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white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen · 1 year

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Heaven Can Wait

Summary: Neal and Y/N Caffrey have an idyllic domestic life until a terrible accident threatens to rip it all away.

Words: 1,957

I can’t find it in my ask history but it was definitely requested.

Some women dreamed of being stay-at-home mothers. It had been nice for a couple months, until the itch in your legs started and you couldn’t think straight. Before the kids were on solid foods, you were back at work, Neal taking over as a stay-at-home father. Truthfully, you considered as you cooked breakfast, this was probably the best solution for everyone. You made more and had more upward mobility, since you didn’t have a felony record. Still, you were glad that he was happy. Neal hadn’t struck you as a stay-at-home anything while you were dating, but he was an amazing father. It was as if the little ones you welcomed a year ago had cured his fear of staying put.

Knox couldn’t get enough over-easy eggs, and Ellie seemed to think breakfast was for chumps. You looked over at them both after flipping the pancakes with a tender smile. Your son’s shirt had been on him for less than twenty minutes and it was already gross and smeared with egg yolk, while your daughter’s fingers were already covered in a thin layer of crayon wax. Ironically, the child who loved to make art wasn’t the one named after an artist.

Neal came into the kitchen with fluffy, towel-ruffled hair, halfway through a yawn. “It smells delicious,” he said, predictably lured by scent straight to the still-hot coffee. He paused by the children to ruffle his son’s hair and kiss his daughter on her head.

“Da,” Ellie complained about being distracted from her drawing.

He chuckled before leaving them alone. “Do you want coffee, love?”

“I assume you do want to eat today?” You checked rhetorically.

Neal laughed again. “Got it.” He took down two mugs and started pouring one for each of you while you finished the pancakes and plated the scrambled eggs that were just for the two of you. “Same as usual today?”

“I’ll be home by four,” you promised, reaching over and giving his free hand a little squeeze. As you did, you stole a quick look at the glinting silver band on his ring finger and smiled brightly at the sight of it, suddenly delightfully conscious of the weight of your own.

“We can last until four,” Neal said, looking back over at the twins. You hadn’t been trying, exactly, but you hadn’t not been trying, and you’d both been thrilled by the news. Your son had been a surprise, but for however hectic life had been with two newborns, it was also that much more rewarding. “I think Ellie’s ready for watercolors, don’t you?”

“Neal,” you said, giving him a playfully warning look. She’d barely stopped putting crayons in her mouth. Did he really want to start with thin wooden brushes? “Only if you’re careful,” you agreed, seeing the adorably pleading look in his big blue eyes.

The two of you sat close together at the table, the side of your left leg touching his right one as you both ate, yourself in a rush with half your mind on the time. The pancakes were probably the best you’d made in a while, and Neal appreciatively thanked you for the meal with a kiss on the cheek right before letting you get up and take your plate to the sink.

“I’ve got it,” he said before you could turn on the water. “Don’t worry about it. You have to go.”

Smiling gratefully, you downed the rest of your coffee and put the mug down in the sink. “Thank you, darling,” you said, bending over the back of his chair to hug him tightly from behind. He raised a hand to stroke your arm and you kissed his temple before moving on to your little ones. Knox babbled at you a little, not quite ready to say “mama” yet, and Ellie only reluctantly turned her head to you long enough for a kiss before going back to her coloring. “I love you both,” you cooed, stroking her dark hair down the nape of her neck.

“Love Ma,” Ellie said with a pout, the V coming out a little blunted.

You grabbed your bag and took one last look at your little family around the table, thanking the stars that you’d been able to hold onto this wonderful man and that you’d been blessed with healthy, sweet children. Now you couldn’t imagine being anywhere else, and looked forward to every time you got to spend time together as a family. Then you were out the door before you got too emotional and went back in for a second round of hugs.

The route to work was so familiar that you could probably have done it blindfolded, barring other pedestrians. You took the A train downtown and then went a few blocks eastward. Once out of the subway, you only had to walk for about four minutes to get to your job. It was a pretty convenient location and you liked that it was also near a few good restaurants and a pharmacy.

You stopped at an intersection to wait to cross, the red hand blinking at you from across the street. The building was in sight, and your mind was transitioning into work mode. Already you were reviewing what you’d done the day prior and thinking over the next steps – what could you get done by lunch? The boss had been in an unusually lighthearted and laissez-faire mood lately, and you had no idea why, but it was nice to work at your own efficient pace without feeling heat at your heels-

The light turned to the white walk sign. You stepped off the curb after checking the coast was clear and headed across the crosswalk. There was at least one pretty big thing that you could finish by the end of the day if you kept your foot on the gas. A loud screech and the blare of a horn made you turn your head around, but you barely had time to understand what you saw before the car slammed directly into your side and sent you flying away and to the ground.

~~~ Heaven Can Wait ~~~

Neal had been mopping up the mess Ellie made when she knocked over the little water cup for painting when the phone rang. He couldn’t explain how, but he felt his stomach drop right in that moment. Something was deeply, horribly wrong. It took a beat for him to unfreeze his muscles and answer. The nurse making the call confirmed his bone-deep fear when she said she was at a hospital. He nearly threw up.

Ellie was crying, and Knox not much better, only kept on this side of docile by a stuffed green monkey. He kept trying to shush Ellie on the subway because he knew people were giving them baleful stares, but his heart wasn’t in it. All he could think of were horrible, unwanted images of his wife laying lifelessly on a stretcher. A car accident. Jesus, what were the odds when you didn’t even drive? Neal kept running his paint-stained hand through his hair, and on occasion bent down over the handles of the twin stroller as his breath hitched to force himself to keep calm for his kids.

He got looks for bringing two babies to the emergency ward, but didn’t bother trying to explain himself, and when he said your name in an urgent panic, the irritable gaze of the receptionist softened a touch. A nurse was paged. They said words he didn’t understand and a few he did that he wished he didn’t, and finished by pointing him to chairs to wait. His knees nearly buckled as he found a place to sit, the stroller just in front of him.

Transverse fracture. Fractured hip. Two broken ribs. Internal bleeding.

Severe head trauma.

A woman in scrubs came into the room, but not from the direction of the operating theaters. Neal looked up with red-rimmed eyes at the cop, at first not understanding what was happening as the nurse directed the policeman towards him. He distractedly started to push the stroller a few inches back and forth, keeping Knox as calm as he could in the foreign environment with his father so clearly distressed. Ellie, thankfully, had gone to sleep after tiring herself out with tears.

The policeman explained, briefly, what had happened and gave him papers. A man ran the red light to turn and claimed he hadn’t seen you until it was too late. He said he laid on the horn but you didn’t move. A fury started to bubble in his chest at that, burning brighter than any rage he’d felt since confronting Fowler at the Russian Consulate. He knew damn well that his wife hadn’t just not moved. You hadn’t been given a chance. That pathetic, bullshit excuse ensured Neal would be going after his blood however he could – as soon as his family was taken care of.

Next of kin notified, and a copy of the incident papers and contact information given, the policeman gave his token condolences with a sympathetic glance at the twins in their stroller. Neal didn’t read the papers. He knew he’d do something stupid if he had the man’s identifying information. Instead he stuffed them into the empty pocket of the babies’ diaper bag in the bottom tray of the stroller.

It felt like it took hours before he was finally called back to see his wife. A nurse offered to stay with the stroller, but Neal couldn’t bear losing track of his children while he was so affected by nearly losing his partner and refused. She didn’t press, and instead led the three of them down a few halls and to a room with low lights. She held the door for Neal to push the twins inside, and he leaned heavily on the handles as he saw you, the love of his life, lying broken in the bed. The thin blankets laid awkwardly over bulky bandages and a cast around your left arm. Part of your head was wrapped tightly, and as nausea turned his stomach, he couldn’t bring himself to ask yet exactly why. Half of your face was scraped to hell and purple and black bruising had already spread deeply across your cheek.

“She’s stable,” the nurse said, her eyes looking briefly to his violently shaking hands. She was just repeating what she’d already said now.

Neal moved the stroller to the side of the bed so that when you woke up you’d be able to see your kids right away. He cautiously bent over the side of the bed, hovering his hand gingerly over the mostly unharmed side of your face. “Y/N,” he whispered, his sight blurring briefly before he blinked and let the tears start to fall.

You didn’t stir.

“Sir,” the nurse said softly, about to repeat herself again. “Y/N is in a medically-induced coma.”

All the cautions in the world couldn’t have reached his brain in the waiting room, when all he could hear was his heartbeat and blood rushing in his ears, desperate to see with his own eyes. Neal furrowed his eyebrows, trying to tune her out, hoping not to hear. He couldn’t hear it again. He was barely holding on, barely telling himself over and over again that you were okay now, that your mangled body wasn’t dead before him.

It was a few minutes before it really hit him that, wherever he put the kids, however gently he touched you, whatever he said to plead with you to wake up and tell him yourself that you were okay – you weren’t going to wake up. And, if he was deeply, devastatingly unlucky, you might never wake up again.

#white collar lawmen and conmen #white collar #white collar x reader #neal caffrey #neal caffrey x reader #reader insert #reader #kids #family #drama #accident #car accident #coma #requested #oneshot #heaven can wait

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white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen · 2 years

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Bodyguard

Summary: There’s immediate chemistry when Y/N works as Neal’s bodyguard.

Words: 2,569

Requested by anon

“I didn’t know there was a whole gym,” Neal commented, looking around with some interest at the exercise equipment. He almost considered asking if he was allowed down here without supervision, but then decided communal equipment probably didn’t meet his standards of cleanliness.

Peter had brought him down to the basement floor and into a large, open room with black mats. One agent was running at a treadmill, another two were working at ellipticals, and a fourth was doing some push-ups in athleticwear. Lastly, on a slim side of the room without any extra equipment, but on a gymnastics mat, a pair of agents were working hand-to-hand training.

“It’s not exactly here to be an amenity,” Peter pointed out, slowing down as they approached the agents working hand-to-hand. “We’re not here to work out, anyway. Jones says our guy’s reportedly quick to jump the gun. Possibly literally. I’m not having you go in alone.”

They stopped a couple yards from the mat. One of the fighters was a tall man with arms that could give Jason Momoa a run for his money. The other was a woman with sweat dripping down her face and hell in her eyes. Neal was enchanted by you straight away. While they watched, the older man came at you to pick you up as if in a fireman’s hold, but you slammed her body weight right into his mass, tightened each fist around the opposite side of his shirt collar, and pulled your arms back across each other as hard as possible. Although the male agent was, in fact, able to grab you the second time, he couldn’t pick you up without choking himself harder, and he stomped his foot twice to reset.

“I told you it would work,” you said smugly, releasing his shirt while he rubbed his throat. You turned and your eyes slipped right past Peter and Neal, zeroing in on your bottled water and hand towel at the edge of the mat.

“Only in one-on-one,” your coworker cautioned, rubbing his throat with one hand. “And only for you would I ever bet on that one.”

You wiped off her forehead and then gave Peter and Neal both a bright smile, holding the water bottle against her neck as if it were still cold. “Hi,” you said cheerfully. “You must be Burke. Lovely to meet you. I’m L/N.”

“Neal,” the thief interjected himself, giving her his most charming smile. “That was very impressive.”

“I’m sold,” you said to Peter straight away before turning back to Neal. “You can call me Y/N. I’ll be your bodyguard for your undercover operation.” You lowered her water bottle and gave him a short curtsy. “I’ve been with the bureau about two years, but aced weapons training and have been studying martial arts since I was a kid. You’ll be in good hands.”

“Evil hands,” your coworker huffed, drinking water himself and still rubbing sorely at his neck. “Evil, evil hands.”

Peter chuckled while Neal gave you a warm smile. “I already feel safer.”

He didn’t feel threatened at all, really, and some traditional, gentlemanly part of himself didn’t love the idea of a female bodyguard. Not that he didn’t appreciate strong women; it could be argued he appreciated strong women a bit too much – but it felt different, somehow, to go in expecting a woman to take a hit for him and hit back on his behalf, compared to simply going in with a female partner and trusting her to have his back. Bodyguard had a different connotation he didn’t like so much… but, bodyguards had their place in the environment he’d be trying to blend into.

Y/N smiled back at him. It could’ve been just his imagination, but he thought you were charming him, too. Maybe flirting a little. Just as he thought you were having a moment, Peter ruined it by interrupting to talk shop.

“We’d love to get you up to white collar and run down the plan early,” he said. The smile slipped off of your face, replaced immediately by a completely professional and solemn expression. Peter continued, “Let you sleep on it, and give an opportunity to think of any questions before we officially get started.”

“I just need twenty minutes and I can be in your division,” you said, pointing over towards the door that Neal presumed led to the showers.

“Take thirty,” Peter said kindly, then sending a playful look over Y/N’s shoulder. “You alright there, Chris?”

Chris, who had started cooling off while they talked, gave a thumbs-up. “I’m just going to miss her so much,” he said sarcastically, making you smirk. “Who else is going to make me look average?”

“I’ll be back to combat training before you know it,” you promised him teasingly, giving Neal a lingering look of what he decided was friendly interest before heading to the showers to clean off.

Neal watched you go, mindfully keeping his eyes up north. It wasn’t often he met agents who were so willing to broadcast friendliness towards him, much less ones who were willing to be a little bit flirty. And, he had to admit, he liked that athletic look you had.

“Eh,” Peter said, making the noise sharp in his throat like he did at Satchmo. Neal startled and Peter shook his head. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Never,” Neal agreed, inwardly rolling his eyes. No point in arguing when Peter had already decided he was misbehaving. “Just-“ His agent made the noise again and Neal’s lips tightened in irritation. “That’s so rude,” the thief scolded.

~~~ Bodyguard ~~~

“Don’t worry,” you said, misinterpreting Neal’s long look at the wire being fastened on the inside of your button-down shirt. “This isn’t my first time.”

It was low-hanging fruit, so to speak, but the joke was impossible to pass on when you were standing there with the top buttons undone. “I’ll still be gentle,” he joked, chuckling when you stuck your tongue out at him.

“I won’t,” you retorted, grinning when he was pleasantly surprised.

With the wire in place, you pulled on a black blazer that you wore open. It looked amazing, framing your waist and hugging your shoulders. He had to remind himself that if he flirted too hard, Peter might send him to the HR department. Not that he was worried, because you weren’t being too shy about your attraction to him, either. Neal was a very handsome man, and you knew he was very smart on top of that. Smart, hot guys were kind of a weakness.

But attraction or a conflict of interest was also a weakness – and that was the type of weakness that you had been trained to avoid. While you worked together, you could be friendly, but professional. When the operation was done, though… you were in different divisions, with different specialties. You didn’t see any reason why you couldn’t offer to take him for coffee once you were done working together. Work just had to come first.

In theory, the operation was a very simple one for you. You just stood slightly behind Neal, looking intimidating and watching his back. Agent Burke didn’t want him to be unprotected, but the odds of Neal actually being attacked were slim, between the FBI’s top-notch forgeries for his fake ID and his proven track record of de-escalation. Still, you looked the part and made sure he had someone. And you were glad that you did, because it turned out that this was one instance where even Neal couldn’t settle the ruffled feathers.

Neal saw from the start that everyone was on edge. It wasn’t the great beginning that he had hoped for, but it was the worse case scenario that he had planned on. He turned up the charm to eleven, settling smoothly into his role as a proud but amicable thief, hoping that if he didn’t act like anything was amiss, neither would the armed men around him. With Y/N behind him, although he wanted to feel safer, he also knew that they were outnumbered – and he would much rather no fight started anyway. Even if you could guarantee his safety, he’d feel awful if anyone were hurt over him.

Unfortunately, the worse scenario turned to the worst. The mark had already decided he didn’t trust Neal, and by extension, didn’t trust you. It didn’t matter how much of a smooth talker anyone was when your guilt was already decided. They looked for reasons to lash out, going as far as to search Neal’s person for a wire. Fortunately, he wasn’t wearing one because the bureau had stuck with the recording counterfeit watch. If it worked, why change it? But he could feel his heart speeding up even as he kept his breath even, knowing that if they didn’t find what they were looking for on him, they would check you next.

“Alright,” Mark snapped, gesturing roughly at Neal to be moved away from the table. The cards were left shuffled but unfinished and Neal gave them a forlorn look as he was yanked away by one of the guards. “Her next.”

The other one had shuffled into place behind you. By the rigid way you’d been standing ever since, Neal knew you were aware. You moved forward before the man had a chance to push you, but you left your jacket on and gave Neal a small look with a simple little nod as if telling him it was okay. Although he knew better than to look nervous, he couldn’t lie to himself that well – not with one gun in sight and finger-shaped bruises forming on his upper arm.

Mark made the other guard take your jacket off from behind. You forced your shoulders to stay down and not look defensive. It also served the double purpose of not telegraphing your move before you made it. Just before Mark started patting you down, you whirled around, kicking your leg out and striking him in the groin. While he involuntarily went backwards while doubling over, you delivered a hard strike to the guard’s face with one hand and went straight for his gun with the other. In maybe five seconds, you had a firm grip on the weapon and were stepping away from both men, bringing the gun up to the other guard.

As soon as the guard behind Neal realized what was happening, he’d hurriedly let go of the con artist and gone for his own sidearm. “Y/N!” Neal yelled in warning, throwing himself against the guard to throw off his aim.

A bullet fired, but lodged itself firmly in the wall. The puffed loudly at being shoved aside and turned the gun back to Neal. Now you were pissed. You took a shot as the guard did. Another side of the room let out a crack from a stray bullet, his aim thrown – again – this time by your shot to his arm. He dropped the gun and Neal, who’d doubled over holding onto his arm, hurriedly scrambled to cover the grip with his shoe.

“You okay?” You barked, rushing to him and hurriedly taking the gun up from the ground. You put the safety back on, tucked it in your empty holster, and put an arm in front of Neal, ushering the thief gently back towards the wall to have a more defensible point. By now, you were sure that backup was rushing in.

“It grazed me,” Neal hissed, turning to look at his arm. The sleeve was ripped and a two-inch stripe over his arm was raw pink speckled with red. You took it in during just a glance and dropped your shoulders again, relieved.

“I’ve seen much worse grazes,” you said reassuringly, but scolded, “You shouldn’t have gotten in the way. I had it handled.”

Neal grimaced, replaying it in his head. You’d already been looking at the guard before he slammed his body into the man. He’d been so focused on the gun being raised towards you that, at the time, he hadn’t processed that you already had yours levelled at the man. You would’ve gotten the shot off first, and neither of you would’ve ended up hurt if Neal hadn’t jumped in in a momentary panic. When he did, you hadn’t had a clear shot until the guard was already aiming at him.

“My bad,” he said pointedly, pushing his elbow out as if to remind you of the graze. It burned fiercely.

~~~ Bodyguard ~~~

“I gave you a bodyguard specifically so this wouldn’t happen,” Peter complained when he had Neal sitting down. He didn’t seem to care that Neal’s seat was the back of an EMT van while a man quickly but carefully disinfected his arm.

“She was outnumbered,” Neal said defensively. He already felt bad enough, but he’d genuinely feared for her life at the time. “I was trying to help.”

“Next time help by trusting our professionals to do our jobs,” Peter rebuked. His eyes softened when Neal looked away from him. “This was too close,” he said more gently. “The worst outcome of a case is one where my people don’t come back in one piece. I know you were trying to help, but this is what she was trained for. I wouldn’t send you in with someone who couldn’t manage… I’m glad you’re okay.”

Neal looked up reluctantly and saw nothing but sympathy and concern in Peter’s eyes, so he drew himself up a bit and nodded understanding. “Thanks,” he said quietly, and then dismissed the sentimentality of their exchange by complaining, “No one ever said how much this hurts.”

“Pain is a good teacher,” Peter said dryly. “Don’t do it again.”

After checking with the EMT that Neal didn’t need a hospital after Neal himself turned down the offer of a ride, Peter gave him a pat on his uninjured side and went back to the agents cleaning up the crime scene. He’d barely been gone a minute when you came to join Neal, hands in your pockets, stolen weapons surrendered.

“You did good,” you said with a small smile. “I appreciated your intent. I’d call it a learning opportunity.”

“Yeah, consider it learned,” Neal sighed. He was also going to hear about this from Jones and Diana, without a doubt. “Thanks for having my back.”

“It’s what I’m here for,” you said courteously. It was hard not to point out that if he’d been alone, they wouldn’t have found a wire and a fight wouldn’t have had to happen. Still, the fact that they’d been itching for a reason made you glad he hadn’t gone alone. “I guess they’re arrested for shooting at us.”

“The exact things we wanted access to were in the office,” Neal said, summarizing Peter’s initial glee when he’d arrived. As he did, the EMT put a light dressing on his arm. “By making it a crime scene, we got legal access to everything. They practically built our case for us, and got more charges against them.”

“I guess the case is basically over, then,” you said with a cheery smile. “That means I can ask you out for coffee. Ill-advised or not, trying to save my life was rather attractive.”

Neal chuckled, moving his elbow back to his side and standing up. “I’d love to get coffee, though I hope I didn’t just set too high a bar for myself.”

“You absolutely did,” you teased.

~~~

A/N: I’m still working on the NCAC sequel, but I wanted to get something out sooner than later, so I made this. I hope you enjoy :) Don’t forget to comment or send a message if you want to be added to this blog’s Discord server!

#white collar #white collar x reader #lawmen and conmen #oneshot #bodyguard #fluff #casefic #reader #reader insert #second person #neal caffrey #neal caffrey x reader #peter burke #fic

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white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen · 2 years

Text

New fic, "Bodyguard" coming out Monday 8AM!

#update

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white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen · 2 years

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i just discovered white collar and i really love your writing it’s amazing 😭❤️❤️

Welcome to the White Collar fandom!! Thank you so much, you’ve made my day 🥹 Please enjoy your stay

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white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen · 2 years

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✨🧡🌙SEND THIS TO TEN OTHER BLOGGERS YOU THINK ARE WONDERFUL. KEEP THE GAME GOING ✨🧡

Awww, I’m so flattered 🥹☺️🥰

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white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen · 2 years

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am I finally working on the Never Con a Conman sequel? Yes. Is it going to be double the length of the original story? Probably

#not-fic

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white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen · 2 years

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The Transfer

Summary: Sometimes it takes an outside eye to spot when something's going wrong inside a team.

Word Count: 4,801

Requested by @twistedtooth

White Collar wasn’t your idea of the dream, but everyone had to start somewhere. You were just glad that you’d made it to a real office where something exciting happened once in a while! You weren’t sure exactly where you were heading next, but from the moment you transferred into the WCCD, you knew it was a place where you could happily bide your time and learn from senior agents. There was a sort of camaraderie on the twenty-first floor that had been absent in your previous position, and you were welcomed into it by new agents and twenty-year vets alike.

Within a couple of weeks, you were on a first-name basis with almost everyone on the floor, from Peter Burke himself down to the probationary agent who usually worked in the archives. And of course you met Neal. He was just as charming as everyone had made him sound. You admit it; you were charmed, too.

It was hard, at first, to forget who you were talking to. You’d gone through Quantico in the last five years, and then you’d asked around about the division once it was set in stone that you’d be working there. Neal Caffrey’s reputation preceded him; in all honesty – and you would never admit it to his face – you were a bit starstruck the first time you saw him striding in beside Peter, coffee in one hand, anklet on one leg, hat jauntily perched on his head. This was James Bonds himself, in your new office, sitting barely fifteen feet away from you and even using the same coffee pot. It felt a little bit like a fresh-blooded actress being cast alongside Meryl Streep.

But, truthfully, the stars blinked from your eyes pretty quickly. Working in the same space, even if you didn’t work on the same cases together, took apart whatever larger-than-life image you’d built of him in your head. Talking to him – shyly at first, getting more comfortable as the days went by – humanized him, until, yeah, it was still pretty cool that you were sharing water cooler gossip with Neal freakin’ Caffrey, but he was also the guy who infamously got the double-finger-point from Hughes every other week and was sent to fetch coffee from outside the building whenever he pissed someone off by complaining too much about the instant mix in the kitchenette.

As weeks went by in your new division, you actually started striking up something with Neal. You weren’t quite ready to call it sparks – for a few reasons, you weren’t willing to go there just yet, even in your mind – but you did think it could be friendship. You started taking coffee breaks together when you were both able to step away from work. Sometimes, Neal even finished with what Peter had given him and wandered over to your desk to pull up a chair and help you look at your cold cases of the week, seeing if a fresh pair of eyes couldn’t make a difference. They usually couldn’t, but that one time they had? Oh, boy. You hadn’t felt a rush like that since the one and only time you’d taken the free fall at the amusement park.

After months in the division, there was truthfully only one thing you still complained about to yourself and your non-bureau friends. It wasn’t the cheap coffee; you were more than welcome to use your breaks to go get better stuff from a café. Nor was it the sometimes long hours; you’d known those were coming, and you had the security of salaried pay to make the few instances worth the exchange. Even the boring cases, you had, in a sense, signed up for. No, what still really bothered you, months in, was the way one specific coworker was treated by everyone with authority.

Neal brushed it off and never let it get him down. He was like a smiley, cheerful duck in that it all rolled off his back, barring the few comments where he made a mocking face of hurt or sarcastically clapped back. Most of the time, he just let it go as if everything were warranted; and it wasn’t. Because, the thing was, he’d been sentenced to four years in prison. Between actual prison time, and his time on parole, he’d served well over four years. Sure, he’d gotten that additional four for breaking out, but time and hindsight had proven that the girl he’d broken out for had, indeed, been in danger. She’d wound up murdered by the people who’d pushed her to go off the grid. Personally, you were pretty sure Neal had more than made up his debt to society, especially since the man whose company he’d stolen from gave him the moral all-clear after the kidnapping debacle.

It wasn’t your call to make, and you weren’t going to delude yourself into thinking it was, but all that left you with a bad taste in your mouth when Neal was treated poorly by figures of authority in the bureau simply because of his record; the record that he had paid for dearly with whole years of his life. No, he didn’t serve out that second sentence in full yet, but he was working for the bureau in a capacity that often put him in mortal danger; didn’t that at least earn him the respect of the people he worked beside? If they were comfortable enough entrusting him with civilian and agent lives alike, you thought they should be plenty comfortable going more than a single day without a jibe meant to put him back in his place.

“Trust you? I don’t think so,” Jones would say in all seriousness with an amused chuckle when Neal encouraged him to take a leap of faith.

Diana wouldn’t even look up from her desk before issuing mild-mannered threats about Neal attempting to manipulate her – before even letting him say hello or approach why he was at her desk to begin with.

Even Peter would make the jabs on occasion. One time Neal had been admiring a car and they used its lo-jack to identify a suspect. Neal made a comment appreciating that it came with a GPS, and Peter made a cheerful quip of, “Just like you!” That seemed innocent enough on its face, but it became a lot less innocent when he would make very casual references to having looked at Neal’s tracking data, or reminding the artist that Peter could chuck him back in jail when he thought Neal was being annoying.

All the little things like that added up to you, and you started cataloguing them with your head down and a frown replacing your neutral, preoccupied expression. You told yourself you worked with good people, and they wouldn’t constantly put a man down like that – especially a man who was on their side, ostensibly their friend. Maybe it sounded bad to you, but was all in good fun – like the way you insulted your best friend if she dared to touch your French fries. You started glancing at Neal afterwards to see if he seemed upset. He never seemed to let it get to him, but you did notice that if he’d been acting playful or particularly friendly before, that seemed to put an end to it. So there went that theory of it being appropriate in context.

As a junior agent, barely out of your probationary timeframe, it was absolutely none of your business how Diana or Clinton interacted with Neal – much less how Peter did. And, since Neal didn’t make a fuss about it, you didn’t either. Maybe that was cowardly of you, but you didn’t want to stand out at work for any of the wrong reasons. Instead, you just tried to be a good friend to him at work, showing him the respect of not automatically assuming he was constantly out to manipulate, trick, lie to, or otherwise scam you. Likewise, you never tried to guard your phone, jewelry, or other personal effects from him. You hoped that if he noticed that behavior from some of the less confident agents, he would also notice and appreciate the opposite from you.

Silent support seemed to be working pretty well, because you picked up on how often Neal would come to you to socialize or help out with cold cases when he didn’t have something else to work on or anywhere to be. And in addition to having the clever blue-eyed boy keep you company, it brought an unexpected upside of drawing positive attention from the older agents, who, after several months of no incidents between you and Neal, appeared to believe that you were capable of handling yourself. Between your composure and Neal’s favorable attention, Peter’s team started to loop you in on cases when they needed more manpower. Being included, in whatever capacity, in the larger-profile cases was a huge professional boon.

That was how, on a Thursday evening, you found yourself in the van with Neal and Peter. It was far from your first surveillance operation, but it was your first time on one of this caliber. Fortunately, there was very little pressure; it being late evening, the suspect was more likely than not to head to bed soon and then be unconscious for most of your shift. Still, the van needed people in it, so you traded places with Clinton for a staggered watch and joined the infamous crime-solving duo with fresh coffee and a deck of cards.

Both men started grinning, albeit for different reasons. Peter reached for the coffee you offered him with an almost reverent tone of gratitude, while Neal started to grin widely and rolled up his sleeves. “Finally, a way to pass the time.”

“Nertz is off the table,” you said regrettably. “But anything where we can check the cameras every few seconds is fair game.”

You handed him the deck since he was so excited. Neal popped it open and started shuffling the cards with the ease of a practiced magician. He caught your eye and grinned as you watched him bridge the deck against his thigh without dropping any.

“Y/N doesn’t know how to play the usual card games,” Neal said sideways to Peter, shuffling without even looking. Now that was unfair. You sipped at your coffee, made a face, and put it to the side to cool off. The equipment on the table was taking up most of the space, so you’d have to make smart use of the flat tops, too, but it was going to be wholly doable. “I promised I’d teach her some.”

“Got an extra deck, if you wanna play,” you offered. Truthfully, you didn’t know how many decks most games needed, so you’d just grabbed two to be safe.

“We’re gonna start with poker,” Neal said brightly.

You chuckled quietly, already quite certain that in any game of bluffing, you would lose to Neal. Still, you’d never had a reason to bluff to him before, so maybe you stood a slim chance that he wouldn’t know your tics right away.

Peter made an almost incredulous face at you, and then looked at Neal, then back to you. “You’re teaching Neal to teach you poker? You know what he does for a living, right?”

“Peter,” Neal objected gamely, giving him a scolding, but not very serious, frown. It was a token objection, if that.

“Works for the FBI,” you said at the same time, giving Peter a pointed look. It was the quickest and bravest you’d dared to be about one of those snide little remarks. But the fact was, Neal didn’t make his living hustling people at cards. He earned his stipend by working for the bureau, just like you and Peter both also did. The only difference was that the two of you were actually paid a living wage, whereas it was somehow fair for the bureau to not only demand Neal’s compliance with life-threatening demands, but also to pay him less than poverty wages.

“Before that,” Peter said, smiling a little like you’d made a funny joke. He elbowed Neal, but Neal didn’t play along with him. Instead he straightened the edges of the cards and deliberately didn’t look at Peter.

“He’s my teammate,” you said, frowning at Peter fully. “I trust him. I’ll continue to do so unless he gives me a reason not to.”

The senior agent looked almost shocked that something he’d meant as a joke had been responded to so seriously. Did he really not hear how mean-spirited it had sounded? At least he now seemed to see that it wasn’t taken as one, and that you weren’t the only one upset. He looked at Neal again, but then looked away, frowning to himself. You could see gears turning in his head. While he reflected, you changed the subject back to friendlier waters, encouraging Neal not to mentally retreat.

“What’re we playing for?” You asked him, opening up the small bag you’d brought with you. “I brought chocolate. Or, we could go for coffee-fetching.”

The stakeout passed uneventfully. After a few minutes, you’d drawn Neal back out into the playful mood he’d been in before, and once a respectable amount of time had passed since you’d very politely told off your boss, Peter asked to be dealt in. As predicted, both of them wiped the floor with you, but you’d had a good time and the foresight to bring spare chocolate.

Another few weeks passed uneventfully. You were pleased to note that, at least in front of you, Peter made fewer snarky comments about Neal. Something about that night – whether it was being called on it, or actually seeing that Neal wouldn’t look at him after – showed the older agent that his jokes weren’t actually funny. Not that you spent that much time in his presence, granted. That case was closed a couple days after you helped to surveil, and you hadn’t been recruited for anything by their team since. You still said your friendly hellos and made conversation with Neal almost every day.

There came one interesting day when organized crime popped in. It wasn’t unusual for agents from other divisions to wander through for some reason or another, but when a whole trio of them came in doing the strut together, you tended to take notice. They went straight to Hughes’ office, and when the white-haired ASAC came out, he did the double-fingered point at Neal before turning straight back into his office. Neal looked like he had no idea what was going on, but was just happy to be invited, and went on up to Hughes’ office on the mezzanine with a bit of pep in his step.

The pep was gone when he came to see what you were up to later on in the day. “Special assignment?” You asked him curiously before he had the chance to say something to you. When you looked to his face, his expression was glum. “Oh. Not in a good way.”

“I’m getting loaned out,” he complained, filling one of Peter’s mugs with coffee. By the amount of cream he put in it, you strongly suspected it wasn’t for Peter. “Ruiz doesn’t even appreciate my expertise.”

“Not all agents can be as cool as I am,” you said sympathetically. “I’m sorry. It’s not for long, I hope?”

“This case they’re on could be a few days,” Neal predicted. Then he confirmed your suspicion about the coffee by taking a big sip from the rim, settling his hip against the counter to make himself more comfortable as he spoke to you. The artist scrunched up his nose adorably; you weren’t sure whether it was about the coffee or about the division’s visitors. “He said I’m a tool in his belt.”

You snorted. “From what I’ve heard, Ruiz is the tool.” He was a passable agent, but not well liked by any stretch of the imagination.

“Not Ruiz,” Neal corrected you, still just as displeased. “Hughes. He can loan me out because I’m a tool. And not even a good enough one to want to keep on, apparently.”

This was the first time you’d ever heard Neal voice his issues with being spoken down to in that way. You wondered if it was because you’d demonstrated that you were in his corner about it already, but brushed it off; this wasn’t about you. That said, there really wasn’t anything you could do when Hughes had already made a decision. He outranked you by miles.

“Well, if you were on my team, I’d be fighting to keep you put,” you said, trying to bolster his mood without stroking his ego – or sounding too much like a heartfelt cheerleader. “I’m sorry Hughes still talks to you like that.” Really, you’d think someone as experienced as your division chief would know better than to paint people with such broad strokes. Especially when those strokes were demoralizing, and, dare you say, dehumanizing.

“If I put together my own crew, you’ll be on it,” Neal promised in solidarity.

Your lips twitched up, but you tried not to actually smile. This was the kind of good-natured joking Peter thought he was doing. “Team.”

“Crew, team. Same thing,” Neal said innocently.

Neal was with organized crime for three days and part of a fourth before you got him back. When he did return, he arrived to a little bit of well-intentioned fanfare from you, Peter, and (albeit more sarcastically) Diana. He caught you all up to speed on his week with a quick sum-up that amounted to “murder bad, guns ick, Ruiz boo” before immediately pouncing on Peter’s newest case.

To be clear, it wasn’t like you were waiting on the edge of your seat to be brought into another of the big cases. You knew exactly where you sat in the pecking order, and you knew that if you were patient, and continued to show your merit, you would eventually earn some better files. That said, you were not going to turn down an opportunity, so when Neal indirectly asked if you’d like to join the team on a counter-smuggling operation, you excitedly let him lead you to the floor’s biggest conference room.

The way that the team talked about everything going into their sting made you almost buzz. It was all so normal to them – they did it, or something like it, so often that the novelty had worn off. But for you, there was a thrill to what you were doing and what you were aiming to accomplish. Your role was small, but crucial; you were inwardly delighted that they trusted you with it, even if only because their small team was too small for the operation they needed to pull off.

After the whole team disbanded, Peter led you and Neal down into the evidence warehouse to select and familiarize yourself with the props you’d be using: precious gems. The idea was to flash valuable stones enough that your display would be targeted when your back was turned. Little did your thieves know, but you were replacing the real ones shown for appraisal with cheap facsimiles in the case. Clinton and Peter would be making sure to keep the heat on your bad guys, so they wouldn’t have time to stop and appraise the fakes in the dark before leaving – and taking a tiny GPS tag with them. The act of stealing the fakes would, itself, be a crime, and hopefully lead back to the pure emeralds stolen from a gallery.

With a careful, gloved hand, you picked up a vaguely oval-shaped stone from a small blue felt tray where the bureau’s confiscated mid-range gems lay. “This is gorgeous,” you admired, turning it slightly and seeing how the colors seemed to shift from a ocean blue in the center to a faded pink on the edges.

Neal looked at what you were appreciating for only a couple of seconds before he identified it. “Alexandrite,” he said. “We’re looking for something a bit more valuable.”

The other stones were pretty, too, but you loved the alexandrite. “Value is subjective,” you sighed softly before putting it back down.

Neal ran a gloved fingertip gently over some of the stones on the tray, making them move and seeing how they changed under the light. Peter sighed while he waited for the two of you to make your picks, but you ignored him – neither of you knew what you were doing, so you were going to defer to the man who actually had professional expertise on the subject of gemstones. After a moment, Neal seemed to zero in on a couple before choosing a relatively small one to hold up. At first, you’d thought it was a diamond like some other pieces, but when he held it away from the blue felt, you could see it had a soft purple tint to it.

“Amethyst?” You asked skeptically.

Neal smiled at you, amused by the guess but not being rude that you were wrong. “Taaffeite. First found in Ireland, valued at up to thirty-five grand per carat.” You eyed it skeptically. The artist quietly chuckled. “You think the alexandrite is prettier, don’t you?”

“I do,” you confirmed.

Neal gently put the taaffeite to the side and picked up the alexandrite you’d put down. You perked up. “Alright. This isn’t a rare coloring, it’s got a flaw running the side. But something like this, it could still go for fifteen, maybe twenty.” He put it with the taaffeite, which made you smile excitedly. You were allowed to be excited about holding pretty gems. This was probably the only time you’d ever be able to so much as look at them for free, much less model them on your body.

Since he’d been sweet enough to bend his criteria just a little to let you wear your favorite one, you shut up and smiled at all of the others he selected, too. In the end, you had realized there were well over a million dollars there on that tray, hence Peter’s presence and the antsiness of the agent against the wall who’d brought them out. Neal chose a little over a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of gemstones to attract smugglers of this particular tier.

“You’ve been holding out on me, Peter,” Neal said with obvious glee as he stripped off his gloves, all the gems safely stored in soft velvet bags.

“I’d hoped I’d never have to tell you this stash exists,” Peter moaned. “Next thing we know, we’re robbed blind and you’re halfway to India.”

Neal looked up and shot Peter a glare. It was almost alarmingly quickly that Neal’s aggravated expression turned much lighter and almost exasperated, but you hadn’t missed that split-second before he covered it up. The artist didn’t appreciate the accusations. At all. And hell, you couldn’t blame him – Peter didn’t sound like he was joking, because he wasn’t laughing with Neal, he was just shoving his nose back in the fact that he had a record and his own coworkers didn’t trust him.

Catching that look on your friend’s face, finally, after months of looking for it, made something held tight inside of you snap. Your friend was hurting. Neal hated that the people he had no choice but to be around treated him like he was going to do exactly what Peter said: rob them blind and run to the other side of the planet. You’d known him long enough to know that the artist valued his own integrity. His moral code was a little different from yours, but he had no interest in backstabbing the people he had worked with for years. And in those same years, he had proven the same, despite every opportunity to make them look bad – only for the accusations never to stop. For the trust never to be earned. For the respect to be revoked the moment they felt irritated or embarrassed.

“Why do you always have to hold his conviction over his head?” You blurted out hotly, fisting your hands at your sides. “Exactly what does he have to do to prove he’s not looking to screw you over at any chance? Because I’ve only been here a few months and I’m sick of it – and none of the snide little comments are even directed at me!”

“Y/N,” Neal said, voice as soft as his expression as he looked towards you and warned you down.

“No,” you said to him, firmly. “It’s okay.” And then, so he didn’t feel like you were making some grand gesture, you made it clear that, although you cared about Neal and were upset on his behalf, this wasn’t some show of loyalty or concern. “We’re supposed to have principles. Treat people as innocent until proven otherwise. The one thing Neal was actually convicted of is someone the one thing I haven’t heard anyone accuse him of! Is that really the dynamic we want the bureau to share with our consultants? Jeez, Peter – if the bureau’s supposed to operate as a bunch of overpowered bullies, I’ll surrender my badge and gun right here!”

The words were out of your mouth before you thought them through, but, you realized, you fully meant them. You loved the work you were doing. You couldn’t imagine doing anything else. But you’d seen your friend be nearly shot or stabbed or even speared with an arrow that one time, and Neal didn’t have a say in any of it. Not only was he not treated with the basic respect and autonomy of a civilian, but he was constantly harangued and picked at over water that should’ve gone under the bridge ages ago. If you were him, you would’ve lost your mind long before now, and this had presumably been going on long before you transferred into the division.

“Y/N,” Neal said, again, with quiet dismay.

Peter looked absolutely startled that you were arguing with him, especially over what he’d thought was a one-off complaint. As you went on, particularly nailing him on the argument of moral behavior, he almost went pale, eyes looking to Neal with concern. You knew that Peter truly cared about his CI. Maybe getting snapped at in turn was what it would take for him to see that he wasn’t acting like a friend or a mentor at all.

“I –“ Peter stopped, paused to think intently to himself, and shook his head slightly. He cleared his throat. “You’re right. That is how I’ve been behaving, and it isn’t the way this is meant to be.” He turned to Neal, seemed to fumble for a minute like he wasn’t sure what to say, and then tightened his jaw, figuring it out. “Neal. I’m sorry if how I’ve behaved has hurt you. There’s a difference between keeping you in check and putting you down.”

On your part, you were surprised, albeit very pleasantly so, that Peter was owning up to it like a man instead of retaliating against a junior agent. Neal looked stunned that anything had come of this comment at all, and answered as if dazed. “I never said…”

“You shouldn’t have had to,” Peter said emphatically. “Y/N is right. I’ve been beating a dead horse. I don’t think I’m the only one. That needs to stop… you’re part of this team, too.”

The rest of the day was indescribably awkward. Peter authorized the agents in evidence to keep the gems that you would use for your op separate from the rest so that you could easily retrieve them when they were needed. Then he called Diana and Clinton into his office for a couple minutes, leaving yourself and Neal in the bullpen. It was only for a couple of minutes, but by the subdued way that both Diana and Clinton made their way to Neal one after the other, you could surmise Peter pointed out exactly what you had. It wasn’t the whole division, but it was a start. A good one, too – it was heartening to know your coworkers were the kind of people who would apologize for poor behavior.

Neal came to you before the end of the day. He had this look on his face that you’d seen in a mirror when you couldn’t quite believe what had happened. “You didn’t have to do any of that,” he said quietly, leaning over your desk to you and putting a hand lightly on your knee.

You gave him a small smile. It had been weighing on you for a while, so it was a relief to have it off of your chest – and all the better, it looked like it actually made a difference and improved the workplace for him. “I’m glad I did, though.”

~~~

A/N: Whew, glad to have this request out! I don't know why, but I kept getting stuck in places. Anyway... drop a comment if you want to join the Lawmen and Conmen Discord, and keep an eye out for more stuff soon!

#oneshot #the transfer #requested #lawmen and conmen #white collar #white collar x reader #peter burke #neal caffrey #neal caffrey x reader #x reader #reader insert #fbi reader #friendship #definitely could be read as more

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white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen · 2 years

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i'm on a roll! another oneshot coming on Monday!

The Transfer

Summary: Sometimes it takes an outside eye to spot when something's going wrong inside a team.

Word Count: 4,801

#update

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white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen · 2 years

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Marbles

Summary: Ellen isn't the only person who knew Neal Caffrey before he became Neal Caffrey.

Word Count: 7,333

Requested by anonymous; photo credit is Jeff Eastin's Twitter

St. Louis, 1984

Kids at school called you Marbles because you always had a little bag of them with you. You knew even then that the nickname was supposed to be mean, but it had never gotten under your skin. You just laughed along, because, yeah, it was kinda weird that you carried marbles, but you played with them all the time and loved it. And before long, they were calling you Marbles because it stuck, not because they were laughing at you.

Marbles were just great fun. And in second grade, whenever you had extra time, your teacher would let you play with them and a classmate or two so long as your other work was already done. After a couple of weeks into the school year, you had a few people you would regularly play with. Danny was one of them. His bright blue eyes made him stand out from the boys at his table. He was cute, but at seven, you still preferred puppies to boys.

The first day he talked to you, you’d been bouncing some marbles on the carpeted floor to stay quiet, staring at them intently and trying to devise a new game in your head. Danny sat cross-legged and asked if he could play. Abandoning your half-baked game, you reached up to your desk and grabbed a piece of paper from your class folder, quickly drew the circles to represent a mancala board, and divided the marbles. Danny beat you on his first try. That was when you knew you liked him. You gave him a bag of your marbles so he could make new games, too.

From then on, you played together whenever you could, but scarcely stuck with one game for very long. You were both easily bored by the simple games that marbles allowed, so you fiddled with the rules, tampering with the game play to see what would happen. Sometimes you created entirely new games, sometimes incorporating other tools that were easy to carry in school or to the park, like a set of dice or an origami fortune teller.

By Christmas that same year, you’d started to exhaust your options and branched out into other ways of entertaining yourselves. Cards were good for quick games, and the randomness of a good shuffle kept games interesting for longer. Puzzles were great for you both, but they took too long to do at school and you could only play them when you had a playdate or sleepover. Eventually, you settled on codes and ciphers as your mutual favorite activity. You could create them when you were together and have secret communications, or you could create them separately and challenge each other to solve them. You liked to base yours on symbols and books. Danny liked incorporating math. By the end of the school year, you had a collection of codes of varying complexity.

St. Louis, 1986

After nearly two years of friendship, you and Danny snuck downstairs to his aunt Ellen’s TV to watch a new movie. It was called The Color of Money. With a shelf of adult movies in front of you, you were way more interested in the popular titles you recognized, like Ferris Bueller and Top Gun, but Danny convinced you to give Scorsese a try and you never regretted it. That movie introduced you two to the world of gambling. As cynical nine-year-olds, you weren’t really interested in the idea of gambling so much as the behavior of people who did it – and the methods behind milking out the most rewards for the least risks.

It took some needling and permission from your parents, but Ellen finally agreed to teach you both how to play poker. One Friday, she picked you both up from school, took you to the store to pick out a box of your favorite candies, and used the chocolates in place of money. With bowls of candy at stake, you learned what cards you wanted, when to fold, and how to count the multicolored plastic poker chips. Initially, Ellen hadn’t wanted to teach you to bluff on principle of not encouraging children to lie, but they had bluffed in all the movies, so you and Danny both tried it without her suggestion. She was exasperated, but amused by your complete failure. Danny had much better results, and when Ellen went to bed and left you to either play cards or watch a movie, he told you that when you lied, you always lifted your chin, like you were daring someone to call you on it.

You both had detention the next week for trying to use poker to win your classmates’ brownies at lunch.

St. Louis, 1989

When you were twelve, Nintendo came out with the Game Boy. Neither of your families had the kind of money to spend on a game system like that, so you and Danny decided you could team up to buy one for yourselves to trade back and forth. It was better to have the hot new thing sooner than later, even if it meant taking turns. You took out a sheet of paper to figure out how long it would take if you pooled your money together; even with the little bit of spare allowances you had socked away, you both still needed to save over thirty dollars each.

In hindsight, what happened next was probably your parents’ first red flag.

Sixty-four bucks, for a couple of kids in the late eighties, was a lot of money, and you were both too young to legally get jobs. Divide and conquer, however, had already demonstrated merit when it came to convincing your parents of letting you go to the fair or the movies, so why not divide and conquer to raise cash? All you needed was enough people contributing. But then came the problem that if they contributed, they’d feel entitled to your Game Boy. It was for the two of you, not anyone else. So they would need to be paid back by money you got from somewhere else.

To summarize a long story, and explain many angry phone calls from your peers’ parents, you and Danny essentially ran a pyramid scheme to raise the money for a Game Boy, enticing kids in your old elementary school to pay forward their allowance to your first- and second-round financiers in your middle school. When you were caught, you were grounded for months – but by this point, you were both well-practiced at sneaking between each other’s houses and hiding things in your rooms, and you had a Game Boy.

Your parents’ anger and the way your little sister’s friends’ parents treated you made you realize you’d done something morally wrong. It was humiliating and shameful to be looked at that way. Danny didn’t take it as hard as you did. It rolled off his back once Ellen was back to treating him the way she always had. Danny needed to be liked, and he was liked a lot, because he was cute, and smart, and didn’t bully girls at school, and now he had a Game Boy, so he didn’t mind that kids in a different school and their parents he never saw thought badly of him. It didn’t affect him day to day the way that the guilt started to carve into your self-esteem.

In hindsight, that was your first red flag that there was something a little bit off about Danny. When you brought it up to him, he genuinely didn’t see why you felt so bad. You hadn’t lied to those little kids, and after all, each one only sacrified a couple of dollars. You couldn’t articulate just why, but you needed to make it right. In the end, Danny helped you make it up to the kids by handing back out a portion of your allowances for a few weeks and helping out with their homework, but you knew he’d only done it because he was sad to see you so upset.

You couldn’t deny how great it had felt to accomplish something so quickly, and Danny had boasted for weeks about how persuasive he’d been, but you made an agreement that from then on you wouldn’t hustle kids anymore. Danny pouted about it a little because they were such easy marks, but he agreed to keep you happy. When your wrongs were righted, you felt restored, and you got back to your regular mischief – but you were much more cautious of whether you were being clever or just unethical.

St. Louis, 1992

High school was an entirely different beast from middle school. You and Danny kept sending each other coded letters and hanging out on the weekends, but he was the one who got caught up in how girls looked twice at him and how guys wanted to be his friend. Danny joined the cross-country team, partly to spend more time with those friends and partly to keep in shape to apply for the police academy after high school, and started to pursue girls. He had a new girlfriend every other month. And it meant, altogether, that there was less time for you – so you followed his lead and joined your own clubs, made your own friends.

In freshman year, there had been a rumor that you were dating. You’d loudly opposed it. You had eyes and could see that he was hot, and you didn’t think you’d ever be happy with anyone less smart, or less kind to you, but the idea of kissing Danny just made your stomach turn. There was one time when he started dating a cheerleader who made the mistake of threatening to “ruin” you if you didn’t back off of “her” Danny – he dumped her as soon as you told him what happened. So, although you didn’t have as much time to spend with each other, there was never any doubt that you were still best friends.

You still liked friendly competitions, and found ways to work together to make quick money or convince your parents that what you wanted to do or see was a good idea. But something about high school flipped a switch in Danny. Maybe it was all the teachers saying now was the time to shape up. Suddenly, everything he did was in light of being like his father. Danny had always idolized his dead dad, and you couldn’t bring yourself to criticize him for that, even when it made him sort of a buzzkill. Did he really think that none of the city cops had ever snuck some liquor from their mom’s freezer? And goodbye to any manipulative schemes – even if your conscience hadn’t stopped you, Danny’s ambitions would have. He still had no moral compunctions about taking from people who didn’t need what they had, but for the fact that it was illegal and could jeopardize his future as a cop.

“Cop this, cop that,” you complained once, playfully shoving at his arm. “Am I gonna have to become a criminal to force you to loosen up?”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Danny responded with absolute confidence. “You wouldn’t like prison.”

You’d scoffed. “You’d turn in your best friend?!”

He gave you a cheeky grin. “If my best friend’s not smart enough to get away with crimes, she shouldn’t be committing them.”

St. Louis, 1995

You weren’t sure what you wanted to do after high school. Your parents were supportive of whatever you wanted to do, but they hoped you’d at least give college a try; but without any idea what you wanted to actually do, you couldn’t justify spending that much money on it to yourself. The more you thought about what you really loved to do, you kept coming back to games and puzzles. It had been years since anyone called you Marbles, but the passion that bonded you and Danny had persisted.

It was when you were watching the new Will Smith detective movie that you realized maybe you and Danny had this in common, too. He wasn’t just going to be a great cop because of his father; it was because he had a knack for solving puzzles. Maybe investigating was your great calling in life. How cool would it be to be detectives together??

You sat on it for a few weeks, thinking it over before telling Danny you were going to apply, too. That way he wouldn’t know to be disappointed if you changed your mind. In the end, you never did get to tell him. You were still thinking about in by his eighteenth birthday.

You’d already agreed to go to the mall together so you could buy him dinner, but he never came to get you like he’d said he would. You called his home, but no one picked up, so you called his aunt’s neighboring house instead. Ellen had answered and tiredly said that it wasn’t a good time. Assuming they’d had a fight, you let it be and minded your business, changing your plans when it became clear that the mall was off.

The next morning, you left to go get him before walking to school, just to make sure he was feeling okay. He and Ellen rarely fought; Danny tried so hard to be on his best behavior for her, even before he’d straightened up to make sure he got into the police force. You noticed the post on your mailbox was up and detoured, and took out a piece of folded paper. No envelope and no stamp – just your name on one of the trifolds.

Assuming it was another coded letter, you eagerly unfolded it to see what kind of patterns you were working with and mull it over on the way to school. To your disappointment, it was plain English. And, to your horror, it was an apologetic goodbye note.

You sprinted several streets away to the Brooks house and pounded on the door. No one answered. You were almost panicking, considering grabbing the extra key Danny had told you about, before Ellen next door caught your eye, waving for you to come over. You jumped off the porch and ran in, dumping your backpack by the doorway to show her the note. The blonde woman barely glanced at it before saying, “I know. I’m so sorry, Y/N.”

It was surprising how clearly you could remember that moment all these years later, especially when what came next felt like a blur of colors and motions melting together. You think Ellen sat you on her couch and poured you some tea. She made you sit and breathe before she explained to you that she’d caught Danny – Neal – signing an application for the police. He was so eager to do it the moment he’d turned eighteen, that Ellen hadn’t had a choice. She’d had to tell him he couldn’t, because Danny Brooks wasn’t his real name; and even if it were, he needed to know that his motivation, the story he’d been telling himself for years, was a lie.

Ellen told you that the Brooks family were actually in Wit-Sec. That Danny’s real name was Neal Bennett, and that his father had been a cop, but a dirty one. That Ellen wasn’t really his aunt, but his corrupt dad’s police partner, who had testified against him and asked to be relocated near Neal, just to make sure the little boy grew up safely. That Neal had been too young to remember. That he had run away, and she didn’t think he was coming back.

Ellen – you still didn’t know if that was even her real name – let you sit on her couch for hours, staring at the floor, drinking the tea she poured mindlessly after it had gone cold, and crying with grief. It was the one and only time she’d ever condoned playing hooky from school. She rubbed your back for a little while, and then let you sit in silent shock while she went about cleaning. It took you an embarrassingly long time to realize that she wasn’t just cleaning, she was packing. Packing to leave. Because people were going to wonder why Neal had disappeared, and maybe the cops would get involved, and maybe her and Neal’s mother would both be in jeopardy.

Ellen gave you a small box of Neal’s belongings that she thought you’d want. In the bottom was the bag of marbles you’d given him in second grade.

Life was never the same after Neal left. Your best friend was gone. You figured, hey, he’d always been street-smart, the odds were pretty good that he was still alive; but the way he disappeared, the odds were also pretty good that you would never see him again, so to you, he may as well be dead. You thought of him sometimes (often) and hoped he was okay, when you weren’t wishing he would come home or cursing his fake name for making you care and then abandoning you without the decency to say goodbye to your face.

You had so many questions in the coming weeks, but the day after Neal had vanished, so had Neal’s not-aunt, along with any opportunities for closure. Once, a few days later, you scraped up the guts to use that hidden key he’d showed you and let yourself into his and his mom’s house. It was completely empty, but left in disarray, with scraped paint, peeling wallpaper, dust settled deep in the rug corners. It had been a long time since you’d spent time together there, rather than in Ellen’s, and now you knew why. With hindsight, and a psychology degree, you were reasonably sure that Neal’s mother had been fighting depression his whole life, and most of the house felt the same.

To make it worse, Danny had been such a beloved part of the school community that in the two months between his disappearance and your graduation, everything under the sun passed under the rumor mill. At first the cops investigated. They talked to you, interrogated you. One of them made you cry by insinuating you were secretly in love with him, and killed him because he’d been dating some chick on the track team. Another rubbed your shoulder and offered you cocoa because he “couldn’t possibly imagine how cofused you’re feeling”. And the whole time, you felt compelled to lie, choking on your tongue and stumbling through how he missed your plans on his birthday and left a note the next morning. You left out the part where you’d talked to Ellen, because what the hell were you supposed to do? Out her as a witness? Admit that Danny Brooks was such a deep lie that even he hadn’t known about it?

Whatever the correct procedure was, no one had bothered to tell you about it. But you were reasonably certain that whoever was in charge of securing the Bennetts, and Ellen, they had caught wind of the investigation, because rather suddenly, all the police activity stopped. You were left alone, and so was his girlfriend, and the guys he played soccer with. The only way they would drop a missing persons case that hard and that quick was if the feds stepped in and told them to back off.

Your parents, and even your little sister, knew that something was off about you. You’re reasonably sure that your entire family knew you knew something you weren’t sharing. But after weeks of trying to comfort you and get you to open up, they started to let go, trusting that if you knew anything actionable, you would have shared to protect your friend.

The police letting it go didn’t end the nightmare for you, though, because the talk at school continued. The US Marshals couldn’t tell everyone to shut up and mind their business. Some people thought Danny had run away from his mother, others thought he’d been kidnapped and trafficked. Some thought he’d knocked up a girl and they ran away, but that one ended when the girl came back to school, and it turned out she’d had the flu. Some people thought you must have had something to do with it, because you’d been so close for so many years. Those people really got to you, because in truth, you could hardly believe you’d known the boy for most of your lives and never suspected he was anything else.

March trudged into April and April slipped into May, and your graduation crawled closer. You were announced as valedictorian. When you went to get the honors sash to wear over your gown, the administrator compassionately told you that Neal would have been valedictorian, had he been there, so though they knew it must be hard, you should keep your head up and be proud enough for the both of you. That just made it even harder to get through. What was supposed to be one of the best days of your life was one of the darkest. A huge shared milestone was lonely. Neal had run away, left you picking up the pieces in a shattered social circle, and now you were taking his place, and somehow someone else had figured out he had that tiny edge over your GPA, and a picture of you in your cap and gown giving your speech was put on a blog along with an accusation that you killed him or threatened him away so you could be valedictorian.

You had to get the hell away. Every unnecessary second you spent in your neighborhood, in your school, in the city you used to share felt like it was scratching at your skin. The application cycle for colleges was long closed, but you took your savings, promised to call your parents every day, and moved to California, as far away as you could get. There, you got a job, found a shitty apartment to share with a girl who minded her own business, and scraped by until you could apply to college.

Palo Alto, 1999

High school valedictorian had felt like a hollow and bitter loss more than anything, rubbing salt in the wound that Neal was gone. In the four years of college since, you’d made plenty of friendly acquaintances, and even some good friends, but none as good as Neal.

You’d visited the school counselor a few times. Told her, minus what you knew about Neal and Wit-Sec, what had happened to drive you all the way from St. Louis to Palo Alto for school. She’d been incredibly sympathetic, even as she suggested that perhaps there had been some trauma mixed in with the grief. Looking back, you could accept it for what it was. You lost your best friend, on multiple levels, and then members of your community turned on you, accusing you of the worst. And, though you were still the only one who knew, the whole time you’d been holding onto a secret boring through your soul that you couldn’t share with anyone.

College graduation felt… much different. Like a success. You were proud of yourself. Sad to see it go but happy you’d made it out the other side, not just of a program but of the grief that had clenched you so tightly. This was what graduation was supposed to feel like. You weren’t valedictorian – or whatever the university equivalent was – this time, but you were graduating with honors, and had an acceptance to a graduate program in hand, so there was that.

Your whole family made the trip to see you graduate. As you walked across that stage, receiving a piece of paper bound in ribbon, you wished once again that Neal would’ve been there to celebrate with you, and hoped that he was okay, then found your family in the crowd and beamed at them brightly, tears pricking in your eyes with joy. Your sister was doing her best to be both supportive and embarrassing by wearing an obnoxiously neon shirt with your name on it.

You faltered in your steps across the stage, just for a second, when you saw the face in the crowd grinning from behind your father. They were so far away, it was kind of hard to see, but for just a second, you could’ve sworn…

You got nudged from behind and had to look down to safely get off of the stage steps. When you were out of the way of the procession, you looked for your family again and stood on your toes to see around your parents. The face you thought you’d seen was gone. You looked down to the rolled paper in your hand, proclaiming you’d earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and shook your head; you, of all people, should know the power of wishful thinking.

Your parents took you back by your apartment to change out of your regalia before going for a celebratory meal. You hurried up the steps in your dress heels, eager to get out of the heavy robe, but stopped cold just on entering the front door. Sitting on the cheap kitchen table was a bouquet of flowers and a little bag of marbles.

Your gut response was to clear the apartment like they did in the cop movies, but you didn’t have a gun or a taser or even pepper spray, so if you searched and found someone, you were really just putting yourself in more danger. Cautiously, you inched towards the table, along the way recognizing the flowers as the kind that you used to admire while walking to school. When no one jumped, and you didn’t feel unsafe getting closer to the table, you slowly picked up the bag of marbles. The little beads clinked together. You held them up for inspection and realized that they were color tinted, but still mostly translucent, and inside each was a clay creature. Your favorite animal, sculpted and suspended in resin.

No one had given you marbles, or called you by that name, in years. You hadn’t carried them anywhere since middle school. And you certainly couldn’t have told anyone what your favorite flowers were when you didn’t even remember what they were called.

The marbles, the flowers, and the face you thought you’d seen at the ceremony all added up to mean one thing to you, and instead of changing your clothes, you sat at the table with the marbles in your hand and had a good, solid cry for a few minutes. Then you stored your new marbles with shaking hands in your so-called Neal Box and put the flowers in some water. You couldn’t decide if you were happy, sad, or furious, but it all boiled down to one thing: he was alive. And still thought about you, just like you still thought of him. And that was something to celebrate, even if your family didn’t know it wasn’t just your graduation that you were happily crying over.

Quantico, 2001

Completing your Master’s degree was your new proudest achievement, but though there wasn’t anything bad about that graduation, when you walked the stage, you’d hoped to catch another glimpse of a familiar face. No such luck. You still weren’t too worried. Ever since getting those beautiful marbles, you’d gotten an anonymous postcard every once in a while. There was usually a little note on them in one of your oldest, simplest ciphers. Nothing complex, but enough to let you know that he was okay, and he was thinking of you.

Sometimes you wondered why he didn’t ever just come say hello if he missed you. Yes, you were a part of Danny Brooks’ history. But if Neal Bennett had had to reinvent himself out of a lie, did that have to mean shunning everything about who he’d been?

Still, a note once in a while was better than the four-plus years you spent with radio silence, hoping he was alive, knowing it was even probable, but with no proof and no way of verifying.

Shortly out of your Master’s program, you were accepted into the FBI. A couple of internships during school had showed you that you weren’t interested in clinical practice, nor did you think you really had the drive to push through a doctorate program, so you looked for ways you could use your degrees to solve puzzles, returning to that lifelong passion for an intelligent challenge. You found the bureau, and other members of the alphabet soup, but especially the bureau. It was probationary, but you were in, and it was time to head to Quantico.

The physical exercises were draining. You’d never been so active in your life. Still, the mental exercises were more entertaining than not, so long as they didn’t get so repetitive. Your very favorite instructor took the class of recruits through prolific cases that hadn’t quite become public knowledge, or cold cases that still had yet to be solved. Unlike a documentary, instead of telling you step-by-step what had happened, he prompted and prodded at the agents in training to work their way through themselves. You excelled at this exercise and it proved to you that, although you’d have to work hard to secure a role where you could choose to work on these types of cases, the opportunity was there. That was what you wanted to work towards.

At least, it was your favorite class. Your emotions changed the day that you were shown pictures of inductees into the FBI’s Most Wanted ranks. Because, to your horror, you recognized one of those faces. He was six years older, but there was no chance you wouldn’t have recognized him. Not him.

“Not him,” you nearly whispered out loud, barely catching yourself before your tongue moved in your mouth. You drank in all the information they had on him – suspected of bond forgery, along with a litany of other crimes, and dubbed James Bonds, because they had no clue what his real name was.

You had a split second choice to make, and you felt the pressure beating down on you. Either betray your best friend and turn him in to the FBI, or betray the moral conscience you’d long since sworn to live by – along with the bureau you were about to swear to serve.

It was an easier choice than it should have been. It would haunt you, but you couldn’t fathom for a second turning your back on him. For as long as you stared at the list of things he was wanted for, there was nothing in that list that could make you hate the man he’d become.

The instructor had noticed you stopped at Neal’s image. “Is there a problem?” He asked you expectantly.

Shit. Every game of poker with Neal came to mind and you controlled all the tells he had ever warned you of, making your decision and committing to it. “No,” you said, looking up and putting on your best amused face. “Sorry, Sir. It’s just… James Bonds?”

You sold it so well that you should’ve been ashamed. The senior agent chuckled and shook his head a bit. “I guess the opportunity felt too good to pass on,” he said, picking up the flyers from your row to share with the next group.

Quantico, 2003

You weren’t capable of turning on Neal, but you also couldn’t bring yourself to follow his case. The conflict of interest was too strong in your gut, so you just turned a blind eye to any flyer you saw, or a deaf ear to any curious chatter about James Bonds and his globetrotting stunts.

You kept an eye out for postcards and anonymous letters, but they’d become less frequent. Either Neal had been keeping tabs and learned you joined the bureau, or he’d realized sending mail was becoming more hazardous. In either case, you still got some once in a while, so if it were the former, he was trusting you.

Over the years, the more you heard about him, the more impressed you were. But also the more… saddened you became. Neal had strayed so far from the man he had wanted to be when you’d spent so much time together. You had to wonder if he were truly happy. At this point, his face was plastered anywhere law enforcement could be assed to look, and you had to hope that he was, because you feared it was too late for him to change course, even if he wanted to.

At some point, you’d begun to realize that you were technically aiding him just by keeping in touch. You didn’t have a way to send messages to him, but however he’d found your address repeatedly, he really was trusting you – it took over a year, but between bits you overheard and images on postcards, you realized that he was actively sending you clues as to where he was. Now, you doubted that he was doing so with that actual intention. More likely, he was just sending you the postcards because he knew you’d always liked their pictures and wanted to travel. But there was an additional professional boundary being crossed when you knew that the agent in charge of his case was searching for him in Germany or Iceland when you’d just gotten a card from Cape Town or Tehran.

It also occurred to you that he wouldn’t be an anonymous James Bonds forever. Sooner or later they would figure out who he was. They’d trace him back to either Neal Bennett or Danny Brooks. Both names would flag with the Marshals, and the FBI would learn all about how he disappeared overnight from St. Louis. The FBI would also learn all about how the police had questioned his best friend, Y/N Y/L/N, for days. And then they would have a lot of uncomfortable questions for you that you still had no idea how you were going to answer.

Then, one day, James Bonds had a name. Neal Caffrey. You didn’t recognize his last name, but it was instantly committed to your memory. Now you knew what he was going by. It was another hit to your heart. He didn’t keep either of his last names. But he had kept his birth name – which had been foreign to him when he learned what it was. It was hard to tell what was going on in his head. You hoped he knew what he was doing. And you hoped that whatever he was choosing, he was happy and safe.

From the moment he’d been named, you kept waiting for the agents you worked with to turn on you, ask you those awkward questions, but the time never seemed to come. For a second, you had considered running, but you didn’t have the knowledge or connections to get very far or hide for very long. No, the best option for you would be to bow your head and accept the consequences. But those consequences didn’t come for you, and when you saw the updated flyer, you saw why. They had him listed as born in Texas during February. The bureau had a whole fake identity that they fully believed; they had no idea who he really was.

“You astound me every time,” you’d muttered to yourself, closing the browser window.

Ossining, 2005

If you ask someone where Sing Sing is, they’ll probably just say “New York”. If pressed, they might even say “New York City”. Very rarely do they actually realize it’s about thirty miles upstate in a little town called Ossining. You’d never been, and had no reason to go, but when you saw the email memo that Neal Caffrey had been apprehended and was awaiting arraignment, you didn’t think you had much of a choice in the matter. You filed for a transfer, ostensibly for a change in scenery, and fortunately, it was granted. Your new home was New York City.

Your shoes and your conscience itched to guide you upstate straight away, but as much as it pained you, you forced yourself to stay away until after he was convicted. Neal was considered an extreme flight risk; any interactions he had were extremely closely monitored. No matter how loyal you were, you were still afraid of being in trouble for failing to give up his name and whereabouts. And while that made you feel quite selfish, there was also the detail that he’d been “caught” by voluntarily walking into a trap to protect his girlfriend from taking the fall for him. It comforted you that he was still the same softhearted man you’d always known and loved – but, since he’d always been fiercely protective, you weren’t sure if he’d welcome you jeopardizing your good standing to see him.

Well, too bad. You winced. Okay, maybe a little more sympathy for the guy in prison.

You signed in a civilian, not an agent, in the hopes that the bureau was less likely to be notified. You weren’t sure what you’d say, but you couldn’t just leave Neal to rot alone in here. The place looked like the place of nightmares, and you were free to just turn around and walk out the door. Your heart ached. God, Neal…

They searched you quite invasively, but that bit of your dignity was a small price to pay. Once satisfied you weren’t using your body to smuggle a nail file or the like, the guards had you wait while they fetched Neal for visitation and put him in a small monitored cell, then allowed you to be led back the same way. The moment you realized he had to have visitors in a cell with him, it felt like your heart skipped a beat. You knew his containment orders were serious, but to not even be permitted to use the visitation room? This was the kind of restriction that was usually placed on quite dangerous felons.

There was already one guard standing inside with Neal, close to the door but warily watching. You could tell from his profile, in the ugly orange jumpsuit, that his wrists and ankles were manacled together and locked to the metal table. As the guard who’d led you back let you enter, the guard already inside gruffly barked the rules: fifteen minutes, follow the tape on the floor to your seat (rather than take a shortcut which passed closer to Neal), and absolutely no touching.

You ventured in as Neal turned around as well as he was able to see you. The surprise in his eyes was quickly taken over by delight and he started to stand, only to get yanked down by the links around his wrists. That sight alone nearly killed your excitement to see him, but he remained undeterred. “Marbles!” he cheerfully chirped your old name.

You forced a little laugh, loosely sticking to the tape and hurrying to your side of the table, swinging your legs in comfortably to sit across from him. “You are such an ass, Neal,” you complained with a small smile.

There was almost a little look of shock when his chosen name came out of your mouth so casually, but before you could respond to it, it had melted into a soft smile that lit up his eyes. He looked at you like you’d put the sun in the sky for a long minute. “I’ve missed you,” he said quietly.

“I’ve missed you, too,” you risked answering, not daring to look to the guard. Hopefully he wouldn’t remember this bit. “When you… well, I thought for years that was it.”

“It wasn’t meant to be,” Neal admitted. It was easy to say that now that it was in the past and you’d gotten back in touch, but you couldn’t help but trust him. Neal had never told you an outright lie before, not for any reason. “Things just… is it too cliché to say I needed to find myself?”

You hesitated, but shook your head. “No,” you said haltingly, “But there were better ways to do it than becoming a milk box picture.” You’d imagined screaming in his face for it, giving him a real what-for over the way he left you to pick up the pieces he left behind. But now that you were here, in a prison where he’d be spending the next half decade of his life – well, it was hard to hold onto any anger. Neal was paying for his mistakes. You didn’t need to pile on with trauma you’d already processed. “Did you?” You gently prompted, sensing that if you didn’t, he was going to wait for you to say what you’d thought about.

His smile tightened into something wistful. Your heart sank a little for him. “I think I got close at times,” he allowed. You didn’t quite buy it, but thought if he needed to believe it, it wouldn’t hurt to let him tell himself that all of this was worth it. Like he’d always done when he was unhappy, he turned the subject around back to yourself. “I’m so proud of you, Y/N. I knew you’d make something good for yourself.”

We could’ve done it together. You thought back to his eighteenth birthday. You’d been so close to telling him you were going to take that next step with him. Maybe if he’d known it wasn’t just his journey… well, it didn’t matter now. It was ten years in the past.

“Stop talking like we’re in retirement,” you accused lightly. If it weren’t for the guard who felt very strongly about touching, you’d have nudged his foot under the table. “We’ve got ages to make more out of ourselves yet still.”

“You do,” Neal disagreed graciously.

“No, we do,” you argued, saying it so firmly that he wasn’t allowed to disagree again. Then you softened your tone, because you knew he already knew how bad this was going to be. “Four years… it’s gonna be hard. But one day it’ll be done and you’ll have a whole life in front of you to do something new.” It was the twenty-first century. When he got through his sentence, he’d still have more than half his life expectancy ahead. “And we’re gonna make it good. Got it?”

Neal’s expression had hardened a bit, for a moment showing his anger. When he was Danny, he’d been good at concealing anger, but when it did come out, it was volatile. Ellen wanted to put him in therapy to better manage it, but his mother had never gone through with it, so Neal had been left learning to self-soothe and manipulate his own emotions until he could explode in private. It wasn’t pretty. And, unfortunately, based on that familiar expression he’d made, that habit hadn’t changed. But when you were done, he seemed to assess what you were saying and judge it on the merits of your own belief in it, because he studied your face as he slowly nodded, and the anger slipped away, either unwinding from his joints or being masked by something else. You hoped for the former, but truthfully, it had been ten years. You’d once known him better than anyone. While you still suspected that that was largely true, you couldn’t be sure this hadn’t changed.

“We will,” he echoed after you. “You’ll be here?”

You nodded with certainty. If nothing he’d done so far had gotten you fed up with him, there was probably nothing he could manage from inside a prison to change that. “I will.”

You put a hand down on the table. The guard locked his eyes on it and you barely refrained from rolling your eyes. Symbolically, you were offering Neal a hand to hold. Judging by how exasperatedly he glanced at the guard, he understood as he made an exaggeratedly slow motion, mirroring your hand but not reaching across to you.

“It’s gonna be a long four years,” Neal grumbled under his breath, shooting an irritable glare in the guard’s direction.

~~~ ~~~

A/N: Wow! This ended up twice as long as I planned because I got really into it and carried away a bit. I might even be open to a continuation... Anyway, if you liked it and want to get announcements about stories and chat about what's coming up, leave a comment asking to join the Discord and I'll send you a link!

#white collar lawmen and conmen #white collar #white collar x reader #neal caffrey #neal caffrey x reader #platonic #x reader #friends #reader insert #oneshot #fic #requested #anonymous #james bonds #neal bennett #danny brooks #pre-series #marbles #fbi reader

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