FIC: Tribulation (2 of 3); White Collar
Title: Tribulation (2 of 3)
Author: Esmeralda (laesmeralda)
Fandom: White Collar
Dramatis Personae: Neal Caffrey/Peter Burke
Warnings: Season 1 Finale spoiler
Rating: R to NC-17 (this chapter, PG13)
Disclaimer: This is a work of impure fiction.
Feedback: Responses, including constructive criticism, are welcome.
Original Date: Written March 2012
*******
Tribulation: Part 1
*******
Elizabeth’s one careful glass of wine sat half full between them on the coffee table. Her eyes had gotten big, but she hadn’t slapped Neal or ordered him out of the house. “You are always a surprise,” she said.
He met her gaze with some difficulty. Since the first, she’d been good to him. Loving even. She hadn’t made him feel judged. So the next part was particularly hard. “It wasn’t my idea to say anything. Peter insisted that he had to tell you. It wasn’t right for him to have to-he didn’t do anything wrong.” He traced an imaginary circle on the coffee table. “I would have never breathed a word, even though you’ve been so generous with me. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that deep down I’m an honest guy.”
He was surprised when she broke into a toothy smile. “No wonder he’s sounded sheepish on the phone yesterday. And running off to do an errand as soon as he got me home? I knew that was a pretense.”
In the absence of anger from her, he felt, oddly, a little disrespected. “I think you wouldn’t react this way if I were a woman.”
“Damn right, I’d claw your eyes out. Or do whatever civilized equivalent would keep me out of jail.” She reached out and took his hand. “Given enough time together, there are things a good partner senses about the other. Peter and I have a rich life together. I should be plenty of woman for him. If he went to another woman for sex or intimacy, it would be a betrayal and I wouldn’t tolerate it.” She let Neal’s hand go. “But I’m not man enough for anybody.”
“Elizabeth… I think you’re wrong about him. I’ve never seen any sign.”
She took a swallow of wine. “Let’s talk about you first. I could see what’s been happening to you around him. That part doesn’t surprise me at all-I fall in love with him regularly. You’re a better person than you believe yourself to be, or than you’ve allowed yourself to be. That said, the extraordinary loyalty you’ve given him, so fast, the man who dragged you out of your high-life and put you in prison? I knew that was about more than admiration.” She studied him for a few uncomfortable moments. “You’re so-almost proud-about truly bad things like stealing and doing time, why is this part of yourself something to hide?”
“I’m consistent. It’s about survival in the world I’ve known. ’Two-natured’ is at best a pop culture reference to being a were-beast. To people of either exclusive orientation, people like me are unpredictable and aren’t to be trusted. And my… former… line of work is all about being trusted.” He didn’t sugar coat it.
“I see,” she said, not looking entirely sympathetic. “I do have to say that I’m surprised you made a move. If nothing else, you’d worry that he’d reject you. That suggests to me that he’s responding-subtly-and you sensed that he’s open to you. You read people like no one else I’ve ever met.”
“It was simply that my guard was way down. He was impeccably… brotherly.”
She shook her head. “You’re having an effect on him. Something I’ve never seen before.”
“In my admittedly narrow real-world experience, men don’t just wake up one day and decide to be sexually cued to other men.”
Elizabeth smiled a little slyly. “I didn’t say that, did I?” She sighed. “Despite being steeped in the homophobic culture of athletics and then Quantico, Peter has always had gay and lesbian friends in his circle. And Diana came to him first when she and Christie started having problems, even though he was her boss. That’s unusual.”
“That’s just tolerance. Peter’s all about doing the right thing and people know that.”
“I know it looks like sympathy for the plight of others but it’s empathy too. He’s never been ashamed of recognizing other men’s qualities or paying compliments that most guys would never utter.”
“Easily explained by humbleness and generosity. Peter doesn’t compete with anyone else; unlike me, he stands on his own merit. So, he can build others up-he doesn’t have to tear them down to be better.”
“Yes, it’s one of the dear things about him. Okay, I’m going about this far too obliquely. Let’s try this. Does he strike you as particularly interested in men’s fashion?”
Neal snorted. “Pleated trousers?”
“Right.” She reached over, pulled a stack of European men’s fashion magazines out from underneath the latest edition of Baseball Digest, and thrust them at Neal. “These are not mine.”
Neal thumbed through them. “Articles?” he asked, half-sardonically.
She chuckled. “He’s never hidden this from me but I bet he wouldn’t take them to work or let a male colleague see them here. That tells me that it means something… private to him.”
“Not much to go on. It isn’t exactly porn.”
“Humor me. Open that one.” She indicated a tattered, last-fall issue.
When he pulled it out, it fell open to a where the spine had been repeatedly flattened. On the left, there was a headline with a photo from a New York City Ballet performance and columns of text. On the right, a full-page lone dancer posed, bare-chested in trousers, face tilted down and away, his fedora perched just so. Neal looked up at El, his heart suddenly racing.
“There’s just a bit more. But I’m keeping that marital privilege close. The upshot is, you’ve awakened a sleeping dragon.”
To Neal, she looked a little shaken, saying that out loud. Or maybe it was just his surprise, projected onto her. He carefully put the whole pile back, under the baseball mag. “I care about you, Elizabeth. Very much. I’m willing to quit the bureau to make this right. I mean that. If I stay out here, Peter will keep me working with him. Either way, I promise you I won’t cross the line again.” He fought himself every word of the way to make that promise, but he meant it.
“You’re not hearing me. I can see that I have to spell this out.” She folded her hands resolutely. “I want this to go wherever it goes. If Peter ends up approaching you…”
“He’s not going to.”
She quelled him with a look. “Don’t be such a dummy. Now that you’ve broken the ice, and once I let him know how I feel, I can say with confidence that it’s a simple matter of time for him.”
Neal digested that. “Okay, hypothetically, what if down the road it isn’t casual for him?”
“It isn’t casual for him now. Good Lord, don’t hurt him, Neal. Not if you can possibly help it. I’ll ask that much of you. I’ve thought about this, obviously, a lot more than either of you have. I know how to ask for what I want and speak up about what I don’t want. I’m offering to share what’s most precious to me. If you get greedy or make this in any way about a game, I’ll tell you to back off, and if you don’t, I’ll make you.”
He nodded at the challenge in her voice. “Fair enough.”
She softened again. “You came here tonight to protect him, to confess and take on all the punishment I could dish out. That says all I need to know right now. I’ve just told you that you have my blessing. Why aren’t you celebrating?”
Neal was overwhelmed. He pushed her glass aside, leaned over, and kissed her, very softly, on the mouth. It wasn’t brotherly, but it wasn’t overly naughty either. She giggled just a little. “One other thing...” She pulled back to look him in the eyes, and he could see mirth and a spark of desire. “If anything ever does happen, I think, just maybe, I might want to hear some details. I want your advance consent that Peter can tell me.”
*******
They worked together as though nothing had happened. They cleared cases, verbally sparred, and had an outright fight about Neal’s attempted double-play with the Krugerrands, all without a hint of any oddness. It took Peter several days to forgive Neal for that little nondisclosure. After confirming that Alex got on the plane and that no one who boarded got off before it taxied, he asked Neal to meet for coffee. It was their first time together and not working since the strange afternoon.
“Thank you for talking with El. I meant to say that ages ago.”
“No worries,” Neal replied. “I’m still alive.”
Peter smiled. And that was all they said about it. They went on with other topics and things went back to normal. On the outside. On the inside, Neal couldn’t put it away.
Peter continued to provide little comforts: a hand on Neal’s shoulder, a pause over a case file to ask if he was okay, a compassionate smile at just the right times. It made Neal feel downright achy in the chest.
Neal was worried that his hero-worship demeanor, and his usual practice of making extended eye contact with Peter (which people logically interpreted as his attempt to seem more credible or get on Peter’s good side) were magnified by what he could only describe as his yearning to elicit a response from Peter. In compensating, of course, he had pulled it back a little too much.
“You have another fight with the boss?” Diana teased one morning. “It’s obvious that he won, you know. You should just let it go, whatever it is. Quit giving him the cold shoulder. He seems impervious but he’ll secretly feel hurt. I ought to know.”
So he trusted Peter, and tried to fall back into just being himself. And of course, Peter pulled it off beautifully. So beautifully, Neal figured that was that.
*******
He hadn’t stopped crying about Kate. Moz had warned him it could be a year or more of unpredictable tears. So he accepted it, stopped counting, and still cried.
Meanwhile, the only way to cope with moving through the daily normalness with Peter seemed to be to elaborately develop and fiercely indulge a fantasy life about him when alone.
For a couple of weeks, there existed a frightful juxtaposition between the differing expressions of his feelings for Kate and for Peter. So, he created little rituals of separation… for example, never thinking about Kate in the shower, on weekend afternoons, when occupying the couch, or right before going to sleep. He never fantasized about Peter when he was drawing, relaxing in the big armchair, or in the morning before work. He wrote letters to Kate in his journal and never spoke to her of Peter. His fantasies about Peter never involved being comforted about Kate.
Perhaps because his sadness about Kate could now involve words, it settled into a steadier rhythm. As it did so, he realized that his imaginary affair with Peter only served to make the difference between night and day too stark. He willed himself to stop it. And succeeded. Mostly. Then, he decided it was time to move on, time to acknowledge how unfulfilled he felt about both Kate and Peter, and to have sex with someone real for the first time in a very long time. He had to break the spell.
Out in the real world, he learned that men can spot, and tend to shy away from grief no matter how deeply masked. That made Peter seem even more remarkable. Which didn’t help.
He also discovered that women trust sadness more than they do confidence, and most are drawn to that extra vulnerability in a man. So that was the way the river flowed, and too tired to fight the current, Neal let it take him.
*******
Tribulation: Part 3
Author: Esmeralda (laesmeralda)
Fandom: White Collar
Dramatis Personae: Neal Caffrey/Peter Burke
Warnings: Season 1 Finale spoiler
Rating: R to NC-17 (this chapter, PG13)
Disclaimer: This is a work of impure fiction.
Feedback: Responses, including constructive criticism, are welcome.
Original Date: Written March 2012
*******
Tribulation: Part 1
*******
Elizabeth’s one careful glass of wine sat half full between them on the coffee table. Her eyes had gotten big, but she hadn’t slapped Neal or ordered him out of the house. “You are always a surprise,” she said.
He met her gaze with some difficulty. Since the first, she’d been good to him. Loving even. She hadn’t made him feel judged. So the next part was particularly hard. “It wasn’t my idea to say anything. Peter insisted that he had to tell you. It wasn’t right for him to have to-he didn’t do anything wrong.” He traced an imaginary circle on the coffee table. “I would have never breathed a word, even though you’ve been so generous with me. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that deep down I’m an honest guy.”
He was surprised when she broke into a toothy smile. “No wonder he’s sounded sheepish on the phone yesterday. And running off to do an errand as soon as he got me home? I knew that was a pretense.”
In the absence of anger from her, he felt, oddly, a little disrespected. “I think you wouldn’t react this way if I were a woman.”
“Damn right, I’d claw your eyes out. Or do whatever civilized equivalent would keep me out of jail.” She reached out and took his hand. “Given enough time together, there are things a good partner senses about the other. Peter and I have a rich life together. I should be plenty of woman for him. If he went to another woman for sex or intimacy, it would be a betrayal and I wouldn’t tolerate it.” She let Neal’s hand go. “But I’m not man enough for anybody.”
“Elizabeth… I think you’re wrong about him. I’ve never seen any sign.”
She took a swallow of wine. “Let’s talk about you first. I could see what’s been happening to you around him. That part doesn’t surprise me at all-I fall in love with him regularly. You’re a better person than you believe yourself to be, or than you’ve allowed yourself to be. That said, the extraordinary loyalty you’ve given him, so fast, the man who dragged you out of your high-life and put you in prison? I knew that was about more than admiration.” She studied him for a few uncomfortable moments. “You’re so-almost proud-about truly bad things like stealing and doing time, why is this part of yourself something to hide?”
“I’m consistent. It’s about survival in the world I’ve known. ’Two-natured’ is at best a pop culture reference to being a were-beast. To people of either exclusive orientation, people like me are unpredictable and aren’t to be trusted. And my… former… line of work is all about being trusted.” He didn’t sugar coat it.
“I see,” she said, not looking entirely sympathetic. “I do have to say that I’m surprised you made a move. If nothing else, you’d worry that he’d reject you. That suggests to me that he’s responding-subtly-and you sensed that he’s open to you. You read people like no one else I’ve ever met.”
“It was simply that my guard was way down. He was impeccably… brotherly.”
She shook her head. “You’re having an effect on him. Something I’ve never seen before.”
“In my admittedly narrow real-world experience, men don’t just wake up one day and decide to be sexually cued to other men.”
Elizabeth smiled a little slyly. “I didn’t say that, did I?” She sighed. “Despite being steeped in the homophobic culture of athletics and then Quantico, Peter has always had gay and lesbian friends in his circle. And Diana came to him first when she and Christie started having problems, even though he was her boss. That’s unusual.”
“That’s just tolerance. Peter’s all about doing the right thing and people know that.”
“I know it looks like sympathy for the plight of others but it’s empathy too. He’s never been ashamed of recognizing other men’s qualities or paying compliments that most guys would never utter.”
“Easily explained by humbleness and generosity. Peter doesn’t compete with anyone else; unlike me, he stands on his own merit. So, he can build others up-he doesn’t have to tear them down to be better.”
“Yes, it’s one of the dear things about him. Okay, I’m going about this far too obliquely. Let’s try this. Does he strike you as particularly interested in men’s fashion?”
Neal snorted. “Pleated trousers?”
“Right.” She reached over, pulled a stack of European men’s fashion magazines out from underneath the latest edition of Baseball Digest, and thrust them at Neal. “These are not mine.”
Neal thumbed through them. “Articles?” he asked, half-sardonically.
She chuckled. “He’s never hidden this from me but I bet he wouldn’t take them to work or let a male colleague see them here. That tells me that it means something… private to him.”
“Not much to go on. It isn’t exactly porn.”
“Humor me. Open that one.” She indicated a tattered, last-fall issue.
When he pulled it out, it fell open to a where the spine had been repeatedly flattened. On the left, there was a headline with a photo from a New York City Ballet performance and columns of text. On the right, a full-page lone dancer posed, bare-chested in trousers, face tilted down and away, his fedora perched just so. Neal looked up at El, his heart suddenly racing.
“There’s just a bit more. But I’m keeping that marital privilege close. The upshot is, you’ve awakened a sleeping dragon.”
To Neal, she looked a little shaken, saying that out loud. Or maybe it was just his surprise, projected onto her. He carefully put the whole pile back, under the baseball mag. “I care about you, Elizabeth. Very much. I’m willing to quit the bureau to make this right. I mean that. If I stay out here, Peter will keep me working with him. Either way, I promise you I won’t cross the line again.” He fought himself every word of the way to make that promise, but he meant it.
“You’re not hearing me. I can see that I have to spell this out.” She folded her hands resolutely. “I want this to go wherever it goes. If Peter ends up approaching you…”
“He’s not going to.”
She quelled him with a look. “Don’t be such a dummy. Now that you’ve broken the ice, and once I let him know how I feel, I can say with confidence that it’s a simple matter of time for him.”
Neal digested that. “Okay, hypothetically, what if down the road it isn’t casual for him?”
“It isn’t casual for him now. Good Lord, don’t hurt him, Neal. Not if you can possibly help it. I’ll ask that much of you. I’ve thought about this, obviously, a lot more than either of you have. I know how to ask for what I want and speak up about what I don’t want. I’m offering to share what’s most precious to me. If you get greedy or make this in any way about a game, I’ll tell you to back off, and if you don’t, I’ll make you.”
He nodded at the challenge in her voice. “Fair enough.”
She softened again. “You came here tonight to protect him, to confess and take on all the punishment I could dish out. That says all I need to know right now. I’ve just told you that you have my blessing. Why aren’t you celebrating?”
Neal was overwhelmed. He pushed her glass aside, leaned over, and kissed her, very softly, on the mouth. It wasn’t brotherly, but it wasn’t overly naughty either. She giggled just a little. “One other thing...” She pulled back to look him in the eyes, and he could see mirth and a spark of desire. “If anything ever does happen, I think, just maybe, I might want to hear some details. I want your advance consent that Peter can tell me.”
*******
They worked together as though nothing had happened. They cleared cases, verbally sparred, and had an outright fight about Neal’s attempted double-play with the Krugerrands, all without a hint of any oddness. It took Peter several days to forgive Neal for that little nondisclosure. After confirming that Alex got on the plane and that no one who boarded got off before it taxied, he asked Neal to meet for coffee. It was their first time together and not working since the strange afternoon.
“Thank you for talking with El. I meant to say that ages ago.”
“No worries,” Neal replied. “I’m still alive.”
Peter smiled. And that was all they said about it. They went on with other topics and things went back to normal. On the outside. On the inside, Neal couldn’t put it away.
Peter continued to provide little comforts: a hand on Neal’s shoulder, a pause over a case file to ask if he was okay, a compassionate smile at just the right times. It made Neal feel downright achy in the chest.
Neal was worried that his hero-worship demeanor, and his usual practice of making extended eye contact with Peter (which people logically interpreted as his attempt to seem more credible or get on Peter’s good side) were magnified by what he could only describe as his yearning to elicit a response from Peter. In compensating, of course, he had pulled it back a little too much.
“You have another fight with the boss?” Diana teased one morning. “It’s obvious that he won, you know. You should just let it go, whatever it is. Quit giving him the cold shoulder. He seems impervious but he’ll secretly feel hurt. I ought to know.”
So he trusted Peter, and tried to fall back into just being himself. And of course, Peter pulled it off beautifully. So beautifully, Neal figured that was that.
*******
He hadn’t stopped crying about Kate. Moz had warned him it could be a year or more of unpredictable tears. So he accepted it, stopped counting, and still cried.
Meanwhile, the only way to cope with moving through the daily normalness with Peter seemed to be to elaborately develop and fiercely indulge a fantasy life about him when alone.
For a couple of weeks, there existed a frightful juxtaposition between the differing expressions of his feelings for Kate and for Peter. So, he created little rituals of separation… for example, never thinking about Kate in the shower, on weekend afternoons, when occupying the couch, or right before going to sleep. He never fantasized about Peter when he was drawing, relaxing in the big armchair, or in the morning before work. He wrote letters to Kate in his journal and never spoke to her of Peter. His fantasies about Peter never involved being comforted about Kate.
Perhaps because his sadness about Kate could now involve words, it settled into a steadier rhythm. As it did so, he realized that his imaginary affair with Peter only served to make the difference between night and day too stark. He willed himself to stop it. And succeeded. Mostly. Then, he decided it was time to move on, time to acknowledge how unfulfilled he felt about both Kate and Peter, and to have sex with someone real for the first time in a very long time. He had to break the spell.
Out in the real world, he learned that men can spot, and tend to shy away from grief no matter how deeply masked. That made Peter seem even more remarkable. Which didn’t help.
He also discovered that women trust sadness more than they do confidence, and most are drawn to that extra vulnerability in a man. So that was the way the river flowed, and too tired to fight the current, Neal let it take him.
*******
Tribulation: Part 3