A/N: Spoilers for the final in Sorrow (#32). In defense of Stupidity (that doesn't sound odd at all) for all that Neal doesn't like guns, he's never been so panicked or overwhelmed when a gun was pulled on him that he couldn't think straight. He's always (keeping in mind I haven't seen all the episodes) been calm enough to deal with the situation, and he knows how to handle guns, so I'm guessing he's had some significant exposure to firearms in the past. One for My Baby has been sung by all sorts talented people, like Sammy Davis Jr and Dean Martin, and Blue Skies was made famous by the likes of Frank Sinatra. I'll get links to them up on my livejournal, since FF isn't great for links. Share isn't mis-numbered. I swapped out #35 with a prompt later on that I had already written.

31. Smirk

Peter walked into the conference room, took one look at Neal, and scowled.

"I hate that look."

"What?" Neal asked innocently, ignoring the stares he was suddenly getting from Cruz and Jones.

"You're up to something," Peter glared.

"Yeah," Neal agreed, "solving your case for you."

"No," Peter disagreed, "you're up to something else."

"Has anyone ever told you you're paranoid?" Neal grinned.

"Cautious," Peter corrected. "Whatever it is, don't."

"Whatever you say Peter," Neal's voice was placating, but there was a particular glint in his eyes.

"Why do I even bother?" Peter grumbled, snatching a file from in front of Neal to read.

Cruz rolled her eyes and went back to work. Jones hid his snickers behind a file folder. Neal bent his head back over columns of numbers, looking far too amused.

Peter looked between the three of them and wondered, with equal parts annoyance and amusement, just what he had done to deserve them.

32. Sorrow

Neal blinked awake to the middle of the night quiet and a cold nose against his hand. He was thrown for a moment until Satchamo's wet tongue licked his fingers. He had fallen asleep on Peter's couch again. Someone had slipped a pillow under his head and tucked a blanket around him, and he was pretty sure he hadn't even made it through the first two pages of the file he was supposed to be reading.

With a disgruntled sign, he tossed back the blanket and sat up, feeling stiff and groggy. He had been oscillating back and forth for a while now, swinging from weeks of insomnia to weeks of barely being able to keep his eyes open. He had always been somewhat prone to insomnia, but the pervasive exhaustion was both new and unwelcome. Not that insomnia was ever particularly welcome.

Excessive tiredness, Mozzie had informed him, was a sign of depression. Neal had already known that. It was one of many random facts that he happened to have picked up along the way. For all that Neal was one of the more impulsive people in the world, he generally tried not to cater to his moods too much. Part of being a conman was having control of his emotions. To that end, Neal tried to ignore the oppressive tiredness, without much success.

Which only made him angry on top of everything else, although at the moment he was too tired to be angry, so he settled for scratching Satchamo behind the ears and pushing himself off the couch to find where Peter had put the files so he could at least catch up with where Peter was on the case.

Peter had left the stack on the dining room table, and Neal picked up the top file and wandered into the kitchen to make coffee. Peter and Elizabeth were generally sound sleepers. As long as they knew someone else was suppose to be in the house, they wouldn't wake up.

While the coffee brewed, Neal leaned against the counter and flipped open the case file. On the first page was a post it note in Peter's all but unreadable handwriting, telling Neal to go back to sleep. Neal was amused, but ignored the note.

By the fourth page the coffee was done and Neal must have lost his place and had to go back and reread the previous sentences a half dozen times, which was frustrating to say the least. Neal was used to a single quick read through getting him everything he needed to know. He only liked rereading if it was Shakespeare or Dickens or someone else of high literary caliber. Peter was talented in many ways, but his chicken scratch notes did not qualify as literature.

The fifth page had another post it on it, telling Neal to leave the coffee until morning and go back to sleep. Neal thought, with a yawn, that he might just be getting predictable in his old age, and ignored that note as well, determined to be able to carry on an intelligent conversation about the case in the morning.

He couldn't hold onto the threads that held the case together though, even with coffee. He kept losing names and places, times and heists. He had to go back over pages two or three times, and even then the words refused to stay.

Neal was smart. He knew he was smart. Which was what made it so amazingly stupid that he couldn't keep track of a couple poorly executed heists by a group of people whose names were the only things less original than their tactics, and he used the term 'tactic' lightly.

If he couldn't hold onto the pieces of such a simple plot, how was he suppose to string together the pieces of the convoluted and tangled one that was strung up all around him, how was he supposed to straighten out the mess he had gotten not only himself, but Peter and Elizabeth into?

On the tenth page Peter had scribbled a timeline in the margins, and Neal couldn't remember anything about the heists listed on it, not even what was stolen.

If he couldn't do this, how could he make things right again?

With a surge of frustration Neal threw the file across the kitchen and sank down to the ground, back to the cupboards and knees drawn up. He couldn't stop the hot tears that spilled over or the shudders that caught in his chest making it hard to breathe. He was not all that surprised by the dog socks that stopped beside him, but he clung to the hope that if he just ignored them, they would go away.

There was no such luck. Peter sat on the floor beside him and rubbed patient circles on his back until he could breathe again without gasping. Neal rubbed angrily at the tears that wouldn't stop and refused to look at Peter.

"It'll get better," Peter said softly, his hand coming to rest on Neal's shoulder and squeezing gently.

Neal looked at him then, wanting to yell, wanting to scream and shout and tell him he didn't know what he was talking about, but he couldn't seem to find his voice, and Peter was so very Peter, practical and solid and strong enough for Neal to break against if that's what he needed.

"I know it doesn't seem that way, but it will," Peter's arm circled his shoulders and pulled him against the warmth of his side.

Neal's anger fell away, replaced by the unbearable exhaustion that never seemed to really fade. He turned into Peter's shoulder, into what was real and alive and safe.

"We'll get through this," Peter murmured, wrapping him in both arms. "Just don't give up on us, and we'll get through it."

Neal nodded, too tired to disagree. His last thought as he drifted off to sleep was that he was going to owe Peter an apology in the morning when they were both stiff and aching from a night spent on the kitchen floor.

33. Stupidity

"Are you stupid?" Peter demanded.

"Um…" Neal looked away from the medic who was bandaging his arm. "No. That's why you keep me around, remember?"

"When someone points a gun at you, you give them what they want," Peter hissed.

The medic eyed the angry agent uneasily, and Neal gave him a reassuring smile.

"Well, he asked for something I wasn't willing to give," Neal would have shrugged, but that would have upset the medic, and he was already looking less than thrilled with them. "Anyway, if I had given him what he wanted, he wouldn't have had any reason not to kill me."

Peter scowled, clearly not at all placated by the obvious line of reasoning. "You knew he was carrying. You never should have gone with him in the first place."

"But if we lost the painting, we wouldn't have been able to hold Barith," Neal pointed out.

"Then we would have gotten him some other time," Peter rubbed the bridge of his nose wearily.

"While I'm glad you feel so optimistic, this guy has been eluding you for how long now?" Neal flinched as the medic pulled the bandage tight.

"It's still not worth you getting killed over," Peter growled in frustration.

"Do I look dead to you?" Neal grinned and tried to sound reassuring rather than tired, annoyed, and in pain.

The bullet had only grazed his arm, but a bullet wound was a bullet wound and it hurt. It wasn't the worst pain he had ever been in by a long shot, it wasn't even the first time he had been shot, but there was still something exhausting about having someone point a gun at you and then pull the trigger.

Peter wasn't really angry… well Peter probably was angry, but mostly he was worried, and Neal appreciated that, but he was finding trying to reassure him on top of being shot just a little exhausting.

Maybe if he acted like it was his first time being shot, Peter would ease off a little. It was a rather problematic solution as he wasn't sure how the average person reacted to being shot the first time. In all honesty, he hadn't been paying that much attention to his own reaction the first time he had been shot, and even if he had, he had hardly qualified as the average man on the street by that point.

"You're an idiot," Peter said, "whatever you're thinking, stop." He turned to the medic, "is he ready to go?"

"Yeah," the medic nodded. "We can load him up and head out."

"Good," Peter nodded. "I'm riding with him. Let me tell Jones we're leaving."

Peter turned away and waved Jones over, and Neal gave the medic a sympathetic smile. Despite the fact that he loathed hospitals, he had a certain fondness for medics.

"Sometimes he forgets the difference between a question and a statement," Neal accepted the man's offered hand up, doing his best to sound apologetic on Peter's behalf.

His injury wasn't that serious, but he still needed stitches, so he would be going to the hospital whether he liked it or not.

"This is not your first time being shot," the medic said, finally looking more amused than annoyed.

"No," Neal admitted, letting himself be helped into the back of the ambulance. "But it's Peter's first, so we'll just have to be patient.

The medic seemed to find that unexpectedly funny and snorted with laughter. Peter spent the duration of the trip to the hospital scowling. The medic spent the trip trying not to look at Peter, lest he lose composure. Neal spent the trip thoroughly amused by both of them, at least until he fell asleep.

34. Serenade

It was well past midnight when June got home. She said goodnight to her driver and made sure to lock the door behind her. Her staff had gone home long ago, and there was really no way to tell if or when Neal would be home. She assumed he wasn't home as he had turned down her invitation to the charity event because he was working.

She wished he had come. He was an exceptionally pleasant escort to these sorts of events. He was charming and clever and everything her usual company at these events was not. And she had to admit, she never tired of the stir it caused when she walked into a black tie event with a handsome young thing like Neal on her arm.

At least Neal was amused by the gossip they stirred up and not offended. The only time she had ever seen Neal completely lose his composure in public was when someone had suggested, in what they must have thought was a subtle manner, that he was her illegitimate son. She had found herself abruptly pulled onto the dance floor for the sole purpose of giving Neal an excuse to hide his face against her shoulder while he fell into hysterics. In between the gasps of laughter, she had heard something about improbable genetics and recessive genes.

As if she would ever deny having a son like Neal.

June stopped at the bottom of the stairs to pull off her heels, and was surprised to hear the faint sound of a piano. She left her wrap hanging over the banister and headed towards the music room, shoes still dangling from one hand.

She had to admit, she was surprised to find Neal sitting at the piano. She had been expecting Frank, her cook, who was rather fond of the baby grand, or Jenny, one of her maids, who was a music student and liked to play when no one was around.

He was playing One for my Baby, which was not such a surprise, and while he seemed comfortable with the music, he was putting enough concentration into playing to imply he didn't play often.

June leaned against the doorframe listening for a moment. It was had been a long time since she had heard that song and she was pleasantly surprised to find it more sweet than bitter.

"I didn't know you played Neal," she said when he hesitated over a note, either uncertain of the next chord or thinking of stopping.

Neal turned to look at her, just a little startled, then he smiled the smile that made everyone at the parties jealous.

"June, I didn't think you'd be home for a while."

"There was not enough alcohol in Lower Manhattan to keep me there another hour," June dropped her shoes near the door and came to sit on the bench beside him, back to the piano.

"That bad, huh?" Neal picked up where he had left off in the song, sounding both amused and sympathetic.

"I missed my escort," June stretched her legs out in front of her and crossed her ankles.

"I would have rather been there, but I had to keep Peter from being shot," Neal sighed.

"That bad, hm?" June echoed his question back to him.

"Yeah," he said shortly.

June nodded and leaned her shoulder against his, listening for a few more bars.

"Byron used to sing that to me," she told him wistfully.

"It's not exactly a romantic song," Neal pointed out mildly.

"It's always romantic when a man sings to you," June smiled.

"I don't sing," Neal managed to almost sound apologetic.

"I have it on good authority that you do," June tried not to sound too amused.

"Vicious lies," Neal tried to cover his slight blush with a smile.

June laughed softly and let her head rest against him, "Do you know Blue Skies?"

Neal nodded and shifted into the new song easily. June listened for a few bars, tapping her feet in time. Neal's forte was art, but Byron's had been music, and she missed having a house full of melody.

"Blue skies, smilin' at me," she started singing. "Nothin' but blue skies do I see."

Neal matched the tempo of the music to her singing, and for a little while she lost herself in the memory of Sunday afternoons spent on the piano bench beside Byron.

But Neal was not as tall as Byron, and he didn't play as well. June didn't mind that too terribly much. The differences were soothing, a reminder of just how pleasant her present was.

"Blue days, all of them gone. Nothin' but blue skies from now on."

39. Share

It was two in the morning and the three agents (and Caffery) were still sitting around the conference table, stacks of files and piles of paper scattered everywhere. Caffery had claimed one end of the table for himself and every time someone else's stack got too close to what he had designated as his area, he would push it away. He did it absently, without ever looking up from the files he was going through, not even stopping in the notes he was scribbling on his notepad.

Jones debated whether or not he should switch places with Cruz. She was sitting closest to Caffery, and every time he pushed one of her files away she looked like she was going to hit him. The girl needed to relax, or at least learn how to respect personal boundaries.

Burke walked up behind Caffery and leaned over his shoulder, reading his notes while he was writing them. He reached for Caffery's coffee cup as he read and took a drink. Jones expected a token gripe from the man who couldn't share his file space, but Neal didn't even notice.

Cruz scowled.

Apparently, personal boundaries were subjective.