Life Imitating Art by glacis (White Collar, Neal/Peter, NC17) Everybody knows an artist must keep up his skills. Neal’s an artist. Peter gets a taste of his skills. Originally written for the Small Fandom Fest 06, Jan. 2010.

There was an old saying: Those that can’t do, teach. In his business, Neal sometimes heard it said as, those who can’t sell, steal. Any way you looked at it, in order to do what he did, you had to be an artist.

You couldn’t fake it if you couldn’t do it as well as the Masters.

Of course, his ego would have gotten him caught a thousand times over if it wasn’t mitigated by his sense of adventure, twisted humor, and addiction to adrenaline. Even then, Peter managed it.

A couple times.

The point was, of course, that it was a skill, one of several in his varied set, and one that, like all others, had to be practiced to keep sharp. There was a reason his cell had scrap paper all over the damned place, with everything from ultra-close examinations of shadow patterns from bars to dreamscapes of Paris to Kate’s… well, anyway. New sketches and paintings were cropping up at his new place, a study of June in the sunlight on the roof deck, a Manhattan nightscape, Mozzie from the side, where he couldn’t be identified, but anyone who knew him would recognize him from the grin and the light glinting off his glasses. A lovely three-quarters portrait of Elizabeth, a playful scene of Satchmo curled on the couch, looking smug ‘cause he’s getting away with sleeping on the furniture.

Art was the backbone of his array of talents. He had to keep his hand in, or he’d get rusty, then he’d get caught, then he’d be back in his cell. Besides, he had a reputation for quality to maintain.

He could no more stop drawing than he could stop breathing, but he was paranoid to the bone, a fact that kept him a step ahead of every lawman (except Peter), con artist, and vengeful mark for almost a decade. So he had sketches, and canvases, that saw the light of day… and a sketchbook that never would.

It was his dream journal, or maybe his fantasy creation, sometimes his nightmare book, and occasionally his porn stash. For the last four years, it had been leaning heavily toward the porn side of things. Since Kate… anyway, since he’d gotten out of the cell and started working with Peter, the drawings had changed.

He always had been one to weave real life into his fantasies, another trick of the trade, for no lie sold so well as one that held a kernel of truth. Of course, then he’d make those fantasies close enough to real life to work a con, and for a few years there, he’d nearly had exactly what he wanted. Then Peter caught him, then Kate… well, anyway, it looked like his subconscious was getting tired of missing what it couldn’t have, and focusing on what was (possibly) available, because his secret sketchbook had a whole sheaf of new subjects.

Peter’s face, his eyes, squinted in a glare, wide in disbelief, crinkled with laughter. Peter’s mouth, tight lips, full smile, quirked in a smirk, even a pout Neal had worked on for hours and still didn’t think was quite right. The line of his jaw, the dimples carving his cheeks, bracketing his mouth. The outline of his brow, hair falling over it, a hand reaching up to push it back.

Peter’s hands. Close up, holding a pen, a gun, a sheet of paper. Ruffling Satchmo’s fur, wrapped around a glass, curled into a fist, relaxed in his lap.

Peter’s lap.

God, there was another whole level of obsession. It had been a couple years since he’d last held Kate, naked and happy, underneath him. Prison had been nightmarish until he’d broken a few bones, and one encounter with a few ridiculously large men in the shower still haunted his nightmares, but once he’d gotten a solitary cell it hadn’t been as stressful… scary… fucking terrifying… anyway. Not that he could count that as sex.

So really, it had been years since he’d had sex and enjoyed it. He wasn’t about to abuse June’s hospitality by taking her granddaughter up on what she’d been offering, as he’d long since learned not to philander where he slept (except with Kate, and that hadn’t exactly been philandering). He’d never been drawn to guys in general, but he’d always been drawn to talent, regardless of the package it came in, and Peter had it in spades.

Elizabeth too, and a deep well of kindness, and a wild streak a mile wide, barely covered by the veneer of sophistication she wore like a favorite lip gloss. But Neal wouldn’t make a move on Elizabeth, because he respected her, and Peter, too much. They were friends, sort of, he and Elizabeth more than he and Peter, and he and Peter were partners, and you didn’t do that to your partner.

Plus there was the fact that, as much as Elizabeth turned him on, Peter did it first, faster, and harder.

Not that he’d make a move on Peter, either, because Peter would probably punch him. Then send him back to prison. If Elizabeth didn’t kill him first.

So his sex life, such as it was, consisted of his own talented pair of hands, and an outpouring of frustration into his secret sketchbook. Pretty soon, isolated studies of Peter’s hands became part of a greater scene, as Peter’s hands were sketched touching a faceless body, that later became Neal’s body. Peter’s mouth was sketched attached to Elizabeth’s neck, then Neal’s neck, then Neal’s mouth, then Neal’s dick.

Sometimes, when he was sketching, he had to take a break to attend to his own dick, but then he’d get right back to sketching. After the clean-up and nap, of course.

The twist of bodies curving together, meeting, barely separated by light for contrast, making the lines more stark and yet more sweet with it, morphed all too easily from Peter and Elizabeth, to Peter and Elizabeth with Neal, to Peter and Neal. He’d never been much for self-portraiture, so the face on his figure was never completed, but the details on Peter were sharp as a razor-cut. Elizabeth was a little smokier, partly from subconscious fear or respect, partly from a tendency to slide into drawing Kate that pissed him off completely.

Given that his secret sketchbook was for escape, and if he obsessively drew Kate over and over (any more than he already had) he’d tear the damned thing into scrap paper, Elizabeth’s figure stayed soft-focus. Unlike Peter, who was hard.

Damned hard.

Made Neal hard, too.

Staring at his latest sketch, of himself bent over Peter’s desk (hinted but not detailed) as Peter plunged into him, dick rampant, Neal took a deep breath and stuck his hand down his sweatpants. The title penciled in beneath it said ‘Assume the position.’ It would make him laugh if it wasn’t so fucking sexy.

A few moments of staring brought the sketch slightly out of focus, and the figures came to life, in his mind’s eye. Sweat, as their bodies slammed together, the unforgiving edge of the desk digging into his thighs, his hands sliding across the surface, the heat and bulk of Peter reaming him, the sounds Peter made as he pushed in deep…

“Neal! Open the damned door!”

Neal came down from coming hard only to hear the voice he’d thought was in his head was actually at his door, and wasn’t happy about something. Oh, shit. If Peter kept that up, June would be up here letting him in any moment. Scrambling madly to wipe his hands on the sheet and grab a shirt and make it to the door without falling over his own feet, Neal swung the door open and gave Peter a blinding smile.

Peter looked him over, from his wildly tousled hair to his bare feet, lingering a little around the wet stain on his thigh, and lifted an eyebrow. Brushing past and walking into the apartment, he crinkled his nose in Neal’s general direction.

“I don’t want to know.”

Thank god, Neal thought, then froze. His sketchbook was wide open on the bed. The messy bed that made it very obvious what he’d just been doing. He inched toward it. Peter turned to look at him and Neal froze again, then shook it off and sloped toward the table, in the opposite direction of the bed.

“Coffee?” he asked innocently.

Peter gave him The Look, the one that saw right through him, and sighed. “You’re late.”

“We had… late? What? Saturday?” It was the weekend, right? He wasn’t missing work, was he? Neal was completely distracted, trying to keep Peter focused on him and not the bed. Or the sketchbook.

Peter gave another long-suffering sigh. From the doorway came Elizabeth’s perky voice. “Picnic, remember? Please don’t tell me you forgot. Satchmo’s been missing you.”

“Hi, Elizabeth, please come in,” Neal invited, wincing as he remembered that they had, indeed, made plans for this morning.

She gave Peter a look as she walked in, to which he replied, “What?” She rolled her eyes and grinned at Neal.

“Grab your shoes, man, and put on a shirt. Can’t go to the park looking like that, we’d be mobbed.”

It was Peter’s turn to roll his eyes, as Neal snickered. “Okay, I’ll just be a minute. Make yourselves at home…well, Elizabeth, you can, Peter already has…”

On the way to the bathroom, he flawlessly kicked at the sheet, covering the sketchbook in what would look, to his guests, like an attempt to straighten his bedclothes. Oh, Neal, you’ve still got it, he congratulated himself, as, butt covered, he went to clean up for a day in the sunshine with his two favorite non-Kate, non-Mozzie people. And their dog.

Peter followed him to the bathroom, yapping something about a case they’d closed a while ago, filling him in on the details about arraignment and sentencing and such as if Neal gave a damn. Neal let him talk and made encouraging noises when Peter paused for breath.

He didn’t notice the silence from the main room.

He deliberately didn’t look in the direction of the bed as they left, as he didn’t want to draw attention to it. Best to leave it lie, and get back to it later.

Later that night, after a thoroughly enjoyable picnic in the part with Elizabeth, Satchmo, and Peter, replete with a hundred new images to create and rework in his sketchbooks (both public and secret), Neal made it home.

The bed was made.

His sketchbook was missing.

Son of a bitch.

He spent all of Sunday tearing the place apart, then putting it back together. He found a missing cufflink, a book on Duccio di Buoninsegna he’d been using for background the previous month when an idiot had tried to sell a poor copy of the Stoclet Madonna (one of the easier cases they’d cracked) behind the bookcase, and a single emerald earring, that must have been from a guest of the previous occupant. Nice stone, though.

But no sketchbook.

After a brief, uncomfortable meeting with June that left her smirking and him blushing, he decided no one who lived in the house had snuck up, made his bed, and made off with his sketch porn. Which left only one suspect.

Peter hadn’t just been yapping Saturday morning, it looked like… he’d been casing the scene, and taking evidence. Naughty Peter.

Ignoring the fact that the idea of a naughty Peter turned him on, Neal dressed even more sharply than he usually did, suited for battle as it were, and headed off to work Monday morning.

He then spent the entirety of Monday waiting for the other shoe to fall.

Peter was good. Damned good. He gave no indication, through word or action, that he’d stolen Neal’s secret sketchbook. He made no remark, no suggestive expression, not a single fucking thing to give away his guilt.

Neal was frankly envious.

He’d always prided himself on his game face, but Peter’s left him in the dust.

Okay, if that’s how Peter wanted to play it, that’s how Neal would play it. Still examining every word that left Peter’s mouth, every move he made, Neal relaxed into the challenge. He would make Peter break.

He would!

He didn’t.

By six o’clock that evening, sinuses a little clogged from old files he’d been scrounging through, no new case catching their attention, Neal admitted temporary defeat. They would see. Tomorrow was another day.

And holy crap, he couldn’t believe he was channeling Scarlett O’Hara.

By Friday at six, he was a nervous wreck. It didn’t help that no new cases came through that required close attention. By Wednesday lunch Clinton Jones was staring at him like an exhibit in a zoo. Neal tried to avoid him, then confront him, then when that didn’t work, flirt with him, but all that got him was an even more confused Jones.

He didn’t bother flirting with Cruz. He had the feeling she batted for the home team, and if he tried to get cute, she’d break something he might need later.

Through it all, Peter just watched him, with that damned poker face. Neal didn’t know whether to give up and kiss him, or steal his gun and shoot him.

Of course, the erotic dreams he had all – damned – week didn’t help.

So by the time the weekend rolled around, he was ready to spontaneously combust from a combination of frustrated lust, high-alert adrenaline, and just plain being freaked out. Plus, he missed his sketchbook, and not just for the Peter-porn. Sketching was a stress reliever for him, and God knew he’d had enough stress that week.

When the knock came at his door an hour after he got home, it was a relief. Or his doom. Whichever, it was just nice to have some resolution.

He threw the door open and stared at Peter, wild-eyed.

Peter cracked up.

Neal’s eyes narrowed to slits, and he dragged Peter inside the room by his lapels, slamming the door shut behind them, mentally apologizing to June and thankful she’d flown to Chicago the night before (and wouldn’t be back until Tuesday). Neal had a feeling it was going to get loud.

When Peter finally stopped laughing, he tossed his overcoat on a chair and held up a familiar book he’d had hidden by the coat. “Missing something?”

Neal lunged for it. Peter, damn his height, held it out of reach. Neal refused to act like a teenaged girl and jump for it, so he stopped, folded his arms over his chest, and glared, hard, at his partner.

“Interesting imagination you got here, Caffrey,” Peter teased him, keeping the book just out of reach but letting it fall open to a particular sketch.

Oh, god. The couch sketch. One of Neal’s favorites, which might be why the book fell open so easily there. It was a ménage-a-trois, viewed from the side. Neal, fully dressed but with his pants down around his ankles, bent over the back of the couch; Elizabeth, sprawled along the couch, pulling him down by his tie, kissing him, their faces obscured by angle and shadow; Peter, the most defined of the three figures, standing behind Neal, expression strained, obviously fucking him and enjoying it immensely. In the corner, Satchmo, curled with his back to the trio as if to disown them completely along with their silly human mating rituals. There was humor in the sketch, and eroticism, and something romantic at the same time. Neal was proud of it, or would be, if no one had ever seen it but himself.

As it was, Peter was using it like a weapon. Neal curled into himself.

Peter noticed, of course, and tossed the sketchbook gently on the table, still too far away to grab. Neal didn’t even try.

“Tell me you’re not going to be a pussy about this,” Peter barked at him.

Neal looked over at him, trying unsuccessfully to glare, unaware of the hurt in his eyes.

“Oh, god, you are,” Peter sighed. “You’re such a little girl sometimes.”

Then he reached forward, took hold of Neal, and pulled him up against him. Neal would forever deny it, but he squawked like a chicken when Peter grabbed him.

Peter took advantage of the open mouth to stick his tongue in it.

Neal forgot his embarrassment, his hurt feelings at having his private sketches exposed, and his anger at Peter for stealing his sketchbook. He was too busy having the stuffing kissed out of him.

Damn, but Peter could kiss. The height difference helped, and he used it, to keep control over the situation and steer Neal toward the bed. Those strong hands Neal had studied for months were busy, stripping him of his shirt, pushing down his pants, only leaving long enough to strip himself as well before pushing Neal down on the bed.

Neal’s brain was foggy, but not so foggy that he couldn’t tell he was being dominated. Unlike the few times he hadn’t been in control in prison, he didn’t feel threatened. He felt weirdly safe.

And totally turned on.

From the feel of it, Peter had spent some time studying the sketchbook, because he recreated one of the drawings as he latched on to Neal’s neck in a way bound to leave a mark. His hands roamed everywhere they could reach. It was all Neal could do to hang on for the ride, as Peter left his neck only to go back to his mouth. By the time he was breathless, Peter was off again, following a trail down his torso, sidetracking for a little while to do things to his nipples that made it feel like he was tripping an electric current tied directly from Neal’s chest to his dick.

Tongue. Talented. Talented tongue. Neal tried to compliment him but all he could do was grunt.

That made Peter snicker, which would have been fine, if a little embarrassing. Except that he snickered while he had Neal’s balls in his mouth, and holy fuck but that felt amazing. A full-body shudder nearly yanked his balls right back out of Peter’s mouth, and Peter let it, then followed up with a lick all the way from his balls to the tip of his dick, which he then proceeded to latch onto and suck.

Hard.

A tiny part of Neal’s brain was really happy June was a couple states away, maybe more, but he couldn’t remember his geography when his brain was being sucked out the end of his dick. Still, he was yelling something that sounded vaguely like Peter’s name, so he was thankful his landlady wouldn’t be coming by to see who was murdering him.

The vast majority of Neal’s brain was dissolving into goo. His hands were clenched around Peter’s head, and he wanted to apologize for any hair-pulling or throat-choking going on, but that would take actual words, which was beyond him at the moment.

Not that Peter’s hands weren’t busy, too, doing obscene things between Neal’s thighs, and up between his butt cheeks, and whoa, but where’d the lube come from? Because that was way too slick for spit, and shit, shit, shit, but a man’s tongue had never done that to his slit before, and Neal was too busy coming and screaming to care much about the fingers he was clamping down on in the back.

“Ouch,” Peter grumbled. He sounded a little strangled.

“Hahgh?” Neal responded. Peter snorted.

Given the sensitivity of the portion of Neal’s anatomy he snorted on, Neal bucked like a bronco at a rodeo and nearly dislodged Peter from his position pinning Neal to the bed.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Neal chanted, trying not to jump completely out of his skin.

“Okay,” Peter answered him.

Condom? Where’d that come from? Neal hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud until Peter said, “My wallet.”

Neal blinked dazedly up at him. Peter grinned back down at him, his eyes intent, his mouth reddened and swollen. Neal moaned. Sexy look. More brain fodder for more pornish sketches.

Then Peter shifted Neal’s knees up by his shoulders, did a shimmy with his hips that would get him major tips in most bars downtown, and Neal did a lot more than moan. Screamed, in fact.

Peter was big. As stretched as Neal had gotten when he was getting blown and didn’t realize it, and as relaxed as he was from a truly mind-bending orgasm, Peter was fucking big. And long. Thankfully, he was also patient, and by the time he’d worked his way in until his balls were resting against Neal’s ass, Neal was back to moaning.

How the hell had he missed this? Because sex was great, and making love was wonderful, but holy shit, how come nobody told him about the joy button halfway up his ass? That Peter was playing like a fucking virtuoso? More little yelps and mangled words were coming from his mouth, but Neal couldn’t do anything to stop them, nor much of anything else but hang on again, and god, but Peter had broad shoulders. Good thing, too, because they were the only thing anchoring Neal to reality, such as it was.

He didn’t know when he got hard again, wasn’t even sure he completely had, but he was coming again, a weird kind of coming that felt like his entire body was scrunching up and releasing, all the way to the ends of his fingers and his curled-up toes and his tingly scalp. Peter was saying something, too, that vaguely sounded like ‘Neal’ or maybe ‘tight’ or possibly ‘sonovabitch’ but it was hard to tell through the ringing in his head.

It was impossible to miss, however, how hard the bed rocked, or how strong the jolting was as Peter pounded in to him, or how crazy his entire body felt, like it was lit up from inside – with major voltage. Then the banging and the jolting stopped, and Peter froze, so far up inside him Neal thought he could feel it in the back of his throat. Then Peter gave a groan that sounded like he was dying, and shook a little, and Neal managed to unclench his fists from Peter’s shoulders and wrap them around his torso.

Then Peter collapsed on top of him, and damn, he was heavy.

Neal made a muffle protest, trying to untangle his legs so he could straighten them out before they cramped up completely, but unwilling to let Peter go long enough to get enough room between them to move. With another heartfelt groan, Peter slowly withdrew, leaving Neal feeling emptier – and messier – than he had in, well, forever, maybe. Peter fiddled with the condom and tossed it in the trashcan, then collapsed again, thankfully on the bed next to Neal instead of on top of him. Neal absently squirmed against the sheet and reminded himself to change the bed linens. If they ever got out of bed. Which wouldn’t be any time soon if he had his way.

Side by side, they stared at the ceiling. Neal felt like his eyes were about to pop out of his head, but the rest of his body was relaxed to the point of bonelessness. Peter finally rolled over onto his side, propping his head on his hand and grinning down at Neal. He looked ridiculously pleased with himself.

There were a million things Neal probably should say, but only one actually made it out of his mouth.

“Ellie’s gonna kill me and castrate you.”

Peter’s grin stretched impossibly wider. “Who do you think gave me the sketchbook?”

FIN