A/N: This series of drabbles is the result of playing with the second set of prompts from 1sentenceorder on livejournal. These are obviously not one sentence each and I may not get through all fifty of them, but I thought I would post what I have.

I should also note that I haven't actually seen all the episodes of White Collar, so there may be some inaccuracies. Wishes and Worry are purely speculative.

1. Walking

"I'm through talking to you," Neal turned to walk away.

Peter snatched his arm and yanked him towards the car. "You're not walking."

"What the hell do you care?" Neal jerked his arm free with an ease that caught Peter just a little off guard.

Just like everything else Neal did, it bespoke of skill rather than brute force.

"Last time I let you walk home you were almost shot," Peter shifted to block the most obvious escape route. "Get in the car."

For a moment it looked as if Neal was going to make a bid for escape anyway, then he jerked open the passenger's side door.

"Sometimes I hate you," Neal said, sounding an awful lot like he meant it.

Peter wondered if this was how fathers sometimes felt, because really, having Neal hate him for a while didn't bother him that much as long as he was safe.

2. Waltz

"You don't know how to dance?" Neal folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair, looking at Peter speculatively, almost as if he thought the Fed was trying to con him.

Which would have been quite an accomplishment on Peter's part; not that he would have ever admitted that.

"Why in the world would I?" Peter grumbled.

"You better call Elizabeth then," Neal didn't exactly smile, but it was only too obvious he was laughing at his partner. "You're not stepping on my toes while you learn."

3. Wishes

"Neal…" Peter approached him cautiously, not sure what to say.

Just because he had been adamant about being right didn't mean he had particularly wanted to be.

"I wish…" he started.

"If wishes were fishes we'd all dine like kings," Neal murmured so quietly Peter almost didn't hear him.

"What?" Peter could only stare at the back of the young man's head in confusion.

"Nothing," Neal waved airily without turning away from his view of the night skyline. "It doesn't matter anyway."

It was possibly the least true thing Neal had ever said to Peter, and it drove him to lean on the balcony railing beside him, so close their shoulders almost touched.

"You always lie to yourself like that?" Peter asked with a gentleness he usually reserved for things he expected to brake but had to handle anyway.

"Sometimes the difference between lying and wishing is negligible."

Peter found the truth more bitter than he expected and wrapped an arm around Neal's shoulders in hopes of softening the blow for both of them.

4. Wonder

Neal felt eyes on the back of his head and looked up from picking burs out of Satchamo's coat.

"What?" he asked curiously, returning Elizabeth's gaze.

Wordlessly she held up a catering brochure from the pile on the table in front of her. Neal wrinkled his nose and shook his head in response.

"Save yourself the trouble and just throw that one away," he suggested.

"Thanks," she tossed it in her trash pile and got back to work.

On the couch, Peter grumbled about a missed shot on the tv, but didn't comment on the fact that Neal was very much not helping him with the case that was spread out all over the coffee table and couch. He loved his dog, but he hated untangling his coat. If Neal was going to do it, he wasn't going to complain.

Neal returned to his self appointed task, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his slacks and shirt were wrinkling from sitting on the floor, never mind the dog hair.

Their house had always been a home, no matter how busy the two of them got. Having Neal drift in and out of it at random times of the day and night hadn't changed that. It was starting to feel strange to Elizabeth though, if she didn't have Neal in her living room at least three times a week.

Elizabeth sometimes wondered, with a little more foreboding every time the thought crossed her mind, if their house would still feel like a home after the tracker was cut and there were no more excuses for Neal to sit on her living room floor.

5. Worry

There was only two months left until the tracker came off, no sign of Kate, and a track record of doing stupid things at the last minute. But Peter wasn't worried about Neal running out early.

All indications to the contrary, Neal was exceptionally patient. He always saw his objectives through to the end. It was just sometimes hard to tell what his objectives were. With the overwhelming evidence that Kate was not being held by anyone, Neal's immediate objective in his work-release deal had shifted from finding her, to honoring an agreement made with someone he respected. That didn't mean he had given up on Kate though.

Peter didn't worry about finding Neal's tracker suddenly abandoned, or having to hunt the brat down again and lock him away for good. Instead, he had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that the moment the piece of high tech jewelry came off, Neal would be gone, and Peter would be left to spend the rest of his life trying to convince himself and El that the kid they had taken into their family almost by accident was out there somewhere and alright.