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“If you don’t stop fidgeting with the handcuffs, I’m going to put them on your wrists,” Diana threatened, shooting a glare in his direction.
“I’ll just pick them,” Neal said, unbothered.
When her glare didn’t relent, he tossed her the handcuffs, quieting his fidgety hands. He was just beginning to feel proud of himself for managing to sit without at least tapping his fingers together when Jones said, “The foot tapping isn’t much better.” Neal looked down and realized he’d started tapping his foot, such a small and quick motion it seemed like his foot might simply be vibrating.
He quieted his feet.
“Okay,” Peter said, rolling his eyes with frustration, “we get it. You don’t like the van. Message received. We have all also been here for two hours, nobody is any more thrilled than you are, and the incessant fidgeting isn’t going to get any of us to let you go home early, so pull it together for one more hour, okay? If our guy doesn’t show up by then, we’ll all go grab something to eat and go home.”
There were a lot of things Neal could was tempted to respond to there—a comment on how bad the van was, or maybe the fact that he wasn’t strictly trying to send a message, or the fact that an hour in this van currently sounded longer than his four year prison sentence, or perhaps Peter’s questionable food choices. Instead, in a flare up of very real frustration, he bit out, “What am I doing now?”
Internally, he winced—that wasn’t strictly keeping it together, which wasn’t good for his image, so he tried to follow it up with a playful smirk to show that he was kidding, or that he obviously already knew what he was doing and was totally messing with him, and they were right to think he was messing with him, and they should just be upset with him and he would continue to annoy them and the status quo would be preserved and everything would be fine.
Peter looked caught off guard by the question, though, like it was the last thing he’d expected, and he wasn’t fooled by Neal’s attempts to cover up his frustration. He raised an eyebrow, pointing to Neal’s left hand, which Neal now became aware was flicking each of his fingers off his thumb in a rhythmic pattern.
He stilled his hand, which immediately started itching, buzzing beneath his fingertips, like if he didn’t start moving them his hands might actually explode. His eyes scanned the van, looking for anything interesting to focus on. He racked his brain for topics to think about besides the stakeout. It wasn’t his preferred method, since he preferred to be present so he could observe everything and never be caught off guard, but he could usually make the urge to fidget go away if he found a sufficient daydream to focus on and creatively pick the details of.
“How did you ever manage to keep still during cons and heists?” Diana wondered. “Surely you can’t pull off a major theft while constantly conspicuously fidgeting.”
“If that was an attempt to get me to confess to theft, it wasn’t subtle,” Neal said, flashing a grin. It’s not difficult when I’m committing crimes, he doesn’t say. When I have a job, when I have a task, especially the things like cons and heists which are constant sources of adrenaline, I don’t NEED to move, or fidget, or find something to occupy my mind with.
It wasn’t worth trying to explain.
“No, no, she has a point,” Peter pressed. “If you can be still and quiet enough to vanish into thin air the way you do, how is it that on a stakeout, you incessantly fidget without even realizing you’re doing it?”
So he picked up on that, huh?
Of course he did. “Well, I can’t let you guys forget how much I hate a long stakeout,” Neal reminded them, playing off of Peter’s earlier assumption that he was fidgeting to send a message. The blinding smirk he tossed in caused Diana and Jones to turn away with nearly identical eye rolls, but though Peter dropped the topic, it was obvious he wasn’t satisfied by that answer.
Great. Now he had Agent Peter Burke, archeologist who never stopped digging, taking an interest in his ridiculous inability to sit still for long periods of time like an adult. At best, it would be material for him to tease him about being childish, and at worst, it would affect the way he viewed him at work.
He’d just have to go on as usual, constantly reminding him via his actions that he was a valuable asset, and hopefully this incident would disappear into the back of his mind, filed away with all the other “Neal Caffrey being intentionally annoying” instances and memories.
—
Neal checked his watch compulsively. He’d done it anxiously often enough (a con artist could never afford to lose track of time, after all) that it had become a nervous habit, which was just as well. It didn’t look like a nervous habit, which kept it from presenting as a sign of weakness, and it made sure he never lost track of time, which he’d been distressingly prone to as a child.
The habit hadn’t flown under Peter’s radar, of course, but when he suspiciously asked him what he was always inspecting his watch for, he’d shrugged, looked away convincingly uncomfortably, and claimed it was something about the sense of routine that had been drilled into him by prison. It was one of the few lies of Neal’s that Peter had ever bought.
(Probably because it wasn’t totally a lie. Neal hadn’t ever thought it was possible for him to have an internal clock for routine, but prison had come closer than anything to drilling one in.)
So when his watch broke and he discarded it one morning, he found himself glancing at and rubbing his wrist compulsively all day, internally feeling uncomfortably surprised when he didn’t feel it. By the end of the day, he’d grown used to it not being there, and though he still glanced at his wrist compulsively every now and then, he no longer expected to actually find the time.
It wasn’t an issue, anyway. It wasn’t like he kept his own schedule.
It didn’t become an issue until he was painting later that night and an insistent knock sounded on his apartment door. “Coming,” he called as he wiped off his paintbrushes, though a needlessly strong annoyance flared up in his chest. It wasn’t that he was closed to visitors—he liked June and Mozzie and Peter, the three most likely people to be knocking at the moment—but when he was focused on something like painting, really focused, there was always something enormously frustrating about being interrupted, even if he cognitively understood that it was silly.
He opened the door to Peter, wearing a stern, suspicious expression. Peter blew past him, walking through his room and leaving Neal standing in the doorway.
“Why don’t you come on in,” Neal said sarcastically as he shut the door.
Peter squinted at the canvas Neal was painting on disapprovingly. “That’s a famous Monet, right?”
“Impression, Sunrise,” Neal confirmed. “Painting helps me clear my head. I’ve done this one a few times.” Never for illegal reasons, actually, now that he thought about it. He just really liked painting Monet reproductions.
Peter gave him a pointed look.
“Yeah, I thought you might do this,” Neal said with a sigh. He tilted the canvas so he could see the top back corner, where Neal had already signed his full, real name in dark, unmistakable lettering. “It’s not a forgery. It’s for fun and practice.”
Peter nodded slowly, though the suspicious expression still didn’t disappear. Figures. “Care to tell me what you’ve been doing all this time, while your anklet shows you sitting perfectly still in the middle of the room?”
Neal raised an eyebrow. “Painting. I’ve been painting. As you can see,” he said, gesturing to the canvas. “And I’ve already proven I’m not planning on selling it under false pretenses. Unless there’s something illegal about having a hobby, I’m not sure what I’ve done to warrant whatever this is.”
“Uh-huh,” Peter said, still disbelievingly, which was really beginning to piss Neal off. “You’ve been painting, and doing nothing else, not moving, for the last five hours?”
Neal rolled his eyes at the exaggeration. “No. I started around eight PM, and if my tracking shows me standing still before that, it’s been hacked or something. I don’t know.”
Now the suspicion finally dropped— thank GOD —only to be replaced by concern. “Neal… what time do you think it is?”
Neal shrugged. “I don’t know. My watch broke this morning, so I haven’t been watching the time as closely as I normally do.”
“It’s one in the morning,” Peter said.
The words hit Neal like a freight train.
There were so many things he could say to that. He settled on the response that didn’t reveal any of his own concern or insecurity: “You were stalking my tracking data at one in the morning? You drove out to my apartment in suspicion over my tracking data at one in the morning?”
“You were completely still for five hours!” Peter defended himself. “That’s not you; that’s not Neal Caffrey. I figured at best you were passed out in the middle of your apartment and needed medical attention and at worst you were up to something suspicious or someone hacked your tracking! Neither one of those is a good situation!”
“I appreciate the concern,” he said wryly, trying to hide his concern at the way he so thoroughly lost track of time behind a mask of mild irritation, “but I’m perfectly fine, and you should probably go home and to bed before Elizabeth gets worried about you.”
“I’m still worried about you,” Peter said. At least now he really did look worried for Neal instead of worried Neal was up to something, finally. It would be touching if Neal wasn’t itching to be left alone with his own concerns (and tiredness, now that he was no longer wired with the energy of painting the Monet replica, and come to think of it, when was the last time he used the restroom? Or drank a glass of water?). “You were really painting for that long?”
“Yes. Again, unless having a hobby is illegal now—”
“You can’t even sit still for a three hour stakeout,” Peter pointed out. “There’s always fidgeting and tapping. And you can’t solve a crime or plan a sting without pacing. You don’t just focus.” Neal must have seemed defensive, because Peter quickly continued, “I don’t have a problem with it. I mean, sometimes in the van it gets frustrating, but I don’t mind the constant movement. It’s almost… endearing.”
Neal bristled even further. I’m not a child. I handle myself; I’m in control. I am.
“But you can focus on making a forgery?”
“Reproduction. For fun. And it’s not true that I can’t focus,” Neal said, keeping the defensiveness in his voice under control. If he was too defensive, he’d set off Peter’s Neal Caffrey Alarms, and he’d invite an interrogation into his time management issues and fidgety behaviors. “I just can’t always choose what I focus on. And I need more movement to focus sometimes. Why does this even matter?” Why are we talking about my FOCUSING, like you’re my fifth grade teacher or something? I take care of myself fine. I’m an adult, not a child.
“How did you not realize it was one in the morning?”
“Got in a zone, lost track of time without my watch. It’s not going to affect my work at the office,” Neal quickly added. “I’ll get a new watch as soon as possible. Time management hasn’t been an issue yet, has it?”
“No,” Peter agreed slowly, “it hasn’t… but you do check your watch a lot.”
“Right. That’s me managing my time. As you can tell, I’m perfectly fine and there’s nothing wrong with me.”
“I didn’t think there was something wrong with you,” Peter said curiously, looking at him strangely. Great. Now Neal was letting childhood insecurities actually slip into his tone and words. It had really thrown him off to realize he’d majorly lost track of time for the first time in… a while.
He didn’t need his control slipping now.
He was a con artist. He could do better than this. “Then you should probably go to bed,” Neal said, raising an eyebrow at him. “Since I’m not doing anything suspicious and it’s the middle of the night.”
Peter nodded awkwardly, looking like he wanted to say something else but either wasn’t sure what it was or didn’t know how to word it. “Okay. Um… have a good night.”
“You too.”
—
“Neal, I swear to God,” Diana’s voice cut through the thick, uncomfortable air of the van.
That was nothing new. Neal raised his hands in a mock gesture of surrender, flashing a smirk in her direction. This is our normal banter. I do this to annoy her because it’s funny, and not because my skin buzzes uncomfortably with unreleased energy when I sit still in unexciting and under-stimulating environments.
He had a new watch that he was back to checking compulsively and was taking care of himself just fine. He wasn’t losing track of time, he wasn’t letting any unwarranted irritability show when he was interrupted from something he was focused on, and his fidgeting and pacing was a joke, not a problem. It was a running joke, that was all it was.
“Here,” Peter said, holding something out to Neal. “Try this.”
Neal raised an eyebrow, taking the… thing out of his hands. “What is this?”
“Silicone-covered magnets,” he said, less like he knew it by heart and more like he was repeating something he heard elsewhere. “It was Elizabeth’s idea.”
Neal snapped one of the magnets off, rotated it, and snapped them back together. “What’s Elizabeth thinking?”
“That they might be an easy way for you to fidget without making noise,” he said, “so you can keep your hands occupied and the rest of us can have our peace and quiet.”
The more Neal rotated them in his hands, the more he realized they were actually incredibly effective at making the buzzing under his fingertips go away while being much quieter than flicking his fingers or snapping handcuffs. “Huh. These are strangely fun.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Burke,” Jones said.
“She’s great,” Peter agreed.
“Where did she get this idea?” Neal wondered.
“Oh, she has a friend from her event business who keeps them in her purse,” Peter said. “Apparently she highly recommends them for other people with… other people who need to fidget a lot.”
Neal bristled slightly.
If Jones and Diana noticed the way Peter redirected his sentence, they didn’t show it, but Neal certainly did.
“I don’t have a problem,” Neal emphasized. It’s not a condition, he reminded himself. I’m completely fine.
“Of course you don’t,” Peter agreed. “It’s a group problem. You need to do something with your hands and we can’t stand the sound of you doing things with your hands, and the magnets fix that little dynamic for all four of us so we can focus on the stakeout.”
Neal relaxed slightly. He still wasn’t sure he completely believed him, and he’d have to get the truth out of Elizabeth over what she thought was going on with him (and explain to her gently that she was completely wrong, but that he appreciated the gift). Just as he relaxed, Peter stiffened. “That’s our guy,” he said, pointing. “That’s him. Agents, be ready to move. Neal, with me.”
And just like that, adrenaline spiked in his veins, and Neal found himself laser-focused, Elizabeth’s thoughtful gift temporarily forgotten.