White Collar Ficlet - At Night, It's a Different World

[elrhiarhodan]

Title: At Night, It’s a Different World
Author: elrhiarhodan
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Elizabeth Burke, Neal Caffrey, Peter/Elizabeth/Neal
Spoilers: Vague for S4.16
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: NONE
Word Count: 400
Summary: It’s a hot night in the city, and Peter and Neal go looking for a treat.

A/N: Title from The Lovin’ Spoonful classic, Summer in the City


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Because it's Brooklyn and it's summer time, there are gourmet ice cream trucks on almost every block. Neal's gotten good at finding the best ones, and El tells then to bring her back a cup of blueberry sorbet. She's too comfortable to find her shoes and go with them for a walk. Satchmo's equally lazy.

Neal's favorite flavor is Rocky Road and Peter thinks that's all too telling. Neal simply licks his cone and gives Peter a look that says "stop reading into this...it's just ice cream." But Peter can't quite stop thinking about it. After all, his lover's life has never been easy. Uprooted at three, dreams destroyed at eighteen. A life of crime. Prison. Kate. Everything.

Neal might smile and walk through life as if the red carpet was rolling out in front of his every step, but Peter knows the truth. The life of Neal Caffrey is a rocky and unpaved road, filled with ruts and holes that could trap him forever, or just as easily break him to pieces.

Peter likes pistachio ice cream. They go out for Chinese food and Peter orders a dish of the green stuff and eats it with great relish. Neal thinks its vile, worse than his deviled ham sandwiches. Besides, it doesn't taste anything like pistachios. Peter says that his dad used to get him pistachio ice cream every Saturday night in the summer. There was this ice cream shop and they'd walk there and …

Peter's voice trails off. He remembers that Neal doesn't have memories like these. His memories of his father are filled with lies and blood and shame.

But Neal says, "go on...the ice cream shop?" He's interested, he really wants to hear about Peter's boyhood. So he tells him about being a kid in upstate New York, with a father who made time to teach him how to hold a bat and pitch a ball and see that he got his homework done every night, about summers filled with the carefree days of childhood and winter evenings knowing that his family was nearby.

Walking back to the house, Peter looks over at Neal. He's got on that shy smile - the honest one that made Peter fall in love with him in the first place. He wishes that Neal could have shared his childhood, but he's also glad that Neal is the man he is now, too.

FIN

Comments

[elrhiarhodan]

Pistachio says that Peter has the same taste in ice cream as he does in ties.

Thank you!