I could reeaaaallllyyyyy use something to split my focus right now, so! Gakked from ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zvi last:
Never Will I Ever Meme: Name a fic you think I will never, ever, ever write. In return, I will attempt to write a snippet of that fic.
I reserve the right to refuse prompts in the trivial case (I bet you wouldn't write a Japanese Stargate: Universe fic using the kanji character set!) or in the case I just... really don't want to. I'll ask you for another prompt.
zvi last: Never Will I Ever Meme: Name a fic you think I will never, ever, ever write. In return, I will attempt to write a snippet of that fic.
I reserve the right to refuse prompts in the trivial case (I bet you wouldn't write a Japanese Stargate: Universe fic using the kanji character set!) or in the case I just... really don't want to. I'll ask you for another prompt.
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r&r OR ELSE
Neal looked longingly up through the glass walls of Peter's office. Peter, Diana, Hughes, and Jones were having a celebratory lunch after closing a difficult mortgage fraud case. Neal had been the one who figured out how the bank manager had forged and replaced his client's contracts, but Diana declared the lunch "convict free" and kicked him out of the office anyway. (He'd tried appealing to Peter, but Peter just paused mid-examination of pizza box and rolled his eyes. "She has a point. We're celebrating having *less* criminals to worry about.")
So Neal was sitting at a lower level desk, ostensibly studying a supplement to New York warrent laws, but really focusing far too closely on the pizza party. Neal couldn't see anyone's face but Peter's clearly from his vantage, so he watched hungrily as Peter's lips closed around the edge of a pizza slice and pull back, trailing motion lines of melted mozzarella. A piece of pepperoni fell off and landed on his tie - he pulled it off and, after a cursory examination, popped it in his mouth. Then Jones made a ill-defined gesture with his free hand and all four of them dissolved into laughter. Neal could imagine the crumbs of saliva-wetted bread and processed meat flying across the desk; he tried to use the disgust as a distraction, but it was hard finding the energy.
A junior agent walking by followed Neal's gaze to its subject and laughed, dropping him an exaggerated wink. Neal looked back down at the supplement and clamped hard on the rising urge to blush. It wasn't like *that* - although he could have played a convincing bashful lover if he thought it was what Peter wanted from him. No, right now his heart's desire smelled like overheated engine oil and was served in greasy cardboard boxes. He hadn't had anything to eat since yesterday morning. June made it clear he was always invited to breakfast with her, but Peter had taken to picking him up ever earlier and it was hardly good etiquette to ask your host to program her alarm clock to match yours. And it wasn't like he could pop downstairs to the deli: the FBI had inconveniently neglected to supply him with any disposable income, no doubt watching him closely to see when he'd get desperate enough to lead them to some of his alleged stashed funds.
It would take more than a few missed meals. He'd been hungry before, he reminded his complaining stomach. He'd get through it.
His stomach growled its opinion at him.
"God, Caffrey, I've read those updates. They're not that enthralling."
Neal blinked. He rolled his head slowly to face Cruz, making a show of stretching out his shoulders until he'd settled on the right variation of "harmless flirting" grin. She matched it with a sharper one, eyes roaming over his body. His hat was already resting on the desk, but Neal watched her mentally peal off his jacket, snap the buttons on his shirt. He leaned back slightly, giving her a better field of view and, not incidentally, exposing a little bit more of his thoat, his abdomen. Non-threatening.
Neal let his grin reach his eyes. "I don't know," he said, stretching his arms back and clasping his hands behind his head. "I never knew there were so many things you *couldn't* do with handcuffs."
Cruz' eyes flashed to the sliver of wrist between his shirtsleeve and his hair. "Legally," she clarified. "In an arrest situation." She licked her lips as punctuation, then blinked for just slightly too long and tore her attention back to the salad roll she gripped like a glock 23. She took a large bite, and Neal didn't let his face freeze while she chewed. His stomach growled again, though, traitor that it was.
Cruz swallowed. "Hey," she said, "if you're that lazy, you can't walk to the vending machine..." She dug into her takeout bag and produced the other half of her salad roll. Neal unclasped his hands and leaned towards her. Interested, but not unduly so.
She dunked the open end into a Styrofoam container of peanut sauce and held the roll out to him. Neal fought to keep the shocked disappointment out of his expression, but something must have bled through, because Cruz pulled her offering back a few inches.
Neal waved off the roll. "Thanks," he said, "but I'm not hungry."
Cruz' eyes narrowed. "Really."
"Really. I had a big breakfast." He leaned back again, raising his arms to his sides. "I have to watch my figure," he told her, the flirty smile back in place.
Cruz scoffed. "Whatever, pretty boy." She stalked off to her own desk.
Neal swallowed a sigh. He glanced back up at Peter's improptu celebration. Everyone invited looked food-sleepy. They were grinning at a story Diana was telling, complete with hand gestures that might have been pulled taffy or jerking off or would you mind terribly grabbing that stalk of broccoli for me? But Peter caught the edge of Neal's gaze and frowned in his direction.
***
"What the hell, Neal!" Peter honked once at a cyclist with a near-terminal case of traffic-light colour-blindness, then went back to yelling at Neal. "You're too good to eat with Cruz, now? Two days after I handed her the lecture about treating you more like a teammate?"
Neal dug his fingernails into the seatbelt. Nice leading by example, he thought, but it came out, "Taxi!"
Peter swerved around the offending taxi, passed two others, and slowed at a red light behind another. "Taxi. In Manhattan," he muttered. Then, louder, "You know some cultures see refusing gifts as a killable offence?"
"Cruz won't try anything. She knows I have friends in law enforcement," Neal said. Peter snorted, and just ahead of them a taxi tried to back out of an alley. Neal gripped the seatbelt harder. "Like I told her, I just wasn't hungry. Between June and Elizabeth..."
"Right, about Elizabeth," Peter said, though half of it was lost to the horn of the sedan next to them. "She tells me you're not cooperating with her taste tests." Neal winced, and tried to pretend it was just because Peter was gunning it for a yellow light. "I love my wife," said Peter, "but even love only goes so far when it comes to duck vomit."
"Foie Gras is *not* duck vomit," said Neal.
"Tastes like it," Peter said. "And I'm not going to let you deflect forever."
Neal unwrapped his fingers one by one from the seatbelt and set them on the armrest. He moved into a more relaxed posture, and as he shifted his legs, he felt the epi-pen where he'd taped it to his thigh. It wasn't that he was unwilling to help Elizabeth decide between the caviar and the smoked salmon biscuits, but she refused to divulge the ingredients to him beforehand, claiming spoilers. That meant he was risking anaphylactic shock every time he put something in his mouth.
As deep, dark secrets went, a peanut allergy was one of Neal's more mundane ones. But it could be inconvenient, and Peter'd made it more than clear he expected Neal to fit himself into *any* situation as condition of his release. He didn't want to give Peter any more reason to dump Neal back at maximum security prison, where the community pastimes were shiving each other in the back, intramural courtyard basketball, and gang raping Neal Caffrey.
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I. I don't know if I hate you or love you for this.
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