fic: my lips have the sin [2/4]
warnings and info in part one
*
The first time he touched himself, it felt like a betrayal.
His hand shook with tension, as if he was struggling against the grasp of some imaginary enemy (only they were real. He knew their names, knew their families). His fingers were awkward around his cock like they hadn’t been since he was nine and just beginning to discover what his body was capable of.
He started to stroke himself. He tried to remember what he liked. He looked at the door, at the lock, and for some reason, waited for Peter to come in.
But it was silent and he was alone and he wanted very badly to come. He’d woken up hard and rutting against the blankets, a warm dream quickly fading. He tried to finish himself off, but it wasn’t easy. His body was ready but his mind kept getting in the way.
It wasn’t working. He could think of nothing except how awkward it was until the clock neared 7. And then he thought about Francois. He wrapped his fingers around his cock again, slowly, carefully, and imagined Francois pressed tight around his back, beard scrapping against Neal’s neck. Telling him how sexy he looked, how jealous everyone in the surrounding cells were. Begging Neal to make a sound, any sound, when he came.
He came and the memory of Francois faded as fast as his dream had. His hand was covered in his own semen. He was sweaty, his hair was stuck to his forehead, the clock was ticking past 7. He was going to be late.
He spent the day jumping at shadows and crowding too close to Peter’s side. Afraid that someone was going to look at him and know he wanted it.
It had felt good. He didn’t want anyone to know. He was irrationally convinced that they’d all smell it on him. Semen and sweat and need. Slut. He touched the scars on his hip whenever he wasn’t actively reminding himself not to. Both he and Peter were worn out by the end of the day.
He got in the shower after dinner. Not something he normally did, but Peter told him over and over and over again that he got to do whatever he wanted. And he wanted to make sure every hint of sex was washed from his body.
But when the hot water started running, he got down on his knees. Put one hand over his mouth to muffle any sound and the other around his dick, and he started jerking off. Not because anyone wanted him to, not because he had to, not because he was weak, not because he was warped. Because he wanted to. Because he liked the way his body felt limp and relaxed afterwards, because it felt like he was reminding his body how to feel good, because-because this was one of the parts of his life that he hadn’t ever expected he’d get back. Masturbating in a shower. Mundane and lewd and habitual, one of the many things he hadn’t known he could lose, one of the many things he never thought he’d have again.
He finished, washed his hair with Peter’s shampoo (which he tried not to do too often), and got out just as the hot water was running out.
He went out on the porch, that night. Wearing his own slippers, wrapped in Byron’s robe, Satchmo panting on his feet. Felt the warmth fade from his body and the cold set in and savored the sensation. This is my body, he told himself. It felt like show-and-tell, like preschool, something he had to learn again. This is my body.
*
"I like him."
"You like everyone," Diana replied with a roll of her eyes.
"That is not true. What about...Ruiz? I don’t like Ruiz," Brad said triumphantly.
"Nobody likes Ruiz," she said condescendingly. "And I saw the birthday card that you bought for him."
"It was the man’s birthday! Just because I don’t like him doesn’t mean I have no heart. Unlike some people I could name."
Diana rolled her chair over next to his. "Ruiz is a big part of the reason Neal got locked up again," she said quietly.
She went back to her desk and Brad stared at Peter’s office. Neal was working up there again. Sitting at the side of the desk, occasionally sliding his notepad over to Peter.
Sometimes Brad felt like he was walking blindfolded through a minefield. He’d been with the unit for a couple months and he still got blindsided with back stories he didn’t see coming. Diana filled him in when she had to, but she seemed to enjoy withholding information. He didn’t begrudge her the upper-hand. Peter was a hard boss to work for. Even Diana, who’d been with the man for years, caught the sharp end of his tongue more than seemed fair.
When he’d first been assigned to the unit, he’d thought Peter was simply focused on the job. Too busy for incompetence and too impatient to suffer fools. Peter yelled at the agents who got temporarily assigned to large cases until they sat down, shut up, and followed his orders to the letter. He had no love for the higher-ups, and only seemed to listen to Hughes because-well, because Hughes was a scary son-of-a-bitch. It wasn’t until Neal arrived that he realized that Peter was actually a decent guy with a sense of humor and a nice smile.
"Was it like this before?" Diana sighed, but turned her chair around to look at him. "When Neal was here the first time?"
Diana followed his gaze and looked up at Neal and Peter, their heads nearly touching, both writing on the same piece of paper. "Like the two of them are members of a club that you really want to join, and neither of them seems to realize it?"
"I meant about Peter, and how much happier he seems now. But-yeah. Like a secret club."
"Pretty much exactly," she said decisively.
They both went back to work.
For about five minutes, because the fraud case he was working seemed to be constructed entirely of dead ends and he was getting bored. "Can we start our own secret club? I’ve already got a great secret handshake."
"Get to work," she snapped.
He was pretty sure that when she saw the flag he’d sketched, she’d totally be into it.
*
One week later and he’d learned that 401(k) regulations had two loopholes he’d never explored before, that Neal Caffrey was about eight times smarter than he was, that Diana definitely did not want to be in his club, and that Caffrey was suffering from a pretty damn severe case of PTSD. Oh-and that the bakery down the street had the best bearclaws he’d ever had in his entire life.
The 401(k) thing he’d learned after Neal had solved his case for him, which is also how he learned how freaky smart the man was; that Diana didn’t want to be in his club he’d learned through clever use of his deductive reasoning skills, and that Caffrey had PTSD? Well, aside from just using the smarts that God and his momma had given him, there was the fact that the man jumped like a cat when he was startled, that he twitched whenever there were loud noises, and that he never stood or sat with his back to a door if he could help it.
Which also explained why he liked to work in Peter’s office so much. The glass walls, the chair at the end of the desk-it was the perfect vantage point. The new desk Neal had been assigned in the bullpen was squished into a corner facing the wall, wedged between the desks of two agents from another unit who talked across it pretty constantly.
*
The next morning Brad came in, munching on his bearclaw, and sat down in Neal’s chair. When Peter and Neal came in (exactly two minutes late, which seemed to be their standard arrival time) they both stopped and stared at him.
"This pastry? Is excellent," he informed them. He twisted back and forth in the chair for a second. "Hey, boss-do you think I could switch desks with Neal? You don’t mind, do you, Neal? It’s just that this chair is better for my back than the other one, and I can’t switch just the chair because this one won’t fit under the other desk, and I could raise the other desk off the ground but then there’s this whole skewed-”
"Shut it, Brad." He blinked innocently up at Peter. "Neal, do you mind switching desks?" Neal looked between them a couple of times and then shook his head. "You sure?" Neal nodded, and Brad beamed up at him.
"Thanks, man! You’re a lifesaver. Speaking of which-I’ve got an extra roll around here somewhere, you want some? I just like the name, don’t actually care for the taste."
He rambled as Peter went up to his office, kept talking as he and Neal switched all of their belongings over, and finally shut up once Neal was sitting in his new desk, his back to Diana’s workspace, clear view of the entrance to the office in front of him. Then Brad turned around, wedged himself into his tiny new working space, and finished eating his bearclaw.
*
Patel called them back a week later. Neal’s tests had come back positive for a couple of STIs, some that were curable and others that were manageable. Nothing serious, nothing-nothing fatal.
After Peter recovered from the rush of relief that had nearly knocked his feet out from under him he went to the pharmacy, filled the prescriptions, and made sure that Neal followed the directions on the bottles exactly. Neal seemed to be amused by his zealous mother-henning and obediently took his pills with full glasses of water or light meals. Peter asked him, every morning, if he felt better. Neal just nodded at him every morning for two weeks and then, one day, one day like any other, Neal wandered down the stairs at exactly 6:45 and instead of nodding, he smiled.
Peter should have appreciated that moment more. Because when Elizabeth went upstate to visit her sister and her new baby, everything went to hell.
*
Neal had gotten into one fight on the inside. And he had planned it very carefully. In full view of the guards, in a well-lit room where they would be separated quickly. He’d punched another inmate in the face and then curled up to protect himself as best as possible to weather the retaliation until the guards intervened.
After Hector died, it had been a free-for-all. Everyone wanted a piece of him and he had nothing left to give and no power to withhold. He’d figured that solitary was his best option. Some respite from the assaults, time to himself, room to breathe again. And he’d gotten what he’d been asking for.
It was a curse, Moz had told him. May you find what you are looking for. He’d looked for Kate for years. His second time in prison he was just looking to be alone.
He’d never been in solitary before, in the years he’d spent during his first period of incarceration. He’d been a model prisoner when he was in maximum security. Played the game and gotten the privileges that came from greasing the right palms and playing nice with the other inmates. After the dog-eat-dog world of general population, he was ready for a change.
Solitary was...solitary was hell.
Solitary was twenty-three hours out of every twenty-four locked in a room by himself. Being driven crazy by the silence and being punished for screaming, solitary was food shoved through a slot in the door and dying for just a glimpse of the guard’s fingers. It was handcuffs put on once a day for a trip to a tiny room where he could do pull-ups, more white walls and the trip between which quickly became the highlight of his day.
Walking down hallways with guards’ hands on his elbows to keep him moving, their fingers brushing against his wrists when he was released, maybe-sometimes-saying hello, Caffrey, how’s it going.
He’d thrown one punch, gotten two months, and vowed never to fight back again. With Elizabeth gone to visit her sister, the house emptier than ever and Peter’s temper uncertain, Neal made his move.
*
Peter was downstairs watching the game on TV. Probably reading over a case file during commercials. Usually Neal would stay with him. He liked working next to Peter, especially when most of Peter’s attention was fixed on something else. Today, though, he had something different planned.
He went upstairs after dinner and got ready. A bit after nine he heard the TV turn off, then the sounds of Peter cleaning up: putting his beer bottle in the recycling, letting Satchmo in from the backyard.
His skin started to crawl when the stairs began to creak. He bit the inside of his cheek and fought down his nerves as best as he could.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on feeling the texture of the bedspread against his skin, listened to the sound of the wind against the window, the rattle it made against the frame. They were new details but it was a familiar exercise. Concentrating on his environment to shut down his awareness of his body.
The door opened and he counted out a full two seconds before he could bring himself to open his eyes. Peter was standing in the doorway to his bedroom, staring at Neal with his mouth and eyes wide open.
Neal curved his lips in something that he hoped resembled a smile.
“Neal,” Peter said, as if he were choking on disappointment, but Neal knew want when he saw it. And he saw it in the way Peter’s eyes drifted over his body.
Neal was naked, but he wasn’t hard. He’d tried and failed to bring himself to an erection-his skin was still tender from the amount of time he’d spent trying to convince his body that he was ready for it, this time-so he tilted his hips away from the door as much as he could. Tried to create some echo of Botticelli.
It was maybe the first time since he’d been released that he felt like he knew what he was doing. He was offering himself to Peter, and Peter was walking towards the bed, Peter was looking at his body (too skinny, too skinny for Peter, but he’d been eating he’d been trying he was smiling).
He hadn’t prepared himself. He had mentally, as much as he’d been able, but not physically. He’d brought lotion in with him from the bathroom but hadn’t opened himself up. It was a gamble, hopefully one that wouldn’t hurt him too badly if he’d bet wrong-but he figured that Peter would want to do that. To pretend that Neal was a virgin, that it was their wedding night, pretend Neal was the other version of himself that would actually have wanted this.
“Neal,” Peter said again, and Neal raised an eyebrow in expectation. But instead of taking off his clothes Peter picked up his bathrobe. “You don’t have to do this.”
Neal didn’t like being lied to.
He got on his knees, shuffled to the edge of the bed, and stroked himself with his right hand. He was half-hard within seconds. It was easier with Peter in the room, the threat of his body close by. He’d had years, after all, to train his body for this. He pinched a nipple with his left hand, rolling it between his fingers, trying to convince Peter that feeling guilty was a waste of time. He shouldn’t feel bad about taking what he was offered.
Peter stepped forward, and Neal…relaxed.
That surprised him more than anything. That Peter (tall, strong, too close) registered as anything other than a threat.
He’d planned on pretending. He was used to pretending. But Peter stepped forward and Neal’s hips swayed towards him, his eyelids flickered shut, some crossed wires in his fucked-up brain actually, honestly, wanted Peter to touch him.
He hated that his response wasn’t forced, wasn’t calculated, hated that Peter would know how helpless Neal was before him. How much Neal needed. He’d see it in the way that Neal leaned towards him when he stepped forward and sighed when Peter ran a hand down the speed bumps that his ribs had become.
If Peter took this-took him-they would be okay. Neal would earn the protection that Peter was giving him. It would be a contract, not a gift that could be taken away (like it had been before). Slowly, Peter knelt down in front of him, and for one breathless, expectant second, Neal thought that Peter was going to suck him. Instead Peter put his hand on Neal’s hip.
Right on top of the scars.
For one horrible, frozen moment, Peter’s fingertips traced the letters. Neal couldn’t move as Peter spelled out the words that were carved into his body.
“I saw this,” Peter whispered. “They sent me copies of all the medical reports. I saw-”
And Neal tore himself away and scrambled off the other side of the bed until his back was against the wall, he covered his scars with one hand and his cock with the other and gasped, lungs tight, he couldn’t breathe. Peter held his hands up in surrender and stared at the floor.
“I’m sorry.”
And he looked at Peter’s lips, at the creases in the corners of his eyes, and had a horrible sense of déjà vu. Because the last time he’d heard those words from Peter it had been like this. Peter on his knees and Neal with no forgiveness in his mouth. Only that time Peter had been holding Neal’s tracker in his hands and Neal hadn’t known what was in store for him. Three years later and the words still sounded wrong out of Peter’s mouth; Neal still didn’t want them.
"I did everything that I could. I swear."
Peter held up the bathrobe and Neal grabbed it on his way out of the room.
*
He slammed the door shut on his way out, stalked to his bedroom, then closed and locked his door. He held the terrycloth bathrobe in clenched fists until his knuckles ached, trying to convince the adrenaline burning in his body that he hadn’t failed.
I get to run, he told himself fiercely. If I want to, I can leave. Right now. And Peter won’t stop me. He crouched in his room, back against the door, and repeated that over and over until he could breathe again.
He looked at his room-the room that the Burkes had set aside for him before they knew that he would be released, before they’d known June’s apartment would be unavailable, before they’d known that he’d choose them instead of the motel-he looked at the room and the gifts and the decorations and tried to convince himself that he was worth it.
Nelson, his third keeper-the one before Francois-had been bored on a Saturday afternoon, had borrowed a makeshift knife from a friend, and then carved the words into Neal’s body one excruciating letter at a time. It had barely healed, the scars still red and tender, when the guards realized that Nelson was going to kill Neal if they didn’t do something. They’d transferred him to Francois’ cell with the words on his hips inflamed like an advertisement, a label, a gift card.
Neal was familiar with cruelty now in a way he’d never had to be before. The crudeness and brutality and permanence of it. Nelson had taught him that lesson well. And-and it didn’t matter whether or not the words were true. Didn’t matter how gently Peter had touched the scars or how warm his fingers had been or how terribly it had hurt when Nelson had cut it into him. It might be false but it was still his. In his skin and on his body.
And he did not know why. But something inside of him said you deserve this. The scars, yes, but also the room and the robe and the sign at work with his name on it, Neal Caffrey engraved on cheap plastic in a truly hideous font.
And he did not know why. But something inside of him that had been counting on Peter to save him, something that had been waiting, dormant for three years now, said you don’t need him for that. Something that had been broken and beaten before it had been forgotten whispered to him when his knuckles were sore and his eyes burned with unshed tears and his muscles were tense with panic: you have survived.
*
The new house was old.
Two stories high with an unfinished basement, a wide rambling porch in the backyard, and a garden that was more weed than vegetable. As winter began to melt into spring, the Burkes decided it was time to start to work on the house.
Neal helped paint. He scraped old layers off the walls and helped select 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 also starting to gain some weight back. Maybe a pound a week. Some weeks were bad, though; some weeks Peter was out of the office on a case 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. And with cornflower blue trim on the floorboards and a fresh eggshell white brightening 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 could do with the basement.
He stumbled on a box of financial records when he was exploring a deep storage closet.
We love the country, Peter had said. There’s room for Satchmo to run, Elizabeth had explained.
The house was old, beautiful, and charming. It was also a long 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 $300,000 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 $5o0,000 transfer had been made to Judge Tyler three weeks before Neal’s final appeal had gone through. 500,000 untraceable, inexplicable dollars had been transferred into an offshore account that was so well hidden it had taken Neal every ounce of skill he had to find it.
He didn’t write anything on the piece of paper he’d found in the basement, didn’t comment on it, didn’t ask any questions. He just set it down on Peter’s desk and stood there. Waiting for Peter to tell him the truth.
"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 the 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 that 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 just 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 (Peter’s 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...
Even with all of the things that had happened to him in prison, he’d never been sold before. Rented, yes, because Nelson had understood that favors were a powerful currency and that Neal’s ass was a valuable commodity, so he’d traded Neal’s ass for a few packs of cigarettes, his mouth for a bottle of toilet wine. Peter had bought the rest of his life for 500,000.
Peter had bought his freedom for more than Neal knew he was worth.
Neal 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’d 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 somehow tied to the roof of her car. He’d gone to help her because even if he was trying to avoid her it didn’t mean he wanted to see her get crushed to death.
They carried the swing to the back porch together. 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 cheaper paint.
*
Two weeks later Brad Knot bought him a donut.
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, on the center of a napkin in front of his keyboard, 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’d 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. 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 there was 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 bite. 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 brought him a scone.
*
The woman at the bakery reminded Brad of his mother. Only worse, because he didn’t talk to his mother about his dating life, and he’d made the mistake of telling Marie why he’d started buying two donuts instead of one. Every morning she needled him for updates, teasing him for being shy.
He wasn’t being shy, he was just...biding his time.
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.
"My sister lived with an abusive partner for seven years," he continued, when it became clear that his answers were insufficient to allay Burke’s fears. She’d kept it a secret for six and insisted it just wasn’t that bad for the seventh. When she’d landed in the hospital with her arm broken in four places, the police had stepped in and made it their problem. She was doing better, now. Physically and mentally. But it had been a long, hard, painful journey. "I’m not saying that I won’t screw it up," he said, because it was obvious that Neal was an emotional minefield, "but I know how to be careful. I will be careful."
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 cliché. 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.
*
Brad bought a new suit. A new suit that he 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 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 the 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 cliché," 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?"
She laughed, and a shiver ran down his spine. "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 will 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 no one the wiser.
*
The first date was…awkward. His hands shook too badly for him to write very quickly, so the conversation was especially stilted. He had to force himself to eat. Brad devoured an entire steak and both of their salads. He also paid for the dinner and pulled Neal’s chair out for him and walked him up to the Burkes’ door after the date, but then he didn’t lean in to kiss him.
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. 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.
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 learned that he could be guided closer, that he wanted to kiss again, that the brush of Brad’s moustache brought back memories, but none so bad that they couldn’t be chased away by the tilt of Brad’s head and the careful breaths he drew around Neal’s lips.
part three
*
The first time he touched himself, it felt like a betrayal.
His hand shook with tension, as if he was struggling against the grasp of some imaginary enemy (only they were real. He knew their names, knew their families). His fingers were awkward around his cock like they hadn’t been since he was nine and just beginning to discover what his body was capable of.
He started to stroke himself. He tried to remember what he liked. He looked at the door, at the lock, and for some reason, waited for Peter to come in.
But it was silent and he was alone and he wanted very badly to come. He’d woken up hard and rutting against the blankets, a warm dream quickly fading. He tried to finish himself off, but it wasn’t easy. His body was ready but his mind kept getting in the way.
It wasn’t working. He could think of nothing except how awkward it was until the clock neared 7. And then he thought about Francois. He wrapped his fingers around his cock again, slowly, carefully, and imagined Francois pressed tight around his back, beard scrapping against Neal’s neck. Telling him how sexy he looked, how jealous everyone in the surrounding cells were. Begging Neal to make a sound, any sound, when he came.
He came and the memory of Francois faded as fast as his dream had. His hand was covered in his own semen. He was sweaty, his hair was stuck to his forehead, the clock was ticking past 7. He was going to be late.
He spent the day jumping at shadows and crowding too close to Peter’s side. Afraid that someone was going to look at him and know he wanted it.
It had felt good. He didn’t want anyone to know. He was irrationally convinced that they’d all smell it on him. Semen and sweat and need. Slut. He touched the scars on his hip whenever he wasn’t actively reminding himself not to. Both he and Peter were worn out by the end of the day.
He got in the shower after dinner. Not something he normally did, but Peter told him over and over and over again that he got to do whatever he wanted. And he wanted to make sure every hint of sex was washed from his body.
But when the hot water started running, he got down on his knees. Put one hand over his mouth to muffle any sound and the other around his dick, and he started jerking off. Not because anyone wanted him to, not because he had to, not because he was weak, not because he was warped. Because he wanted to. Because he liked the way his body felt limp and relaxed afterwards, because it felt like he was reminding his body how to feel good, because-because this was one of the parts of his life that he hadn’t ever expected he’d get back. Masturbating in a shower. Mundane and lewd and habitual, one of the many things he hadn’t known he could lose, one of the many things he never thought he’d have again.
He finished, washed his hair with Peter’s shampoo (which he tried not to do too often), and got out just as the hot water was running out.
He went out on the porch, that night. Wearing his own slippers, wrapped in Byron’s robe, Satchmo panting on his feet. Felt the warmth fade from his body and the cold set in and savored the sensation. This is my body, he told himself. It felt like show-and-tell, like preschool, something he had to learn again. This is my body.
*
"I like him."
"You like everyone," Diana replied with a roll of her eyes.
"That is not true. What about...Ruiz? I don’t like Ruiz," Brad said triumphantly.
"Nobody likes Ruiz," she said condescendingly. "And I saw the birthday card that you bought for him."
"It was the man’s birthday! Just because I don’t like him doesn’t mean I have no heart. Unlike some people I could name."
Diana rolled her chair over next to his. "Ruiz is a big part of the reason Neal got locked up again," she said quietly.
She went back to her desk and Brad stared at Peter’s office. Neal was working up there again. Sitting at the side of the desk, occasionally sliding his notepad over to Peter.
Sometimes Brad felt like he was walking blindfolded through a minefield. He’d been with the unit for a couple months and he still got blindsided with back stories he didn’t see coming. Diana filled him in when she had to, but she seemed to enjoy withholding information. He didn’t begrudge her the upper-hand. Peter was a hard boss to work for. Even Diana, who’d been with the man for years, caught the sharp end of his tongue more than seemed fair.
When he’d first been assigned to the unit, he’d thought Peter was simply focused on the job. Too busy for incompetence and too impatient to suffer fools. Peter yelled at the agents who got temporarily assigned to large cases until they sat down, shut up, and followed his orders to the letter. He had no love for the higher-ups, and only seemed to listen to Hughes because-well, because Hughes was a scary son-of-a-bitch. It wasn’t until Neal arrived that he realized that Peter was actually a decent guy with a sense of humor and a nice smile.
"Was it like this before?" Diana sighed, but turned her chair around to look at him. "When Neal was here the first time?"
Diana followed his gaze and looked up at Neal and Peter, their heads nearly touching, both writing on the same piece of paper. "Like the two of them are members of a club that you really want to join, and neither of them seems to realize it?"
"I meant about Peter, and how much happier he seems now. But-yeah. Like a secret club."
"Pretty much exactly," she said decisively.
They both went back to work.
For about five minutes, because the fraud case he was working seemed to be constructed entirely of dead ends and he was getting bored. "Can we start our own secret club? I’ve already got a great secret handshake."
"Get to work," she snapped.
He was pretty sure that when she saw the flag he’d sketched, she’d totally be into it.
*
One week later and he’d learned that 401(k) regulations had two loopholes he’d never explored before, that Neal Caffrey was about eight times smarter than he was, that Diana definitely did not want to be in his club, and that Caffrey was suffering from a pretty damn severe case of PTSD. Oh-and that the bakery down the street had the best bearclaws he’d ever had in his entire life.
The 401(k) thing he’d learned after Neal had solved his case for him, which is also how he learned how freaky smart the man was; that Diana didn’t want to be in his club he’d learned through clever use of his deductive reasoning skills, and that Caffrey had PTSD? Well, aside from just using the smarts that God and his momma had given him, there was the fact that the man jumped like a cat when he was startled, that he twitched whenever there were loud noises, and that he never stood or sat with his back to a door if he could help it.
Which also explained why he liked to work in Peter’s office so much. The glass walls, the chair at the end of the desk-it was the perfect vantage point. The new desk Neal had been assigned in the bullpen was squished into a corner facing the wall, wedged between the desks of two agents from another unit who talked across it pretty constantly.
*
The next morning Brad came in, munching on his bearclaw, and sat down in Neal’s chair. When Peter and Neal came in (exactly two minutes late, which seemed to be their standard arrival time) they both stopped and stared at him.
"This pastry? Is excellent," he informed them. He twisted back and forth in the chair for a second. "Hey, boss-do you think I could switch desks with Neal? You don’t mind, do you, Neal? It’s just that this chair is better for my back than the other one, and I can’t switch just the chair because this one won’t fit under the other desk, and I could raise the other desk off the ground but then there’s this whole skewed-”
"Shut it, Brad." He blinked innocently up at Peter. "Neal, do you mind switching desks?" Neal looked between them a couple of times and then shook his head. "You sure?" Neal nodded, and Brad beamed up at him.
"Thanks, man! You’re a lifesaver. Speaking of which-I’ve got an extra roll around here somewhere, you want some? I just like the name, don’t actually care for the taste."
He rambled as Peter went up to his office, kept talking as he and Neal switched all of their belongings over, and finally shut up once Neal was sitting in his new desk, his back to Diana’s workspace, clear view of the entrance to the office in front of him. Then Brad turned around, wedged himself into his tiny new working space, and finished eating his bearclaw.
*
Patel called them back a week later. Neal’s tests had come back positive for a couple of STIs, some that were curable and others that were manageable. Nothing serious, nothing-nothing fatal.
After Peter recovered from the rush of relief that had nearly knocked his feet out from under him he went to the pharmacy, filled the prescriptions, and made sure that Neal followed the directions on the bottles exactly. Neal seemed to be amused by his zealous mother-henning and obediently took his pills with full glasses of water or light meals. Peter asked him, every morning, if he felt better. Neal just nodded at him every morning for two weeks and then, one day, one day like any other, Neal wandered down the stairs at exactly 6:45 and instead of nodding, he smiled.
Peter should have appreciated that moment more. Because when Elizabeth went upstate to visit her sister and her new baby, everything went to hell.
*
Neal had gotten into one fight on the inside. And he had planned it very carefully. In full view of the guards, in a well-lit room where they would be separated quickly. He’d punched another inmate in the face and then curled up to protect himself as best as possible to weather the retaliation until the guards intervened.
After Hector died, it had been a free-for-all. Everyone wanted a piece of him and he had nothing left to give and no power to withhold. He’d figured that solitary was his best option. Some respite from the assaults, time to himself, room to breathe again. And he’d gotten what he’d been asking for.
It was a curse, Moz had told him. May you find what you are looking for. He’d looked for Kate for years. His second time in prison he was just looking to be alone.
He’d never been in solitary before, in the years he’d spent during his first period of incarceration. He’d been a model prisoner when he was in maximum security. Played the game and gotten the privileges that came from greasing the right palms and playing nice with the other inmates. After the dog-eat-dog world of general population, he was ready for a change.
Solitary was...solitary was hell.
Solitary was twenty-three hours out of every twenty-four locked in a room by himself. Being driven crazy by the silence and being punished for screaming, solitary was food shoved through a slot in the door and dying for just a glimpse of the guard’s fingers. It was handcuffs put on once a day for a trip to a tiny room where he could do pull-ups, more white walls and the trip between which quickly became the highlight of his day.
Walking down hallways with guards’ hands on his elbows to keep him moving, their fingers brushing against his wrists when he was released, maybe-sometimes-saying hello, Caffrey, how’s it going.
He’d thrown one punch, gotten two months, and vowed never to fight back again. With Elizabeth gone to visit her sister, the house emptier than ever and Peter’s temper uncertain, Neal made his move.
*
Peter was downstairs watching the game on TV. Probably reading over a case file during commercials. Usually Neal would stay with him. He liked working next to Peter, especially when most of Peter’s attention was fixed on something else. Today, though, he had something different planned.
He went upstairs after dinner and got ready. A bit after nine he heard the TV turn off, then the sounds of Peter cleaning up: putting his beer bottle in the recycling, letting Satchmo in from the backyard.
His skin started to crawl when the stairs began to creak. He bit the inside of his cheek and fought down his nerves as best as he could.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on feeling the texture of the bedspread against his skin, listened to the sound of the wind against the window, the rattle it made against the frame. They were new details but it was a familiar exercise. Concentrating on his environment to shut down his awareness of his body.
The door opened and he counted out a full two seconds before he could bring himself to open his eyes. Peter was standing in the doorway to his bedroom, staring at Neal with his mouth and eyes wide open.
Neal curved his lips in something that he hoped resembled a smile.
“Neal,” Peter said, as if he were choking on disappointment, but Neal knew want when he saw it. And he saw it in the way Peter’s eyes drifted over his body.
Neal was naked, but he wasn’t hard. He’d tried and failed to bring himself to an erection-his skin was still tender from the amount of time he’d spent trying to convince his body that he was ready for it, this time-so he tilted his hips away from the door as much as he could. Tried to create some echo of Botticelli.
It was maybe the first time since he’d been released that he felt like he knew what he was doing. He was offering himself to Peter, and Peter was walking towards the bed, Peter was looking at his body (too skinny, too skinny for Peter, but he’d been eating he’d been trying he was smiling).
He hadn’t prepared himself. He had mentally, as much as he’d been able, but not physically. He’d brought lotion in with him from the bathroom but hadn’t opened himself up. It was a gamble, hopefully one that wouldn’t hurt him too badly if he’d bet wrong-but he figured that Peter would want to do that. To pretend that Neal was a virgin, that it was their wedding night, pretend Neal was the other version of himself that would actually have wanted this.
“Neal,” Peter said again, and Neal raised an eyebrow in expectation. But instead of taking off his clothes Peter picked up his bathrobe. “You don’t have to do this.”
Neal didn’t like being lied to.
He got on his knees, shuffled to the edge of the bed, and stroked himself with his right hand. He was half-hard within seconds. It was easier with Peter in the room, the threat of his body close by. He’d had years, after all, to train his body for this. He pinched a nipple with his left hand, rolling it between his fingers, trying to convince Peter that feeling guilty was a waste of time. He shouldn’t feel bad about taking what he was offered.
Peter stepped forward, and Neal…relaxed.
That surprised him more than anything. That Peter (tall, strong, too close) registered as anything other than a threat.
He’d planned on pretending. He was used to pretending. But Peter stepped forward and Neal’s hips swayed towards him, his eyelids flickered shut, some crossed wires in his fucked-up brain actually, honestly, wanted Peter to touch him.
He hated that his response wasn’t forced, wasn’t calculated, hated that Peter would know how helpless Neal was before him. How much Neal needed. He’d see it in the way that Neal leaned towards him when he stepped forward and sighed when Peter ran a hand down the speed bumps that his ribs had become.
If Peter took this-took him-they would be okay. Neal would earn the protection that Peter was giving him. It would be a contract, not a gift that could be taken away (like it had been before). Slowly, Peter knelt down in front of him, and for one breathless, expectant second, Neal thought that Peter was going to suck him. Instead Peter put his hand on Neal’s hip.
Right on top of the scars.
For one horrible, frozen moment, Peter’s fingertips traced the letters. Neal couldn’t move as Peter spelled out the words that were carved into his body.
“I saw this,” Peter whispered. “They sent me copies of all the medical reports. I saw-”
And Neal tore himself away and scrambled off the other side of the bed until his back was against the wall, he covered his scars with one hand and his cock with the other and gasped, lungs tight, he couldn’t breathe. Peter held his hands up in surrender and stared at the floor.
“I’m sorry.”
And he looked at Peter’s lips, at the creases in the corners of his eyes, and had a horrible sense of déjà vu. Because the last time he’d heard those words from Peter it had been like this. Peter on his knees and Neal with no forgiveness in his mouth. Only that time Peter had been holding Neal’s tracker in his hands and Neal hadn’t known what was in store for him. Three years later and the words still sounded wrong out of Peter’s mouth; Neal still didn’t want them.
"I did everything that I could. I swear."
Peter held up the bathrobe and Neal grabbed it on his way out of the room.
*
He slammed the door shut on his way out, stalked to his bedroom, then closed and locked his door. He held the terrycloth bathrobe in clenched fists until his knuckles ached, trying to convince the adrenaline burning in his body that he hadn’t failed.
I get to run, he told himself fiercely. If I want to, I can leave. Right now. And Peter won’t stop me. He crouched in his room, back against the door, and repeated that over and over until he could breathe again.
He looked at his room-the room that the Burkes had set aside for him before they knew that he would be released, before they’d known June’s apartment would be unavailable, before they’d known that he’d choose them instead of the motel-he looked at the room and the gifts and the decorations and tried to convince himself that he was worth it.
Nelson, his third keeper-the one before Francois-had been bored on a Saturday afternoon, had borrowed a makeshift knife from a friend, and then carved the words into Neal’s body one excruciating letter at a time. It had barely healed, the scars still red and tender, when the guards realized that Nelson was going to kill Neal if they didn’t do something. They’d transferred him to Francois’ cell with the words on his hips inflamed like an advertisement, a label, a gift card.
Neal was familiar with cruelty now in a way he’d never had to be before. The crudeness and brutality and permanence of it. Nelson had taught him that lesson well. And-and it didn’t matter whether or not the words were true. Didn’t matter how gently Peter had touched the scars or how warm his fingers had been or how terribly it had hurt when Nelson had cut it into him. It might be false but it was still his. In his skin and on his body.
And he did not know why. But something inside of him said you deserve this. The scars, yes, but also the room and the robe and the sign at work with his name on it, Neal Caffrey engraved on cheap plastic in a truly hideous font.
And he did not know why. But something inside of him that had been counting on Peter to save him, something that had been waiting, dormant for three years now, said you don’t need him for that. Something that had been broken and beaten before it had been forgotten whispered to him when his knuckles were sore and his eyes burned with unshed tears and his muscles were tense with panic: you have survived.
*
The new house was old.
Two stories high with an unfinished basement, a wide rambling porch in the backyard, and a garden that was more weed than vegetable. As winter began to melt into spring, the Burkes decided it was time to start to work on the house.
Neal helped paint. He scraped old layers off the walls and helped select 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 also starting to gain some weight back. Maybe a pound a week. Some weeks were bad, though; some weeks Peter was out of the office on a case 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. And with cornflower blue trim on the floorboards and a fresh eggshell white brightening 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 could do with the basement.
He stumbled on a box of financial records when he was exploring a deep storage closet.
We love the country, Peter had said. There’s room for Satchmo to run, Elizabeth had explained.
The house was old, beautiful, and charming. It was also a long 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 $300,000 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 $5o0,000 transfer had been made to Judge Tyler three weeks before Neal’s final appeal had gone through. 500,000 untraceable, inexplicable dollars had been transferred into an offshore account that was so well hidden it had taken Neal every ounce of skill he had to find it.
He didn’t write anything on the piece of paper he’d found in the basement, didn’t comment on it, didn’t ask any questions. He just set it down on Peter’s desk and stood there. Waiting for Peter to tell him the truth.
"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 the 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 that 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 just 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 (Peter’s 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...
Even with all of the things that had happened to him in prison, he’d never been sold before. Rented, yes, because Nelson had understood that favors were a powerful currency and that Neal’s ass was a valuable commodity, so he’d traded Neal’s ass for a few packs of cigarettes, his mouth for a bottle of toilet wine. Peter had bought the rest of his life for 500,000.
Peter had bought his freedom for more than Neal knew he was worth.
Neal 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’d 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 somehow tied to the roof of her car. He’d gone to help her because even if he was trying to avoid her it didn’t mean he wanted to see her get crushed to death.
They carried the swing to the back porch together. 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 cheaper paint.
*
Two weeks later Brad Knot bought him a donut.
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, on the center of a napkin in front of his keyboard, 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’d 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. 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 there was 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 bite. 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 brought him a scone.
*
The woman at the bakery reminded Brad of his mother. Only worse, because he didn’t talk to his mother about his dating life, and he’d made the mistake of telling Marie why he’d started buying two donuts instead of one. Every morning she needled him for updates, teasing him for being shy.
He wasn’t being shy, he was just...biding his time.
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.
"My sister lived with an abusive partner for seven years," he continued, when it became clear that his answers were insufficient to allay Burke’s fears. She’d kept it a secret for six and insisted it just wasn’t that bad for the seventh. When she’d landed in the hospital with her arm broken in four places, the police had stepped in and made it their problem. She was doing better, now. Physically and mentally. But it had been a long, hard, painful journey. "I’m not saying that I won’t screw it up," he said, because it was obvious that Neal was an emotional minefield, "but I know how to be careful. I will be careful."
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 cliché. 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.
*
Brad bought a new suit. A new suit that he 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 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 the 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 cliché," 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?"
She laughed, and a shiver ran down his spine. "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 will 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 no one the wiser.
*
The first date was…awkward. His hands shook too badly for him to write very quickly, so the conversation was especially stilted. He had to force himself to eat. Brad devoured an entire steak and both of their salads. He also paid for the dinner and pulled Neal’s chair out for him and walked him up to the Burkes’ door after the date, but then he didn’t lean in to kiss him.
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. 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.
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 learned that he could be guided closer, that he wanted to kiss again, that the brush of Brad’s moustache brought back memories, but none so bad that they couldn’t be chased away by the tilt of Brad’s head and the careful breaths he drew around Neal’s lips.
part three