Title: I'd Do Anything For Love
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: PG
Length: 900



The clock was already showing 3AM, but Elizabeth couldn't sleep, her thoughts running wild.  Peter's rhythmic breathing next to her assuring her he was fast asleep.  She didn't want to lie to him, she really didn't.  But she wasn't sure she had any other choice.

At first she'd thought she'd been reacting to the danger of Peter's quest, but it was really much more than that.

She knew Peter was going to go after Pratt.  She wished he'd be going after a less dangerous target - hell, she wished he didn't spend his days chasing dangerous people - but he wouldn't be the Peter she married if he'd backed down now.  What she couldn't take was knowing that once again Neal had managed to get her husband to throw away his principles for whatever it was Neal had schemed up.

She'd fallen for it too.  How could she not fall for the dashing young man who executed a daring escape and risked prison to be with his one and only love?  It was so romantic, the stuff you only read about in fairy tales.   

He'd show up at their house, full of smiles and brimming with ideas about how to catch the next bad guy.  Peter thought that was an indication that Neal was improving, heading down the right path.  It was actually the other way around. Neal was attracted to the challenge, and slowly but surely he was leading Peter down a path El wasn't sure he could get off.  It started with small things, taking shortcuts here and there.  Then developed into running Neal's cons with him.  By now, Peter had confided in her, writing reports that would pass FBI muster was getting harder and harder.  He was closing more and more cases, but at what price?  

This wasn't the man she'd married. 

When Neal's father thanked them for being a family to Neal, she'd taken it as a compliment.  But adopting a convict, particularly one who refused to give up his criminal lifestyle, was never part of the deal.
 
So many months ago, testifying before Neal's commutation committee, she'd said Neal was worth all the trouble he'd caused Peter.  She wasn't so sure about that anymore.  Keller wasn't his fault, Pratt wasn't his fault either, but disaster followed in Neal's footsteps, because he didn't care and didn't look back.  He lived in the moment.

What really cinched it was the day Peter came home several weeks earlier, all ashen.  Neal had 'had it', he said, with Peter meddling in his life.  He'd blamed Peter for Ellen, for Sam - and Peter had taken the blame.

After everything Peter had done for the guy.  Putting his career on the line for him, time and time again.  Running to the ends of the earth in order to bring him back safe and sound.  Worrying about him for nights on end.  Because Peter could talk till he was blue in the face about being responsible as Neal's FBI handler.  That might have been true at first,  but by now it was much more than that.  Peter cared.  For the first time in his life Neal had somebody who was much more than a handler, or even a partner.  He had somebody who was there for him, no matter what.  Somebody who might send him to jail, if that was the only way to help him, rather than see him ruin his life.  And that was something that ingrate Neal could never understand.

Peter was right, of course.  Sam wasn't who he claimed to be.  Neal didn't bother apologizing, and Peter had simply rolled with it, glad that Neal was talking to him again.  He thought that if Neal had come to him for help (again), that was enough. It wasn't.

And the worse part was that for all she and Peter knew, Neal could be running a con.  A long con.  Or maybe a series of shorter cons.  Wasn't that exactly the con his father had ran on him?  Push away the target and make them *want* to do anything, everything, to help you out?  After close to three years, she had no idea if she really knew who Neal Caffrey was.  She wasn't even sure Peter knew, and he'd had analyzed Neal from every possible angle for almost as long as she'd known him.

When she'd told Neal to keep his scheming to himself, the only excuse he could come up with was "I can't lie to Peter."  As if he hadn't spent the past three years lying to her husband.  El couldn't care less about the distinctions Neal, and even Peter, made between 'lying' and 'conning'.  Obviously Neal saw no problem with the latter.  Sure, it was charming at times.  Who else but Neal would steal a multimillion dollar treasure under the nose of a suspicious FBI agent?   But by now, she realized, it was jeopardizing Peter's career, his life.       

She knew Neal would go along with her request, because it appealed to his instincts.  And then the next day, he showed up expecting an apology.  She'd actually been thinking of starting with a perfunctory 'I'm sorry' for the way she'd laid it on him the day before, but his assumptions made her change her mind.  She was not going to apologize.  If Neal wanted to be a scheming thief and run behind Peter's back, then he'd better do it when it suited her too.

Neal didn't fool Peter - probably because he wasn't trying too hard - but that didn't change anything.  Peter was now following Neal as the criminal he was, and not as a partner in crime.

Because whoever Neal was, this time she'd had it.