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White Collar fic: Somewhere Out of Time
I've had this one sitting on my desktop for awhile, but, aargh, I just need to stop poking at it and worrying about how people are going to react to it, and post it. *g*
Title: Somewhere Out of Time
Fandom: White Collar
Word Count: 8800
Pairing: Peter/El, Neal/Sara and experimental Peter/El/Neal/Sara
Rating: Kind of R-ish?
Summary: Written (ultra-belatedly) for this prompt at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
wc_women_fest: Sara/Neal and Elizabeth/Peter on a couples retreat (which morphed into a sort of OT4-ish thing).
Notes: Takes place somewhere in the middle of the first half of season three (after "Veiled Threat", but before Neal and Sara's breakup).
Cross-posted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/403656
It was a sort of one-month anniversary present to Neal and Sara. (Or possibly two-month, or three-and-a-half month; just exactly how long Neal and Sara had been dating was a matter of how "dating" was defined in a given context.) In any case, it was Peter's idea, sort of, which El found adorable.
The thing about Peter that she sometimes forgot was that he really did have a wide romantic streak. His ability to remember birthdays and anniversaries was next to nonexistent, and his tolerance for things like flowers and tiny individually-wrapped chocolates was about as high as she could expect for a guy who grew up blue-collar in upstate New York (which was to say, not very). But for Peter, being romantic manifested itself as wanting to take care of the people he cared about and make them happy, and in that, he was about as romantic as any guy she'd ever met.
He'd also been yenta-ing his heart out on Neal and Sara, which El thought was adorable and hilarious and possibly doomed to crash and burn, but she'd decided to be cautiously supportive. She'd had to think about it first, because Peter's idea of Neal finding a good woman to straighten him out was, in El's opinion, unfair to the woman in question. On the other hand, Peter genuinely loved Neal and wanted him to be happy, and Sara seemed like a nice person who had the backbone to stand up to Neal in his less attractive moments -- it was a whole lot more than Peter merely picking some girl off the street and trying to push her into Neal's arms, which El would not have stood for, and she couldn't imagine Peter doing that anyway.
Peter had been worrying about Sara getting fed up with the limitations of Neal's leash and heading for the hills. "She's used to traveling all over the place, going out on the town and having a good time."
"They still have most of Manhattan. It isn't exactly small."
"Well, that's true, but still ... what if she gets fed up with it and heads for the hills?"
"If she's really the right one, honey, she'll wait." El poked him in the arm. "How many times do you take me out on the town and show me a good time?"
"We're married," Peter said. "It's different." He looked suddenly very worried. "Do you want to go out? Because we could go out --"
"I'd rather have a pot roast at home." El kissed his nose. "And maybe Sara would too. How do you know she's not that kind of girl?"
"Maybe," Peter conceded. "Somehow I don't think the Marshals would agree to widen Neal's radius for one weekend so that he can take her somewhere new, anyway, which means if she did want to get out of Manhattan, I'd have to be with them. Er, not in the same room, obviously ..."
El laughed out loud at this. "I'm sure they'll appreciate you inviting yourself along on their date." Peter blushed, but she sobered and thought about it for a minute. "Honey, what about some sort of couples weekend for all of us? You, me, Neal, Sara. That might be a little less, um, weird than you planning a date for him and then inviting yourself along for it. It would be like a little mini-vacation for them, and for us too."
Peter came home the next evening with several photographs of an attractive mansion on Long Island.
"The Bureau seized this a few months ago. Looks nice, huh? Lots of bedrooms, fully furnished, in legal limbo since the owners are in jail ..."
"You were doing so well up until the last part."
***
She had to admit, the house was nice. As nice as June's, and overlooking a stretch of private beach. Every room was gorgeously decorated in a different style, and El couldn't help herself: she wandered from room to room, taking pictures with her cell phone for her personal gallery of event-decorating ideas.
Sara immediately hauled all the sheets off the beds and began trundling them down to the industrial-sized washing machine in the laundry room -- "Because I don't know about the rest of you, but my imagination is giving me all sorts of pictures of what's been going on in these beds, and I do have some standards." She managed to draft Peter into serving as a beast of burden.
Neal cornered El in the kitchen while she was taking pictures of the countertops. "You want to be here, right?" he asked quietly, sidling up beside her with a glass of wine. "I mean, he didn't drag you along against your will, did he?"
El laughed and snapped a shot of Neal in front of the refrigerator. "Why? Did he drag you?"
"Sort of. You don't really say no when Peter gets set on an idea. Well, you can try, but it doesn't help ..."
El patted his arm. "Look upon it as an opportunity to get out of Manhattan and have a little fun. If you and Sara want to spend the entire weekend holed up in your room, I promise that I'll keep Peter from bothering you and slip food under the door."
Rather than answering, Neal slipped on a glossy, evasive smile -- El wondered if he even realized that he'd done it. "Actually, I was thinking about checking out the beach. Want to join me?"
Neal's anklet was set to roaming status for the weekend, but technically he was supposed to be accompanied by an agent (Peter, namely) whenever he left the house. El grinned; she knew he was testing the limits of his leash, but it was the sort of delinquency she was happy to participate in. "Sure."
The house had a deck overlooking the beach, with a flight of wooden stairs leading directly down to the sand. El slipped off her shoes and stockings, and waded barefoot into the sand, curling her toes in delight. She looked over her shoulder to see Neal fastidiously tucking his socks into his expensive leather shoes and rolling up the cuffs of his pants.
It was still early in the season, and they were the only people in sight. Far out on the water, the white triangle of a sailboat's sail glimmered in a shaft of sunlight, though a cloud cast its cool shadow on the beach.
"When was the last time you walked barefoot on a beach?" El asked Neal as they padded through the dry sand onto the firmer, waveswept portion of the beach.
"Never."
"Really?" El said, surprised. "Somehow my vision of a high-flying Neal Caffrey includes lying on the beach with suntanned women in bikinis. No?"
"No," Neal said, cautiously extending one pale foot to be licked by an incoming wave. "I've been near beaches, but I was always more interested in having a glass of wine at the bar. Lying in the sun has never exactly been my scene." As if to underscore his words, the sun peeked out from behind a cloud and he squinted in the brilliant sunshine reflected from the sand. With his suit and tie, he could not possibly have looked more out of place. The anklet rested loosely on his bare ankle, and El wondered suddenly how waterproof it was. Apparently enough to take into the shower, but how did it handle sun and seawater?
"What are you two doing down there?" Peter called from the deck.
"Neal is making his escape," El hollered back. "I'm helping. We're just waiting for our getaway boat."
She heard Peter say something that sounded like "... ask a stupid question," and a minute later he joined them, barefoot as well.
"The water's cold," Neal reported, withdrawing to the dry part of the beach. He then discovered the tendency of sand to stick to his wet feet, and El laughed at his expression -- it made her think of a cat that's accidentally stepped in a mud puddle.
"Neal's never been on a beach before," she told Peter.
"Sure he has," Peter retorted. "What about Monaco?"
"Just because there was a beach proximate to my location doesn't mean that I went courting sunburn and sand fleas," Neal said, attempting without success to brush the sand off his feet.
"And yet I can't help noticing sketches of you and Mozzie on the beach all over your apartment."
Peter had his suspicious-FBI-agent face on, and Neal was starting to bristle, so El hastily headed them off. "Come on, Sara is going to wonder where we got off to. And I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm starting to get hungry. Why don't we dirty a few dishes in that immaculate kitchen?"
***
They'd stopped to pick up food supplies on the drive out -- in several different gourmet markets, at the combined behest of El and Neal, while Sara and Peter made commiserating faces at each other. They now had an extensive stock of raw materials, and El and Neal shared the kitchen, preparing what Peter judged was probably going to be some sort of ridiculously complicated gourmet meal involving dozens of needless steps and utensils he didn't even know the names of. However, there were some good-looking sirloin steaks at the heart of the meal, so he figured they could have their fun.
At home, and sans Neal, he'd know exactly how to jump in. Here, in an unfamiliar kitchen and without a clue what they were doing half the time, he had no idea.
Sara hovered around the outskirts of the activity, looking as out of place as Peter felt. She would start to make a move towards a utensil, then abort as El or Neal swooped in, oblivious, doing their little kitchen dance as if they'd done it a thousand times before. (To the best of Peter's knowledge, this was the first time that they'd ever cooked anything together, but they seemed to be completely in sync. Some sort of innate chef telepathy, he presumed.)
Sara topped off her glass of wine, kissed Neal on the cheek and then wandered out to the deck. Peter decided that following her would be (marginally) less awkward than continuing to hang around the kitchen propping up a wall.
"Thank you for setting this up," Sara said, leaning on the railing and looking out at the sea. It still wasn't good beach weather -- the clouds threatened rain, and there was a lingering spring chill in the air. "This really is a lovely place. I can't believe I'm vacationing in the Hamptons."
"You're telling me." Peter set his beer on the wooden railing.
"It's nice to get out of the city sometimes."
"Well," Peter said, "that's the idea."
Sara looked at him sideways. Clearly there was something else on her mind; she opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, but never seemed to work herself up to saying it. Then El came to let them know that it was time to eat, and Sara, not meeting Peter's eyes, slipped off to find Neal.
***
They ate on the deck: a gourmet meal served on paper plates. The threatened rain held off until they were just finishing up dessert; then fat drops began to strike all around them, sending them running into the house to watch the storm through the big picture windows.
"My hair," Sara said, touching her damp, frizzing curls. "I need to go do something about this before it dries this way."
"You look like you could use a shower," Neal said. He leaned over to whisper something in her ear, darting a look sideways at Peter and El. Sara giggled, gave her head a quick shake and tugged his hand; the two of them darted away to the wing of the house that they'd taken over for their own.
"Looks like it's just you and me, Mrs. Burke." Peter affected a slouch against the wall. "Shame we can't get out to the house in the Hamptons more often."
"Well, you know what our busy social calendar is like." El grinned and slid into his arms. "Between all the dinner parties with actors and Senators, and the European vacations ..."
He captured her mouth, her lips warm and sweet, yielding at first and then aggressive, possessive, claiming territory of her own.
"Why, Mr. Burke," El said, breaking away breathlessly and looking towards the picture windows. "What will the neighbors think?"
"Let them talk." Peter slipped a hand under her waistband.
***
Later, sated and happy, Peter fell asleep in the bedroom while El, drawn by the pounding of the rain, pulled on a robe and padded quietly into the living room. She always brought a book on vacations, but it was, she realized, back in the bedroom, and she didn't want to wake Peter to retrieve it. He'd been working hard, and she knew he was also more deeply stressed about Neal's current situation than he wanted her to know. This vacation might be ostensibly on Sara and Neal's behalf, but of all of them, she thought Peter needed it the most.
The rain had stopped on the deck, but the storm still grumbled over the ocean, brightening the night with distant flashes of lightning. There were high louvres above the picture windows, and after some experimentation, El discovered to her delight that they were electric, controlled by a rheostat next to the light switches. She opened them, letting in the fresh smell of the rain and the sea, and tucked her feet up under her on the couch while she checked her email on her phone. She answered a few of Yvonne's texts and one from her mother, and then forced herself to shut it off. They were on vacation, after all. Her business and family and friends would still be there in two days.
It was so dark here. There were other house lights along the shore, and from the other side of the house it must be easy to see the glow of the vast metropolitan area south and west of them. But the ocean was dark and wild. El watched it for a while before getting bored and hunting through the room for something to read. There were a few mostly decorative bookshelves offering up leather-bound volumes of the sort of books that people buy to make themselves look intellectual: Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a complete set of Shakespeare, Moby-Dick. She chose a volume of Shakespeare's sonnets and took it back to the couch.
There was a soft throat-clearing noise and El looked up to see Sara, similarly berobed, pad barefoot into the kitchen and hunt through cabinets until she found a box of tea and a mug. Holding these up, she asked, "Want some?"
"Yes, please," El said, and a few moments later Sara brought her a cup of sweetly floral-scented tea and sat down on the opposite couch. She folded her slim body with awkward grace -- like a heron, El thought: some sort of wading bird, unselfconscious and fluid in its movements.
"Neal is asleep?" A part of El -- a tiny little part -- wondered if he might take the opportunity to run. The house was unsecured, the White Collar division and the U.S. Marshals miles away. He could go far before anyone even realized he was missing.
Sara smiled. "He's drawing. He sketched me for a while, but I got restless. Rain makes me that way." She looked down into her cup of tea, then up at El. "And there was something I wanted to talk to you about. I thought it might be easier without the guys around."
Sara hesitated, and El tried to look as friendly and curious as possible. Sara took a deep breath.
"Neal and I weren't sure ... why you asked us up here. What you expected to happen, I mean. We weren't sure if you were asking -- well, perhaps I should say I wasn't sure ..."
She trailed off again. El waited. When Sara didn't say anything else, El said, "I'm not really sure what you're asking."
Sara turned pink, and raised her eyes, meeting El's. "We thought you might have been thinking about some sort of foursome or partner-swapping arrangement."
"Oh," El said, surprised but relieved -- she'd thought Sara and Neal might have been upset about something. "Oh. No." She stopped herself quickly because she was about to laugh and didn't want to hurt Sara's feelings. "No, it was only a way of giving you two a nice weekend out of the city without violating the terms of Neal's release, that's all."
"Oh." Sara let out a little laugh herself. "Neal said ... well, Neal thought I was reading the situation wrong. I guess he knows you two better than I do."
El wondered if Sara might have gotten the wrong idea about what sort of person Peter was. She didn't know him very well, after all ... "Peter would never take advantage of his position over Neal. I hope you understand that."
Sara's eyes went wide. "Oh, yes, I know -- I mean, I guess I don't know your husband all that well, but I never would have thought -- I'm sorry. I certainly didn't mean to imply that we thought anyone would be forced. It's just that Neal and I wouldn't have minded at all. We've talked about it, actually."
"... oh?" El managed.
"And now I've offended you," Sara said. "Dammit. I really am sorry. Maybe Neal should have done this; I'm not always good with people."
She made to rise; El reached out a hand to stop her. "No, wait. I'm not offended. I'm just surprised. Peter and I -- we've never considered something like that. It's only that I don't know what to say, that's all."
She thought of herself as an open-minded person, but she'd grown up in the Midwest and come of age in the '90s. Partner-swapping, key parties and all of that were things that her generation left behind, abandoned to a sexually freer, pre-AIDS era. Oh, she wasn't completely sheltered -- certainly she'd known people in open relationships, especially back in college -- but she'd never even imagined stepping out on Peter, whether or not he knew about it. Peter was what she wanted. All she wanted.
And yet. She thought of Neal -- the smooth lines of his body in those suits, his springy dark hair (was it just as springy and dark under the suit?) -- and felt her mouth go a little dry.
Danger, Will Robinson, she thought firmly. Down, girl. He's your husband's partner, and no matter what, you're going to have to see him almost every day for years. And Peter has to work with him. Think this through for God's sake. Peter wouldn't -- Neal wouldn't --
No ... Neal would. Of course he would. He was Neal.
Sara was waiting, her eyes large and liquid. El couldn't tell what she was thinking, but she seemed somehow expectant.
"Your idea?" El asked, smiling.
"Not exactly," Sara admitted. "Well, I was the one who thought you two might have invited us up here for -- But it was Neal who first brought it up. I suppose. It's hard to remember now."
Of course it had been Neal.
"I think ..." El said slowly. "I think I need to talk to Peter about it."
Sara's eyes went round. "Do you think he might actually say yes?"
"Do you want him to?"
"Maybe," Sara said, evasive.
***
Peter slept the sleep of the dead all night -- a good fourteen hours of hard, heavy sleep that he sorely needed. El allowed herself to sleep in, too, and the two of them wandered into the kitchen with the sun shining through the picture windows. There was clear evidence that Sara and Neal had already been and gone: two cups in the sink, crumbs around the toaster, and a fresh pot of coffee perking.
"He'd better still be in the house," Peter said, and he already had his phone out -- to check Neal's tracking detail, El guessed. She closed her fingers over his, stopping him.
"He wouldn't violate your trust. Not this weekend."
"If you say so." Peter sounded uncertain, but he put the phone on the counter and joined her in preparing a simple breakfast of toasted English muffins and eggs. They took it out to the deck. The air was fresh and clean, still too brisk for swimming, especially with a new layer of clouds scudding in from the ocean.
"It's going to rain all weekend, isn't it?" Peter said.
El smiled over her coffee cup. "That means we'll have to stay inside. What a shame."
"I married a very naughty woman."
"Speaking of ..." El said. "Now, hon, I want you to listen to all of this before you say anything, all right? And no matter what, this is strictly between you and me."
She told him about Sara's proposition of the previous night, and got to see Peter's eyes growing rounder and rounder. It wasn't often that she really got to shock him.
"They thought we brought them up here for sex?"
"Sara said they thought we might be considering either partner-swapping or a foursome."
"Doesn't Neal have the slightest idea of the position that I -- no. Of course not. He's Neal." Peter sighed and started to rise from his chair. El grabbed his arm, pulling him back down.
"Where are you going?"
"To put a stop to this ridiculous rumor before things get out of hand."
"Just between you and me, remember?" She rose and, for safety's sake, pinned him by sitting in his lap. Aside from the hum of a lawnmower on one of the nearby properties and music playing somewhere else, there was no sign of anyone around. Nobody watching, unless one of the neighbors had chosen to spy with binoculars, in which case, let them get an eyeful.
"Besides," she said, playing with his hair and then tapping his nose, "do you really think it's a ridiculous idea?"
"Of course it's ridiculous. I'm legally responsible for Neal. I'd be violating a dozen regs, not to mention crossing my own ethical lines."
El drew back and studied the man whose face she knew better than her own. The brown eyes, distant in contemplation; the worried furrow between his brows; the set of his mouth. "Are those the only reasons?"
"Aren't those enough?" Peter said in disbelief.
"You never said you didn't want to," El said gently.
Peter blinked as if that thought had never occurred to him. "All the more reason not to cross any lines we can't come back from."
Which wasn't a no, and staggered her. After over a decade of marriage, it was startling to find corners of Peter's soul that had been hidden in shadow. Was she jealous? El turned it over in her mind and decided, no, she was not. A vast wave of relief accompanied this realization. She'd been jealous before -- recently, in fact. She knew that she could be possessive. But this didn't feel the same. Not threatening at all. And an idea was fluttering around the corners of her brain, like a caged bird struggling to break free.
"Here's a wild and crazy thought," El said, feeling it out for herself. "Suppose we didn't have to worry about any of that. Suppose we were just us, and they were just them. No anklet. No Bureau. Just the four of us as people."
Peter frowned. "So it's okay if no one ever finds out? I'd know. And that's what matters."
And that was what made him the man she loved, the man she'd married. "I'm not suggesting that we try to get away with something. I'm just presenting, as a thought problem -- suppose that we think of this weekend as a space that exists apart from our regular lives. A place out of time, out of space. Not just a vacation from the city, but a vacation from being us."
"I can't believe you're trying to talk me into this."
"I'm not," El said, and kissed the tip of his nose quickly, apologetically, then moving on to his lips. "Hon," she said when she came up for air, "the absolute last thing I want to do is pressure you into anything. Really. I'm only presenting options you may not have considered, that's all."
He kissed her, long and tender. "I don't want to make love to anyone but you," he said quietly. "For the rest of your life and mine."
"I know," she said, and leaned her temple against his. "But you love Neal."
She felt him shiver a little; then he said slowly and quietly, his breath stirring the hair over her ear, "I don't think I love Neal like that."
"I think he might love you like that."
Peter heaved a sigh. "I know," he murmured against the side of her face. "I guess I've always known."
And how does Sara fit into all of this? El wondered, for a moment seeing all of them as pins on a corkboard, with an infinitely complex web of different colored yarn crisscrossing in a cats'-cradle between them. Going along for the ride because Neal wants to? But Sara didn't seem like the type to be passively dragged along with her man.
"Speak of the devil!" Sara's voice said brightly, and El jumped, nearly whacking Peter's nose with her head. "We were just talking about you," Sara added as she and Neal breezed out onto the deck. Both of them were nattily dressed, Sara even wearing her high heels -- plainly having trouble with the concept of "vacation" in El's opinion.
"We were just talking about you, too," El said, pivoting on Peter's lap, but throwing an arm around his neck as she did so. It felt oddly like laying claim, although she wasn't sure for whose benefit she was planting her flag.
There was a silence. Both Sara and Neal seemed to be trying to avoid the eyes of everyone on the deck, including each other. Then Neal picked up the uneaten half of Peter's English muffin and bit into it.
"Caffrey!" Peter said, in his usual tone of half-fond annoyance. "You're stealing my muffin."
"It's not a felony," Neal pointed out, taking another neat bite. "Grand theft muffin? A misdemeanor at most, I'd say."
The sudden thought occurred to El that out of the whole group of them, with all their different one-way and mutual connections, the two people who most needed to talk about this were both out here on the deck and should probably be left alone. She slithered off Peter's lap and stood up.
"Sara, could you give me a hand with the cleaning up, please?" she asked, picking up the paper plates that had held the muffins. "Tonight it'll be the guys' turn."
"Okay," Sara said, her eyes darting from Peter to Neal and then to El. She wasn't slow on the uptake.
"Hey!" Peter said, as he belatedly woke to the realization that the women were abandoning them, but El shut the sliding glass doors behind her.
***
"Is it just me," Neal said, looking after the two women who were carrying the breakfast dishes into the kitchen and seemed to be making a studied attempt not to look at them, "or was that a little weird?"
He looked over at Peter, who was wearing a robe entirely unsuited to his surroundings (gray from many washings, it probably should have been thrown out years ago), his hair tousled from both wind and sleep. Neal almost never saw him like this -- generally his first sight of Peter in the morning was a Peter dressed for the office: suit and tie, hair combed down, very much in control.
And he was also trying to avoid Neal's eyes. Hmm. Not good.
"You and El seemed to be having an interesting conversation when we came out here," Neal said. Unfortunately he'd eaten the last of the muffin, which left him nothing to do with his hands.
"My conversations with my wife aren't really your business," Peter said.
"Someone woke up grumpy," Neal said lightly, and perched on the edge of one of the wood-slat deck chairs.
Based on the way that Peter was continuing not to look at him, he thought he could guess what El and Peter had been talking about. Goddammit. His heart flipped over, not in a good way. Peter held Neal's future in his hands, in more ways than one right now, and there were times when he thought Sara didn't seem to understand what that meant.
He glanced at the sliding glass doors. The women were visible in the kitchen, talking animatedly over fresh cups of coffee. Well, at least they were getting along.
Maybe he should just get it over with. "Peter," he started to say, at the same time that Peter said, "Neal --"
They both broke off and stared at each other for a moment, warily, before breaking into grins. Neal felt the tension unknot a little.
"You might be aware by this point," Neal said, "that Sara got a slightly inaccurate idea about this trip."
"So I've heard," Peter said, and the bottom dropped out of Neal's stomach again. Peter, however, didn't look upset. He looked more ... gentle, almost, which was considerably more unnerving than anger would have been.
Neal had been prepared for either anger or for Peter to be his usual affectionately mocking self. But this, whatever this was -- it unexpectedly pierced his defenses and laid him bare.
"What I can't figure out is that it seems like my wife and your girlfriend are both just fine with the idea," Peter said. Though his eyes were steady on Neal, he was blushing faintly, a pink tinge over his cheeks. "Obviously there is -- well. It's a lot more complicated when you and I enter the picture. For obvious reasons."
"I wasn't actually going to ask," Neal said, wishing again that he had something to do with his hands. There wasn't even a salt shaker on the table.
"Really?" Peter said.
His tone was skeptical, and Neal felt a sharp twist of anger in his stomach. "No, Peter," he said. "There are things I don't steal."
There was silence from Peter, and rather than looking at him, Neal looked out at the ocean, infinite in its depth and breadth and its many shades of blue, gray, green. You could spend a lifetime painting the ocean and never capture its many moods.
That was what people were like, too. He found them fascinating. Dealing with people was like juggling glass balls, adding more and more, trying to keep them all in the air at once.
But it stopped being fun when the people became individuals, the glass balls their hearts. It mattered to him if he dropped one and it broke.
And the idea that he might actually cradle Peter's heart in his hands, in any fashion -- as Peter cupped Neal's future in his own -- was a thought that he didn't like. It was too much responsibility. And yet, the sense of holding that fragile glass thing, warm to the touch and so breakable, warmed something deep inside him that had been cold for a very long time.
"El said something today," Peter said. Out of the corner of his eye, Neal saw him shift in place. "She suggested that this vacation, this house -- that it's like we're not really us here. The usual rules don't apply. 'A place out of time' ... that's what she said."
"What did you say?" Neal asked quietly.
"I told her that she's wrong. It always matters. Rules, regulations -- morality, right and wrong ... it isn't something that you put on and take off like a ... an expensive suit. You take it with you wherever you go."
"Ah," Neal said, and looked at him. Peter's eyes were darker than the sea, but no less full of depth and mystery.
"What do you want?" Peter said.
"What?"
"I said, what do you want? Much as I might hate to admit it, Neal, you are an adult and I can't go around making all your decisions for you."
"I --" He felt as if he teetered on the brink of a precipice. He thought again of the glass ball cupped in his hands -- Peter's heart -- and suddenly it was not a hard decision to make at all. "I would never ask you to do anything that would make you less ... you. Never, ever. In terms of your marriage or morality or any of those other things you said."
"Oh, bullshit," Peter said, but his voice was gentle. "You try to get me to circumvent my morals all the time."
"I wouldn't push if you didn't push back. And this ... not about this, Peter. Not this." He tried to infuse every bit of sincerity that he could into his voice, his face, his bearing. This would have been a hard conversation to have at the best of times, but given the way things were between them right now, Neal had no idea what he could do to get across that he really meant this, more than anything he'd ever said before.
Peter gazed at him from those ocean-deep eyes, then sighed and stood up, turning to look out at the sea himself.
"I wish I could convince myself that this isn't part of some con you're working on me."
"Sara was the one who brought it up," Neal pointed out.
Peter shot him an exasperated glance. "Yeah, and that's exactly how you'd do it, too. Convince Sara that it was her idea, and Sara convinces El ... I just can't figure out what your long game is."
Neal opened his mouth to say It's not a con, and then closed it again. Because he'd promised himself, long ago, that he'd never lie to Peter. It was a promise he meant never to break. And he wasn't sure himself.
Part of the problem was that he sometimes couldn't figure out the boundaries of what Peter considered a con. Romance, courting ... it was all about cleverly manipulating the other person's perceptions. A socially sanctioned dance between lies and truth. That was how everyone did it, Neal was pretty sure, not just him.
But Peter wanted truth. Always truth. Neal couldn't give him the truth about the treasure, not right now, but he could give him this truth. So he tried.
"I don't know," he said. "I'm really not sure. I'd like to believe I'm not conning you, Peter, but I honestly don't know if I'm doing it half the time."
Peter watched him for a moment, and then the corner of Peter's mouth tugged up in a sardonic, somewhat deprecating smile. "Of everything you've said since the women left us out here ... that I believe."
***
El couldn't tell if Peter and Neal's talk had gone well or not. They didn't seem to be relating to each other any differently. She questioned Peter with her eyes, and he offered a tiny shrug that clarified nothing.
The day was growing warmer, though the clouds still hung low, threatening rain. The four of them went for a walk on the beach -- El changed her robe for a sundress with a sweater over the top. It still amazed her how isolated it felt out here. The beach seemed to go on and on, a white ribbon of sand winding past rambling, widely spaced mansions, each one uniquely styled.
They found a lovely wide tide pool, shallow and reflective and warm in the sun, and Peter immediately began to hunt for skipping stones on the beach. He was horrified to discover that Neal had never skipped rocks. "There's something the versatile Neal Caffrey doesn't know how to do?"
"Strangely enough," Neal said, wearing his plastic smile again, "it's a talent that rarely comes up in my line of work."
Peter's teasing expression shifted, becoming shadowed with sadness. "You know, some people do things because they're fun."
"I do things because they're fun," Neal countered. "Fun and profitable."
Peter tossed him a flat rock. "Well, today you're going to learn how to do something that isn't profitable in the least."
Sara and El shared an amused glance, then sat in the sand and watched. Neal balked at first, then watched Peter carefully and emulated him. His rock flipped over and sank.
"No," Peter said, "like this," and took Neal's hand, carefully positioning his fingers on the rock and leading his hand slowly through a mimed throw. Then he let go. Neal looked at him, his expression unreadable. Peter released Neal's hand and stepped back, and nodded.
Neal being Neal, his next try was perfect: the rock bounced three times before sinking. Sara and El clapped.
Naturally this led to a contest to see who could skip a rock all the way to the far side of the pool. The women joined in. "Quite a throwing arm you've got there," Neal said when one of El's rocks outbounced Peter's.
El grinned and flexed; Neal mimed feeling her muscles.
Rain was looking imminent again, so they slogged back through the sand. El and Peter held hands; so did Neal and Sara. About halfway back, Neal reached out and very cautiously laced his sand-encrusted fingers through Peter's. It was so subtly done that El didn't even think she'd have noticed if she hadn't felt Peter's stride miss a step. She managed not to look over and upset their careful balance, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Neal start to withdraw his hand just as carefully, and Peter tightened his own grip, capturing Neal's fingers within the cage of his own.
They walked back four abreast, all joined by their hands. The beach was easily wide enough to accommodate them without any trouble.
There were more steaks in the fridge for a late lunch, and Peter took over the food preparation, firing up the apparently never-used barbeque grill on the deck. "You two had your way with dinner last night. Now it's my turn."
They ate the steaks with a tossed salad -- inside, this time, since rain squalls were sweeping over the house, battering its walls. El opened a fresh bottle of wine, and couldn't help noticing that no one skimped on it. Liquid courage, she thought, spinning her glass in her hand and watching the stormlight wink off the liquid like a glass full of rubies.
She hoped they weren't all making a terrible mistake. She'd lightly suggested to Peter that it was possible to play, to experiment, over the weekend and then just go back to their normal lives as if nothing had happened.
What if I'm wrong?
But really, life was nothing but a series of experiments. All relationships lived in a state of flux. We could never, ever change, and grow so rigid that life would easily break us. Or we can bend and flex and take each opportunity as it comes.
Neal rose to get another bottle of wine. Sara immediately lifted a bare foot and settled it into El's lap.
El looked at it in surprise.
Sara raised her eyebrows. She wore a nervous and expectant expression.
El glanced at Peter, suddenly hyper-aware of him leaning against her side, one arm around her shoulders. He looked as nervous as she felt, but he shrugged a little, smiled, and kissed the side of her mouth. El laid a hand on the sole of Sara's foot, hesitant -- she hadn't done footrubs much, since Peter was ticklish and not that fond of it. Sara had nice feet, though, neatly manicured with green-painted toenails, still speckled with a few grains of sand from their earlier walk. El dug in her thumbs and Sara's tense posture relaxed; she tilted her head back, closing her eyes.
Neal, returning, stopped at the sight of this tableau. He glanced at Peter and then, wary as a wild animal, slipped onto the end of Peter and El's couch, and leaned his shoulder against Peter's.
El felt Peter stiffen against her. Neal had plainly felt it too, because he withdrew quickly, reclaiming some personal space.
Peter cleared his throat. "Ground rules," he said. His voice was a bit husky. "None of this can go beyond this house, and I mean it."
"What happens in the house, stays in the house," Neal said.
His voice was light, but Peter said without a trace of levity, "You could ruin me with this."
"I wouldn't," Neal said. With her fingers still kneading the arch of Sara's foot, El glanced at him. His face was set and serious. "I wouldn't, Peter."
Sara opened her eyes and propped herself up on her elbows. "It stays in the house," she agreed.
Peter was looking at Neal, so El couldn't see his face, just the sweep of his eyelashes and the curve of his jaw. But she saw Neal's face change, growing soft and fragile, as Peter raised a hand to cup the side of his face -- as he'd done for El, so many times she'd lost count; it was strange seeing it from the outside.
Peter leaned in and kissed Neal on the lips: lightly, chastely. He drew back a little. Neal was still looking at him with that wide-eyed, soft look. With infinite tenderness, Peter kissed his cheekbones, his forehead, the soft skin at the edge of his mouth.
And El was caught off guard by a surge of jealousy -- sudden, strong, bitter. Neal already had so much of Peter's life, his entire work life; it wasn't fair that he should have this too. She closed her eyes and breathed through it, methodically working up Sara's foot to her ankle.
She'd thought Peter would be the one who would struggle with this. She hadn't expected to find that much possessiveness in herself.
Fear, she thought. The root of jealousy is fear of abandonment. She'd read that in one of her father's psych books. And Peter's fake engagement to Selena Thomas had left a bruise on her soul. Even knowing that it was all false, that she had no more to fear from Selena than from any run-of-the-mill mobster or embezzler (a threat to Peter's life, maybe, but not his heart), she'd struggled with a visceral and, she knew, irrational reaction to seeing her husband in the arms of another woman.
She wanted to believe that she had no more to fear from Neal, but she knew it wasn't true. Neal, beloved in Peter's eyes, beautiful and wild -- she never could believe that any other woman might capture Peter's heart and take him away from her, but Neal ... yes. Neal could.
And yet, she had never believed that you loved by holding on. She didn't control Peter. Putting a ring on his finger did not give her the right to put a chain on his heart.
El opened her eyes and her own feelings mirrored in the mix of emotions on Sara's face. The thought occurred to El that if she, married eleven years, couldn't help a rush of jealousy, then Sara -- who had known Neal only a few months, whose relationship was still new and tentative -- must surely be a thousand times less secure.
Sara turned her head, met El's eyes. There was a rueful moment of mutual recognition; then Sara smiled, warm and wistful and a little sad.
"This ought to get the boys' attention," she said, and leaned forward and kissed El. It started as a close-mouthed kiss, tentative, not unlike Peter and Neal's. But El parted her lips, and Sara responded with a sudden fierceness. Competitive. Intense.
In eleven years, El had kissed no one but Peter. Had never even thought of kissing anyone but Peter. He'd been cautious and careful with her when they were first dating, treating her like she was breakable; it had taken her months to convince him that she could in fact take whatever he could dish out and serve it right back. But Sara was neither cautious nor reserved; she threw herself into the kiss with the same flair as she approached life, and when they broke apart, she drew El's bottom lip lightly through her teeth before letting it snap back. El was breathless.
Both the guys were staring at them.
"Bedroom?" El said.
***
They ended up, all four of them, in one of the bedrooms that no one had claimed yet. Somehow going back to either couple's bedroom didn't feel right.
The kiss with Sara had left El feeling oddly calm and centered. It still wasn't too late to pull out of this, but they were rapidly reaching that point of no return -- riding a runaway train that was gathering speed.
"Who in this room has ever done this before?" Sara asked. "Show of hands." Her hand promptly went up. No one else's did. She looked around at the others and said, "Seriously?"
"I thought you were a workaholic who didn't even have time for a social life," Neal challenged her.
"And I thought you were an international man of mystery who had been everywhere and done everything." Her smile was coy. "Looks like both of us were wrong."
El sat on the edge of the bed and began undoing her buttons. Neal glanced at Peter; El thought they seemed to be having a whole conversation in that one look, and then Neal knelt in front of her and began unbuttoning her with his sure, confident con-artist's hands.
Out of the corner of her eye, El saw that Sara and Peter had begun to undress each other -- slowly and awkwardly; Peter managed somehow to get her hair caught in the zipper of her sundress and stammered an apology. El grinned helplessly. She wasn't sure why, but Peter's dork moments had always made her love him more than ever. And somehow it defused the jealousy a little. He was still her Peter, still the same unique blend of confident and insecure, dominating and shyly diffident that she'd fallen in love with.
Peter kept glancing her way -- worried, anxious looks -- and she tried to reassure him with her eyes: It's all right. Go on.
The root of jealousy is fear of abandonment. And there was, she thought, nothing to fear in this room.
Neal unzipped her slacks and she lifted her hips so that he could slide them down. All the while he kept his eyes on her face -- wide blue eyes, assessing her, watching her, asking the silent question: Is this okay? Should I keep going?
"Yes," she said aloud, and kissed him tentatively. Peter's lips had just been on Neal's, and though she knew it had to be her imagination, she thought she could taste him there. Neal responded very gently, kissing her mouth and then moving on to her cheeks, nose, eyelids -- much as Peter had done for him a few minutes earlier.
He laid her back down on the bed in her bra, and she felt the bed dip as Sara and Peter settled onto it.
The point of no return, she thought, and hooked her thumbs into the elastic of her panties, tugging them down.
***
It was, truth be told, far from the best sex she'd ever had. Since three of the four of them had never experienced sex with multiple partners before -- and two of the four had been in a long-term monogamous relationship for over a decade -- there was a lot of "Sorry!" and "Oops, my elbow --" and "You don't like that? But El likes that ..."
El could tell -- she knew him far too well not to be able to tell -- that Peter wasn't really into the physical side of it. Mostly he seemed to be self-conscious and nervous, not exactly enjoying himself. But there was no questioning his earnest desire to please his partners, and El found that it was easier to cope with the lurking specter of resentment over having that single-minded focus turned on someone else when she had Sara's head between her legs, Neal's lips on hers.
Not the best sex ever. But tangled up together afterwards -- Peter's shoulder under her head, Neal nestled against her neck, Sara's leg thrown over El and Neal both -- she didn't remember ever feeling so warm and loved and content.
Love wasn't something that could ever be multiplied or quantified. This wasn't better than what she had with Peter. But more love ... is more, she thought, turning her head without raising it so that she could kiss Neal's forehead.
Neal put an arm over her and, reaching blindly, found Peter's hand by touch and curled his fingers through Peter's. Peter lightly chafed the back of Neal's hand with his thumb, and El felt Neal go boneless against her, his eyes closed in bliss like a warm, sleepy cat.
***
Evening found them showered and dressed and all slightly uncertain with each other.
No one particularly wanted to cook, so they ordered pizza and ate on the deck, sitting on the steps and watching the world's shadow creep up the blue and violet sky. The sky was clear at last, but there was still a chill in the wind blowing off the water.
Neal sat with his back against Peter's knees, and when Peter lightly, tentatively rested a hand on the back of his neck, Neal leaned his head back and settled into the touch.
El felt a sharp twinge and looked away, out at the water, until it faded.
Sara was stretched out at the top of the stairs, propped on her elbow. She moved to put a hand on Peter's shoulder, then apparently thought better of it and obtained herself another slice of pizza instead.
I suppose we have to start putting ourselves back together, El thought. Tucking ourselves back into our everyday lives. The next day they'd be driving back to the city, reassuming the roles they'd lived before, with nothing left of the beach and the house except memories.
But none of the memories were ones she regretted. She reached up to lay a hand on Neal's foot -- it happened to be the one with the tracking anklet -- and lightly, affectionately rubbed her thumb against his ankle.
"Thank you," Sara said, and El looked up the stairs at her. The setting sun caught the red highlights in Sara's hair and turned it to fire. "Both of you. This was nice."
"Have to do it again sometime?" El said.
She was joking, mostly, but the words fell into the silence between them like stones into a still pool, setting up ripples and currents that caught and tugged at them.
"Maybe," Neal said after a moment. "If ..."
He stopped, and Peter lifted his hand off Neal's neck, rested it across his knees instead. Neal detached himself quietly from El's gentle grip on his ankle and went up to join Sara at the top of the stairs.
If they were all still here. Still together, in all their various permutations.
There were, after all, no guarantees in life.
Sara twined her hand in Neal's and leaned against him. El, for her part, scooted up the stairs so that Peter could touch her shoulder, bare except for the strap of her blouse.
"I wouldn't mind, you know," Sara said. "Doing it again."
"Next year," Peter said abruptly, and El tipped back her head to look up at him. He was staring out to sea, but she got the impression that his words were directed mostly to Neal -- a challenge, she thought, and perhaps, just perhaps, an incentive to stay.
"Next year," he repeated. "Different place, probably, but ... we'll find somewhere."
"Somewhere out of time," Neal said, the words little more than a sigh.
"Exactly."
No one else said anything. In silence, they watched the sunset sky darken into night. El leaned into the warmth of Peter's hand, and closed her eyes.
~
Title: Somewhere Out of Time
Fandom: White Collar
Word Count: 8800
Pairing: Peter/El, Neal/Sara and experimental Peter/El/Neal/Sara
Rating: Kind of R-ish?
Summary: Written (ultra-belatedly) for this prompt at
wc_women_fest: Sara/Neal and Elizabeth/Peter on a couples retreat (which morphed into a sort of OT4-ish thing). Notes: Takes place somewhere in the middle of the first half of season three (after "Veiled Threat", but before Neal and Sara's breakup).
Cross-posted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/403656
It was a sort of one-month anniversary present to Neal and Sara. (Or possibly two-month, or three-and-a-half month; just exactly how long Neal and Sara had been dating was a matter of how "dating" was defined in a given context.) In any case, it was Peter's idea, sort of, which El found adorable.
The thing about Peter that she sometimes forgot was that he really did have a wide romantic streak. His ability to remember birthdays and anniversaries was next to nonexistent, and his tolerance for things like flowers and tiny individually-wrapped chocolates was about as high as she could expect for a guy who grew up blue-collar in upstate New York (which was to say, not very). But for Peter, being romantic manifested itself as wanting to take care of the people he cared about and make them happy, and in that, he was about as romantic as any guy she'd ever met.
He'd also been yenta-ing his heart out on Neal and Sara, which El thought was adorable and hilarious and possibly doomed to crash and burn, but she'd decided to be cautiously supportive. She'd had to think about it first, because Peter's idea of Neal finding a good woman to straighten him out was, in El's opinion, unfair to the woman in question. On the other hand, Peter genuinely loved Neal and wanted him to be happy, and Sara seemed like a nice person who had the backbone to stand up to Neal in his less attractive moments -- it was a whole lot more than Peter merely picking some girl off the street and trying to push her into Neal's arms, which El would not have stood for, and she couldn't imagine Peter doing that anyway.
Peter had been worrying about Sara getting fed up with the limitations of Neal's leash and heading for the hills. "She's used to traveling all over the place, going out on the town and having a good time."
"They still have most of Manhattan. It isn't exactly small."
"Well, that's true, but still ... what if she gets fed up with it and heads for the hills?"
"If she's really the right one, honey, she'll wait." El poked him in the arm. "How many times do you take me out on the town and show me a good time?"
"We're married," Peter said. "It's different." He looked suddenly very worried. "Do you want to go out? Because we could go out --"
"I'd rather have a pot roast at home." El kissed his nose. "And maybe Sara would too. How do you know she's not that kind of girl?"
"Maybe," Peter conceded. "Somehow I don't think the Marshals would agree to widen Neal's radius for one weekend so that he can take her somewhere new, anyway, which means if she did want to get out of Manhattan, I'd have to be with them. Er, not in the same room, obviously ..."
El laughed out loud at this. "I'm sure they'll appreciate you inviting yourself along on their date." Peter blushed, but she sobered and thought about it for a minute. "Honey, what about some sort of couples weekend for all of us? You, me, Neal, Sara. That might be a little less, um, weird than you planning a date for him and then inviting yourself along for it. It would be like a little mini-vacation for them, and for us too."
Peter came home the next evening with several photographs of an attractive mansion on Long Island.
"The Bureau seized this a few months ago. Looks nice, huh? Lots of bedrooms, fully furnished, in legal limbo since the owners are in jail ..."
"You were doing so well up until the last part."
***
She had to admit, the house was nice. As nice as June's, and overlooking a stretch of private beach. Every room was gorgeously decorated in a different style, and El couldn't help herself: she wandered from room to room, taking pictures with her cell phone for her personal gallery of event-decorating ideas.
Sara immediately hauled all the sheets off the beds and began trundling them down to the industrial-sized washing machine in the laundry room -- "Because I don't know about the rest of you, but my imagination is giving me all sorts of pictures of what's been going on in these beds, and I do have some standards." She managed to draft Peter into serving as a beast of burden.
Neal cornered El in the kitchen while she was taking pictures of the countertops. "You want to be here, right?" he asked quietly, sidling up beside her with a glass of wine. "I mean, he didn't drag you along against your will, did he?"
El laughed and snapped a shot of Neal in front of the refrigerator. "Why? Did he drag you?"
"Sort of. You don't really say no when Peter gets set on an idea. Well, you can try, but it doesn't help ..."
El patted his arm. "Look upon it as an opportunity to get out of Manhattan and have a little fun. If you and Sara want to spend the entire weekend holed up in your room, I promise that I'll keep Peter from bothering you and slip food under the door."
Rather than answering, Neal slipped on a glossy, evasive smile -- El wondered if he even realized that he'd done it. "Actually, I was thinking about checking out the beach. Want to join me?"
Neal's anklet was set to roaming status for the weekend, but technically he was supposed to be accompanied by an agent (Peter, namely) whenever he left the house. El grinned; she knew he was testing the limits of his leash, but it was the sort of delinquency she was happy to participate in. "Sure."
The house had a deck overlooking the beach, with a flight of wooden stairs leading directly down to the sand. El slipped off her shoes and stockings, and waded barefoot into the sand, curling her toes in delight. She looked over her shoulder to see Neal fastidiously tucking his socks into his expensive leather shoes and rolling up the cuffs of his pants.
It was still early in the season, and they were the only people in sight. Far out on the water, the white triangle of a sailboat's sail glimmered in a shaft of sunlight, though a cloud cast its cool shadow on the beach.
"When was the last time you walked barefoot on a beach?" El asked Neal as they padded through the dry sand onto the firmer, waveswept portion of the beach.
"Never."
"Really?" El said, surprised. "Somehow my vision of a high-flying Neal Caffrey includes lying on the beach with suntanned women in bikinis. No?"
"No," Neal said, cautiously extending one pale foot to be licked by an incoming wave. "I've been near beaches, but I was always more interested in having a glass of wine at the bar. Lying in the sun has never exactly been my scene." As if to underscore his words, the sun peeked out from behind a cloud and he squinted in the brilliant sunshine reflected from the sand. With his suit and tie, he could not possibly have looked more out of place. The anklet rested loosely on his bare ankle, and El wondered suddenly how waterproof it was. Apparently enough to take into the shower, but how did it handle sun and seawater?
"What are you two doing down there?" Peter called from the deck.
"Neal is making his escape," El hollered back. "I'm helping. We're just waiting for our getaway boat."
She heard Peter say something that sounded like "... ask a stupid question," and a minute later he joined them, barefoot as well.
"The water's cold," Neal reported, withdrawing to the dry part of the beach. He then discovered the tendency of sand to stick to his wet feet, and El laughed at his expression -- it made her think of a cat that's accidentally stepped in a mud puddle.
"Neal's never been on a beach before," she told Peter.
"Sure he has," Peter retorted. "What about Monaco?"
"Just because there was a beach proximate to my location doesn't mean that I went courting sunburn and sand fleas," Neal said, attempting without success to brush the sand off his feet.
"And yet I can't help noticing sketches of you and Mozzie on the beach all over your apartment."
Peter had his suspicious-FBI-agent face on, and Neal was starting to bristle, so El hastily headed them off. "Come on, Sara is going to wonder where we got off to. And I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm starting to get hungry. Why don't we dirty a few dishes in that immaculate kitchen?"
***
They'd stopped to pick up food supplies on the drive out -- in several different gourmet markets, at the combined behest of El and Neal, while Sara and Peter made commiserating faces at each other. They now had an extensive stock of raw materials, and El and Neal shared the kitchen, preparing what Peter judged was probably going to be some sort of ridiculously complicated gourmet meal involving dozens of needless steps and utensils he didn't even know the names of. However, there were some good-looking sirloin steaks at the heart of the meal, so he figured they could have their fun.
At home, and sans Neal, he'd know exactly how to jump in. Here, in an unfamiliar kitchen and without a clue what they were doing half the time, he had no idea.
Sara hovered around the outskirts of the activity, looking as out of place as Peter felt. She would start to make a move towards a utensil, then abort as El or Neal swooped in, oblivious, doing their little kitchen dance as if they'd done it a thousand times before. (To the best of Peter's knowledge, this was the first time that they'd ever cooked anything together, but they seemed to be completely in sync. Some sort of innate chef telepathy, he presumed.)
Sara topped off her glass of wine, kissed Neal on the cheek and then wandered out to the deck. Peter decided that following her would be (marginally) less awkward than continuing to hang around the kitchen propping up a wall.
"Thank you for setting this up," Sara said, leaning on the railing and looking out at the sea. It still wasn't good beach weather -- the clouds threatened rain, and there was a lingering spring chill in the air. "This really is a lovely place. I can't believe I'm vacationing in the Hamptons."
"You're telling me." Peter set his beer on the wooden railing.
"It's nice to get out of the city sometimes."
"Well," Peter said, "that's the idea."
Sara looked at him sideways. Clearly there was something else on her mind; she opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, but never seemed to work herself up to saying it. Then El came to let them know that it was time to eat, and Sara, not meeting Peter's eyes, slipped off to find Neal.
***
They ate on the deck: a gourmet meal served on paper plates. The threatened rain held off until they were just finishing up dessert; then fat drops began to strike all around them, sending them running into the house to watch the storm through the big picture windows.
"My hair," Sara said, touching her damp, frizzing curls. "I need to go do something about this before it dries this way."
"You look like you could use a shower," Neal said. He leaned over to whisper something in her ear, darting a look sideways at Peter and El. Sara giggled, gave her head a quick shake and tugged his hand; the two of them darted away to the wing of the house that they'd taken over for their own.
"Looks like it's just you and me, Mrs. Burke." Peter affected a slouch against the wall. "Shame we can't get out to the house in the Hamptons more often."
"Well, you know what our busy social calendar is like." El grinned and slid into his arms. "Between all the dinner parties with actors and Senators, and the European vacations ..."
He captured her mouth, her lips warm and sweet, yielding at first and then aggressive, possessive, claiming territory of her own.
"Why, Mr. Burke," El said, breaking away breathlessly and looking towards the picture windows. "What will the neighbors think?"
"Let them talk." Peter slipped a hand under her waistband.
***
Later, sated and happy, Peter fell asleep in the bedroom while El, drawn by the pounding of the rain, pulled on a robe and padded quietly into the living room. She always brought a book on vacations, but it was, she realized, back in the bedroom, and she didn't want to wake Peter to retrieve it. He'd been working hard, and she knew he was also more deeply stressed about Neal's current situation than he wanted her to know. This vacation might be ostensibly on Sara and Neal's behalf, but of all of them, she thought Peter needed it the most.
The rain had stopped on the deck, but the storm still grumbled over the ocean, brightening the night with distant flashes of lightning. There were high louvres above the picture windows, and after some experimentation, El discovered to her delight that they were electric, controlled by a rheostat next to the light switches. She opened them, letting in the fresh smell of the rain and the sea, and tucked her feet up under her on the couch while she checked her email on her phone. She answered a few of Yvonne's texts and one from her mother, and then forced herself to shut it off. They were on vacation, after all. Her business and family and friends would still be there in two days.
It was so dark here. There were other house lights along the shore, and from the other side of the house it must be easy to see the glow of the vast metropolitan area south and west of them. But the ocean was dark and wild. El watched it for a while before getting bored and hunting through the room for something to read. There were a few mostly decorative bookshelves offering up leather-bound volumes of the sort of books that people buy to make themselves look intellectual: Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a complete set of Shakespeare, Moby-Dick. She chose a volume of Shakespeare's sonnets and took it back to the couch.
There was a soft throat-clearing noise and El looked up to see Sara, similarly berobed, pad barefoot into the kitchen and hunt through cabinets until she found a box of tea and a mug. Holding these up, she asked, "Want some?"
"Yes, please," El said, and a few moments later Sara brought her a cup of sweetly floral-scented tea and sat down on the opposite couch. She folded her slim body with awkward grace -- like a heron, El thought: some sort of wading bird, unselfconscious and fluid in its movements.
"Neal is asleep?" A part of El -- a tiny little part -- wondered if he might take the opportunity to run. The house was unsecured, the White Collar division and the U.S. Marshals miles away. He could go far before anyone even realized he was missing.
Sara smiled. "He's drawing. He sketched me for a while, but I got restless. Rain makes me that way." She looked down into her cup of tea, then up at El. "And there was something I wanted to talk to you about. I thought it might be easier without the guys around."
Sara hesitated, and El tried to look as friendly and curious as possible. Sara took a deep breath.
"Neal and I weren't sure ... why you asked us up here. What you expected to happen, I mean. We weren't sure if you were asking -- well, perhaps I should say I wasn't sure ..."
She trailed off again. El waited. When Sara didn't say anything else, El said, "I'm not really sure what you're asking."
Sara turned pink, and raised her eyes, meeting El's. "We thought you might have been thinking about some sort of foursome or partner-swapping arrangement."
"Oh," El said, surprised but relieved -- she'd thought Sara and Neal might have been upset about something. "Oh. No." She stopped herself quickly because she was about to laugh and didn't want to hurt Sara's feelings. "No, it was only a way of giving you two a nice weekend out of the city without violating the terms of Neal's release, that's all."
"Oh." Sara let out a little laugh herself. "Neal said ... well, Neal thought I was reading the situation wrong. I guess he knows you two better than I do."
El wondered if Sara might have gotten the wrong idea about what sort of person Peter was. She didn't know him very well, after all ... "Peter would never take advantage of his position over Neal. I hope you understand that."
Sara's eyes went wide. "Oh, yes, I know -- I mean, I guess I don't know your husband all that well, but I never would have thought -- I'm sorry. I certainly didn't mean to imply that we thought anyone would be forced. It's just that Neal and I wouldn't have minded at all. We've talked about it, actually."
"... oh?" El managed.
"And now I've offended you," Sara said. "Dammit. I really am sorry. Maybe Neal should have done this; I'm not always good with people."
She made to rise; El reached out a hand to stop her. "No, wait. I'm not offended. I'm just surprised. Peter and I -- we've never considered something like that. It's only that I don't know what to say, that's all."
She thought of herself as an open-minded person, but she'd grown up in the Midwest and come of age in the '90s. Partner-swapping, key parties and all of that were things that her generation left behind, abandoned to a sexually freer, pre-AIDS era. Oh, she wasn't completely sheltered -- certainly she'd known people in open relationships, especially back in college -- but she'd never even imagined stepping out on Peter, whether or not he knew about it. Peter was what she wanted. All she wanted.
And yet. She thought of Neal -- the smooth lines of his body in those suits, his springy dark hair (was it just as springy and dark under the suit?) -- and felt her mouth go a little dry.
Danger, Will Robinson, she thought firmly. Down, girl. He's your husband's partner, and no matter what, you're going to have to see him almost every day for years. And Peter has to work with him. Think this through for God's sake. Peter wouldn't -- Neal wouldn't --
No ... Neal would. Of course he would. He was Neal.
Sara was waiting, her eyes large and liquid. El couldn't tell what she was thinking, but she seemed somehow expectant.
"Your idea?" El asked, smiling.
"Not exactly," Sara admitted. "Well, I was the one who thought you two might have invited us up here for -- But it was Neal who first brought it up. I suppose. It's hard to remember now."
Of course it had been Neal.
"I think ..." El said slowly. "I think I need to talk to Peter about it."
Sara's eyes went round. "Do you think he might actually say yes?"
"Do you want him to?"
"Maybe," Sara said, evasive.
***
Peter slept the sleep of the dead all night -- a good fourteen hours of hard, heavy sleep that he sorely needed. El allowed herself to sleep in, too, and the two of them wandered into the kitchen with the sun shining through the picture windows. There was clear evidence that Sara and Neal had already been and gone: two cups in the sink, crumbs around the toaster, and a fresh pot of coffee perking.
"He'd better still be in the house," Peter said, and he already had his phone out -- to check Neal's tracking detail, El guessed. She closed her fingers over his, stopping him.
"He wouldn't violate your trust. Not this weekend."
"If you say so." Peter sounded uncertain, but he put the phone on the counter and joined her in preparing a simple breakfast of toasted English muffins and eggs. They took it out to the deck. The air was fresh and clean, still too brisk for swimming, especially with a new layer of clouds scudding in from the ocean.
"It's going to rain all weekend, isn't it?" Peter said.
El smiled over her coffee cup. "That means we'll have to stay inside. What a shame."
"I married a very naughty woman."
"Speaking of ..." El said. "Now, hon, I want you to listen to all of this before you say anything, all right? And no matter what, this is strictly between you and me."
She told him about Sara's proposition of the previous night, and got to see Peter's eyes growing rounder and rounder. It wasn't often that she really got to shock him.
"They thought we brought them up here for sex?"
"Sara said they thought we might be considering either partner-swapping or a foursome."
"Doesn't Neal have the slightest idea of the position that I -- no. Of course not. He's Neal." Peter sighed and started to rise from his chair. El grabbed his arm, pulling him back down.
"Where are you going?"
"To put a stop to this ridiculous rumor before things get out of hand."
"Just between you and me, remember?" She rose and, for safety's sake, pinned him by sitting in his lap. Aside from the hum of a lawnmower on one of the nearby properties and music playing somewhere else, there was no sign of anyone around. Nobody watching, unless one of the neighbors had chosen to spy with binoculars, in which case, let them get an eyeful.
"Besides," she said, playing with his hair and then tapping his nose, "do you really think it's a ridiculous idea?"
"Of course it's ridiculous. I'm legally responsible for Neal. I'd be violating a dozen regs, not to mention crossing my own ethical lines."
El drew back and studied the man whose face she knew better than her own. The brown eyes, distant in contemplation; the worried furrow between his brows; the set of his mouth. "Are those the only reasons?"
"Aren't those enough?" Peter said in disbelief.
"You never said you didn't want to," El said gently.
Peter blinked as if that thought had never occurred to him. "All the more reason not to cross any lines we can't come back from."
Which wasn't a no, and staggered her. After over a decade of marriage, it was startling to find corners of Peter's soul that had been hidden in shadow. Was she jealous? El turned it over in her mind and decided, no, she was not. A vast wave of relief accompanied this realization. She'd been jealous before -- recently, in fact. She knew that she could be possessive. But this didn't feel the same. Not threatening at all. And an idea was fluttering around the corners of her brain, like a caged bird struggling to break free.
"Here's a wild and crazy thought," El said, feeling it out for herself. "Suppose we didn't have to worry about any of that. Suppose we were just us, and they were just them. No anklet. No Bureau. Just the four of us as people."
Peter frowned. "So it's okay if no one ever finds out? I'd know. And that's what matters."
And that was what made him the man she loved, the man she'd married. "I'm not suggesting that we try to get away with something. I'm just presenting, as a thought problem -- suppose that we think of this weekend as a space that exists apart from our regular lives. A place out of time, out of space. Not just a vacation from the city, but a vacation from being us."
"I can't believe you're trying to talk me into this."
"I'm not," El said, and kissed the tip of his nose quickly, apologetically, then moving on to his lips. "Hon," she said when she came up for air, "the absolute last thing I want to do is pressure you into anything. Really. I'm only presenting options you may not have considered, that's all."
He kissed her, long and tender. "I don't want to make love to anyone but you," he said quietly. "For the rest of your life and mine."
"I know," she said, and leaned her temple against his. "But you love Neal."
She felt him shiver a little; then he said slowly and quietly, his breath stirring the hair over her ear, "I don't think I love Neal like that."
"I think he might love you like that."
Peter heaved a sigh. "I know," he murmured against the side of her face. "I guess I've always known."
And how does Sara fit into all of this? El wondered, for a moment seeing all of them as pins on a corkboard, with an infinitely complex web of different colored yarn crisscrossing in a cats'-cradle between them. Going along for the ride because Neal wants to? But Sara didn't seem like the type to be passively dragged along with her man.
"Speak of the devil!" Sara's voice said brightly, and El jumped, nearly whacking Peter's nose with her head. "We were just talking about you," Sara added as she and Neal breezed out onto the deck. Both of them were nattily dressed, Sara even wearing her high heels -- plainly having trouble with the concept of "vacation" in El's opinion.
"We were just talking about you, too," El said, pivoting on Peter's lap, but throwing an arm around his neck as she did so. It felt oddly like laying claim, although she wasn't sure for whose benefit she was planting her flag.
There was a silence. Both Sara and Neal seemed to be trying to avoid the eyes of everyone on the deck, including each other. Then Neal picked up the uneaten half of Peter's English muffin and bit into it.
"Caffrey!" Peter said, in his usual tone of half-fond annoyance. "You're stealing my muffin."
"It's not a felony," Neal pointed out, taking another neat bite. "Grand theft muffin? A misdemeanor at most, I'd say."
The sudden thought occurred to El that out of the whole group of them, with all their different one-way and mutual connections, the two people who most needed to talk about this were both out here on the deck and should probably be left alone. She slithered off Peter's lap and stood up.
"Sara, could you give me a hand with the cleaning up, please?" she asked, picking up the paper plates that had held the muffins. "Tonight it'll be the guys' turn."
"Okay," Sara said, her eyes darting from Peter to Neal and then to El. She wasn't slow on the uptake.
"Hey!" Peter said, as he belatedly woke to the realization that the women were abandoning them, but El shut the sliding glass doors behind her.
***
"Is it just me," Neal said, looking after the two women who were carrying the breakfast dishes into the kitchen and seemed to be making a studied attempt not to look at them, "or was that a little weird?"
He looked over at Peter, who was wearing a robe entirely unsuited to his surroundings (gray from many washings, it probably should have been thrown out years ago), his hair tousled from both wind and sleep. Neal almost never saw him like this -- generally his first sight of Peter in the morning was a Peter dressed for the office: suit and tie, hair combed down, very much in control.
And he was also trying to avoid Neal's eyes. Hmm. Not good.
"You and El seemed to be having an interesting conversation when we came out here," Neal said. Unfortunately he'd eaten the last of the muffin, which left him nothing to do with his hands.
"My conversations with my wife aren't really your business," Peter said.
"Someone woke up grumpy," Neal said lightly, and perched on the edge of one of the wood-slat deck chairs.
Based on the way that Peter was continuing not to look at him, he thought he could guess what El and Peter had been talking about. Goddammit. His heart flipped over, not in a good way. Peter held Neal's future in his hands, in more ways than one right now, and there were times when he thought Sara didn't seem to understand what that meant.
He glanced at the sliding glass doors. The women were visible in the kitchen, talking animatedly over fresh cups of coffee. Well, at least they were getting along.
Maybe he should just get it over with. "Peter," he started to say, at the same time that Peter said, "Neal --"
They both broke off and stared at each other for a moment, warily, before breaking into grins. Neal felt the tension unknot a little.
"You might be aware by this point," Neal said, "that Sara got a slightly inaccurate idea about this trip."
"So I've heard," Peter said, and the bottom dropped out of Neal's stomach again. Peter, however, didn't look upset. He looked more ... gentle, almost, which was considerably more unnerving than anger would have been.
Neal had been prepared for either anger or for Peter to be his usual affectionately mocking self. But this, whatever this was -- it unexpectedly pierced his defenses and laid him bare.
"What I can't figure out is that it seems like my wife and your girlfriend are both just fine with the idea," Peter said. Though his eyes were steady on Neal, he was blushing faintly, a pink tinge over his cheeks. "Obviously there is -- well. It's a lot more complicated when you and I enter the picture. For obvious reasons."
"I wasn't actually going to ask," Neal said, wishing again that he had something to do with his hands. There wasn't even a salt shaker on the table.
"Really?" Peter said.
His tone was skeptical, and Neal felt a sharp twist of anger in his stomach. "No, Peter," he said. "There are things I don't steal."
There was silence from Peter, and rather than looking at him, Neal looked out at the ocean, infinite in its depth and breadth and its many shades of blue, gray, green. You could spend a lifetime painting the ocean and never capture its many moods.
That was what people were like, too. He found them fascinating. Dealing with people was like juggling glass balls, adding more and more, trying to keep them all in the air at once.
But it stopped being fun when the people became individuals, the glass balls their hearts. It mattered to him if he dropped one and it broke.
And the idea that he might actually cradle Peter's heart in his hands, in any fashion -- as Peter cupped Neal's future in his own -- was a thought that he didn't like. It was too much responsibility. And yet, the sense of holding that fragile glass thing, warm to the touch and so breakable, warmed something deep inside him that had been cold for a very long time.
"El said something today," Peter said. Out of the corner of his eye, Neal saw him shift in place. "She suggested that this vacation, this house -- that it's like we're not really us here. The usual rules don't apply. 'A place out of time' ... that's what she said."
"What did you say?" Neal asked quietly.
"I told her that she's wrong. It always matters. Rules, regulations -- morality, right and wrong ... it isn't something that you put on and take off like a ... an expensive suit. You take it with you wherever you go."
"Ah," Neal said, and looked at him. Peter's eyes were darker than the sea, but no less full of depth and mystery.
"What do you want?" Peter said.
"What?"
"I said, what do you want? Much as I might hate to admit it, Neal, you are an adult and I can't go around making all your decisions for you."
"I --" He felt as if he teetered on the brink of a precipice. He thought again of the glass ball cupped in his hands -- Peter's heart -- and suddenly it was not a hard decision to make at all. "I would never ask you to do anything that would make you less ... you. Never, ever. In terms of your marriage or morality or any of those other things you said."
"Oh, bullshit," Peter said, but his voice was gentle. "You try to get me to circumvent my morals all the time."
"I wouldn't push if you didn't push back. And this ... not about this, Peter. Not this." He tried to infuse every bit of sincerity that he could into his voice, his face, his bearing. This would have been a hard conversation to have at the best of times, but given the way things were between them right now, Neal had no idea what he could do to get across that he really meant this, more than anything he'd ever said before.
Peter gazed at him from those ocean-deep eyes, then sighed and stood up, turning to look out at the sea himself.
"I wish I could convince myself that this isn't part of some con you're working on me."
"Sara was the one who brought it up," Neal pointed out.
Peter shot him an exasperated glance. "Yeah, and that's exactly how you'd do it, too. Convince Sara that it was her idea, and Sara convinces El ... I just can't figure out what your long game is."
Neal opened his mouth to say It's not a con, and then closed it again. Because he'd promised himself, long ago, that he'd never lie to Peter. It was a promise he meant never to break. And he wasn't sure himself.
Part of the problem was that he sometimes couldn't figure out the boundaries of what Peter considered a con. Romance, courting ... it was all about cleverly manipulating the other person's perceptions. A socially sanctioned dance between lies and truth. That was how everyone did it, Neal was pretty sure, not just him.
But Peter wanted truth. Always truth. Neal couldn't give him the truth about the treasure, not right now, but he could give him this truth. So he tried.
"I don't know," he said. "I'm really not sure. I'd like to believe I'm not conning you, Peter, but I honestly don't know if I'm doing it half the time."
Peter watched him for a moment, and then the corner of Peter's mouth tugged up in a sardonic, somewhat deprecating smile. "Of everything you've said since the women left us out here ... that I believe."
***
El couldn't tell if Peter and Neal's talk had gone well or not. They didn't seem to be relating to each other any differently. She questioned Peter with her eyes, and he offered a tiny shrug that clarified nothing.
The day was growing warmer, though the clouds still hung low, threatening rain. The four of them went for a walk on the beach -- El changed her robe for a sundress with a sweater over the top. It still amazed her how isolated it felt out here. The beach seemed to go on and on, a white ribbon of sand winding past rambling, widely spaced mansions, each one uniquely styled.
They found a lovely wide tide pool, shallow and reflective and warm in the sun, and Peter immediately began to hunt for skipping stones on the beach. He was horrified to discover that Neal had never skipped rocks. "There's something the versatile Neal Caffrey doesn't know how to do?"
"Strangely enough," Neal said, wearing his plastic smile again, "it's a talent that rarely comes up in my line of work."
Peter's teasing expression shifted, becoming shadowed with sadness. "You know, some people do things because they're fun."
"I do things because they're fun," Neal countered. "Fun and profitable."
Peter tossed him a flat rock. "Well, today you're going to learn how to do something that isn't profitable in the least."
Sara and El shared an amused glance, then sat in the sand and watched. Neal balked at first, then watched Peter carefully and emulated him. His rock flipped over and sank.
"No," Peter said, "like this," and took Neal's hand, carefully positioning his fingers on the rock and leading his hand slowly through a mimed throw. Then he let go. Neal looked at him, his expression unreadable. Peter released Neal's hand and stepped back, and nodded.
Neal being Neal, his next try was perfect: the rock bounced three times before sinking. Sara and El clapped.
Naturally this led to a contest to see who could skip a rock all the way to the far side of the pool. The women joined in. "Quite a throwing arm you've got there," Neal said when one of El's rocks outbounced Peter's.
El grinned and flexed; Neal mimed feeling her muscles.
Rain was looking imminent again, so they slogged back through the sand. El and Peter held hands; so did Neal and Sara. About halfway back, Neal reached out and very cautiously laced his sand-encrusted fingers through Peter's. It was so subtly done that El didn't even think she'd have noticed if she hadn't felt Peter's stride miss a step. She managed not to look over and upset their careful balance, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Neal start to withdraw his hand just as carefully, and Peter tightened his own grip, capturing Neal's fingers within the cage of his own.
They walked back four abreast, all joined by their hands. The beach was easily wide enough to accommodate them without any trouble.
There were more steaks in the fridge for a late lunch, and Peter took over the food preparation, firing up the apparently never-used barbeque grill on the deck. "You two had your way with dinner last night. Now it's my turn."
They ate the steaks with a tossed salad -- inside, this time, since rain squalls were sweeping over the house, battering its walls. El opened a fresh bottle of wine, and couldn't help noticing that no one skimped on it. Liquid courage, she thought, spinning her glass in her hand and watching the stormlight wink off the liquid like a glass full of rubies.
She hoped they weren't all making a terrible mistake. She'd lightly suggested to Peter that it was possible to play, to experiment, over the weekend and then just go back to their normal lives as if nothing had happened.
What if I'm wrong?
But really, life was nothing but a series of experiments. All relationships lived in a state of flux. We could never, ever change, and grow so rigid that life would easily break us. Or we can bend and flex and take each opportunity as it comes.
Neal rose to get another bottle of wine. Sara immediately lifted a bare foot and settled it into El's lap.
El looked at it in surprise.
Sara raised her eyebrows. She wore a nervous and expectant expression.
El glanced at Peter, suddenly hyper-aware of him leaning against her side, one arm around her shoulders. He looked as nervous as she felt, but he shrugged a little, smiled, and kissed the side of her mouth. El laid a hand on the sole of Sara's foot, hesitant -- she hadn't done footrubs much, since Peter was ticklish and not that fond of it. Sara had nice feet, though, neatly manicured with green-painted toenails, still speckled with a few grains of sand from their earlier walk. El dug in her thumbs and Sara's tense posture relaxed; she tilted her head back, closing her eyes.
Neal, returning, stopped at the sight of this tableau. He glanced at Peter and then, wary as a wild animal, slipped onto the end of Peter and El's couch, and leaned his shoulder against Peter's.
El felt Peter stiffen against her. Neal had plainly felt it too, because he withdrew quickly, reclaiming some personal space.
Peter cleared his throat. "Ground rules," he said. His voice was a bit husky. "None of this can go beyond this house, and I mean it."
"What happens in the house, stays in the house," Neal said.
His voice was light, but Peter said without a trace of levity, "You could ruin me with this."
"I wouldn't," Neal said. With her fingers still kneading the arch of Sara's foot, El glanced at him. His face was set and serious. "I wouldn't, Peter."
Sara opened her eyes and propped herself up on her elbows. "It stays in the house," she agreed.
Peter was looking at Neal, so El couldn't see his face, just the sweep of his eyelashes and the curve of his jaw. But she saw Neal's face change, growing soft and fragile, as Peter raised a hand to cup the side of his face -- as he'd done for El, so many times she'd lost count; it was strange seeing it from the outside.
Peter leaned in and kissed Neal on the lips: lightly, chastely. He drew back a little. Neal was still looking at him with that wide-eyed, soft look. With infinite tenderness, Peter kissed his cheekbones, his forehead, the soft skin at the edge of his mouth.
And El was caught off guard by a surge of jealousy -- sudden, strong, bitter. Neal already had so much of Peter's life, his entire work life; it wasn't fair that he should have this too. She closed her eyes and breathed through it, methodically working up Sara's foot to her ankle.
She'd thought Peter would be the one who would struggle with this. She hadn't expected to find that much possessiveness in herself.
Fear, she thought. The root of jealousy is fear of abandonment. She'd read that in one of her father's psych books. And Peter's fake engagement to Selena Thomas had left a bruise on her soul. Even knowing that it was all false, that she had no more to fear from Selena than from any run-of-the-mill mobster or embezzler (a threat to Peter's life, maybe, but not his heart), she'd struggled with a visceral and, she knew, irrational reaction to seeing her husband in the arms of another woman.
She wanted to believe that she had no more to fear from Neal, but she knew it wasn't true. Neal, beloved in Peter's eyes, beautiful and wild -- she never could believe that any other woman might capture Peter's heart and take him away from her, but Neal ... yes. Neal could.
And yet, she had never believed that you loved by holding on. She didn't control Peter. Putting a ring on his finger did not give her the right to put a chain on his heart.
El opened her eyes and her own feelings mirrored in the mix of emotions on Sara's face. The thought occurred to El that if she, married eleven years, couldn't help a rush of jealousy, then Sara -- who had known Neal only a few months, whose relationship was still new and tentative -- must surely be a thousand times less secure.
Sara turned her head, met El's eyes. There was a rueful moment of mutual recognition; then Sara smiled, warm and wistful and a little sad.
"This ought to get the boys' attention," she said, and leaned forward and kissed El. It started as a close-mouthed kiss, tentative, not unlike Peter and Neal's. But El parted her lips, and Sara responded with a sudden fierceness. Competitive. Intense.
In eleven years, El had kissed no one but Peter. Had never even thought of kissing anyone but Peter. He'd been cautious and careful with her when they were first dating, treating her like she was breakable; it had taken her months to convince him that she could in fact take whatever he could dish out and serve it right back. But Sara was neither cautious nor reserved; she threw herself into the kiss with the same flair as she approached life, and when they broke apart, she drew El's bottom lip lightly through her teeth before letting it snap back. El was breathless.
Both the guys were staring at them.
"Bedroom?" El said.
***
They ended up, all four of them, in one of the bedrooms that no one had claimed yet. Somehow going back to either couple's bedroom didn't feel right.
The kiss with Sara had left El feeling oddly calm and centered. It still wasn't too late to pull out of this, but they were rapidly reaching that point of no return -- riding a runaway train that was gathering speed.
"Who in this room has ever done this before?" Sara asked. "Show of hands." Her hand promptly went up. No one else's did. She looked around at the others and said, "Seriously?"
"I thought you were a workaholic who didn't even have time for a social life," Neal challenged her.
"And I thought you were an international man of mystery who had been everywhere and done everything." Her smile was coy. "Looks like both of us were wrong."
El sat on the edge of the bed and began undoing her buttons. Neal glanced at Peter; El thought they seemed to be having a whole conversation in that one look, and then Neal knelt in front of her and began unbuttoning her with his sure, confident con-artist's hands.
Out of the corner of her eye, El saw that Sara and Peter had begun to undress each other -- slowly and awkwardly; Peter managed somehow to get her hair caught in the zipper of her sundress and stammered an apology. El grinned helplessly. She wasn't sure why, but Peter's dork moments had always made her love him more than ever. And somehow it defused the jealousy a little. He was still her Peter, still the same unique blend of confident and insecure, dominating and shyly diffident that she'd fallen in love with.
Peter kept glancing her way -- worried, anxious looks -- and she tried to reassure him with her eyes: It's all right. Go on.
The root of jealousy is fear of abandonment. And there was, she thought, nothing to fear in this room.
Neal unzipped her slacks and she lifted her hips so that he could slide them down. All the while he kept his eyes on her face -- wide blue eyes, assessing her, watching her, asking the silent question: Is this okay? Should I keep going?
"Yes," she said aloud, and kissed him tentatively. Peter's lips had just been on Neal's, and though she knew it had to be her imagination, she thought she could taste him there. Neal responded very gently, kissing her mouth and then moving on to her cheeks, nose, eyelids -- much as Peter had done for him a few minutes earlier.
He laid her back down on the bed in her bra, and she felt the bed dip as Sara and Peter settled onto it.
The point of no return, she thought, and hooked her thumbs into the elastic of her panties, tugging them down.
***
It was, truth be told, far from the best sex she'd ever had. Since three of the four of them had never experienced sex with multiple partners before -- and two of the four had been in a long-term monogamous relationship for over a decade -- there was a lot of "Sorry!" and "Oops, my elbow --" and "You don't like that? But El likes that ..."
El could tell -- she knew him far too well not to be able to tell -- that Peter wasn't really into the physical side of it. Mostly he seemed to be self-conscious and nervous, not exactly enjoying himself. But there was no questioning his earnest desire to please his partners, and El found that it was easier to cope with the lurking specter of resentment over having that single-minded focus turned on someone else when she had Sara's head between her legs, Neal's lips on hers.
Not the best sex ever. But tangled up together afterwards -- Peter's shoulder under her head, Neal nestled against her neck, Sara's leg thrown over El and Neal both -- she didn't remember ever feeling so warm and loved and content.
Love wasn't something that could ever be multiplied or quantified. This wasn't better than what she had with Peter. But more love ... is more, she thought, turning her head without raising it so that she could kiss Neal's forehead.
Neal put an arm over her and, reaching blindly, found Peter's hand by touch and curled his fingers through Peter's. Peter lightly chafed the back of Neal's hand with his thumb, and El felt Neal go boneless against her, his eyes closed in bliss like a warm, sleepy cat.
***
Evening found them showered and dressed and all slightly uncertain with each other.
No one particularly wanted to cook, so they ordered pizza and ate on the deck, sitting on the steps and watching the world's shadow creep up the blue and violet sky. The sky was clear at last, but there was still a chill in the wind blowing off the water.
Neal sat with his back against Peter's knees, and when Peter lightly, tentatively rested a hand on the back of his neck, Neal leaned his head back and settled into the touch.
El felt a sharp twinge and looked away, out at the water, until it faded.
Sara was stretched out at the top of the stairs, propped on her elbow. She moved to put a hand on Peter's shoulder, then apparently thought better of it and obtained herself another slice of pizza instead.
I suppose we have to start putting ourselves back together, El thought. Tucking ourselves back into our everyday lives. The next day they'd be driving back to the city, reassuming the roles they'd lived before, with nothing left of the beach and the house except memories.
But none of the memories were ones she regretted. She reached up to lay a hand on Neal's foot -- it happened to be the one with the tracking anklet -- and lightly, affectionately rubbed her thumb against his ankle.
"Thank you," Sara said, and El looked up the stairs at her. The setting sun caught the red highlights in Sara's hair and turned it to fire. "Both of you. This was nice."
"Have to do it again sometime?" El said.
She was joking, mostly, but the words fell into the silence between them like stones into a still pool, setting up ripples and currents that caught and tugged at them.
"Maybe," Neal said after a moment. "If ..."
He stopped, and Peter lifted his hand off Neal's neck, rested it across his knees instead. Neal detached himself quietly from El's gentle grip on his ankle and went up to join Sara at the top of the stairs.
If they were all still here. Still together, in all their various permutations.
There were, after all, no guarantees in life.
Sara twined her hand in Neal's and leaned against him. El, for her part, scooted up the stairs so that Peter could touch her shoulder, bare except for the strap of her blouse.
"I wouldn't mind, you know," Sara said. "Doing it again."
"Next year," Peter said abruptly, and El tipped back her head to look up at him. He was staring out to sea, but she got the impression that his words were directed mostly to Neal -- a challenge, she thought, and perhaps, just perhaps, an incentive to stay.
"Next year," he repeated. "Different place, probably, but ... we'll find somewhere."
"Somewhere out of time," Neal said, the words little more than a sigh.
"Exactly."
No one else said anything. In silence, they watched the sunset sky darken into night. El leaned into the warmth of Peter's hand, and closed her eyes.
~
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This is a really fascinating story, and much different from anything I've ever seen in this fandom. It's so tenuous and fragile, like the whole story is resting on a soap bubble. Being set at that point in canon adds to that, because things never were more uncertain.
I'm really impressed with how you addressed Peter's concerns about the legal and ethical ramifications. That usually gets ignored or handwaved in Peter/Neal and Peter/Neal/El stories, but I can't see Peter ignoring it.
I also was impressed by how you handled Elizabeth's jealousy and concerns, which were both brought up and resolved in a very in character manner.
There's a quiet tension here, straight through the end, and while people's immediate concerns have been dealt with, the big questions remain unresolved. There's a certain sadness at the end.
And now, I'm once again poking that idea I had for a Neal/Sara(/Peter) exhibitionism fic. I keep examining it, and then I keep setting it aside, convinced that it won't work. This has got me poking again.
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Getting Peter on board was the hardest thing about this story. He just didn't want to do it. *g* I had to approach it very carefully -- sideways, almost. I didn't really like breaking out of El's POV, but I couldn't get Peter's part in the foursome to work without giving him scenes with the others that El wasn't around for.
Anyway, I was very uncertain about this one, so I'm delighted you enjoyed it. :D And yes, you should write yours too!