Chapter Text
Neal Caffrey might be the best thing that ever happened to their sex life.
Not that it was ever boring, or bad. Elizabeth has never found Peter dull in bed or anywhere else. They're so in love it hurts sometimes, and even if the sex hadn't been any good she suspects she wouldn't have cared.
But when Peter started chasing Neal, everything suddenly seemed...brighter. Sharper.
If she ever brought it up with Peter he would have first been horrified, second denied it, and third pointed out that it was probably more the passion of reunion when he came back from traveling (chasing). But it's not that, because sometimes he comes home from work, having seen her eight hours ago when he left that morning, and she comes out to kiss him hello and the next thing she knows she's on the dining-room table, legs wrapped around Peter's hips, moaning and kissing him and it's perfect.
So it's not just when he travels, and it's not when he's working other cases. It's the days he cracks something on the Caffrey case, the days Neal Caffrey lets Peter get a whiff of him before he disappears.
She'll never tell him. He's so beautifully oblivious to the way he reacts to Neal. She feels like she ought to find Neal somehow (a fantasy, perhaps, doing what her husband can't ever quite seem to) and send him a gift to say thank-you. Maybe a nice hat or a copy of the tape-recording she made when Peter got back from two weeks away and fucked her so thoroughly they almost broke the bed (they did alarm the neighbors).
The day he catches Neal, right there in New York, Peter calls to tell her the good news. He comes home to a celebratory dinner with cake, but instead he pulls her down onto the couch and kisses her for what feels like hours instead, just kissing and kissing. The food has long since gone cold when she realizes that either all he wants is this or he's doing it to hide the fact that he can't seem to get it up.
It's the only time it's ever been a problem -- the next day he's shaken and lost but when she curls around him in bed he's hard and it's still good, if a little quieter than it has been. Even if he hadn't been able to, she'd still love him: his beautiful brain and big capable hands and the solid immovable weight of his convictions.
The first day of the trial she goes with him. He didn't ask, but then Peter is not the kind of man who would, and he is the kind of man who would want her there.
She sees Neal in the flesh for the first time, all gorgeous paper-thin arrogance and failing charm. He's the exact opposite of her Peter: there's no substance underneath, and his hands (while undoubtedly capable) are fine-fingered, used to more delicate work. She finds herself thinking Neal Caffrey could never build the lattices Peter built into the patio, couldn't wrestle new pipes into place when the kitchen sink fell apart.
Peter, next to her, can't look at Neal. But when the hearing breaks for lunch they find a convenient broom closet down the hall from the courtroom and he hitches up her skirt and neither of them make any noise as they fuck and that's pretty perfect too.
She never comes closer than arm's length to Neal, and his hands are shackled, but that night when she's digging through her purse she finds a little origami goldfish folded out of a piece of torn legal pad. Written on one side is a single sentence:
Mrs. Burke, you are very beautiful.
She doesn't tell Peter about that, either. Peter would strangle Neal with his bare hands. But she feels the little secret bubble of pleasure that a married woman feels to find she has a young admirer.
Soon after, Neal Caffrey is sentenced to four years in prison. Something...goes out of Peter.
Peter notices the change in himself, but she can see the gears clicking in his head, has always been able to read him easily, and she knows he lies to himself about what caused it. First, he thinks it's exhaustion from the case and the trial; later, he thinks it's that he's getting older (well, they both are) and he starts working out a little more. Which is certainly nice, but El worries for him.
The day before his birthday a card arrives from Neal. It's a simple, cheap affair; he opens it before he realizes what it is, and when she hears the strangled noise from the living room she comes out to find him staring down at it with emotions on his face she can't, for once, decipher.
Peter, of course, assumes that the sex that night is so good because it's birthday sex. He never even seems to consider why, if it's his birthday, she's the one who comes three times.
Elizabeth goes out the next day and pays cash for a box of art supplies. She doesn't know what Neal likes, but he seems like he'd be willing to improvise. She sends it from the address of an old apartment she used to live in before she met Peter. She has no idea if it arrives; she's hoping perhaps Neal will send them something if he has art supplies, but there's only silence from supermax.
Until Peter's next birthday, when a hand-drawn card arrives with a gorgeous, intricately detailed sketch of a fish on the front (later, Peter tells her it's an anatomical study by Leonardo da Vinci). Peter is baffled by the card, but Elizabeth knows Neal got the art supplies. She sends another box the next day, wearing a scarf around her throat to hide the bitemark Peter left there.
The third birthday card arrives two days late and while Peter is in the middle of an intense investigation. When he gets home all he wants to do is sleep. El rests her head on his shoulder and strokes his hair, listening to his deep, even breathing. When he wakes, she tells him, "Neal sent you another card."
"I don't care about Neal Caffrey," he growls, but then he pulls her over on top of him and holds her steady and tight while she rides his cock and it looks like it hurts, he comes so hard.
Five months later, Neal escapes, and Elizabeth feels a little guilty squirm of delight, but something's wrong. Peter sits up with his file all night after catching him, quiet and contemplative, and for a week he barely touches her. When he finally seems to notice he's been neglecting her, another week passes where he can't do anything but touch her. It still feels wrong, it feels wrong up until the day Peter says, "I'm taking Neal out of prison. We need his help."
And then one sunny autumn day Neal Caffrey turns up on her doorstep in the flesh. She hasn't seen him since the day in court when he somehow slipped what could be considered a love-note into her purse.
"Mrs. Burke," he says, with a con man's smile in place. He's still wearing that thin layer of glossy, arrogant charm, but she thinks now there's something stronger underneath. Or perhaps it's always been there, but with her husband next to her the contrast dimmed it to nothing.
"Neal," she replies, putting on her own good-hostess smile. "Come in."
"Thank you," he tells her, a perfect gentleman, but his eyes sweep their home in an instant. "I need to talk to Peter."
"He's in the shower. Can I get you some juice? Coffee?"
And then his eyes are sweeping her with that same unemotional appraisal he applied to the room around him. The difference is, when he's done with her, they're warm.
"Coffee, please, if it's not any trouble," he says. "Do you mind if I wait?"
"Not at all. Sit down," she tells him, and by the time she comes back from the kitchen he has a folder open on the table. He holds up a mirror and a magnifying lens.
"Wanna see a forgery?" he asks, and she laughs, and she does.
She's leaning over the image, peering through the glass, when he says, very quietly, "I got the art supplies. Those were from you, right?"
"Peter doesn't know," she replies.
"Thank you," he says. His fingers steady the lens. They are, still, so different from her husband's hands, but perhaps Neal isn't his opposite; more like a mirror-twin. She begins finally, finally to understand how this man holds so much of Peter's unconscious thoughts in his palm. She wonders if Neal knows the power he has.
"Peter says you're going to be consulting with him for a while," she tells him, leaning back against the couch.
"I hope to," he says. His hand goes to his ankle where a little green light blinks. It's the first tell she's seen or heard of from him, and it surprises her that his own thoughts are so open to her.
When they leave, Peter kisses her with every kind of promise and holds her so tight she thinks his fingers might leave bruises on her hips.
She finds a little origami bluebird in her back pocket.
Mrs. Burke, you're even more beautiful now.
This is going to be so good.