Mozzie tries to pass that off as proof.

[magibrain]

One of my quirks with regards to White Collar is that I tend to think Neal is kinda overloaded on narrative shininess, and so even when it might seem more congruent to give him wacky supernatural stuff, I tend to balk and aim the supernatural stuff at whoever else is in the vicinity instead. Which mostly translates to Peter. Sometimes Peter and Diana both. (Unless the supernatural stuff inconveniences Neal in some way, like that braintic I have where Neal died at eighteen and then got accidentally resurrected.)

But, you know, it tickles me when Peter gets to hand-rear a dragon hatchling or gets solicited to perform Great Works for various deities or gets to be a BTR-style guardian angel or has made friends with the eldritch creature that lives in Records and has been granted superpowers or, you know, etc.

So today I got the idea that Peter should have draconic blood. And some people with draconic blood hoard gold or jewels or sports cars or cats or something, but Peter? Peter hoards evidence. Also puzzles. Clues. Unsolved mysteries books.

And then it just kept getting better.

• Mozzie claims to be descended from Cassandra. No one is ever sure whether or not to believe him; he tends to try to plate that as evidence that he's telling the truth. So it's entirely possible Mozzie has some oracular powers.

• Neal figures out the Peter thing when he cleverly-playfully lifts Peter's watch or something, and (as he's inspecting it to make a snarky comment) discovers that it's a medical alert watchband so if Peter ever ends up in the hospital, they'll know what kind of blood to give him. Neal kinda feels like an ass for that.

• The Caffrey box? Yeah, that's not Peter's only box. He probably has a storage facility somewhere full of evidence boxes. El only lets him keep a few of the most important ones in the house because otherwise the place would overflow.

• Peter gets assigned to the Evidence Warehouse. This is a bad idea. Neal comes to visit him at one point and finds him dopily blissed out in the stacks, cataloguing every counterfeit watch New York City has ever seen. They get him back to White Collar, and Peter's happy to be there – because it's Peter, and the chase is the thing – but evidence is all he'll smalltalk about for weeks.

• The lights go out in Power Play and Peter needs to pick a lock, so he just crouches down next to the door and breathes out little tongues of fire so he can see.

• Neal has to go to the hospital after the plane or the warehouse explosion, and ends up staying there for a while due to smoke inhalation. Peter visits. Neal wants to know how he never ends up dealing with any of this, and Peter is more or less "I eat smoke for breakfast." Because dragon.

• El gets Peter new puzzles, riddle books, and unsolved mysteries media for every birthday and anniversary, sometimes in conjunction with other gifts and sometimes not, and Peter is always ludicrously happy to receive them.

• Peter and Mozzie bond unexpectedly over the great historical mysteries like the Amelia Earhart disappearance or the current location of the Rubicon, and spend what Neal considers a disturbing amount of time swapping theories about them. And then Mozzie tries to bring Peter in on something like the faked moon landing, and Peter goes on an hours-long debunking rampage because EVIDENCE! Neal tries not to be around during these sessions. Eventually Mozzie just starts showing up at the Burkes' house and Elizabeth makes them all coffee and snacks and watches the show and pokes both of them with metaphorical sticks.

• After a while, Neal starts really noticing that Peter keeps swiping things like Neal's severed tie from On Guard and really wanting to swipe things like the dinosaur egg from Digging Deeper, and it stops being quirky and just gets really weird.

• It's entirely possible this is why Peter went for the anklet deal in the first place. Because Neal is a neverending source of clues and evidence, and that makes Peter a happy demidragon.

…though I feel like at some point I should give Jones some supernatural awesome, because poor Jones always gets left out.

Comments

[sholio]

.... this is the most adorable thing, omfg. :D :D :D This is so hilariously him. (Blissed-out dragon Peter in the evidence stacks, ahahahaha WOW.) And all the clue-stuff he hoards in canon!

I WANT TO READ SCENES FROM THIS 'VERSE.

[magibrain]

Well, you're definitely not in luck, because I certainly haven't neglected all my other responsibilities today in order to write out 3500 words of this.


•cough•

"Do you ever get the urge to just gather up all the evidence you've collected, make a little nest, and sleep in it?" Neal asks at one point, because it's late, and they're stuck in the van, and he likes poking at Peter with sticks when they're stuck in the van, because the van is one big stick for Peter to poke at him with. And besides, Peter makes the best expressions when his semi-draconity comes up.

"Sleeping on evidence compromises it, and you'd be surprised how few hoards are actually made up of something that's comfortable to sleep on," Peter says, eyes not leaving the screens. "Dragons got away with gold because their body heat was high enough to make it malleable and their scales didn't exactly have nerve endings."

"Okay," Neal says, and leans back, bouncing a pen off the wall. "See, the interesting thing – to me? – about that, is that you phrased it all in a way that suggests you've actually tried."

[sholio]

I HAVE NO COMPLAINTS. and ahahaha YES. I can totally see Elizabeth coming down some morning to find that Peter has spread boxes of case files on the couch and is sleeping on them. (Peter: ".... this isn't very comfortable." El: *grabs phone for camera purposes*)

... also, I love that Neal likes to poke the (semi) dragon with sticks, and the dragon doesn't really mind.

[magibrain]

They're in boxes! You could just line up all the boxes and put a mattress on top!

Poking each other with sticks is a big part of their relationship.

[sholio]

It is entirely possible that's what the mattress in Peter and El's bedroom is sitting on. She'd be a good sport about it, I think, especially if it stopped Peter from getting up 5 times a night to check that all his boxes were still secure in the closet.

[magibrain]

I actually have it that the entire closet in the guest bedroom is just full of evidence boxes. Which Mozzie discovers when he's sweeping the house for bugs. (El is not overly secretive about these things, and it's not like Peter is embarrassed by his hoard, and it's all stuff it doesn't even make sense to log into evidence so it's not like there would be any great desire to tamper with it, so there's no reason to hide the boxes from Mozzie.) (This is also how/when Mozzie discovers that photo from when Peter put El under surveillance. Because Peter also has an El box. ...it probably has her credit card transactions from the Pilot in it, too.) (Peter is very lucky El loves his draconic little quirks.)

[sholio]

ha, wow, yeah -- he probably has TONS of El stuff, going right back to his very first surveillance efforts. (It's kind of alarming/disturbing how well this all actually works with canon Peter - you don't really have to change ANYTHING!)

[magibrain]

We don't have to change anything.

But we can give Peter fire breath and nubbly little claws, and that is amazing. XD