Work Text:
She watches Peter and Neal at the table outside, sipping wine, their dark heads bent close together as they talk. Peter’s not really a wine person, but he makes an exception at Sunday lunch, when they’re relaxed and together and safe. Neal’s long, clever fingers are making idle patterns on the red checked tablecloth, but he isn’t looking at it. His eyes are on Peter’s face, and there is warmth in them, and affection.
Peter looks up and catches her gaze. She smiles, willing him to relax, but she knows he can read what she’s thinking in her eyes. She knows. It’s been there for while now, the sense that there is something between her husband and his consultant. She won’t go so far as to say they’re having an affair, if only because she knows Peter far too well. She can sense that he’s aware—sometimes uncomfortably—of his closeness with Neal, but she knows he hasn’t considered yet that there can be more. She watches him shift away from Neal, his body language horribly obvious, and bites her lip to keep from grinning.
Suddenly, she realises that the tacit exchange between her and Peter has not gone unnoticed. Neal looks from Peter to her, his quick eyes studying their faces in turn before turning to her. There is a question in them, and she knows it’s now or never. She nods, and holds her breath.
Neal flashes her a quick smile before turning to Peter and looking at him as though he were the most precious thing he’s ever contemplated stealing. She watches as his artist’s hands cup Peter’s face, as he leans in, cutting short Peter’s exclamation of bewilderment, and touches his lips briefly to her husband’s.
Elizabeth walks to the screen door and opens it gently as Peter turns to her, half-astonished, half-penitent, as she’d known he would. Her fingertips brush the back of his t-shirt, just below the nape of his neck. ‘Don’t stop,’ she says.
Neal’s grin is as bright as the sun.
