#anyway peter and elizabeth basically Install Themselves at neal's for the next couple days

[words-writ-in-starlight]

White Collar ot3 number 14, 18 and/or 29 for the ship asks because you just reminded me how much I adore them today. Thank you and happy birthday!!

I cut this bad boy for length because I sure can go on about these three. That first one is basically a whole fic. Thank you, my birthday was great!

14) When one has a cold, what does the other do?

This feels like a great opportunity to talk about one of my favorite things to think about with this OT3, which is The First Time Neal Gets Sick, AKA The Time Peter And Elizabeth Almost Had A Heart Attack.

The thing is, they expect dramatics. Neal is someone who leans on dramatics as 70% of his social charms, and if you'd held a hot brand to Peter's skin while he was chasing Neal over half the godforsaken country, back in the day, he'd have said that Neal would be the type to wring every minor illness for all it was worth. Not, like, out of any particular irritation for that particular behavior--Elizabeth is the kind of person who gets dramatically sick even if all she has is a cold, and if he's being perfectly honest Peter kind of enjoys babying his wife for a few days--but just because. Well. All Neal ever does is make sure all eyes are on him, seeing exactly what he wants, doing exactly what he needs. It's the con he's best at, Neal's favorite magic trick: sweep everyone up in the delirium of those blue eyes and that shattering smile and take everything they've got in their distraction.

So anyway, then Neal doesn't show up to work. He's an hour late. Two hours late. By the third hour, Peter is silently doing the math for how far Neal could get on his anklet without setting it off, and then for any loopholes he might have missed--faking the signal somehow? Neal's passable but not phenomenal with computers, but could he have hired someone? Peter's never heard of someone pulling that off, but Neal's got an aura about him, that makes the impossible seem merely improbable.

It is very important that this be an issue of Neal trying to run, because if it's not, then something might have happened to him. Neal hasn't exactly been endearing himself to the criminal underworld lately.

At three hours and forty-nine minutes past Neal's appointed arrival time, Peter takes an early lunch break and goes to June's. He knocks on Neal's door for a few minutes, and then goes and politely 'acquires' the spare key from the staff and lets himself in.

Neal is asleep on the couch, buried in every blanket he could find in his apartment, and he blinks hazily at Peter for a second when Peter shakes him and then bolts upright so fast that Peter has to move or get concussed.

"Peter," Neal says in a good approximation of his usual good humor. "What are you doing here?"

"You didn't show up to work," Peter says, reaching out toward Neal's forehead automatically. Neal dodges him and Peter sees the dizzy wave cross his face. "Are you sick?"

"I'm fine," Neal says, and then immediately starts coughing, a wet sharp cough that hurts to listen to. "Sorry I'm late, I--fuck, is it past noon? Okay, just--give me a second, I can get ready to go--"

"How long have you been sick, Neal?"

It takes Peter the better part of fifty minutes to wring the facts out of Neal, and he does not like the facts, thanks. He more or less forces Neal back into the blanket nest on the couch and calls El, apologizes for interrupting one of her rare days off and asks her to bring Neal literally anything, and shuts down Neal's fourth attempt to convince Peter that he's fine.

Neal seems...really bothered by the idea that Peter knows he's sick, let alone Elizabeth, and Peter doesn't like what that implies. About anything. At least it doesn't seem personal--Neal doesn't seem to want anyone to know that he's sick, so much so that he's been taking double doses of DayQuil and drinking straight espresso in order to smother all his symptoms at work for the past three days. Peter does some quick math in his head about the number of DayQuil that would require and says "You're lucky you're not in the ER," and Neal says, "I know what I'm doing, Peter," in that voice that means he's thinking about getting offended.

"You're going to give yourself liver failure, is what you're doing. Why didn't you just call out sick, Neal, Jesus Christ." It's blunter than he meant to be--actually, Peter meant to let El work on Neal for a few hours before he came back to play Blunt Cop--but Neal looks awful and he has a fever and he's been taking ten DayQuil in a ten hour work day and Peter does actually read labels and Peter made him stay late at work two days ago because Peter didn't know he was sick.

And maybe it's because Neal's sick, maybe it's because the fever is blurring his reaction time, maybe Peter just knows him really well by this point, but he sees the second that Neal's face closes up and he goes from "defensive" to "ready to do whatever he needs to do in order to get Peter to back down".

And then Neal smiles, all guileless blue eyes and blithe schoolboy innocence, and he says, "Come on, Peter, you'd have thought I was trying to run."

It stings inordinately. Peter did think that, this morning, but only because Neal fucking vanished, didn't come in, didn't answer his phone, didn't even leave a message with someone when Peter showed up. If Neal had said he was sick, Peter might have come by to check on him--and sure, seeing that he was really sick would have put those concerns to bed, but--

"Besides," Neal is continuing, and his voice is starting to show the effect of the coughing now, and he's trying to get up again, wavering on his feet a little before he blinks twice and visibly forces himself to steady. "I'm fine. And even if I wasn't, it's what, seven hundred dollars a month? That's not covering a doctor, and it's not like I have pneumonia. It's just a cold, Uncle Sam, I can still go to work."

And then Neal gives Peter the slip while Peter's still sitting there, stinging.

And the thing is, he doesn't even know if Neal really thinks that of him, or if Neal just knew it would make him shut up long enough for Neal to walk into his bathroom and take more fucking DayQuil.

Well, fine, then. Peter can fight dirty too, and to prove it, he walks the ten feet to the door and leans back against it, just out of an excess of caution, as he pulls out his phone. First he texts his wife, because she's a very smart woman and deserves to have all the information. Second, he calls his boss, because he's already well outside his lunch break and he might as well do the thing properly. Neal comes out of the bathroom, wearing fresh slacks and an unbuttoned white shirt, just as Peter says, "Yes, sir, I'll keep an eye on him."

Then Peter hangs up and points his phone at Neal and says, "Lie the hell back down before I taze you. You're off until next week, and I'm taking the day off to make sure you don't go into organ failure. Don't you dare," he adds when Neal takes a purposeful step toward the kitchenette and its coffee maker. "El is going to be here with actual cold medicine in thirty minutes. Take those slacks off and lie down in your actual bed."

"I'm fine," Neal says again, as if he's not struggling with a shirt button for the first time since Peter's met him, including multiple occasions of being handcuffed.

"You're really not," Peter says, and then he pauses for a moment, and looks at the way Neal's fingers pause on the button, and then he says, a little cautiously, "And that's fine. Everyone gets sick, Neal."

"I don't need you to babysit me," Neal mutters.

"I'm only babysitting you because, apparently, you take life-ending doses of caffeine and cold medicine when you're left alone. Come on, Neal, this won't be the end of the world, El will bring you some food that won't hurt your throat and I'll let you make me watch one of your boring foreign films."

"I know your secrets," Neal says, and then pauses to cough up what's probably part of his failing liver, not that Peter is feeling any doom and gloom about this whole thing. "You watch romcoms with Elizabeth, she told me you enjoy things other than football and you'll never fool me again."

"Yeah, you got me," Peter says with a faint grin. He walks away from the door like he's approaching a feral dog, and closes his hands gently but inexorably around Neal's wrists, and then steers him firmly back onto the couch. Neal's skin is hot even through his shirt, and he trips twice, and he lets Peter push him down into the blankets like he's too tired to do anything else. "I'm going to go get you pajamas. Where do you keep them?"

"Second drawer," Neal says dismally.

"Okay," Peter says, and doesn't give into his impulse to maybe, like, brush Neal's rumpled curls out of his face or something. Half the reason that Peter caught him in the first place is because Peter knows when to press his advantage. He takes the win and gets Neal some pajamas.

18) When they fight, how do they make up?

Elizabeth is the best at this, because she works with vendors all the time and that makes her a literal professional at conflict resolution.  She has a temper and she’ll lose her cool with the best of them, but she knows how to say “I need a minute” and then she’ll leave and come back when she can be reasonable.  She’ll lay out what she’s upset about, hear the other person out, and then either apologize or expect an apology.  Then she’s the physical touch kind of person after a fight--she’ll take Peter’s hands and link their fingers together, or wrap her arms around Neal from behind with her cheek between his shoulder blades, and just kind of...rest against them until everyone’s tension starts to bleed out of them.

Peter isn’t an innately high-empathy person and he knows this, so it’s sometimes hard for him to figure out when a fight even started, let alone how to fix it.  He gets frustrated with himself for not knowing what to do, and then it’s easy for Elizabeth or Neal to feel like he’s mad at them for being mad at him, and then everyone gets madder and it’s just stressful.  So Peter’s the type to ask explicitly “wait, are we fighting” because, first of all, he would like to know so he can figure out how to resolve it, and, second of all, he’s discovered that being clear about it will sometimes shock everyone involved into taking a step back and figuring out if they’re arguing at all or if they’re both just frustrated.  After they’ve managed to figure out what’s wrong and talked it out, Peter’s an acts of service kind of person after a fight--his specific brand is to make someone’s favorite meal, regardless of who was doing the apologizing.  

Neal is...not good at conflict.  For obvious reasons, he’s inclined toward avoiding conflict when he can, and bailing immediately afterward when he can’t.  The first time he actually fought with Elizabeth, she had to come to his apartment and hammer on his door until he let her in.  Neal’s never really been able to argue with someone and then have them still be there except for maybe Mozzie, and it’s an extremely rough adjustment for everyone.  It requires a lot of patience from Elizabeth and Peter, and a lot of anxiety from Neal, for them to find a balance about it.  But Neal is a gifts person after an argument, once he learns to be anything after an argument, and not just extravagant things.  He brings flowers or Elizabeth’s favorite mixers or one of the boring patterned ties that Peter loves, he brings a paperweight or a mug, a hair pin, a new set of dress shoe laces, a pair of beautiful earrings, a six-pack of beer, whatever hoves into his field of vision and he can afford to acquire.

29) Why do they fall a little bit more in love?

One time when he got home from work, Peter caught Neal and Elizabeth waltzing in the kitchen while the radio played the Top 40 Hits station, and they were giggling while they tried to keep time to Umbrella, and Neal was complaining about El not letting him play classical while she was cooking, and Neal dipped El so that she could wink at Peter upside down, and they burned dinner because they left the stove on and the three of them got takeout ramen instead.

Peter thinks about that evening sometimes when he’s stuck in traffic.