White Collar fic - Another Form of Art (Prologue)

[sheenianni]

Title: Another Form of Art
Author’s Name: sheenianni
Fandom: White Collar
Spoilers: Minor from Season 1 - 3
Characters: Neal Caffrey, Mozzie
Raiting: PG
Content Notice: None
Word Count: ~ 14,800
Notes: This was written for veleda_k during the wcpairing exchange, whose story absolutely made my day. Huge thanks to rabidchild67 for betaing this fic, to November Leaving from fanfiction.net for cheerleading and helping me figure out my prompts, and finally to one other person who refuses to be named.
Prompt: Neal and Mozzie, pre-series. Wacky hijinks and zany schemes! Gen, please.
Summary: When Neal and Mozzie come to Europe, they decide to pull a heist that the world hasn’t seen yet. Pre-series.

Prologue - Part I - Part II - Part III - Epilogue

                                                                                                

Prologue

It was late in the evening. In a cozy room lit by faint, warm light, two men were sitting around a table, enjoying cool beer, cheese and crisps and good-naturally bantering and boasting about their respective lives and careers.

Suddenly, the eyes of one of them stilled at the newspapers that was laid on the table.

Daily News - Culture section

‘Girl and Boy’, a mostly unknown study done by Picasso, lent to a local museum

“It is a true pleasure to announce that Mrs. Amanda Hoffmand, a very gracious and respectable lady with deep love of art, has decided to lend the “Girl and Boy” to our humble exhibition,” states Mr. Steffan, the curator of the -

The rest of the article was hidden under the plate of crisps.

“It’s a nice piece,” said Jack Rodgers as he swallowed a gulp of beer and placed his glass back on the table.

“A nice piece? Are you serious? It’s beauty underappreciated,” replied Neal intensely. He shook his head before he picked up a few pieces of cheese and leaned back into his armchair. “Nice piece…”

His companion grinned at him. “You a fan of Dutch painters?”

“Some of them,” replied Neal honestly. “You?”

“Some of them,” echoed Rodgers.

They both laughed before they settled for a moment of comfortable silence.

“So, what was the most interesting score you allegedly ever went after?” asked Neal after a while.

“The alleged score… Let me think,” replied Rodgers and his forehead wrinkled.

Neal took a sip of his beer and further relaxed in his armchair.

He and Moz had met Rodgers the day before, when they had been casing (“Just looking!”, Mozzie had insisted, but Neal had been sure he would change his mind) the local museum for the Picasso’s painting they had noticed in the newspaper. Neal had already had the heist half-planned when he had noticed a red-haired man approximately his age, wearing well-tailored clothes and scanning the area with the sharp eyes that didn’t belong to the usual visitor.

They had observed the man as he had familiarized himself with the security cameras and the guards, as he had slowly walked through the rest of the museum and then left without raising the slightest suspicion.

For their own security, they decided to check him out. Finally, they had their answer – the man was Jack Rodgers, he wasn’t local and as far as they could tell, he was a thief, not a cop.

For Mozzie, the subject had been therefore closed. He hadn’t been interested in the painting in the first place.

For Neal, it became a challenge.

The next day, he approached Rodgers in a local restaurant. After a lot of careful, mutual probing, their talk had slowly gone from “in theory” to “possibly” and “maybe”. Eventually, they left the restaurant – and here they were, late in the evening, drinking and joking and still testing each other, with the subject of the painting still unresolved between them.

“How about we make a bet?” suggested Rodgers suddenly, his tone betraying that he was already drunk. Neal wasn’t much better off.

“A bet?” he asked.

“A goddamn freaking bet,” nodded Rodgers. “The ‘Girl and Boy’,” he said slowly. “We both want it. How about we make a bet for it?”

Neal smiled. “What do you have in mind?”

An hour or two later, he and Rodgers parted ways, and Neal watched the rain outside with a goofy smile.

He was looking forward to telling Moz that they had a new job.

                               

Part I