[Fic][White Collar] Elephant Jokes

[magibrain]

Title: Elephant Jokes
Rating: T.
Genre: Character study, background casefic, background crackfic
Beta: Unidentifiable.
Continuity: Quite probably not canon-compliant, as it takes place post-S4 and as of this writing S5 hasn't aired yet. (This fic also dodges all issues of how the end-of-S4 cliffhanger was resolved. In fact, you could probably just pretend that it never happened.)
Prerequisites: The pilot, most of Sara's episodes through "Shot The Moon".
Summary: Our Heroes have a case where there are plenty of clues, and yet still no one knows what they're looking for. In the case or outside of it. (Post season-4, but very little canon plot involvement.)
Disclaimer: I would eagerly engage in complicated negotiations to be invited into arrangement of ownership of White Collar; so far, though, no one has asked. The opinions expressed herein are the properties of the characters, and not of Michael Swanwick. Propane and charcoal grills should only be used outdoors. It is unlawful for a person to possess a wild animal in the state of New York. Questions, comments and cape buffalo can be left in replies or directed to magistrata(at)gmail(dot)com. Thank you for reading!

---

It started, as these things did, with an unknown large animal and a patio grill.

-

Peter hadn't expected to run into Elizabeth when he stopped by the house. He was only there to drop off a briefcase and pick up one or two things, Neal in tow, but the front door opened while he was on his way down the stairs (one illicit printout in hand) and El bustled in, looking three kinds of harried and five kinds of on top of it. She paused just inside the door, took in Peter on the stairs and Neal being abandoned by Satchmo on the couch, and said "Oh, hey there. I wasn't expecting you home."

"Just passing through, unfortunately, Peter said, folding the paper and slipping it into his pocket. "What about you? I thought you had that fundraiser at 82 Mercer."

"Just stopping in to change," Elizabeth said, climbing the stairs far enough to plant a kiss on Peter's lips. "Setup got a little messy." She turned back to look at Neal. "Is my husband commandeering your evening?"

"He's a harsh taskmaster," Neal said, and Elizabeth chuckled.

"So I'm told. Working on anything interesting?"

"Well, let me answer that with another question," Peter said, sliding an arm around her waist. "What gets smuggled in through the Port of New York and New Jersey and loaded into a wide-load semi trailer, snuffles at toll gates, is probably paid for with embezzled funds, and probably puts someone in violation of the New York Environmental Conservation laws, title five, subsection 11-0511?"

"That actually is what we're working on," Neal said, helpfully. "Not the setup for a bad joke."

"I have yet to be convinced of that," Peter retorted, and turned back to Elizabeth. "We're just going to swing by a few sites, talk to a few people. Back by eight."

"Well, I won't be." Elizabeth clapped him on the shoulder, and headed up toward the bedroom. "I'll probably be out past midnight. Don't wait up."

"Tomorrow," Peter promised, and El paused at the landing to give him a brilliant smile.

"I'm looking forward to something special, mister."

"Very," Peter assured her, and she vanished up the stairs.

Neal watched them both. The Burkes had an odd sort of theater going on; a kind of casual, familial openness which had apparently expanded to include him without any of them really planning on it. He appreciated it, in a way. Even as it occasionally made him keenly aware of the sorts of things he'd never have with Kate, and as of yet could only dream about, with Sara.

Still, it was nice to know that the universe had made the option available to someone.

Peter continued down to the first floor, inclined his head, and said "Come on. Let's go."

-

"You realize that Elizabeth didn't believe you for a second."

"Hm?"

"About swinging by some sites and talking to some people," Neal said. They were on the Brooklyn Bridge, headed in toward the single case-related errand they needed to clear up for the day.

"I realize that," Peter said. "She won't hold it against me."

"That's good of her." Neal leaned back, eyeing the dashboard GPS as it tracked their progress into Manhattan. "So, tell me again why we're not just showing up at Smith's place with a warrant?"

Peter let out an aggrieved sigh. "Last time the FBI went after him, they thought they had him dead to rights. Not only did he wriggle out of it, but he turned around and sued the Bureau for half a dozen charges and scraped out a win in court. So this time, we need to get him definitively – but we need to be careful about it. No pulling him in for endless cross-examinations, no stretching to get a warrant or bug his office or car without bulletproof reasons to back it up. He's already embarrassed us once."

"And now it's a matter of pride," Neal filled in.

"And justice," Peter corrected.

"Of course." Neal resisted the urge to fiddle with the radio; the drive wasn't that long. "Should have happened last week," he said. "I could have put Mozzie on it. He gets upset at animal mistreatment."

Peter raised an eyebrow, but thankfully kept his eyes on the road. "Can you honestly tell me that Mozzie wouldn't hear that the FBI is looking into large-animal smuggling and immediately jump to the conclusion that we were covering up the Loch Ness monster?"

"...honestly?" Neal clarified. Peter's mouth quirked up. "He's been on more of a hodag kick, anyway. Loch Ness is the wrong continent."

"Oh, hodags. Of course." Peter quite clearly had no idea what those were, and equally clearly found this unsurprising, given Mozzie. "What's he doing out of the city, anyway?"

"Uh, he told me to tell you he was in Toledo, if you asked. And he didn't tell me anything incriminating."

"Of course he didn't. Which Toledo?" Peter asked, and, when Neal raised both eyebrows at him, added "Yes, I'm aware he's probably not in either one."

"So," Neal said, deciding that an unsubtle change in subject was probably not unwarranted, "what are we actually doing, while your wife doesn't actually think we're chasing down leads? Figured out your anniversary plans yet?"

"Yeah." Peter grinned, wide and self-satisfied, and pulled the paper out of his pocket. "Take a look at that."

Neal took the sheet, unfolded it, smoothed it against the dashboard... and found himself looking at a listing clearly printed from a hardware store's website. That was his first indication that this was going wrong.

"A grill," he said.

"The first place that was ours," Peter said. "I mean, really ours, not the crappy apartment I had when she moved in with me – there was this grill out back. It got to be a thing, we'd make meals on it once or twice a week–"

"Peter," Neal said, giving him one of those I despair of you looks. "Peter. Rule number one: if it's likely to show up in a Sears catalog, it's not a suitable anniversary gift."

"It's sentimental," Peter argued.

"Then surprise her with it on a weekend," Neal said. "Come on. You think this is the way you're going to top Belize?"

"I'm not going to top Belize. If I try to go down that route, in six years I'm stuck trying to rent out the Taj Mahal for a week-long spa getaway with live jazz. But this," he jabbed a finger at the paper, "is good."

"It's a piece of hardware which requires propane and will get smoke in her eyes," Neal said. "You can't get less romantic without adding in hospital equipment."

"Obviously it's not just going to be the grill," Peter said, though now it seemed like he was on the defensive. "I figured I was going to surprise her when she got home, have a whole meal cooked up, candles on the balcony–"

"Mm-hm." Neal arched an eyebrow. "Citronella candles and tri-tip?"

Peter set his jaw. "Look, if you're trying to say something, just say it."

"It's your anniversary," Neal said. "You're supposed to pull out all the stops. Show her a good time – something with refinement and class and distinction. They're supposed to be once-in-a-lifetime events, not just pleasant evenings. You only get so many of them."

Peter stewed until the end of the bridge, then finally gave in with a tone of ill grace. "What do you suggest, then?"

"Art," Neal said, without hesitating. "Fine art, then dinner at a – you know what? Why don't you let me make a few calls."

"Neal," Peter warned.

"Nothing illegal, and nothing that would take advantage of your position with the FBI to gain privileges which wouldn't be extended to a member of the public," Neal assured him, by rote. "And Elizabeth will enjoy herself. I guarantee it."

He could see Peter thinking it over, but really, with Peter Burke, Nothing illegal and Elizabeth will enjoy herself were almost all you needed to close a deal. Sure, Neal knew that Elizabeth was more than willing to tolerate Peter's occasional hamfistedness when it came to romantic gestures, and all of his rough edges. Still, Neal had to imagine that it would be a nice change if she didn't have to.

-

There had never been a time when Peter had been in Elizabeth's life and not in the FBI, and she was fairly well-convinced that there had never been a time when Peter hadn't been fundamentally Peter. She was used to squeezing birthdays, anniversaries, and occasionally Federal holidays in around their various other obligations, and that had only become more true since her event-planning business had taken off. Holidays had always been, and probably would always be, contested territory.

Elizabeth wasn't much of a believer in the whole true-love, you-complete-me, happily-ever-after prepackaged versions of romance you could pick up in a bookstore or see at a theatre. It wasn't that she was cynical; more that she relegated them into the same kind of feel-good, no-substance category as sponge candy and caramel lattes: perfectly pleasant, nothing wrong with them, but hardly a complete meal. She was a more pragmatic sort, the kind of person who knew when she walked by a rosebush that someone had been on their hands and knees in the dirt planting it, and someone was keeping it trimmed and watered and keeping the buds and leaves pinched back. She knew that you got beautiful things by putting in the work to make them work.

And it had come as something of a surprise, when she was first getting to know him, that FBI Special Agent Peter Burke was a believer in those true-love, you-complete-me things, though with a kind of unconscious non-examination. He treated the entire American love mythos the same way someone might treat a car manual in a glove compartment or assembly instructions for a new piece of furniture: someone had provided it as a handy piece of reference material, and he had no particular reason to doubt its authenticity. Even if he wasn't inclined to refer to it until a situation came up which forced him to.

It was the kind of thing she'd spent over a decade poking at, enjoying, tweaking, and occasionally subverting, but she'd never put any special effort into changing it. She was more than comfortable with the fact that Peter and his quirks were to be taken as-is, not re-cast into something that suited her sensibilities. And she tended to let Peter handle the social-requirement things of anniversaries and Valentines days and the like because she suspected that it made him feel better about his general non-fluency in it all. She could deal with the whole range of options, from him forgetting the date outright, on up.

But she wasn't expecting to deal with a dinner several echelons outside of Peter's usual comfort zone, a live jazz act at the Blue Note (complete with a sax soloist coming by their table), and dessert.

That was interesting.

It was a lovely evening, of course. It was also very... un-Peterish, in a strange way, like she'd reached for his hand and found, instead, a smooth marble statue.

They'd just finished up at some tiny French bakery-cafe where they'd shared a praline mousse and a black currant panna cotta, two desserts which she was quite sure would never enter Peter's culinary vocabulary unless prompted by a third party. As they stepped out onto the sidewalk – Peter holding her coat as she slipped into it; that was Peter through and through, she decided that there was a certain signature on the night's activities. And she didn't even need a polarized light to see it.

"Did you have a good time?" Peter asked, and he had the look in his eyes she'd come to associate with the situations where he'd be more comfortable with a written assessment, with defined criteria and matrices and possibly point values. Sentimentality, 5/5.

She briefly considered a diplomatic, ego-sparing answer, but artificiality had never been a staple in their relationship before and, tonight notwithstanding, she didn't really want it to become one. "The concert was lovely," she said. "And that was some of the best food I've ever eaten in my life. But..."

Peter caught that as the salient part of that sentence. "But?"

Elizabeth reached out and took his hands, giving them a reassuring squeeze. "But," she said, "and – I love you – don't take this the wrong way; I wish it had been a little more Peter Burke, and not quite as much Neal Caffrey."

The quick flash of Oh, god, I've broken everything and been found out panic pretty much said that he'd taken that wrong. She squeezed his hands again, and leaned up to kiss him. When she rocked back onto her heels, he was giving her a searching look, and she said "I think it's sweet that Neal is so willing to help." And it was definitely adorable, in a somewhat frustrating way, that Peter had accepted that help.

"I thought you'd enjoy it," Peter said.

He was a good man, Peter Burke, but Elizabeth had learned over the course of many years that his capacity to find fault – with himself, just as much as with anyone else – was nigh-limitless unless action was taken to cap it. "And I did. But I want to know what you were planning."

Peter shifted, looking a little embarrassed. "I was going to get a patio grill," he said, like he was aware, now, that this was the wrong answer. Which was, in itself, wrong.

"You were going to get a grill?" Elizabeth said.

"Yeah – you remember the grill bolted down behind our first place?" Peter said. "You said you missed how we used to have grill nights. And we've been talking about it, so I thought I could finally get one, put it out back, we could have a steak dinner with wine and Dizzy Gillespie on the stereo–"

"Peter," she said, trying to keep an edge of frustration out of her voice. "I've been dropping those hints for weeks. What made you change your mind?"

"You–" Peter started, and blinked at her. "Wait, you wanted that for our anniversary?"

"It's our history," Elizabeth said. "It would have been perfect."

"I was told that a grill was just about the least romantic thing I could come up with," Peter said, wryly. At least now he was beginning to relax into the conversation; he'd been putting on a performance all night. Like this was an undercover op, she thought; not that she'd often seen him on one, but she knew as well as anyone that he could play a part, if it was required of him.

She didn't want to require it of him.

"I'm sorry," Peter said.

She sighed. "Don't be. It was lovely. I just..."

"Would prefer it if I didn't use a cheat sheet?" Peter suggested. Elizabeth nodded.

"Something like that."

"Duly noted." Peter looped an arm around her back. "He's going to want a postmortem," Peter said. "What do you think? I should reconsider keeping him on retainer?"

"I think you're one badass FBI agent, Peter Burke, and you should stick to your guns." She elbowed him. "But, you know, go easy on Neal. He means well."

"He always does," Peter said, ruefully.

But now a thought was crystallizing in Elizabeth's mind, and she said "Actually, you should invite him over after work. I can do just as good a postmortem as you can."

"He's not going to be happy he's been found out."

"Peter," she said. "You took me to Montebello. The game is up."

He laughed, and tilted his head to concede the point, and that was decided. Best for everyone, really.

Besides, there was a thank-you she needed to make. And a gentle corrective talk, as well.

-

Neal's first words, on arriving at the office, were "So, how'd it go?"

Peter, who was already at his desk, hadn't exactly prepared to give immediate feedback, although he probably should have. "It was good," he said. "The food was good." Then, because Neal had raised an eyebrow and Peter was damning the evening with faint praise, Peter explained "It's a little weird, having some guy standing over your table and playing sax. The entire place was staring at us."

"Yeah, well, you're incapable of getting lost in the moment," Neal said. "Did Elizabeth like it?"

"Oh, I think she was charmed," Peter said. "How'd you wrangle that, anyway? I didn't get the impression that was something they normally did."

Neal shrugged, with his most inscrutably pleasant look.

"Right. Never mind." Peter turned his attention to the file on the desk. "Overnight developments?"

"Apparently Smith's been moving his creature from site to site around the edges of the city," Neal said. "But Jones has been looking at traffic cams, CCTV, I think he even has a couple of ATM cameras, and nothing ever gets a good look at what Smith is moving. He and Diana are working up a list of dock and warehouse employees and security guards Smith might have had to go past while he was loading and unloading his whatever-it-is." He gave Peter a look. "I still say you should have just taken today off, made a long weekend of it. I could have gotten you a great weekend rate on a cabin up in Maine–"

"And miss all the fun here?" Peter asked. "It's not every day we get a large-animals case. Is there a pool yet?"

Neal grinned. "Two-to-one odds on an African elephant. Asian elephants and rhinos are the next most popular, and Blake really wants it to be a hippo. Jones put down a dollar each on a guar, a zebu, an American bison, and a moose, just to keep his options open."

"Remind me to ask Jones what a zebu is," Peter said.

"Indian cattle breed," Neal filled in, as though he'd just looked this up. Probably in order to place some hedging bets of his own.

"Right." Peter thought, for a moment. "Aren't guars those little long-nosed snuffly things?"

Neal stared at him, for a moment. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he said, at length.

Peter considered that. "...neither do I," he admitted, and leaned back in his chair. "Hey, you got plans tonight?"

Neal blinked. "Non-sequitur. Why?"

"Eh, Elizabeth wanted me to drag you home." He shrugged. "I don't ask questions."

"Does she have a new caterer she wants me to vet?" Neal asked. Peter watched him.

"Like I said," he repeated. "I don't ask questions."

"Okay. We both know that's not true." Neal leaned back against the office doorframe, and grinned. "But sure. Why not?"

-

Elizabeth was already letting something rise in the kitchen when Peter drove down to Brooklyn, and she greeted them at the door with a kiss for Peter and a hug for Neal and a bright, "I got my first hate mail today. Nights To Remember Events thinks I'm poaching their clients and pushing them out of business."

"Aren't they the ones who set the Canal Room on fire last year?" Peter asked. Elizabeth gave him a cheeky grin.

"Yes, but I'm sure that has nothing to do with it." She turned to Neal. "You keeping yourself busy?"

"Spent the day learning about the exotic large animal market," Neal said, and a moment later there was a dog nosing into his knee. He patted Satchmo's head, and maneuvered around him into the actual living room. "What's going on in the kitchen? New caterer?"

"Bierocks," Elizabeth said.

Peter sounded pleasantly surprised. "I love bierocks."

"I know," Elizabeth reassured him. "Hey, um–" she looked up, catching Peter's eye. "The dough will be done rising in a few minutes, and I haven't had a chance to take Satchmo out, yet. Could you?"

Peter blinked, then looked down at Satchmo, who was still intrepidly trying to get between, around, or through Neal's legs. "Yeah," he said. "I can do that." He reached back into the entryway to retrieve Satchmo's collar, and almost got out a "Neal, if you could surrender my dog?" before Satchmo sensed the promise of the outside world and all but leapt up Peter's chest.

"Need some help with that?" Neal asked.

"I've got it," Peter said, and clipped the leash on Satchmo's collar. "You, be good."

Then he disappeared outside, closing the door behind him.

Not the most subtle con. Probably not even Elizabeth's most subtle con. Neal turned back to give her a questioning look. "So, what is this?" he asked. "Are we talking about Peter behind his back?"

"Well, we could do that," Elizabeth said. "You want a drink?"

He accepted some kind of trendy, unsweetened, lavender-flavored soda that he was pretty sure offended Peter's sensibilities just by virtue of existing.

As Elizabeth came back with it from the kitchen, she said – perfectly conversationally – "So. You gave Peter a few tips on what to do last night."

Neal smiled, and ducked his head. "Was it that obvious?"

Elizabeth rolled her eyes, and looked at him.

"Fair enough."

"Mm." She pursed her lips. "As good as it was for you to do that for him, and as much as I love the Blue Note, I'm going to have to ask you to stop doing that."

That hadn't been something Neal was expecting, and for a moment, he didn't have anything to say. "I'm sorry?"

"Advising Peter on his love life," Elizabeth said. "It's... disorienting."

"Having a good time is disorienting?" Neal asked. If Elizabeth had to guess, she would have said that he read that as a warning sign.

"Neal," she chided. "I married Peter. Do you honestly think we would have made it past ten years if I needed someone to make grand romantic gestures for me?"

He blinked, at that, and said, "Oh."

"Mm-hmm," Elizabeth said, and steered him toward the couch. "All those things – you know, roses and diamonds and expensive dinners – I mean, don't get me wrong, they're nice, but they don't mean anything. They're basic units of social currency. What I love about Peter is, he's a man of substance. He's not glitz and glimmer – he doesn't have a glimmery bone in his body. But when he says something, he means it, and when he plans out an occasion..."

There's something there, she was going to say, but Neal was looking a little drawn, and she let the words trail off. "I think I get it," he said.

"I just," Elizabeth started, and then the conversation did a quick rewind and reminded her of what she'd just said.

Oh. Glitz and glimmer. Being a person of substance, what she'd seen versus what she'd got, and people who meant what they said. That certainly didn't sound like a left-handed jab.

"Oh, honey," she said. "I didn't mean it like that. It was awfully sweet of you to do that, and I do appreciate it."

"It's the thought that counts?" Neal asked.

"Something like that."

Neal let out a thin, somewhat wounded laugh.

"I'm really not angry," she offered.

"No. No, I get it," Neal said, with a hundred-watt smile which looked fake just because of its brilliance. "It's just – the first time this happened, Peter was asking me for advice. I just thought he wasn't good at it."

"Oh, he's not good at it," Elizabeth said, and gave a very unladylike snort. "Trust me. Watching Peter try to be romantic is like watching a grizzly bear trying to ice skate." The edges to her smile softened, though. "But he doesn't need to be. It's not–"

Important to me, was what she had been going to say, but that rang a little too close to it's unimportant to me, which wasn't what she wanted to say at all.

"It's not Peter Burke," she settled on, instead.

Who – and the understanding hung in the air – was worth all his many faults and shortcomings, and was a man who needed no embellishment. Neal had to wonder what it meant, if he himself was just naturally embellishing.

"Are we okay?" Elizabeth asked, with a perhaps overcautious degree of gentleness.

"Oh, yeah," Neal said, breezy as ever. "No problem. From now on, I'll just let Peter sink or swim. When it comes to anniversaries."

"Thank you," Elizabeth said, and then it was just a matter of Elizabeth grilling Neal on his day and regaling him with hers, passing the next uncomfortable minutes (not too many – Neal suspected that Satchmo had been well-walked before his arrival) before Peter showed up again, let Satchmo loose in the livingroom, and noted the way that Neal hopped to his feet.

"What's going on?" Peter asked.

Neal gestured out the door with his hat. "Just thought I should get going. But the two of you have a nice meal." He paused, for a second, and looked at Peter. "It's not going to be a working weekend, is it?"

"Ask Smith," Peter said. "I thought you were staying for dinner."

"Well," he said, brushing that off with feigned casualness. "I just thought, you know, the two of you should relax. Have more anniversary. Get a grill," he suggested, and grinned, and backed out the door. "You know where to find me if you need me."

Then he vanished, in what looked suspiciously like a retreat.

Peter sighed, and hung up Satchmo's leash. "You broke him," he said.

Elizabeth made a small, frustrated noise, and headed for the kitchen.

-

Sometime after Neal's exodus, after the dinner had been eaten, the dishes cleared away, the dog let out again, and the last vestiges of productivity dispensed with for the night, Elizabeth started thinking. Rather, picked up on a thread she'd been thinking on, hours before.

Brooklyn had flowed from daylight to streetlights outside the window and they'd settled in on the couch, Satchmo a dozy rug on the ground beside them. Peter was bulwarked against the back and one arm, and Elizabeth was nestled in against him, his chest against her shoulderblades, cheek beside her temple, their legs making a casual tangle. After this many years – years with the couch, years with each other – they'd more or less perfected the art of staying like this and reading like this, Peter's wrist braced against her hip and holding a casefile open, her elbows tucked just inside his and hands holding open a novel, this one by V. S. Naipaul.

That was one of the things Elizabeth loved about Peter: he gave the impression that, between her and an active investigation, and possibly a bottle of beer, he had everything he needed in the world.

Every once in a while, she had to stop and reflect just how damn lucky she was. Not that she had something which always worked perfectly, because she didn't, but that she had something, real and solid and warm, that she could rely on to be there when she needed it and work if they put the right maintenance in.

Not everyone could say that.

She folded the book closed and laid it across her chest, leaning back into Peter's bulk. "Are you in contact with Sara, at all?"

Peter shifted under her, quietly refocusing his attention on conversation instead of case. "Not recently," he said.

"Do you think Neal is?"

She could feel him tracking the conversation, trying to follow it back to its raison d'être. "If he is, he doesn't talk about it. I haven't wanted to bring it up."

"No, I don't know that he'd take that well." She frowned, thoughtfully. Peter had told her, in the run up to the fiasco with the U-boat loot and Keller (might he stay locked away forever) and then again in the aftermath of Neal's short-lived flight to Cape Verde, that he worried about the two of them. And worried a bit that worrying meant crossing some bound of Neal's autonomy that he hadn't already crossed in the course of arresting him, sending him to prison, dragging him back out of prison, sticking a tracker on him and basically co-opting most of the major parts of his life over the course of several years. She'd found it heartwarming and slightly hilarious.

Now, though, she was worrying about a couple of the same things, herself.

"In all the time you were chasing Neal," she said, "did you find out a lot about Kate?"

"Just enough to do our jobs," Peter said. "Smart girl, careful, seemed a little standoffish, but that could have just been the channels we were getting our info from. Why this sudden interest in Neal's love life, past and present?"

"I think he's lonely," Elizabeth said.

Peter sighed, and put aside the case file.

"I wonder that, sometimes," he admitted. "What am I supposed to do about it, though? I seriously doubt Neal would have any trouble finding someone, if he wanted to."

"I don't know that he would think of it," Elizabeth said. She was thinking of the conversation they'd had, the day he almost ran with Kate: typical Neal, almost nothing given away, just those six words. You and Peter. How'd you know?

She hadn't known then that he was heading off to vanish with Kate; hadn't been able to pick up the nuance on the words. She couldn't even remember, now, what she'd answered, but suspected nothing would have quite filled in the ground the way he'd wanted it to. Neal wanted unambiguous answers and interpersonal certainties and absolute, unshakable loves, and found it hard to accept that people were ambiguous, uncertain and shakable, themselves.

"Neal can hardly walk by a woman without flirting with her," Peter pointed out. "I'm fairly sure he's thought about it."

"Yes, but flirting," Elizabeth said. "In Neal's world, that means 'hello, how are you,' not 'I need someone to share my life with and you seem like a suitable candidate'." Not I think I might need you. He was a couple years older and more jaded than the person who had insisted to Peter that Kate was the one, who'd caused Peter to come home some days and complain What am I supposed to do? He's completely starry-eyed; I don't think he could see straight if she was pointing a gun at him. But he was still very much Neal, who confided in Peter more than Peter seemed to realize, and for whom she'd felt a growing and often conflicted rush of protectiveness ever since he'd showed up with half the US Marshals in the state after him for diamond forging and fleeing and with apparently only her husband as an advocate.

"You think I should tell him to see a therapist?" Peter asked. "Talk about his problems with intimacy? –ow."

That last was when she elbowed him in the stomach, though she didn't bother to disguise a note of laughter. "If you do, I want a hidden camera set up so I can see both your expressions for that conversation. No; I think he needs someone. Not for flirting, or anything like that, just to have someone in his life."

"Well," Peter said, "if you run into anyone who might be able to tolerate him, let me know and I'll make introductions."

Elizabeth shot a speculative look over her shoulder. "I'd date him."

"Hmph." The corner of Peter's mouth ticked up. "Lucky for me I married you first, then."

"Well, you know," Elizabeth said, shifting so she was more on her side, more able to look him in the eye, "it's the twenty-first century, hon. These things are becoming more acceptable."

Peter blinked, and paused on that for a moment. "What?"

"It would take a little planning, especially as your schedules both tend to be unusual in the same ways," she said, picking a hair off Peter's collar and waving it to the ground. She kept her tone light – just the hint of ribbing. "But I'd like to think my business has made me pretty good at sorting out impossible logistical issues." She raised her eyebrows, giving Peter her most innocent look. As innocent looks went, she figured it was at least Neal-quality.

And apparently, this was a good assessment. "I can't tell if you're being serious," Peter said, helplessly.

"Oh, hon." Elizabeth smiled – brightly, brilliantly – and leaned up to kiss him. "I don't have to be. I'm not going to put you in a position where you're uncomfortable."

"But we are having the conversation I think we're having?"

"That," Elizabeth said, "depends a lot on what conversation you think we're having."

"El," Peter said.

"Peter Burke." She put her hands on his wrists, and put a matter-of-fact tone into her voice. "I love you more than I can express, and I care about Neal almost as much as you do, and I find him charming and good company with excellent taste in music and art, which you are an absolutely phenomenal husband without, but which I enjoy bonding with others over from time to time. And I think that he enjoys my company, and I think he's lonely."

Peter stared at her a moment longer, looking deeply into her eyes, and then started to form a response.

"I'm not talking about seducing him," Elizabeeth said, before he got a chance to. "Or doing anything you'd be embarrassed to be in a room with, even." She jabbed him in the ribs, because yes, she knew him, and knew roughly where the bounds of his propriety lay. "Just... offering the chance to be closer, I guess. Do more things together. Have another outlet, if he needs one."

"What, you mean, have him over when I'm not here, go to exhibits, listen to contemporary jazz... give him a hug from time to time?" Peter asked. "How is this different from what you're already doing?"

Elizabeth laughed.

"No, I'm serious," Peter said. "I'm really missing part of this conversation."

"I know," Elizabeth said. "I'm not laughing at you, hon. It's a good question." She exhaled. "I guess it's a matter of context and intention." Because Neal seemed to look at them as a sort of template for the life he wanted, and had parked himself firmly across an invisible line that in his mind separated Them from Outsiders. And if that was right, well, she couldn't give him everything. But she could offer a hand over the barrier. "It's a way of offering him something solid that he can look at and know we care about him."

Peter looked less than happy with that explanation. "El, if he doesn't know we care by now–"

"I know he knows." Elizabeth searched for words. "I'm sure he knows. But it's – it meant a lot when Christie could propose, didn't it?"

"...are we also talking about Diana's love life?" Peter asked.

"No, and that's not the point. Though I'd date her, too, if she asked." That, she added just to see Peter's reaction. His reaction was underwhelming. "What I mean is, even if you know something, having some official act of recognition can make it feel more real."

Peter chewed on that, with the look of someone swallowing something bitter.

"And I've said something that's upset you." She found one of his hands, which turned to accommodate hers with the smoothness of long familiarity. "What is it?"

"I was just thinking, that works for one of us," he said. "I mean, obviously, I want what's best for him. I have no desire to date him."

"You're his partner," she pointed out, her thumb running up and down his, over the knuckles, back to the wrist. "I think he relies on that more than he tells you."

He was quiet, studying her, and she settled in and let him work through the angles. For all that he didn't quite trust himself to know what to do when emotions came up he'd always had a good gut for profiling, and sometimes if he could just exercise those muscles, it all worked out in the end.

"I don't know," he said, eventually. "I'm supposed to be upset by this, aren't I?"

And there, they were back into what he was or wasn't supposed to do. "Honey."

"No, really. My wife comes to me and tells me she'd like to date other men–"

"Not 'other men'," Elizabeth said. "An other man."

"–aren't I supposed to be on a talk show or something, at this point?"

"You're not the talk show type." She squeezed his hand. "Are you upset by it?"

His jaw worked for a moment, like he was having trouble with this part. "It feels inappropriate to say this, but it sounds... sensible." He let out a long, low breath. "This is why I kept hoping things would work out, between him and Sara. He needs someone to ground him. And you," he tilted his head forward, and she leaned in to rest her forehead against his, "are probably the most grounding influence I know."

"So we can try this?" Elizabeth asked.

He stopped short of actually saying yes. "I still feel like I'm giving the wrong answer."

"Hon, short of threatening to drive off and kill him, I don't think there is a wrong answer," she said. "Anyway, you know I don't want the 'right' answer. Give me the Peter Burke answer."

"The Peter Burke answer." He gave her a small impression of a smile, at that. "Is... I think it doesn't bother me." He paused. "And I should have got the grill."

-

"This isn't going to be another awkward conversation, is it?" Neal asked, when Peter opened the door. He looked more than a little wary, which Peter couldn't blame him for, and which Peter didn't think was going to be assuaged much by the conversation Elizabeth had in store for him.

But he wasn't just going to come out and say that, so he answered with an even, "I think Elizabeth wants to apologize for the awkwardness."

"That's really not necessary," Neal said, but walked in anyway. "I can take constructive criticism."

Peter was about to find something to say to that when the fax machine warbled, and he turned to it as it whirred out a thin stack of papers.

"Expecting something?" Neal asked.

"Diana was going to look into some other deliveries Smith has been getting. See if anything he was buying through normal commercial channels gave us a clue on what he was getting off them." Two pages printed out, and Peter plucked them from the tray. Neal quirked his head.

"What, like a few tons of raw peanuts?"

"Mm." Peter glanced over the list. "Or... looks like a lot of construction supplies, electric fencing, a – okay, I don't think that's related to his new pet – and... oh, there we go. That looks like feed." He skimmed the pages, then lowered them and gave Neal an incredulous look. "What kind of animal has a diet of grass hay, banana leaves, alfalfa, decorative ferns, oat hulls, jade plants, kudzu, kelp, bamboo, and philodendrons?"

Neal showed both hands. "Hey, hardly the expert on large-animal smuggling, here."

"Educated guess," Peter said. "It's gotta beat what I've come up with."

Neal thought for a moment. "It doesn't sound very educated when I say it out loud," he warned. "Looking at that, I'd say the buyer has no idea what his purchase eats."

Peter tossed the report down. "That's what I came up with. We think this guy bought a hippo or a rhino and doesn't know how to do a Google search or visit a library?"

Neal shrugged one shoulder. "Like I said."

"Maybe it's a herd of goats," Peter said.

"Are goats big bamboo eaters?"

"I'm sure they would be." He turned to see Elizabeth coming down the stairs, looking fantastic in a hazel sweater and a cream scarf, with her jacket folded over her arm. She smiled at both of them.

"Well, that's all wrapped up," she said. "Hopefully there won't be any more fires to put out today. How's the case?"

"Our suspect doesn't know how to use Google," Neal said. "And there was talk of goats."

"Uh-oh. That doesn't sound good."

"It's like he's doing this to bother us," Peter said. "Maybe he's just playing games. He knows we're watching, and he's ordered three tons of red herrings because he knows he has an audience."

"It's something I might do," Neal admitted.

"Do any of the orders make sense on their own?" Elizabeth stepped up to them, making a rough triangle, all three points of which were equally far from enlightenment. "Any sense that's not completely useless, I mean?"

Peter shook his head. "Grass hay, alfalfa, that's domestic livestock feed. That's the best I can come up with."

"Oat hulls can be used as replacement biomass in coal power plants," Neal said, and both of the Burkes turned to look at him. "I swear, I don't have any nefarious reasons for knowing that."

"And factories don't snuffle at toll gates," Peter said.

"Well." Elizabeth slid into the rhythm of the conversation like a cook slapping someone's hand away from a plate of cookies – I know, I know, the mystery is very tempting, but this time is for a weekend and we can't eat it up before the weekend gets any. "Maybe you just need to mull. And meanwhile, we're going to listen to twelve of the best contemporary jazz artists in the country."

"Right." Peter waved at the door with the nonsensical receipts. "You two... have fun," he said, like he was trying not to impart any special meaning into that and failing because the mere fact of trying was enough, and Elizabeth reached out and smacked him on the shoulder.

Peter looked at her, she looked at Peter, and they had a brief but apparently nuanced conversation mostly in grimace, lip-purse, and eyebrow.

"I'm missing something," Neal said.

"Yes," Peter said, turning to look at him with his poker face on, "you are. And I'm not going to be the one to explain. You two enjoy the jazz; I'm going to see if I can convince someone to subpoena something on a Saturday at two in the afternoon."

-

Neal did not learn what the Burkes were plotting as Elizabeth drove them up to Central Park, though he did learn that Elizabeth was by far the more aggressive and attentive driver of the Burke household. That, he would not have expected.

"So," Elizabeth said, as they shot onto the bridge, and Neal got ready to assure her that really, she didn't need to apologize for anything; he'd be much happier just moving right along and pretending that if he didn't look at his social mis-steps, they couldn't see him. But then Elizabeth completed the thought: "Why is White Collar investigating exotic animal smuggling?"

Neal let out a breath. Oh. Right. That.

He said, with the tone of one who had been asking that question himself not long ago and hadn't found any peace of mind in the answer, "It has to do with a case of possible embezzlement and espionage by a former employee at this biotech company, and for a while it looked likely that money was being laundered through..." He trailed off. "It's kinda complicated."

Elizabeth raised an appreciative eyebrow. "Sounds like it. More or less complicated than the Eight Rivers Realty thing last year?"

Neal coughed, low in his throat. "Well, so far, no one's got their Taurus disassembled?"

Elizabeth snerked. Neal hadn't thought that particular verb was something people actually did.

They parked in a garage near the Met and headed down toward the Naumberg bandshell, and Neal had enough time to think that either Peter or the Marshals had a lot of faith in Elizabeth's ability to keep him out of trouble; the Met was technically inside his radius, but Peter seemed to think anything within a couple of blocks was temptation, and so far as he knew the Marshals had a special alert set for it.

Shame, that.

"I haven't been properly out to one of these things in years," Elizabeth said, looping one of her arms around Neal's elbow. "I'm guessing you haven't, either?"

"Between the FBI and Mozzie, my weekends tend to fill up pretty quickly," Neal said. It was strange: he wasn't nearly as cautious saying things like that around Elizabeth. He had no illusions that it was entirely safe to spill incriminating words around her; the impression he'd always had was that as Peter went, so went Elizabeth's nation, and vice versa – at least, on most of the things that mattered.

In all the other ways that mattered, he'd seen how they kept each other honest.

Still, Peter was FBI through and through and if he caught the whiff of something, he'd be on it like a scent hound. Elizabeth, on the other hand? She had a sense of mischief which had won over Mozzie, even before Peter's reliability had.

"Maybe we should make something of it," Elizabeth said. "I mean, on the rare occasions when I'm not running someone else's events all weekend, and Peter lets you out of his sight." They were headed down the afterthought of a pedestrian path on East Drive, and a strident saxophone was already making its way to them on the air. "He might appreciate the 'get out of culture free' cards."

Neal laughed. "We are leaving time for the two of you to do something, aren't we? I'd hate to monopolize your time."

"Well, let's put it this way," Elizabeth said. "Peter gets bored at art and live music; you can't stand baseball. And I like baseball a lot more than Peter likes jazz."

Then her phone rang.

She paused in the middle of the walkway, an odd, well, of course this would happen expression on her face, and answered it. Neal quietly reclaimed his arm so he could get in a better position to watch her expressions; they moved smoothly from amused tolerance to a kind of fond exasperation.

"Yeah," she said. "Of course. Love you too." Peter, then. Without hanging up, she held the phone out to Neal. "He'd like to talk to you."

"I think I know what this is," Neal muttered, and took the phone. "Peter. You're seriously going to call a bait-and-switch on my day off?"

"I owe you one," Peter said, and actually did sound sorry about it. "Look, I'd leave you there, but something came up, and it's time-sensitive, and I could use an extra set of eyes. You mind?"

"Would it do me any good to say I did?" Neal asked, but he'd been in this job long enough that he could accept these things with equanimity. "We'll just say you owe me one."

"Be there in a bit," Peter said.

-

Peter was waiting in the street parking on Fifth Ave, and Neal slid into the passenger seat just as he had a thousand times before. "How was the jazz?" Peter asked, fiddling with the volume on something distinctly non-jazz-like from the car's radio.

"Contemporary," Neal said. "Elizabeth has good taste."

"We knew that," Peter said, and pulled them out into traffic. "The two of you talk at all?"

"...it was a jazz festival in Central Park," Neal said, with that niggling missing-something feeling back at the corners of his mind. "Not Carnegie Hall. There was conversation. Why?"

"Curious," Peter said. "Did you have any significant conversation?"

"Define significant."

Peter turned to look at him, which was almost never a good sign.

"Road!"

"Obviously not," Peter said, but at least he put his eyes forward again.

Neal eyed him for a moment, then settled back in his seat. "Okay, the two of you are hiding something. Should I be worried?"

"Elizabeth wanted to bring something up with you," Peter said, and Neal shifted uneasily.

"What was it?"

"Like I said. Elizabeth wanted to bring something up with you."

Neal stared at him a moment longer. "You're terrible at communication. Where are we going?"

"Smith rented an extra-wide semi to transport his exotic animal," Peter said. "The owner of the truck he rented is letting us take a look at the thing before the mechanics are set loose on it. He needs to get it back in the fleet and on the road for another rental on Monday, and apparently there's enough damage that he's worried he won't get it done even if his crews work through the weekend. He's giving us two hours. And that's from the time I called."

Neal raised his eyebrows. "That sounds like a lot of damage for a herd of goats."

"No kidding."

-

The rental place was all the way out in the Bronx, which Neal felt was adding insult to injury. The owner came out to greet them and lead them back to the garage, where a wide-load trailer was being inched into a garage. The owner, a harried man in his late middle age whose Bronx accent was just beginning to wipe out something Eastern European, came over to shake their hands and gave over the rental sheet without being asked. "I'm pretty pissed off at this guy," he said. "But so far as I can tell, he didn't breach contract, so all I can do is charge him for the damages. You find out that he's doing anything illegal, you string him up by the toes, okay?"

"We'll do our best," Peter said.

"Call me if you need anything," the owner said, and waved them back to the truck.

Neal gave the trailer an appraising eye as they approached it. "So, what kind of evidence do we actually need, from this?" he asked. "We're sure he's transporting a large animal. How many of those are actually legal to drive around in semis?"

"It could be cattle," Peter said, and pulled open the back of the truck. "In which case I can just see the headlines: 'FBI arrest local entrepreneur on suspicions of cattle rustling. Entrepreneur sues federal government for making an ass of themselves.'"

They stepped inside.

The trailer wasn't designed for livestock transport. There a line of air holes had been cut up near the ceiling, but there were no other obvious concessions to the role; there wasn't any hay or other bedding or feed on the floor, and either the animal – whatever it was – hadn't left behind any droppings, or the truck's owner had been kind enough to hose them out before they arrived. There were, however, long gouges in the metal of both walls, at about mid-chest-height, mostly parallel to the ground and breaking through to the outside in places, and the floor was dented and pitted as though something too big for its load capacity had been stomping around. And large dents lower on the wall, as well, as though something with large, extremely rounded feet had kicked them.

"Wow," Neal said. "This thing has seen better days."

"And it doesn't look like cattle damage." Peter was staring at the walls, tongue probing the inside of his cheek. After a moment, he turned around and said "I'm thinking it was definitely something large, and something not accustomed to being transported. You?"

"Assuming this thing wasn't in this condition when it was rented?" He walked to the wall, started to put his hand out to it, then paused. "I didn't bring gloves."

Peter patted down his pockets, then frowned. "Neither did I. But if anyone finds your fingerprints and thinks you fenced the animal, I'll vouch for you."

Neal raised his eyebrows at Peter, and went back to examining the marks.

"Weird," he said. "Don't get me wrong, I don't do a ton of metalwork, but these are clearly a sequence of short gouges, overlapping. Not one long scrape."

Peter came closer, bending down to look at the pattern in the tears.

"And there's something in them," Neal said, and blew a stream of air over the tear. A puff of white something came up. "Bone powder, maybe? Horn?"

"We should see if it's ivory," Peter said. "Though I'm having trouble imagining that an elephant small enough to fit under this ceiling would be able to do this."

"Elephant tusks are modified teeth," Neal said, absently. "Most animal horns are made of keratin, which is more like hair. We should definitely get this powder under a microscope."

Peter straightened up, and looked at him.

"...it's useful information if you're authenticating certain antiquities," Neal explained. "Though knowing if it's dentin or keratin won't explain... this." He gestured over the gouges.

"Right." Peter turned, taking in the damage. "There's this joke about how many elephants you can fit in a Taurus."

"How many?"

"Five. It's got bucket front seats and a split-folding rear seatback."

Now it was Neal's turn to give Peter a Look. "That's a terrible joke."

"Elephant jokes always are." He crossed the space. "The real question is, how many elephants can you fit in a modified semi?"

"You're thinking Smith is smuggling more than one elephant?" Neal asked. It would explain the sheer amount of tearing. Sort of. In a way where it really didn't, especially when the uniformity of height and shape had to be taken into account.

"Elephants, rhinos – hey, what do you get if you cross an elephant with a rhino?"

"If I ask 'what', will you stop telling jokes?"

"El-if-i-no."

"I'm guessing we can't just take samples from all over the walls and run DNA tests on them," Neal said. "How do you tell if you've got five elephants crammed into a trailer?"

"There's an empty Taurus parked outside," Peter offered. "I'm going to ask someone from the Bronx Zoo to come in and look at this. Assuming they'll leave it out of maintenance that long."

"Can't you just seize it as evidence, or something?" Neal asked. "Or have the FBI rent them a replacement?"

Peter huffed. "I'll make a few calls."

-

"Making any progress on your mystery beast?" Elizabeth asked. She was at the counter when Peter came in, annotating pages in a thick binder full of some kind of charts and tables. Peter tried not to groan too loudly as he put his briefcase down on one of the diningroom chairs.

"So far, our best guess is a rhinoceros with an obsessive-compulsive disorder," he said, and Elizabeth snorted in surprise. "...was that insensitive?"

"Well, it was definitely inexplicable," she said, and turned to face him. "Explain?"

"I have no idea what we're dealing with," Peter said. "I'm not a large-animals guy."

"Must be interesting, having a case which isn't in your or Neal's areas of expertise."

"Frustrating," Peter corrected. He looked across at her; he looked tired. "Listen, I'm sorry I had to drag Neal away before you talked to him. You know I didn't–"

"Peter," she said. "I've been dealing with the FBI throwing wrenches at my personal life for a long time, now."

Peter grimaced. She smiled, and came around for a hug.

"It hasn't driven me away yet, and it isn't about to," she promised. "I'm adaptable."

"It just doesn't make sense," Peter said, and for a moment Elizabeth thought he was referring to her. "The more information we get, the more complete a picture we should be able to draw. But nothing we're looking at makes any sense – it's like every piece of new information is just another paintsplatter on one of those abstract pieces Neal is so fond of." He paused, thought about that for a second. "Except that Neal isn't seeing the pattern, either."

"What does he think?" Elizabeth asked.

"He thinks that my jokes are the worst part of this case," Peter said. "Every assumption we make leads us straight to a logical cliff. We either walk into it or walk off it."

"Maybe you need to examine your assumptions," Elizabeth said.

"Maybe we need to say 'damn the torpedos' and put Smith under so many kinds of surveillance he won't be able to scratch an itch without three different branches of the FBI knowing about it."

"Three," Elizabeth repeated. "Isn't that a bit overkill for a troubled rhino?"

"You're right." Peter sighed. "It'll just be one."

-

Which was more or less how he and Neal found themselves sharing first shift in the surveillance van parked outside a loading dock somewhere on 12th Avenue.

At least by now, several hours into the stakeout, Neal had more or less given up protesting that fact and they had settled into a somewhat-tired and mostly caffeine-fueled conversation about... something. Surveillance van talk; it was usually more notable as a way to sweep out various oratorical cupboards than as a way to say things that actually needed saying.

Of course, just when you bought into that, the van had a way of tossing in a curveball.

"This, coming from the man who won the significant-other lottery," Neal was saying, and Peter was trying to work out if there was something wistful in his voice, or if it was just his imagination. A little wistful, maybe. Wist-half-ful. "One of these days you're going to have to tell me how you pulled that off."

"Here I thought you were the romantic," Peter said.

"Well, being a romantic doesn't necessarily make you good at this," Neal responded.

Peter quirked an eyebrow and held it until the pressure to say something overrode Neal's inclination to let that be the end of the discussion.

He leaned forward fiddled with the resolution on one of the monitors. "I mean, if you're talking about the whole chocolates, wine and roses thing, I'd say I'm pretty good at it. It's a set of etiquette just like anything else." He shrugged. "But like Elizabeth pointed out, that's not really the determining factor in whether or not something works."

"I'm a little surprised you don't have more people offering you wine and flowers," Peter said. Neal hmphed.

"The only person who ever reliably buys me wine is Mozzie," he said. "And that's not that reliably."

"Kate left you a bottle," Peter pointed out.

Neal rolled his neck out, and gave Peter a tilted look. "That was symbolic."

"And I'm guessing that Mozzie's rate of wine supplying never quite catches up to his rate of wine consumption."

"There's that," Neal agreed. "He also brought me three pounds of Belgian chocolate, once. Milkfat content was too high for him. ...never any flowers, though."

"Mm," Peter said, a little too archly to be sincere. "Mixed signals."

"He's family," Neal said, firmly. "If he was really interested in sending me signals, I think he'd show up at my place a lot more often wearing ascots in International Klein Blue."

"Okay," Peter said. "First of all, I refuse to believe that's a real color, and second, the less I know about how Mozzie flirts with people, the happier I think I'll be."

Neal gave him a sidelong smile.

"What about you?" Peter asked.

Neal blinked, at that. And, yeah, okay, he was used to Peter breaking out a somewhat awkward paternalism at times, but this seemed a little more awkward than usual. "I'm not flirting with Mozzie, either."

Peter looked confused for a moment, like the question he was asking and the question Neal had answered hadn't been the same thing. "No, I mean – what's going on with you, these days? With Sara in London, I thought you might..."

"Move on?" Neal prompted.

Peter shrugged one shoulder. "You looking for someone?"

"You want someone to keep me out of trouble," Neal said. "Maybe get me to set down some roots here? Remind me of all the good things that come of a life less locked-up?"

He figured that would have been worth at least a defensive stammer, if Peter weren't completely shameless about his ulterior motives for these things. "Fringe benefits," he said.

"I'm sure." He turned his attention back to one of the monitors, which remained unchanged from the previous hours of his staring at it. "I appreciate the concern – I think – but the people I'm likely to be interested in aren't the kind of people I could go out and reliably scout for."

"Mm. And what kind of people would those be?" Peter asked, with just enough weight to not sound casual at all.

Neal groaned. "Peter, please don't play matchmaker."

Peter balked. "I do have better things to do with my time, Neal."

"Okay," Neal said. "Please don't ask Elizabeth to play matchmaker. I'm fine."

"I'm not–" Peter chewed off the end of that statement. "No one's playing matchmaker. I'm not allowed to be curious?"

"When you get curious, you tend to put people under surveillance, and that brings back bad memories for June," Neal said. Peter gave him a disparaging look. Neal gave it right back, and then Peter reached for his coffee and Neal adjusted one of the cameras to focus on a slightly different but equally uninteresting patch of sidewalk. Thinking about Kate, thinking about Sara? "I mean, if I was in the market, which I haven't given all that much thought to – don't start – I'd look for..."

Someone intelligent, pragmatic, and independent, who I can rely on, whose life dovetails with mine, who can keep me on my toes. Wow. That sounded...

"I'm not attracted to you either," he said, like maybe he could just head off that particular awkwardness at the pass.

The resulting Pffhrrgl! as Peter almost choked on his coffee probably meant that that strategy hadn't worked out.

Okay. So maybe a little more lead-in, next time.

Peter got most of the coffee down his throat where it was supposed to be, and shot Neal a .40 caliber glare. "Well, that's good," he said, with strained calm, "because I would hate to fall for the Caffrey charm and go the way of Jack Franklin."

"Peter, I'm hurt," Neal said, lightly. "You wouldn't take a demotion to Internal Bank Fraud for me?"

"Why are we having this conversation?" Peter asked.

"You started it," Neal said. "I'm just saying, I can empathize with Elizabeth's reasons for liking you."

"Okay, why are we still having this conversation? ...how did we even get onto this topic?"

Neal thought back. "We started on the weather; you said fall reminded you of your grandma's apple butter, then you said you wanted to take El upstate to an orchard one of these weekends but you didn't know if she'd be able to get away, and that got us onto you not spending enough time with her, and then you made a remark about me spending enough time with her."

"Apple butter," Peter said, with a kind of casual desperation. "That was a good topic. Have you ever had an apple butter and ham sandwich? It sounds weird, but they're really good."

Neal hid a grin. Now? Now, this was just fun. "Though, you know," he said. "If you were fifteen years younger, could actually manage a conversation on classical art, and enjoyed museums..."

Peter looked as if he wanted to bash his head into the van's monitors. "And had a different set of chromosomes?" he asked.

"Peter," Neal said, lining his voice with mock-disapproval. "I am going to tell Diana you asked that."

Peter swiveled around to face him, lining his own response with a hint of death threat. "Neal, if you report any part of this conversation to anyone, I will personally see you sent to Florence. And not the one in Italy."

"Touchy subject," Neal said.

"It's not touchy. It's highly ina– no. You know what?" Peter dusted off his hands. "I'm vetoing this topic for the remainder of the night. We're going to rewind all conversation to yesterday, when we were still digging into the semi truck mystery, and the most I had to wonder about was whether or not my CI was going on a date with my wife."

"That wasn't a date," Neal said, quickly.

"You say tomahto."

"Peter," Neal said, like there was some emergency override drop all cleverness and be very very sincere button in his head, and he'd just hammered it. "You know that there are lines I wouldn't cross, and–" and then Peter was giving him one of those Neal, stop being an idiot looks, and that sentence ran out of momentum. "Wait, did Elizabeth say it was a date?"

"At this point, I'm not even sure any more," Peter grumbled.

The van door swinging open startled both of them, and a casually-weary Diana and Jones made their way in, already stocked with coffee. "How're you guys doing?" Jones asked.

Peter looked at his watch. "Is it two already?"

"Unfortunately for us," Diana said, and settled into one of the free seats. "Anything interesting going on?"

There was a moment when both Neal and Peter were trying very, very hard not to look at each other.

"Absolutely nothing," Neal said. "Surveillance van purgatory. Very boring."

"Neal was making up names for colors," Peter said.

"Peter waxed rhapsodic on apple butter for a while."

Jones looked between the two of them with a sympathetic expression. "Well, you guys can go catch a catnap before work," he said. "We'll take it from here."

"Thanks," Peter said, and pushed himself only somewhat stiffly out of his chair. "Catch this guy if he does anything."

"See you in a bit, boss," Diana said.

Peter and Neal stepped down out of the van, closing the doors behind them. "My car's a couple blocks from here," Peter said. "You want a ride home?"

Neal made a no, thanks gesture. "I think I'll walk. It's a nice night."

"Yeah," Peter agreed. Then, in a right, that might be the best option way: "Yeah. Have a good walk, then."

"Have a nice drive," Neal said, and they went their separate ways.

-

One of the many, many ways Peter knew that Elizabeth loved him was that when he rolled out of bed after getting half a handful of sleep, he discovered that she had made him a breakfast primarily composed of coffee. "Has anyone ever told you that you're completely wonderful?"

"It's been mentioned a few times," Elizabeth said, with a smile that indicated that she'd actually gotten a reasonable night's sleep. She slid into the chair opposite him as he sat down, trusting the coffee to take effect enough that he could think about getting actual food in his stomach, and slid his cell phone across the table toward him. "Diana called a couple times, earlier."

Peter sighed, and took the phone. "I didn't wake up."

"Well, if it was anything urgent, I'm sure she would have tried the landline, too," Elizabeth said.

"Probably," Peter agreed, and took the phone and dialed Diana back. A few seconds passed, during which the phone rang and Peter poured more coffee down his throat, and then Diana picked up. "Hey," Peter said. "What did I miss?"

There was the soft mutter of voices on the other end, too soft for Elizabeth to hear, and Peter sagged a little. "Right. Well, we'll pull traffic cams and get another surveillance order put through. Thanks for letting me know."

He hung up.

"No good news?" Elizabeth asked, with a certain degree of sympathy.

"Smith moved his animal down somewhere on South Street early this morning," Peter said. "But he loaded the thing onto its truck using a loading dock we didn't have surveillance on, and apparently he knew he was being tailed. Not so much as a driving violation they could pull him over on – I mean, as much as you can ever pull someone over when you're driving a City Utility van. So we've still got nothing on him that we can use, and all we got out of the night was an awkward conversation and another person who can recognize our vans. I swear, one of these days I'm going to put in a request to have those things repainted."

"You've been saying that for years," Elizabeth said. "What awkward conversation?"

Peter rubbed his hand across his forehead. "I talked to Neal. I think we just added an elephant to the room. And I'm not talking about the one we're chasing."

Elizabeth perked up. "You discovered it's an elephant?"

Peter sighed, staring into the depths of his coffee. "No. We still have no idea what that thing is."

Elizabeth hmphed, then reached over and put her hand on Peter's arm. "You're Peter Burke," she said. "You'll figure it out."

He gave her a somewhat tired smile.

"Both elephants," she said.

"It could be a cape buffalo," Peter muttered.

-

By the time noon rolled around Elizabeth had thrown together a two-egg frittata and settled in at the diningroom table with Satchmo at her feet and a catering catalog at her elbow. She was five bits and two pages in when her cell phone rang, and the caller ID said NEAL.

She flipped the phone open. "Calling in the middle of the day. Are you giving my husband the slip?"

"My turn to pick up the take-out," Neal said. His voice was warm, but had edge of fatigue – not abnormal for the day after a stakeout. And an edge of wariness when he spoke again – not abnormal for Peter's elephant. "How are you?"

Elizabeth quirked a smile. "I'm fine, but I know you didn't call me to ask how I was. Spit it out."

There was an uncharacteristic hesitation, before Neal said, very carefully, "It's possible Peter may think I'm coming on to you."

"Well, no, that's not exactly what he thinks." She flipped a page of the catalog, and because say what you would but Elizabeth Burke was not one to mince words when she didn't think it would help, she said "He thinks I'm coming on to you, and I was going to bring this up at the concert, but life intervened. So. Neal, would you like to formally go out at some point?"

There was silence on the other end of the line, and Elizabeth fought down the urge to smile at the prospect of having thrown the normally-unflappable Neal Caffrey for a loop. Then Neal started in on something which began "Elizabeth, what you and Peter have–", and oh, no, she saw where this was going.

"Has survived a great deal more than Neal Caffrey," she interrupted, "and will continue to do so. Trust me; I am asking with Peter's full knowledge."

There was another silence, but it was shorter, this time. "Okay," Neal said, carefully, then seemed to realized that that was ambiguous, and corrected himself with "No. Wait. ...Peter's okay with this?"

"Honey." Elizabeth laughed. "I'm asking you out, not propositioning you. Peter knows you to be a gentleman, and he's probably counting on me to keep you out of trouble or something. Besides, this means a few less exhibits on modern art he has he suffer through."

"Peter's okay with this," Neal repeated.

"I know," Elizabeth said. "He was surprised, too."

One more moment of silence, and Neal admitted "I'm not really sure what to say."

"Well," Elizabeth said, "take some time. Tell you what – come over for dinner tonight. We can all sit down in the same room and have the conversation we should have had together at the beginning. How does that sound?"

By his tone, Elizabeth suspected that it sounded as bewildering as everything else in the conversation had. "Yeah, I can – that sounds fine. Er, I'm at the deli."

"Oh, which one?"

"Tin Roof, over on Grand Street."

"Ooh," Elizabeth said. "Are you getting Peter the churrasco?"

"He said to just pick up anything." She could hear the background noise, now; that definitely sounded like Tin Roof. "They have deviled ham here, so–"

"Get him the churrasco," Elizabeth said. "And we'll talk later. You're going to need both your hands."

Then she hung up, and left Neal to his errand.

-

When Neal got back to the office to distribute food, Jones and Diana were gone. "Building manager in Two Bridges agreed to let them look around sans warrant," Peter explained. "They're going to call us if they find anything. How'd you know I liked churrasco?"

"Inside source," Neal said, and there was no way he was bringing up anything more from that conversation while they were in a conference room surrounded by other agents.

By the time Diana called they had finished their sandwiches, and they left the rest of the division in the conference room and walked down to Peter's car, just as they had uncounted times before. They got in, and Peter filled him in on what had come up while he was on the sandwich run, and Neal made acknowledging noises and waited to bring up the more pressing concern of several elements of his life no longer making the amount of sense he was accustomed to.

A few streets into the drive, he mentioned "Elizabeth wants me to come over for dinner," and kept an eye on Peter's reaction.

Which didn't tell him much, but certainly implied some things. Peter was keeping his voice carefully neutral, in a way that used to mean he was sure Neal was playing him and wasn't going to play his own hand in response, yet. A tone that said I'm not showing anything until I have a few more factors in play. "That might be a good idea."

"She said the three of us should talk about something," Neal said.

Peter nodded.

Neal let a long breath out, and – remembering the coffee incident in the van – waited until they were safely stopped at a red light so Peter didn't plow the car into a tree or something. "Something about her asking me out on a date."

"It wasn't my idea," Peter said. Like that was the important thing, there.

"...you actually did know about this," Neal realized, aloud. "This isn't just Elizabeth's odd sense of humor."

"We've had some very complicated conversations over the last few days," Peter hedged.

Neal scoffed.

Peter frowned. "Yes, I've already been reminded that it's the 21st century, and that I'm hopelessly out-of-date."

"No," Neal said. "I'm just thinking, this day can't get any weirder." He dug the knuckle of one thumb into his temple. "Isn't there some sort of FBI ethics violation in here?"

"You know," Peter said, "you would think so, but I don't think anyone thought far enough ahead to write this particular situation into the books."

"And that's enough to bring you on board?"

"No!" Peter said. "Of course not. Just because something isn't illegal doesn't mean I automatically approve of it; you know that."

"Yeah, I do," Neal said. "And I know – okay, what about the Stanzler case? You were shooting death glares at me the entire time I was undercover."

"Yes," Peter said, evenly. "Because you were impersonating me."

"I'd call it more of an homage than an impersonation."

"Regardless." Peter tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. "You don't get to be my wife's husband. I get to be my wife's husband. And I get to be me."

"But dating," Neal said. "That's perfectly fine."

Peter shook his head, briefly, like he wasn't finding any better way through this conversation, either. And he kept his eyes on the road – which was a pretty good indication of how comfortable he wasn't; normally, he had no problem staring whoever was in the passenger seat down and encouraging the car to drive itself. "If you're asking why I'm not worried that you'll steal my wife and run with her to France, it's – well, this conversation is a pretty good indication of why."

Neal did his best to communicate, with silence and a steady stare, that the dodge had been transparently obvious, and Peter was doing himself a disservice by pretending it hadn't been.

After a moment, it worked. Peter shifted, paid a bit too much attention to changing a lane, and said "Look, if – if Elizabeth wanted someone younger, or better-looking, or more charming than me, she could have had them at any point." His voice was softer than usual. "I wouldn't even have blamed her. But we've made it through more than a decade of – of me working late and getting called away at odd hours, and giving really terrible gifts at anniversaries and forgetting Valentine's Day altogether, and I love my wife. And I trust her. And if this is something that will make her happy, I support that." He nodded. "Wholeheartedly."

There was a moment of silence, and a part of Neal's chest did something he was sure he hadn't given it permission to do.

"Besides," Peter said, and Neal could tell that he was trying to brush that little bit of emotional honesty under the nearest rug. "I can tell you from experience that my wife can be very persistent if she decides she likes you, and that my life is better for that."

"...are you encouraging me?" Neal asked. Peter being unexpectedly sanguine at the prospect was one thing; him being invested in it was – well, he may have spoken prematurely when he'd said his day couldn't get any weirder. And the odd, steady pressure in his chest wasn't going away.

"Elizabeth... cares about you, and she's worried," Peter said, as they pulled off South Street and into the parking lot of some new and apparently uninhabited condominium, "She thinks you don't have anyone in your life, right now."

"I appreciate the thought," Neal said, "but Sara's just in London. She's still in my life, okay? And I have you guys, and Mozzie, and June, and at this point Jones and Diana like me enough that I can show up at their apartments for drinks, which I'd say is a pretty good indicator that my life is not as lonely as Elizabeth seems to think it is."

"It's not the same, though," Peter said. In some abstract and undefinable way he could kinda grasp but was still having trouble quantifying. He pulled into a spot near the building's front door, shut down the engine, unbuckled himself and stepped out. Neal followed suit.

"Peter," he said, closing the door and crossing his forearms on the car's roof, "you and Elizabeth – you're family, already. That's just as important. It's a lot more important, sometimes."

Peter looked pleased, or possibly relieved. "You know," he said, swinging his own door shut, "that doesn't preclude you from taking Elizabeth out to jazz acts and gallery openings."

"Or on dates?" Neal asked.

Peter sighed. "You know what, so long as no one at the Bureau ever catches wind of it, at this point, that's between you and her. Although."

Neal raised his eyebrows in a go on expression.

Peter shrugged. "I think she'd be good for you."

He was just turning to the condo when something exploded out of the third-floor wall in a shower of glass and concrete. There wasn't time for either of them to do much more than throw themselves to the side, as fist-size debris peppered the pavement around them and something the size of a small elephant took a gentle parabolic arc directly down onto Peter's car. The car's alarm made an abortive mrble, which was quickly swallowed up in the crunch of sheet steel, shatterproof glass, and hopelessly outclassed suspension.

"Is everyone alright?" yelled a voice – Diana – from up above.

Neal scrambled to his feet. Across the car from him, Peter picked himself up a little more carefully, and they took a look at the thing which had just caused multiple insurance claims to be written into someone's schedule. It was huge – longer than the car and massive, with thick legs now bent at unnatural angles beneath its unmoving bulk. It looked like someone had skinned a horned lizard, stretched the skin on top of an armadillo, blown it up to ridiculous size, and stuck a couple of beachball-sized bone clubs on either side of its tail.

It was, in short, an ankylosaurus.

Peter glanced up at the building's new walk-out window, where Jones and Diana could be seen standing just inside, staring down with expressions that said they didn't know what to make of this, either. Peter shook his head – the lizard neither disappeared nor turned into something more sensical – and approached the now-gently-steaming ruin of his car.

He looked over the wreck at Neal.

Neal looked at him.

Both of them looked at the dinosaur.

"...what," Peter said.

—