A/N: This idea has been in the back of my mind for months. I hope it brings a smile.

Neal's loft, Manhattan. March 22, 2005. Tuesday evening.

There wasn't much time left. Neal had been avoiding this for almost two months, and if he didn't get it done in the next few weeks, he could be in serious trouble.

He knew he could ask for help, but it felt awkward. He'd pulled off intricate heists and was fluent in multiple languages. How could he admit to being intimidated by a mere tax return? It was only two pages long, although the instructions were well over a hundred pages.

In his prior career as a thief and con artist, he hadn't paid income tax. Then he'd been hired by the FBI at the end of 2003, receiving his first paycheck in January of 2004. So this was the first year he'd received a W-2. It and the tax form were side-by-side on his dining table, in all their mystifying glory.

He procrastinated by turning on classical music and pouring a glass of wine.

And as if summoned by the wine, Mozzie was at the door with his distinctive knock. Neal hastily shoved the forms beneath his textbooks, but he knew it was a lost cause. Mozzie was like a bloodhound when it came to government documents.

Sure enough, in less than three minutes, Mozzie had uncovered the forms. "A 1040EZ!" he exclaimed. "Have I taught you nothing? We must itemize." Mozzie opened one of Neal's notebooks, muttering as he jotted down proposed deductions.

"We? Since when have you paid taxes?"

"Know your enemy, mon frère. I've taken multiple tax preparation courses."

Peter's office, Manhattan. March 23, 2005. Wednesday morning.

"Do you have a minute?"

Peter looked up to see Neal, who was holding a file folder. When Peter nodded, Neal handed over the file, which contained a few sheets of paper covered with notes. "You can have a seat," Peter offered.

Neal shook his head, and remained standing just inside the doorway. He looked like he was keeping an eye on the stairs, in case he needed to escape.

A quick glance told Peter the notes weren't in Neal's handwriting. A longer glance told him the topic was tax deductions. He raised his brow as he turned over the first page and glanced down the second. He continued through the third and fourth pages, and then looked at Neal. "If I'm reading this correctly, you're looking for a refund that's more than your annual salary. You're begging for an audit."

Neal winced. "Yeah, I could tell Mozzie was going overboard."

"This is Mozzie's handwriting?" Peter wondered if he should file this in case they needed it for evidence one day.

"Not really. He adopts different handwriting for each project. This is how he thinks an accountant would write."

Peter thought back to the precise ledgers he and his fellow accounting students had produced in college, and had to give Mozzie credit. "He isn't wrong. I mean, about the handwriting. Please tell me you're not going to let him do your taxes."

Neal glanced over his shoulder, as if double-checking no one else would overhear. "I want to do them myself, but I'm worried about getting it wrong."

That's when Peter realized that Neal had probably never dealt with income taxes before. And it gave him an idea.

Federal Building, Manhattan. March 25, 2005. Friday morning.

June Ellington and Elizabeth Burke walked through the White Collar bullpen, followed by the stares of the agents who were at their desks.

"Looks like our being here is a surprise," El said as they walked up to Peter's office. He was on the phone, and waved them toward the conference room. She took a seat at the table.

June walked around the room. "I imagined something more ominous," she said. "Perhaps more like a police station." She glanced out the window before sitting beside Elizabeth.

El wondered about June's experiences with the police. "Have you ever been arrested?"

"Only questioned. Fortunately I'm good at playing the damsel in distress and can tear up at a moment's notice. The officers always ended up patting me on the shoulder and sending me on my way. What about you? Any brushes with the law?"

El chuckled. "There was a streaking incident when I was in college." She looked up when she heard someone clear their throat. "Oops. Probably not supposed to mention that here."

Agent Diana Berrigan entered the room with her arms full of file folders. "Probably not," she agreed. "There's a decent bar down the street though, if you want to swap stories later." Diana distributed the folders around the table, one in front of each chair. "I can take an early lunch."

"An early lunch works for me," El agreed, and June seconded the idea.

Soon Peter and the rest of the agents filed into the room. Everyone but Peter sat. And everyone but Peter looked morose. "Welcome to part two of tax boot camp!" he said.

"What was part one?" El asked.

"Individual taxes," Jones said. "Forms 1040, 1040A, 1040EZ, plus every rate schedule and attachment."

"We also went over deductions," Neal added. "Using a long list of suggestions from Mozzie."

"That was the only thing that kept me awake," Travis said. "Mozzie's creativity is boundless."

Peter opened the file folder in front of him. "It's important for an agent — especially a White Collar agent — to be familiar with basic tax code. After all, some of the Bureau's most famous arrests have been for tax evasion. Today we're going to look at examples of legitimate corporate tax returns. Elizabeth agreed to share the forms she filled out as a small business owner, and Mrs. Ellington has provided last year's returns for Masterson Music, giving us an example of what a large company does. We'll review these in the morning, and then this afternoon we'll look at examples from the Bureau's case files, so you can see how organizations have bent taxes laws and how we caught them."

This announcement was followed by a chorus of groans, but June asked, "Could I join that session?"

"Seriously?" Diana stared at her.

"I'd like to know what to avoid." She smiled at the group. "And what I can get away with."

Neal's loft, Manhattan. March 25, 2005. Friday evening.

Once again, Neal poured a glass of wine and looked at his W-2. He hoped never to attend another tax boot camp, but he had to admit that he was no longer intimidated. He did the math manually first, just to be able to tell Peter he had, and then went online to file.

Hopefully Mozzie wouldn't be too disappointed that his list of proposed deductions wasn't used outside of the boot camp. Neal received a modest refund and breathed a sigh of relief that he wouldn't have to think about taxes for another year.

Or so he thought…

Over the weekend he received a note from an organization that funded arts programs in New York City schools. It was an acknowledgement of an anonymous donation made in his honor, and the amount made him pause. That number looked familiar.

He double-checked to be certain, and confirmed it was the amount of federal taxes withheld from his salary last year.

On Monday, Diana and Jones pulled Neal aside as soon as he arrived at the office.

"Saturday I got this." Diana handed over a note similar to the one he'd received. Hers was for a donation to the Trevor Project.

"And I got one for a group that helps veterans with PTSD," Jones added.

"I got one, too," Neal admitted

"The amounts are weird," Diana added. "Who donates an amount that ends with 3 dollars and 14 cents?"

Neal explained the connection he'd discovered to his taxes.

Jones sat down at his desk and logged into the payroll system, checking his records for the prior year. "Same here. Someone donated the exact amount of my federal withholding." He frowned at Neal. "Was it Mozzie?"

Neal shrugged. "I can't think of anyone else who could or would do it. He isn't a fan of the IRS or how the government uses tax dollars, and he'd enjoy giving the money to causes he knows we'd want to support."

"Should we tell Peter?" Diana asked, with a glance toward his office.

Jones shook his head. "All we have are notifications of generous gifts. There's no evidence of a crime."

"You know Mozzie siphoned the money from someplace he felt didn't deserve it," she insisted.

It was time for the morning briefing, and Jones closed his laptop. "I'd like to look into how he got access to our salary information. That's a security hole I want to fix."

In the evening when Neal left the office, a taxi pulled up to the curb and Mozzie rolled down the window. His bald head was adorned with brown felt reindeer antlers and a red velvet bow.

Neal got into the cab. "Interesting hat choice. Is it related to some recent charitable gifts?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny," Mozzie said as he pulled back into the evening traffic.

"Jones is concerned about the security of our payroll data."

Mozzie scoffed. "I thought by now he would have uncovered a public records request for federal salary data in Manhattan filed by Kris Kringle."

"You mean you didn't hack into any of our systems?"

"I didn't say that. But I did think Jones would enjoy the gift of a puzzle to solve. I left eight clues, one for each reindeer." He turned on a CD of holiday music, and hummed along to "Carol of the Bells."

"Eight? What about Rudolph?"

"Rudolph is the cleverest of the bunch, and the bullying of his peers taught him to hide his tracks. There's no catching him."

After a long day at the Bureau, Neal didn't want to get into a discussion about the Big Brother aspects of Santa's spying on children and the reasons the elves should unionize. Instead he sang along with the next Christmas carol.

It would be charitable to say Mozzie harmonized. Singing was not among his many gifts. Nevertheless, Neal felt cheerful when they arrived at Riverside Drive, and was still humming when he walked up to his loft.

A/N: Thanks for reading! During April I'll be working on more fanfic during Camp NaNoWriMo and hope to post it soon.

See our blog (Penna Nomen and Silbrith Conversation) for an updated list of stories in order, with each vignette broken out separately. I've also added pins for this story to the Caffrey Vignettes Pinterest board.