Title: Criminal (Part 2 of ?)
Author: Castiel! at the Disco (a/k/a calcium_yeah )
Rating: R
Fandoms: Supernatural, White Collar
Genre: Slash
Pairing: Dean Winchester/Neal Caffrey, allusions to Neal/Kate
Spoilers/Warnings: None/Nothing you wouldn’t expect from a rated R fic.
Disclaimer: A collection of people own Supernatural, White Collar and their characters. I own nothing.
Notes: Not sure why this was suddenly so easy to write, but I'll take what I can get. Cross-posted to sn_crossovers, sn_slash , and whitecollarfic .
Summary: Dean checks into a New York motel using an identity created for him over four years ago by the best forger, counterfeiter, and general white collar criminal Dean has ever known. That criminal? Well he’s happy to see that identity is still in use. Chapter 1: A Phone call. Chapter 2: Backstory!

Neal was a picture of effortless cool, and he’d probably spent hours figuring out how to pull it off. His hat was tipped over his eyes, blocking the setting sun, as he leaned against the brick exterior of a West Village coffee shop. He wore a pale gray suit, white shirt, and black tie—all immaculately smooth—and the only thing that looked out of place to Dean was the bulge at the bottom of his pant leg. Dean thought maybe Neal had finally taken the hint and started packing.

He certainly got in enough trouble to make it worth his while.

After Dean had gone to Neal for work a few times, got to know him well enough that they both became a bit less over-protective about their big illegal secrets, Dean became more casual about hiding his weapons. John was always paranoid about sharing information, and even with other hunters he was always wary, but when he and Dean took separate trips, Dean fell into his own patterns. There was a certain camaraderie that Dean felt when he did business with people like Neal. The guy might not have been out to make the world a better place, but he was damn good at what he did and he never asked Dean too many questions.

So when they met out in Philadelphia for some heavy fake identity work, and Dean popped open the trunk of the car he was renting, he didn’t even try to keep Neal from seeing the hunting paraphernalia stored there.

Neal had look disturbed when he’d seen the guns Dean carried on him; not scared, or worried, or even uncomfortable—he just didn’t look like he approved.

“You alright?” Dean had eyed him, looking for a sign that the other man was going to freak out and call off their transaction or say something about what he’d seen, but Neal was too much of a professional to let what he’d seen make a difference, and he was too smart to slap on a smile and pretend he hadn’t been bothered.

“Just not a fan of guns.” Neal turned his palms up as if to say ‘eh, what’re you gonna do, that’s life’ before pointing to the cash Dean had pulled out of its hiding place. “I am however a fan of your frequent need for new identification. And believe me, you’re going to be a fan of the I.D. that I provide you.”

And that’s what Dean liked, that Neal didn’t concern himself with why Dean always needed this new identification, or even with who this older man was in the pictures that Dean supplied for John’s I.D.

They’d done business this way for a while, Dean visiting the tri-state area when John was on another job. Over time, they started to meet at more social places, if cheap diners and bars could be considered social. Neal always looked a bit out of place there because for all he was an expert at subterfuge, he had always trained to blend in with the ritzy and the upper-class.

Neal had actually been recommended to Dean by a very ritzy, very upper-class young lady with whom they’d both had a passing acquaintance. Dean had traveled to Connecticut to take down an angry spirit haunting her family’s vineyard. Everyone else in the family talked themselves into believing the whole ordeal had some rational explanation, but Esme, she wouldn’t deny what had happened—at least not to him. They’d had an amazing night as Dean killed some time before heading to meet John in Virginia, and Esme explained that she knew exactly what she'd seen when he'd shot that spirit full of rock salt and eventually destroyed the remains trapped under a tool shed. Just as sure as she wasn't in denial about what she'd seen, she was sure that people who knew these things couldn’t take the risk of acknowledging that to other people.

“It disturbs your life, you can’t live normally after that; it’s easier to ignore it.” She’d spoken as if this wasn’t the first ghost she’d faced down and Dean had gotten the impression that her family had the kind of long and troubled history that people used to craft legends around.

She knew the truth about what out there though, even if she chose to live her life as if she didn’t, and it was freeing to talk to her about things that he couldn’t ever talk about. It wasn’t just about monsters; it was about everything that happened when the fight wasn’t going down. It was long roads, and no home, and no real identity outside of his father’s car. He told her that his name wasn’t really Paul Rodgers, but he’d been using the name so long he probably wouldn’t bother renewing his real I.D. and would just stick with being Paul.

Esme had been engaged in their conversation the entire night, but the mention of fake I.D.s brought a shine to her eyes. Did Dean actually use fake I.D.s so regularly? No, it’s not like she was going to report him to police or anything; he’d saved her life. It’s just…she’d met a guy at one of her family’s wine tastings, and there were rumors about this guy—counterfeiting, securities fraud, art theft, racketeering—things that the police had never proven. But he was talented—very talented, Esme assured, and Dean got the idea that she wasn’t just talking about his forgery skills.

So it was that Dean was introduced to Nick Halden.

Dean looked the guy up before following up, but there was too much conflicting information to get a good idea of what his deal was. Dean took that as a good sign that he knew how to cover his tracks. The interactions between Dean and “Nick” were brief and fruitful; with Neal appearing to be so into the work he was doing that Dean was almost envious.

Neal never acted like a guy engaged in criminal activity. The guy seemed to have an underlying layer of fun pushing out from under his skin. He’d smiled when he told Dean that some fake credit cards and FBI badges would be like color by numbers for him, and he’d seemed damn proud of that fact. Dean was just grateful that his dad had approved of the work when he’d seen it and patted Dean on the back for finding a new source on his own. So yeah, sometimes Dean had a chance to be proud too.

Dean wasn’t sure how John would have taken to Neal if he met him in person. The few times they’d met, “Nick” had exhibited his usual professional charm, with Dean raising an eyebrow at the overt friendliness bordering on flirtation. He didn’t think the guy was actually flirting with him, but he seemed to fall so hard into this persona designed to win people over that he always seemed like he wanted to take you to bed. He’d wink at the end of a joke, or slip innuendo into the conversation, and he had a habit of looking at people as if he wouldn’t mind stripping them down—at least that’s how Dean felt.

The only thing that assured Dean he wasn’t being sized up for a tongue bathing were Nick’s frequent mentions of a girlfriend. They’d only spoken a few times, but on each occasion he’d pointed out that he made a similar card for his girlfriend, or that his girlfriend would help him get his hands on the special paper he needed for a document, or his girlfriend was waiting and he couldn’t stay long.

It was that girlfriend who blew the cover on Neal’s real name.

Dean and Neal had done business five times at that point when Dean called with emergency request for a reproduction of an African statue, modified with a secret compartment. Dean was prepared to come into the New York area when Neal asked him to meet as far away from the area as possible.

“I have to worry?” Was Dean’s only question, leaving it unsaid that he was asking if he should be looking out for police on the other man’s heels.

“Not at all.” Neal responded and left it at that.

When they met at a halfway point between their locations, at a KFC in Washington, D.C., Dean gave Neal photographs of the clay zebra that Neal needed to replicate, as well as the specs for the required size and shape of the compartment to be hidden in the animal’s belly.

With business out of the way, the conversation shifted to Neal’s taste in art and Dean’s lack thereof while they dined on chicken and potato wedges.

It was over a Little Bucket Parfait that Neal mentioned he and his girlfriend were having a disagreement. He didn’t elaborate.

Five minutes or so passed, and it was in the midst of an exchange on the scam (as Dean called it) of found-art and other “piles of discarded crap,” that Dean noticed the dark-haired woman watching them from the back of the restaurant. He pretended not to have noticed her, but quietly asked Neal if he’d been followed. Neal looked confused and Dean filled him in on their audience.

“Look at us. Wouldn’t you look at us?” Neal laughed it off and spun around to see who was watching them, frowning when he saw her. He turned back around to Dean and slumped into his seat with a sigh. “Kate.”

“Kate?” Dean asked, then noticed out of the corner of his eye that she had gotten up and was heading their way.

“Remember that girlfriend I told you about?” Neal said, just as Kate arrived at their booth looking upset. She only looked away from Neal for a moment, glancing at Dean, who kept his expression as uninterested as possible. She looked at Neal for a few seconds before deciding to speak.

“I’m sorry about…Keller.” Kate fidgeted with her nails, clearly uncomfortable and unsure of what else to say for fear of making things work.

“So am I, Kate.” Neal responded with a smile that didn’t look nearly as convincing as he could have made it look and Kate sighed, leaving a silence to hang between them until Neal continued. “That’s a long drive you just took for four words.”

“Can we just talk about this alone for a minute.”

“I think I’d rather be with him right now,” Neal nodded in Dean’s direction and Dean worried that he was about the get dragged into the middle of something he wanted nothing to do with. Neal turned back to him as if he was about to continue their conversation, but Kate tried to pull him up.

“It’s not about being with him, it’s about the job. He needs someone with some finesse, you know how he is.”

“I’d rather know how Dean here is.” He shook off her hands. “Dean, other than trash art, what do you think of the other forms of found art?”

“Dude, that conversation sounds so boring I’d rather leave you two to it.” Dean moved to stand up because he knew this woman wasn’t going to just go away and Dean didn’t want to get caught up in the drama of their little lovers’ quarrel.

“Then we’re done here.” Neal looked at Kate and didn’t even pretend he was talking about anything but her.

“Neal, wait,” Kate reached out to stop him and he shook her off, moving towards the door a few steps behind Dean. “Don’t leave with him.”

Dean listened to see if he would make it clear that they weren’t actually leaving together, but the following silence made it obvious that Dean was being used as some kind of leverage to make her think twice about whatever they were arguing about, and Dean wasn’t going to get involved with whatever game they were playing at.
"Are you coming back?" Kate asked and Neal responded with a quick "I always come back" before turning away one last time to follow Dean outside.

Dean held the door for Neal as he exited, raising an eyebrow at him, “Neal, huh?”

Neal kept his gaze ahead as they walked through the parking lot, only turning his head slightly to peek at Dean, “I’ve known her longer; she gets the real name.”

Three days later, when Neal drove down to drop off the completed statue in person, Dean still called him Nick until Neal finally said “we both know that’s not my name.”

“I call a man what he likes to be called.” Dean answered, ignoring all the times in his life he’d called his little brother 'Sammy' in defiance of Sam’s wishes.

"Fair enough," Neal smiled, stroking the mane of the clay zebra one last time before handing it over. "I like to be called Neal."

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