WHITE COLLAR KINK MEME ROUND 3
THE RULES HAVE CHANGED - Please read them.
* If you post a prompt, post a fill. It's only fair. Prompts can be responded to an infinite number of times.
* Post prompts / requests anonymously. <- This will be enforced.
* If you like a fill, say so.
* No bashing. no bashing means NO BASHING: no judgmental comments, *hints* at judgmental comments, or ( Read more... )
* If you post a prompt, post a fill. It's only fair. Prompts can be responded to an infinite number of times.
* Post prompts / requests anonymously. <- This will be enforced.
* If you like a fill, say so.
* No bashing. no bashing means NO BASHING: no judgmental comments, *hints* at judgmental comments, or ( Read more... )
*
The new house was old.
Two stories high with a molding basement, a wide rambling porch in the backyard, and a garden that was more weeds than vegetables. As winter began to melt away the Burkes decided it was time to start to work on the house.
Neal helped paint. He scraped layers of old paint off of the walls and then got to pick the new colors for the rooms. Elizabeth took him to the Home Depot and they stood in front of the paint swatches for what felt like hours, comparing shades of Tropical Aqua with Caribbean Orange, Cerulean Mist with Intangible Apricot.
He was starting to gain some weight back. Slowly. A pound or two a week, most of the time. Some weeks were bad, though, some weeks Peter was out of the office or someone grabbed him to say hello and took him by surprise. Some weeks it was harder to forget than others and his plates stayed half-full.
As he worked on the house, he began to get back some muscle. He and Peter would return from work in the early evening, have dinner, and they’d all get to work on the house. Some nights Peter would pull out his case files but Neal liked to leave his work in the city, he didn't want to bring the evidence photos and witness reports into this house. It was a beautiful house. Now, with cornflower blue trim on the floorboards and an eggshell white on some of the walls, it was almost...charming. Neal went to bed sore and tired and slept through the night for almost three straight weeks.
But the house was a myth, he learned, after he’d finished the last of the hallways and spent a weekend scheming about what he wanted to do with the porch.
He stumbled on a box of financial records when he was redoing a closet in the basement.
We love the country, Peter had said. Room for Satchmo to run, Elizabeth had explained.
The house was old, beautiful, and charming. It was also a forty-five minute drive from the city, run-down, in need of new plumbing and it would be nice if the driveway got paved sometime before the next winter. It also cost $50,000 less than their last house had sold for.
What, Neal wondered, would the Burkes need $50,000 for?
The house was a myth. The happy family home (this is your room), the wide expanse of land and the open sky. He dug as deep as he could into all the records he could access over the next five days, and on Friday afternoon, he brought a piece of paper into Peter's office.
A $150,000 transfer had been made to Judge Tyler three weeks before Neal's final appeal had gone through. $150,000 untraceable, inexplicable dollars into an offshore account that was so well hidden it had taken Neal more luck than skill to find it.
He didn't write anything on the piece of paper he’d found in the basement. Just set it down on Peter's desk and stood. Didn't ask any questions but knew that Peter had to have some answers.
"I didn't want you to find out about this," Peter said finally, voice gone a bit hoarse. "Not yet, anyway."
Neal wanted the old house back. He wanted the claustrophobic yard and handmade shelves, the paintings that Elizabeth had bought because of how they'd look on walls that she'd planned on looking at for years. Neal wanted the house back, wanted the money back, wanted to be rid of the obligation, the debt -
"I would have paid twice as much," Peter continued. "It took a while to find a judge who was willing and discreet. And then it took a bit longer to raise the money." June, Neal thought, his lungs clenching. Moz. "I don't regret a single cent that we spent," and Peter's fingers were hovering over the figures laid out in black and white on top of his desk (his savings, his retirement fund). "I just wish that we'd done it sooner."
Neal was angry. Furious. Pissed, with an energy running through him that he couldn't quite understand. It wasn't his money, they'd done it to help him, why was he...
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Peter'd bought his freedom.
But he shouldn't have.
He left the printout on Peter's desk, carefully opened and closed the office door behind him, went to the men's room, punched the wall until his knuckles bled, and waited for the work day to end.
*
He stopped working on the house. Left the opened cans of paint with pretentious, impossible names sitting in half-finished hallways. Sat in his room (too big, too old, too fragile) and stared at the spots of mildew on the ceiling.
If he had anywhere to go, any friends he didn’t owe, he would have left.
Then Elizabeth bought the porch swing.
He’d heard her cursing through his window, looked at the driveway, and saw her wrestling with the black metal monstrosity she’d tied to the roof of her car. He’d gone to help her because even if he was trying to avoid her that didn’t mean he wanted to see her get crushed to death.
They carried the swing to the back porch. It was a simple bench - black supports on either side that they dug into the ground, a wooden bench hanging from them on rusted chains. She’d bought it at a yard sale (for only ten dollars!, he tried not to see the printout, Peter’s fingers hovering over too many zeros).
He helped her set it up and when he tried to go back inside she and Satchmo had fixed him with identical entreating glances.
“It’s so beautiful out here,” she murmured after he sat down. The air had a bite to it and the ground under their feet was still damp with melted snow. The trees were bare and the grass was a sickly green, the sky gray and heavy with clouds. He raised an eyebrow at her and she laughed. “I grew up in the city, you know. Had my first subway pass when I was five. Never lived in the country like this. There’s just so much space out here, so much freedom.”
All he could think about was the tracker on his ankle, phantom shackles on his wrists, Nelson’s hands around his hips.
“Peter told me that you found out about the money.” He stiffened. “I loved the old house,” Elizabeth whispered, setting the swing into motion with a gentle push. “But when you-left-” she paused to search for words and Neal tried to catch his breath, remind himself it was okay to breathe. “It was so empty.” She swallowed, gave another push. “So empty.
“I’m not trying to guilt you into staying,” she called after him when he stood up to go inside, because the hollow places inside of him were echoing (the places in his heart and mind and life that the Burkes had filled, that Peter had filled, that had stood abandoned for so long). “I’m just saying that we’re really glad you’re here. We want you to be here.”
Francois had dreamed him a dozen different futures. Fantastic careers and spectacular affairs, each one more ridiculous than the last.
When Neal had been in prison any future had seemed ridiculous.
On Sunday he went back to the Home Depot and bought some more paint.
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Brad had a routine. He came in to work at 8:30 with his own coffee and a donut, finished the coffee around 9, and had his donut at around 10:30 with another cup of coffee from the break room. He'd spend about ten minutes complaining about how bad it tasted and then get back to work.
That was his normal routine. He did it every day until Tuesday, when, for no reason that Neal could discern, he brought in two donuts instead of one.
Neal stared at the circular bit of dough on his desk, right on the center of the napkin, and looked at Brad.
Brad was trying to whistle nonchalantly.
Brad was not good at whistling.
Neal pushed it to the side of his desk and got to work. No one said anything to him about it. Brad just went about his day - shifting in his seat, getting coffee, gossiping with Diana. One of the secretaries was pregnant and Brad was convinced that Hughes was the father.
At eleven Brad went to the bathroom, and Diana scooted her chair over to Neal's desk. "If you don't want to eat the donut - or the metaphor that the donut represents - you best just give it back to him. Okay? Before he strains something pretending that he doesn't care."
Metaphor? he wrote on a post-it.
"He's flirting," she said. "Badly, but, still." She waited a minute. "Okay?"
Neal nodded. And looked at Peter, who was occupied in his office, and then at the door, waiting for Brad to come back in.
He was kind of hungry. And he didn't like donuts very much, but.
Brad was flirting with him?
It was stupid and dangerous and hopeless and, just, stupid. But - Brad was really bad at whistling. And Diana and Peter would protect him, if he got in over his head. He was back in a world where weakness didn’t translate into consent, back in a world where consent mattered, and he was pretty sure he wouldn’t forget that when Brad stood too close to him or touched his arm or held his hand.
He needed to find out. No-he wanted to find out. The bruises from prison had long since faded, and Neal missed-not the pain, not the ache, but the sensation. Feeling. He missed being touched. Peter’s hand on his shoulder was a lot, it was enough, but maybe-he wanted more. When he jerked off, he’d like to have something to imagine that didn’t involve the rough friction of overly-starched sheets against his skin and the sound of the inmates in the other cells offering commentary.
At some point he was going to have to take a chance.
He broke a piece of the donut off and ate it. It was too sugary, the sprinkles made a mess of his desk, and he was pretty sure some of it was smeared on his chin.
Brad grinned like a madman the rest of the day.
*
The next morning, there was another donut. This one was filled with some sort of custard. The day after that a plain glaze, then a chocolate glaze, then a lemon-filled one and a bearclaw. On the morning of the bearclaw, at around ten, Brad went for coffee. He paused by Neal's desk on the way. "You want some coffee?" Neal shook his head. "Tea?" Another no. "Do you even like donuts?"
Neal looked at his donut, untouched except for the one missing corner. He shook his head.
"Right. Uh - do you want me to stop?"
Neal licked his lips. They tasted sweet. He shook his head again.
The next morning, instead of a donut, Brad bought him a scone.
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When he ran out of different kinds of scones to try and Marie started threatening to lace his baked goods with Viagra, he figured he should man up and actually, y'know, talk to Neal.
"I'd like to go out with you," he announced to Neal as they stood in front of the vending machine. Neal bent over and picked up the pack of gum he'd just bought. Brad inserted his coins and made his selection in silence. He pulled out his roll of lifesavers, opened it, and gave the first two-both green, which he hated-to Neal (who inexplicably liked them). "What do you think?"
Neal put the gum in his pocket and rolled the lifesavers around in his palm.
He nodded.
*
Brad had been scared of Peter even before his first day in New York. Horror stories about Peter Burke's temper, his impatience, his demand for perfection had haunted the halls of Quantico like a cautionary tale to scare green agents with. His first month in the White Collar division had pretty much supported all of the rumors. Peter had been short-tempered, explosive, and solitary. When Burke got Caffrey back, though-even though there was now a new tension in the air, even though everyone walked around the office aware that there was a sore spot that they were all perilously close to hitting-Peter was happier. A better man to work for.
However, when Peter Burke summoned him into his office and then sat behind his desk glaring at him for nearly a minute without saying anything, all of Brad's initial terror came back to him as if it had never left.
"I am so sorry," he said when he could no longer stand the wait. "For whatever it is that I've done. Or not done. Or done poorly."
"Shut it," Peter barked. Brad shut it. Peter walked around his desk and closed the shades that Hughes had installed in all of the offices the year before. Brad wondered if maybe he should start screaming for help. "So. You and Neal." It had been a statement, not a question, but Brad nodded anyway. "What are your intentions?"
Brad bit off an involuntary laugh when Peter glared at him. "I plan on taking him out for dinner. Sir." Peter waited. "And, um. Bringing him back home early?"
“Don’t get smart with me, Knot.”
“I’m sorry, sir. Am I-am I breaking any rules? With his new position in the department, I didn’t think I was crossing any lines.”
“That’s not the problem.”
“Then what is?”
“Neal is-you should know that he’s-he's not okay," Peter said, in the understatement of the century. “So if you’re just fooling around, or looking for a good time, then-”
Brad knew that most of the time he came across as a bit of a goofball. He was a six foot six former linebacker, he cultivated his air of I-am-not-a-threat very deliberately, but sometimes-times like this-he recognized and regretted that it cost him credibility. "Agent Burke," he interrupted, "no offense, but I'm not blind. I know that the man's hurting."
"Then why the hell are you doing this?"
"Asking him out to dinner?" Peter nodded. "Well. Just because he's hurting doesn't mean he doesn't like Italian food." Peter started to speak up but Brad cut him off. “Caffrey is an adult. And he doesn’t need you to protect him. He's smart, and artistic, and I like him. He eavesdrops when me and Diana gossip and he puts too much sugar in his coffee even though he hates sweet pastries, and I think he's brilliant. I'd like to get to know him better.
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They sat in silence for another minute.
Brad felt like he was being weighed. Judged. He tried not to show how nervous he was. How much Peter's opinion of him mattered. How much he really wanted to take Neal out to dinner and see if he could get the man to dance.
"Don't take him to Italian," Peter said finally, reopening the curtains and returning to his desk. "Indian, maybe. Thai if you're feeling adventurous."
"He doesn't like Italian?"
"No," Peter answered. "It's just a goddamn cliche. Now get back to work."
Brad got out of Burke’s office as quickly as he could, went back to his desk, and started googling Thai restaurants.
*
that's the last of it for today. thank you for reading!
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I am so glad you're continuing. Fantastic work!
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You show us so much of Neal's pain but also how he is slowly working himself back.
What really gets me is that Peter bribed a judge to get Neal out. I imagine that last part of that chapter was that Neal didn't think he was worth it.
I also love the whole thing about Brad taking Neal out for some Italian and Peter calling it a cliche.
This whole story is so beautiful, so wonderful. It had been sorely missed and I'm so glad you've continued with it.
Thank you.
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I am so very happy to see that there is more story here. ILUSVM
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*
He bought a new suit. A new suit paired with an old tie and freshly-shined shoes, hopefully covered with enough polish to hide the scuff marks. The tailor had promised him that the suit looked good on him, but it felt tight. Made him feel fidgety. Neal seemed to like it, though, given the wide eyes and slow smile that met him at the Burkes’ door.
“Thanks,” he said, grinning at Neal’s dumbstruck face. He’d have to send his tailor a muffin basket. “You look-uh.” Neal’s shirt was unbuttoned over a white tank top, and he didn’t even have socks on. “Am I early?”
Neal rolled his eyes and grabbed Brad’s wrist to pull him into the house. Peter was standing at the bottom of a staircase, a suit jacket in his hands, a glare on his face for Brad. “You have a lovely house,” Brad offered.
Peter narrowed his eyes.
Neal patted him on the shoulder, pointed to the floor to get him to wait, and went into the dining room with Peter to finish getting ready. Elizabeth came down the stairs to give Neal a pair of balled up socks, and then came to stand with Brad in the hallway.
"Sorry. We’ve all got first-date jitters.” Brad nodded awkwardly, because he wasn’t sure what the etiquette was for talking to his boss’s wife, much less his date’s…guardian? Friend? His ‘it’s complicated’? He glanced into the dining room, inadvertently met Peter’s eyes, and flinched when Peter drew his finger across his neck in an unmistakable I’m going to kill you gesture. Neal swatted Peter’s hand away and shot Brad a small smile.
“Peter's such a cliche," El said with a laugh. "Don't worry about him, though. He's all bark and no bite." Brad averted his eyes from Peter before his boss noticed him staring. He was pretty sure the retaliation rules for wives and boyfriends-of-Neal were different, so he didn't take Elizabeth that seriously. "It's me you should be worried about," El said with a smile. She leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms over her chest. She looked fondly at Neal and Peter. Peter was whispering something to Neal, furiously quickly, while Neal rolled his eyes and tapped his foot impatiently.
"Pardon?"
"Peter might yell, and he’ll probably threaten, and he’ll definitely glare. But he's your boss, and that's a boundary that he's going to respect." She put a hand on Brad’s shoulder and he stared apprehensively at her long fingernails. "You hurt Neal, and I ruin you. Are we clear?"
He swallowed and fought back the urge to run away. "Yes, ma'am."
She straightened his tie and patted his shoulder. "I'm glad we understand each other." Peter and Neal appeared in the doorway and El greeted them with a smile. "You boys have fun now!"
Neal gave her a kiss on the cheek and led the way out. Brad stammered out goodbye and hustled out the door after him. He paused on the front step to let his heart slow down to a healthier pace. Neal raised a worried eyebrow. "I'm fine," he said. He put his hand on his chest where Elizabeth's nails had rested. "Mrs. Burke is kind of..."
Nice? Neal mouthed.
"A terrifying, terrifying woman."
Neal chuckled and grabbed Brad's elbow. Brad, distracted from his brush with mortality by the press of Neal against his side, let himself be pulled to the car. He was going to do his best to get this right. For himself, and for Neal, and because he was pretty sure that Elizabeth could dispose of his body with none the wiser.
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He left Neal a muffin on his desk next morning. On the napkin he put underneath it he’d scrawled Second date? Y/N? because he was still in middle school. Neal circled yes, wrote Dork underneath it, and had butterflies in his stomach the rest of the day.
The second date was better, because they drove into the city together to go to a new restaurant Diana recommended. The long stretch of silence as they both watched the scenery pass on the long drive by was calming. They played tic-tac-toe on Neal’s notepad as they waited for their food and compared the other diners to animals and when dessert came Brad stared at Neal’s cheesecake so longingly he worked up the courage to offer Brad a bite. He held his fork up to Brad’s mouth and Brad took it slowly, staring at Neal the entire time. Some crumbs got caught in his moustache and Neal brushed them away with his thumb. On the drive back he wanted to hold Brad’s hand, but didn’t.
After the third date, burgers at a fifties diner, Brad walked him up to his door and grabbed Neal’s hand before he could reach for the doorknob. "I really want to kiss you," Brad said, looking at Neal's lips. "Is that okay?"
It's okay to want to, Neal thought, trying to fight down the surprise at his instinctive desire to say yes.
He leaned forward.
Brad's moustache was bristly. Uncomfortable. It reminded him of Nelson, the way his beard had left irritated red patches on Neal's skin. Brad's breath smelled like barbeque sauce. They both probably did.
Brad had told him the week before that he thought his moustache made him look like a cop, like an authority figure, tough and confident. It quivered against Neal's upper lip.
It's okay, Neal's body answered, when he kissed Brad for the first time. Slow and careful. Relearning how to lean forward, relearning how to set the tone and take the first step. Letting himself want and encouraging himself to take.
It was absurdly chaste. Closed lips pressed against closed lips. Gentle. He kissed Brad's lips and then his moustache and then his chin, the dimple right in the center.
"Thank you," Brad said. And Neal raised an eyebrow and Brad blushed and when Brad put a hesitant hand on Neal's neck Neal showed him that he could be guided closer, that he wanted to kiss him again, that the brush of his moustache brought back memories but none so bad that couldn't be chased away by the tilt of Brad's head and the careful breaths he drew around Neal's lips.
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its so beautifully written. I can hardly wait for more
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