elrhiarhodan

Title: The Smartest Man I Know
Author: elrhiarhodan
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Peter Burke, Neal Caffrey, Elizabeth Burke. You don’t need slash goggles to see Peter/Neal in the future
Spoilers: None
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: Ovid, Socrates and Plato, Castrati, Carmina Burana and Rem Koolhaus. Victoria Regina and Lesbosians. Things that will never be mentioned in the same fic at the same time ever again.
Word Count: ~1200
Summary: Peter thinks Neal is pulling a fast one on him. Peter may be right. These are two very clever men.



A/N: Written for the lovely daria234, for her request on the recent comment fic meme. Her prompt is at the end of the fic. No beta. All mistakes are mine and mine alone.

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Peter was listening with a half an ear as Neal was holding forth in the Conference Room on a most unusual subject – the poetry of Ovid. Diana was listening avidly, Blake was trying to pay attention and Jones was having trouble keeping his eyes opened.

“And in 8 C.E., Ovid so offended the Emperor Augustus, that he was exiled to the city of Tomis on the Oxane Sea.”

Without thinking Peter said, “Neal – that’s the Euxine Sea. The Black Sea. Not the Oxane.”

Peter didn’t look up as Neal corrected himself. If he had, he might have noticed Neal’s smile.

A few weeks later, they were talking about, of all things, Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana.

“Those 9th century French monks, they were something. All that sexy talk and drinking.”

Peter took a sip of his beer, shook his head and sighed. “Neal – those monks were German. And it was the 12th century.”

“Oh.” If the lighting on the balcony weren’t quite so atmospheric, Peter would have seen how Neal’s eyes glowed.

Peter finally began to notice a pattern. They’d be discussing something – art or music, history or literature, and Neal would make a small error of fact. Peter would correct him; Neal would docilely accept the correction and move on. It wasn’t the mistakes that caught Peter’s attention, because no one, even their resident summa cum laude autodidact, could know everything. It was the way the Neal never challenged the correction – and even seemed to take such pleasure in being corrected.

Finally, when Peter mentioned that the people of the island of Lesbos were called “Lesbosians” not “Lesbians” (they were dealing with a case involving Paleolithic artifacts smuggled out of that island), he couldn’t help but see Neal’s look of satisfaction. After the meeting, he pulled his partner aside and started questioning him.

“Maybe we should take this to the interrogation room?” Neal gave him the full Caffrey grin.

“And maybe you should just tell me why you seem to take so much enjoyment being corrected.” It was a stupid question, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that Neal was running a scam on him.

“Ummm, maybe because I’ve once been a part of the Federal corrections system?”

“Stop joking, Neal. I’m not stupid – and I have eyes in my head. What’s going on?”

“Peter – what can I tell you? Didn’t Plato say that “True knowledge only exists when you know you know nothing?”

“You’re paraphrasing. It was Socrates who said scio me nihil scireor more accurately, ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα. “I know I know nothing.” Plato simply wrote that down.”

This time, there was no mistaking Neal’s grin of triumph, and there was something else there too. That “something else” was what was confounding Peter. “Neal – I don’t know what game you are playing – but I’m going to get to the bottom of is.”

Neal rocked back on his heels, lifted his chin and just said, “Prove it.”

For the better part of two years, they continued to play cat and mouse, or rather pupil and teacher. Or something else entirely.

Peter kept a list of all of the things he had corrected Neal on, he ran it through every database he had access to, and pulled strings to get access to ones he didn’t. Even the CIA’s massive data crunching tools could find no statistical or probable relationship between those bits of data.

One evening, sitting in his living room, trying to make sense of it all, he let out a muffled groan of frustration.

El asked him what was wrong. Or rather, all she said was “Neal?”

“Yeah. I still don’t get it.” Peter had long ago told El of his suspicions that Neal was playing some type of game, or worse.

“Hon, I know that you’ll never trust Neal. You’ve been through too much with him – but frankly, you’re being ridiculous.” She picked up a page of Peter’s notes. “You’ve corrected him about … famous castrati, the difference between the optative and the subjunctive moods, that Rem Koolhaus is Dutch, not Danish, the pronunciation of Victoria Regina…”

“Re-KHI-nah” not “Re-sghee-NA” Peter commented.

El shook her head. “Whatever. I think you are looking for something that isn’t there. Neal’s smart, you’re smarter – and he seems not mind when you prove it.”

“El – it can’t be that simple.”

“Peter – sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

He sighed. Maybe she was right. Maybe he was so accustomed to looking for problems, he was simply inventing them. Besides, Neal’s work-release was coming to an end in a week. He’ll be someone else’s problem in less than a hundred hours.

And Peter was unutterably depressed.

There was a small ceremony at the office when Peter took the tracker off for the last time. The Harvard Crew had taken Neal out to lunch to celebrate. Peter didn’t go, claiming workload. Neal simply commented that there was cake, and it was good.

It was after five, there were a few boxes on Neal’s desk. Peter sourly thought that most of those were filled his tie collection. He kept his head down; he didn’t want to see Neal walk out the door for the last time. He almost wanted to ignore the knock on the door.

“Hey.” Neal’s voice was quiet. “I didn’t want to go without saying goodbye.”

“Yeah. Can’t believe it. Four years – you made it through.” Peter tried to inject a note of levity and failed miserably.

“I’ll be back – you know. I’m just going to travel for a while. June’s letting me keep the apartment. New York will always be my home base, and I … will miss this too much.” Neal blinked and Peter thought there might have been tears in his eyes.

The shook hands – and Peter pulled him into an awkward hug. Neal struggled and then wrapped his arms around him and whispered, “I’ll be back, I promise.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.”

He turned to leave and Peter couldn’t help himself. “A question, Neal.”

“What, Peter?”

“Remember, when I asked why you never challenged me when I corrected you?”

Neal gave a small huff of laughter. “Of course.”

“Can you tell me now?”

“Why does there have to be an explanation?”

“Because, in all the years I’ve know you, there is nothing you do that doesn’t need an explanation.”

Neal’s smile dimmed just a little. “After everything, you still don’t trust me?”

Peter felt a little ashamed. No – he’d never fully trust Neal – but this suddenly seemed so petty. “Forget it. I’m sorry. It’s not important.”

Neal didn’t leave, and he finally gave Peter a rueful grin. “You really want to know?”

He couldn’t believe it – there was actually something there. He hadn’t been chasing shadows. He nodded.

Neal licked his lips. “You’re the smartest man I know. When you correct me, you validate that.” He shrugged, seemingly embarrassed by the confession.

Peter blinked. “You admire me?”

“Yeah.”

Peter relaxed – of all the answers; this was the last one he expected. “Well, umm, thank you.” He wasn’t going to ever tell Neal the lengths he’d gone to try and decipher a more sinister motive.

And then Neal had to go wreck his newly found peace of mind. As he walked out the door, he tossed one final comment.

“And I find your smarts almost unbearably sexy.”

FIN

The Prompt: Neal keeps saying incorrect things about something (not crime is fun, but like when he made a mistake about Tycho Brahe on the show). The reason? He knows Peter knows about the topic and he finds it HOT when Peter corrects him on cultural knowledge/stuff that Neal finds refined and sophisticated. (It doesn't have to be trivia, of course, anything where Neal like Peter to make him more 'cultured' since Neal is of course a total 'high-culture'-fetishist. :)