Word Count: 329 Rating: PG. Category: Introspection. Character Study. Friendship. Story Status:
Complete. Summary: Mozzie's thoughts on Neal being elusive - or not.
A/N:
I'm thinking this is set before Season 3, possibly even as early as
Season 1, though there are references to a conversation in 4x10 (Vested
Interests) and the back story as seen in 2x11 (Forging Bonds). Written for fan_flashworks for the prompt 'Elusive or Ephemeral' (multi-genre comm, not gen-only).
Beta:
Thank you to Jayne Perry and Sholio for the beta-reading.
A Fish Too Elusive To Catch By Leesa Perrie
cover art by Leesa Perrie
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e·lu·sive - adjective 1. eluding clear perception or complete mental grasp; hard to express or define: an elusive concept. 2. cleverly or skilfully evasive: a fish too elusive to catch.
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Mozzie has known Neal a long time and one thing he knows well, is that Neal considers himself too smart, too clever, too elusive
to get caught. Which is why he's prone to brazen acts, like signing the
Atlantic Bonds or leaving cryptic clues for the Suit - or even sending
champagne to a surveillance van.
Not to mention those late night telephone conversations that Mozzie
isn't supposed to know about, but of course he does. He might not have
accompanied Neal on all of his foreign jaunts, but enough to know that
Neal never could resist calling the Suit to tease and taunt that he was
out of the Suit's jurisdiction.
Too brazen for his own good, and yet Mozzie had to accept that none of
these acts had led to Neal being caught. No, that was down to love,
powerful enough to turn a smart man stupid so that he walked into a
trap knowing full well it was almost certainly a trap.
Even then, as far as Neal was concerned, it wasn't so much being caught
as giving himself up - no matter how much the Suit might gloat
otherwise.
The second time, Neal was convinced he'd been waiting for the Suit and so hadn't
been caught then either. That he hadn't even tried to run, being too
dispirited by missing Kate by a mere two days. Or some such idiotic
thing.
So yes, Neal is still convinced that he's too smart to be caught,
despite evidence to the contrary. Lots of evidence to the
contrary, now that he works for the Suit and rarely gets away with
much. But Mozzie lets him continue with the fantasy, because really, he
suspects that Neal knows deep down that it's not true. That the only
one of them that truly has been too elusive to catch has been him, Mozzie, the man behind the curtain, the Machiavellian puppet master.
