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hoosierbitchTitle: Bruises
Author:hoosierbitch
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 8,200
Pairing: Neal/Peter/Elizabeth
Content Advisory: BDSM, handcuff!kink
Beta: The amazing, incomparable, patient, and benevolent![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ivorysilk.
Notes: This is my advent fic, but it’s also fordoctor_fangeek. I know it’s late, bb, but here’s a fic just for you. ♥
Summary: Neal has a handcuff kink.
There are bruises like bracelets around Neal’s wrists.
Slight lacerations that tell the story of Neal struggling against restraints. Bruises always make Elizabeth think of stories in progress. Neal left their house in the morning with a smile and came back injured. if she didn’t know Neal—if she saw only the way his hands shook slightly as Peter touched his wounds gently—she would know that part of his story had taken place without her.
“I’ll have his badge,” Peter is mumbling menacingly, his hands wrapped around Neal’s wrists; there’s flesh in place of metal but he still looks like he’s holding Neal prisoner. Neal, relaxing, does not seem to mind. “Putting cuffs on my CI...”
“I love it when you get all caveman,” Neal says, smiling, not pulling his hands away. His hands are loosely curved, relaxed. When Peter had first led him into the house, they had been white, as if cold, and tense; his fingers and eyes had skittered away from her when she had first approached.
“Don’t encourage him,” she says. She’s sitting sideways on the couch next to him. Peter’s sitting on the ottoman in front of Neal. “He’ll hit you over the head and drag you into the bedroom if you’re not careful.”
“I’m possessive, not a Neanderthal,” Peter says, finally letting go. Neal reaches for him. Grabs Peter’s left hand and wraps it back around his wrist. Peter, slowly, caresses the skin there. Brings both hands back up and presses Neal’s hands together until they’re clasped as if in prayer. “Are you okay?”
Neal shrugs and she puts her hand on his shoulder. (Sometimes, if she looks at him for too long, she forgets that he is real, that he is warm.) “Mostly. It was just…”
“Unexpected,” Peter supplies.
“Frightening,” Neal says, quietly, as if the danger lurks close outside their window. “I mean—they had me in the back of the squad car with the door closed. If you hadn’t shown up when you did…”
“Peter’s always going to show up.”
Neal shrugs again. “I know,” he says. Peter’s face twitches, just a bit, somehow still surprised that Neal has decided to trust him. “But it’s not always up to him. Not immediately. They were a heartbeat away from processing me as part of some departmental dick-measuring contest.”
“Which I would have won,” Peter says.
“Less than helpful,” she chides.
Neal smiles and lets out a deep breath, exhaling some of the tension of the day. He starts to sink back into the cushions of the couch, but Peter’s tight grip on his wrists pulls him up short
“Is this helpful?” Peter asks. They’re all three of them looking at his hands.
“Yes,” Neal says, after a pause where they all hold their breath together.
“Are you tired enough for bed now?” she asks.
“Yes,” he says again. “You don’t even have to hit me over the head and drag me there.”
Peter smiles and pulls him to his feet. Neal goes willingly, his captive hands held between them.
*
Peter can feel sleep pulling him under. Their bedroom room is dark and the sheets are slightly damp with the sweat of their combined exertion. He turns on his side and looks down at Neal and Elizabeth. The light through the window is dim, but he knows and loves the curves and planes of their faces well enough to complete the picture on his own.
It’s been weeks since he almost lost Neal to the NYPD. It wouldn’t have been for long—he has a not insignificant amount of pull within the FBI—but those minutes had been long enough. Neal had scraped his wrists picking the lock on the cuffs, and, when Peter had finally managed to pull Neal into an unobserved corner, Neal’s breath had been shaky. The marks have faded. Neal still rubs his hands over his wrists when he’s not paying attention.
“I have an insensitive question for you,” he says to Neal. He may not be as smooth as Neal and Elizabeth are, with their hyperawareness of other peoples’ moods, so he’s learned to preface his announcements with suitable disclaimers.
“I reserve the right to remain silent,” Neal says. El turns on her side and rests her head on Neal’s shoulder. Their hair is almost the same color and their eyes are the same inquisitive blue. They look like siblings. (Peter would not be averse to role-playing an incest scenario.)
“There was a time—when I was still chasing you—”
“The good old days,” Neal says, with a wistful smile that Peter knows is a joke (that he knows is also a little bit true).
“You and Kate were holed up in a hotel in Chicago.”
“The Waldorf,” Neal says.
“We were close enough on your tail that your coffee was still warm when we broke into the room.”
“We were going up the fire escape when you started yelling ‘FBI.’ Running across roofs isn’t as fun as they make it look in movies.”
“There were handcuffs attached to the headboard,” Peter says. El blinks at him. Neal just says, “Ah.” Neal’s hands stop moving for a second, but then he resumes brushing them through El’s hair. “Did you use them on Kate,” Peter asks, “or did she use them on you?”
He remembers how uncomfortably honest the open metal cuffs had looked against the stark white of the hotel sheets. He’d felt like an intruder for the first time since his manhunt had started. His cataloging of the evidence had been vaguely worded when it came to that part of the situation.
“She used them on me,” Neal says, pronouncing each word carefully. Peter recognizes the cadence. Neal’s honest confessions are infrequent, but each one is burned into Peter’s memory vividly enough that he can identify each new truthful moment as Neal gives it to them. El hums thoughtfully and looks up at Neal. “I know that it’s kind of passé for a criminal to have a handcuff kink, but…” He pauses, searching for words. Peter props his head up on his hand and waits. “I just like it.”
“Do you still like it?” Peter asks.
“I don’t know,” Neal says. “I haven’t tried it since prison.”
Peter never knows what to say when Neal brings up prison. He feels it like a bulletproof partition, a wall that he had put between them (it had been a choice that he would not change if he could. He loves Neal, but he will uphold the law. Neal says he loves that about him. Peter hopes he isn’t lying.).
“Do you want to try it again?” Elizabeth asks. “With us?”
“Maybe,” Neal says, closing his eyes. “Slowly.”
“Carefully,” Peter adds.
“Maybe,” Neal says again. A minute later Peter pulls the blankets up over them and wrangles his way into the tangle of his lovers’ limbs. “Yes,” Neal says. Peter can feel him nodding. Peter smiles and kisses the side of his hair, the edge of his ear, the parts of Neal that his mouth can reach.
“Slowly,” Peter says. “And carefully.”
*
Peter and Elizabeth keep ambushing him with little questions. It’s endearing, how intrigued they are by the whole thing, how new it is to them, how dedicated they are to getting it right.
Elizabeth asks him about safewords while they’re washing the dishes after Sunday brunch. Neal goes from contemplating the leftover pancake on Elizabeth’s plate—to eat, to compost, or to sneak to Satchmo?—to wondering what Elizabeth is thinking about doing to him that would require a safeword.
“I googled it,” she says. “Do you have a safeword that you use a lot?”
“Well, I don’t use it a lot,” he says, “the goal isn’t to make your sub safeword.”
“No, I mean—”
“I know what you mean. When Kate and I…the safeword was fuschia. Red is just so bourgeoisie,” he says, with a grin that feels old on his face.
“What about if we gag you?”
He puts his plate down so that he won’t drop it. “Are you…are you planning to gag me?”
“If you want us to,” she says softly.
He swallows and thinks about what it might feel like to be wordless and bound before Elizabeth and Peter. “I want you to,” he says, picking the plate back up and scrubbing it with careful circles. “If I can’t say the safeword, I’ll just shake my head a lot. Or I can hold a ball or something, and just drop it when I need you to stop.”
They finish doing the dishes in silence. She stands on her tiptoes and kisses the tip of his nose when they’re done. She says, “Thank you,” and Neal, who had been thinking the same thing, just smiles.
Peter, who has apparently been doing googling of his own, asks Neal about the cuffs. “Apparently it’s not good to use the metal ones,” he says, sitting down next to Neal on the couch and balancing his laptop on his knees. “They’re too hard on the wrists, and they can leave marks if you struggle. I’ve been looking at alternatives, but I figured I’d ask the resident thief to—” Neal practically climbs into his lap to kiss him. Peter puts the laptop on the floor and lets Neal push him down onto his back.
He picks it back up when they’re done (shirts still on but pants unzipped and down around their thighs). “So—no specialty bondage gear, then?”
“Maybe some other time,” Neal says. “First time, though—I want to be wearing your handcuffs. And then I want to wear the marks they’ll leave.” Peter groans and rolls them over on the couch. The laptop’s battery has worn down by the time they’re done.
*
It’s two in the morning when Peter tells him what he’s afraid of.
“I like the idea of tying you up,” Peter says, his voice scratchy with sleep, quiet to keep from waking Elizabeth. “But it’s not just about the…the logistics of it. It’s about—I want to—I want to dominate you.” Neal’s never particularly liked the labels, dominant and submissive, but Peter just says it honestly, matter of fact; it’s what Peter wants to do. “I like having control.” The words come out of Peter’s mouth but Neal can feel them twining between his own tense fingers, teasing between his teeth and tongue. Peter had taken the words that Neal has been searching for.
Neal has survived this long because of his mastery over his body and mind and action; his control is his livelihood and his safety net. “I like taking control,” Peter continues, confessing it like a dirty secret.
Neal nods, and swallows, and when Peter opens his mouth again Neal leans forward and kisses him. “You can,” he says, his lips wet with Peter’s lips. “I trust you. I wouldn’t have said yes if I didn’t.” He wants Peter more than he wants safety, more than he wants to keep his words and boundaries and certainties. More than any of that, more than he needs control, he wants Peter to take it from him.
*
Peter approaches it with the thoroughness of an FBI agent and Elizabeth comes at it with the organizing eye of a party planner and Neal does his best not to evade them like a conman. He talks about Kate and Alex and the men and women who had come into his life before them. He explains what subdrop is, and warns them that he goes into it easily. He’ll slip into obedience like a sled sliding down an icy hill; climbing out of it on his own is daunting.
*
“Do you have anything that you really don’t want to do?” Peter asks, nearly a week later. “Any…” He checks his notes, scrawled on a legal pad in front of him. “Any hard limits?”
“You’re adorable,” Neal says.
“Answer the question.”
Neal thinks about it. Honesty, he reminds himself. “I want to stay. Afterwards, when we’re done—I don’t want to go back to June’s right away.” Peter’s pen is poised to write Neal’s answers down, but he drops it on the table and reaches for Neal’s hand. Neal pulls away, needing to keep some distance between them in order to provide the kind of information Peter wants. “You can call me names—like slut, or whore, or whatever—I kind of like that, to be honest. But don’t…don’t make fun of me. I need to know—you need to tell me that I’m doing good. That I’m doing what you want. No face slapping. And don’t—don’t leave me. During or after. Not without saying when you’ll be back or leaving me a lockpick or something.”
“Got it,” Peter says, picking his pen back up and starting a bullet-pointed list. When he’s done, he slides it across the table. Neal reads over it and nods.
Elizabeth writes a list of her own hard limits further down on the page. She seconds all of the things that Neal says, and adds ‘pre-scene negotiation.’ When he asks her what she means, she says that the only way she’ll enjoy hurting him—tying him down, denying him, controlling him—is if she knows he wants it. “The idea of doing things to you that you don’t want done…” She shudders.
He loves her.
Peter can’t think of anything else he needs to add, but he does bring Neal a list of things to do for aftercare (and a definition of what aftercare is) and has Neal go through it with him.
It’s getting easier and easier to be honest. (He tells Peter and Elizabeth many, many things, but he keeps the fear that one day he will be too honest—that he will tell them too much, scare them away with some part of himself that they’ve overlooked until now—to himself.)
“I feel like we’re taking all the magic out of it,” Neal complains, as Peter writes ‘Keep Neal warm & give him water’ on the latest of his lists.
“Really?” Peter thinks about it for a moment. “Do you honestly think that knowing it’s coming is going to make it any less hot when I put my cuffs on you and order you to get on your knees and blow me?”
Neal’s mouth falls open. He feels a bit like a fish. “I—that…”
“Yeah,” Peter says, putting the cap back on his pen. “That’s what I thought.”
*
On Tuesday night, after watching Casablanca (Peter talks through all the best parts, despite Elizabeth’s attempts to smother him with a pillow), Peter announces the plan. “I thought next Friday evening you could come over after work. You can make dinner with Elizabeth if you want, or we can order in.”
“Potato soup and kale salad if you cook with me,” she says, “or Indian if we order out.” Both are favorites of Neal’s. Elizabeth’s attention to culinary detail is both reassuring and neurotic.
“Then you’re going to take a shower with me,” Peter continues, “and come to bed. We’re going to tie you up. Arms over your head, cuffs wrapped around a slat on the headboard. We both want to fuck you—we were thinking me first, and then El can ride you—or you can eat her out—whatever’s more comfortable. Logistically. If your arms get sore or your wrists hurt, we’ll use some bondage tape and tie your arms behind your back.”
“Did you know they sell bondage tape on amazon?” Elizabeth asks. “We got it in black this time, but it comes in all sorts of colors.”
“I…did not know that,” Neal says, feeling a bit like someone’s hit him on the back of the head with a two-by-four. He’s lost count of how many of Peter’s briefings he’s sat through, but this one is definitely his new favorite.
“One we’re done,” Peter continues, “we’ll take care of you. I’m thinking that you and I can take a bath before we put you to bed, but we’ll play it by ear once we know what you need. Does all of that sound good? Any changes you want to make?”
“I’m about a breath away from coming in my pants,” he confesses. His skin feels too tight. All of him wants. “Everything sounds good.”
“We know what your safeword is,” El adds. “But if you want us to stop, or slow down, or take a break, you just tell us. If you change your mind about doing this, nothing bad will happen. Okay?”
“That sounds perfect,” he says, thinking back to the day he had come to their house with a stranger’s marks circling his wrists. They had made him feel safe then. They’re making him feel safe now. “I love you,” he says. “Just in case I don’t say it enough. Thought I’d remind you.”
“We love you too,” El says.
“Ditto,” Peter says. El elbows him. “I love you,” he says. Neal smiles at him and he smiles back. “Both of you.”
*
On Friday he and Elizabeth make a Kale salad with beets and mandarin oranges, and a potato and leek soup. Elizabeth cuts her thumb and Neal gets her a bandaid from the first aid kit underneath the sink in the bathroom. It feels so normal. Cooking dinner and , thinking the entire time how normal everything feels. Everything feels normal, and, later, these two normal people are going to take him to bed and ride him until he can’t move.
“What’s funny?” she asks, as he adds some swiss cheese to the soup.
“Just wondering what everyone else on this block is doing. What they’re getting ready for.”
“I guarantee that none of them have plans as good as ours,” she says haughtily. She pinches his ass as she walks past and laughs when he yelps.
*
Elizabeth undresses him. She likes the ritual of it. Taking and folding his clothes while Peter watches. Sometimes Neal feels like Peter's just checking him over for injuries, for hidden contraband; he looks so serious and examines Neal so intently. Elizabeth just touches him like she's trying to wake him up gently, like he's made of stone and only the touch of her hands will bring him back to life.
When he is finally naked, Peter says, "On the bed on your back. Arms above your head." Neal starts to move forward and Peter catches his bicep and stops him. "Are you sure? You really want to do this?" Neal can feel Peter's erection against his thigh. He believes that, if asked, Peter would stop.
"I'm sure." This may be the most sure he's ever been. Peter nods and lets him go.
He crawls onto the bed, onto clean forest green sheets that he and Elizabeth had picked out from Macy’s during an after-Christmas sale, and lies down on his back.
"Arms," Peter says.
It is an act of will. Of eagerness and trepidation, expectancy and nerves. Arms above his head. Leaving his stomach and ribs and armpits vulnerable. Exposing himself before them. For them. Arms above his head.
Peter takes the handcuffs from the bedside table and holds them up. Shows Neal the key and puts it back down, making more promises that Neal, if asked, would swear he doesn't need.
When Peter clicks the first cuff closed above his head, Neal reruns Elizabeth's words through his head. If you want us to stop, we'll stop.
"Cold," he says, because that alone would have sent shivers down his skin. Elizabeth clambers up on the mattress next to him and holds the second cuff between her hands to warm it up.
"She's spoiling you," Peter mutters, ceding his place to her.
"He deserves it," Elizabeth counters. She kisses the inside of Neal's wrist, and then—then—his mind stutters to a stop. There’s metal around both of his wrists. A piece of wood that the chain’s wrapped around. He doesn't have any lockpicks concealed on his person or around the bed, the cuffs are too tight for him to slip out of no matter how many fingers he dislocates.
He is trapped.
“Do you need us to take them off?” Peter asks. He’s already got the key in his hand.
Neal shakes his head. Very tentatively he pulls his hands apart to the limits of the chain. Elizabeth whispers at him to be careful. He tugs against the headboard; it doesn’t budge. The only way he’s getting out of this is if he asks for it.
The handcuffs around his wrist feel just like he remembers from weeks ago, when he'd been arrested (for once, on a rare instance when he hadn't been guilty) and, under that, his body--his thin skin and the blood flowing underneath it--remembers different times.
The last time he’d volunteered for handcuffs, he was in the Waldorf Astoria and still in love with Kate. He'd been bound to the bed and she was standing over him, sipping her coffee, making him wait. He'd still been hard when the front desk called to alert them about an unexpected guest. He'd escaped out the window barefoot, wrapped in a robe, Kate laughing and tugging him along behind her.
Peter and Elizabeth, standing at the foot of the bed, kiss each other, and thoughts of Kate fly out of Neal’s head.
“We thought since we have a captive audience that we would put on a little show,” Elizabeth says.
“It was her idea,” adds Peter.
“It was a good idea,” Neal says. He regrets that a moment later when they turn back to each other and kiss again. They look like a matched set. The portraits of the two of them that are littered around the house pale against the reality of Peter-and-Elizabeth. Peter has his hands on Elizabeth’s hips and she’s holding Peter’s face between her hands. Neal too knows the feel of Peter’s stubble beneath his palms. He knows the feel of Elizabeth’s hips moving under his hands.
“I don’t like this,” he says.
Peter and Elizabeth break off instantly. Peter goes for the key, while Elizabeth comes to him. “Not the cuffs,” Neal says quickly, startled by the speed of their response, “those are fine. Great. Those are wonderful, don’t take them off.”
“What’s wrong?” Peter asks. It’s hard to answer. He doesn’t want to. He has no good reason.
“We weren’t ignoring you,” Elizabeth says softly, one hand cupping Neal’s cheek the same way she’d done to Peter. Neal can’t reach for her hips so he tilts his face into her touch.
“I know,” he says. But it had felt that way. “Can we do something else?”
“We wanted to put on a show for you,” Elizabeth says. “It was supposed to be a—a tease. Not a taunt.”
It’s different, when El puts it that way. It’s just that he hadn’t felt like he was in the front row; he’d felt like an understudy.
“We’ll move on,” Peter says, “if you still want to.”
“I want to.”
Peter grabs lube from the bedside table—which has a handcuff key, lube, bondage tape, scissors, bottled water, and Elizabeth’s copy of Poisonwood Bible on it—and tosses it onto the mattress. It rolls against Neal’s thigh and stops. He reaches for it, forgetting, for a moment, that he can’t reach it. The metal chain scrapes against the headboard and all three of them stop to look at it. Neal can’t help himself. He practically writhes on the bed, like an electric current is running through his body in slow motion, a shock from the metal resounding through his body.
“Jesus Christ.” Peter’s awed exclamation makes Neal do it again. He feels good. He likes it when they watch him. Peter strips his clothes off, throwing them on the floor, and climbs onto the bed. He grabs Neal’s thighs and separates his legs, leaving Neal open. They’ve barely started and Neal is already shaking. Peter’s moving Neal where he wants him and Neal can’t help, can’t fight, can’t run.
“I like you like this,” he says, after Peter slides Neal’s feet up the bed so that his heels touch his thighs. It’s not comfortable. The slight pain is something Neal hadn’t quite realized he’d been missing. “I like it when you take control.”
Peter pauses, his hands still on Neal’s ankles. Neal feels awkward in the momentary break in movement. Then Peter’s mouth relaxes from a frown into a smile, and Neal remembers their last late-night conversation. He remembers that this is more strange for Peter than it is for Neal. They’re both got worries to ward away.
Elizabeth though doesn’t seem to have half as many hang-ups as the two of them do, grabs the lube and squirts some onto Peter’s fingers. Peter’s fingers feel huge inside of him. Neal doesn’t know if it’s the position, the metal around his wrists, or just the anticipation coming to a head, but he feels every inch of Peter’s fingers inside of him the way he had when they first started doing this. One finger and then two, the slow, inexorable slide, like the relentless rocking of waves.
"I think I get it now," Elizabeth says. She’s kneeling on the bed next to him, watching her husband work. She reaches out and strokes the underside of his cock with the tip of her finger, running up the meandering vein, watching it bob in response. "I understand the appeal." She looks him over, and under the strength of her gaze he is newly aware of his nudity. He stretches to show himself off and she smiles. "I could get used to this," she says, looking over at her husband. Neal fights down a whimper of protest. (If she is looking at Peter, she is not looking at him.)
"It's quite a rush," Peter says.
He can feel himself slipping. His muscles loosening, like he's sinking into himself, into the bed, melding with the air; he is letting go. He turns his face towards Peter, opens his mouth to say--say something. Say Thank you or I feel so good but nothing comes out of his mouth. His words have also melted.
"You're beautiful," Elizabeth says. Neal closes his eyes and lets her words wash over him. Peter, reminded that praise is one of the most important bullet points on his multitude of lists, joins in.
"You are...," Peter says. "You look—you look—" Neal is expecting Peter to say something crass, something plain, some insufficient word. "You look strong." It takes a moment for Neal to look at himself the way Peter sees him, to come up with the word strong.
"Do you feel good?” Elizabeth asks/ “You're not too sore? Do your arms need a break?"
"Don't untie me," Neal says quickly. Yes, his biceps are aching, and he knows that muscle knots in his forearms won't be far behind, but if they let him go before they end the scene, he doesn't know how he can keep himself from falling apart. "Not yet, please."
"We won't," Elizabeth says.
*
He likes watching Neal’s arms. They tremble sometimes, and when Peter touches him just right, he can hear the metal against the wood and it makes him smile. (He makes sure that Neal’s muscles don’t lock up, checks the pressure points, then makes Neal shake again.)
Neal’s hole is slick, relaxed around his fingers. He teases it with his thumb, pressing in then passing over it. He leans forward and licks the tip of Neal’s cock. They’ve barely touched it, and the slightest tease of Peter’s tongue makes Neal’s hips arch off the mattress.
“This isn’t supposed to be about you making me feel good,” Neal pants.
“What do you mean?” Peter asks.
“I mean—oh, god…” Neal’s voice trails off when Peter licks the head of Neal’s cock again. “It means—you should be making me suck your dick. Or fucking me, or—”
“That’s ridiculous. I’ve got you at my mercy,” Peter says, standing up from the bed, looking down at Neal’s prone and naked form. “I can do whatever I want with you. To you. And it makes me feel good to make you feel good. Is that a problem?”
“No,” Neal says quietly.
Peter’s not going to bring up Kate. Not Kate or Alex or Sara or whoever it was that used to lock Neal up taught him that his own pleasure was unimportant. “Good.”
He's fucked Neal a lot. Their first few weeks together had been like a honeymoon in its frenzy and intensity. He, Neal, and Elizabeth had rechristened every room in their house and also the backyard. And the car. And Elizabeth's office and Peter's desk.
He's never had power like this before, though. He puts on a condom, lubes up, and presses Neal's thighs up, taking advantage of Neal's flexibility to get the angle he wants. Neal's hands are wrapped around the headboard to keep from pulling against the chain unnecessarily. Peter has full control. He slides in, just an inch, just enough to feel the tight grasp of Neal's body around his cock. Then he stops, rests there, watches Neal's eyes flutter open as he realizes what Peter's doing.
"Fuck me," Neal says.
Peter pulls out. "Who's in charge here?"
He can see Neal's Adam’s apple move when he swallows. "You are."
Elizabeth kneels behind Peter and rests her chin on his shoulder. "You love this," she whispers into his ear. He nods. Looks at Neal. Enters his body again, just as slowly, just as shallowly. Neal bites his lip; Peter can practically feel the words trapped in his mouth. He can see Neal's muscles twitch with the desire to move.
"Good boy," he says. Neal had given him some tips on good phrases to use and pet names he liked. Neal gasps when Peter says it and his hole clenches around Peter's cock. "Very good," Peter says with a groan. He slides forward another inch and Neal whines, a noise Peter's never heard him make before.
"You're so hungry for this, aren't you?" Elizabeth says. "Neal. Answer me."
Neal shakes his bangs out of his eyes. "What—what was the question?"
Peter thrusts in until most of his length is buried in Neal's warmth; Neal swears and throws his head back; his bangs fall back in his eyes
"She asked if you were hungry for this."
"Yes," Neal says. His fingers tighten, and then he lets go of the headboard. His wrists tug at his bonds.
"Good boy," Peter says again. He works his hips in tight circles until he's flush against Neal's ass, all of him inside the familiar heat of Neal's body. Neal's a creative but impatient lover, so Peter stays still once he's all the way in, a gentle, teasing torment.
"You're being mean," Elizabeth says.
"Can you blame me?"
She looks Neal over and shakes her head.
"I'm going to fuck you now," Peter says. "As hard as I can. If you need me to slow down, you tell me, ok? Neal?"
"Stop," Neal says. Peter freezes and feels Elizabeth go rigid behind him. "Stop asking me questions. I can't--I don't know what to say, I can't--" Neal struggles against his lack of words in a way he hasn't fought against his physical bonds. "If you ask me a question, I worry about getting it wrong. Just tell me what to do. If I don’t want to do it, I’ll tell you.”
It's hard for him. Peter can't remember reading about this in any of the material he'd read. He lets that go and looks at Neal, who, for the first time since this started, looks unhappy.
"Last question," Peter says. "If you need us to stop, do you promise you'll tell us?"
"Yes," Neal says; he sounds relieved. "Do whatever you want. If I don't like it, I promise, I will say something."
Peter leans forward to kiss Neal, practically folding Neal's body in half. Neal groans into his mouth and gasps when Peter grinds into him.
He's still going to be careful; he knows that Neal's judgment won't be at its best. He'll trust what he knows of Neal; he’ll trust Elizabeth and himself not to go too far.
Neal looks like a porn star. Sweat’s making his lean body shine, and the noises coming out of his mouth in a helpless stream are intoxicating. Peter uses Neal’s knees for leverage, knowing that the stretch has to be painful for the other man, loving how the pressure on his ribs is making Neal’s breath puff in time with Peter’s movements.
Elizabeth pinches Neal’s nipples whenever his eyes start to close, and she talks to him, telling him how sexy he is, how amazing this whole night has been, how much she and Peter are enjoying themselves.
When Neal’s cock—which has been hard since before Elizabeth stripped him naked and Peter brought out the cuffs—starts to drip with precum, Elizabeth wraps her hand around the base and holds him tight.
“No coming,” she whispers, bending forward and sucking on Neal’s neck. Neal’s whole body convulses. Peter adjusts his grip on Neal’s knees and keeps going. “Peter’s going to fuck you, and you’re going to eat me out, and then—then you can come. It’ll be your reward,” she explains. “For being so good.”
Neal whines again, that high pitiful sound that Peter is quickly becoming addicted to. “Look at me,” Peter says, feeling his orgasm coming on. “Try—reach for me,” Peter says. “Try.”
Neal obeys, his fingers stretching forward, the cuffs digging into his skin. His whole body is an arch, balanced between Peter’s hands and Peter’s cuffs. Neal looks lost, transcendent. Peter feels powerful, to have taken Neal to this place; he feels honored that Neal trusted Peter enough to let him do this to him.
When Peter comes, it’s Neal who cries out. Peter hammers into him, making the most of every last moment. He knows now that Neal like it this way. Every muscle in his body goes tense, riding an impossible high for long enough that he arms and thighs ache when he finally comes down, collapsing on top of Neal.
They’re both sweaty, Neal’s limbs bent beneath him; it’s not the most elegant they’ve ever been. Peter kisses Neal’s shoulder and then bites it.
He comes back to himself with a jolt. “Oh, god—are your wrists okay?” He hadn’t been thinking clearly.
“They’re fine,” Elizabeth says. “I kept an eye on him.”
He still checks Neal’s wrists as soon as he can work up the energy to move again. They’re red, scraped in a few places. “I don’t know if it’ll bruise,” he says, “but it’ll definitely leave marks.”
Neal—sweaty and exhausted and hard—smiles and tugs at Peter’s hands.
“Stay still,” he orders. Neal grins and wiggles for a moment before he obeys. Elizabeth shakes a finger at him and then gives him some water. Peter goes to the bathroom to clean up, and when he comes out Elizabeth’s undoing the handcuffs. “Is everything all right?”
“He was getting sore,” she explains.
“I told her,” Neal says. His voice sounds rough around the edges. If he didn’t know better, Peter would say he was intoxicated. “Told you I’d say if something went wrong. And it did. So I did.”
“Good job,” Peter says. He sits down on the bed next to Neal and tries to hide his surprise when Neal leans bonelessly into him. Elizabeth smiles at him, sharing in Peter’s startled joy, but Neal seems not to notice. “What are you doing?” he asks.
*
The bondage tape is tacky under her fingers. It feels and looks like electrical tape, but earlier she’d wrapped it around her own wrist and pulled it off and it had been painless. It sticks to itself, but won’t adhere to skin or arm hair. Peter’s cuffs are on the bedside table. It’s her turn now.
“I’m getting him ready for round two,” she says. “Neal, babe, cross your wrists behind your back, okay? And hold them there.”
She wraps it carefully. The youtube videos she’d watched had been very detailed.
“How do you feel?”
“Good,” Neal says. “Great. Wonderful.”
She gets off the bed and moves to the armchair in the corner of the room. She sits down and spreads her legs. “Come here,” she says. “On your knees.”
Peter helps Neal off the bed, holds him as he staggers to his knees. When Peter lets go, he leans forward, his forehead pressed against the carpet. She can see the tense line of his shoulders leading down to the x of his wrists. She likes the way that the black tape looks there. She looks at Peter, who checks to make sure Neal’s okay.
Neal gets back up slowly. She wants to touch herself, to satisfy the throbbing ache between her legs, but she knows how much sweeter it will be if she waits for Neal. It’s not a long distance, but every inch of it is awkward for Neal, staggering, his balance off, his hard cock bouncing with each shuffling move forward.
“You are so beautiful,” she says. Neal stops for a moment, panting. Then he looks up at her through his bangs. His posture changes, and he moves faster to get to her. (She liked the way he had looked, tired and shamed and obedient; she will tell him that later and see if he had liked it too.)
When he gets to her she relaxes back against the chairs cushions, sliding her buttocks forward; she wants to make him work for it, but she doesn’t want it to be impossible.
“I feel like a queen,” she says with a gasp, guiding Neal’s mouth to her cunt, looking at her husband over Neal’s head. Peter’s lounging on the bed watching them.
“You look like one,” Peter agrees. She likes Peter’s compliments; he’s too honest for flattery.
“I think—I think I might be dreaming,” she says, when she puts her hand on Neal’s head and pulls him in tighter, feeling a corresponding increase in his speed. “This is…”
“Unbelievable.”
“If your hands weren’t tied behind your back,” she says, running her fingernails gently through Neal’s hair, over his scalp the way he likes, “I’d have you finger me. Maybe after that, I’d let you fuck me.”
“But not tonight,” Peter says.
She nods and then gasps when Neal moans against her clit. “No. Tonight, you can’t do any of that.” She pushes him back and he bends backwards, his abdominal muscles stretched, his chest thrust forward. He looks drugged. She hadn’t understood what Neal had meant before when he talked about subdrop. She gets it now. At this point, she’s pretty sure that Neal would do whatever she told him to do. If she wanted to hurt him, a cruel word now would do the trick.
He is so vulnerable.
“Come back, beautiful,” she says. She wraps her hands in his sweaty hair and tugs on it, giving him a point of pain to help balance him out. He loves sucking on her clit. Playing with it with his teeth, his lips, sucking on it—but when she’s close—and she’s close now, she’s probably dripping on the chair—all he has to do is lick long stripes across her clit with the flat blade of his tongue. “Make me come,” she says.
Peter climbs down from the bed and gets on his knees behind Neal, pinching his nipples between his fingers. Neal cries out and for a second she thinks she’s started to come; but it’s just a painfully sharp throb of arousal. She likes how Neal looks when he’s in pain. They have talked about it enough that she feels safe in the danger of this new desire.
Neal, supported now by Peter’s hands, eats her out with so much enthusiasm that she can’t separate the sensations rushing through her. He fucks her with his tongue, licks her, teases her, rides the motions of her hips when she can’t help but gyrate against his mouth.
When she comes she closes her eyes and sees Neal imprinted on the back of her eyelids. The pink flush on his cheeks and the black tape around his red wrists. He takes her as high as he can, his tongue driving her crazy; when it gets to be too much she pulls his hair until he moves away.
“That was…”
“Incredible,” Peter finishes for her.
*
He is floating.
He can taste Elizabeth on his tongue and feel the friction of Peter’s calluses on his nipples, the birth of bruises on his hips from Peter’s hands. He is what they tell him to do; he is who they tell him to be. Peter calls him a good boy as he helps Neal onto his feet and Neal wants to kneel for him again, wants to kiss his feet, wants to be good forever.
They lay him down on the bed. Elizabeth sits with her back against the headboard and cradles him between her thighs, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, taking pressure off of his bound hands.
Peter spreads Neal’s legs again. Neal wants to make a joke about déjà vu but he can’t think of anything to say. He loses track of time but snaps back into the moment when he feels Peter fingering him open again. He doesn’t know where the lube had come from, can’t understand the words that Elizabeth’s saying. He’s sore from earlier, and tired, and his cock is so hard he doesn’t know if he’ll even be able to come.
“Neal,” Peter says. He squeezes Neal’s cock and says it again. “Neal. Listen to me.” Neal focuses on Peter’s face. (Neal loves Peter’s face.) “You can come any time you want.” Neal nods, his words still misplaced somewhere between getting on his knees and being called a good boy. He’s ready to come. He wants to.
But then Peter lets go of his cock and Elizabeth starts teasing his nipples and—and neither of them are touching him where he needs to be touched. Oh, god.
“You’ve come untouched before,” Peter’s saying, three fingers inside Neal’s ass. “I think you can do it again.”
“But if you can’t,” Elizabeth says, “or if it hurts, we’ll do something else. We just want to try this. If you need us to stop, just say so.”
He thinks that if she hadn’t asked, he wouldn’t have been okay with it. He finds words deep down inside of him and pulls them up. They hadn’t gagged him but he still feels like there is a barrier of silence between him and the world. (Peter and Elizabeth make room for Neal’s voice in a way that none of his other lovers had.)
“Yes,” he says. He chases the word out of his mouth with a sharp exhale. Peter’s spread his fingers wide and is licking between them.
He thinks that if he had time to breathe he would probably cry. His body is oscillating between the ache of his erection and the overwhelming pleasure of Peter’s mouth and hands. If he could have touched himself, he would have.
He pulls at the tape and is so grateful. This is what he wanted. For them to take him past the point that he could take himself, past the limits that he sets for himself. (If he says stop, they will stop. He does not say stop.) Peter licks him, fingers him, rubs on his prostate with the tips of his fingers and presses his perineum with his thumb.
Elizabeth tells him that he is okay. That he is beautiful. That he can do this. He listens to her voice and Peter’s hands and when they both carry him past where he can stand to be he screams, a nearly inhuman cry, and comes. Peter pounds his fingers in and out of Neal’s body and after the first spurt of semen drips onto his stomach Elizabeth strokes him through the rest of it. When his scream dies for lack of breath his mouth stays open in a silent exultant cry. Elizabeth strokes him until he whines in pain and Peter fingers him until he tries to move away.
He feels empty.
Now that it’s over, he feels—he doesn’t know. His thoughts are sluggish, his usual quick cataloging of his status is stalled.
He should—he should get up. He should move. Should—should shower. Help clean up. Should apologize, or say thank you, or leave—he doesn’t know.
“Neal.” He turns towards the sound of his name and opens his eyes to see Elizabeth’s smile. “Are you hurt?” He shakes his head; he doesn’t think so. “I need you to lean forward so I can untape your arms.” Stuck halfway through that thought, Neal stalls until she says simply, “Lean forward.” Clumsily, he obeys. Peter catches him as he tips forward.
Neal’s too hot and Peter’s body feels even hotter, but a shiver still runs down his spine when they touch.
Elizabeth cuts the tape off of his arms and gently massages his wrists and hands to make sure that his circulation is normal. She talks to him the whole time, explaining what she’s doing. Peter just holds him.
When she’s done, Peter takes him into the bathroom. With Peter’s help Neal manages to stay mostly upright. He leans against the counter while Peter turns on the water. He must have dozed off for a second, because a second later Peter’s kneeling in front of him.
“Do you want to take a shower tomorrow instead?” Peter asks.
“Don’t think I can stand up on my own,” Neal mumbles.
“I know,” Peter says. He pulls Neal to his feet and steps into the shower with him. “I’ve got you,” Peter says, holding Neal with one arm and grabbing soap with the other. “I’ll make sure you’re okay.”
Neal closes his eyes while Peter washes his hair and runs a cloth over his body. (This is what it’s supposed to feel like, he’s realizing. This is what’s supposed to be waiting for him at the end.)
“I like getting to take care of you,” Peter says, redirecting the showerhead after washing the shampoo out of Neal’s hair. “As much as I love everything else we did, I think that this part might be my favorite part.”
Neal reaches for Peter and kisses him. There wasn’t enough kissing earlier. (Neal will mention that, when they talk over the scene. When they do it again—and he thinks that they will, they will do this again—there will be more kissing.)
They stay in the water until it starts to go cold, Neal pulling Peter back under the spray whenever he tries to leave. “Come on,” Peter says finally. “This is a shower, not a spa.”
Neal flinches. It’s hard to find words, but he promised he would tell Peter if he did something that Neal didn’t like. “Don’t do that,” he says quietly. He can hear an embarrassing sincerity in his plea. “Don’t joke yet. I’m not ready.”
Peter stays still for a moment, then wraps Neal in an embrace that makes him feel fragile and cushioned; protected. “I didn’t mean to,” Peter says. Neal’s head is resting on Peter’s shoulder and he can feel Peter’s words rumbling through his chest. “I’m trying to make you feel comfortable. I won’t do it again.”
Neal lets himself sink back into his fatigue. When Elizabeth comes in to tell them that the bed’s ready, Peter helps Neal step over the edge of the bathtub, talking quietly to him the entire time.
Elizabeth wraps him in towels while Peter dries himself off. “Are you ready for bed?” Peter asks.
Neal opens his mouth to answer and is met with the same blank wordless answer that he’s been flirting with all night.
“Were not supposed to ask him questions,” Elizabeth reminds Peter. “Neal, it’s time for bed. Let’s go.” He follows her gratefully.
Elizabeth makes him drink more water and Peter gives him some aspirin and by the time they end up in bed he can’t stop smiling. They’re on either side of him, each of them holding one of his hands (not with a choreographed synchronicity, but merely with a simultaneous desire to check any injuries to his wrists).
“I never thought I’d be grateful for almost getting arrested,” he says. His voice sounds rusty. Peter still laughs. “Who’d have known that getting handcuffed on a case would lead to—to—”
“To this,” Elizabeth says. She kisses the back of his hand.
They hold him while he talks, making bad jokes and telling stories they’ve all heard before. They wait while he lets out a stream of meaningless words because he’s not ready for silence. When he runs out, he looks at his wrists.
“I’m gonna be bruised in the morning,” he says.
“Is that bad?” Peter asks.
He thinks for a moment. His answers are getting easier to find. “No.” It’s good. It’s really, really good.
*
Comments are appreciated. :-)
Author:
hoosierbitch Rating: NC-17
Word count: 8,200
Pairing: Neal/Peter/Elizabeth
Content Advisory: BDSM, handcuff!kink
Beta: The amazing, incomparable, patient, and benevolent
ivorysilk.Notes: This is my advent fic, but it’s also for
doctor_fangeek. I know it’s late, bb, but here’s a fic just for you. ♥Summary: Neal has a handcuff kink.
There are bruises like bracelets around Neal’s wrists.
Slight lacerations that tell the story of Neal struggling against restraints. Bruises always make Elizabeth think of stories in progress. Neal left their house in the morning with a smile and came back injured. if she didn’t know Neal—if she saw only the way his hands shook slightly as Peter touched his wounds gently—she would know that part of his story had taken place without her.
“I’ll have his badge,” Peter is mumbling menacingly, his hands wrapped around Neal’s wrists; there’s flesh in place of metal but he still looks like he’s holding Neal prisoner. Neal, relaxing, does not seem to mind. “Putting cuffs on my CI...”
“I love it when you get all caveman,” Neal says, smiling, not pulling his hands away. His hands are loosely curved, relaxed. When Peter had first led him into the house, they had been white, as if cold, and tense; his fingers and eyes had skittered away from her when she had first approached.
“Don’t encourage him,” she says. She’s sitting sideways on the couch next to him. Peter’s sitting on the ottoman in front of Neal. “He’ll hit you over the head and drag you into the bedroom if you’re not careful.”
“I’m possessive, not a Neanderthal,” Peter says, finally letting go. Neal reaches for him. Grabs Peter’s left hand and wraps it back around his wrist. Peter, slowly, caresses the skin there. Brings both hands back up and presses Neal’s hands together until they’re clasped as if in prayer. “Are you okay?”
Neal shrugs and she puts her hand on his shoulder. (Sometimes, if she looks at him for too long, she forgets that he is real, that he is warm.) “Mostly. It was just…”
“Unexpected,” Peter supplies.
“Frightening,” Neal says, quietly, as if the danger lurks close outside their window. “I mean—they had me in the back of the squad car with the door closed. If you hadn’t shown up when you did…”
“Peter’s always going to show up.”
Neal shrugs again. “I know,” he says. Peter’s face twitches, just a bit, somehow still surprised that Neal has decided to trust him. “But it’s not always up to him. Not immediately. They were a heartbeat away from processing me as part of some departmental dick-measuring contest.”
“Which I would have won,” Peter says.
“Less than helpful,” she chides.
Neal smiles and lets out a deep breath, exhaling some of the tension of the day. He starts to sink back into the cushions of the couch, but Peter’s tight grip on his wrists pulls him up short
“Is this helpful?” Peter asks. They’re all three of them looking at his hands.
“Yes,” Neal says, after a pause where they all hold their breath together.
“Are you tired enough for bed now?” she asks.
“Yes,” he says again. “You don’t even have to hit me over the head and drag me there.”
Peter smiles and pulls him to his feet. Neal goes willingly, his captive hands held between them.
*
Peter can feel sleep pulling him under. Their bedroom room is dark and the sheets are slightly damp with the sweat of their combined exertion. He turns on his side and looks down at Neal and Elizabeth. The light through the window is dim, but he knows and loves the curves and planes of their faces well enough to complete the picture on his own.
It’s been weeks since he almost lost Neal to the NYPD. It wouldn’t have been for long—he has a not insignificant amount of pull within the FBI—but those minutes had been long enough. Neal had scraped his wrists picking the lock on the cuffs, and, when Peter had finally managed to pull Neal into an unobserved corner, Neal’s breath had been shaky. The marks have faded. Neal still rubs his hands over his wrists when he’s not paying attention.
“I have an insensitive question for you,” he says to Neal. He may not be as smooth as Neal and Elizabeth are, with their hyperawareness of other peoples’ moods, so he’s learned to preface his announcements with suitable disclaimers.
“I reserve the right to remain silent,” Neal says. El turns on her side and rests her head on Neal’s shoulder. Their hair is almost the same color and their eyes are the same inquisitive blue. They look like siblings. (Peter would not be averse to role-playing an incest scenario.)
“There was a time—when I was still chasing you—”
“The good old days,” Neal says, with a wistful smile that Peter knows is a joke (that he knows is also a little bit true).
“You and Kate were holed up in a hotel in Chicago.”
“The Waldorf,” Neal says.
“We were close enough on your tail that your coffee was still warm when we broke into the room.”
“We were going up the fire escape when you started yelling ‘FBI.’ Running across roofs isn’t as fun as they make it look in movies.”
“There were handcuffs attached to the headboard,” Peter says. El blinks at him. Neal just says, “Ah.” Neal’s hands stop moving for a second, but then he resumes brushing them through El’s hair. “Did you use them on Kate,” Peter asks, “or did she use them on you?”
He remembers how uncomfortably honest the open metal cuffs had looked against the stark white of the hotel sheets. He’d felt like an intruder for the first time since his manhunt had started. His cataloging of the evidence had been vaguely worded when it came to that part of the situation.
“She used them on me,” Neal says, pronouncing each word carefully. Peter recognizes the cadence. Neal’s honest confessions are infrequent, but each one is burned into Peter’s memory vividly enough that he can identify each new truthful moment as Neal gives it to them. El hums thoughtfully and looks up at Neal. “I know that it’s kind of passé for a criminal to have a handcuff kink, but…” He pauses, searching for words. Peter props his head up on his hand and waits. “I just like it.”
“Do you still like it?” Peter asks.
“I don’t know,” Neal says. “I haven’t tried it since prison.”
Peter never knows what to say when Neal brings up prison. He feels it like a bulletproof partition, a wall that he had put between them (it had been a choice that he would not change if he could. He loves Neal, but he will uphold the law. Neal says he loves that about him. Peter hopes he isn’t lying.).
“Do you want to try it again?” Elizabeth asks. “With us?”
“Maybe,” Neal says, closing his eyes. “Slowly.”
“Carefully,” Peter adds.
“Maybe,” Neal says again. A minute later Peter pulls the blankets up over them and wrangles his way into the tangle of his lovers’ limbs. “Yes,” Neal says. Peter can feel him nodding. Peter smiles and kisses the side of his hair, the edge of his ear, the parts of Neal that his mouth can reach.
“Slowly,” Peter says. “And carefully.”
*
Peter and Elizabeth keep ambushing him with little questions. It’s endearing, how intrigued they are by the whole thing, how new it is to them, how dedicated they are to getting it right.
Elizabeth asks him about safewords while they’re washing the dishes after Sunday brunch. Neal goes from contemplating the leftover pancake on Elizabeth’s plate—to eat, to compost, or to sneak to Satchmo?—to wondering what Elizabeth is thinking about doing to him that would require a safeword.
“I googled it,” she says. “Do you have a safeword that you use a lot?”
“Well, I don’t use it a lot,” he says, “the goal isn’t to make your sub safeword.”
“No, I mean—”
“I know what you mean. When Kate and I…the safeword was fuschia. Red is just so bourgeoisie,” he says, with a grin that feels old on his face.
“What about if we gag you?”
He puts his plate down so that he won’t drop it. “Are you…are you planning to gag me?”
“If you want us to,” she says softly.
He swallows and thinks about what it might feel like to be wordless and bound before Elizabeth and Peter. “I want you to,” he says, picking the plate back up and scrubbing it with careful circles. “If I can’t say the safeword, I’ll just shake my head a lot. Or I can hold a ball or something, and just drop it when I need you to stop.”
They finish doing the dishes in silence. She stands on her tiptoes and kisses the tip of his nose when they’re done. She says, “Thank you,” and Neal, who had been thinking the same thing, just smiles.
Peter, who has apparently been doing googling of his own, asks Neal about the cuffs. “Apparently it’s not good to use the metal ones,” he says, sitting down next to Neal on the couch and balancing his laptop on his knees. “They’re too hard on the wrists, and they can leave marks if you struggle. I’ve been looking at alternatives, but I figured I’d ask the resident thief to—” Neal practically climbs into his lap to kiss him. Peter puts the laptop on the floor and lets Neal push him down onto his back.
He picks it back up when they’re done (shirts still on but pants unzipped and down around their thighs). “So—no specialty bondage gear, then?”
“Maybe some other time,” Neal says. “First time, though—I want to be wearing your handcuffs. And then I want to wear the marks they’ll leave.” Peter groans and rolls them over on the couch. The laptop’s battery has worn down by the time they’re done.
*
It’s two in the morning when Peter tells him what he’s afraid of.
“I like the idea of tying you up,” Peter says, his voice scratchy with sleep, quiet to keep from waking Elizabeth. “But it’s not just about the…the logistics of it. It’s about—I want to—I want to dominate you.” Neal’s never particularly liked the labels, dominant and submissive, but Peter just says it honestly, matter of fact; it’s what Peter wants to do. “I like having control.” The words come out of Peter’s mouth but Neal can feel them twining between his own tense fingers, teasing between his teeth and tongue. Peter had taken the words that Neal has been searching for.
Neal has survived this long because of his mastery over his body and mind and action; his control is his livelihood and his safety net. “I like taking control,” Peter continues, confessing it like a dirty secret.
Neal nods, and swallows, and when Peter opens his mouth again Neal leans forward and kisses him. “You can,” he says, his lips wet with Peter’s lips. “I trust you. I wouldn’t have said yes if I didn’t.” He wants Peter more than he wants safety, more than he wants to keep his words and boundaries and certainties. More than any of that, more than he needs control, he wants Peter to take it from him.
*
Peter approaches it with the thoroughness of an FBI agent and Elizabeth comes at it with the organizing eye of a party planner and Neal does his best not to evade them like a conman. He talks about Kate and Alex and the men and women who had come into his life before them. He explains what subdrop is, and warns them that he goes into it easily. He’ll slip into obedience like a sled sliding down an icy hill; climbing out of it on his own is daunting.
*
“Do you have anything that you really don’t want to do?” Peter asks, nearly a week later. “Any…” He checks his notes, scrawled on a legal pad in front of him. “Any hard limits?”
“You’re adorable,” Neal says.
“Answer the question.”
Neal thinks about it. Honesty, he reminds himself. “I want to stay. Afterwards, when we’re done—I don’t want to go back to June’s right away.” Peter’s pen is poised to write Neal’s answers down, but he drops it on the table and reaches for Neal’s hand. Neal pulls away, needing to keep some distance between them in order to provide the kind of information Peter wants. “You can call me names—like slut, or whore, or whatever—I kind of like that, to be honest. But don’t…don’t make fun of me. I need to know—you need to tell me that I’m doing good. That I’m doing what you want. No face slapping. And don’t—don’t leave me. During or after. Not without saying when you’ll be back or leaving me a lockpick or something.”
“Got it,” Peter says, picking his pen back up and starting a bullet-pointed list. When he’s done, he slides it across the table. Neal reads over it and nods.
Elizabeth writes a list of her own hard limits further down on the page. She seconds all of the things that Neal says, and adds ‘pre-scene negotiation.’ When he asks her what she means, she says that the only way she’ll enjoy hurting him—tying him down, denying him, controlling him—is if she knows he wants it. “The idea of doing things to you that you don’t want done…” She shudders.
He loves her.
Peter can’t think of anything else he needs to add, but he does bring Neal a list of things to do for aftercare (and a definition of what aftercare is) and has Neal go through it with him.
It’s getting easier and easier to be honest. (He tells Peter and Elizabeth many, many things, but he keeps the fear that one day he will be too honest—that he will tell them too much, scare them away with some part of himself that they’ve overlooked until now—to himself.)
“I feel like we’re taking all the magic out of it,” Neal complains, as Peter writes ‘Keep Neal warm & give him water’ on the latest of his lists.
“Really?” Peter thinks about it for a moment. “Do you honestly think that knowing it’s coming is going to make it any less hot when I put my cuffs on you and order you to get on your knees and blow me?”
Neal’s mouth falls open. He feels a bit like a fish. “I—that…”
“Yeah,” Peter says, putting the cap back on his pen. “That’s what I thought.”
*
On Tuesday night, after watching Casablanca (Peter talks through all the best parts, despite Elizabeth’s attempts to smother him with a pillow), Peter announces the plan. “I thought next Friday evening you could come over after work. You can make dinner with Elizabeth if you want, or we can order in.”
“Potato soup and kale salad if you cook with me,” she says, “or Indian if we order out.” Both are favorites of Neal’s. Elizabeth’s attention to culinary detail is both reassuring and neurotic.
“Then you’re going to take a shower with me,” Peter continues, “and come to bed. We’re going to tie you up. Arms over your head, cuffs wrapped around a slat on the headboard. We both want to fuck you—we were thinking me first, and then El can ride you—or you can eat her out—whatever’s more comfortable. Logistically. If your arms get sore or your wrists hurt, we’ll use some bondage tape and tie your arms behind your back.”
“Did you know they sell bondage tape on amazon?” Elizabeth asks. “We got it in black this time, but it comes in all sorts of colors.”
“I…did not know that,” Neal says, feeling a bit like someone’s hit him on the back of the head with a two-by-four. He’s lost count of how many of Peter’s briefings he’s sat through, but this one is definitely his new favorite.
“One we’re done,” Peter continues, “we’ll take care of you. I’m thinking that you and I can take a bath before we put you to bed, but we’ll play it by ear once we know what you need. Does all of that sound good? Any changes you want to make?”
“I’m about a breath away from coming in my pants,” he confesses. His skin feels too tight. All of him wants. “Everything sounds good.”
“We know what your safeword is,” El adds. “But if you want us to stop, or slow down, or take a break, you just tell us. If you change your mind about doing this, nothing bad will happen. Okay?”
“That sounds perfect,” he says, thinking back to the day he had come to their house with a stranger’s marks circling his wrists. They had made him feel safe then. They’re making him feel safe now. “I love you,” he says. “Just in case I don’t say it enough. Thought I’d remind you.”
“We love you too,” El says.
“Ditto,” Peter says. El elbows him. “I love you,” he says. Neal smiles at him and he smiles back. “Both of you.”
*
On Friday he and Elizabeth make a Kale salad with beets and mandarin oranges, and a potato and leek soup. Elizabeth cuts her thumb and Neal gets her a bandaid from the first aid kit underneath the sink in the bathroom. It feels so normal. Cooking dinner and , thinking the entire time how normal everything feels. Everything feels normal, and, later, these two normal people are going to take him to bed and ride him until he can’t move.
“What’s funny?” she asks, as he adds some swiss cheese to the soup.
“Just wondering what everyone else on this block is doing. What they’re getting ready for.”
“I guarantee that none of them have plans as good as ours,” she says haughtily. She pinches his ass as she walks past and laughs when he yelps.
*
Elizabeth undresses him. She likes the ritual of it. Taking and folding his clothes while Peter watches. Sometimes Neal feels like Peter's just checking him over for injuries, for hidden contraband; he looks so serious and examines Neal so intently. Elizabeth just touches him like she's trying to wake him up gently, like he's made of stone and only the touch of her hands will bring him back to life.
When he is finally naked, Peter says, "On the bed on your back. Arms above your head." Neal starts to move forward and Peter catches his bicep and stops him. "Are you sure? You really want to do this?" Neal can feel Peter's erection against his thigh. He believes that, if asked, Peter would stop.
"I'm sure." This may be the most sure he's ever been. Peter nods and lets him go.
He crawls onto the bed, onto clean forest green sheets that he and Elizabeth had picked out from Macy’s during an after-Christmas sale, and lies down on his back.
"Arms," Peter says.
It is an act of will. Of eagerness and trepidation, expectancy and nerves. Arms above his head. Leaving his stomach and ribs and armpits vulnerable. Exposing himself before them. For them. Arms above his head.
Peter takes the handcuffs from the bedside table and holds them up. Shows Neal the key and puts it back down, making more promises that Neal, if asked, would swear he doesn't need.
When Peter clicks the first cuff closed above his head, Neal reruns Elizabeth's words through his head. If you want us to stop, we'll stop.
"Cold," he says, because that alone would have sent shivers down his skin. Elizabeth clambers up on the mattress next to him and holds the second cuff between her hands to warm it up.
"She's spoiling you," Peter mutters, ceding his place to her.
"He deserves it," Elizabeth counters. She kisses the inside of Neal's wrist, and then—then—his mind stutters to a stop. There’s metal around both of his wrists. A piece of wood that the chain’s wrapped around. He doesn't have any lockpicks concealed on his person or around the bed, the cuffs are too tight for him to slip out of no matter how many fingers he dislocates.
He is trapped.
“Do you need us to take them off?” Peter asks. He’s already got the key in his hand.
Neal shakes his head. Very tentatively he pulls his hands apart to the limits of the chain. Elizabeth whispers at him to be careful. He tugs against the headboard; it doesn’t budge. The only way he’s getting out of this is if he asks for it.
The handcuffs around his wrist feel just like he remembers from weeks ago, when he'd been arrested (for once, on a rare instance when he hadn't been guilty) and, under that, his body--his thin skin and the blood flowing underneath it--remembers different times.
The last time he’d volunteered for handcuffs, he was in the Waldorf Astoria and still in love with Kate. He'd been bound to the bed and she was standing over him, sipping her coffee, making him wait. He'd still been hard when the front desk called to alert them about an unexpected guest. He'd escaped out the window barefoot, wrapped in a robe, Kate laughing and tugging him along behind her.
Peter and Elizabeth, standing at the foot of the bed, kiss each other, and thoughts of Kate fly out of Neal’s head.
“We thought since we have a captive audience that we would put on a little show,” Elizabeth says.
“It was her idea,” adds Peter.
“It was a good idea,” Neal says. He regrets that a moment later when they turn back to each other and kiss again. They look like a matched set. The portraits of the two of them that are littered around the house pale against the reality of Peter-and-Elizabeth. Peter has his hands on Elizabeth’s hips and she’s holding Peter’s face between her hands. Neal too knows the feel of Peter’s stubble beneath his palms. He knows the feel of Elizabeth’s hips moving under his hands.
“I don’t like this,” he says.
Peter and Elizabeth break off instantly. Peter goes for the key, while Elizabeth comes to him. “Not the cuffs,” Neal says quickly, startled by the speed of their response, “those are fine. Great. Those are wonderful, don’t take them off.”
“What’s wrong?” Peter asks. It’s hard to answer. He doesn’t want to. He has no good reason.
“We weren’t ignoring you,” Elizabeth says softly, one hand cupping Neal’s cheek the same way she’d done to Peter. Neal can’t reach for her hips so he tilts his face into her touch.
“I know,” he says. But it had felt that way. “Can we do something else?”
“We wanted to put on a show for you,” Elizabeth says. “It was supposed to be a—a tease. Not a taunt.”
It’s different, when El puts it that way. It’s just that he hadn’t felt like he was in the front row; he’d felt like an understudy.
“We’ll move on,” Peter says, “if you still want to.”
“I want to.”
Peter grabs lube from the bedside table—which has a handcuff key, lube, bondage tape, scissors, bottled water, and Elizabeth’s copy of Poisonwood Bible on it—and tosses it onto the mattress. It rolls against Neal’s thigh and stops. He reaches for it, forgetting, for a moment, that he can’t reach it. The metal chain scrapes against the headboard and all three of them stop to look at it. Neal can’t help himself. He practically writhes on the bed, like an electric current is running through his body in slow motion, a shock from the metal resounding through his body.
“Jesus Christ.” Peter’s awed exclamation makes Neal do it again. He feels good. He likes it when they watch him. Peter strips his clothes off, throwing them on the floor, and climbs onto the bed. He grabs Neal’s thighs and separates his legs, leaving Neal open. They’ve barely started and Neal is already shaking. Peter’s moving Neal where he wants him and Neal can’t help, can’t fight, can’t run.
“I like you like this,” he says, after Peter slides Neal’s feet up the bed so that his heels touch his thighs. It’s not comfortable. The slight pain is something Neal hadn’t quite realized he’d been missing. “I like it when you take control.”
Peter pauses, his hands still on Neal’s ankles. Neal feels awkward in the momentary break in movement. Then Peter’s mouth relaxes from a frown into a smile, and Neal remembers their last late-night conversation. He remembers that this is more strange for Peter than it is for Neal. They’re both got worries to ward away.
Elizabeth though doesn’t seem to have half as many hang-ups as the two of them do, grabs the lube and squirts some onto Peter’s fingers. Peter’s fingers feel huge inside of him. Neal doesn’t know if it’s the position, the metal around his wrists, or just the anticipation coming to a head, but he feels every inch of Peter’s fingers inside of him the way he had when they first started doing this. One finger and then two, the slow, inexorable slide, like the relentless rocking of waves.
"I think I get it now," Elizabeth says. She’s kneeling on the bed next to him, watching her husband work. She reaches out and strokes the underside of his cock with the tip of her finger, running up the meandering vein, watching it bob in response. "I understand the appeal." She looks him over, and under the strength of her gaze he is newly aware of his nudity. He stretches to show himself off and she smiles. "I could get used to this," she says, looking over at her husband. Neal fights down a whimper of protest. (If she is looking at Peter, she is not looking at him.)
"It's quite a rush," Peter says.
He can feel himself slipping. His muscles loosening, like he's sinking into himself, into the bed, melding with the air; he is letting go. He turns his face towards Peter, opens his mouth to say--say something. Say Thank you or I feel so good but nothing comes out of his mouth. His words have also melted.
"You're beautiful," Elizabeth says. Neal closes his eyes and lets her words wash over him. Peter, reminded that praise is one of the most important bullet points on his multitude of lists, joins in.
"You are...," Peter says. "You look—you look—" Neal is expecting Peter to say something crass, something plain, some insufficient word. "You look strong." It takes a moment for Neal to look at himself the way Peter sees him, to come up with the word strong.
"Do you feel good?” Elizabeth asks/ “You're not too sore? Do your arms need a break?"
"Don't untie me," Neal says quickly. Yes, his biceps are aching, and he knows that muscle knots in his forearms won't be far behind, but if they let him go before they end the scene, he doesn't know how he can keep himself from falling apart. "Not yet, please."
"We won't," Elizabeth says.
*
He likes watching Neal’s arms. They tremble sometimes, and when Peter touches him just right, he can hear the metal against the wood and it makes him smile. (He makes sure that Neal’s muscles don’t lock up, checks the pressure points, then makes Neal shake again.)
Neal’s hole is slick, relaxed around his fingers. He teases it with his thumb, pressing in then passing over it. He leans forward and licks the tip of Neal’s cock. They’ve barely touched it, and the slightest tease of Peter’s tongue makes Neal’s hips arch off the mattress.
“This isn’t supposed to be about you making me feel good,” Neal pants.
“What do you mean?” Peter asks.
“I mean—oh, god…” Neal’s voice trails off when Peter licks the head of Neal’s cock again. “It means—you should be making me suck your dick. Or fucking me, or—”
“That’s ridiculous. I’ve got you at my mercy,” Peter says, standing up from the bed, looking down at Neal’s prone and naked form. “I can do whatever I want with you. To you. And it makes me feel good to make you feel good. Is that a problem?”
“No,” Neal says quietly.
Peter’s not going to bring up Kate. Not Kate or Alex or Sara or whoever it was that used to lock Neal up taught him that his own pleasure was unimportant. “Good.”
He's fucked Neal a lot. Their first few weeks together had been like a honeymoon in its frenzy and intensity. He, Neal, and Elizabeth had rechristened every room in their house and also the backyard. And the car. And Elizabeth's office and Peter's desk.
He's never had power like this before, though. He puts on a condom, lubes up, and presses Neal's thighs up, taking advantage of Neal's flexibility to get the angle he wants. Neal's hands are wrapped around the headboard to keep from pulling against the chain unnecessarily. Peter has full control. He slides in, just an inch, just enough to feel the tight grasp of Neal's body around his cock. Then he stops, rests there, watches Neal's eyes flutter open as he realizes what Peter's doing.
"Fuck me," Neal says.
Peter pulls out. "Who's in charge here?"
He can see Neal's Adam’s apple move when he swallows. "You are."
Elizabeth kneels behind Peter and rests her chin on his shoulder. "You love this," she whispers into his ear. He nods. Looks at Neal. Enters his body again, just as slowly, just as shallowly. Neal bites his lip; Peter can practically feel the words trapped in his mouth. He can see Neal's muscles twitch with the desire to move.
"Good boy," he says. Neal had given him some tips on good phrases to use and pet names he liked. Neal gasps when Peter says it and his hole clenches around Peter's cock. "Very good," Peter says with a groan. He slides forward another inch and Neal whines, a noise Peter's never heard him make before.
"You're so hungry for this, aren't you?" Elizabeth says. "Neal. Answer me."
Neal shakes his bangs out of his eyes. "What—what was the question?"
Peter thrusts in until most of his length is buried in Neal's warmth; Neal swears and throws his head back; his bangs fall back in his eyes
"She asked if you were hungry for this."
"Yes," Neal says. His fingers tighten, and then he lets go of the headboard. His wrists tug at his bonds.
"Good boy," Peter says again. He works his hips in tight circles until he's flush against Neal's ass, all of him inside the familiar heat of Neal's body. Neal's a creative but impatient lover, so Peter stays still once he's all the way in, a gentle, teasing torment.
"You're being mean," Elizabeth says.
"Can you blame me?"
She looks Neal over and shakes her head.
"I'm going to fuck you now," Peter says. "As hard as I can. If you need me to slow down, you tell me, ok? Neal?"
"Stop," Neal says. Peter freezes and feels Elizabeth go rigid behind him. "Stop asking me questions. I can't--I don't know what to say, I can't--" Neal struggles against his lack of words in a way he hasn't fought against his physical bonds. "If you ask me a question, I worry about getting it wrong. Just tell me what to do. If I don’t want to do it, I’ll tell you.”
It's hard for him. Peter can't remember reading about this in any of the material he'd read. He lets that go and looks at Neal, who, for the first time since this started, looks unhappy.
"Last question," Peter says. "If you need us to stop, do you promise you'll tell us?"
"Yes," Neal says; he sounds relieved. "Do whatever you want. If I don't like it, I promise, I will say something."
Peter leans forward to kiss Neal, practically folding Neal's body in half. Neal groans into his mouth and gasps when Peter grinds into him.
He's still going to be careful; he knows that Neal's judgment won't be at its best. He'll trust what he knows of Neal; he’ll trust Elizabeth and himself not to go too far.
Neal looks like a porn star. Sweat’s making his lean body shine, and the noises coming out of his mouth in a helpless stream are intoxicating. Peter uses Neal’s knees for leverage, knowing that the stretch has to be painful for the other man, loving how the pressure on his ribs is making Neal’s breath puff in time with Peter’s movements.
Elizabeth pinches Neal’s nipples whenever his eyes start to close, and she talks to him, telling him how sexy he is, how amazing this whole night has been, how much she and Peter are enjoying themselves.
When Neal’s cock—which has been hard since before Elizabeth stripped him naked and Peter brought out the cuffs—starts to drip with precum, Elizabeth wraps her hand around the base and holds him tight.
“No coming,” she whispers, bending forward and sucking on Neal’s neck. Neal’s whole body convulses. Peter adjusts his grip on Neal’s knees and keeps going. “Peter’s going to fuck you, and you’re going to eat me out, and then—then you can come. It’ll be your reward,” she explains. “For being so good.”
Neal whines again, that high pitiful sound that Peter is quickly becoming addicted to. “Look at me,” Peter says, feeling his orgasm coming on. “Try—reach for me,” Peter says. “Try.”
Neal obeys, his fingers stretching forward, the cuffs digging into his skin. His whole body is an arch, balanced between Peter’s hands and Peter’s cuffs. Neal looks lost, transcendent. Peter feels powerful, to have taken Neal to this place; he feels honored that Neal trusted Peter enough to let him do this to him.
When Peter comes, it’s Neal who cries out. Peter hammers into him, making the most of every last moment. He knows now that Neal like it this way. Every muscle in his body goes tense, riding an impossible high for long enough that he arms and thighs ache when he finally comes down, collapsing on top of Neal.
They’re both sweaty, Neal’s limbs bent beneath him; it’s not the most elegant they’ve ever been. Peter kisses Neal’s shoulder and then bites it.
He comes back to himself with a jolt. “Oh, god—are your wrists okay?” He hadn’t been thinking clearly.
“They’re fine,” Elizabeth says. “I kept an eye on him.”
He still checks Neal’s wrists as soon as he can work up the energy to move again. They’re red, scraped in a few places. “I don’t know if it’ll bruise,” he says, “but it’ll definitely leave marks.”
Neal—sweaty and exhausted and hard—smiles and tugs at Peter’s hands.
“Stay still,” he orders. Neal grins and wiggles for a moment before he obeys. Elizabeth shakes a finger at him and then gives him some water. Peter goes to the bathroom to clean up, and when he comes out Elizabeth’s undoing the handcuffs. “Is everything all right?”
“He was getting sore,” she explains.
“I told her,” Neal says. His voice sounds rough around the edges. If he didn’t know better, Peter would say he was intoxicated. “Told you I’d say if something went wrong. And it did. So I did.”
“Good job,” Peter says. He sits down on the bed next to Neal and tries to hide his surprise when Neal leans bonelessly into him. Elizabeth smiles at him, sharing in Peter’s startled joy, but Neal seems not to notice. “What are you doing?” he asks.
*
The bondage tape is tacky under her fingers. It feels and looks like electrical tape, but earlier she’d wrapped it around her own wrist and pulled it off and it had been painless. It sticks to itself, but won’t adhere to skin or arm hair. Peter’s cuffs are on the bedside table. It’s her turn now.
“I’m getting him ready for round two,” she says. “Neal, babe, cross your wrists behind your back, okay? And hold them there.”
She wraps it carefully. The youtube videos she’d watched had been very detailed.
“How do you feel?”
“Good,” Neal says. “Great. Wonderful.”
She gets off the bed and moves to the armchair in the corner of the room. She sits down and spreads her legs. “Come here,” she says. “On your knees.”
Peter helps Neal off the bed, holds him as he staggers to his knees. When Peter lets go, he leans forward, his forehead pressed against the carpet. She can see the tense line of his shoulders leading down to the x of his wrists. She likes the way that the black tape looks there. She looks at Peter, who checks to make sure Neal’s okay.
Neal gets back up slowly. She wants to touch herself, to satisfy the throbbing ache between her legs, but she knows how much sweeter it will be if she waits for Neal. It’s not a long distance, but every inch of it is awkward for Neal, staggering, his balance off, his hard cock bouncing with each shuffling move forward.
“You are so beautiful,” she says. Neal stops for a moment, panting. Then he looks up at her through his bangs. His posture changes, and he moves faster to get to her. (She liked the way he had looked, tired and shamed and obedient; she will tell him that later and see if he had liked it too.)
When he gets to her she relaxes back against the chairs cushions, sliding her buttocks forward; she wants to make him work for it, but she doesn’t want it to be impossible.
“I feel like a queen,” she says with a gasp, guiding Neal’s mouth to her cunt, looking at her husband over Neal’s head. Peter’s lounging on the bed watching them.
“You look like one,” Peter agrees. She likes Peter’s compliments; he’s too honest for flattery.
“I think—I think I might be dreaming,” she says, when she puts her hand on Neal’s head and pulls him in tighter, feeling a corresponding increase in his speed. “This is…”
“Unbelievable.”
“If your hands weren’t tied behind your back,” she says, running her fingernails gently through Neal’s hair, over his scalp the way he likes, “I’d have you finger me. Maybe after that, I’d let you fuck me.”
“But not tonight,” Peter says.
She nods and then gasps when Neal moans against her clit. “No. Tonight, you can’t do any of that.” She pushes him back and he bends backwards, his abdominal muscles stretched, his chest thrust forward. He looks drugged. She hadn’t understood what Neal had meant before when he talked about subdrop. She gets it now. At this point, she’s pretty sure that Neal would do whatever she told him to do. If she wanted to hurt him, a cruel word now would do the trick.
He is so vulnerable.
“Come back, beautiful,” she says. She wraps her hands in his sweaty hair and tugs on it, giving him a point of pain to help balance him out. He loves sucking on her clit. Playing with it with his teeth, his lips, sucking on it—but when she’s close—and she’s close now, she’s probably dripping on the chair—all he has to do is lick long stripes across her clit with the flat blade of his tongue. “Make me come,” she says.
Peter climbs down from the bed and gets on his knees behind Neal, pinching his nipples between his fingers. Neal cries out and for a second she thinks she’s started to come; but it’s just a painfully sharp throb of arousal. She likes how Neal looks when he’s in pain. They have talked about it enough that she feels safe in the danger of this new desire.
Neal, supported now by Peter’s hands, eats her out with so much enthusiasm that she can’t separate the sensations rushing through her. He fucks her with his tongue, licks her, teases her, rides the motions of her hips when she can’t help but gyrate against his mouth.
When she comes she closes her eyes and sees Neal imprinted on the back of her eyelids. The pink flush on his cheeks and the black tape around his red wrists. He takes her as high as he can, his tongue driving her crazy; when it gets to be too much she pulls his hair until he moves away.
“That was…”
“Incredible,” Peter finishes for her.
*
He is floating.
He can taste Elizabeth on his tongue and feel the friction of Peter’s calluses on his nipples, the birth of bruises on his hips from Peter’s hands. He is what they tell him to do; he is who they tell him to be. Peter calls him a good boy as he helps Neal onto his feet and Neal wants to kneel for him again, wants to kiss his feet, wants to be good forever.
They lay him down on the bed. Elizabeth sits with her back against the headboard and cradles him between her thighs, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, taking pressure off of his bound hands.
Peter spreads Neal’s legs again. Neal wants to make a joke about déjà vu but he can’t think of anything to say. He loses track of time but snaps back into the moment when he feels Peter fingering him open again. He doesn’t know where the lube had come from, can’t understand the words that Elizabeth’s saying. He’s sore from earlier, and tired, and his cock is so hard he doesn’t know if he’ll even be able to come.
“Neal,” Peter says. He squeezes Neal’s cock and says it again. “Neal. Listen to me.” Neal focuses on Peter’s face. (Neal loves Peter’s face.) “You can come any time you want.” Neal nods, his words still misplaced somewhere between getting on his knees and being called a good boy. He’s ready to come. He wants to.
But then Peter lets go of his cock and Elizabeth starts teasing his nipples and—and neither of them are touching him where he needs to be touched. Oh, god.
“You’ve come untouched before,” Peter’s saying, three fingers inside Neal’s ass. “I think you can do it again.”
“But if you can’t,” Elizabeth says, “or if it hurts, we’ll do something else. We just want to try this. If you need us to stop, just say so.”
He thinks that if she hadn’t asked, he wouldn’t have been okay with it. He finds words deep down inside of him and pulls them up. They hadn’t gagged him but he still feels like there is a barrier of silence between him and the world. (Peter and Elizabeth make room for Neal’s voice in a way that none of his other lovers had.)
“Yes,” he says. He chases the word out of his mouth with a sharp exhale. Peter’s spread his fingers wide and is licking between them.
He thinks that if he had time to breathe he would probably cry. His body is oscillating between the ache of his erection and the overwhelming pleasure of Peter’s mouth and hands. If he could have touched himself, he would have.
He pulls at the tape and is so grateful. This is what he wanted. For them to take him past the point that he could take himself, past the limits that he sets for himself. (If he says stop, they will stop. He does not say stop.) Peter licks him, fingers him, rubs on his prostate with the tips of his fingers and presses his perineum with his thumb.
Elizabeth tells him that he is okay. That he is beautiful. That he can do this. He listens to her voice and Peter’s hands and when they both carry him past where he can stand to be he screams, a nearly inhuman cry, and comes. Peter pounds his fingers in and out of Neal’s body and after the first spurt of semen drips onto his stomach Elizabeth strokes him through the rest of it. When his scream dies for lack of breath his mouth stays open in a silent exultant cry. Elizabeth strokes him until he whines in pain and Peter fingers him until he tries to move away.
He feels empty.
Now that it’s over, he feels—he doesn’t know. His thoughts are sluggish, his usual quick cataloging of his status is stalled.
He should—he should get up. He should move. Should—should shower. Help clean up. Should apologize, or say thank you, or leave—he doesn’t know.
“Neal.” He turns towards the sound of his name and opens his eyes to see Elizabeth’s smile. “Are you hurt?” He shakes his head; he doesn’t think so. “I need you to lean forward so I can untape your arms.” Stuck halfway through that thought, Neal stalls until she says simply, “Lean forward.” Clumsily, he obeys. Peter catches him as he tips forward.
Neal’s too hot and Peter’s body feels even hotter, but a shiver still runs down his spine when they touch.
Elizabeth cuts the tape off of his arms and gently massages his wrists and hands to make sure that his circulation is normal. She talks to him the whole time, explaining what she’s doing. Peter just holds him.
When she’s done, Peter takes him into the bathroom. With Peter’s help Neal manages to stay mostly upright. He leans against the counter while Peter turns on the water. He must have dozed off for a second, because a second later Peter’s kneeling in front of him.
“Do you want to take a shower tomorrow instead?” Peter asks.
“Don’t think I can stand up on my own,” Neal mumbles.
“I know,” Peter says. He pulls Neal to his feet and steps into the shower with him. “I’ve got you,” Peter says, holding Neal with one arm and grabbing soap with the other. “I’ll make sure you’re okay.”
Neal closes his eyes while Peter washes his hair and runs a cloth over his body. (This is what it’s supposed to feel like, he’s realizing. This is what’s supposed to be waiting for him at the end.)
“I like getting to take care of you,” Peter says, redirecting the showerhead after washing the shampoo out of Neal’s hair. “As much as I love everything else we did, I think that this part might be my favorite part.”
Neal reaches for Peter and kisses him. There wasn’t enough kissing earlier. (Neal will mention that, when they talk over the scene. When they do it again—and he thinks that they will, they will do this again—there will be more kissing.)
They stay in the water until it starts to go cold, Neal pulling Peter back under the spray whenever he tries to leave. “Come on,” Peter says finally. “This is a shower, not a spa.”
Neal flinches. It’s hard to find words, but he promised he would tell Peter if he did something that Neal didn’t like. “Don’t do that,” he says quietly. He can hear an embarrassing sincerity in his plea. “Don’t joke yet. I’m not ready.”
Peter stays still for a moment, then wraps Neal in an embrace that makes him feel fragile and cushioned; protected. “I didn’t mean to,” Peter says. Neal’s head is resting on Peter’s shoulder and he can feel Peter’s words rumbling through his chest. “I’m trying to make you feel comfortable. I won’t do it again.”
Neal lets himself sink back into his fatigue. When Elizabeth comes in to tell them that the bed’s ready, Peter helps Neal step over the edge of the bathtub, talking quietly to him the entire time.
Elizabeth wraps him in towels while Peter dries himself off. “Are you ready for bed?” Peter asks.
Neal opens his mouth to answer and is met with the same blank wordless answer that he’s been flirting with all night.
“Were not supposed to ask him questions,” Elizabeth reminds Peter. “Neal, it’s time for bed. Let’s go.” He follows her gratefully.
Elizabeth makes him drink more water and Peter gives him some aspirin and by the time they end up in bed he can’t stop smiling. They’re on either side of him, each of them holding one of his hands (not with a choreographed synchronicity, but merely with a simultaneous desire to check any injuries to his wrists).
“I never thought I’d be grateful for almost getting arrested,” he says. His voice sounds rusty. Peter still laughs. “Who’d have known that getting handcuffed on a case would lead to—to—”
“To this,” Elizabeth says. She kisses the back of his hand.
They hold him while he talks, making bad jokes and telling stories they’ve all heard before. They wait while he lets out a stream of meaningless words because he’s not ready for silence. When he runs out, he looks at his wrists.
“I’m gonna be bruised in the morning,” he says.
“Is that bad?” Peter asks.
He thinks for a moment. His answers are getting easier to find. “No.” It’s good. It’s really, really good.
*
Comments are appreciated. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-02 08:20 am (UTC)Thank you, this is wonderful \o/