FIC: Reciprocity
Jun. 17th, 2012 09:33 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
winterstar95.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
whitecollarhcTitle: Reciprocity
Author: dmk0064/winterstar
Genre: hurt/comfort
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Peter/Elizabeth/Neal
Warning: BDSM, discussions of armbindings, dom/sub, safe word
Summary: Peter and Neal are just learning the ways of a dominant submissive relationship and when they fail at it, who will be there to save them? This is for the prompt . It also fills restrained square on my hc-bingo card.
Author’s notes: not sure if this fits the bill, but I tried!
The house shouldn’t be dark, but the picture window reflects the streetlights instead of throwing light back out. Elizabeth shuts off the engine of the Taurus and frowns as she glances at her home in Brooklyn. Down within the depths of her body she feels a twist of worry, balanced against a fit of anticipation.
It isn’t normal for her boys to be up for anything more once they are finished with a particularly strenuous play scene. She’s made it perfectly clear she will not indulge in fantasy play unless they are both at their best and not burned out from previous session. She worries they might drive the desires too far, might ask too much of each other, might actually hurt one another. So, she set down a rule and her boys wouldn’t dare break it.
So why are the lights out?
Sleeping?
If it had been a rough session, Peter might have insisted on Neal taking to bed early. She smiles, it is always nice to slip into the bed with them as they spoon close and wrap her in their embrace. Gathering her purse and satchel, she opens the car door, slams it shut, and pushes the button on the remote to lock it. She climbs the stairs and slides the key in the lock without thinking.
She swings open the door, ready for Satchmo meet and greet – which is curiously absent. She peers around the corner, his name on her lips, but it dies there as she catches a glimpse of a figure sitting in the dining chair.
Satchmo curls at his feet and only lifts his head and whines a bit as she toes off her shoes to enter. For a moment, it feels like the floor tilts, the planks of the hardwood are sharp under her nyloned feet. She waits but there is no greeting, no actual acknowledgement that she’s arrived home after a long Saturday event. Only the light from the street and the glow of the digital clocks lend a shred of evidence for her to glean what might have happened, what is happening.
The anticipation, the warmth bleeds away and her heart ratchets up into her throat so that she has to cough to shove it back down. She knows who’s sitting there; she recognizes the curve of his muscular but somehow delicate collarbone as the naked flesh shimmers in the dim light. His demeanor is closed and shut off; he’s like a vault holding in all its precious possessions, keeping it away from any prying eyes – or hands.
She ventures closer and stands across the table from him. Pain radiates off of him until it becomes a barrage like a full scale battle in a war. She swallows back her fear, after all she never even cried when Keller kidnapped her. She can handle a little issue with her boys, can’t she?
“Neal?”
He startles, as if he never realized she’d entered the house, came to his side. He searches her with his eyes, and she knows he can see nothing of her expression since no light casts upon her face. She leans over and flips the switch, making sure to dial it down. He squints up at her, but she says nothing. She needs to assess the situation first, she needs to know why Neal is sitting here in the dark and her husband is nowhere in sight.
Her immediate reaction is to throttle him, to distrust him, to accuse him, and scream where the hell is my husband in his face. She resists and, instead, studies him. He’s mostly naked except for boxer briefs he wears. There are bruises along his flank and his hair has that tousled, just fucked look to it. His belly glistens with dry semen. His mouth has a slight bite mark which will soften in appearance and disappear by Monday morning.
In her review of his state, she thinks nothing is wrong, everything is right until she sees his arms. There are markings indicating he’s been bound for a long time – they lattice up his arms to his biceps. His wrists are cut, and she can see where the blood beaded up to scab over on his wrists.
This isn’t right.
Peter would never leave Neal so abused, so not taken care of after one of their session. She can still smell the come, the sweat, the fear on him.
“Neal.” She keeps her voice steady, low, and comforting. “What’s happened?”
He opens his mouth as if he might answer, but looks away and grips the side of the table.
She tries again. “Neal, tell me where Peter is?”
He looks at her as if she’s asked him an obvious question, as if everything should be normal. He gives her the glimmer of a smile and it turns her stomach because it is one of his con-smiles, the kind he uses on strangers. “Upstairs, of course, Elizabeth.”
Jesus.
If alarm bells ever rang in her head, there are sirens going off in blasting waves now. She reaches out to see if he’ll take her hand, but he remains frozen in place. She doesn’t want to leave him alone, not like this, not now. Something hideously wrong has happened.
One thing she always falls back on is nice cup of tea. She busies herself, making a pot of her favorite Bengal Spice tea. She lets it steep in an antique porcelain teapot which has a nice cozy to wrap around it. She places it on the table with a cup for Neal and a few slices of a banana bread she made earlier in the week.
Without a word, she puts a napkin at his place and inches her fingers to his hand which now lies limp on the table. When she touches him, he looks up at her but her heart chills over for he has the mask of a conman on. He smiles again but it brings no light to his eyes.
She leans over and kisses his cheek which he permits and she thinks, at least, this is a good sign. After watching him pour himself a cup of tea, she leaves him to find Peter. Every step feels like a hundred and the weight of the air increases until she feels like she’s breathing in water. She braces herself to confront what thing must have happened to her boys during their play session.
It cannot be good.
She discovers Peter much the same way she found Neal, sitting in the dark very nearly naked. He looks exposed and small to her, not the large, protective shield of a man he truly is. Without turning on the light, she eases down on the bed next to him. The first thing she notices is strands of the rope, the Japanese jute – often used in the sensual bindings of Kinbaku. His plans had been to use it as a device to armbind Neal, to leave him roped with his arms behind his back restrained from bicep to his wrists. He even learned an intricate pattern to weave the rope around Neal’s arms, to stress the muscles and ligaments just right without doing damage. He’d looked forward to it for weeks. When he’d asked Neal if he would be up for it, Neal hadn’t hesitated. His interest flared and desire lit his eyes.
Threading her fingers through his, Elizabeth sits without a word waiting for him to start. She knows him too well; she understands how this has to happen. She waits as the storm passes through him, as he weathers the pain and the torrential self-doubt.
When his voice breaks the silence, it is rough and hoarse. “I-I.” He stops, he isn’t ready. It shatters little pieces off of her as she watches this brave solid man disintegrating in front of her. For one second, anger wells up and she wants nothing but to go downstairs and tell the little pisser to leave her house, but she cements herself in place. There are things she does not know. If she is anything, she is a reasonable woman.
“Safe word,” Peter murmurs. His shoulders droop; melt away like he is an ice sculptures at one of her events disappearing into no form at all. “He used his safe word, El.”
One hand still holds onto to Peter, the other digs nails into her palm. She remains silent and waits for him to find the courage to continue.
He curls her hand against his chest as he whispers, “He used his safe word; I didn’t realize, El. It took a few minutes for me to figure out what was going on. He was crying by the time I got him out of the damned ropes.”
Now, she doesn’t know how to react. The twisting in her belly churns and she gulps back bile. Her husband caused pain to someone; her husband hurt someone for no other reason but arousal and dominance. She isn’t sure she wants to be a part of this anymore, she isn’t sure she wants to comfort him.
“I hurt him, El,” he confesses, and then the words come out in a rush. “He tried, El. He tried to accept it. He was trembling and panting by the time I finished.”
She doesn’t want to hear, she wants him to be quiet. She knows she cannot request him to stop, she knows she is his priest.
“He stayed,” Peter growls under his breath. “He fucking stayed in it for a half hour before he finally safeworded. I didn’t want it like that; I didn’t want him to struggle with pain.”
He sinks lower somehow, though he hasn’t moved. He raises her hand to his lips and he kisses her. “I can’t imagine hurting you like that.” He turns to gaze at her. “I can’t imagine hurting him like that either. I thought he wanted it.”
“I did.” Neal stands as a silhouette against the backdrop of the city lights. His long lean form exudes both sorrow and pain. “I wanted to do it for you.”
Peter shakes his head, but it is Elizabeth who stretches out her hand to welcome Neal. He crosses the room and sits on the bed next to her, separated from Peter.
“Tell me,” Elizabeth says.
“It wasn’t what I thought,” Neal states as if that tells them everything. He must realize it doesn’t because he starts again. “I thought it would be like being tied with the cuffs or leathers we have, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t – .” He looks far off into the glimmering lights of the city outside their window. “I couldn’t get out of it.”
“The other bindings you can,” Elizabeth provides.
Neal nods, but Peter shivers next to her. “And then when I said it, the safe word, it took so long to get them off. It felt like a thousand snakes coiled around me. I felt like I was suffocating.” He starts to hyperventilate a bit, but Elizabeth’s hand on his back eases his breathing. He rolls his shoulders.
“And then?” This time Elizabeth is looking at Peter.
“I tried to bring him to the bath; I wanted to stop it, to help him. I could see how terrified he was.”
“I didn’t let him,” Neal says. “I wouldn’t let him touch me.”
The ultimate failure of a healthy dominant-submissive relationship, when the dominant cannot offer the needed comfort.
“Why not?” she asks.
“I didn’t trust him.”
Peter heaves in a harsh breath but manages not to break down or apart.
“You don’t trust him?” Elizabeth says.
“Of course I do,” Neal replies and this time his words are genuine and perfect. “I trust Peter; I trust the both of you more than anyone in my life.”
“Then?”
“It felt like the moment I realized it was for real, that I was going away to prison,” Neal says. “You were in court that day; it was the last time I would see you for almost four years. You were the last person I saw before they led me away.”
Peter acknowledges his words.
“You smiled,” Neal says and the words hurt her soul.
“Damn it, Neal,” Peter says. “That was a different time, a different place. I was an agent; you were just a crook to me. The case was closed and I won.”
Neal stares him in the eye and repeats. “You won.”
Every breath of air seeps away as they stare at one another. The world tumbles and crashes and splinters as they realize the implications, as they accept the unbalance to their carefully crafted fantasy.
“Then why didn’t you use the safe word earlier?”
Neal glances down at his body, the semen like a stain of dishonor there. Elizabeth realizes it isn’t Neal’s come but Peter’s dried across his lover’s abdomen.
“You liked it, I wanted to make you happy,” Neal says.
“Damn it,” Peter says and turns away. He stands up and glares down at Neal, a tower of both wrath and sympathy. “It isn’t just about what I want, what makes me happy. It’s about what makes us happy, all three of us. I thought you understood that, Neal. I thought you understood that you don’t have to play the submissive, you can be whomever you want to be, just be real with us.”
Neal’s on his feet, toe to toe, chest to chest with Peter. “I am real with you, Peter. I was, today. I wanted to make you happy and that is my prerogative. I wanted to try, but I failed. I make stupid mistakes sometimes. You should be used to it by now.”
“You didn’t fail, it isn’t about failure. It’s about pushing limits and loving you,” Peter says and reaches out to cup Neal’s face. “I love you heart and soul. Bound or unbound.” He leans forward and places the lightest of kisses on Neal’s lips.
They tip foreheads together. Neal whispers, “I’m sorry, I should have told you earlier. I should have safe worded earlier.”
“And I should have read your signs better; I should have focused on your desire and not just my own.”
“You boys are learning,” she says. “I’m going to run the bath, and then you can both take care of one another.”
She moves to leave but not before she watches as Peter wraps his arms around his lover and whispers in his ear, his hand cradling Neal’s head to his shoulder. They stay like that for a minute, as if they are in a slow dance.
She smiles and leaves them at peace. The world, the family that they are building has blocks of more than mortar and brick, but of understanding and words. As she sits on the edge of the tub and the water fills it, she knows they will find their way. Stripping, she dips a toe in the water and welcomes them as they enter the large bath. For this time, she will offer them comfort and solace and the night will give them peace.
THE END
Author’s notes 2 – I realize this is not the perfect dom/sub relationship, but I figure they have to start learning somewhere and they are learning together.
Author: dmk0064/winterstar
Genre: hurt/comfort
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Peter/Elizabeth/Neal
Warning: BDSM, discussions of armbindings, dom/sub, safe word
Summary: Peter and Neal are just learning the ways of a dominant submissive relationship and when they fail at it, who will be there to save them? This is for the prompt . It also fills restrained square on my hc-bingo card.
Author’s notes: not sure if this fits the bill, but I tried!
The house shouldn’t be dark, but the picture window reflects the streetlights instead of throwing light back out. Elizabeth shuts off the engine of the Taurus and frowns as she glances at her home in Brooklyn. Down within the depths of her body she feels a twist of worry, balanced against a fit of anticipation.
It isn’t normal for her boys to be up for anything more once they are finished with a particularly strenuous play scene. She’s made it perfectly clear she will not indulge in fantasy play unless they are both at their best and not burned out from previous session. She worries they might drive the desires too far, might ask too much of each other, might actually hurt one another. So, she set down a rule and her boys wouldn’t dare break it.
So why are the lights out?
Sleeping?
If it had been a rough session, Peter might have insisted on Neal taking to bed early. She smiles, it is always nice to slip into the bed with them as they spoon close and wrap her in their embrace. Gathering her purse and satchel, she opens the car door, slams it shut, and pushes the button on the remote to lock it. She climbs the stairs and slides the key in the lock without thinking.
She swings open the door, ready for Satchmo meet and greet – which is curiously absent. She peers around the corner, his name on her lips, but it dies there as she catches a glimpse of a figure sitting in the dining chair.
Satchmo curls at his feet and only lifts his head and whines a bit as she toes off her shoes to enter. For a moment, it feels like the floor tilts, the planks of the hardwood are sharp under her nyloned feet. She waits but there is no greeting, no actual acknowledgement that she’s arrived home after a long Saturday event. Only the light from the street and the glow of the digital clocks lend a shred of evidence for her to glean what might have happened, what is happening.
The anticipation, the warmth bleeds away and her heart ratchets up into her throat so that she has to cough to shove it back down. She knows who’s sitting there; she recognizes the curve of his muscular but somehow delicate collarbone as the naked flesh shimmers in the dim light. His demeanor is closed and shut off; he’s like a vault holding in all its precious possessions, keeping it away from any prying eyes – or hands.
She ventures closer and stands across the table from him. Pain radiates off of him until it becomes a barrage like a full scale battle in a war. She swallows back her fear, after all she never even cried when Keller kidnapped her. She can handle a little issue with her boys, can’t she?
“Neal?”
He startles, as if he never realized she’d entered the house, came to his side. He searches her with his eyes, and she knows he can see nothing of her expression since no light casts upon her face. She leans over and flips the switch, making sure to dial it down. He squints up at her, but she says nothing. She needs to assess the situation first, she needs to know why Neal is sitting here in the dark and her husband is nowhere in sight.
Her immediate reaction is to throttle him, to distrust him, to accuse him, and scream where the hell is my husband in his face. She resists and, instead, studies him. He’s mostly naked except for boxer briefs he wears. There are bruises along his flank and his hair has that tousled, just fucked look to it. His belly glistens with dry semen. His mouth has a slight bite mark which will soften in appearance and disappear by Monday morning.
In her review of his state, she thinks nothing is wrong, everything is right until she sees his arms. There are markings indicating he’s been bound for a long time – they lattice up his arms to his biceps. His wrists are cut, and she can see where the blood beaded up to scab over on his wrists.
This isn’t right.
Peter would never leave Neal so abused, so not taken care of after one of their session. She can still smell the come, the sweat, the fear on him.
“Neal.” She keeps her voice steady, low, and comforting. “What’s happened?”
He opens his mouth as if he might answer, but looks away and grips the side of the table.
She tries again. “Neal, tell me where Peter is?”
He looks at her as if she’s asked him an obvious question, as if everything should be normal. He gives her the glimmer of a smile and it turns her stomach because it is one of his con-smiles, the kind he uses on strangers. “Upstairs, of course, Elizabeth.”
Jesus.
If alarm bells ever rang in her head, there are sirens going off in blasting waves now. She reaches out to see if he’ll take her hand, but he remains frozen in place. She doesn’t want to leave him alone, not like this, not now. Something hideously wrong has happened.
One thing she always falls back on is nice cup of tea. She busies herself, making a pot of her favorite Bengal Spice tea. She lets it steep in an antique porcelain teapot which has a nice cozy to wrap around it. She places it on the table with a cup for Neal and a few slices of a banana bread she made earlier in the week.
Without a word, she puts a napkin at his place and inches her fingers to his hand which now lies limp on the table. When she touches him, he looks up at her but her heart chills over for he has the mask of a conman on. He smiles again but it brings no light to his eyes.
She leans over and kisses his cheek which he permits and she thinks, at least, this is a good sign. After watching him pour himself a cup of tea, she leaves him to find Peter. Every step feels like a hundred and the weight of the air increases until she feels like she’s breathing in water. She braces herself to confront what thing must have happened to her boys during their play session.
It cannot be good.
She discovers Peter much the same way she found Neal, sitting in the dark very nearly naked. He looks exposed and small to her, not the large, protective shield of a man he truly is. Without turning on the light, she eases down on the bed next to him. The first thing she notices is strands of the rope, the Japanese jute – often used in the sensual bindings of Kinbaku. His plans had been to use it as a device to armbind Neal, to leave him roped with his arms behind his back restrained from bicep to his wrists. He even learned an intricate pattern to weave the rope around Neal’s arms, to stress the muscles and ligaments just right without doing damage. He’d looked forward to it for weeks. When he’d asked Neal if he would be up for it, Neal hadn’t hesitated. His interest flared and desire lit his eyes.
Threading her fingers through his, Elizabeth sits without a word waiting for him to start. She knows him too well; she understands how this has to happen. She waits as the storm passes through him, as he weathers the pain and the torrential self-doubt.
When his voice breaks the silence, it is rough and hoarse. “I-I.” He stops, he isn’t ready. It shatters little pieces off of her as she watches this brave solid man disintegrating in front of her. For one second, anger wells up and she wants nothing but to go downstairs and tell the little pisser to leave her house, but she cements herself in place. There are things she does not know. If she is anything, she is a reasonable woman.
“Safe word,” Peter murmurs. His shoulders droop; melt away like he is an ice sculptures at one of her events disappearing into no form at all. “He used his safe word, El.”
One hand still holds onto to Peter, the other digs nails into her palm. She remains silent and waits for him to find the courage to continue.
He curls her hand against his chest as he whispers, “He used his safe word; I didn’t realize, El. It took a few minutes for me to figure out what was going on. He was crying by the time I got him out of the damned ropes.”
Now, she doesn’t know how to react. The twisting in her belly churns and she gulps back bile. Her husband caused pain to someone; her husband hurt someone for no other reason but arousal and dominance. She isn’t sure she wants to be a part of this anymore, she isn’t sure she wants to comfort him.
“I hurt him, El,” he confesses, and then the words come out in a rush. “He tried, El. He tried to accept it. He was trembling and panting by the time I finished.”
She doesn’t want to hear, she wants him to be quiet. She knows she cannot request him to stop, she knows she is his priest.
“He stayed,” Peter growls under his breath. “He fucking stayed in it for a half hour before he finally safeworded. I didn’t want it like that; I didn’t want him to struggle with pain.”
He sinks lower somehow, though he hasn’t moved. He raises her hand to his lips and he kisses her. “I can’t imagine hurting you like that.” He turns to gaze at her. “I can’t imagine hurting him like that either. I thought he wanted it.”
“I did.” Neal stands as a silhouette against the backdrop of the city lights. His long lean form exudes both sorrow and pain. “I wanted to do it for you.”
Peter shakes his head, but it is Elizabeth who stretches out her hand to welcome Neal. He crosses the room and sits on the bed next to her, separated from Peter.
“Tell me,” Elizabeth says.
“It wasn’t what I thought,” Neal states as if that tells them everything. He must realize it doesn’t because he starts again. “I thought it would be like being tied with the cuffs or leathers we have, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t – .” He looks far off into the glimmering lights of the city outside their window. “I couldn’t get out of it.”
“The other bindings you can,” Elizabeth provides.
Neal nods, but Peter shivers next to her. “And then when I said it, the safe word, it took so long to get them off. It felt like a thousand snakes coiled around me. I felt like I was suffocating.” He starts to hyperventilate a bit, but Elizabeth’s hand on his back eases his breathing. He rolls his shoulders.
“And then?” This time Elizabeth is looking at Peter.
“I tried to bring him to the bath; I wanted to stop it, to help him. I could see how terrified he was.”
“I didn’t let him,” Neal says. “I wouldn’t let him touch me.”
The ultimate failure of a healthy dominant-submissive relationship, when the dominant cannot offer the needed comfort.
“Why not?” she asks.
“I didn’t trust him.”
Peter heaves in a harsh breath but manages not to break down or apart.
“You don’t trust him?” Elizabeth says.
“Of course I do,” Neal replies and this time his words are genuine and perfect. “I trust Peter; I trust the both of you more than anyone in my life.”
“Then?”
“It felt like the moment I realized it was for real, that I was going away to prison,” Neal says. “You were in court that day; it was the last time I would see you for almost four years. You were the last person I saw before they led me away.”
Peter acknowledges his words.
“You smiled,” Neal says and the words hurt her soul.
“Damn it, Neal,” Peter says. “That was a different time, a different place. I was an agent; you were just a crook to me. The case was closed and I won.”
Neal stares him in the eye and repeats. “You won.”
Every breath of air seeps away as they stare at one another. The world tumbles and crashes and splinters as they realize the implications, as they accept the unbalance to their carefully crafted fantasy.
“Then why didn’t you use the safe word earlier?”
Neal glances down at his body, the semen like a stain of dishonor there. Elizabeth realizes it isn’t Neal’s come but Peter’s dried across his lover’s abdomen.
“You liked it, I wanted to make you happy,” Neal says.
“Damn it,” Peter says and turns away. He stands up and glares down at Neal, a tower of both wrath and sympathy. “It isn’t just about what I want, what makes me happy. It’s about what makes us happy, all three of us. I thought you understood that, Neal. I thought you understood that you don’t have to play the submissive, you can be whomever you want to be, just be real with us.”
Neal’s on his feet, toe to toe, chest to chest with Peter. “I am real with you, Peter. I was, today. I wanted to make you happy and that is my prerogative. I wanted to try, but I failed. I make stupid mistakes sometimes. You should be used to it by now.”
“You didn’t fail, it isn’t about failure. It’s about pushing limits and loving you,” Peter says and reaches out to cup Neal’s face. “I love you heart and soul. Bound or unbound.” He leans forward and places the lightest of kisses on Neal’s lips.
They tip foreheads together. Neal whispers, “I’m sorry, I should have told you earlier. I should have safe worded earlier.”
“And I should have read your signs better; I should have focused on your desire and not just my own.”
“You boys are learning,” she says. “I’m going to run the bath, and then you can both take care of one another.”
She moves to leave but not before she watches as Peter wraps his arms around his lover and whispers in his ear, his hand cradling Neal’s head to his shoulder. They stay like that for a minute, as if they are in a slow dance.
She smiles and leaves them at peace. The world, the family that they are building has blocks of more than mortar and brick, but of understanding and words. As she sits on the edge of the tub and the water fills it, she knows they will find their way. Stripping, she dips a toe in the water and welcomes them as they enter the large bath. For this time, she will offer them comfort and solace and the night will give them peace.
THE END
Author’s notes 2 – I realize this is not the perfect dom/sub relationship, but I figure they have to start learning somewhere and they are learning together.
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