WHITE COLLAR ANONYMOUS KINK MEME: ROUND 1
Remember the RULES.
* 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.
* If you like a fill, say so.
* No bashing. eta: no bashing means NO BASHING, folks. this means no judgmental comments, *hints* at judgmental comments, or snarking about someone else's ( 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.
* If you like a fill, say so.
* No bashing. eta: no bashing means NO BASHING, folks. this means no judgmental comments, *hints* at judgmental comments, or snarking about someone else's ( Read more... )
Francois was tall and strong, with a laugh that made the other inmates groan, it bounced through the halls and into their cells (he'd laughed while Neal rode him, laughed and kissed him and ran his hands through Neal's hair which had grown so much longer). He wasn't French, didn't speak a word of it, but Neal could imagine them in France. Walking down the Champs, hand in hand, Francois with his tan and sun-bleached hair white teeth gleaming in one of his huge grins. Or in Provence, in one of the hostels he'd stayed in with Alex, living like poor art students and eating pastries in bed.
Francois didn't know who Neal was or why he was in prison, and he spent the time they weren't fucking making up elaborate back stories for him. "I think you murdered your whole family," he guessed the first night. "You've got a crazy clever look about you, Neal. I bet you did it real weird, too. With - with kitchen appliances. Because you were a chef. Were you a chef, sweetie?"
Neal shook his head but gave Francois a small grin, which made him laugh (it boomed, echoed, was too loud, surrounded him). "You're gorgeous when you smile, baby. You don't have to, or nothing," he said when it faded. "But it sure makes you look - real pretty, Neal. Real real pretty."
Francois was gay. He had a boyfriend on the outside, a string of other lovers behind him, and he knew how to make Neal come, moan, cry. The first time he'd rimmed him Neal had orgasmed before he even known what was happening. Francois didn't just touch him in the yard (didn't tell Neal to hold onto his belt loop or pocket) he just kept his arm wrapped around him at all times. Like they were dating, like they were partners, like he cared.
He was in jail for fraud. He'd robbed thousands of people of their life savings. Didn't have that much pull on the inside, but he was built like a beast, no one wanted to challenge him.
Most of the time Neal tried not to think about the bonds he'd forged. $500,000 dollars from a corporation worth billions, a few pieces of paper, and for that he was be spending the rest of his life behind bars. Peter's deal hadn't been worth it. He should have served the four years he'd forfeited for Kate, should have told Peter his deal wasn't good enough, shouldn't have chased the man he'd thought was their mark past his two-mile tether.
By the end of his third year, Francois' impossible stories filled his head. At first they were all about Neal's mysterious past - had be been a family-killing chef, or a trainer at sea world who'd violated the dolphins, maybe a schizophrenic tranny with a shoe fetish, a crazed stalker of Hall & Oates who'd taken his obsession one tragic step too far.
When he started telling stories about the future, Neal did his best to nod and smile. "We're going to be big stars on Broadway, Neal," and he smiled and pushed back harder, getting the final inch of Francois' cock at just the right angle. "Going to get a house - and an electric car - and you can cook, or paint, or sing - "
Neal thought about the Burke's house, about the dreams he and Moz and Kate had shared, tried to say I'm in here for good, I'm in here forever but somewhere along the line the silence had gone from a choice, a habit, a shield into something else. Somewhere along the line he'd lost his voice. He'd lost so many things he hadn't noticed it was gone until he tried to say I'm no good, I'm trapped, I'm a bird in a cage, querida, Francois, stop talking.
He had hickeys on his neck a well-fucked ache in his ass and an unbalanced feeling from Francois not being at his side when Peter Burke filed one final, successful appeal and got him out.
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If there was one thing that had remained constant through the eight years they'd known each other, it had been that Peter knew everything about Neal - Hell, he knew his shoe size (11) brand of toothpaste (apricot tartar control) what he liked (beautiful women, money, Kate, Peter), what he needed.
The Neal that the guards brought him after he showed them his paperwork? Wasn't seem like the same man. Sure, his hair was longer and he was thinner, he looked different, and Peter'd braced himself for that.
But the - the spark of Neal Caffrey, that had made him look as if he was always just a second away from either picking your pocket or kissing you, that let you know that either choice would be an adventure, simply wasn't there anymore. Maybe there's a mistake, he thought, even though he knew there hadn't been. This was Neal. This was Neal, now. They'd just have to - to start over. Neal flinched when he stepped closer so he stopped.
"I'm going to get you out of here," he said. Neal nodded like he'd - he'd expected it, like it wasn't a big deal, like he didn't care. "You just need to sign the forms, and you can go home."
He gave Neal the papers and a pen and Neal sat down at the table and started reading. Reading the fucking papers like there was a choice in the matter, like working with Peter might be worse than what he already had.
"It's a good deal," he tried to explain. "Just the three years you had left." Neal turned a page. "I know it's not perfect, but it's the best I could do." Another blank stare and page turn. Peter thought of the hours he'd put into getting the judge to release Neal, the hours and money and energy, the worry and he wanted to - to shake Neal, shake him and hug him and take him home and feed him. "Aren't you going to say anything?"
"He don't talk," the guard behind him said.
"What do you mean, he doesn't talk? Of course he talks! I've heard him talk! Did something happen to him?" He turned to Neal. "Are you sick? Was your throat damaged somehow?" He did his best not to think of how hollow Neal's voice had sounded three years ago (how much could happen in three years) of all the ways damage could be inflicted on the delicate lining of a throat.
"Nah. He just don't talk." Peter's stare of incredulity was interrupted by the scratch of a pen across paper. Neal was signing it, he realized, and took a moment for the relief to wash over him. "Let's get you out of here."
He waited outside while Neal went through processing. He'd forgotten Neal had gone back in during the summer - he was shivering in his white t-shirt when he walked out into the snow. Peter quickly took his coat off and draped it around Neal's thin shoulders. He was careful not to touch him, thinking about boundaries and flashbacks and all of the reports that had crossed his desk. The photos he'd seen of Neal.
He opened the car door for him and Neal didn't say thank you, or smile at him or mock him. Just slid in and stared out the window, like he had nothing better to do.
"June's willing to take you back," he said as he navigated through traffic, trying to see if he could make out the bulge of the anklet through Neal's thin slacks. Just making sure. "But she took in boarders after you left - she's got to let the current guy finish out the month. But she'll do it for $700 again, like last time."
He switched on the turn signal and they sat at a red light. "You've got two choices - we can get you a room at the hotel, or you can take the guest bedroom in our house." He waited for an answer that couldn't come. "Right. No talking. Uh - hold up on finger for the hotel, two for the guest room."
Neal put his two fingers in the crook of Peter's arm. It sent a jolt through him - like Neal might have been a ghost, this whole time, a mirage sprung from his own desperation - but the pressure of Neal's hand through his suit jacket meant it was real. All of it, everything, was real.
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More plz? //grabby hands//
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More, please?
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Please tell me there's more! All that in-prison angst, and now poor Neal deserves the payoff of compassionate Peter. Even (especially?) if it's still dark and angsty, I want to see Peter try to work things out with Neal.
Your Loyal Fan,
Reader Anon
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"We moved," he said, when he'd recovered himself. "New house. We have a yard, if you can believe it." Neal just turned back to the window.
Elizabeth ran outside when they pulled up to the house - pulled up in their driveway (which was still gravel, which they would eventually get paved, if the Christmas bonuses came through). El ran up to the car, and Neal didn't even open his own door. Just sat there and waited for Peter to come around, to take his elbow and guide him out onto the snow. To tell him what he was supposed to do. El was visibly torn - she wanted to hug him, touch him, welcome him - but he looked so small, and worried and clung so desperately to Peter's sleeve.
"It's good to see you again," she said, and when she stepped towards him Neal sidestepped behind Peter. "Right." She nodded, like that was understandable behavior, like he'd said 'hello,' and not just stared at their house like it was some sort of fairy-tale castle. "You must be cold. Let's get you inside."
Peter gave him the grand tour. They'd moved to an old farmhouse, with a lot of land and plumbing problems. It was a real fixer-upper. But the rooms were huge and open, the windows looked out over fields that were barren, then, covered in white - but in the summer they were a dark, deep green, in the spring there were deer, in the fall the surrounding trees turned a red deeper than fire. It was a place where they El could grow her own herbs and Satch could chase squirrels until he fell over and they could begin to think about raising a family.
It was a place where Peter could retreat. He'd needed that space, the past three years. But he had thought - with Neal back - that the empty corners of their huge house would be filled. That the attic and the back staircase and the empty closets wouldn't seem like they belonged to someone else, that Neal would paint them or fill them.
Three years before Neal had fit into their lives like a missing puzzle piece. Now he followed Peter like an obedient dog, and said nothing and all Peter could hear was the grinding of his own teeth.
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Peter awkwardly straightened the comforter while Neal stood on the edge of the room. "I hope you like it," he said finally when he couldn't stand the silence anymore (he'd have to get better at that, get used to it). "If you don't, you can change it." He gave Neal what he knew was an unconvincing smile. "It's your room."
Neal's room, but this wasn't Neal. Who touched the antique first edition Ginsberg with such hesitant fingers, who avoided eye contact, who had stolen so many things he hadn't earned (beautiful, expensive, priceless things) but looked so overwhelmed by the slippers on the floor, the hats hanging by the door, by Peter who was still - he would get used to it, he would - waiting for him to say something.
"Do you need anything?" Neal shook his head. "If you do, we're down the hall. We have to leave early for work. The commute's about forty-five minutes."
Neal looked worried. He gestured at himself - at his lips, his throat - then shrugged helplessly.
"I don't know," Peter said, who had no idea how Neal would be able to work with no voice. "We'll figure it out. Neal - " (and he meant it, he did, he had to - ) "I promise that you're not going to go back there."
Because Peter was the only one who could ever catch him if he ran. If Peter didn't chase - Neal's eyes got big and his hands (wrapped around the bedpost) tightened. "Try and get some sleep," Peter said. And he closed the door and went downstairs to his wife and his dog and the dinner Neal hadn't been able to eat and started planning.
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The line about Neal realizing that Peter could promise because *Peter* wouldn't chase him... just wow.
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The bed was too soft. And so empty - there was no heavy arm wrapped around his stomach to keep him anchored, no hot breath in his ear to lull him to sleep, and only the last lingering ache of Francois to remind him that this house - this beautiful house, this home existed in the same world as grey walls and metal bars.
He wandered the house in the dark hours of morning. Satchmo followed him (clack of nails on wood) and they patrolled. There was food in the kitchen, he ate an apple - the first time in three years he hadn't eaten at a predetermined mealtime. He left the core on the top of the compost bin. Peter would see it and be happy that he'd eaten.
He walked outside by himself, grabbing a lawn chair from off the back porch. He carried it into the back of the yard, the snow soaking his bare feet and the bottom of his pajama pants. He walked to the fence and sat down awkwardly cross-legged in the plastic chair. He held his feet in hands that were only slightly warmer and breathed through the panic attack that threatened to overwhelm him. This was harder than the adjustment to June's had been. New York City had been busy, the streets full, June's guest house small enough - he'd been able to close his eyes and pretend, taking comfort in the steady noise and close walls. He couldn't do that here. No ring of clanging doors, no rasping breath in his ear, no horns blaring. He breathed in the silence.
He stared out at the moonlit fields and knew that if he ran, right then, if he decided it was all too much right in that moment he would freeze to death. He was already shaking. It was, he'd heard, a relatively painless way to die.
He rubbed his toes and watched the stars. Picked out the constellations he knew. And he tried - he tried to whisper their names, the stories of how they got into sky (how they'd become myth) but all that came out of his mouth was his breath.
Aries was above his head. Aries who had tried to rescue two abused children and was murdered by the surviving boy for his fleece. Known for his stubbornness. The ram in the story had never seemed stubborn to him before. But right then, surrounded by black and the option of running and the impossibility of going into the FBI office the next morning and opening his mouth and having nothing come out - right then he thought about the strength it took to simply keep moving. Thought about the mulish set to Hector's jaw when he made up his mind, the angry bruises Francois' hands had left on his wrists, the papers Peter had brought him.
He thought about what he knew of strength and wondered if what he had done - choosing the lesser of two evils - he wondered if that counted. He looked at the stars for the first time in three years and remembered Peter's promise and the ram's long trek across the sky and cried. On a plastic lawn chair with no shoes or words or hope he cried until hoarse sounds spilled out of his mouth, obscene, until nothing else came out.
He looked out at the empty fields, picked up the chair, and went back inside.
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He woke up at six because he always woke up at six, half an hour before the alarms went off and the guards starting banging on the bars. Enough time to relieve himself and stretch himself open before his cellmate woke.
Only this morning he woke up to sunlight streaming in through his window. He had to force himself to stay in bed for another half an hour. His skin itched with warning, with danger, with urgency. It would be worse for him if he didn't prepare and they took him dry. Worse if they had to wait to get their rocks off.
He wondered if he should keep to his old routines - it would make the transition back to prison easier when this fell through. But Peter - Peter had promised him. Peter had promised not to chase him (run, run, run) so he clenched his teeth, ignored his instincts, and stared out the window until six thirty.
At six thirty he went to the bathroom (only it wasn't one step away anymore) brushed his teeth (an unopened toothbrush sitting on the counter) and took a shower (hot water, scented shampoo, no one's hands but his on his body) and opened the closet. He had to decide what to wear.
He breathed in the scent of his old cologne mixed with Byron's and the unmistakable smell of mothballs. The fabric under his hands was smooth, the colors a spectrum of grays and blues. He'd always prided himself on his sense of color (his sophisticated palate) but after neon orange everything seemed subdued.
The choice - not the amount of options, but the fact he had to choose - stunned him. You've done this before, he chided himself. Come straight out of prison and landed not just on his feet but in a penthouse. But he'd - he'd been himself, that time, in that prison. Isolated, yes. Literally bored to tears and frustrated and desperate - but himself.
And he'd had Kate, then, to visit him every week and tell him she loved him no matter what.
He was pretty sure 'no matter what' didn't include gangbangs that left him so open they'd gotten two fists inside him at the same time, but Kate was dead. And no one else had ever made him that promise.
He decided on a navy blue suit with pin-stripes that he'd never worn before because it had been too small. It wasn't until he figured out that he'd still have to wear a belt to hold the slacks up that he realized how much weight he'd lost. Maybe Peter'd had a point when he'd tried to get him to eat last night. He'd have to relearn that. Eating until he was full. There was no mirror in his room but he looked at his body - my body, mine - and ran a hand over the pronounced ridges of his ribs.
He snatched his hand away and retreated against the wall before his body remembered that he was alone. No one to see him touch himself and make him keep going, or forbid him the right, or replace his hands with their own. He was alone. Alone, alone, alone. His body ached from old bruises and the expectation of more.
His hands shook as he put on the undershoot and did up the buttons. A shirt with buttons. A novelty. I probably look like a cartoon, he chided himself as he straightened the jacket and selected a hat. A boy playing dress up. A fraud.
But since he'd been a fraud since he first learned the value of a lie he took a deep breath and walked out of his room. He'd be playing the role of Neal Caffrey, today. Smooth, elegant, smart. He ignored the way his hands shook, the way he felt unbalanced without Francois at his side to lean against, and his horrid useless missing voice.
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