Tattooed on My Mind, a white collar fanfic

Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me.

Notes: Also written for the livejournal kink meme. Title from the Maroon 5 song Can't Stop (Thinking About You): and I touch myself like it's somebody else / thoughts of you are tattooed on my mind.

There's not a whole lot to do in prison.

It sounds obvious, duh, what did you expect, it'd be like summer camp? But it's not something Neal really understands until he's there, counting out the days in even tick marks on the walls, coming to the realization that four years move a hell of a lot slower when you're spending them in a room roughly the size of a bathroom.

So it's find something to occupy himself or go slowly mad. Neal's always been active, mobile, going places and doing things. He doesn't do well being still. He doesn't do well by himself, not after he's gotten used to sleeping with someone next to him.

He starts coming up with insane escape plans in his head—plans that would never work, plans he would never use, but they keep him entertained anyway. When he runs out of those, he starts having conversations in his head, things he wants to say now but doesn't have the chance to. Most of those conversations are with Kate, but Peter Burke features quite prominently, strangely enough.

You know, you're the one that put me in this hellhole, and the funny thing is I really like you, he thinks, and it's true. Three years of this cat-and-mouse chase he's had to be on his toes like never before; finally there's someone who can match him step for step. And Peter may have won this game, but there's always another, and another after that, and maybe the next time will be Neal's turn to win. The Peter in his head always smiles at him like he finds him inordinately amusing, or like he's a puppy that's just done something exceedingly clever, but not clever enough to get himself out of a trip to the vet's (in this case a trip to the vet's equates throwing him in prison, and Neal decides that prison is having an exceedingly detrimental effect on the quality of his analogies).

The guard comes around every night to remind them that it's lights out. Neal lies on his bunk, eyes wide open to the darkness, mind restless and always running. He just wants to stop thinking for a moment, wants to forget the drab surroundings caging him in.

Well, there's one surefire way to do that.

It's a definite challenge to keep quiet enough that no one else can tell what he's doing when he's got a hand around his cock, stroking firmly, rubbing his thumb over the head, and there's nothing Neal loves more than a challenge.

Of course it's Kate's face that swims into his mind first, Kate with her long, sweet-smelling hair and her beautiful eyes, her soft body that curled around him in the mornings and held him in bed for a moment longer, just a moment longer. But it's too painful thinking of her, too raw; he can't use her to bring himself off, not when he has the memories of what it was like to actually bury himself inside her and steal kisses from her mouth. It only throws into harsher relief the loneliness he has to live with now.

He tries nameless, faceless women—long-legged and slim, with full breasts and slender, clever hands. It works, to a certain extent, but always leaves him somewhat dissatisfied. It's never enough. Anonymous men don't do much for him either. It's only when he pictures one slamming him up against a wall with heated eyes and strong hands, and the man suddenly morphs into Peter the day he'd caught Neal and finally ended the hunt—You've given me one of the best chases of my life, Peter had said, eyes glittering as he'd handcuffed Neal and slowly pulled him away from the wall he'd shoved him up against—and Neal has to bite his lip hard to stifle a gasp as he comes harder than he has in weeks, that Neal realizes just how he's going to keep himself from going insane in the next few years.

He might feel a little guilty at objectifying Peter, but hey. The man threw him in here, the least he can do is fuel Neal's fantasies to keep him occupied while he's locked up.

The way it actually happened when Peter caught Neal, Peter read him his rights and pushed him into the waiting car, looking a mix between gleeful and proud and a little sympathetic; his fingers brushed lightly over Neal's shoulder, as if to say hard luck.

The way it happens in Neal's head, now Porn Central, is this: Peter clicks the handcuffs around Neal's wrists and pushes him backward until he hits the wall with a muffled thud. Peter says nothing, only smiles with an inexplicable mix of liking and smugness and heated lust that hits Neal like a punch to the gut. Maybe that day when Peter had braced his arm against Neal's throat in a silent warning not to move, that Peter had the upper hand and Neal had better not try to regain it, he'd been wondering what Neal's mouth would taste like. Neal will never know. In his head, though, Peter's eyes flick down to his lips and then back up, and his mouth is sure and confident when he kisses Neal.

Neal—the real Neal, the Neal who does not and may not ever know the feel of Peter's lips on his own—grits his teeth against a low groan and twists his hand around his cock, spreading his legs open a little more. He thinks about Peter's hands—would they be gentle, or forceful and strong, fisting Neal's cock roughly as he bites the curve of Neal's neck. Maybe he would kick Neal's legs apart and keep them spread open, maybe he would press down on Neal's shoulders until he falls to his knees and takes Peter's cock into his mouth.

Maybe he would thrust into Neal's eager mouth until he's left it abused and swollen red, and then maybe he would kiss him softly like a lover.

Neal's mouth falls open in a silent pant, and he closes his eyes to face a different kind of darkness, the welcoming kind that lives inside his head. He exhales a shaky breath when he comes, and wipes his hand blindly somewhere on his bunk.

He feels lassitude start to creep up on him, slowing his racing mind and calling him down to what promises to finally be a peaceful slumber.

Not much to do in prison. Well, looks like he's found something to keep him busy.