A/N: So I found this in my files. I probably hadn't planned to ever share it because it feels rather disconnected and Peter's just apparently in a horrific mood that turns him into a monstrous overlord, but hey. I got an anon comment on Adventures in Neal-Sitting that asked for longer chapters and the literal handling of charges, so this is for them, I guess. Anyway. This fic totes contains the spanking of an adult Neal by a Peter who started out the morning by accidentally stepping on Satchmo's tail (poor puppy.) You've been warned. In fact, I'm just making that the summary.

A/N 2: So I received a review that didn't heed the summary, complaining about the spanking of adults in stories, and I just wanted to give a head's up to avoid any other such idiocy. First of all, in case it wasn't clear, if you don't like what's in the summary, don't read the fic.I always think this is a no-brainer, but there's always at least one, apparently. Secondly, I actually just wanted to give you guys my thoughts on spanking. We'll get personal with it. Full disclosure: as a child, I was, indeed, spanked. This is why I don't believe in spanking, but have a spanking kink. I think it's pretty fucked up to give your kid a kink and simultaneously traumatize them, so there's a reason not to spank your kids. I don't believe in spanking adults, either, as evidenced in this story where the blame rests solely on Peter and his reaction to Neal's behavior. He's reactionary. He's not calm or thinking about what he's doing or thinking about the effects it will have on the recipient of his actions. He's blinded with a bad mood and the anger that comes with it and he just goes with it. Now, if we're confused, this satisfies me on the basic level of I-like-to-think-of-Peter-as-being-paternal-towards-Neal: the blind reaction of a spanking, of something that hurts, but something that's intimate and, on a very shallow level, harmless, is something I equate to parental action. It's not a good action, but it makes me feel warm inside that Peter thinks of Neal that way. Have I already admitted my thinking is fucked up? Why, yes, I have. Now, in case it wasn't evidenced by the story, aptly entitled "Ogre," this also makes me think bad thoughts about Peter for doing such a thing to Neal, who, as his charge, is vulnerable under his authority. Still, I love Peter as a character so of course he apologizes at the end and redeems himself slightly by feeling remorse and hugging Neal. This also satisfies me on the level of I-enjoy-warm-fuzzies-and-a-good-reason-for-them.

...So there. Haha. I hope you enjoyed this analysis. On to the story.

Peter Burke is in an unfortunate mood.

It started when the power briefly blinked out during the night, rendering his alarm useless. Of course, being such a stickler for stringent rules and guidelines, it comes with the territory to have a rather exceptional internal clock. Thus he woke up a mere five minutes late, swore loudly at the blinking digital numbers flashing across the screen, and promptly swung his legs over the side of the bed to step on Satchmo.

The poor dog yelped and cried and walked with his tail between his legs for five minutes and El shot him, Peter, irritated looks for the rest of the morning. Peter, of course, felt terrible.

Then, when he went to pick up Neal, the kid was set on standing in front of the mirror for an unnecessary ten extra minutes, knotting his tie just right, and tilting his hat at the perfect angle. It would have been eleven minutes, but Peter's tone was rather convincing when he said, "You get your ass downstairs now, Neal, or I'm going to make myself extra late by dropping you off at prison before work."

He tried to tell himself he sounded convincing, anyway. Neal seemed to have no problem telling him that he sounded just like that mother they'd overheard a few days back while getting coffee. She'd been with her kid, who was somewhere in the realm of toddlerhood and early childhood, and the kid kept zooming around people's legs until the mother had said something to the effect of, "You get your butt over here now, Robby, or there will be no cupcake. Just home."

"I'd never heard the word 'home' sound that menacing before, though, Peter," Neal said, as if realizing Peter was closing in on that last nerve. His voice was smooth and soft, the kind of voice one uses to soothe ruffled feathers. Or FBI agents with gritted teeth and white knuckles. "So, yeah. Work! Lets go. Cupcake?"

"No cupcake," Peter grunted, and steered his C.I. out of the apartment by the shoulder.

And now? Now his coffee tastes like mud. And there is a gaggle of junior agents talking over one another as if their parents, or teachers, or goddamn Harvard (or whatever ivy league institute they had attended) had never taught them the concept of manners. And Neal is the loudest of them all, claiming that he'd go into the prospective senator's office as a fast-talking ad exec, or, when that's shot down, a moody, but brilliant failed novelist interested in freelancing a scorching tell-all about the opposing candidate.

"No," the room says at large.

A fresh-faced intern with pastries, then.

"Caffrey, just shut up and let us do our jobs. We'll decide the best approach."

"But-"

"We might not even need you for this."

"What are you talking about?" Neal huffed indignantly. "Of course you'll need me. This is politics we have on the table! There will be fundraising soirees and pedantic missteps and sexual scandals and caterers with hidden cameras at fifty-thousand-dollar-a-plate events! Peter, tell them-!"

"Everyone out," Peter cuts him off briskly, because that's it. That's it and Peter's had enough.

They all gape at him. But especially Neal. He looks just like that Robby kid when his mother threatened him with home instead of a cupcake.

"A-Agent Burke?" a brave young soul inquires, only for Peter to bark in reply: "Out!"

Peter feels like the largest, the hairiest, the ugliest of all the ogres when all the chairs skid out from under the table, when pairs upon pairs of junior agent feet scamper out of the conference room, leaving only Peter's big, hairy ogre feet and Neal's well-dressed criminal ones.

Neal clucks his tongue. "Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning."

Peter points a finger in his face. "Annoying."

Neal's mouth drops open in mimic of a gasp, his blue eyes go big, and his hand makes its dainty way to his chest as if to say "Moi?"

"Yes, you. And when I say 'out,' I mean you, too. You are not excluded from everyone else's orders, Neal, unless I specifically come out and say so."

"But, Peter-"

"Don't, 'but, Peter' me. Go to your desk and behave for once in your life until I come out and get you."

Neal sighs and kicks the floor. "Are you getting the rest of them, too? You're going to tell them, right? That you're putting me on this one?"

"Neal…"

Neal, like Robby, is also somewhere in the realm of toddlerhood and early childhood, Peter decides, watching as the very conflicting bane of his existence gets up and kicks his chair as if to prove some sort of point before skulking to the door, at which Neal pauses, looks back to Peter, and proceeds to whine, "Fundraising soirees, Peter."

Peter lunges. Neal emits a rather unmanly squeak and hastens out the door. And finally, the conference room is empty save for Peter Burke, who sighs, and drops into a chair, holds his head in his hands and takes several moments to collect himself.

It's a bad fucking day.

Peter wishes he had never gotten out of bed this morning, had never stepped on Satchmo. The dog's whimper of distress has been echoing in the back of his mind all day, and Peter can now feel a headache approaching with steps like a Sasquatch, huge but placid feet stomp stomp stomping to the front of his brain. It's getting there, one stomp at a time, and once it situates itself, he can add it to his list of today's numerous annoyances.

He takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly, remembers his brief pre-adolescent rebellion of smoking, and wishes he could see it, smoke in the air, visual proof that he's exhaling so he can relax and tell himself that he's here, and as long as he's here, he's capable of doing what needs to be done. He can run this plan with these junior agents without blowing another gasket. He can even deal with Neal's sulking and tell the kid "no" multiple times without wringing his neck.

Maybe he can even start training Neal to heed the "no" the first time he's been told. That way, Peter can save valuable time and valuable breath and above all, valuable patience. Because he has time right now, about three minutes to get himself together before Hughes comes barging in and demanding to know what huge fucking thing has crawled up his ass, died, and rendered him immobile because this is the FBI, Burke, not some non-existent Dunkin' Donuts catering service; and he has breath even if he can't see it. But patience? Patience, he's running on empty.

He continues to breathe, deep breaths from his abdomen, and looks out the wall of windows at the city, feels like he's putting himself back together limb by limb, screwing his head back on even if that ache is still there.

Finally, he's ready. He gets up and walks out of the conference room, walks until he's in front of his office and can hold himself over the main office area, clears his throat to announce to the juniors that they can get their asses back in there now, that he's ready for their bright, young minds to expound on ideas one at a time, please, but this is what comes out, instead:

"Where's Neal?"

Because Neal's not there. Neal is not at Neal's desk and whenever Neal is not where Neal is expected to be that means trouble. Big trouble. Big Trouble capitalized.

Nobody has an answer for him.

Maybe the kid's in the bathroom. Although sometimes Peter thinks about Neal like he used to think about girls when he was but a teenager and ignorant of the ways of life, like Neal is a creature not nearly grotesque enough to emit bodily fluids, the fact that he eats all those fancy gourmet foods be damned.

Peter checks the bathroom, anyway. And yes, he does indeed find Neal, though not at a urinal. The kid's not taking a leak, he's preening in front of the mirror, doing his hair, pushing his bangs down over his forehead so they cover his brows, making him look all of twenty. And his suit jacket is off, nowhere to be seen, probably back at his desk, but the really bizarre thing is that Neal's not wearing a tie, and his shirt is untucked.

"What are you doing?" Peter asks, and the irritation is back and hitting him like a barrage of bullets because somewhere in his head, he knows exactly what Neal is doing. It's not Big Trouble, but it is Annoying Trouble.

"Mmm…nothin'," Neal replies, like it's no big deal. Peter can hear the deliberateness with which the guy leaves off the 'g,' and then there's the smile to punctuate it, the entire situation, scintillating and not-at-all-innocent.

Peter sucks in another breath. Lets it out slowly. They have about three miles to go before he runs completely out of what remains of his self-restraint. "Don't tell me nothin', Neal. What. Are. You. Doing."

"I was just going to show you that I could pull off fresh-faced intern. Look." He turns, hands splayed out with palms to the ceiling, like he's holding something invisible and quite large. "Imagine me with a pastry box. Nobody thinks twice about the intern hearing things, or snooping. It's the perfect cover."

"A cover that's already been shot down," Peter replies. "Now tuck your shirt back in, put your tie back on, and come out. We're ready to continue the meeting." He turns to the door.

"No."

Peter jerks to a stop at the word, his back going rigid with the force the fury hits him.

"Excuse me?"

"No," Neal says, stubborn. "You're not even giving it a thought. I want in on this case, Peter."

Peter turns around. Neal is somehow accomplishing the feat of looking nothing like himself and exactly like himself at the same time. The unruly hair, the untucked shirt, the lack of tie is distinctly not Neal-like…but Peter can somehow see the attention given to the look, the motivation behind each aesthetic detail, the final result a smug smile and few mischievous missteps along the way and it is so Neal that he wants to scream.

There's something feral in his voice when he says, "You can't always get what you want and don't you dare tell me no again." He points a finger at Neal for extra emphasis, but the kid just shrugs and rolls his eyes like a goddamn teenager.

And then Neal says this: "No."

And it snaps. Whatever it was that was holding Peter together, whatever threadbare strings he managed to knot during his alone time in the conference room, they all just snap. Peter vaguely wonders if Neal can hear the sound of the snap, because he sure as hell can. His head explodes with it, it's like fog and bright light and that ringing in your ears after a gun has been discharged all at once, it's so all-consuming and he doesn't even realize what he's doing until he's doing it.

He has Neal by the arm and he's spanking him in the middle of the men's restroom at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Oh god, what is he doing. What is he doing. What am I doing, he wonders in something of a panic, but he doesn't stop and Neal's scrambling to get away, but Peter is bigger and stronger and well trained in the art of containing criminals. He shoves the younger man against a sink, hears a pained 'oomph,' that he briefly considers apologizing for, but Neal's bent now and Peter's pulling the shirt up above the kid's ass for a better target.

El would frown at this sort of parenting. She always does when they catch glimpses of it when they're out together. And for good reason. Those parents are ogres. Ogres just like Peter.

"Peter? Peter, stop!" Neal pleads, but he's not even fighting anymore. He's just taking it. Does he think he deserves it? Peter wonders. Whether he does or doesn't really isn't the question, because Neal is a complex creature and Peter can't be sure of exactly what goes on in that brilliant mind of his. But he's watched Neal for years now, seen the kid at his worst, seen how he takes pain and desire and instinct and lets it destroy him from the inside out, he's seen the kid close to death and close to murder and neither is this, whatever this vulnerability is, whatever is keeping him tethered to Peter while Peter is doing this to him.

You're the only one.

And Neal is still pleading and there are tears in his voice and tears in his eyes and he's promising to be good.

Peter finally lets up. Neal is sniffling and wiping at his face, and when he turns around, Peter sees tear-stained cheeks and naked regret.

Peter sucks in a breath. He lets it out slowly.

His hand hurts, but he doesn't check Neal's backside for injuries. He pulls up Neal's now-rumpled shirt and looks at his stomach, where he and the sink collided before the kid decided to give up. There's a red mark.

"Does it hurt?" Peter croaks. "Your stomach, I mean."

Neal crosses an arm over the mark and shakes his head, his blue eyes huge, wet, and red-rimmed.

"Don't lie, Neal," Peter says softly, but there's no warning in his voice. He still doesn't know what he's doing. His head is still filled with white fog, and that's why, he'll tell himself later, that he takes Neal in his arms then, embraces him tightly and says, "I'm sorry, buddy. M'having a really bad day today."

It's no excuse, but Neal accepts it, nods his head into Peter's neck and says, "I noticed."

They clean up and make themselves presentable.

The day resumes.