Caught, a White Collar story by glacis. Rated NC-17, no copyright infringement intended.
~~
Most of the time, Mozzie liked being Neal Caffrey’s best friend. But sometimes, it sucked. He stared down at the piece of paper in his hand, then glanced up at Neal, sitting across from him at the table. Then he winced and stared back down at the paper.
Weeks of work had finally paid off… he’d identified the ring on the hand of the man seen grabbing Kate in the ATM photo. Unfortunately, it wasn’t good news. The guy wasn’t some kidnapper or enemy from the past. He was Kate’s partner in cons before she got together with Neal. Her fucking mentor.
Even
worse, in a way, is that Mozzie finally tracked down the X on the subway map
she’d etched on the bottle. Maybe she
was trying to let Neal down easy. Maybe
she was just being a bitch (this was Mozzie’s unspoken pet theory). He’d found some of Neal’s things stashed in a
locker. With them, he found a letter
that essentially said that while she loved Neal, she loved the money more, and
with Burke on Neal’s ass the way he was, and with Neal getting caught, the
future prospect of money was bleak, much like Neal’s future prospects.
The fucking bottle was a fucking Dear John letter. Mozzie snarled. Neal laughed, but it sounded like it was stuck in his chest.
“She’s gone after the cache I told her about,” Neal said, sounding way too calm. “Too bad it’s bogus.”
That made Mozzie feel a little better. Sure, Neal had lied to both of them about where he’d stashed his goods, but he was sleeping with Kate, so that made the fact that he’d lied to her even nastier than that he’d lied to Mozzie. There was a cold kind of comfort in that. Belatedly, he registered Neal’s voice. He was asking Mozzie to leave.
Way, way, way too calm.
Mozzie left, because Neal wanted him to, but he didn’t leave it at that. He did the next best thing to being there, and called Peter.
“Burke.”
“Haversham,” Mozzie lied.
“What’s wrong?” Peter immediately asked.
Mozzie liked that about the Tinman. No messing around. Straight to the point. He returned the favor. “Found out about Kate. It’s not good. Neal’s about to fall into the abyss, and he didn’t want me around. I don’t think he should be alone.”
A gusty sigh came over the phone, but Peter’s voice was concerned when he answered. “I’ll be there in ten.”
Mozzie nodded as the line went dead. Yeah, if anybody could set Neal straight, or keep him from going over the edge, it would be Peter Burke.
~~
Peter had studied Neal Caffrey and knew him in all his moods, or thought he did, but he’d never seen him out of control. Never.
When he knocked on the door of Neal’s apartment, and got a shouted, “Fuck off, Mozzie!” as his answer, he didn’t bother to be polite. He just barged in, thankful the door was unlocked since he didn’t think June would appreciate it if he broke it down.
Neal was on his way to a solid drunk, if the two empty bottles on the table were any indication, and he was in a flaming temper. “I told you to fuck off,” Neal snarled as he turned on Peter. He looked confused for a moment to see Peter, but then threw his hands up in the air. “You can fuck off, too!”
Peter approached slowly, like he would with a wild animal, unsure how to handle Neal in this frame of mine. “It’s okay,” he said soothingly, pitching his voice low, and holding his hands out to the side in a non-threatening manner. “Talk to me, Neal. What happened? What’s wrong?”
Neal gave a wild bark of a laugh and screamed, “Okay my ass!” before losing it completely and taking a swing at him.
It wasn’t much of a swing – Neal was a thief, not a fighter – but while it was off-target there was a lot of angry force behind it. Peter caught the swing and pulled Neal’s arm behind his back, but they overbalanced and ended up sprawled on the floor. Neal was out of control and Peter tried to restrain him without hurting him. It was tougher than it should be, because Neal in a temper was a slippery, unexpectedly strong Neal. Unable to control him any other way, Peter finally lay on him, putting the full force of his body over Neal, pinning him to the floor.
It didn’t exactly have the result Peter was expecting. Neal didn’t calm down. Peter got a little worked up. He had no idea how it happened, but instead of trying to get away, Neal was grinding up against him, and instead of putting a stop to it, Peter was grinding back down on him. Now the whole situation was out of control. Neal was staring up at him with big lost dark blue eyes, and their zippers were down, and their bare dicks were rubbing up against each other. Peter was sure he’d out on shorts that morning, but wasn’t sure what happened to them. Then they were coming before Peter could really come to grips with what was happening.
Mentally snorting over the pun, Peter gave up the need to get an explanation for the moment. Neal was exhausted, still drunk, and near incoherent, so Peter took care of the immediate necessities first. He found his shorts bunched up with his pants down around his ankles, and pulled them up so he could walk. Then he stripped Neal, trying not to notice the body under the towel as he cleaned Neal up, tossing the wine and sweat and come-stained clothes on the floor at the foot of the bed. Feeling a little numb and a whole lot confused, Peter tucked Neal under the comforter. He had to get out of there.
But he couldn’t just leave.
Looking around for something to write a note with, Peter heard a noise from the bed. He turned to see Neal starting to thrash around in a nightmare, and a doozy from the look of it. Peter took a deep breath and walked over beside him. Neal looked like he was in pain, his face contorted, his hands fisting the sheet, his body twisting. Peter leaned over and tried to shake him awake.
It didn’t work, but Peter noticed that as soon as he touched Neal, the nightmare faded and Neal stilled. Peter let go, watching closely, and very quickly, Neal once again began to shake. Peter resigned himself to a long evening. He couldn’t leave Neal in this state, because God knew what he’d do when he woke up. Peter shucked his shoes and climbed into the bed, wrapping Neal in a firm hug. Neal turned to him, hanging on like a limpet, and eventually Peter fell asleep.
He woke up slowly, brain automatically taking in the deep shadows in the room and trying to figure out 1) where he was and 2) when he was. Then his brain slid off the track as the hot, talented mouth wrapped around his dick and took every bit of attention he had.
God, Elizabeth was incredible. Peter dropped his hand down to her head, carding his fingers through her short curls, before a little voice spoke up in the back of his mind and reminded him that El had long, straight hair, and her mouth was smaller than the one currently sending him to heaven.
Peter’s eyes popped open and he looked down to see Neal, eyes closed, cheeks flushed, mouth swollen, doing things to his dick that he’d only read about (and then, not often).
He knew what he should do, if he could just make his hand unwind itself from Neal’s hair and make his hips stop moving and stop his dick from doing his thinking for him. Another thought struck him, just as Neal did a thing with his tongue on the head of his dick that made his toes curl.
Pushing Neal off him might not be the best idea. Not just for his own dick, but because Neal could break completely at something he would see as another rejection. But Peter didn’t want to cheat on his wife, even accidentally, and this felt kind of like an accident, since he hadn’t climbed into bed with Neal in the hopes of getting an amazing blow job. Which he was. But he HAD climbed into bed with Neal, so maybe his id knew something his conscious mind didn’t. God. It had to be done, before he came again and made it all a moot point and an even messier situation.
Yet another mental pun.
He groaned and, gritting his teeth, gently pulled Neal off him. Neal gave him a hurt look, blue eyes starting to shutter and go cold, and Peter couldn’t have that. He pulled Neal up into a kiss that was meant to be reassuring, but ended up being scorching hot.
Thoughts and good intentions were derailed again. Peter wasn’t quite sure how it happened, again, but his pants were off – maybe that happened before the blow job? He wondered, until his brain shut down – because Neal straddled him and sank down onto his dick, and was riding him like he was the last bull in the rodeo.
This was different. And since when did his sex drive hijack his body?
Peter hands were locked onto Neal’s hips, his back and legs straining, but he couldn’t move. Neal had him pinned. Peter stared up at Neal, who looked like he was a world away, and that abruptly irritated Peter. If he was fucking Neal, then Neal had damned well better be aware of who was in the bed with him. He peeled a hand from Neal’s hip and wrapped it around Neal’s dick, catching his attention with a bang. Neal stared at Peter, almost startled, then moaned uncontrollably as Peter started to stroke his dick.
It was one of the most singularly erotic noises Peter had ever heard.
The intensity built until it was unbearable, and Neal came all over Peter’s hand and his belly, and the clenching around his dick took Peter over the edge as well. When he returned to reality, Neal was near comatose again, draped over him like a blanket.
Peter rolled his eyes, vaguely wondering how Neal could smell so damned good covered in sweat and come, then gingerly pulled out, wrenching one of those moans from Neal again. Even drained as he was, that made Peter’s dick twitch, and he knew then that he was in big trouble. Gently rolling Neal over to lay out of the wet patch, Peter went into the bathroom and wet a towel to clean them up. Again.
He couldn’t meet his own eyes in the mirror.
After cleaning Neal up, Peter tucked him in, again, but this time, he stayed away from the temptation to climb in with him. Happily, it looked like Neal was too wiped out for nightmares. Peter impulsively leaned over to kiss him on the forehead, but hit his mouth instead.
Damned sex drive.
Even asleep, Neal kissed him back. It was sweeter than it should be.
Peter finally wrote a short note, glancing over at Neal’s slumbering form several times before he left. The note was to the point.
“Neal. We need to talk. Don’t do anything stupid. Peter”
He wasn’t sure how much more stupid Neal (or he) could get than what they’d already done, but Peter knew better than to underestimate how stupid an intelligent man could be when out of his mind and desperate with heartbreak.
It was late when he got home, or maybe really early, like three am. El was in bed, warm and sleepy and gorgeous. He wanted to talk to her, but found himself making love to her instead, a wild, needy lovemaking that left them both a little stunned and wide awake.
Her eyes gleaming,
His mouth answered instead of his brain. “Neal.”
Her eyes widened. “Explain,” she demanded softly, steel beneath the words that changed swiftly to concern when she followed up with, “is he okay?”
Peter shook his head. No, Neal was many things, but ‘okay’ was not one of them. He dithered a bit, finding he couldn’t just flat-out say, ‘I had sex with Neal tonight.’ Instead he found himself going through the events of the evening as if he were giving a report, divorcing himself from the action in order to make it through from beginning to end.
He could self-destruct after he finished confessing.
It didn’t take long to explain, from Mozzie’s somewhat
panicked phone call to Neal’s out-of-control behavior, to the fight that became
fucking. He knew it was disjointed and
confused, but it was the truth, and he had never lied to his wife. When he ran out of words, he realized that
sometime during the telling
“I’m sorry. I love you.” He didn’t know what to say. He looked at her a little desperately. He’d deserve it if she just got up and walked away, but he wasn’t sure he would survive it. “What kind of bastard am I?” he muttered, not meaning to say it out loud.
“My kind,” El told him promptly, and she sounded odd, relieved and intrigued and understanding all at the same time. He would never understand the wonder that was his wife, but he would always thank God for her. He told her so, and she kissed him, then patted him on the chest.
“Come on,” she told him, and moved out of his arms.
“Where are you going?” he asked, suddenly fearful.
“We,” she emphasized the word, “are going to make sure Neal doesn’t do anything stupid.” He stared at her, jaw slack, and she grinned. “Get dressed.”
The ride over to Neal’s apartment was quick, and nearly silent. He only asked, “Why?”
She smiled gently at him. “You care about him. So do I. Right now, we’re the only thing keeping him from going over the edge.” She snuggled up to his side and her smile turned a little evil. “I love you enough to share. Plus, the two of you together… it’s hot.”
He nearly drove into a parked car. El had always been a wild child, and maturity
might mask it, but the essence never changed.
She was still snickering under her breath when they stopped at Neal’s
door. Peter knocked, but no one
answered. He gave
She reached around him and gently pushed the door open.
Neal sat at the table, wearing only boxer shorts. He was leaning his head on one hand and a freshly-opened bottle of wine sat in front of him among the litter and empties from the previous evening. From the look of it, he hadn’t bothered with a glass. He didn’t turn when they entered. It looked like he didn’t even know they were there. Peter’s note was crumpled in one fist.
El went up to his side and placed a hand on his
shoulder. Slowly, he turned his head to
look at her hand, then up into her face. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he looked
haunted, and sad. He opened his mouth to
say something, probably apologize, and
Elizabeth was talking softly, words about not being alone, and there being people who cared about him, and it not being the end of the world even if it felt like it, and it’s all right, and they would talk later, as Peter walked up to the table.
Neal stood, trying to shake off El gently without hurting
her, and he ended up in Peter’s arms again.
Neal was muttering denials and apologies, looking around wildly like he
was trying to find an escape route, so Peter took a page from El’s playbook,
and kissed him. Neal made that low
moaning noise again, prompting a sound of approval from
Things went from surreal to fuzzy right about then. Peter felt El’s hands on him, on Neal, leading them to the bed, but he was too busy kissing Neal and Neal was too busy undressing Peter, for either of them to notice many details. Peter glanced over and saw that El had stripped the bed down to clean sheets. It looked ridiculously inviting. A part of his brain asked where she found them, but the question was swamped when El joined Neal right next to him. Somehow Peter was kissing her and then Neal and Neal was kissing him and then Elizabeth and they were all on the bed, and when did they get naked?
Then that attempt at reasonable thought fractured too,
because Neal was underneath him, on his hands and knees, and it was even better
from that angle, because Peter could get deeper, and he could move, so he
did. Neal moaned again, but the sound
was oddly muffled.
Peter forced his eyes open, not having any idea when they closed, to see that Neal had his face between Elizabeth’s thighs, and from the way she was squirming, he was as good at that as he was at giving blow jobs. Peter’s grip tightened on Neal, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from his wife, staring down at her over Neal’s shoulder. His gaze traveled down, from Neal’s hands caressing her ass and Neal’s head moving between her legs, along the length of Neal’s back and Elizabeth’s front, to see her sucking on Neal’s dick as her hands played back between them, catching Neal’s balls, and sometimes Peter’s dick as it pulled out or pushed back in, and it was fucking incredible.
Then El arched, and he knew that move, knew she was coming. Neal sucked and licked her like a pro, prolonging the pleasure, and the part of Peter’s brain that hadn’t gone ‘lizard in the jungle’ was taking notes – she really liked that. Neal must have, too, because he gentled his movements with his mouth and hands, at the same time that his hips started to move like a jackrabbit, and El was drinking him down with just as much enthusiasm as he’d used on her. The tightness clenching around his dick, the enjoyment on his wife’s face, the sheer erotic weirdness of the moment got to Peter and he came so hard he nearly blacked out.
Once again, it was Elizabeth who took charge, as both men had about as much initiative (and muscle control) as boiled noodles. She wiggled out from under Neal in a way that would have Peter hard as a rock if he hadn’t been completely drained, then grinned at him and gave him a long, deep kiss. He tasted Neal, and damn if that didn’t make his dick twitch too.
Sometime during that kiss they pulled apart from the knot they’d made of their bodies, and Neal lay sandwiched between them, watching them with a glazed, hungry look. Peter found himself kissing Neal, and tasting El, and damned if that didn’t bring life back to the dead. Well, a little life. El reached down to stroke him, and he shuddered, oversensitive from so many orgasms in such a short night.
Short, but eventful.
Kind of like Neal.
And
Then El kissed Neal, and wiggled a little more, and leaned over him to kiss Peter, and wiggled a little more. They’d managed to bundle themselves up under a comforter El must have brought up with her during one of those distracting wiggles.
Neal made an abortive movement as if to escape, and El rapped the back of his head. He stopped, looking shocked, and Peter couldn’t help the snicker that escaped. Neal looked at him like he’d lost his mind.
“We’ll talk later,” El told them both firmly. “Sleep now.”
Peter nuzzled the side of Neal’s neck and whispered, “Might as well just accept it. You’re stuck with us.”
For the first time since they arrived, Neal managed a complete sentence. “You two are amazing. Completely insane, but amazing.”
“S’okay, baby,” El slurred, nearly asleep. “You’ll get used to it.” She cracked open one eye and pinned Neal with a sharp look. “Stay.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Neal answered automatically, then looked at Peter, completely confused, completely worn-out, but finally without the despair that had been killing him by inches earlier.
Peter grinned tiredly at him, and gave him a goodnight kiss. “Stop thinking. It won’t help.” He threw a leg over Neal’s, pinning him lightly, making sure if Neal tried to do anything stupid, like leave, Peter would wake up and put a stop to it. It wasn’t quite as effective as handcuffs, but it would do in a pinch.
El shifted over, effectively bracketing Neal with Peter, and wrapped her arm around Neal, her hand resting on Peter’s thigh. Silence settled over the room as they drifted off to sleep.
~~
An hour or so later, as dawn was breaking, the door quietly opened. Mozzie stuck his head in, frowned at the wine bottles on the table, and tiptoed into the room. He uncrumpled the note, staring at Peter’s writing for a moment, then put it back on the table. Glancing around, he crept further into the room, stopping and staring in shock at the three cuddled in a pile on the bed. After a moment, he grinned, shook his head, and tiptoed back out of the room.
It was about time Neal caught a break. And wouldn’t it just figure, that it would be with the only one that ever caught him.
END
