Work Text:
your wildest fantasy
peter/neal
wc: approx. 2,700
Pg-13
Clinically, Neal is aware that while Peter may not have any choice but to love him, Peter might not actually like him. Neal is -- he’s attractive, intelligent, charming (Peter says ‘smarmy’), so it’s not difficult to get people to fall in lust with him. And of those he manages to con into loving him, they don’t tend to stay that way, or they die an untimely and violent death. He knows Peter loves him absolutely, but they’re so intrinsically different, he’s not sure Peter is capable of liking him, or what would keep them together once the lust runs its course, as it does in all relationships (Neal’s heard from varied and reliable sources).
Neal can't help but be sneaky, it's just how his mind works. He can't help that while he could invariably get most of what he wants by asking or minimal payment, his mind immediately supplies ten different way to get something through nefarious means, which may or may not include rappelling down the side of a skyscraper, just like Peter can't help his righteous indignation when Neal finishes the peanut butter and puts the empty jar back into the pantry. It's just the way they're built. Which is why much heartache and trouble could have been avoided if it had occurred to Neal to ask Peter for what he needed, if Neal had just been honest about his insecurities, if if if.
Okay, let's go back to the beginning...
---
Time: 96 hours earlier
Location: Bed
It’s a necessary evil, Neal thinks. A dismal rite of passage in every (healthy?) relationship.
Peter squirms a little. “I don’t think I can--”
"I think you need to tell me what it is immediately," Neal says, grinning.
"I--" Peter says, haltingly.
Whatever has Peter so tied up in knots is bound to be delicious. Peter is unashamed of his kinks to the point of being kinky in and of itself. If Peter wants to tie Neal down, blindfold him and stick a vibrator in his ass, Peter brings it up over pasta primavera, then calmly asks for Neal to pass the bread, while Neal’s heart is still stuttering in his throat.
Neal studies the high color on Peter’s cheeks, the way his chest is flushed a deep attractive rose. God, what if it’s watersports? Neal could maybe be okay with that. Overnight-ship rubber sheets from Amazon and they’d be good to go. Neal’s a man of the world. There’s very little that shocks him.
"Earth to Peter," Neal says. "We were in the middle of a very important discussion. What would you like to do in your wildest fantasy? Something you would never tell another person, except like, now you totally have to tell me.”
“Aren’t I allowed some secrets?” Peter asks, smiling faintly.
No, Neal thinks, panic rising in his chest. No, because Neal keeping secrets is a given. Neal needs secrets like he needs air in his lungs, but Peter keeping secrets means Peter is specifically hiding something from Neal, which never signifies anything good. For Neal.
Feeling like he might suffocate at any moment, he runs a hand over Peter’s chest, down his flank, warm and solid beneath his palm. He reaches for Peter’s cock and Peter turns away. “Late for my run,” he grunts, rolling out of bed. “Need some coffee.” He presses a distracted kiss to Neal’s forehead and leaves the room.
This is it, Neal realizes, falling back into the pillows. This is the beginning of the end.
---
It's nothing Neal or El have talked about, but by tacit agreement, Peter is not left alone for any extended stretch of time. They can't trust him not to eat cereal for dinner or not to procure all three meals from vending machines, despite the fact that Neal has explained to Peter in horrifying detail that dairy should not come from vending machines, ever. No exceptions, put down the goddamn egg salad.
So it’s just Neal and Peter in the house, which is what spurred the distressing conversation earlier. It was about wanting to surprise El with some raunchy sexcapades, yes, but also about what could possibly keep Peter interested in Neal for the next five years, because Neal couldn’t ever imagine a time when he would not want Peter desperately, but it’s depressingly easy for him to imagine a time when Peter will throw in towel, decide Neal’s more trouble than he’s worth. Given his life experiences, Neal’s always understood that love comes at a price.
Neal whistles a jaunty tune, pours himself a bowl of organic muesli, which Peter makes a face at, swipes Peter’s coffee and grins cheekily at him over the rim, all the while his brain is furiously plotting how to figure out what Peter secretly wants from Neal, so Neal can provide it and pretend that he didn’t know Peter secretly wanted it. Or something.
Peter frowns at him, pours himself another cup of coffee. “You’re looking shifty,” he mumbles, slurping his coffee annoyingly. His sleep pants are hitching dangerously low on his hips, saggy and faded, and he refuses to throw them out ‘because they’re comfortable’ and his hair is thinning a bit at the front and the morning light highlights the lines around his mouth, but his eyes are sharp, kind, and the perfect cupids bow of his lips will never stop being charming, even when they’re pursed, while he stares carefully at Neal.
Neal loves him terribly.
He feels a grin stretch wide over his lips, the kind of bright fake smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, doesn’t fool Peter for a minute, that actually signifies true abject misery, but he just can’t seem to help himself. “Just thinking about all the work I have to do today.”
Peter sets his coffee down. “What’s going on in that rat maze of a brain?”
Neal rolls his eyes, huffs a little in faux indignation. “Nothing, Peter. Seriously.”
“Uh huh,” Peter says, clearly not convinced, but obviously not going to pursue whatever hint of crazy he sniffs out. “Here to talk if you need me,” he throws over his shoulder as he sits down at the table and slides out the sport section of the NYT.
---
True, though he has thought of little except how to extract Peter’s secrets from his iron grip, it actually starts out innocently enough.
Neal's laptop makes a sick whirring sound and then the screen goes black. Neal curses quietly to himself; he was in the middle of looking at acquiring sodium pentothal from some pretty nasty backchannels. He casts about, sees Peter's laptop sitting innocently on the table, so he slides it over, and hesitates for one second --It’s not that Neal hasn’t thought about breaking into Peter’s laptop before, and has done, many times, but Peter’s usually careful to keep his history cleared, his important files password protected, and has no less than three keyloggers, a backup failsafe should Neal manage to disable the first and so on. Neal and Mozzie found that one out the hard way.
Which is why Neal’s surprised to open the laptop and it immediately winks on -- what the fuck? He sees strange pictures, graphic images of people dressed as animals doing stuff that he's pretty sure society and the laws of nature don't permit.
Okay, Neal thinks, struggling to breathe evenly. Okay. So El has been busy doing double duty with her business and a part time job at the gallery and Peter is always busy and Neal's been traveling a lot for work and maybe their sex life has faltered a bit, but this? Well, he wanted to know.
Neal sits back, closes the laptop. He needs an objective opinion on this.
--
Time: 90 hours earlier
Location: Outdoor Cafe
In retrospect, going to Mozzie was probably a deeply terrible idea.
"In theory -- purely theory -- if someone maybe wanted to dress up like an animal to have sex what would you do? Would you do it, even if they hadn't asked, more like a -- hidden desire you stumbled upon."
"And by stumbled upon, you mean--” Mozzie gestures for Neal to continue, even though he looks like that’s the last thing he really wants Neal to do.
“Broke into Peter’s computer and found out against his wishes,“ Neal says quickly. “Can we move on?"
“I'll have you know,“ Mozzie says, “I find this conversation extremely alarming."
"That makes two of us," Neal says miserably. “Can we -- can we go back and call this a hypothetical person that maybe would like another hypothetical person to dress as an animal so they can like, rut?”
"Purely hypothetical? " Mozzie asks, then adds, "I pray to whichever divine being may be listening."
Neal reassures him, "Completely hypothetical.”
Mozzie takes a fortifying sip of his wine. Then another. He leans forward, steepling his fingers thoughtfully. "If you love this person, well -- you've done worse."
"I have, haven't I?" Neal says, brightening. "I've done a lot of worse things, some that weren’t even legal in the EU at the time."
"Most of which I have been witness to in some form," Mozzie says, sounding defeated. "If you think that's what The Suit really wants." Mozzie shrugs. "Go for it. What’s the worst that could happen?”
--
Time: 72 hours earlier
Location: Classified
When life gives you lemons, Neal thinks sadly, you end up buying a couple of bunny suits online to try to entice your partner into having sex with you again. He clicks express two-day shipping and checks out.
--
Time: 8 hours earlier
Location: Front Door
The costume arrives on time and Neal furtively snatches it off the doorstep, lest anyone see it and somehow know what kind of awful sexual things Neal’s planning to do.
He opens the box and pulls the suit out. It's...white with a pink belly. Neal takes a deep breath. Peter called a few hours ago to let Neal know he would be home early. El's still out of town for travel-- and he doesn't even want to know if she's aware of this particular proclivity of Peter's. He may never be able to meet her eyes again. He may never be able to meet his own after this.
--
Time: Present time
Location: Bedroom
Neal takes a deep breath and stretches his arm. He feels stupid, cumbersome, itchy. But it’s what Peter wants, and he would endure a lot more for Peter.
The bedroom door swings open. "Neal, how about we order in--" Peter stops. Neal holds his breath.
Peter blinks. "It's too early for Halloween."
"Isn't my fur soft and milky white?" Neal asks, trying to stroke his arm to demonstrate. He feels a little offended just by uttering the words aloud. The eyeholes are really high up and he can barely see, not to mention the hands in the suit are huge, so he just kind of ends up thumping on his arm. Alluringly, he hopes.
"This is a sex thing, isn’t it?" Peter asks faintly.
If his oversized ears weren’t supported by wire, they'd be drooping about now. "I--isn't this what you want?" Neal’s honestly baffled. Peter doesn’t look turned on, he doesn’t even look happy. This situation played out very differently in his head, once he got over the vague unease of having sex in bunny suits.
If It’s physically possible to look even more confused, Peter’s valiantly trying. "In what universe?" He steps closer, looking Neal over carefully. "There's a hole in the crotch," he observes, sounding faint.
"I saw what you were looking at--on your computer. I," Neal says haltingly. "I thought."
Peter reels back. "Someone at work made a crude joke, I just googled it and I was so shocked, I closed the laptop. Wait, why were you on my laptop?"
“Let’s not get bogged down by unimportant details," Neal says hurriedly.
Peter's still staring at the crotch hole like it's going to jump out and bite him. “Dammit, I knew you were up to something, I just didn’t--”
“Yes,” Neal says, “go you, your observational skills are second to none, Eliot Ness. Now, can we get back to the situation at hand -- Do you or do you not want to dress up like animals and have sex? Because if so, I have a second suit--”
“Please don’t finish that statement,” Peter practically begs.
"I just--you seemed kind of busy and maybe bored," Neal admits, even though it goes against every fiber of his being to be honest. It’s one of those situations that if he doesn’t tell Peter the truth now, everything they’ve worked for these years, every sliver of trust he’s managed to wrest from Peter will be lost. Because Neal wanted to be closer to Peter, and instead he broke into his laptop, made a bunch of crazy assumptions and brought Mozzie and Amazon Prime into what he thought Peter wanted, instead of just sitting down and talking to Peter, explaining why it was so important to Neal. It occurs to him that their conversation that fateful morning was just half-asleep talking, that in no way did he indicate to Peter that the answer was really important to Neal, that if he’d let Peter know, Peter would have undoubtedly told him what he really wanted in bed.
I’ve messed up, Neal thinks, objectively considering his current situation: invading Peter's privacy, wearing a bunny costume with his dick hanging out. Probably, he could have handled this better.
"Can you take the head off? I can't be having this conversation with an overgrown rabbit."
Neal takes it off, drops it on the floor. It hits the ground with a sad, dull thud and rolls across the floor until coming to a stop a few inches away from Peter’s foot.
"Neal," Peter says, "I don't want exciting and new, I want you."
"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that," Neal snaps.
"Can you?" Peter asks, scrubbing a hand over his face tiredly. "Also, please take off the rest of that costume."
Now that he thinks about it, Peter has been looking more tired than usual, also working later hours. He‘s probably working on a complicated case, not sick of Neal and secretly thinking of ways to leave him. Neal hesitates, then says, "I can't really reach the zipper in the back." He turns around, demonstrating, overblown white paws clawing ineffectually at his mid-back.
Peter steps behind him and slowly unzips the suit, and Neal shivers as the cool air touches his bare skin. "Oh, now this," Peter says, voice going low and husky, "this I like." Peter’s fingers trail down his back.
Peter has undressed him before, countless times, it's one of his favorite things to do, which is partly why Neal loves wearing so many layers. Also, vanity. He looks great in vests.
The familiarly of Peter's long, blunt fingers brushing against his skin washes over him, super-imposed on hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of times Peter has done this before. It never gets old. Neal feels a warmth in his chest that spreads out through his body -- love, lust, excitement, anticipation, but mostly love, love, love.
"Peter--" Neal says, his voice catching.
"I know," Peter says as the costume slides off. “This, I could do this all day. You’re everything I want.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Neal asks, breathless.
Peter chuckles. “Didn’t want to give you a big head.” Peter stills behind him. “I thought you knew,” he says quietly. Neal’s head hangs forward. He didn’t know, he didn’t. He’d thought --
Peter pulls Neal back against his chest, palms his jaw in his big hands, and presses soft, damp kisses across his cheek, down his neck in apology, kisses his sorrys into the sensitive skin of Neal’s shoulder. Neal’s eyes flutter closed as he rocks back into the reassuring warmth of Peter’s body. "Let’s go to bed,” Peter murmurs. “No costumes, just us."
---
"Neal," Peter says, afterwards.
Neal's basking, heavy-limbed and satisfied. He stretches out languidly. "Hmmm?" he says, eyes closed.
"Who helped you get into the costume?" Peter asks, his voice suspiciously stern, like he's already figured it out.
Neal's eyes snap open.
end.