White Collar Fic - The Raven's Children
Dec. 3rd, 2013 08:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elrhiarhodanTitle: The Raven’s Children
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elrhiarhodan
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Peter Burke, Neal Caffrey, Elizabeth Burke, Mozzie, Alex Hunter, Peter/Elizabeth/Neal
Word Count: ~3000
Spoilers: S1.14 – Out of the Box (But slightly canon divergent)
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: None
Beta Credit:miri_thompson, theatregirl7299
Summary: A long time ago, in another country, Neal found a piece. (No, it's not the piece you're thinking of, and you know how long and what he had to do to get his hands on that). This piece he kept for twenty years, occasionally putting it to good use.
Author’s Note: Written for the seventh night of Fic-Can-Ukah for my friend,kaylashay. Her prompt was "In the Back of the Closet" and she asked for Peter/Elizabeth/Neal. I actually brainstormed part of this fic with my dearest enabler-in-chief, theatregirl7299 about four months ago, and I had hoped that someone would be kind enough to pick this prompt and this pairing. I got very lucky.
__________________
2003 – The Amalienborg Palace (A Storeroom)
“Damn it Neal, it’s not here. We’ve got to go.”
Neal looked up at Alex, grinning. “Come on, let’s just take a look.” He bent over a crate and started pawing through piles of horsehair and wood shaving.
“You’re insane, you know that? The music box isn’t here. We’ve tripped the alarms, they know we’re impostors, and you want to randomly dig through crates, looking for what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe something to make this trip worthwhile?”
“You mean something to bring back to Kate, something to impress her.”
Neal shrugged. Alex was way too perceptive. But he didn’t stop fishing through the crate until she began tugging at him. They could hear footsteps and just as he was about to abandon the quest, he touched something solid. His hands closed around it as Alex pulled him away and Neal managed to keep a grip on whatever it was – something cylindrical and solid and heavy – as they ran through the maze of underground storerooms that connected the four palaces.
They paused at an intersection, listening for alarms, for guards and he shoved whatever it was into the pack he was carrying. Alex gave him the all-clear and they headed for the exit – an ancient tunnel that connected the palace to an old gatehouse at the entrance to the Amalie Gardens. The tunnel was filled with rubble, prone to flooding and sloped dangerously in places, but nothing that they couldn’t handle.
Or so Neal had thought. There were almost out – he could smell the fresh air – when disaster hit. Alex, about two yards ahead of him, slipped on something and fell. Neal rushed to her, almost killing himself on the same spot.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit.” Alex was on the ground, her leg twisted at an unnatural angle.
Neal carefully ran his hands over it, trying not to hurt her.
She hissed when he touched her calf. “Is it broken?”
“I’m an art thief, not a doctor.” He figured a little levity in this situation would be better than the truth.
“Funny, Caffrey. Help me up.”
He admired her grit and got her upright. The stood there, looking at the algae-slicked pile of rubble blocking the path. “Well, we can’t go back.”
“No.”
“Then there’s only one way to do this.” Neal shifted the pack so it was on his belly and spared a brief thought for the unknown item inside. “Get on my back and hold on.”
Twenty painstaking (and for Alex, pain-filled) moments later, they emerged from a culvert in the Amalie Gardens, about two hundred yards from the Palace. Both of them saw the lights flashing from police cars, they could hear instructions shouted. Neal didn’t understand Danish, but wasn’t hard to figure what was going on.
“Caffrey – go.” Alex was holding onto a tree, barely managing to stay upright.
“I’m not leaving you –”
“Get out of here. They’re looking for two people, if we stay together, we’ll both be caught.”
“I need to get you to a hospital.”
“I can manage on my own. Now go.”
Still, Neal lingered.
“Caffrey – if we get caught because you’re a stupid, chivalrous bastard …”
Neal frowned, hating that she was right. He pressed a soft kiss against her cheek. “All right, but take care of yourself.”
“You, too.”
Neal didn’t turn back; clinging to the shadows until he reached the edge of the park. He ditched the black watch cap he was wearing, turned his jacket inside out, exposing a vibrant red and white logo for the Danish Football League.
He spent an hour making sure he wasn’t followed before retrieving his wallet and a passport from a small locker in the Copenhagen Central Station, where he boarded a train bound for Sweden. Halfway to Stockholm, Neal remembered that he hadn’t left Denmark empty-handed. He made his way to the lavatory to examine his unknown haul.
Neal bit his lip to restrain a laugh. Under the ugly fluorescent lights in the train car’s tiny bathroom, old gold gleamed, rubies and sapphires glowed. It had to be as long as his forearm, as big around as his fist. And from the heft, he figured it was six, maybe seven pounds – not heavy enough to be solid gold, but probably had a core of ivory. He couldn’t wait to try it out.
The train rocked and the lights flickered for a moment, bringing Neal back to reality. Of all the things to find in the hopes of impressing Kate, giving her an antique gold dildo was probably the least likely to succeed.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
November, 2015
“You’re really going to do this?” Moz was perched on a stool, watching him pack. There was wine within reach, there always was these days.
“Yes.” Neal didn’t feel the need to elaborate on his answer. They’d had this discussion several times over the past few weeks.
“You sure you want to give me the apartment?”
Neal looked up. They’d had this discussion before, as well. “You’ll let me sleep on the couch if I need to?”
“Yeah, I guess I can.”
Of course he had to tweak Mozzie for that. “You guess? How generous of you.”
“Yeah, of course you can. Provided I don’t have company.”
“Right. I’ll double check the doorknob for a sock.” It was an old joke.
“You make sure you do that.” His friend’s sarcasm detector wasn’t operating, apparently.
Neal worked his way through the clothes that were still hanging in the closet. A large part of his wardrobe had migrated to the one in Peter and Elizabeth’s guest room over the past six months, but there were still quite a few suits hanging on the rack. And shoes. At least a dozen pairs were still here.
Maybe because clothes were a lot easier to leave behind than shoes.
He started leaving his clothes at the house in Brooklyn almost as soon as the tracker came off. Peter took him home, kissed him, Elizabeth kissed him and they both told him that he could leave if he really wanted to.
He didn’t.
Neal almost got lost in the memory of that first time – fucking Elizabeth, her breasts in his hands, Peter’s cock up his ass, his mouth on his neck. If it wasn’t for the clink of a wine bottle against a glass, he might have forgotten Moz was sitting there.
“You know, you get a very disturbing, glassy look on your face when you think about the Suits.”
“Are you going to be constructive or are you just going to sit there and drink my wine?” Not that Moz needed an excuse to do that.
“The latter. I have no interest in helping you in this folly.”
“It’s not folly, Moz. It’s what I want. It’s what I’ve wanted for a long time.”
“And what about Sara? What about Rebecca? You didn’t want them?”
Neal refused to let himself get drawn back into this argument. He knew the truth behind Mozzie’s snark. He was afraid. Afraid that Neal was going to leave him behind for a life of virtue and good deeds.
The good deeds were as much a part of his life as his blue eyes, but virtue? If there was one thing he learned in his four years with the FBI, he was not Peter; he didn’t want to be Peter. Yes, he admired the man, he loved him to the very depth of his soul, but he was always going to have a more than a little bit of the con in him. That was who he was. Who he’d always be. A criminal and proud of it.
And that reminded him of something. “Get up.”
“What?”
“Moz, just get up for a moment.”
Which he did, but not without a heartfelt, complaining sigh. Neal moved the stool he’d been perched on and pried loose one of the floorboards.
Moz looked at what Neal uncovered. “Ah – hidden treasure!”
Yes, that was certainly a good description. Neal pulled out a long tube made from heavy borosilicate glass, vacuum sealed. After his father – after James – had gone rooting around, Neal figured that he needed a better hiding place than the slot built into the fireplace. The tube would ensure that the fragile artwork wouldn’t start to decay.
He handed it to Moz. “You know what to with this, right?”
“Of course.”
Neal figured it would end up in one of the many places where Moz had cached the rest of the U-boat loot. They’d talked about anonymously turning it over to the Russians, but they could never agree on the when or how. Neal didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. If Moz wanted to keep it, he could. And frankly, he took no joy in The Entrance of the Masked Dancers. There were too many bad memories associated with it.
That wasn’t the only thing hidden under the floorboard. He retrieved a small velvet bag that contained the MacNally Solitaire. He’d tried to give it to Peter, but Peter – being Peter – gave it back to him, insisting that he had to be the one to return it. Even if he had to wait until the tracking anklet came off. He wondered if Peter and Elizabeth would be interested in a trip to the British Isles, Edinburgh specifically. Another velvet bag held the scarab that Keller stole from the Cairo museum, which he had swiped from Raquel LaRoque. That one he’d turnover to the Egyptian Embassy, anonymously of course. Egypt was far too dangerous, these days.
Yeah, he was such a criminal, returning all of his stolen loot.
The last thing, though – that wasn’t going anywhere. No way, no how. It might never see the light of day (or the light of night), but it was going with him to Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. It could stay in its box and Neal would do his best to forget about it (unless they were really hard up, and by hard up, he wasn’t thinking about cash). Besides, it wasn’t like the Danes were ever going to admit that they once had possession of one of Catherine the Great’s dildos.
The bags with the ring and the scarab were easy enough to palm, but of course Moz noticed the wooden box he had trouble pulling out of the tight space. “What’s that?”
“Something.” It was too much to hope that Moz would let it drop.
“I can see that. What sort of something.”
“Just … something that I once came across.”
“Can I see?”
“Moz …”
“Neal?”
Mozzie had a way of looking at him – like a lost puppy – that was impossible to resist. Neal handed the box to him, if just to see his reaction to the anatomically correct artifact.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1
“GAH!!!!!!!” Moz opened the box and screamed. “What the hell is that?”
Neal took the box back with a grin. “Do I really have to explain? Didn’t Mr. Jeffries give you The Talk when you were ten?”
“Yeah, and he warned me about zits and hairy palms. And why do you think I lost my hair before I was thirty!”
Neal tried not to wince, when Moz got unnerved, his voice tended to climb into registers that would make a dog whimper.
“Anyway, where did you get that?”
“Remember when Alex and I went looking for the music box?”
Moz nodded. “You let everyone think you had it.”
“Well, I didn’t leave the palace empty handed.”
“You stole a dildo from the Danish royal family?” Moz sounded almost terminally outraged.
Neal shrugged. “Do you really think I care about the sex toys of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg?”
“Actually, it’s just the House of Glücksburg, and since when did you become an anti-monarchist?”
“I’m not and you’re missing point. This belonged to Catherine the Great – ” Neal could almost see the words forming like a cartoon speech bubble. “And no, it was not modeled after a horse.”
Moz retrieved his glass and the bottle that Neal was certain belonged to him. Well, Moz was worth the occasional bottle of Brunello.
“So, what are you going to do with it?”
“Do I really need to explain?”
Moz flushed and buried his face in the glass. Neal took pity on his friend, almost. “It’ll go someplace safe and out of the way. I don’t expect I’ll need it, not with Peter …”
“Not with Peter, what?” Moz sounded puzzled.
Neal sighed and just kept on packing.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
September, 2023
“Where’s Peter?” Neal had just carried what he hoped was the last box of stuff out of the basement. He was tired and dirty and the last time he’d worked this hard for so little reward was sometime in 2004.
El wiped her face, smearing dust and cobwebs across her forehead. “I think he’s upstairs, going through the bedroom closet.”
They were moving. They were leaving Brooklyn for the more open spaces of the Upper Hudson Valley. It was a pretty big deal, not without its difficult moments, but after a little bit of loud arguing and some not-so-subtle persuasion, they agreed that they could be very happy in a converted 19th century farmhouse about two hours north. Neal, not surprisingly, was the one who didn’t want to move. He liked Brooklyn and the life he’d built here. But then Peter showed him “the Barn” with its bank of east-facing windows letting in light so pure and perfect that Neal wanted to strip naked and lie in the sun like a cat.
It didn’t hurt that the insanity of the Brooklyn real estate market remained insane and a bidding war resulted in a selling price that made even Neal gasp at all the zeros and commas.
Today wasn’t moving day – that was happening early next week. Today was the day they were taking everything that wasn’t sold in the tag sale over to Goodwill. Neal loaded the rest of the boxes onto the rented truck and went to check on Peter. Elizabeth hadn’t bothered to wash up and just collapsed on the couch, messy, sweaty and exhausted.
Neal hauled himself up the stairs, wondering just when he got so old.
In the hallway, there was a stack of garbage bags filled with clothes. Mostly Elizabeth’s, but some were Peter’s – and Neal hoped against hope that one of the bags included that ancient, ugly and very ill-fitting Brooks Brothers’ suit. The one Peter was wearing both times he’d caught him. Neal was sentimental, but not about that.
Peter had been given the task of organizing the clothing disposal, since he was the only one who had the patience to itemize each piece. He’d also gotten amnesty from basement emptying duties because of a very (and Neal thought, an all-too-convenient) bad back.
“How’s it going?” He asked Peter, or more specifically, Peter’s still deliciously rock-hard ass. Peter’s head and shoulders and arms were in the closet.
“It’s going just fine. Almost done.” Peter backed out of the closet and stood up, a hand at the small of his back. “There’s something of yours on the bed.”
“Mine?” Most of Neal’s clothes were in the guest room closet, not because he was considered a guest, but because the house had been built in the 1920s, before the idea of walk-in closets was born. It was just easier to keep his stuff there than to try and make room where room didn’t exist.
“Yeah, yours, Caffrey.”
Despite his exhaustion, despite the sweat and grime, his body tightened pleasurably at the sound of Peter saying his name just like that – with a little growl at the end.
“Well?”
Neal looked over at the bed. There was a carton, about the size of a shoe box, in the middle of the mattress. He blinked, then flushed, remembering with perfect clarity just what was in that box.
He also remembered taping the box shut and putting it in the guest room closet.
“Peter???”
“I wasn’t snooping, just so you know.” Peter stood there, hands in his pockets and looking for all the world like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “I’d been looking for something in the closet in the other bedroom and found that.”
“And you just opened it?” Neal didn’t know if he needed to pretend outrage.
“Yeah, well … an unlabeled box in the back of a closet? What did you expect?”
“That you’d open it.”
They stood there, a king-sized bed and an open box between them.
“I found it four years ago.”
“Huh?”
“Four years. I opened the box, saw what was inside and put it in this closet four years ago. If you were looking for it, I would have said something.” Peter was an interesting shade of red. “But I really didn’t know how to, umm, ask you about it.”
“I stole it.” Neal blurted out.
Peter laughed, recovering a little, “Well, I figured that out all by myself.”
“I guess I could return it.” He really didn’t want to, though. And unbelievably, Peter seemed to be of the same mind.
“Hmmm.” Peter seemed thoughtful. “Maybe not. It’s reappearance might create all sorts of complications.”
Neal wasn’t sure he heard Peter right. “Excuse me?”
“You know what, better hold on to it. Unless it’s on a loss registry or something.”
“No, I don’t think it is.”
“Well, check it out. That’s easy enough for you to do.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” It would be. Neal consulted for several art repatriation groups, and he had access to all types of lists and databases.
“If it comes up clean, we’ll try it out.” Peter went back into the closet. “Hell, we might as well try it out even if you do have to give it back. I’ve been waiting for four years, you know. I’m not going to pass up the opportunity to use that on you. And Elizabeth.”
Neal just blinked. There were simply no words left.
FIN
Author:
elrhiarhodanFandom: White Collar
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Peter Burke, Neal Caffrey, Elizabeth Burke, Mozzie, Alex Hunter, Peter/Elizabeth/Neal
Word Count: ~3000
Spoilers: S1.14 – Out of the Box (But slightly canon divergent)
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: None
Beta Credit:
miri_thompson, theatregirl7299 Summary: A long time ago, in another country, Neal found a piece. (No, it's not the piece you're thinking of, and you know how long and what he had to do to get his hands on that). This piece he kept for twenty years, occasionally putting it to good use.
Author’s Note: Written for the seventh night of Fic-Can-Ukah for my friend,
kaylashay. Her prompt was "In the Back of the Closet" and she asked for Peter/Elizabeth/Neal. I actually brainstormed part of this fic with my dearest enabler-in-chief, theatregirl7299 about four months ago, and I had hoped that someone would be kind enough to pick this prompt and this pairing. I got very lucky. 2003 – The Amalienborg Palace (A Storeroom)
“Damn it Neal, it’s not here. We’ve got to go.”
Neal looked up at Alex, grinning. “Come on, let’s just take a look.” He bent over a crate and started pawing through piles of horsehair and wood shaving.
“You’re insane, you know that? The music box isn’t here. We’ve tripped the alarms, they know we’re impostors, and you want to randomly dig through crates, looking for what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe something to make this trip worthwhile?”
“You mean something to bring back to Kate, something to impress her.”
Neal shrugged. Alex was way too perceptive. But he didn’t stop fishing through the crate until she began tugging at him. They could hear footsteps and just as he was about to abandon the quest, he touched something solid. His hands closed around it as Alex pulled him away and Neal managed to keep a grip on whatever it was – something cylindrical and solid and heavy – as they ran through the maze of underground storerooms that connected the four palaces.
They paused at an intersection, listening for alarms, for guards and he shoved whatever it was into the pack he was carrying. Alex gave him the all-clear and they headed for the exit – an ancient tunnel that connected the palace to an old gatehouse at the entrance to the Amalie Gardens. The tunnel was filled with rubble, prone to flooding and sloped dangerously in places, but nothing that they couldn’t handle.
Or so Neal had thought. There were almost out – he could smell the fresh air – when disaster hit. Alex, about two yards ahead of him, slipped on something and fell. Neal rushed to her, almost killing himself on the same spot.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit.” Alex was on the ground, her leg twisted at an unnatural angle.
Neal carefully ran his hands over it, trying not to hurt her.
She hissed when he touched her calf. “Is it broken?”
“I’m an art thief, not a doctor.” He figured a little levity in this situation would be better than the truth.
“Funny, Caffrey. Help me up.”
He admired her grit and got her upright. The stood there, looking at the algae-slicked pile of rubble blocking the path. “Well, we can’t go back.”
“No.”
“Then there’s only one way to do this.” Neal shifted the pack so it was on his belly and spared a brief thought for the unknown item inside. “Get on my back and hold on.”
Twenty painstaking (and for Alex, pain-filled) moments later, they emerged from a culvert in the Amalie Gardens, about two hundred yards from the Palace. Both of them saw the lights flashing from police cars, they could hear instructions shouted. Neal didn’t understand Danish, but wasn’t hard to figure what was going on.
“Caffrey – go.” Alex was holding onto a tree, barely managing to stay upright.
“I’m not leaving you –”
“Get out of here. They’re looking for two people, if we stay together, we’ll both be caught.”
“I need to get you to a hospital.”
“I can manage on my own. Now go.”
Still, Neal lingered.
“Caffrey – if we get caught because you’re a stupid, chivalrous bastard …”
Neal frowned, hating that she was right. He pressed a soft kiss against her cheek. “All right, but take care of yourself.”
“You, too.”
Neal didn’t turn back; clinging to the shadows until he reached the edge of the park. He ditched the black watch cap he was wearing, turned his jacket inside out, exposing a vibrant red and white logo for the Danish Football League.
He spent an hour making sure he wasn’t followed before retrieving his wallet and a passport from a small locker in the Copenhagen Central Station, where he boarded a train bound for Sweden. Halfway to Stockholm, Neal remembered that he hadn’t left Denmark empty-handed. He made his way to the lavatory to examine his unknown haul.
Neal bit his lip to restrain a laugh. Under the ugly fluorescent lights in the train car’s tiny bathroom, old gold gleamed, rubies and sapphires glowed. It had to be as long as his forearm, as big around as his fist. And from the heft, he figured it was six, maybe seven pounds – not heavy enough to be solid gold, but probably had a core of ivory. He couldn’t wait to try it out.
The train rocked and the lights flickered for a moment, bringing Neal back to reality. Of all the things to find in the hopes of impressing Kate, giving her an antique gold dildo was probably the least likely to succeed.
November, 2015
“You’re really going to do this?” Moz was perched on a stool, watching him pack. There was wine within reach, there always was these days.
“Yes.” Neal didn’t feel the need to elaborate on his answer. They’d had this discussion several times over the past few weeks.
“You sure you want to give me the apartment?”
Neal looked up. They’d had this discussion before, as well. “You’ll let me sleep on the couch if I need to?”
“Yeah, I guess I can.”
Of course he had to tweak Mozzie for that. “You guess? How generous of you.”
“Yeah, of course you can. Provided I don’t have company.”
“Right. I’ll double check the doorknob for a sock.” It was an old joke.
“You make sure you do that.” His friend’s sarcasm detector wasn’t operating, apparently.
Neal worked his way through the clothes that were still hanging in the closet. A large part of his wardrobe had migrated to the one in Peter and Elizabeth’s guest room over the past six months, but there were still quite a few suits hanging on the rack. And shoes. At least a dozen pairs were still here.
Maybe because clothes were a lot easier to leave behind than shoes.
He started leaving his clothes at the house in Brooklyn almost as soon as the tracker came off. Peter took him home, kissed him, Elizabeth kissed him and they both told him that he could leave if he really wanted to.
He didn’t.
Neal almost got lost in the memory of that first time – fucking Elizabeth, her breasts in his hands, Peter’s cock up his ass, his mouth on his neck. If it wasn’t for the clink of a wine bottle against a glass, he might have forgotten Moz was sitting there.
“You know, you get a very disturbing, glassy look on your face when you think about the Suits.”
“Are you going to be constructive or are you just going to sit there and drink my wine?” Not that Moz needed an excuse to do that.
“The latter. I have no interest in helping you in this folly.”
“It’s not folly, Moz. It’s what I want. It’s what I’ve wanted for a long time.”
“And what about Sara? What about Rebecca? You didn’t want them?”
Neal refused to let himself get drawn back into this argument. He knew the truth behind Mozzie’s snark. He was afraid. Afraid that Neal was going to leave him behind for a life of virtue and good deeds.
The good deeds were as much a part of his life as his blue eyes, but virtue? If there was one thing he learned in his four years with the FBI, he was not Peter; he didn’t want to be Peter. Yes, he admired the man, he loved him to the very depth of his soul, but he was always going to have a more than a little bit of the con in him. That was who he was. Who he’d always be. A criminal and proud of it.
And that reminded him of something. “Get up.”
“What?”
“Moz, just get up for a moment.”
Which he did, but not without a heartfelt, complaining sigh. Neal moved the stool he’d been perched on and pried loose one of the floorboards.
Moz looked at what Neal uncovered. “Ah – hidden treasure!”
Yes, that was certainly a good description. Neal pulled out a long tube made from heavy borosilicate glass, vacuum sealed. After his father – after James – had gone rooting around, Neal figured that he needed a better hiding place than the slot built into the fireplace. The tube would ensure that the fragile artwork wouldn’t start to decay.
He handed it to Moz. “You know what to with this, right?”
“Of course.”
Neal figured it would end up in one of the many places where Moz had cached the rest of the U-boat loot. They’d talked about anonymously turning it over to the Russians, but they could never agree on the when or how. Neal didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. If Moz wanted to keep it, he could. And frankly, he took no joy in The Entrance of the Masked Dancers. There were too many bad memories associated with it.
That wasn’t the only thing hidden under the floorboard. He retrieved a small velvet bag that contained the MacNally Solitaire. He’d tried to give it to Peter, but Peter – being Peter – gave it back to him, insisting that he had to be the one to return it. Even if he had to wait until the tracking anklet came off. He wondered if Peter and Elizabeth would be interested in a trip to the British Isles, Edinburgh specifically. Another velvet bag held the scarab that Keller stole from the Cairo museum, which he had swiped from Raquel LaRoque. That one he’d turnover to the Egyptian Embassy, anonymously of course. Egypt was far too dangerous, these days.
Yeah, he was such a criminal, returning all of his stolen loot.
The last thing, though – that wasn’t going anywhere. No way, no how. It might never see the light of day (or the light of night), but it was going with him to Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. It could stay in its box and Neal would do his best to forget about it (unless they were really hard up, and by hard up, he wasn’t thinking about cash). Besides, it wasn’t like the Danes were ever going to admit that they once had possession of one of Catherine the Great’s dildos.
The bags with the ring and the scarab were easy enough to palm, but of course Moz noticed the wooden box he had trouble pulling out of the tight space. “What’s that?”
“Something.” It was too much to hope that Moz would let it drop.
“I can see that. What sort of something.”
“Just … something that I once came across.”
“Can I see?”
“Moz …”
“Neal?”
Mozzie had a way of looking at him – like a lost puppy – that was impossible to resist. Neal handed the box to him, if just to see his reaction to the anatomically correct artifact.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1
“GAH!!!!!!!” Moz opened the box and screamed. “What the hell is that?”
Neal took the box back with a grin. “Do I really have to explain? Didn’t Mr. Jeffries give you The Talk when you were ten?”
“Yeah, and he warned me about zits and hairy palms. And why do you think I lost my hair before I was thirty!”
Neal tried not to wince, when Moz got unnerved, his voice tended to climb into registers that would make a dog whimper.
“Anyway, where did you get that?”
“Remember when Alex and I went looking for the music box?”
Moz nodded. “You let everyone think you had it.”
“Well, I didn’t leave the palace empty handed.”
“You stole a dildo from the Danish royal family?” Moz sounded almost terminally outraged.
Neal shrugged. “Do you really think I care about the sex toys of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg?”
“Actually, it’s just the House of Glücksburg, and since when did you become an anti-monarchist?”
“I’m not and you’re missing point. This belonged to Catherine the Great – ” Neal could almost see the words forming like a cartoon speech bubble. “And no, it was not modeled after a horse.”
Moz retrieved his glass and the bottle that Neal was certain belonged to him. Well, Moz was worth the occasional bottle of Brunello.
“So, what are you going to do with it?”
“Do I really need to explain?”
Moz flushed and buried his face in the glass. Neal took pity on his friend, almost. “It’ll go someplace safe and out of the way. I don’t expect I’ll need it, not with Peter …”
“Not with Peter, what?” Moz sounded puzzled.
Neal sighed and just kept on packing.
September, 2023
“Where’s Peter?” Neal had just carried what he hoped was the last box of stuff out of the basement. He was tired and dirty and the last time he’d worked this hard for so little reward was sometime in 2004.
El wiped her face, smearing dust and cobwebs across her forehead. “I think he’s upstairs, going through the bedroom closet.”
They were moving. They were leaving Brooklyn for the more open spaces of the Upper Hudson Valley. It was a pretty big deal, not without its difficult moments, but after a little bit of loud arguing and some not-so-subtle persuasion, they agreed that they could be very happy in a converted 19th century farmhouse about two hours north. Neal, not surprisingly, was the one who didn’t want to move. He liked Brooklyn and the life he’d built here. But then Peter showed him “the Barn” with its bank of east-facing windows letting in light so pure and perfect that Neal wanted to strip naked and lie in the sun like a cat.
It didn’t hurt that the insanity of the Brooklyn real estate market remained insane and a bidding war resulted in a selling price that made even Neal gasp at all the zeros and commas.
Today wasn’t moving day – that was happening early next week. Today was the day they were taking everything that wasn’t sold in the tag sale over to Goodwill. Neal loaded the rest of the boxes onto the rented truck and went to check on Peter. Elizabeth hadn’t bothered to wash up and just collapsed on the couch, messy, sweaty and exhausted.
Neal hauled himself up the stairs, wondering just when he got so old.
In the hallway, there was a stack of garbage bags filled with clothes. Mostly Elizabeth’s, but some were Peter’s – and Neal hoped against hope that one of the bags included that ancient, ugly and very ill-fitting Brooks Brothers’ suit. The one Peter was wearing both times he’d caught him. Neal was sentimental, but not about that.
Peter had been given the task of organizing the clothing disposal, since he was the only one who had the patience to itemize each piece. He’d also gotten amnesty from basement emptying duties because of a very (and Neal thought, an all-too-convenient) bad back.
“How’s it going?” He asked Peter, or more specifically, Peter’s still deliciously rock-hard ass. Peter’s head and shoulders and arms were in the closet.
“It’s going just fine. Almost done.” Peter backed out of the closet and stood up, a hand at the small of his back. “There’s something of yours on the bed.”
“Mine?” Most of Neal’s clothes were in the guest room closet, not because he was considered a guest, but because the house had been built in the 1920s, before the idea of walk-in closets was born. It was just easier to keep his stuff there than to try and make room where room didn’t exist.
“Yeah, yours, Caffrey.”
Despite his exhaustion, despite the sweat and grime, his body tightened pleasurably at the sound of Peter saying his name just like that – with a little growl at the end.
“Well?”
Neal looked over at the bed. There was a carton, about the size of a shoe box, in the middle of the mattress. He blinked, then flushed, remembering with perfect clarity just what was in that box.
He also remembered taping the box shut and putting it in the guest room closet.
“Peter???”
“I wasn’t snooping, just so you know.” Peter stood there, hands in his pockets and looking for all the world like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “I’d been looking for something in the closet in the other bedroom and found that.”
“And you just opened it?” Neal didn’t know if he needed to pretend outrage.
“Yeah, well … an unlabeled box in the back of a closet? What did you expect?”
“That you’d open it.”
They stood there, a king-sized bed and an open box between them.
“I found it four years ago.”
“Huh?”
“Four years. I opened the box, saw what was inside and put it in this closet four years ago. If you were looking for it, I would have said something.” Peter was an interesting shade of red. “But I really didn’t know how to, umm, ask you about it.”
“I stole it.” Neal blurted out.
Peter laughed, recovering a little, “Well, I figured that out all by myself.”
“I guess I could return it.” He really didn’t want to, though. And unbelievably, Peter seemed to be of the same mind.
“Hmmm.” Peter seemed thoughtful. “Maybe not. It’s reappearance might create all sorts of complications.”
Neal wasn’t sure he heard Peter right. “Excuse me?”
“You know what, better hold on to it. Unless it’s on a loss registry or something.”
“No, I don’t think it is.”
“Well, check it out. That’s easy enough for you to do.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” It would be. Neal consulted for several art repatriation groups, and he had access to all types of lists and databases.
“If it comes up clean, we’ll try it out.” Peter went back into the closet. “Hell, we might as well try it out even if you do have to give it back. I’ve been waiting for four years, you know. I’m not going to pass up the opportunity to use that on you. And Elizabeth.”
Neal just blinked. There were simply no words left.
Tags:
- character: alex hunter,
- character: elizabeth burke,
- character: mozzie,
- character: neal caffrey,
- character: peter burke,
- genre: future fic,
- genre: ot3,
- genre: post-anklet,
- genre: pre-series,
- kink: sex toys,
- pairing: peter/elizabeth/neal,
- type: fan fiction,
- white collar,
- written for: fic-can-ukah,
- year: 2013
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Date: 2013-12-08 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-04 02:01 am (UTC)Oh, this is priceless, I love this to bits :D
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Date: 2013-12-04 02:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-04 03:59 am (UTC)This was lovely and surprising! I'm not sure what I expected really, and it was a lot of fun to find out what it was. Thank you for sharing!
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Date: 2013-12-04 06:04 pm (UTC)This was totally adorable in so many ways. The scene with Moz in Neal's closet, the quick and dirty image of Neal sandwiched in between Peter and El for their first time and that lovely final scene between Peter and Neal. That Peter seems to have become a bit of a dirty, not quite old yet, man. YUM!
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Date: 2013-12-04 10:21 pm (UTC)The size of that thing? And Peter wants to use it on Neal and El?! YES, PLEASE! (sequel! I demand a dirty, kinky, smexytiems-filled sequel!)
Holy crap, woman. This was awesome!
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Date: 2013-12-05 03:05 am (UTC)What she said... *nods*
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Date: 2013-12-05 02:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-04 11:55 pm (UTC)::because laughing too hard::
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Date: 2013-12-05 03:04 am (UTC)Mozzie's reaction to it was priceless. :)
Thanks!!! Love it!!!
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Date: 2013-12-08 03:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-08 07:12 pm (UTC)Me three on the idea of a sequel to see what Peter, El and Neal get up to with the "piece";).
Thank you for writing and sharing.
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Date: 2016-01-23 01:36 pm (UTC)Nice fic, love how Peter couldn't really bring himself to ask about it.
And also, if you ever need something in Danish I'd be happy to provide translations.
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Date: 2016-01-23 01:44 pm (UTC)I feel like I want to apologize for my abuse of the Danish Royal Family in this fic.
And yes, if I ever need anything translated into Danish, I will definitely ask. Thank you again.