White Collar fic, Peter/Neal
Title: Five reasons Peter is a better person than Neal, and one reason Neal is better than Peter. Or, five fantasies that make Neal feel guilty, and one that makes Peter feel that way too.
Fandom: White collar
Pairing: Peter/Neal
Notes: Written for kinkbingo. Kinks are: Humiliation (in public), bondage (wrist and ankle restraints), tickling, drugs/aphrodisiacs, sleepy/unconscious.
Warnings for: rough fantasies, silly fantasies, issues of sexual shame
Fic:
Neal sometimes thinks about all the ways Peter is a better person than he is.
Not all the reasons Peter thinks he's better. Neal still only supports the side of law and order out of courtesy to his friend.
But the reasons Peter is actually better. Neal counts them off, as he lies in bed, trying to think of Peter in a way that won't end with him humping his hand, feeling pathetic for longing for the man who put him away. But sometimes it always ends up like that anyway.
1. Peter cares about people, not things. That's true of Neal too of course - just not as true as it is of Peter. When Peter finds out Keller - a murdering bastard who has personally insulted them - might get killed by his debtors, Peter wants to imprison him but also protect him. Neal, however, doesn't want him dead, but he's not about to risk himself to prevent it. Not if Peter weren't there anyway.
But Peter doesn't see why anyone would kill or be killed for money or things. Sure, he likes a nice view, good coffee, but he wouldn't kill for them. He definitely doesn't see why Neal would risk his own life or freedom for a thing, or even for the thrill of accomplishment at getting that thing. And Peter surrounds himself with people like him - El and Diana and Jones and everyone else - people who might like their career or their occasional luxuries, but would never think that the point of life is excitement and beauty and wonder, and who don't think it's all that important for people who love one another to reach the extraordinary instead of sharing the ordinary; yes, they want to be the best, but they don't need to have the best. And Neal doesn't think that he's wrong for loving art or great clothes or exquisite cuisine. Taste is not a sin. But he knows that most people in the world would choose money or an easy life over their duty to others, if the money were just good enough. Almost anyone would, if the others weren't that important. But Peter wouldn't, ever. And he doesn't even like to be around people who might.
Somehow he made an exception for Neal. Maybe he understands that in Neal's worldview, crime is his belief system, not a violation of it. But Neal doubts it. He thinks that maybe he has - incredibly, if only partially - conned Peter Burke into thinking Neal Caffrey is a good person. No, he wouldn't choose money over Moz or Peter or El, since he knows that a relationship is harder to replace than cash or art or even a good plan, but he wasn't exactly Mr. Upright. In his younger days, he didn't only con big corporations, and he didn't only steal from flush art institutions. Peter knew a surprising number of Neal's past efforts, but he didn't know all of them, especially from the early days.
He probably wouldn't like Neal as much if he knew.
Neal fantasizes sometimes that Peter finds out and forgives him. He doesn't make excuses (you were so young, things were so hard), since he wouldn't be Peter if he did that. But he forgives him. And then he takes off the anklet and, while he's on his knees, gives Neal a skillful blow.
Neal knows this is not going to happen. Neither part of the fantasy.
2. Neal sometimes fantasizes that Peter leaves Elizabeth for him. El is mad and gets revenge by sleeping with every young rising star chef she meets in Europe as she travels to all the best restaurants in France and Italy and Portugal. She emails pictures of herself with all these talented men and women to all the people Peter works with, just to humiliate him. Neal imagines the various pictures - and they are absurdly hot - but he also imagines the blush on Peter's face as he walks around, trying desperately to pretend like everything is fine, and the shame washes over him like something crass and painful, and Neal loves it despite himself. Peter, however, can barely face the world until Neal's unwavering attention cheers him up.
But then she stops being mad. She likes the new lifestyle so much she stays in Europe and has a fabulous life and no one feels guilty. Peter and Neal move in together in a historic home on Washington Square, with Satchmo, of course. They marry and honeymoon in Bali, then Capri, then Iceland, then Japan, then finish the honeymoon camping in northern Greece to get a glimpse of the last few wild horses of the region. They come home and are happy. Peter and Neal become so close, over years and decades, that their bodies just grow accustomed to each other, fit together so perfectly it feels like a crime to be apart. And in this fantasy, Peter is a sleep humper, rubbing against Neal's ass in bed while remaining unconscious, somehow (improbably, Neal knows) managing to kiss Neal's shoulder while rutting. Neal usually wakes up, but not always - but they have been married so long it barely registers, even as Peter is still embarrassed the morning after. But Neal just lies there, perfectly comfortable, enjoying the stimulation and maybe reaching down to get himself off as well.
One day, Neal decides to adopt, and Peter wants to say no, but just like he was never able to say no to El, he can't say no to Neal now either. They adopt from a young mother via a progressive program where birth parents and adoptive parents stay in contact and birth parents are part of the children's lives, and they help the mother fulfill her dreams go to a famous conservatory to train as an operatic soprano. Peter adores the baby boy and spoils him, and so it falls to Neal to be the disciplinarian. He's not good at it, but the child is so sweet and smart and learns by watching Peter to want to do the right thing all his own, so it's okay. They adopt twin girls later, and on their fifth birthday, each gets a nearly identical puppy, a chocolate lab, except one has a cute teeny white spot on her left paw.
Neal convinces Peter to retire from his dangerous job to be a full-time dad, and Neal earns money by breaking into museums and galleries to steal their masterpieces, but only as part of publicity stunts designed to garner public interest in art. He would cleverly devise brilliant heists, with doting godfather-to-his-kids Moz of course, and then unveil them at staged public performances, explaining the genius of his theft to the applause of onlookers and gallery owners both, and then he would explain why the art is worth such devotion and risk; he would teach the world to truly know art, and to truly love art, as only thieves and artists can....
This is what Neal calls his 'stupid fantasy.' It is stupid at every step, and Neal knows it, he knows that it is as odds with the way the world works in a fundamental way that even the best con can't overcome. For one thing, if Peter left El, she would be crushed and betrayed, and Neal is a shitty shitty person for romanticizing the destruction of the best marriage he's ever seen. Also, El would never do anything that mean to Peter. There might be payback, but not of the public humiliation sort.
More importantly, El would fight to get Peter back. And she would fight well, Neal bets. She would win.
Of course Peter would never, ever, ever leave El for anybody. Least of all Neal.
And Peter would never become this person, would never just magically likes what Neal likes. And if Neal were a better man, he wouldn't want this from Peter.
But once in a while he wants it.
3. Sometimes Neal imagines that Peter is so frustrated with the FBI that he leaves it. But then he is bored all day and Neal has to preoccupy him.
In this fantasy, El doesn't exist. She does somewhere, of course, but she never met Peter and she never held up that sign about Italian food, and Peter is free in the wind once he leaves his job.
Somehow, through an as-yet-undetermined sequence of events, they end up on the run from local police, or more likely, local thugs, in some place with excellent beaches. They have no choice but to sleep on the beach, the sand soft underneath them, radiating the heat stored from the long summer day, and they make love, slow and soft and lingering. Neal savors every kiss and gentle nibble, every caress and every slow inch Peter moves into him. Peter has grown a beard and it is rough against his skin, but he moves over Neal so carefully it doesn't hurt. They are naked in front of the ocean, and it feels like they have been there forever, and they fall asleep entangled, as if they were never two separate people at all.
This image strikes Neal as sweet. But then he realizes that even in his nicest fantasy, Peter loses (or never had) everything that makes him Peter. Even those unnamed events have the vague shape of convincing Peter to do something criminal, some delicious image of Neal convincing Peter to steal something and needing to hide from the world after. Like seeing Peter enter a world of lawless abandon and holding Neal's hand while he does it. As if Peter Burke were not Peter Burke at all.
And this says something about him, Neal knows. That all he can fantasize about is taking things from Peter.
4. Once in a while - not too often - Neal imagines that it is another time and place and Peter has Neal locked in a dungeon. But he is a kind and tolerant dungeonkeeper, and he brings Neal delicious food and sweet-smelling perfumes to rub on all the places where the chains rub hard against his wrists and ankles. And when Neal is chained up, Peter always threatens to spank him but instead ends up tickling him, making him giggle as he writhes around, pulling against his restraints, pleading with Peter to please stop. When he finally does, he lays sweet kisses all over Neal's body, and though the pecks are chaste, they reveal hidden depths of talent and guile in Peter's lips and tongue.
Pretty much all Neal's fantasies involve Peter's lips and tongue at some point.
In this fantasy, Neal knows that Peter somewhere has a wife and a job and a fulfilling life. But when they are in that dungeon, all those things disappear.
Neal, in real life, knows that this fantasy is profoundly fucked up, no matter how sweet it feels while imagining it. First, he knows enough about both prison and history to realize that he - of all people- shouldn't romanticize a dungeon. Second, he realizes that even in this silly piece of fluff, he is still imagining some world where he can have Peter - and Peter can have him - and neither of them have to think about anything or anyone else. Their pleasure, their enjoyment of each other; in that dungeon, there's nothing else.
But the real Peter doesn't believe in this; he lives his life by the idea that you don't ever get to act like your actions don't have consequences, and you don't ever get to forget your promises and commitments and beliefs.
So yet again, he can't think about Peter without imagining taking something from him. Something at his core.
Neal's starting to consider the possibility that being a natural-born thief might not be the compliment he once thought it was.
5. Neal's best fantasy about Peter is also his worst. He feels sick thinking about it. He feels like he's turning every code of honor and friendship and loyalty and gratitude and love he has ever felt into dirt; he feels like he deserves to have Peter leave him and never look back.
The only problem is, of all his fantasies, it's the one that makes Neal come hardest.
In this fantasy, El leaves Peter. She is sick of him putting the job first. It's not because of Neal, so it's not his fault, though it might be indirectly, since Neal makes Peter like his job even more, or maybe Neal forgets to remind Peter not to forget her birthday.
But Peter loses El. And he is lost without her.
He is devastated. He takes it out on the people around him, and soon no one but Neal can stand his temper, so it's just the two of them.
But Peter has no patience for the Bureau's rules any more, and without El, he doesn't care as much anyway. So then he has no wife and soon no job, and no purpose, and he is, and it's the first time in his life, utterly without purpose. Nothing to get up in the morning for, nothing to use his intelligence to solve.
He has nothing.
Except Neal.
And Neal is there for him, and Neal comforts him, and Peter's only happiness is in Neal's body, and he doesn't want to answer his phone or even watch the game since it brings up too many memories, and so the only sounds he can stand to hear involve Neal moaning, begging, or ordering. And he refuses to eat unless it's off of Neal's body, and he refuses to shower unless Neal is there too, pinned against the shower wall, and Peter just can't function at all without his only lifeline; his need for Neal is so deep and so primal (or his depression is so great and so brutal) that sex with Neal is the only thing he can manage to do other than sleep and rage.
But slowly, lovingly, Neal gets him to do other things with him, taking walks or watching a DVD, and then eventually he finds jobs for Peter to do, insurance investigations or maybe private security consultant gigs. Gradually, painstakingly, Neal builds Peter back up from the lost ball of nothing that he had become.
Peter is Peter again.
And Peter is grateful to Neal forever.
Neal knows this is wrong. To imagine Peter so lost, so broken.
But deep down, Neal knows that this - this horrible, reprehensible fantasy - is actually the only way he might ever get and keep Peter all to himself.
And as he thinks about all the details of this imagined life, all the contingencies and possibilities and probabilities, Neal notices that at some point, it has stopped being just a stimulating fantasy. It has started to take on the characteristics of a plan.
A back up plan. A just in case, in-the-event-of plan.
But still.
Neal imagines Peter's life being destroyed. So he can get his shot.
Officially the worst person in the world.
Neal never wants Peter to know he is capable of thinking about - much less lusting after - anything like this scenario.
So of course it's this one that Neal confesses, high on some drug that he was never supposed to take, falling into Peter's arms as he all but carries Neal to his bedroom at June's place.
Like there aren't enough reasons in the world for Neal to hate himself already.
--------------------------------------------
Peter knows Neal. And, despite the appearance otherwise, he knows himself.
He knows that he would have killed Fowler that day, mostly to protect Diana and Neal, but a little bit for himself. For revenge, or something as bad.
He also knows that there's something in him that likes to hold power over other people. Likes pushing the limits of that power.
Maybe it's all the lapsed-religious guilt that makes him feel that this thing -this hard pit of something cruel and dominant - makes him less, makes him wrong somehow. El thinks it's just a preference, one that she shares and doesn't feel the least ashamed of.
But Peter knows it's there, and while El's power is just beautiful and right, Peter knows his own is muddier. It's a stain on him that people like Neal and El don't have.
He gathers more evidence to prove it all the time.
For example: he is never more attracted to Neal when Neal is helpless. Cuffed as Peter bends him over the hood of a car. Sitting on his living room floor, begging Peter to listen to his side of events, awaiting Peter's determination of his punishment or release.
Drugged up, babbling, completely un-Nealed by some chemical. No mask, no con, just Peter prying into, pushing his way, into all the secrets Neal spent his life trying to conceal. Even the secrets Peter had no idea he would find.
It was like that, at Dr. Powell's clinic.
It was like that again, when they went after the brand new synthetic drug that was making its rounds in the finance sector, the one that the dealers would provide to high-stressed Wall Street workers and then use to blackmail them to get inside tips.
When Neal was offered the drug, Peter ordered him in the earbud not to take it. But the (presumed) former con artist was too dedicated to keeping his cover. He swallowed it with the rest of the hotshot young financial wizards, and then Peter decided to raid the office a little early.
Neal was walking on the moon all the way home.
But he fell in mood - if not intoxication - before Peter left, and starting apologizing, started crying. His body was loose, his words were loose, and he was leaning, practically throwing his body on to Peter's, grabbing at his shirt, peering up into Peter's face, his blue eyes moist with shame and fear and with that wine-sweet need for Peter to keep him no matter how bad he was.
And Peter knew that if he were a better person, he would walk away. He wouldn't use an altered state to pressure Neal to confess what it was he felt so guilty about. But of course he did.
Neal told him. "El is so awesome, she's so nice to me, she doesn't deserve this, you don't either, you shouldn't ever be with someone like me, Peter," he babbled on and on, until finally Peter figured out what his deep, dark fantasy was.
Peter wasn't impressed.
Of course, Peter already knew what kind of person Neal was. It didn't make sense, but Neal always believed that people loved him because - and only because - Neal could give them the world. In Neal's mind, he could give them everything they wanted and anything they missed, and then after Neal achieved that impossible feat, someone would be able to find happiness with Neal.
Peter didn't get why he thought that way. For a while he blamed Kate, until he realized it was just the way Neal was. And to be honest with himself, Peter had used that desire of Neal's - to please at all costs - when he was first trying to get Neal established as a viable choice of consultant.
But here's the thing about Neal, Peter knew. Even his most selfish, most twisted fantasies, were still, at heart, pretty romantic.
Peter knew Neal's shoe size, his favorite comfort food, and every piece of porn Neal ever watched during the years Peter chased him. He knew what turned Neal on, and he knew the kinds of things that made Neal squeamish enough to run the other way.
And so he knew that there was something inside him that Neal wouldn't be able to love. Peter knew that there was a part of himself that Neal needed his protection from.
And he wanted to tell Neal that. He wanted to say, Stop worrying about your fantasy because mine is far, far more depraved than yours could ever be. Mine involves you calling me Master and falling on your knees every time you see me. Your fantasies are about sweet gentle love, and mine are about fucking your face until you cry and choke and I have to yank you by the hair just to keep you upright. You'd feel guilty about dreaming of a spanking, and I'm dreaming about flogging you bloody until you confess every secret you've ever kept, until I know every inch of you, every inch of your past, no matter how much you fight it. I dream about fucking you against a wall in Central Park, while I see how many fingers I can add while doing it, until you're screaming and damaged and begging, and neither of us can tell if you're begging me to stop or begging me for more. And then I come on your face, and I slap you right where the semen lands, and my handprint makes your skin bright red around the white and I force the come-and-lube-covered fingers into your mouth as you desperately try to resist, but I make you taste me, I make you open up to me in ways you didn't think you could open up to for anybody. Every time I see you, I want to fuck you and use you and own you until you can't think of anything but turning into someone who is totally mine, and the only reason I haven't tried, the only reason I haven't taken advantage of your moon-eyed crush, is that you deserve much, much better than what I would give you.
Peter wanted to say this. Just once. But it would cost both of them too much. And Neal was in his arms, helpless and limp and trusting, leaning on his chest, whispering his pleas, confessing that he wished he could have Peter all to himself and what a very very bad person that made him.
Peter gritted his teeth. He willed himself to do the right thing, silently told his dick to calm down until it just barely started to listen. And he gently guided Neal to the bed, said, "Don't worry, Neal. I like you just fine the way you are," and went to tell June to keep an eye on her lodger that night. There was no way Peter was going to sit in that apartment with him all night, waiting for some excuse to be worse than Neal deserved. Even Peter wasn't fucked up enough to do that.
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Continuation here http://daria234.livejournal.com/13819.html
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Fandom: White collar
Pairing: Peter/Neal
Notes: Written for kinkbingo. Kinks are: Humiliation (in public), bondage (wrist and ankle restraints), tickling, drugs/aphrodisiacs, sleepy/unconscious.
Warnings for: rough fantasies, silly fantasies, issues of sexual shame
Fic:
Neal sometimes thinks about all the ways Peter is a better person than he is.
Not all the reasons Peter thinks he's better. Neal still only supports the side of law and order out of courtesy to his friend.
But the reasons Peter is actually better. Neal counts them off, as he lies in bed, trying to think of Peter in a way that won't end with him humping his hand, feeling pathetic for longing for the man who put him away. But sometimes it always ends up like that anyway.
1. Peter cares about people, not things. That's true of Neal too of course - just not as true as it is of Peter. When Peter finds out Keller - a murdering bastard who has personally insulted them - might get killed by his debtors, Peter wants to imprison him but also protect him. Neal, however, doesn't want him dead, but he's not about to risk himself to prevent it. Not if Peter weren't there anyway.
But Peter doesn't see why anyone would kill or be killed for money or things. Sure, he likes a nice view, good coffee, but he wouldn't kill for them. He definitely doesn't see why Neal would risk his own life or freedom for a thing, or even for the thrill of accomplishment at getting that thing. And Peter surrounds himself with people like him - El and Diana and Jones and everyone else - people who might like their career or their occasional luxuries, but would never think that the point of life is excitement and beauty and wonder, and who don't think it's all that important for people who love one another to reach the extraordinary instead of sharing the ordinary; yes, they want to be the best, but they don't need to have the best. And Neal doesn't think that he's wrong for loving art or great clothes or exquisite cuisine. Taste is not a sin. But he knows that most people in the world would choose money or an easy life over their duty to others, if the money were just good enough. Almost anyone would, if the others weren't that important. But Peter wouldn't, ever. And he doesn't even like to be around people who might.
Somehow he made an exception for Neal. Maybe he understands that in Neal's worldview, crime is his belief system, not a violation of it. But Neal doubts it. He thinks that maybe he has - incredibly, if only partially - conned Peter Burke into thinking Neal Caffrey is a good person. No, he wouldn't choose money over Moz or Peter or El, since he knows that a relationship is harder to replace than cash or art or even a good plan, but he wasn't exactly Mr. Upright. In his younger days, he didn't only con big corporations, and he didn't only steal from flush art institutions. Peter knew a surprising number of Neal's past efforts, but he didn't know all of them, especially from the early days.
He probably wouldn't like Neal as much if he knew.
Neal fantasizes sometimes that Peter finds out and forgives him. He doesn't make excuses (you were so young, things were so hard), since he wouldn't be Peter if he did that. But he forgives him. And then he takes off the anklet and, while he's on his knees, gives Neal a skillful blow.
Neal knows this is not going to happen. Neither part of the fantasy.
2. Neal sometimes fantasizes that Peter leaves Elizabeth for him. El is mad and gets revenge by sleeping with every young rising star chef she meets in Europe as she travels to all the best restaurants in France and Italy and Portugal. She emails pictures of herself with all these talented men and women to all the people Peter works with, just to humiliate him. Neal imagines the various pictures - and they are absurdly hot - but he also imagines the blush on Peter's face as he walks around, trying desperately to pretend like everything is fine, and the shame washes over him like something crass and painful, and Neal loves it despite himself. Peter, however, can barely face the world until Neal's unwavering attention cheers him up.
But then she stops being mad. She likes the new lifestyle so much she stays in Europe and has a fabulous life and no one feels guilty. Peter and Neal move in together in a historic home on Washington Square, with Satchmo, of course. They marry and honeymoon in Bali, then Capri, then Iceland, then Japan, then finish the honeymoon camping in northern Greece to get a glimpse of the last few wild horses of the region. They come home and are happy. Peter and Neal become so close, over years and decades, that their bodies just grow accustomed to each other, fit together so perfectly it feels like a crime to be apart. And in this fantasy, Peter is a sleep humper, rubbing against Neal's ass in bed while remaining unconscious, somehow (improbably, Neal knows) managing to kiss Neal's shoulder while rutting. Neal usually wakes up, but not always - but they have been married so long it barely registers, even as Peter is still embarrassed the morning after. But Neal just lies there, perfectly comfortable, enjoying the stimulation and maybe reaching down to get himself off as well.
One day, Neal decides to adopt, and Peter wants to say no, but just like he was never able to say no to El, he can't say no to Neal now either. They adopt from a young mother via a progressive program where birth parents and adoptive parents stay in contact and birth parents are part of the children's lives, and they help the mother fulfill her dreams go to a famous conservatory to train as an operatic soprano. Peter adores the baby boy and spoils him, and so it falls to Neal to be the disciplinarian. He's not good at it, but the child is so sweet and smart and learns by watching Peter to want to do the right thing all his own, so it's okay. They adopt twin girls later, and on their fifth birthday, each gets a nearly identical puppy, a chocolate lab, except one has a cute teeny white spot on her left paw.
Neal convinces Peter to retire from his dangerous job to be a full-time dad, and Neal earns money by breaking into museums and galleries to steal their masterpieces, but only as part of publicity stunts designed to garner public interest in art. He would cleverly devise brilliant heists, with doting godfather-to-his-kids Moz of course, and then unveil them at staged public performances, explaining the genius of his theft to the applause of onlookers and gallery owners both, and then he would explain why the art is worth such devotion and risk; he would teach the world to truly know art, and to truly love art, as only thieves and artists can....
This is what Neal calls his 'stupid fantasy.' It is stupid at every step, and Neal knows it, he knows that it is as odds with the way the world works in a fundamental way that even the best con can't overcome. For one thing, if Peter left El, she would be crushed and betrayed, and Neal is a shitty shitty person for romanticizing the destruction of the best marriage he's ever seen. Also, El would never do anything that mean to Peter. There might be payback, but not of the public humiliation sort.
More importantly, El would fight to get Peter back. And she would fight well, Neal bets. She would win.
Of course Peter would never, ever, ever leave El for anybody. Least of all Neal.
And Peter would never become this person, would never just magically likes what Neal likes. And if Neal were a better man, he wouldn't want this from Peter.
But once in a while he wants it.
3. Sometimes Neal imagines that Peter is so frustrated with the FBI that he leaves it. But then he is bored all day and Neal has to preoccupy him.
In this fantasy, El doesn't exist. She does somewhere, of course, but she never met Peter and she never held up that sign about Italian food, and Peter is free in the wind once he leaves his job.
Somehow, through an as-yet-undetermined sequence of events, they end up on the run from local police, or more likely, local thugs, in some place with excellent beaches. They have no choice but to sleep on the beach, the sand soft underneath them, radiating the heat stored from the long summer day, and they make love, slow and soft and lingering. Neal savors every kiss and gentle nibble, every caress and every slow inch Peter moves into him. Peter has grown a beard and it is rough against his skin, but he moves over Neal so carefully it doesn't hurt. They are naked in front of the ocean, and it feels like they have been there forever, and they fall asleep entangled, as if they were never two separate people at all.
This image strikes Neal as sweet. But then he realizes that even in his nicest fantasy, Peter loses (or never had) everything that makes him Peter. Even those unnamed events have the vague shape of convincing Peter to do something criminal, some delicious image of Neal convincing Peter to steal something and needing to hide from the world after. Like seeing Peter enter a world of lawless abandon and holding Neal's hand while he does it. As if Peter Burke were not Peter Burke at all.
And this says something about him, Neal knows. That all he can fantasize about is taking things from Peter.
4. Once in a while - not too often - Neal imagines that it is another time and place and Peter has Neal locked in a dungeon. But he is a kind and tolerant dungeonkeeper, and he brings Neal delicious food and sweet-smelling perfumes to rub on all the places where the chains rub hard against his wrists and ankles. And when Neal is chained up, Peter always threatens to spank him but instead ends up tickling him, making him giggle as he writhes around, pulling against his restraints, pleading with Peter to please stop. When he finally does, he lays sweet kisses all over Neal's body, and though the pecks are chaste, they reveal hidden depths of talent and guile in Peter's lips and tongue.
Pretty much all Neal's fantasies involve Peter's lips and tongue at some point.
In this fantasy, Neal knows that Peter somewhere has a wife and a job and a fulfilling life. But when they are in that dungeon, all those things disappear.
Neal, in real life, knows that this fantasy is profoundly fucked up, no matter how sweet it feels while imagining it. First, he knows enough about both prison and history to realize that he - of all people- shouldn't romanticize a dungeon. Second, he realizes that even in this silly piece of fluff, he is still imagining some world where he can have Peter - and Peter can have him - and neither of them have to think about anything or anyone else. Their pleasure, their enjoyment of each other; in that dungeon, there's nothing else.
But the real Peter doesn't believe in this; he lives his life by the idea that you don't ever get to act like your actions don't have consequences, and you don't ever get to forget your promises and commitments and beliefs.
So yet again, he can't think about Peter without imagining taking something from him. Something at his core.
Neal's starting to consider the possibility that being a natural-born thief might not be the compliment he once thought it was.
5. Neal's best fantasy about Peter is also his worst. He feels sick thinking about it. He feels like he's turning every code of honor and friendship and loyalty and gratitude and love he has ever felt into dirt; he feels like he deserves to have Peter leave him and never look back.
The only problem is, of all his fantasies, it's the one that makes Neal come hardest.
In this fantasy, El leaves Peter. She is sick of him putting the job first. It's not because of Neal, so it's not his fault, though it might be indirectly, since Neal makes Peter like his job even more, or maybe Neal forgets to remind Peter not to forget her birthday.
But Peter loses El. And he is lost without her.
He is devastated. He takes it out on the people around him, and soon no one but Neal can stand his temper, so it's just the two of them.
But Peter has no patience for the Bureau's rules any more, and without El, he doesn't care as much anyway. So then he has no wife and soon no job, and no purpose, and he is, and it's the first time in his life, utterly without purpose. Nothing to get up in the morning for, nothing to use his intelligence to solve.
He has nothing.
Except Neal.
And Neal is there for him, and Neal comforts him, and Peter's only happiness is in Neal's body, and he doesn't want to answer his phone or even watch the game since it brings up too many memories, and so the only sounds he can stand to hear involve Neal moaning, begging, or ordering. And he refuses to eat unless it's off of Neal's body, and he refuses to shower unless Neal is there too, pinned against the shower wall, and Peter just can't function at all without his only lifeline; his need for Neal is so deep and so primal (or his depression is so great and so brutal) that sex with Neal is the only thing he can manage to do other than sleep and rage.
But slowly, lovingly, Neal gets him to do other things with him, taking walks or watching a DVD, and then eventually he finds jobs for Peter to do, insurance investigations or maybe private security consultant gigs. Gradually, painstakingly, Neal builds Peter back up from the lost ball of nothing that he had become.
Peter is Peter again.
And Peter is grateful to Neal forever.
Neal knows this is wrong. To imagine Peter so lost, so broken.
But deep down, Neal knows that this - this horrible, reprehensible fantasy - is actually the only way he might ever get and keep Peter all to himself.
And as he thinks about all the details of this imagined life, all the contingencies and possibilities and probabilities, Neal notices that at some point, it has stopped being just a stimulating fantasy. It has started to take on the characteristics of a plan.
A back up plan. A just in case, in-the-event-of plan.
But still.
Neal imagines Peter's life being destroyed. So he can get his shot.
Officially the worst person in the world.
Neal never wants Peter to know he is capable of thinking about - much less lusting after - anything like this scenario.
So of course it's this one that Neal confesses, high on some drug that he was never supposed to take, falling into Peter's arms as he all but carries Neal to his bedroom at June's place.
Like there aren't enough reasons in the world for Neal to hate himself already.
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Peter knows Neal. And, despite the appearance otherwise, he knows himself.
He knows that he would have killed Fowler that day, mostly to protect Diana and Neal, but a little bit for himself. For revenge, or something as bad.
He also knows that there's something in him that likes to hold power over other people. Likes pushing the limits of that power.
Maybe it's all the lapsed-religious guilt that makes him feel that this thing -this hard pit of something cruel and dominant - makes him less, makes him wrong somehow. El thinks it's just a preference, one that she shares and doesn't feel the least ashamed of.
But Peter knows it's there, and while El's power is just beautiful and right, Peter knows his own is muddier. It's a stain on him that people like Neal and El don't have.
He gathers more evidence to prove it all the time.
For example: he is never more attracted to Neal when Neal is helpless. Cuffed as Peter bends him over the hood of a car. Sitting on his living room floor, begging Peter to listen to his side of events, awaiting Peter's determination of his punishment or release.
Drugged up, babbling, completely un-Nealed by some chemical. No mask, no con, just Peter prying into, pushing his way, into all the secrets Neal spent his life trying to conceal. Even the secrets Peter had no idea he would find.
It was like that, at Dr. Powell's clinic.
It was like that again, when they went after the brand new synthetic drug that was making its rounds in the finance sector, the one that the dealers would provide to high-stressed Wall Street workers and then use to blackmail them to get inside tips.
When Neal was offered the drug, Peter ordered him in the earbud not to take it. But the (presumed) former con artist was too dedicated to keeping his cover. He swallowed it with the rest of the hotshot young financial wizards, and then Peter decided to raid the office a little early.
Neal was walking on the moon all the way home.
But he fell in mood - if not intoxication - before Peter left, and starting apologizing, started crying. His body was loose, his words were loose, and he was leaning, practically throwing his body on to Peter's, grabbing at his shirt, peering up into Peter's face, his blue eyes moist with shame and fear and with that wine-sweet need for Peter to keep him no matter how bad he was.
And Peter knew that if he were a better person, he would walk away. He wouldn't use an altered state to pressure Neal to confess what it was he felt so guilty about. But of course he did.
Neal told him. "El is so awesome, she's so nice to me, she doesn't deserve this, you don't either, you shouldn't ever be with someone like me, Peter," he babbled on and on, until finally Peter figured out what his deep, dark fantasy was.
Peter wasn't impressed.
Of course, Peter already knew what kind of person Neal was. It didn't make sense, but Neal always believed that people loved him because - and only because - Neal could give them the world. In Neal's mind, he could give them everything they wanted and anything they missed, and then after Neal achieved that impossible feat, someone would be able to find happiness with Neal.
Peter didn't get why he thought that way. For a while he blamed Kate, until he realized it was just the way Neal was. And to be honest with himself, Peter had used that desire of Neal's - to please at all costs - when he was first trying to get Neal established as a viable choice of consultant.
But here's the thing about Neal, Peter knew. Even his most selfish, most twisted fantasies, were still, at heart, pretty romantic.
Peter knew Neal's shoe size, his favorite comfort food, and every piece of porn Neal ever watched during the years Peter chased him. He knew what turned Neal on, and he knew the kinds of things that made Neal squeamish enough to run the other way.
And so he knew that there was something inside him that Neal wouldn't be able to love. Peter knew that there was a part of himself that Neal needed his protection from.
And he wanted to tell Neal that. He wanted to say, Stop worrying about your fantasy because mine is far, far more depraved than yours could ever be. Mine involves you calling me Master and falling on your knees every time you see me. Your fantasies are about sweet gentle love, and mine are about fucking your face until you cry and choke and I have to yank you by the hair just to keep you upright. You'd feel guilty about dreaming of a spanking, and I'm dreaming about flogging you bloody until you confess every secret you've ever kept, until I know every inch of you, every inch of your past, no matter how much you fight it. I dream about fucking you against a wall in Central Park, while I see how many fingers I can add while doing it, until you're screaming and damaged and begging, and neither of us can tell if you're begging me to stop or begging me for more. And then I come on your face, and I slap you right where the semen lands, and my handprint makes your skin bright red around the white and I force the come-and-lube-covered fingers into your mouth as you desperately try to resist, but I make you taste me, I make you open up to me in ways you didn't think you could open up to for anybody. Every time I see you, I want to fuck you and use you and own you until you can't think of anything but turning into someone who is totally mine, and the only reason I haven't tried, the only reason I haven't taken advantage of your moon-eyed crush, is that you deserve much, much better than what I would give you.
Peter wanted to say this. Just once. But it would cost both of them too much. And Neal was in his arms, helpless and limp and trusting, leaning on his chest, whispering his pleas, confessing that he wished he could have Peter all to himself and what a very very bad person that made him.
Peter gritted his teeth. He willed himself to do the right thing, silently told his dick to calm down until it just barely started to listen. And he gently guided Neal to the bed, said, "Don't worry, Neal. I like you just fine the way you are," and went to tell June to keep an eye on her lodger that night. There was no way Peter was going to sit in that apartment with him all night, waiting for some excuse to be worse than Neal deserved. Even Peter wasn't fucked up enough to do that.
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Continuation here http://daria234.livejournal.com/13819.html
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