'm just wondering if Caffrey should be on here."
Peter squinted at it, and Cruz quickly passed it across his desk. Up close, he recognized the office birthday list. Every so often, some enterprising probie retyped it, but this one had obviously been passed around for awhile, with a couple of names crossed out (Diana's among them), spelling corrections, notes such as "allergic to chocolate" by Agent Forrester's name, and so forth.
"Huh," he said, and looked through the glass front of his office again. Neal, as if he had some kind of radar for when Peter was watching him, glanced up and flashed him a bright "Who? Me?" smile. "That's a good question."
"Yeah, I hadn't really thought about it, but I was updating the list to take off Marty after he transferred to Organized Crime and I got to thinking that Caffrey wasn't on here. And, you know, I wasn't really sure if he should be ..."
"He's not an agent," Peter said.
"I know --"
"But he goes out in the field just like the rest of us," he went on, thinking out loud, looking through the glass at Neal's head bent over what appeared to be paperwork but was probably an elaborate doodle on the back of an official US government form. "The point is team spirit, I guess -- everybody pulling together." Personally he thought the whole thing was a little silly, but it made everyone happy, and it hardly seemed fair to leave someone out.
Cruz shrugged. "Your call, I guess, boss."
What's the harm in it? Peter thought. At worst, some of the more senior and old-school agents might get a bug up their ass about someone getting a privilege without, as they saw it, having earned it. Like old-money college kids getting on their high horse about scholarship students getting into their frats and honors societies. Peter grinned. He loved wiping that look off people's faces. He reached for his pen and scribbled Neal's name and birthday at the bottom of the list -- after four years of chasing him, there weren't many of Neal's vital stats that he couldn't call up at the drop of a hat.
Cruz retrieved the page. "Two months ago? Guess he missed his turn this year."
"Well, most of us had to go through Quantico to earn our birthday cake," Peter pointed out. "Guess he has to put in an extra few months of pushing papers before he gets his." For some reason he found himself feeling obscurely guilty that he'd missed Neal's birthday -- he hadn't even thought about it, not that Neal had said anything. But still, there had been all those birthday cards sent from prison, even if that had been Neal tweaking his chain more than anything. "It's not even his real birthday," he added, mostly musing out loud, and Cruz looked surprised.
"It's not?"
"I don't think so." There was so much about Neal's past that was shrouded in secrecy and sealed files. "He used a completely different one for every alias. When I was chasing the guy, I never noticed him doing anything special for the birthday that's in his file. Either it's not his real one, or he's not a birthday kind of guy." Peter's private suspicion was that none of the information in Neal's public file was accurate, even his name -- but this was something he didn't like to voice even to himself. He held out a hand.
"Actually, Cruz ... give me the list for a minute."
He had to call up Neal's file to make sure he got the right date, but he scribbled out Neal's official, supposedly-accurate birthday, and wrote in a date a month and a half earlier.
"What's the significance of that?" Cruz asked, taking it back and scanning the page.
"Day he was released into my custody," Peter said. "If he's still here when that day comes around again, he's earned his damn cake."
Despite being well aware that he didn't have a thing to feel guilty about, he bought Neal lunch the next day.
"You're buttering me up for something," Neal said suspiciously. "Or apologizing. Did you do something offensive I failed to notice?"
"Don't read too much into it."
***
But a few months later, of course, everything fell apart, and when Peter finally managed to get the pieces back together, the cracks still showed. Cruz had transferred out, taking an opportunity that had come open in Missing Persons; Diana had transferred in; and Neal ... Neal was back with them, and yet, not quite. He was the walking wounded, and Peter knew that he could see it even if no one else could. On the surface, Neal was pretty much the same, all bright grins and flirty charm and jokes. But Peter had the feeling that it was a brittle shell held together with Scotch tape and hope, covering up God only knew what kind of mess underneath.
"Oh, you have to be kidding me," Diana said when Peter handed her the birthday list, now little more than a mess of coffee stains and ink scribbles. "I started working here years ago. I had people working under me in DC!"
"We're getting two new probies rotating in next month. You can pawn it off on them. In the meantime --" He flashed her a grin. "She who leaves, forfeits her seniority."
"This is because I abandoned you to deal with Caffrey, isn't it, boss." Diana scanned the list and raised an eyebrow. "Oh, hey, speaking of Caffrey, he's on here."
"Yes ..." Peter said, braced to defend his decision if need be, but Diana only grinned.
"Good for him. I'm glad. Don't tell him I said that, of course." She glanced at it again. "His birthday's next week, too. Oh good." Her grin turned predatory. "I get to pick out his card."
"It is?" Peter said, startled. He remembered Neal's birthdate very clearly -- the one in Neal's file, anyway, and it wasn't next week. He took back the sheet of paper, and saw his own handwriting, and the scribbled-out date ... oh, right. He remembered it now, the little flight of fancy that had made him put down Neal's birthdate as the day he got the anklet. A rebirth. Neal's first day as a new man.
Peter looked up, and across the room at Neal: head down, focused on paperwork. There was a stillness to him that hadn't been there before.
If Peter had fancied that Neal had been reborn on that autumn day a year ago, then he'd certainly been born once more on the tarmac, in flames and the stink of jet fuel, and Peter still didn't know which Neal Caffrey had walked away from the explosion that had killed Kate. It was a silly idea anyway, he thought, and he'd never thought of himself as a man prone to silly ideas. He reached for his pen to change the date back to Neal's real birthday -- or his official one, anyway. Then he looked again at Neal, at the defeated slump of his shoulders, and then at Diana. He handed the page back to her.
"Go for it. Just make sure the birthday boy doesn't find out." It was tradition, also, to circulate the card without the recipient ever seeing it, even if they knew it was coming. And Neal actually wouldn't know it was coming. He'd have no reason to suspect.
Neal at the top of his game would have figured it out easily. This quiet, subdued Neal ... perhaps not.
"Don't forget I've done this before, Boss."
"I know you have." Peter smiled at her. "It's good to have you back."
And, he thought as he climbed the stairs to his office, it was hard to believe it had been a year. What a hell of a year.
***
In truth, he forgot about it afterwards, until several days later. The rest of the office had gone home for the night, when suddenly Diana's hands appeared in his field of vision, dropping a Hallmark card and a familiar manilla envelope on top of a pile of paperwork on his desk. Peter blinked and looked up at her.
"You're the last one, boss," she said cheerfully. "Signatures all gathered; all you have to do is sign the card and kick in your lagniappe for the present. And speaking of the present, you ought to look in the envelope."
Peter frowned at her, then opened it, and his eyes widened at the thick sheaf of green inside.
"How many kneecaps did you break?"
Diana laughed and held her hands up, empty. "Not a one. They wanted to. 'course, I seeded it with a couple twenties to get the ball rolling -- oh, don't look at me like that, boss. Everyone in the office knows what happened to his girlfriend, and even people who didn't like the guy feel bad for him. You'd have to be made of stone not to."
"I can't believe we're giving Caffrey this much money," Peter groaned. "As if he needs it. Look at those suits and that apartment. What do you give a man who already has everything?"
"Everything except what money can't buy," Diana said quietly, glancing over her shoulder at Neal's empty desk.
Peter sighed and looked at the card. He was expecting a cheesy joke; what he got instead was a card that was almost entirely white, except for small neat letters: Today is the first day of the rest of your life. And inside: Make the most of it. Happy birthday.
He looked up at Diana again.
"I know," she said, suddenly more uncertain than he was used to seeing her. "I was planning to get something -- I don't know, Bugs Bunny in convict's stripes, open it up and it plays I Fought The Law, that sort of thing. But I saw this one, and ... Do you think it's too much? Rubbing salt in the wound?"
"I'd say we're committed at this point, unless you want to try to circulate another card under Neal's nose without tipping him off." The card was scribbled all over with birthday well-wishes, spilling over onto the back. Most of Peter's agents clearly had no idea what to say, so had fallen back on basic variations on the theme of "Happy birthday, have a great day!" but at least they'd signed it. Of course, with Diana standing over them, he doubted they'd had a choice.
Peter thought about what to write, himself. He'd always hated this sort of thing -- usually El signed for both of them on holiday cards. Still, it was Neal, and reminding himself that the card had already gone around the office and Neal was the only person who was going to read it, Peter used his Quantico pen to write, quick and small in one of the few blank spots left: "Welcome back to the team, Partner." He didn't sign his name; he figured that Neal could not only recognize his handwriting at this point, but do a credible forgery of it.
"I'll bring this back in the morning," he said.
Diana just nodded. It wasn't usual to bother getting coworkers' spouses and so forth to sign, but Peter knew that Neal would like El's birthday greeting on there, too. With a little help from El, he might even be able to get Mozzie to do it, which would really throw Neal for a loop.
"While I'm at it, I can see if El knows what sort of cake he likes. Somehow, that's one item that wasn't in his file."
"Don't need to," Diana said, looking smug. "I already consulted with the baker at the Greatest Cake. I'll pick it up tomorrow afternoon."
"I knew there was a reason we hired you back."
She looked even smugger. "Don't forget ..." she added, tapping the envelope.
"Are you absolutely sure your resumé doesn't include 'mob enforcer' somewhere?"
Diana laughed.
"In all seriousness," Peter said, breaking out his wallet, "what are you planning to spend it on? I guess we could all go out to some fancy restaurant ..."
"I have something better in mind," Diana said, her eyes dancing.
Peter waited expectantly, and she told him.
How had he ever let DC steal this woman away?
"I'll need your help, of course, because of the whole escorted-felon thing," she said. "Jones already agreed, and a couple of the others, as well."
"Of course," Peter said. He peeled off a few bills, then a few more. He saw Diana's eyes go a little round at the amount that he stuffed in with the rest of it.
"So maybe I'll have to go light on the power lunches 'til the next payday," Peter said, embarrassed. "Choose well, Agent Berrigan." He handed the envelope back to her.
"If you have any picks," Diana said, "speak now or forever hold your peace."
Peter felt a grin twitch the corner of his mouth. "You might see if the Hayden Planetarium has anything interesting coming up."
"Would he like that?"
"It's outside his radius, and it's educational, and like hell I'm going to spend my day off at an art gallery watching some performance artist cover themselves in mud. He damn well better like it."
***
The next day -- Neal's birthday observed, as Peter had started thinking of it -- went off just like any other day at the White Collar unit. A couple of times Peter caught agents whispering quietly in a corner of the room while casting glances at Neal, and glared at them until they scuttled off in opposite directions.
Neal, as usual, was acting more or less normal, but he was just that little bit too slow on the uptake to actually be normal. Case in point: he didn't seem to have caught onto the fact that he was the center of a conspiracy swirling around the entire office. Or possibly he had caught on and was simply playing it out. Hard to tell, with Neal. In any case, they spent a quiet day going over their active case files, getting caught up on paperwork, and making plans for the surveillance detail they'd been authorized to start on the Preston case tomorrow.
Around midafternoon, Diana slithered into Peter's office carrying a large box and closed the door behind her. It was a typical reinforced box of the sort the FBI used for storing old case files, but when she opened it, there turned out to be another box inside, this one from the Greatest Cake.
"Sneaky," Peter said. "Let me see it."
The cake, Peter had to admit, was adorable. They'd made it look like the chest section of a classic three-piece suit ensemble: dark suit jacket, waistcoat, slender blue tie. Peter thought he might have actually seen Neal wearing a tie that looked like that. There was even a silver icing tie clip. Lying across the top of the cake was an artfully arranged pair of handcuffs. They looked so realistic that Peter poked one of the cuffs with a fingertip. It was just sugar.
Diana swatted his hand away. "Stop groping Neal's birthday cake, boss."
"I'm not groping Neal's cake," Peter said, licking his fingertip. Definitely sugar.
"Do you think the handcuffs are overkill?"
"Probably," Peter said, "but it's how we show we care." He stood up. "All right, put it in the conference room and start rounding people up. I'll go find the birthday boy."
The birthday boy was, predictably, nowhere to be found. If he slipped his leash today, that would just be my karmic payback, wouldn't it? Peter thought. But before he checked Neal's tracking detail, he decided to check the bathroom, which was where Neal turned out to be.
Neal paused when he exited the door of the men's room and found Peter waiting for him. "Whatever I allegedly did, I didn't do it," he said as Peter took his arm.
"Guilty conscience?" Peter said, steering him back towards the White Collar office.
"No? Yes? What's the right answer?" Neal eeled out of Peter's grip. "I was headed this way anyway, you know," he said, brushing imaginary wrinkles out of his jacket where Peter had gripped it.
"I know," Peter said. "Just like to keep you where I can see you."
"I thought we were past that?" Neal said, actually sounding a little hurt.
"Only on certain days." Peter planted a hand in the middle of Neal's back as soon as the glass doors to the White Collar office came into view, just in case Neal tried to back out as soon as he realized what was going on. The bullpen was mostly deserted; a few agents were finishing up phone calls or crossing the t's and dotting the i's on paperwork, but everyone else seemed to be up in the conference room.
Neal had gone rather tense. "You could have just said there's a meeting," he remarked, his voice light, but with a nervous undercurrent.
He really doesn't know, Peter thought in wonder. Neal was off his game for sure. And, now, apparently, convinced that it was something to do with him. Which was true. But the thought hadn't crossed Peter's mind -- although, from the stiffness in Neal's shoulders, it had certainly crossed Neal's -- that it might look like they were planning to send him back to prison.
"No balloons or noisemakers," he'd told Diana. Nothing that might push Neal over the edge. Not that he thought Neal was going to have a meltdown or anything -- Neal had been doing fine in the field -- but the office was different, the office was where he felt safe, and the last thing Peter wanted to do was freak him out. Which apparently was exactly what he'd done anyway.
Then Diana appeared at the top of the stairs, grinning, and called, "What are you waiting for? Get him up here! Some of us have work to do!"
"Isn't that my line?" Peter asked, propelling Neal forward.
Diana leaned over the railing and plunked a party hat on top of Neal's curls. "Just making sure you don't have to, boss."
Neal took the hat off his head, smoothing his hair absently with his other hand, and stared at it. He still seemed vaguely shell-shocked, now with added confusion.
"You got decorations?" Peter said in disbelief. "What did they do to you in DC? I wouldn't have agreed to this if I'd known there were going to be decorations."
"Just hats," Jones said, leaning out the door of the conference room. He was wearing one, too. "Caffrey likes hats."
"I might have known it was you." Peter hesitated, though, and clamped a hand on Neal's shoulder, leaning over to murmur, "You okay?" Because God knew he hated being blindsided by this sort of thing, personally -- even after all the preparations, if he had to haul Neal hastily out of the office in search of a private spot in order to prevent a full-blown public panic attack, he'd do it.
"I'm good," Neal said faintly, blinking. Cautiously, he put the party hat back on. Since he was Neal, it actually looked good on him.
Diana had, thankfully, put up no decorations at all, and only a handful of people were wearing party hats, but the card was there, and the cake, along with a pile of small envelopes.
"Guys," Neal said. He seemed to have recovered his usual cool, mostly. "This is -- it's nice, it really is, but this isn't actually my birthday."
"I know what's in your file," Peter said. He hadn't taken his hand off Neal's shoulder. "Think back, Caffrey. Use those brains. What happened a year ago today?"
"Oh," Neal said, very quietly.
Jones scooped up the pile of envelopes and plunked them into his hands. "Don't you want to see what we got you?"
"I'm not sure," Neal murmured. He read the card at a glance, flipped it -- Peter noticed Neal's eyes linger on Peter's note -- and then opened the first envelope. His face lit up. Peter, looking over his shoulder, saw that it was a brochure with a woman who appeared to be covered in blue and gold paint, with flowers glued to it. Well, some people liked that sort of thing. Two tickets peeked out of the brochure. "Stacy May? Really? She's amazing, she does these installations commenting on corporate greed, and -- Wait. This is outside my radius."
"They're all outside your radius," Peter said, reaching around him to tap the pile of envelopes. "And in each and every case, you will have an FBI agent with you. Right, Diana?"
"They should all be covered," Diana said, grinning broadly, because Neal looked well and truly floored now. "Evenings, weekends -- Neal, your social calendar is full for the next couple of weeks."
"Which ought to keep you out of trouble, too," Peter said. "Maybe I can have a few quiet dinners with my wife for a change."
The barb flew right over Neal's head; Neal looked like he was only absorbing half of what anyone around him was saying anyway. He took a few deep breaths. "Guys," he said. "Guys, I -- wow. Um. Let me start over." Peter could see him draw himself together, the charming Caffrey facade sliding into place like a wall to block the glimpse of someone much younger, much more open, with his heart in his eyes. "Thank you," Neal said. "All of you. Really. This is -- I wasn't expecting this."
"I'm surprised you never wondered about the birthday thing, in general," Peter said. "Given that I can't keep you out of every other secret around here. You never even peeked at the birthday list?"
Neal shrugged, the charming mask firmly in place. "I hadn't really thought about it. I just assumed that throwing birthday parties for felons on work-release was probably not something the FBI did."
"It's not something the FBI does," Peter said. "It's something we do. Apparently. Now cut your cake before Jones drools on it."
***
The party lasted as long as it took everyone to have a piece of cake and a plastic cup of sparkling cider; then they scattered back to their desks, because it was, after all, still the middle of the workday.
Peter had the photos and Google Maps printouts for the Preston surveillance spread out all over his desk, and he was so deeply buried in figuring out camera angles and agent placement that he barely noticed the office emptying out, at least until Neal tapped on his door.
"Do you ever stop working?"
"It's been known to happen," Peter said. "Once or twice." He rubbed his eyes and glanced at his watch. Time often got away from him when he was engrossed in a puzzle of any kind. Outside the window it was growing dark, and rain streaked the glass. "I want you in the van tomorrow. And I know what you're going to say --"
"Van's fine."
"Really?" Peter frowned at him. "If I'd known all it took to get some cooperation was throwing you a birthday party, we'd have given you one every month."
"Amusing," Neal said. He was carrying his fedora, and twirled it between his hands -- typical Caffrey displacement activity when he wanted to say something but had to work himself up to blurting it out. "I asked Diana to show me the birthday list," he said, "and don't think I can't recognize your handwriting. When did you write that?"
"Oh, last year sometime." Peter tried to remember, but there had been far too much water under the bridge since then.
"You had my birthday on there, the actual one, but you crossed it out."
"Neal," Peter said, "it's just the two of us, so let's not pretend the date in your file has anything to do with your actual birthdate."
Neal got the look that he usually got when Peter correctly inferred something about him -- that odd blend of tolerant amusement and pride, like an adult watching a child figure out something simple and obvious. He spun his hat before flipping it onto his head, and there was a little of the old Caffrey flair in it, the open delight that used to be evident in everything he did, but had appeared only rarely since Kate's death. "Hayden Planetarium," he said. "Peter, I never would've taken you for an astronomy geek."
"There's a lot you don't know about me," Peter said.
"Don't smirk. It's unbecoming."
Peter snorted. "I'll be a few hours yet," he said, glancing down at the photos and sketches. "So no rides home, sorry. You'll just have to get wet."
"Hmm." Neal looked around, grabbed a chair and tugged it over.
"What are you doing?"
"I was thinking that it might go twice as fast with two people."
"This isn't your area of expertise," Peter said.
"No, but I'm very experienced at the other side of it," Neal said. "...allegedly."
"That's ... a really good point." He'd never thought of consulting Neal on setting up a surveillance detail before. He'd been doing it for years and was used to doing it a certain way. But what was his partnership with Neal, if not a long series of lessons in how to flex and bend?
"We can order in," Neal said. "I know how cranky you get when your blood sugar's low."
"You're buying. I happen to know for a fact that Diana slipped you the leftovers from what she spent on show tickets. By the way, you need to do something nice for her. She put the whole thing together."
"Already thinking about it." Neal grinned, and tossed his hat onto the corner of Peter's desk ("Does that look like a hat rack to you, Caffrey?") before pulling a handful of street-level photos over to study them.
One year. Funny how much could change in a year. And it's been one hell of a year, Peter thought.
But they'd survived it. And in some sense, that's what a birthday was, after all -- a big "in your face" to the world: "Take that, world, I survived another year, no matter what you threw at me; bring it!"
Peter looked across his desk at Neal's dark head bent over the photos. The indent from the party hat was still visible.
Yeah, bring it, world, he thought. We can take you on.
Neal looked up from the photos, and smiled -- a trifle uncertainly -- when he met Peter's eyes. "I'm not going to steal these," he pointed out.
"Didn't think you were."
"Mm-hmm," Neal said. "Peter --" and he looked like he was poised on the verge of saying something else, then flipped out his phone instead. "Italian sound good?"
"Italian," Peter said, "sounds perfect."
~
Title: All These Roads Lead Home
Fandom: White Collar
Pairing: Gen
Rating: G
Word Count: 4700
Summary: It's tradition at the White Collar office to do a little something for each agent's birthday. No one's sure if that's supposed to apply to Neal, though. Season one/early season two.
Cross-posted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/344208
It was a tradition at the White Collar office, going back to before Peter's time and before there had been a White Collar unit as such, that when each agent's birthday came up, a card went around. Everyone wrote a little something, from the vulgar to the sweet to the bland and impersonal. Along with the card there was always an envelope, into which each agent would kick a few bucks to buy them a cake, and, with whatever was left over, some sort of suitably vague and inoffensive present -- an Amazon gift certificate or the like.
Also by tradition, the person who kept track of birthdays, bought cards, and monitored the envelope was the juniormost agent in the office. At the moment this agent was Lauren Cruz.
"Question, boss," she said, popping her head into Peter's office the day after the envelope had gone around for Jones.
"You've got questions, I've got answers," Peter said absently, eyes on the report he was typing.
"It's about Caffrey --" Cruz began.
At the word Caffrey Peter sighed, held up a finger, then finished the sentence before giving her his undivided attention. "What did he do?" Looking past her, he saw that Neal was still at his desk, so at least he wasn't doing something right now. Hopefully.
"It's not actually something he's done." Cruz slipped all the way into Peter's office, closed the door behind her, and held up a sheet of paper, its computer-printed text liberally scribbled all over with annotations. "I'm just wondering if Caffrey should be on here."
Peter squinted at it, and Cruz quickly passed it across his desk. Up close, he recognized the office birthday list. Every so often, some enterprising probie retyped it, but this one had obviously been passed around for awhile, with a couple of names crossed out (Diana's among them), spelling corrections, notes such as "allergic to chocolate" by Agent Forrester's name, and so forth.
"Huh," he said, and looked through the glass front of his office again. Neal, as if he had some kind of radar for when Peter was watching him, glanced up and flashed him a bright "Who? Me?" smile. "That's a good question."
"Yeah, I hadn't really thought about it, but I was updating the list to take off Marty after he transferred to Organized Crime and I got to thinking that Caffrey wasn't on here. And, you know, I wasn't really sure if he should be ..."
"He's not an agent," Peter said.
"I know --"
"But he goes out in the field just like the rest of us," he went on, thinking out loud, looking through the glass at Neal's head bent over what appeared to be paperwork but was probably an elaborate doodle on the back of an official US government form. "The point is team spirit, I guess -- everybody pulling together." Personally he thought the whole thing was a little silly, but it made everyone happy, and it hardly seemed fair to leave someone out.
Cruz shrugged. "Your call, I guess, boss."
What's the harm in it? Peter thought. At worst, some of the more senior and old-school agents might get a bug up their ass about someone getting a privilege without, as they saw it, having earned it. Like old-money college kids getting on their high horse about scholarship students getting into their frats and honors societies. Peter grinned. He loved wiping that look off people's faces. He reached for his pen and scribbled Neal's name and birthday at the bottom of the list -- after four years of chasing him, there weren't many of Neal's vital stats that he couldn't call up at the drop of a hat.
Cruz retrieved the page. "Two months ago? Guess he missed his turn this year."
"Well, most of us had to go through Quantico to earn our birthday cake," Peter pointed out. "Guess he has to put in an extra few months of pushing papers before he gets his." For some reason he found himself feeling obscurely guilty that he'd missed Neal's birthday -- he hadn't even thought about it, not that Neal had said anything. But still, there had been all those birthday cards sent from prison, even if that had been Neal tweaking his chain more than anything. "It's not even his real birthday," he added, mostly musing out loud, and Cruz looked surprised.
"It's not?"
"I don't think so." There was so much about Neal's past that was shrouded in secrecy and sealed files. "He used a completely different one for every alias. When I was chasing the guy, I never noticed him doing anything special for the birthday that's in his file. Either it's not his real one, or he's not a birthday kind of guy." Peter's private suspicion was that none of the information in Neal's public file was accurate, even his name -- but this was something he didn't like to voice even to himself. He held out a hand.
"Actually, Cruz ... give me the list for a minute."
He had to call up Neal's file to make sure he got the right date, but he scribbled out Neal's official, supposedly-accurate birthday, and wrote in a date a month and a half earlier.
"What's the significance of that?" Cruz asked, taking it back and scanning the page.
"Day he was released into my custody," Peter said. "If he's still here when that day comes around again, he's earned his damn cake."
Despite being well aware that he didn't have a thing to feel guilty about, he bought Neal lunch the next day.
"You're buttering me up for something," Neal said suspiciously. "Or apologizing. Did you do something offensive I failed to notice?"
"Don't read too much into it."
***
But a few months later, of course, everything fell apart, and when Peter finally managed to get the pieces back together, the cracks still showed. Cruz had transferred out, taking an opportunity that had come open in Missing Persons; Diana had transferred in; and Neal ... Neal was back with them, and yet, not quite. He was the walking wounded, and Peter knew that he could see it even if no one else could. On the surface, Neal was pretty much the same, all bright grins and flirty charm and jokes. But Peter had the feeling that it was a brittle shell held together with Scotch tape and hope, covering up God only knew what kind of mess underneath.
"Oh, you have to be kidding me," Diana said when Peter handed her the birthday list, now little more than a mess of coffee stains and ink scribbles. "I started working here years ago. I had people working under me in DC!"
"We're getting two new probies rotating in next month. You can pawn it off on them. In the meantime --" He flashed her a grin. "She who leaves, forfeits her seniority."
"This is because I abandoned you to deal with Caffrey, isn't it, boss." Diana scanned the list and raised an eyebrow. "Oh, hey, speaking of Caffrey, he's on here."
"Yes ..." Peter said, braced to defend his decision if need be, but Diana only grinned.
"Good for him. I'm glad. Don't tell him I said that, of course." She glanced at it again. "His birthday's next week, too. Oh good." Her grin turned predatory. "I get to pick out his card."
"It is?" Peter said, startled. He remembered Neal's birthdate very clearly -- the one in Neal's file, anyway, and it wasn't next week. He took back the sheet of paper, and saw his own handwriting, and the scribbled-out date ... oh, right. He remembered it now, the little flight of fancy that had made him put down Neal's birthdate as the day he got the anklet. A rebirth. Neal's first day as a new man.
Peter looked up, and across the room at Neal: head down, focused on paperwork. There was a stillness to him that hadn't been there before.
If Peter had fancied that Neal had been reborn on that autumn day a year ago, then he'd certainly been born once more on the tarmac, in flames and the stink of jet fuel, and Peter still didn't know which Neal Caffrey had walked away from the explosion that had killed Kate. It was a silly idea anyway, he thought, and he'd never thought of himself as a man prone to silly ideas. He reached for his pen to change the date back to Neal's real birthday -- or his official one, anyway. Then he looked again at Neal, at the defeated slump of his shoulders, and then at Diana. He handed the page back to her.
"Go for it. Just make sure the birthday boy doesn't find out." It was tradition, also, to circulate the card without the recipient ever seeing it, even if they knew it was coming. And Neal actually wouldn't know it was coming. He'd have no reason to suspect.
Neal at the top of his game would have figured it out easily. This quiet, subdued Neal ... perhaps not.
"Don't forget I've done this before, Boss."
"I know you have." Peter smiled at her. "It's good to have you back."
And, he thought as he climbed the stairs to his office, it was hard to believe it had been a year. What a hell of a year.
***
In truth, he forgot about it afterwards, until several days later. The rest of the office had gone home for the night, when suddenly Diana's hands appeared in his field of vision, dropping a Hallmark card and a familiar manilla envelope on top of a pile of paperwork on his desk. Peter blinked and looked up at her.
"You're the last one, boss," she said cheerfully. "Signatures all gathered; all you have to do is sign the card and kick in your lagniappe for the present. And speaking of the present, you ought to look in the envelope."
Peter frowned at her, then opened it, and his eyes widened at the thick sheaf of green inside.
"How many kneecaps did you break?"
Diana laughed and held her hands up, empty. "Not a one. They wanted to. 'course, I seeded it with a couple twenties to get the ball rolling -- oh, don't look at me like that, boss. Everyone in the office knows what happened to his girlfriend, and even people who didn't like the guy feel bad for him. You'd have to be made of stone not to."
"I can't believe we're giving Caffrey this much money," Peter groaned. "As if he needs it. Look at those suits and that apartment. What do you give a man who already has everything?"
"Everything except what money can't buy," Diana said quietly, glancing over her shoulder at Neal's empty desk.
Peter sighed and looked at the card. He was expecting a cheesy joke; what he got instead was a card that was almost entirely white, except for small neat letters: Today is the first day of the rest of your life. And inside: Make the most of it. Happy birthday.
He looked up at Diana again.
"I know," she said, suddenly more uncertain than he was used to seeing her. "I was planning to get something -- I don't know, Bugs Bunny in convict's stripes, open it up and it plays I Fought The Law, that sort of thing. But I saw this one, and ... Do you think it's too much? Rubbing salt in the wound?"
"I'd say we're committed at this point, unless you want to try to circulate another card under Neal's nose without tipping him off." The card was scribbled all over with birthday well-wishes, spilling over onto the back. Most of Peter's agents clearly had no idea what to say, so had fallen back on basic variations on the theme of "Happy birthday, have a great day!" but at least they'd signed it. Of course, with Diana standing over them, he doubted they'd had a choice.
Peter thought about what to write, himself. He'd always hated this sort of thing -- usually El signed for both of them on holiday cards. Still, it was Neal, and reminding himself that the card had already gone around the office and Neal was the only person who was going to read it, Peter used his Quantico pen to write, quick and small in one of the few blank spots left: "Welcome back to the team, Partner." He didn't sign his name; he figured that Neal could not only recognize his handwriting at this point, but do a credible forgery of it.
"I'll bring this back in the morning," he said.
Diana just nodded. It wasn't usual to bother getting coworkers' spouses and so forth to sign, but Peter knew that Neal would like El's birthday greeting on there, too. With a little help from El, he might even be able to get Mozzie to do it, which would really throw Neal for a loop.
"While I'm at it, I can see if El knows what sort of cake he likes. Somehow, that's one item that wasn't in his file."
"Don't need to," Diana said, looking smug. "I already consulted with the baker at the Greatest Cake. I'll pick it up tomorrow afternoon."
"I knew there was a reason we hired you back."
She looked even smugger. "Don't forget ..." she added, tapping the envelope.
"Are you absolutely sure your resumé doesn't include 'mob enforcer' somewhere?"
Diana laughed.
"In all seriousness," Peter said, breaking out his wallet, "what are you planning to spend it on? I guess we could all go out to some fancy restaurant ..."
"I have something better in mind," Diana said, her eyes dancing.
Peter waited expectantly, and she told him.
How had he ever let DC steal this woman away?
"I'll need your help, of course, because of the whole escorted-felon thing," she said. "Jones already agreed, and a couple of the others, as well."
"Of course," Peter said. He peeled off a few bills, then a few more. He saw Diana's eyes go a little round at the amount that he stuffed in with the rest of it.
"So maybe I'll have to go light on the power lunches 'til the next payday," Peter said, embarrassed. "Choose well, Agent Berrigan." He handed the envelope back to her.
"If you have any picks," Diana said, "speak now or forever hold your peace."
Peter felt a grin twitch the corner of his mouth. "You might see if the Hayden Planetarium has anything interesting coming up."
"Would he like that?"
"It's outside his radius, and it's educational, and like hell I'm going to spend my day off at an art gallery watching some performance artist cover themselves in mud. He damn well better like it."
***
The next day -- Neal's birthday observed, as Peter had started thinking of it -- went off just like any other day at the White Collar unit. A couple of times Peter caught agents whispering quietly in a corner of the room while casting glances at Neal, and glared at them until they scuttled off in opposite directions.
Neal, as usual, was acting more or less normal, but he was just that little bit too slow on the uptake to actually be normal. Case in point: he didn't seem to have caught onto the fact that he was the center of a conspiracy swirling around the entire office. Or possibly he had caught on and was simply playing it out. Hard to tell, with Neal. In any case, they spent a quiet day going over their active case files, getting caught up on paperwork, and making plans for the surveillance detail they'd been authorized to start on the Preston case tomorrow.
Around midafternoon, Diana slithered into Peter's office carrying a large box and closed the door behind her. It was a typical reinforced box of the sort the FBI used for storing old case files, but when she opened it, there turned out to be another box inside, this one from the Greatest Cake.
"Sneaky," Peter said. "Let me see it."
The cake, Peter had to admit, was adorable. They'd made it look like the chest section of a classic three-piece suit ensemble: dark suit jacket, waistcoat, slender blue tie. Peter thought he might have actually seen Neal wearing a tie that looked like that. There was even a silver icing tie clip. Lying across the top of the cake was an artfully arranged pair of handcuffs. They looked so realistic that Peter poked one of the cuffs with a fingertip. It was just sugar.
Diana swatted his hand away. "Stop groping Neal's birthday cake, boss."
"I'm not groping Neal's cake," Peter said, licking his fingertip. Definitely sugar.
"Do you think the handcuffs are overkill?"
"Probably," Peter said, "but it's how we show we care." He stood up. "All right, put it in the conference room and start rounding people up. I'll go find the birthday boy."
The birthday boy was, predictably, nowhere to be found. If he slipped his leash today, that would just be my karmic payback, wouldn't it? Peter thought. But before he checked Neal's tracking detail, he decided to check the bathroom, which was where Neal turned out to be.
Neal paused when he exited the door of the men's room and found Peter waiting for him. "Whatever I allegedly did, I didn't do it," he said as Peter took his arm.
"Guilty conscience?" Peter said, steering him back towards the White Collar office.
"No? Yes? What's the right answer?" Neal eeled out of Peter's grip. "I was headed this way anyway, you know," he said, brushing imaginary wrinkles out of his jacket where Peter had gripped it.
"I know," Peter said. "Just like to keep you where I can see you."
"I thought we were past that?" Neal said, actually sounding a little hurt.
"Only on certain days." Peter planted a hand in the middle of Neal's back as soon as the glass doors to the White Collar office came into view, just in case Neal tried to back out as soon as he realized what was going on. The bullpen was mostly deserted; a few agents were finishing up phone calls or crossing the t's and dotting the i's on paperwork, but everyone else seemed to be up in the conference room.
Neal had gone rather tense. "You could have just said there's a meeting," he remarked, his voice light, but with a nervous undercurrent.
He really doesn't know, Peter thought in wonder. Neal was off his game for sure. And, now, apparently, convinced that it was something to do with him. Which was true. But the thought hadn't crossed Peter's mind -- although, from the stiffness in Neal's shoulders, it had certainly crossed Neal's -- that it might look like they were planning to send him back to prison.
"No balloons or noisemakers," he'd told Diana. Nothing that might push Neal over the edge. Not that he thought Neal was going to have a meltdown or anything -- Neal had been doing fine in the field -- but the office was different, the office was where he felt safe, and the last thing Peter wanted to do was freak him out. Which apparently was exactly what he'd done anyway.
Then Diana appeared at the top of the stairs, grinning, and called, "What are you waiting for? Get him up here! Some of us have work to do!"
"Isn't that my line?" Peter asked, propelling Neal forward.
Diana leaned over the railing and plunked a party hat on top of Neal's curls. "Just making sure you don't have to, boss."
Neal took the hat off his head, smoothing his hair absently with his other hand, and stared at it. He still seemed vaguely shell-shocked, now with added confusion.
"You got decorations?" Peter said in disbelief. "What did they do to you in DC? I wouldn't have agreed to this if I'd known there were going to be decorations."
"Just hats," Jones said, leaning out the door of the conference room. He was wearing one, too. "Caffrey likes hats."
"I might have known it was you." Peter hesitated, though, and clamped a hand on Neal's shoulder, leaning over to murmur, "You okay?" Because God knew he hated being blindsided by this sort of thing, personally -- even after all the preparations, if he had to haul Neal hastily out of the office in search of a private spot in order to prevent a full-blown public panic attack, he'd do it.
"I'm good," Neal said faintly, blinking. Cautiously, he put the party hat back on. Since he was Neal, it actually looked good on him.
Diana had, thankfully, put up no decorations at all, and only a handful of people were wearing party hats, but the card was there, and the cake, along with a pile of small envelopes.
"Guys," Neal said. He seemed to have recovered his usual cool, mostly. "This is -- it's nice, it really is, but this isn't actually my birthday."
"I know what's in your file," Peter said. He hadn't taken his hand off Neal's shoulder. "Think back, Caffrey. Use those brains. What happened a year ago today?"
"Oh," Neal said, very quietly.
Jones scooped up the pile of envelopes and plunked them into his hands. "Don't you want to see what we got you?"
"I'm not sure," Neal murmured. He read the card at a glance, flipped it -- Peter noticed Neal's eyes linger on Peter's note -- and then opened the first envelope. His face lit up. Peter, looking over his shoulder, saw that it was a brochure with a woman who appeared to be covered in blue and gold paint, with flowers glued to it. Well, some people liked that sort of thing. Two tickets peeked out of the brochure. "Stacy May? Really? She's amazing, she does these installations commenting on corporate greed, and -- Wait. This is outside my radius."
"They're all outside your radius," Peter said, reaching around him to tap the pile of envelopes. "And in each and every case, you will have an FBI agent with you. Right, Diana?"
"They should all be covered," Diana said, grinning broadly, because Neal looked well and truly floored now. "Evenings, weekends -- Neal, your social calendar is full for the next couple of weeks."
"Which ought to keep you out of trouble, too," Peter said. "Maybe I can have a few quiet dinners with my wife for a change."
The barb flew right over Neal's head; Neal looked like he was only absorbing half of what anyone around him was saying anyway. He took a few deep breaths. "Guys," he said. "Guys, I -- wow. Um. Let me start over." Peter could see him draw himself together, the charming Caffrey facade sliding into place like a wall to block the glimpse of someone much younger, much more open, with his heart in his eyes. "Thank you," Neal said. "All of you. Really. This is -- I wasn't expecting this."
"I'm surprised you never wondered about the birthday thing, in general," Peter said. "Given that I can't keep you out of every other secret around here. You never even peeked at the birthday list?"
Neal shrugged, the charming mask firmly in place. "I hadn't really thought about it. I just assumed that throwing birthday parties for felons on work-release was probably not something the FBI did."
"It's not something the FBI does," Peter said. "It's something we do. Apparently. Now cut your cake before Jones drools on it."
***
The party lasted as long as it took everyone to have a piece of cake and a plastic cup of sparkling cider; then they scattered back to their desks, because it was, after all, still the middle of the workday.
Peter had the photos and Google Maps printouts for the Preston surveillance spread out all over his desk, and he was so deeply buried in figuring out camera angles and agent placement that he barely noticed the office emptying out, at least until Neal tapped on his door.
"Do you ever stop working?"
"It's been known to happen," Peter said. "Once or twice." He rubbed his eyes and glanced at his watch. Time often got away from him when he was engrossed in a puzzle of any kind. Outside the window it was growing dark, and rain streaked the glass. "I want you in the van tomorrow. And I know what you're going to say --"
"Van's fine."
"Really?" Peter frowned at him. "If I'd known all it took to get some cooperation was throwing you a birthday party, we'd have given you one every month."
"Amusing," Neal said. He was carrying his fedora, and twirled it between his hands -- typical Caffrey displacement activity when he wanted to say something but had to work himself up to blurting it out. "I asked Diana to show me the birthday list," he said, "and don't think I can't recognize your handwriting. When did you write that?"
"Oh, last year sometime." Peter tried to remember, but there had been far too much water under the bridge since then.
"You had my birthday on there, the actual one, but you crossed it out."
"Neal," Peter said, "it's just the two of us, so let's not pretend the date in your file has anything to do with your actual birthdate."
Neal got the look that he usually got when Peter correctly inferred something about him -- that odd blend of tolerant amusement and pride, like an adult watching a child figure out something simple and obvious. He spun his hat before flipping it onto his head, and there was a little of the old Caffrey flair in it, the open delight that used to be evident in everything he did, but had appeared only rarely since Kate's death. "Hayden Planetarium," he said. "Peter, I never would've taken you for an astronomy geek."
"There's a lot you don't know about me," Peter said.
"Don't smirk. It's unbecoming."
Peter snorted. "I'll be a few hours yet," he said, glancing down at the photos and sketches. "So no rides home, sorry. You'll just have to get wet."
"Hmm." Neal looked around, grabbed a chair and tugged it over.
"What are you doing?"
"I was thinking that it might go twice as fast with two people."
"This isn't your area of expertise," Peter said.
"No, but I'm very experienced at the other side of it," Neal said. "...allegedly."
"That's ... a really good point." He'd never thought of consulting Neal on setting up a surveillance detail before. He'd been doing it for years and was used to doing it a certain way. But what was his partnership with Neal, if not a long series of lessons in how to flex and bend?
"We can order in," Neal said. "I know how cranky you get when your blood sugar's low."
"You're buying. I happen to know for a fact that Diana slipped you the leftovers from what she spent on show tickets. By the way, you need to do something nice for her. She put the whole thing together."
"Already thinking about it." Neal grinned, and tossed his hat onto the corner of Peter's desk ("Does that look like a hat rack to you, Caffrey?") before pulling a handful of street-level photos over to study them.
One year. Funny how much could change in a year. And it's been one hell of a year, Peter thought.
But they'd survived it. And in some sense, that's what a birthday was, after all -- a big "in your face" to the world: "Take that, world, I survived another year, no matter what you threw at me; bring it!"
Peter looked across his desk at Neal's dark head bent over the photos. The indent from the party hat was still visible.
Yeah, bring it, world, he thought. We can take you on.
Neal looked up from the photos, and smiled -- a trifle uncertainly -- when he met Peter's eyes. "I'm not going to steal these," he pointed out.
"Didn't think you were."
"Mm-hmm," Neal said. "Peter --" and he looked like he was poised on the verge of saying something else, then flipped out his phone instead. "Italian sound good?"
"Italian," Peter said, "sounds perfect."
~