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In a world with metahumans, aliens, and a league of superheroes, when you think of crime, you think of the big bads.
But here in the White Collar unit, they have to deal with all of the white collar crime of those big bads.
Because, shocker, they don’t exactly fund their criminal escapades in moral, legal ways.
Honestly, the people robbing banks are the least of their problems. It’s the villains who take over other villains’ empires and take on all of their assets that things get murky (and annoying).
Look, they’re not the IRS. There’s a lot that isn’t their jurisdiction.
To be honest, the thing they have to deal with most is copyright infringement.
These villains have their schticks and people want a piece of that.
So, that’s what brings Captain David Singh from the Central City Police Department to their offices.
A sudden influx of villain copycats has not only given the Flash a headache but the CCPD, mostly deciphering who is the real deal and what to do about the ones they catch who aren’t.
It’s mostly a consultation, one that could’ve been done in a Zoom call, but the man had been in town for his husband’s work.
Neal is lounging at his desk, half off his chair as he fills out a Sudoku book with impressive speed.
“Neal,” Peter barks.
Neal’s head snaps up as he nearly falls from his chair but expertly catches himself and somehow makes it look completely smooth and intentional. “Peter,” he replies, cocking a brow. As if reading Peter’s mind, Neal hands him a stack of files. “My daily assignments. And also tomorrow’s. And the day after that.” He grins cheekily. “Really, Peter, I’d think you guys would at least be trying to give me a challenge.”
“Is that your way of saying you want more work?” Peter asks, grabbing the file with a huff. “How about we stick you with all of the mortgage fraud that’s been piling up?”
“You know what? I think my workload is perfectly portioned.”
Peter snorts and thumbs through the report though mostly skimming, knowing that they will all be perfectly filled out as always.
As much of a troublemaker Neal can be, he’s great at what he does and he’s quick with it.
Something about it clicks with him enough to breeze through it all, even the grueling paperwork.
But it’s always all filled out diligently with ample detail and clear thought put into it. The facts check out and it’s worded professionally.
Peter also knows that this isn’t Neal’s way of showing off. He does it because he’s bored.
Neal gets restless when there’s nothing to do. It’s no surprise that he resorted to (alleged) art theft to fill his time.
Hell, if Peter could get his work done in the time Neal does with the quality Neal does it, he’d be itching to fill his time too. (Though he’d probably use it to travel with Elizabeth and not forge bonds — really, Neal, what is the fascination with bond forgery?)
Before he can propose an expansion on the type of work Neal does, Peter spots the CCPD Captain enter.
Neal follows his line of sight and immediately collapses to the ground, chair and all.
“Neal!”
Neal doesn’t pop up gracefully this time, instead hiding under his desk — futilely might he add since he can clearly be seen by the gap between the desk and floor.
The Captain looks confused between Peter and the man hiding under his desk.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into him,” Peter says, as though Neal is a misbehaving dog and not a grown man and also his criminal informant making a terrible first impression on a police captain.
Peter sees Neal go to stand but he hits his head hard on the underside of the desk before clumsily crawling out from under the desk with a lack of grace Peter has never seen from the man.
The Captain’s eyebrows shoot up. “Allen? What the hell are you doing here?”
It’s Peter’s turn to be shocked, eyes darting between Neal and Captain Singh.
Now, this could mean a lot of things, and Peter has always been one for building up doomsday prepping worst case scenarios in his mind.
Already flipping through different explanations to their familiarity — a past con, a past arrest, a past theft — the last thing he expects is for Neal rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “Hey, Cap.”
“What are you doing in White Collar? Are you even qualified for this?”
Peter is about to interject on Neal’s defense but is cut off and made even more perplexed.
“You got a double major in physics and chemistry. Why would you ever leave forensics to be a pencil pusher?”
Peter, speechless with confusion and also the million branches growing in his Theories About Neal Caffrey, just watches as Neal shrinks in on himself even more.
“There’s… more than just paperwork?” Neal says.
Captain Singh just looks at the pile of folders in Peter’s hands with a disbelieving look.
“Okay, there’s a lot of paperwork, but there’s also… analysis.”
“Neal is an expert on forgery analysis, specifically bonds and art,” Peter says, finally catching up from his blue screen comprehension.
“Neal?” Captain Singh repeats.
Okay… so Peter has known that Neal Caffrey was an alias. Maybe not known for sure but considered he had chased the near ghost for years and not been able to find anything but the carefully planted available information about him, it’s a pretty simple deduction.
But never did Peter expect to actually know who Neal Caffrey was before he was Neal Caffrey. He was content in not knowing, figuring that there was pain in the past that he left, a reason he would turn to crime and leave behind whatever life he had before. He had inklings about what had led him to this from his observations and the things the man had told him himself.
What he hadn’t expected was that nothing he thought was right at all, and he really had no idea who Neal was before.
“Allen?” Peter repeats, directed at Neal, the question clear: is that your first or last name?
“Barry Allen,” Neal says after a long pause.
“And why are we establishing this?” Captain Singh asks. He looks between Peter and Neal skeptically.
“I’m here as a criminal informant,” Neal says slowly, his tone odd as if there’s something more to that statement than just his official title.
There’s a complicated tradeoff of expressions that Peter can’t even begin to decipher. Whatever is said in their silent conversation leads Captain Singh pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Give the kid a chance, they said. He’s Joe’s kid, how can you say no to Joe’s kid? So what if he’s late to every scene even though he should definitely be able to on time since he’s The…” he trails off, whatever’s unsaid leaving Neal tensed. “Okay. I’m up to speed. It doesn’t matter. I need to talk to you about these Rogue copycats.”
“Why didn’t you talk to Cisco and Caitlin?” Neal asks before pressing his lips shut, eyes wide and cringing to himself.
Captain Singh sighs again, a tired sigh that Peter understands very well. “Because STAR Labs has a lot more important things to deal with than helping me figure out the precedent of identity theft when it’s everything from shapeshifting to cloning to nanobot androids.”
Peter’s brows raise with alarm.
“Speaking of,” Captain Singh. “If you’re here, why are you not…”
Neal swishes his arms at his sides, like a bad attempt at miming a jog and then points from the right to the left and finishes with a goofy grinned thumbs up.
“Right,” Captain Singh says dryly. “Of course. Well, maybe you can help me run through this too.”
Neal groans.
“How often do you hear that one?”
“So much. Way too much.”
“I bet you hear ‘in a—’”
“Way too much.”
Peter doesn’t like not knowing but he also knows that Neal is offering him something important here. It’s an extension of trust they hadn’t had before, even if it wasn’t from his own volition.
Peter knows a name. It may not be his name but it’s a name. A name he could definitely research and run through all of the systems he has access to.
But, Peter won’t. Because he’d like to know this other Neal. Barry Allen, CCPD CSI, science extraordinaire.
How he went from that to here, Peter doesn’t know. But he knows that it’s not nearly as simple as he imagined it was.
(Peter is definitely not ready for a tale about a time traveling man in yellow, a life-changing lightning strike and a fantastic tale that is almost unbelievable if not for Peter seeing it with his own eyes.
“Why tell me?” Peter asks.
“Because I trust you,” Barry says. “And you deserve to know.”
Peter doesn’t think he deserves to know any of this. This is so much bigger than him.
“And because it’s safer for you to know. I’ve learned the hard way that keeping the people I love out of the loop only gets them hurt.”
Finding out he’s in the ‘people he loves’ category is a shock in itself.
It’s hours after the long retelling of Barry’s life story as they sit on the couch, Barry mindlessly playing tug of war with Satchmo, that it hits Peter.
“Wait. But why did you become an art thief if you’re still The Flash?”
Barry, not looking up from the rope toy in his hand, shrugs. “Oh yeah. All the stuff I stole were anachronisms messed up because I time traveled. The Time Bureau wasn’t happy with me and now I’m on time travel parole.” The rope toy drops from Satchmo’s mouth and Barry tosses it across the room for Satchmo to fetch. “Oh, also on another Earth, you were one my speedster nemeses and I had to make sure you wouldn’t fall down the same path.” Satchmo hands Barry the toy again which he throws once again. “So there’s that too.”)
In a life chasing laundering, fraud, and forgery, when Peter Burke thinks of crime, he thinks of white collar crime.
But this is also a world with metahumans, aliens, and a league of superheroes.
And apparently the line between the two is smaller than he thought.