A Newsroom Fanwork Exchange @itsnotanexchangebutitcanbe - Tumblr Blog

Nov 4, 2013

Title: Lift You Up, Never Stop, Take You To Another World

Author: needsmoregreendragons

Gift for: shannonigans322 (tumblr); queen_scheherazade (A03)

Genre: Romance, kink

Rating: NC-17

Warnings: D/s dynamics, kink exploration (mostly of BDSM, very briefly ageplay), discussion of non- consensual sex, panic attack and the aftermath of that (beginning at ‘He has to use the safeword...’

and ending at the end of that section).

Word Count: 12.95k

Pairing: Neal/Jim

Summary: Neal has bad luck with getting outed. Jim’s a little bad at asking for things. For someone

who’s built a space for himself in dominance and power, Neal’s never felt this out of control.

Notes: So this is a little heavy on the thinky and not so much on the kinky until the end, but I hope

queen_scheherazade enjoys it nonetheless, and that they got something they wanted from it! The

title is from Another World by One Direction, because what says “navigating D/s relationships with

your supposedly heterosexual best friend” better than teenager boybands!

(If you’re interested, the presence of Weiner dickpics in this fic puts the beginning of its timeline at

about mid-July 2013, and the end something like early-to-mid January (so about six months)!)

***

It’s not exactly the most ideal way Neal could have thought of for all this to come out.

In hindsight, none of Neal’s comings out of closets of any descriptor have gone to plan, really.

Coming out in high school had involved had involved being caught having ill-advised in the dorm

bathrooms, and he’s still not sure if the weird looks or the months of detention were worse.

Everyone at the newsroom (who didn’t already know from his continued profound inability to keep

his lays secret) found out about him being pansexual when Jim accidentally typed or didn’t type the

asterisk and sent Neal an email asking about his weekend (“We literally went through this with Mac

and Will not a month ago Jim how is this happening right now! And why the shit couldn’t you just

text it?”). And the less said about his parents the better, really.

Actually, in comparison to all of that, this one’s been a breeze.

They’re at Hang Chew’s when it happens, on a Thursday night, after a gruelling week watching Syria

fall apart again, and trying not to let the show fall apart reporting it. Everyone felt like just letting go

for a night, really.

They’re all at Hang Chew’s together, which means that Jim is doing his usual best job of glancing

nervously around himself, blinking too much, like a prospective sexual partner might sneak up on

him without his realising, and Neal’s doing his usual best job of pretending he doesn’t care that Jim is

depressingly, awfully heterosexual and kind of actually begging Neal to wreck him.

So a normal night, really, until it isn’t.

“Neal!”

He turns on instinct, not bothering to think about where he’s heard that voice before, and by that

stage it’s much too late to run.

“Oh.”

“Neal!” They’ve made eye contact now so there’s no way he can pass it off as anything else.

“Hi, Declan.” As he comes closer Neal tries to signal don’t, just fucking don’t with eyes, hoping

Declan will see the panic there and just stay silent. He’s dressed in leather and silk, as usual, he looks

ridiculously like sin, and honestly, if Neal weren’t where he is now and they hadn’t ended things,

he’d be seriously happy to see this. He can feel the tug of it dully under the panic and resolutely

ignores it. He really, really needs this to not be happening right now.

“Um, hi Declan. How’s it going?”

He drops to crouch next to Neal’s stool and look up at him, because of course he fucking does, Neal

can’t ever see discreet people, and apparently when he sees them he can’t ever stop seeing them

around either.

“I’m really good, just great, how are you... sir?”

Neal’s going to kill him, and he’s not even going to make it look like an accident. This is the last time

he has anything to do with power bottoms. (The actual last, this time.)

People are starting to notice now. They heard the ‘sir’ and now they’re all turning around to check it

out. Neal’s definitely going to kill him.

“Alright, and you?”

It’s not even like Neal’s ashamed of being a Dom, or of seeing people in the scene. It’s just that he’d

really rather keep certain things separate from his work life, and this would have to be the very first

thing on the list. It’s not that he’s ashamed of who he is, or what he does—they’d just all take it the

wrong way.

“I’m okay. Haven’t seen you at the club, though. I’ve been missing you.” Declan is stroking up his leg

now. No one is watching anything but him.

“Yeah, things have been crazy at work, so.” He trails off, leaving the sentence hanging. Maybe if he

makes it awkward enough Declan will just leave.

If the time they were seeing each other is any indication, though, Neal’s shit out of luck.

Declan gets the Look on his and Neal knows he’s done for.

“What do you say to a little... return to old times? Fancy tying me up and giving me a good once

over, sir?”

Holy shit.

“Look, Dec,” Neal’s life is over, it’s literally over “I’m a little bit busy right now? I’d really like it if we

could do this later.” He hates how interrogative his voice sounds, but he can’t do that in front of

these people, he can’t turn into who Declan knows he is.

He’s not even listening to what Declan says as he leaves, already turning back to stare at the drink in

front of him and try to remember how to breathe or speak or not spontaneously combust.

Everyone’s staring. Literally everyone he knows is staring. Neal hasn’t had this many people looking

at him in his life and that includes during the Big Foot phase. That includes the time he got stupidly

drunk at a leather bar and stripped. He thinks Don may have dropped his drink. He thinks Gary is

currently downing Martin’s drink. And possibly also Kendra’s.

Mac has this face like she already knew, which of course she did, Mac’s not actually human.

He can’t look at Jim right now, he actually can’t.

“Um,” he says eloquently, still ostensibly focused on the glass in front of him.”Declan’s really bad

at... subtlety.”

Don starts cackling. “Hidden depths, eh Sampat? Wouldn’t’ve thought you had it in you.”

And just like that, the tension’s gone. Everyone laughs, not like it’s forgotten, but like... no one could

really give a shit, right now. He figures he’ll get shit for it tomorrow, but he can deal with it then, he

supposes.

Neal loves these people. Neal loves these people a lot and doesn’t know why he’d ever mentally

threaten to kill them.

He’s forgotten about Jim, until he swivels around to find Jim looking at him like he’s grown a second

head. He turns away just as quickly.

“Neal. Neal!” Jim starts hissing at him, which is odd, because they’re still sitting right next to each

other.

“What?”

“You’re a dominatrix!” Jim hisses.

Neal sighs. Here we go. “No, Jim.”

“You are!”

“I’m a Dom, not a dominatrix.”

“Oh like there’s a difference?” Jim scoffs.

“The difference,” Neal says, “would be that one of them gets paid to punish or tie up or otherwise

dominate people, and I do not, though, quite frankly someone should because I’m damn good at—“

“Neal!”

“—I enjoy it, Jim. Come on. Like you haven’t ever done something left-of-centre in the bedroom you

haven’t told your friends about?”

Jim blinks. Neal blinks. Jim blinks more.

“Wait, never?”

Jim shakes his head. Which would be Neal’s cue to leave.

(His head hurts thinking about Jim’s sex life. Which is actually a fairly common occurrence, given

the sad sack state of Jim’s ability to pull girls and Neal’s unvoiced insistence that things would go so

much better for him if he were being pulled by boys. Right now though it’s worse, partly because

Jim’s sex life must be so fucking boring and Neal just can’t deal with that, but mostly because he

feels a little sick right now at the fact which has just been thrust in his face—that he will never be the

one to do things like that to Jim.)

(Seriously,though, not even Hallie? He had such high hopes for her.)

He just can’t, is all, and he feels like he’s allowed to check out once in a while, not be the guys who’s

always chill with everything. So he does.

Jim being Jim, who lives to thwart every aspect of Neal’s life, follows him. He barely makes it to the

street outside.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He almost whines, and Neal represses a shiver in favour of a snort.

“Have you not noticed the way you’re reacting right now, Jim?”

“What are you talking about, Neal? I’m not reacting any way right now, there is nothing about my

reaction right now that is out of the ordinary, I’d say my reaction is pretty much on par with any

other ordinary guy finding out his best friend has been keeping sexual secrets, of a secret and sexual

nature, and—“

“You’re really only upset because I didn’t tell you?”

“Well, you—why didn’t you tell me?”

Neal rubs a hand over his face. “I just didn’t want all—this—to get involved in work stuff. It’s

complicated, too messy, I didn’t want things crossing over. And everyone would ask questions, and

look at me, and I’ve just never wanted to deal with it, is that okay?”

Jim nods, looking like it’s not okay at all.

“I’m not being weird about this,” he blurts.

Neal laughs. “Jim, you kind of are.”

“I’m not!”

“It’s fine,” Neal says, and the smile he gives isn’t fake. It’s fine. Neal can make this work. He can still

be the person they know and this new thing they don’t at the same time. It’s fine.

“Neal—“

“I have to go,” he smiles. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He doesn’t turn to see if Jim’s still there when he rounds the corner home.

***

It only takes Jim the weekend to get over his initial shock over the revelation of Neal’s personal life,

and stop glancing at Jim with nervous rabbit eyes and blushing when Neal catches him.

Unfortunately it only gets worse from there.

He’s only just walked in the door and Jim is already on him.

“So when you’re dominating people, do you ever worry that you are in fact forcing them into sexual

contact?”

“Can we just have one day where you don’t do your Investigative Journalist act about my personal

life, Jim, please?” Neal sighs, flopping into his chair.

“Only if we can have a day where you don’t do your obnoxious Tech Head act at me and berate

me for not being able to do complicated things on the computer which I never learned how to do

because i’ve been too busy seeing things and living a life—“

“I boss strangers around in the sack for kicks,” Neal interjects.

“Jesus Christ.” Jim throws his hands up, flinging himself into the lone wheelie chair opposite him.

“The tech thing is really a sore spot for you isn’t it?”

“Yes it is, but back to your questionable sexual practices.”

Neal sighs again. It’s not that he wouldn’t answer these questions, for anyone. It’s not like it’s

something he’s uncomfortable talking about because, aside from relatives, there’s really no one Neal

finds it weird to discuss sex with, probably not even his bosses (he’s pretty sure Leona could give him

a run for his money as far as sexual experience goes), and he doesn’t think there should be. Sex, for

him, is something which should be spoken about and shared as much as performed. When it comes

to the Dom stuff, too, he’s always open and happy to talk about it with people if they ask, because

he knows how terrifying it is to realise that what you want deep down is something raw and dark

and so unconventional, how exhilarating it always is to start learning, to find people who feel the

same. How much of a comfort it was his first time around to find people who wanted to take care of

him, make sure he knew that what he wanted mattered.

It’s just that it’s Jim, who is always so Jim about everything, and it’s less that he would worry Jim

would think him weird—or, not now—and more that once he started talking about it he’d have to

stare the fact square in the face that Jim’s hair is what his fingers itch for these days and his bony

pale wrists are what sing to him to be pulled and tied together and dotted with the marks of Neal’s

teeth. As much as he ignores it, more often than not Jim is behind Neal’s eyes, having more control

over him than Neal has ever been comfortable with. It’s just that Jim is Jim, and Neal is Neal, and this

isn’t what they do. Their friendship inhabits a different space—which is fine, it’s great, Neal’s never

felt close to someone the same way he does Jim.

It’s just that Neal is Neal, and this is what he does, and Jim is so, so Jim and it couldn’t be less what

he does.

But it is Jim, so Neal gives his most withering look and answers.

“it’s not non-consensual, Jim, because inherent in agreeing to let someone boss you around or

hold you down in the bedroom is a consent to, well, them bossing you around in the bedroom. It’s

something both parties agree to, it’s not, like, spontaneous.”

“What about things like hurting people, though? Do you not feel like the ethical dilemma involved in

hurting someone for pleasure is bigger than the weight of the consent in the first place?”

It’s such a goddamn journalistic bloody leading question that Neal almost forgets to be annoyed.

“Again, Jim, if you’re doing it right none of that pain is unwanted, and when done right a lot of

people find it very satisfying, emotionally or physically. There’s no ethical dilemma here. A lot of it is

the talking, really. Most of what you’re doing in a BDSM dynamic relationship is discussing limits and

boundaries and possibilities and consent with your partner.”

“But—“

Neal knows what question Jim wants to ask, the one he isn’t. But why? Why is this something you

want, Neal? Why would someone ever want that?

“But, don’t you think,” Jim says instead, getting that tone like he’s coming to a point, something

he’s been sitting on, “that it’s all a little suspect, archaic, to enforce hierarchies like that? Master,

subordinate, ‘Sir’, all of that?”

Neal shakes his head. “I know what you’re trying to do, Jim, but there’s really no way you can get

me to see any moral conundrum in what I do, even academically. Look, some people need to feel

control. Some people like to feel looked after. Sometimes that’s the way they get those feelings.

That doesn’t make them any less moral than people who... get pets, or start fantasy football teams.”

Jim looks for a moment like that wasn’t what he was trying to do at all.

“Yeah,” he says in a far away voice that makes Neal want to tug on the hair at the base of Jim’s

neck. He can’t tell what Jim’s thinking, and he wants to. He wants to read Jim like an open book, the

honest, open language of the naked body. He wants Jim to tell him.

Jim starts asking him about bondage, instead.

***

“Have you ever whipped anyone?” Jim says to him across the table in the briefing room one

morning. They’re waiting to organise the rundown, and Mac isn’t here yet but Will is—as well as

everyone else in the staff.

All of whom are now trying very hard not to look like they’re listening for his answer.

He blinks at Jim, who shrugs, like can’t blame me for asking—which, Neal definitely can, Neal can

blame Jim for so very many things, this is just one event in a very long list of Shit Which Is Jim

Harper’s Idiot Fault. He glances up and down the table, where most of them have stop bothering to

pretend they’re not paying attention and are now just staring. Maggie may have taken her pen out.

Neal may need to have a chat with Maggie at some point.

He looks over at Will, a last ditch effort in the hope that he might tell them he never ever wants to

hear the answer to that question.

Will shrugs. “Give it a couple of hours and I’ll have heard something worse.”

“Yes,” Neal says. “A couple of times, but not many. It’s hard to do with someone you don’t trust

really well yet? And the logistics of it require some... practice, to make sure you don’t properly hurt

any one.”

“And you get these whips where?” Maggie asks, pen flying across the page, little furrow on her

brow. Neal laughs and is about to explain when Mac walks in.

“Anthony Weiner’s posted more photos of his penis on Twitter, everyone, this time without his

pants, let’s get to work.”

Will looks at Neal. “What I tell you?”

***

“So I was doing some reading, Neal, auto-erotic asphyxiation—“

“Jim, oh my god.”

“What?”

“It’s literally four in the morning.”

There’s a silence over the phone line. “Oh. I guess I didn’t notice the time.”

“I’m not answering questions about auto-erotic asphyxiation at four in the morning. Or ever, jesus,”

he adds quickly.

“Is that your way of telling me you have things to say on the subject of auto-erotic asphyxiation,

because—“

“Jim.”

He hangs up. There is literally nothing in the world right now he doesn’t hate.

***

Jim keeps asking questions at random intervals, and Neal keeps answering them, and he can’t tell

what Jim’s angle is.

Every time it’s something different, a new kink or dynamic he’s been ‘researching’ and wants to

approach Neal about whatever problematic element he’s found in it—and every time Jim looks at

him like he’s answered a completely different question to the one Jim asked.

Neal can’t make sense of it at all.

The two of them are working late on a story together one night. Jim needed Neal to help find Twitter

data, and he was happy to help, but it’s late, much later than they’d intended to be, and Jim’s

starting to flag.

The next time Jim stumbles past him to find another print out he’s lost, but has nine times in the

past fifteen minutes had in his hand as he searched, Neal decides enough is enough.

“Right, that’s it,” he says standing up.

“What’s what?”

“You’re working too hard, you’re going to give yourself an aneurysm, and the thing you’re looking

for is in your hand again, Jim, seriously, you were embedded.”

Jim blinks, yawns, looks brightly at the paper in his hand. “Yeah man, but that was like, three whole

years ago.”

Neal makes an exasperated sound. “You need a break.”

“I’m fine, Neal.”

“Jim you need a break now.”

“Neal it’s really—“

“Sit, Jim.”

Jim sits.

As soon as he’s said it Jim just, plops himself down in Neal’s chair.

Neal’s ears are rushing.

“Okay. Okay, good.”

“What are you doing, Neal?”

Neal comes to stand behind him, raises hands to Jim’s shoulders which are much more tentative

than Neal would like them to be.

“Giving you a massage, you’re too tense.”

“Oh, you don’t have—oh.”

Neal smirks as he digs his fingers in the same spot again. Jim goes limp at the touch, and Neal thrills

a little with it. He works his hands over Jim’s shoulder, the base of his neck, and gradually down his

back, pressing out kinks as he goes.

“You’re good at this,” Jim says, sounding like he’s speaking from a great distance, from underwater.

He sounds as pliant and easy as he feels under Neal’s hands. Neal can feel his fingers tingling.

There’s comfortable peace for a few moments. He’s trying to work the knots between Jim’s shoulder

blades out, but Jim keeps squirming, arching when he hits certain sore spots, which is all very great

for Neal’s future masturbatory adventures, but not so conducive to what he’s trying to do here.

“if you’re not careful I’m gonna have to die you down,” Neal murmurs, smiling fondly, not even

hearing the words he’s saying, too caught up in the soft, sweet sounds Jim keeps making.

“Yes,” Jim sighs, his head tilting back to rest against Neal’s right hand.

Which.

Holy.

Shit.

Neal’s frozen where he stands. Jim doesn’t seem to notice at first, but Neal can feel him tense when

he notices Neal’s silence.

It could be hours. Neal’s heart is thudding too hard and fast and loud to tell. His blood rushes.

“Jim?” Neal asks, and hates his voice for cracking. “Did you, um, did you mean to say that just now?”

Jim is momentarily silent.

“I think I did.”

“You think you did? Jim I need a little more than...” Neal needs to know. He has to know. He feels

itchy all over.

Jim twists to look back up at Neal, and looking right into Jim’s eyes now the seconds of silence feel

much longer, could be hours, and Neal feels like he’s hurtling down a tunnel into Jim’s pupils “I. I did,

yeah. I meant it.”

“Okay.” Neal says.

“I meant it.”

“Yeah, Jim. Okay. Just give me a second to...” Neal scrubs a hand over his face.

The thing is that it’s Jim, and Neal’s always known the way he was supposed to be around him.

“Is that why you kept asking me about stuff this week?”

“I... think it was. Yeah.”

“And you want this? You want to—to try this.”

Jim swivels in his chair to look up at Neal and holy shit, Jim’s eyes are shining brighter than Neal’s

ever seen them. The eyes and the angle Jim’s looking up at him from, the bared line of his neck, the

way he’s in line with Neal’s hips, it—well, it drives him crazy, in that moment. For a few seconds it’s

all he can think about, like tunnel vision, everything else going fuzzy and quiet. He could do it, he

could.

He takes a breath instead.

“I want to try this,” Jim is saying, earnest as Jim always is.

“You want this.”

“Yes.”

“Are you saying yes you want to be tied down or dominated, that that’s a thing you want, or are you

saying yes because you want me to be doing it?”

“I want it to be you.”

“Is this a curiosity thing? Or do you... do you want this?”

Jim looks perplexed. “Of course it’s about curiosity, of course I’m curious, but why can’t it be both of

those things? I’m curious because I’ve never done anything like this before, and I don’t know... how

much I want. But I know I want it and I want it to be you, and not someone else.”

Neal hates the question before it’s even left his mouth. “Why?”

Jim blinks, smiles, laughs a little. “Because you’re... Neal. And you’re my best friend, and I trust you,

and maybe I’ve been wanting... something, with you, for a while now. I didn’t realise but I. I want

something. And I trust you to help me, and to give it to me.”

This is Jim, Neal thinks. This is Neal and this is Jim.

“Okay,” he breathes, feeling like he’s floating, untethered, hovering somewhere around the ceiling.

“Not tonight, obviously. But okay. I’ll figure something out.”

Jim beams. “Thanks.”

Neal’s so fucking fucked.

***

Neal makes them meet up (for coffee, he says, but Jim insists on milkshakes for reasons Neal doesn’t

understand or ask about) to discuss the nuts and bolts of it before they get started. He doesn’t want

the first time they talk about it to be just before or while they’re doing it. He’s determined to get it

right with all the subs he sees, but this with Jim, is amplified so much more.

“I guess one of the first things we should sort out is things like titles,” Neal starts. This is the part

he’s comfortable in, the talking, the boundaries, the part where he can lay it all out rationally and it

doen’t feel like a big tangled mess of this is his best friend. “So, whether you want to be using ‘sir’,

that sort of thing.”

Jim wrinkles his nose. “No.”

“No? You’re sure?”

He nods. “I don’t want that. Is that okay?”

Neal shrugs, eyeing Jim with amusement. “Fine, fine. You’re very sure on it, is all.”

“I just...” he fidgets. “I meant what I said, the other day. It seems archaic and, like, not me. What,

um, what are you supposed to call me?”

“I can call you boy, or something more derogatory which we’ve established you’re not into. I can

also very well call you Jim.”

Jim thinks about it, this time, hands skimming up and down his cup. “I don’t object to ‘boy’? But

I think it could depend on the context. Or tone, or something. I’m most certainly fine with Jim,

though.” He makes some pathetic attempt at comically waggling his eyebrows and Neal chuckles.

“Idiot. The other thing is, we need a safe word, and I’d like to sort it out now rather than the first

time we do it, so we can be really clear on it.”

“Do we really need a safe word?”

Neal quirks an eyebrow. He was sure Jim would have come across this in his extensive

reconnaissance mission last week.

“No really,” Jim shifts forward in his seat, and Neal watches the movement of the collar of his tshirt

against his skin. “It’s not like we’re going to be doing anything that out there the first time, nothing

dangerous at least. Surely saying ‘stop’ is enough, right?”

Neal eyes him seriously. “Jim, that’s not really what the safeword is for.” He pauses, trying to think

about how best to put it. “When you’re playing out a scene, or a fantasy, sometimes language comes

to mean very different things. What if you get lost in a scene, and you say ‘stop’ not because you

mean it, but because it’s part of what you’re doing in the scene? If, say—and I’m not suggesting we

do this,” he adds hastily, “if we were roleplaying a situation where I forced you to suck me off, and

you said ‘stop’ because it was part of the fantasy, and not because you wanted me to? I’d have no

way of knowing. What if you did mean it and I thought it was part of the fantasy?”

Jim’s looking more and more like a scared rabbit again now, when he was starting to look so

comfortable, and into it, which makes Neal think he maybe went a bit too far, so he backpedals as

quickly as he can.

“Like I said I’m not saying we should ever do that, it’s definitely not, like, a thing for me. I’m just

saying that safewords are useful because they’re a very clear way to differentiate between what’s

part of the sex and what isn’t. It’s the way you know you have an out, the way we know we have an

out, both of us.”

Neal picks at the cardboard casing of his milkshake. “If I want out of the scene, if I’m uncomfortable,

I can hardly tell you ‘stop’ can I? If I’m the one in control.”

He makes himself meet Jim’s eyes then. Jim’s hand flutters on the table like he wants to reach out,

but it stays there.

“Has that happened to you?” he asks.

Neal nods. “Not often, but sometimes it’s only when you get deep into something that you realise

you weren’t into it, or it takes a turn you’re uncomfortable with. That’s why there are safewords.

So you know you can signal at any time you feel bad, or unsafe, or like you’re not getting what you

wanted, and I’ll know to stop and re-assess and talk about what needs to be different.”

“Okay,” Jim nods. The silences keep stretching, Neal can feel them hanging between them like

something heavy. “Okay. Sorry, yeah. So, um, what’s the safeword?”

Neal laughs. “That depends on the person. It has to be something memorable obviously, something

that would also never come up in a sexual context. I had hoped you could pick one for us.”

Jim is still for a long time, brow furrowed adorably as he concentrates. Neal can almost see the cogs

turning in his head. After about a minute, he brightens.

“Genoa.”

“What?”

“Genoa. That’s the safeword, Genoa.”

Neal bursts out laughing. “Wait, are you serious?

Jim shrugs. “It’s not like we would’ve brought it up?”

“No you’re right,” Neal grins, and suddenly it all feels so easy, with Jim here, the two of them just

joking about this, “it’s a profoundly unsexy safeword, it’ll do great.” Jim positively beams, at that.

He waits, a hair’s breadth of hesitation, then:

“Good boy.”

He says it as light as he can, like he could make it a joke if Jim didn’t like it, pass it off as a reference

to their earlier discussion. The thing is he wants to know, wants to know how Jim will react, how

he’ll start to fall apart around Neal, and he almost can’t wait until they’re doing it to see.

Jim’s eyes go a bit glazed, the next breath he takes in a little too loud, and this time he does reach

out. His fingers are tangled in Neal’s in the middle of the table now, warm and still. Neal squeezes.

He thinks maybe they can be okay.

***

He comes to Jim’s apartment a couple of days later.

Jim had suggested they go to Neal’s, saying he wanted Neal to “have control over everything, even

where we are, it’ll be better that way”—but Neal didn’t really feel right putting Jim somewhere

unfamiliar and not his own on their first go. He’s been to Jim’s apartment enough that he can be

comfortable there—and besides, it’s not really about him at all, this time.

He’s spent the last two days worrying himself sick about the whole thing, alternating between

working himself up and trying to talk himself out of it. As a result, he’s kind of over prepared.

He always over prepares a little on the first go with someone, wants to make sure he’s ready for any

eventuality, anything that may go wrong (or, very incredibly right). But this... this is Jim’s first time

with anything, anything outside of bog standard vanilla sex, plus his first time with a guy—and it’s

Neal’s first time with Jim, and even though Neal’s determined that anything they do will be simple

and safe and easy, in his head it’s this huge, almost insurmountable thing, this thing he can’t see

around and wants to hack to pieces, turn into little, anatomical parts, easier to handle.

But he can’t, and so he frets instead.

He’s got his big bag of stuff, and he’s standing awkwardly at Jim’s apartment door not knowing

whether to knock, and it’s seriously so fucking ridiculous Neal wants to cry. This has always been so

easy for him, and now it’s so complicated.

He could put it on now, slip into the Dom space he knows like a second skin, and breeze through it.

But he knows Jim, and Jim will know when he walks through the door if he’s not the Neal Jim’s

spoken to every day for three years. Neal wants to give Jim a chance, some time, wants to see him as

just Neal first, before they start. Not just for Jim, but because... it’s what Neal’s wanted for so long,

not just as a Dom but as himself. He wants to be there, in it, as both things, and it’s so scary, because

he’s never had a problem with separating the parts of himself

He’s never felt this out of control before.

He knocks before he can feel it slip away any more.

When Jim opens the door, he’s barefoot, and for a long second it’s the only thing Neal can see. His

clothed feet opposite Jim’s bare ones. It spins him out, if only for a second, like it’s his first time at

this all over again.

He pulls himself together with a breath that’s only slightly shaky and meets Jim’s eyes.

He looks flushed, nervous, but he’s smiling, looks more at peace than Neal feels already.

“Hey.”

“D’you want to come in?”

Neal follows Jim through to the living room, his bag banging softly against his calves. They stand

around a little awkwardly at first, not knowing what to say.

“This is... really stupid,” Jim sighs, and just like that the atmosphere feels thinner and easier. Neal

smiles.

“First time’s always a bit weird.”

“Well, you don’t always know them, do you?”

“That can make it a lot easier, actually,” Neal admits, running a hand through his hair. Jim cocks his

head at that.

“Why?”

Neal knows. “I don’t know, really. Haven’t thought about it too much.”

Jim nods.

“Do you want to start?” Neal asks. “We’ll keep it simple tonight, nothing too big, is that okay?”

Jim nods again. “Yeah. Yeah—let’s do it.”

He steps closer to Jim.

This is the moment. This is the moment where he could create something wonderful, or start

destroying everything. The moment he can step away or start falling.

Neal takes a deep breath. Everything shifts.

“Give me your hands,” he says, and Jim obeys. He holds his hands out with his palms up, not down.

Neal loops his fingers around each one, noting the way he can still touch his thumb to his middle

finger around Jim’s wrists. He feels, then, sweeping his thumb up the flat on the underside of

Jim’s wrist, where blue veins stand out dimly against his pale skin. He flips their hands, entwining

their fingers, thumb still stroking up and down, now rubbing circles into Jim’s palm. He hears Jim

breathing slow, and scrapes lightly down his left palm with his thumb nail, just to see if he can his

breath hitch.

Jim gives the tiniest of gasps, but the speed of his breath stays the same.

He wonders if Jim’s started to sink already—for someone ordinarily so manically clumsy, he’s

remarkably calm and still. He wonders if maybe it isn’t so much the dynamic, yet, just the touch.

Neal keeps forgetting he’ll get to find out the answers to these things, now.

He returns Jim’s hands to their original position, palms facing up in offering, and slides his hands

feather light and slow up Jim’s forearms. There’s no rolled up dress shirt to obstruct him, all he

meets with is the soft skin of Jim’s elbow as he sweeps up and down, then back again, then once

more, quicker. He joins their hands together again, and he holds.

When he meets Jim’s eyes again, Jim looks like he’s maybe waiting for Neal to start—patient, and

rapt, but waiting. Neal’s not sure if he realises they’ve already started.

He gathers up Jim’s wrists in his left hand, then, reaching behind himself into his bag with his right.

He knows exactly where they are, and without looking he’s pulling out a pair of handcuffs, specially

made for comfort, and watching as Jim’s eyes zero in on them and his lips part unconsciously. Neal

wants to lick them, so badly, but he waits.

Jim is still still, and Neal says lowly, knowing Jim will hear the difference in his tone know they’re in

this place:

“You said ‘yes’ to being tied up.”

And Jim hitches a shaky breath, and there’s what Neal was looking for. He waits for a nod, says

“good, good, Jim”, before stepping right up close to him and bringing both Jim’s hands behind his

back.

He could have done it the other way, walked around and cuffed him from the back. It’s what he’d do

in any other circumstance. But he wants to be closer, wants to feel Jim’s breath fan across his face,

and he can fasten the cuffs just fine without seeing them.

When he steps back he watches Jim as he seems to test the limits of the cuffs.

“Comfortable?” He asks.

Jim tests them once more, then nods. “Yeah. Good.”

“Good boy,” Neal allows himself. Neal’s not even touching him and Jim’s shiver is almost palpable.

Without saying anything else, Neal turns and pads toward the couch. He’s keeping it away from

the bedroom this time, he doesn’t want it to become about the sex just yet. When he sits down, he

looks up at Jim, who is still waiting patiently to be told what to do next.

“Good boy,” he hums on instinct. He sees Jim shift as he says it. “What are you waiting for, then?”

Jim comes up to stand in front of him, just between Neal’s casually spread knees.

“Sit,” Neal orders mildly.

Jim looks confused, like he’s not sure where. He looks around him, before stumbling slightly to the

couch next to Neal.

“Not there, Jim.”

“Where?” Jim asks, almost a croak now.

Neal points to the carpet, just to the left on his knee. “You can kneel, just there. Wait.”

He pulls one of the throw pillows off the couch, and lays it where he’s just pointed to.

“Just there.”

“Just... kneel?” Jim shifts cautiously on his feet.

Neal smiles. “Yes. I’m not trying to trick you, I said this would be simple. Just kneel.”

Jim kneels, perched on the pillow just to the left of Neal, and Neal can feel it swelling, buzzing in his

gut. The feeling of power, of control, of care, is like a drug as soon as it hits. He feels dizzy with it

every time, even still.

Jim’s still waiting, he craned to look back at Neal’s face.

“You can face forward, Jim.”

“What are we doing?” Jim asks, obeying immediately.

“This.”

He slides a hand into Jim’s hair, as fluffy and feathery and he’s imagined it, and at the same time

turns the TV on.

“We’re watching TV?” Jim asks, and there’s the tone of normal Jim creeping back, incredulous and a

little bit sharp.

“You’re not going to move, at all. You’re not going to speak unless I ask you something. We’re going

to sit here like this, okay?”

He waits for Jim to answer. He recognises the pause, the first time someone is ordered to do

something they weren’t quite prepared for, the first real submission.

When Jim answers, his voice has that faraway, syrupy quality he heard back in the office.

“Okay.”

They stay like that for a good while, maybe an hour and a half, Jim not moving, Neal stroking a hand

through Jim’s hair, rubbing at his scalp until Jim sighs and goes pliant and easy. He talks silliness to

Jim, who obeys and only replies when directly asks. It’s quiet, it’s easy and comfortable.

Later he leans forward, presses in so his face is up against the side of Jim’s head. From here he can

see Jim is hard in his tracksuit pants, likely has been for some time, but doesn’t seem to notice now.

He’s caught up in the movement of Neal’s fingers, eyes closed, more relaxed than Neal has ever seen

him.

“You’re being so good, Jim,” he murmurs. “You’re doing really well. Should I give you a reward

now?”

“Surely this is the reward,” Jim laughs, and Neal lets his hand still on Jim’s scalp.

“I’m sorry, Jim, are you saying you don’t want your reward?”

“No! No.” Jim is almost frantic, before Neal sets his hand to moving again, shushing him as he

tangles his fingers in Jim’s hair. “I just meant, that this feels so good already.”

“Good boy.” Neal gives the tiniest tug on Jim’s hair, which seems to take him by surprise, eliciting a

tiny mewl from him. “Good boys are grateful, aren’t they? Are you grateful, Him?”

“Yes, Neal, yes. Thank you.”

“So good. My good boy. What would you like, Jim?” In the back of his mind it occurs to him that

he never told Jim, in as many words, that sex wasn’t going to be an option tonight, and regrets it

because if Jim asks for something to that effect he’s definitely going to have to say no.

“Can you kiss me?” Jim sighs instead. “Just, kiss me for a bit, please?”

Neal smiles softly. “Open your eyes first, Jim, and I can.”

Jim’s eyes open sluggishly, fluttering a little before he focuses properly on Neal, who’s so close to

him now.

“Good boy,” he says, one last time, before fitting their mouths together.

Neal takes control of the kiss easily, licking slowly into Jim’s eager, open mouth. They kiss languidly,

Neal making sure nothing’s rushed, running his tongue along Jim’s bottom lip before nipping lightly

at it with his teeth, pulling back just to show he can before claiming Jim’s mouth again. Jim is making

soft, sweet little noises that Neal swallows hungrily. He’s not sure how long they kiss for. He’s not

sure either of them care.

When Neal feels done, he pulls back, ignoring Jim’s little whine as he chases Neal’s lips.

“I think that’s enough for today, don’t you?”

“I—“ he sees Jim about to protest, but he clicks his mouth shut instead. “Okay.”

“Good, Jim, good. Thank you, you’ve been so wonderful, really. Let me uncuff you know, just wait

here.”

He walks over to the table to fetch the key, and takes advantage of the new angle to look at Jim, still

hard yet totally unmoving, floppy like a rag doll, waiting to be directed. He wonders how Jim can be

so good at this already, when he’s so far from this everywhere else.

When he’s uncuffed Jim, Neal gathers him up in his arms, whispering nothings to him while they

watch TV. Jim falls asleep like that, peaceful and pliant, until Neal gets up to go.

***

Neal worries that the next day at work, things will be different.

He went home after last night, didn’t want to push into just sex by staying. Jim agreed easily enough,

bade him goodbye sleepily at the door, leaning heavily into Neal when he presses a kiss to Jim’s

cheek, heart pounding in his throat.

He spends the weekend feeling out-of-sorts, and doesn’t know why. He feels better when he’s

texting comfortably back and forth with Jim, but the rest of the time things feel off and his skin feels

like it fits wrong. Mostly he watches telly, and both waits for it to be Monday and dreads it.

He walks into the office Monday morning with trepidation, almost fear, curling in his stomach, but

finds nothing’s really changed.

They work together fine, same as always—nothing’s uncomfortable and Neal almost feels like it

should be. There’s one, electrically tense moment, when Jim’s dashing around frantically looking

for something, and Neal snaps “for god’s sake, Jim, sit”, and Jim does, not realising what he’s done

until he’s in the chair. They share a wild look for stretched out moments, before Jim shakes his head,

chuckling, and the tension dissipates. Neal feels buzzing in his skin every time Jim brushes him.

They meet up again a few days later. This time Neal’s got a piece of paper split into two lists, and

they’re working through boundaries and Things To Try and Things Never To Touch with a Ten Foot

Pole. They’ve been through bondage (a resounding yes), pain play (a resounding no), orgasm denial

(a blush, and a soft yeah, yeah), watersports (mercifully an I don’t even want to know but no way),

and whole bunch of other things Neal wouldn’t have expected Jim to bring up. The Yes list is a lot

shorter than some he’s had, which in some ways is almost comforting—the subs he’s been with

who have said yes to everything, for whom there hasn’t been a single thing to completely rule out,

they’re the ones who intimidate Neal. Partly because it means there’s all these things he feels the

need to be trying, partly because it’s hard to care for a sub who refuses to know their limits.

Jim, he knows his limits.

“Um, age play?” Neal asks.

Neal was seeing someone for a little while who liked to call him ‘daddy’. It wasn’t really his thing,

but it had been worth it for the way zie had come, gasping and sobbing and clutching at Neal’s back,

when he’d whispered “you’re being so good for me, for daddy.”

Jim looks perplexed. “What’s that? Like, pretending to be a kid?”

“It can be that, sometimes.” Neal rubs his finger around the circular edge of his straw. “I was with

someone once, it wasn’t a big thing for me, but for zir it was just, another way to be taken care of.

Zie would call me ‘daddy’, sometimes we’d roleplay scenarios around that. It wasn’t always, just

sometimes.”

Jim contemplates, taking it seriously, like he’s taken everything Neal’s thrown at him.

Jim’s brow furrows, and Neal reaches out to sooth the line with his thumb before he can stop

himself. He jerks the hand back like Jim’s skin has burned him, because that’s not something they’ve

done, or spoken about. Outside of those quiet hours in Jim’s apartment, they haven’t touched like

that.

Jim leans into the touch, though, just slightly, and Neal relaxes.

“Um, I don’t. Think so? Maybe. Probably not. I think I don’t want to rule it out? I can’t... really picture

it completely now, but I don’t want to say no—only if you’re comfortable with that, though.”

Neal can’t stop noticing the way Jim doesn’t speak like he usually does, now. He’s always babbling,

talks so fast and never pauses (they all do, there’s never any time), always has an air of knowing

exactly what will come out of his mouth—but when they’re talking about this stuff, when they’re

doing this stuff, he’s slower, stalling. Doesn’t always have the answer. Neal can wait for each new

words to leave his lips.

Neal wants to steal the words from his throat before they’ve left.

“That’s okay, we can table that one for later.” he draws a smaller box at the bottom of the page,

labels it ‘Maybe’.

Jim smiles. “We’re gonna have a lot of fun with this list, aren’t we?”

Neal is so very fucking fucked.

***

They do it again, and again and again, and each time it’s different, and glorious, and Neal feels full

and electric until the second he leaves Jim’s house.

But they haven’t had sex yet, and he knows that’s what Jim wants even if he’ll never ask. It plays on

his mind constantly, but Neal can’t bring himself to go there yet. He starts staying over, when they

do things, and going out with Jim for whatever Jim’s decided to do the next day, he’s getting used to

becoming more of a fixture, but he can’t get at the sex with his mind yet, even though he knows how

many times he’s imagined it.

Jim only ever asks once, and mostly as an accident. He gets sleepy after most times, and they’re lying

together at Jim’s house (on the bed, this time).

“D’you... d’you wanna have sex?”

Neal huffs out a laugh. “Do you think you’d be able to stay awake if we did?”

Jim makes a soft, snuffling sound against Neal’s side, like he’s burrowing deeper in the space there.

“Mmmmm, probably not.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Why haven’t we, though? I mean, sex, why haven’t we...”

Neal blinks.

“’S a control thing, right? Like, part of the... thing?”

He wants to say it’s not, he wants to say it’s because I don’t know how to touch you like that when

I want too many things from you and it’s not just the sex for me and you made everything so so

complicated.

“Something like that,” he says, laughing softly again.

“You can say if you’re... not comfortable, with something, yknow?” Jim mumbles into his skin, and

it’s so fucking sweet that Neal wants to cry. He shuffles himself down so he can press his lips to the

top of Jim’s head, bundling him up in one arm and taking the other hand to rest across Jim’s chest.

“I’ll remember.”

“’Kay. You’ll use the safeword if you need it, right?”

“Yeah,” he murmurs into Jim’s hair, and they fall asleep like that, and Neal doesn’t even really mind

when he wakes up there the next morning.

***

He has to use the safeword and it’s awful.

It’s a couple of weeks later and at Jim’s insistence that really, it was okay, he didn’t mind his first

time with a guy being “in the context of this stuff, I’m in this Neal I promise”, Jim is naked and

writhing on Neal’s bed.

Neal said “do you think you could do it? Come without touching yourself, just from my voice, me

speaking to you?” and Jim whined and said “please, please”, already hard, just from that, from those

words alone. Neal said, “come on, Jim, show me,” and Jim did, did everything without question,

everything as asked.

Jim is moaning softly, rutting into the sheets. Neal handcuffed his hands behind his back, just in case

he couldn’t help it, and because Jim seemed to really take to being restricted like that. Neal’s mind

strays to other ways he could play with this fascination of Jim’s when he reminds himself he should

be focusing on where he is right now.

In truth, he doesn’t know at all where he is right now.

“You’re being so good for me, Jim,” he croons. “So good. Look at you, all worked up just from the

sound of me. You can’t get enough of it, can you? So good, Jim, god.”

He can’t decide where to put his body, keeps standing up and wandering around Jim on the bed,

sitting back down and not knowing where his legs should go, standing back up again. It’s beautiful,

and he wants it, but Neal doesn’t feel like he’s in this, he feels strangely out of it and floating.

“Please,” Jim gasps, and Neal stutters on his next words, faltering in his steps. He’s fine, he feels fine.

It’s just different, is all.

“Please,” Jim moans, and Neal sees stars.

“Please, please, Neal, please.”

And Neal can’t breathe.

He doesn’t know where it came from, but he can’t breathe, can’t see, he’s nowhere he’s so nowhere

and he can’t, he can’t.

“Genoa,” he whispers.

It takes a few seconds (all of them breaths Neal can’t keep down) before Jim understands, and then

he’s leaping clumsily off the bed, coming to where Neal is standing and shaking and so, so lost.

“Oh, Neal, god, okay—can you, can you uncuff me? Can you do that? So I can, um—“

Neal’s reaching for the key on autopilot, but his fingers are shaking too hard to get it into the lock on

the handcuffs and he can’t stop making noises that don’t belong to him, and gasping without feeling

the air in his lungs, and he can’t do this.

“It’s okay,” Jim breathes, whipping around in Neal’s fumbling grasp, pressing his forehead to Neal’s

and babbling.

It’s the only point where they’re touching now, and Neal can’t decide if he wants to press himself

into Jim’s everything until Jim’s warmth surrounds him or if he never wants to be touched ever

again. Everything in him is concentrated on that one point of contact, like it’s burning hot when

everywhere else on Neal is ice ice ice.

“It’s okay, Neal, it’s okay. I don’t, um—just breathe, deep—deep breaths, Neal. It’s okay.”

Jim’s still somewhere in subspace, Neal thinks distantly, in some part of his brain the fuzzy panic

hasn’t touched. He has those disconnected sentences he gets when he talks about it, and at the

back of his mind he knows Jim knows about dealing with panic attacks so if he can’t now then he’s

still down. He should bring him back, should be able to bring him back up, that’s Neal’s job it’s his

responsibility. He’s such a bad Dom, he’s so fucking terrible.

“No, no—Neal, you’re not a bad Dom. Come on, Neal, it’ll be okay, please—“

Neal hears himself choke on a sob.

“Okay, or not that. Not please. Come on, Neal, sit down on the bed, breathe, it’s okay.”

They sit, and slowly Jim seems to come back again.

“I want you to take a deep breath, for seven counts, and then hold it for seven, and let it out for

seven. Can you do that for me, Neal? Good, that’s good. Now another, the same way. Good. You’re

in your bedroom, your with me, no one’s hurt, we’re safe, you’re breathing—yep, just like that—

you’re fine.”

Neal follows Jim’s instructions almost without even hearing them, letting the sureness in his

voice soothe something in Neal’s bones. When he can be still for long enough, he reaches around

to unlock the cuffs, and Jim waits for Neal’s nod of consent before placing his hands on Neal’s

shoulders, his chest, his cheeks, whispering meaningless words until Neal’s breathing is slow and

even and his brain only slightly fuzzy.

His head hurts and his teeth hurt and his lips are still buzzing.

“Neal?”

Neal feels like such a fuck-up, he can’t even make eye contact with Jim right now.

“Neal?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry, there’s nothing to apologise for. You—you said yourself sometimes you

don’t know until it happens that something’s not for you, so now we know something about that

wasn’t for you. We can fix it. We can fix it together.”

Neal shakes his head, pressing his lips as hard as he can between his teeth. Such a fucking fuck-up.

“It’s not that. Jim, I—it’s not that.”

“Neal, what is it? You can tell me, whatever it is. Even if it’s nothing to do with, yknow this.” He’s

pressing their foreheads together again, and Neal just can’t take it. “Best friends, remember? You

and me.”

He bursts.

“I don’t know how to do this with you. You’re so—I mean we—Jim I know you, you’re my best

friend. And I’m so used to these two things being separate, this world and the real world, the world

where everyone else I know is. They’ve always been completely different things. And you, it’s like

you’re in two different parts of my head at once, the part that wants this and the part that wants,

fuck, I don’t know, what everyone else has, the stupid parts where you fall in love with a co-worker

because you don’t know how not to—and I can’t push all of you into the part that’s just about the

domination. You’re too big for it, there’s too much of you to fit, it’s like if I try and put you in that

spot I’m... extinguishing all the other parts of you.” He gasps, a ragged breath he didn’t realise he

needed. This is it, Jim’s going to go now, he’s ruined everything.

“And I want to, Jim, I do. But I’m going to fuck it up because I won’t be able to give you the things

you need, and it’s not just about the sex for me, it’s everything, I don’t know how to make them all

fit together in my head. And I...”

He tries to keep going but he’s run out of words. He can’t remember the words to go with this any

more. He’s so tired. He forces himself to look at Jim.

“I just.” Jim pauses. His expression hasn’t changed from the one of understanding, not pity, he’s

been wearing since Neal looked up. “I just want to check something first. You’re not breaking up

with me, are you?”

Neal lets out a bark of laughter which may possibly sound closer to a sob. “God, are we even

together? Is that what this is? No, I’m not breaking things off.”

Jim breathes, Neal sees tension release in his shoulders. He breaks eye contact for the first time,

rubbing fingers over the bridge of his nose. “Good,” he sighs, smiling. “Good, no, that’s good.

Also, when we haven’t been doing this we’ve been pretty consistently, you know, going on dates

together, so I’d say we probably at least a little bit are.”

Neal thinks about milkshakes, and dinner, and walking through the park just because they could.

They were talking about this stuff, yeah, but not always. They were talking as Neal and Jim.

He blinks. He’s been the world’s most colossal idiot.

“We’re dating. We’ve been dating and I didn’t notice.”

Jim chuckles. “All this time you thought you didn’t know how to date someone and be their Dom at

the same time. Why didn’t you tell me? I would have told you you were already doing it.”

Neal laughs, pressing their foreheads closer together, noses brushing. He feels so calm like this, now

he knows where they’re meant to be. Everything goes so quiet in his head when he’s in power, and

right now it feels just like that again, finally, like nothing can touch him. “It wasn’t just that, though,

it was everything with you being my best friend, and until recently, really really heterosexual, and—“

Jim shuts him up with a kiss, and Neal couldn’t care less.

He breaks away almost as quickly, though, worry in his eyes.

“Shit! Sorry, I should have asked if that was okay, I mean you just had a panic attack, shit, I’m so

sorry, Neal.”

It’s been about half an hour since it happened, Neal thinks. Thanks to Jim’s talking, the lightness of

his touch, Neal can barely feel the remnants of it any more. Neal rolls his eyes, says “you idiot, it’s

fine” and then they’re gloriously, gloriously kissing again.

They go down easily, together, horizontal on the bed, with Jim bracketed and cradled in Neal’s arms

as he licks deeper and deeper into Neal’s mouth. Neal’s hands roam, claiming, everywhere from

Jim’s hair, where his tugs earn tiny, beautiful moans, to his (seriously underappreciated) ass, to the

little hollow at the base of his throat where Neal follows finger presses with nips of his teeth. Mine

mine mine, Neal thinks as he touches each one. Mine.

Midway through a kiss, Jim breaks off the gasp, grinning:

“I’d just like to note that at some point in that speech you said you fell in love with me.”

Well, shit.

“Oh god,” Neal groans, burying his face in a pillow. “never let me speak again, ignore literally

everything I say, god, Jim.”

“Come on, Neal, are we going to do this again—“

“Jiiiiiim, stop.”

“Seriously, you—“

“We’re not doing this again, no, I can’t hear you.”

“Neal—“

“Nope.”

“Neal. It’s okay. I fell in love with you, too.”

Neal whips his head back to look up at Jim. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Yes, Neal!” They’re still laughing, can’t keep serious, even when they’re talking about something

like this—everything feels like such a joke, everything’s so light Neal could be floating. He presses

stupid, misplaced kisses on Jim’s lips, and cheek, and chin, and throat above him, smiling so hard

their teeth keep butting together.

“So it seems we’ve had a good few communication failures, then.” Neal can’t stop grinning. Jim is so

here, the weight of him is real and perfect on Neal, and they weren’t there but now they are.

“And I thought you taught me so well,” Jim teases, hamming up a sigh.

Neal lets his grin turn dangerous and animal.

“Didn’t I?”

He flips them before Jim can even process, hears the whoosh of air from his lungs as Jim looks up at

him, stunned.

“Maybe I’ll have to try harder,” he smirks, leaning in.

He feels out of control, but so, so in it.

***

They go back to normal.

Rather, they go back to what’s approximated ‘normal’ for them, for the past few weeks.

Neal knows Jim’s not pressing the sex thing, knows he never was, but now it doesn’t plague at Neal’s

own mind the way it was.

There’s the one time they get each other off grinding against each other, Jim completely naked and

Neal completely clothed because the idea had made Jim gasp and Neal’s grin turn feral with want.

The time when Neal says “don’t come until I tell you, you understand? I’m not going to touch you

until you can come” and Jim doesn’t, he doesn’t, and when Neal finally takes Jim’s cock in hand

Jim whines, pitiful and exquisite. And when Neal takes his own cock out and jerks himself off Jim’s

thighs, claiming him with it, Jim says “yes, yes, yours, please, god yes, Neal, yours only.”

Neal isn’t counting that one as sex though, because “teenagers, Jim, teenagers pull that shit, in the

back of someone’s Daihatsu.”

“Are the teenagers all being told what ‘good boys’ they are while they do it?” Jim counters while

they lie there afterwards, clothed in a sweatshirt of Neal’s which is just too long for him in the

sleeves.

“I suppose not,” Neal concedes. “Probably they don’t last half an hour, either.”

Jim puffs up against Neal’s side, which is ridiculous and endearing.

“You’re impressed with that, huh?”

“I’m proud. You were a very good boy.”

Jim whines. “Neal don’t say that, now I’m gonna end up trying to do it again.”

Neal hits him in the face with a pillow.

They’re working late again one night, only a few people left in the office, and Neal realises he left a

headset in the control room. When he runs back to fetch it he sees Jim there in the studio, dawdling

as he runs a finger along the smooth dark curve of the newsdesk.

He comes around and rests at the studio door, just watching.

“What are you doing?”

Jim only starts a little. “Oh. I had notes, I left here.”

“Is that the only reason why you were in here?”

Jim looks confused, but shrugs. “I guess I was just thinking.”

“About what?” Neal’s inching closer, slowly, crossing the floor to where Jim stands, now knotting his

fingers together.

He looks at Neal for a long time, before shaking his head, almost to himself.

“I really don’t know.”

Neal leans closer then, until Jim has to take a step back. He makes him take another, and another,

until he’s backed up against the desk.

“Do you know what I’m thinking, now?”

Jim swallows. “What are you thinking?”

“How hot it would be to fuck you on this desk.”

Jim gasps. It’s a sharp, ragged intake of air, the shaky, instinctual thing Neal’s been waiting for since

he first wrapped his hands around Jim’s wrists. It’s raw, and unforgivingly honest, and it’s beautiful.

“You’d like that, would you? Me fucking you on the news desk? Knowing every time you came into

work, stepped into the control room, you’d be looking at where I fucked you?”

Jim nods rapidly. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“It would be your first time, too. You’ve never been fucked before, have you?” Neal lets his mouth

curl around every plosive sound, wet c’s crackling in the space between them. “Not like that, at

least. Not in the way most people mean when they say ‘fucked’.”

All Jim seems to be able to do is nod. Neal brings a hand up and strokes along Jim’s neck, hears him

whine softly at the contact, fiddles with the sensitive tendons there.

“It’d be me, I’d be the first. Would you let anyone else, after me?”

“No, Neal, god, just you. Yours.”

“That’s right,” Neal grins, bringing his other hand up to stroke Jim’s cheek. “Mine.”

It looks like Jim thinks Neal will kiss him then, so he doesn’t. Leans a little closer but not all the way.

Jim will always wait to be kissed, like this.

He pauses a little, the hand on Jim’s neck stroking steady circles down to his chest now.

“You know, if they turned the cameras on now, if there were an accident and the cameras started

rolling, and we were being broadcast, everyone would see.” Jim moans, louder than he was before.

“Everyone watching our network would see you and me, how hard you are for me when I’m not

even kissing you.”

“Everyone would see I’m yours,” Jim mumbles hotly. “All yours.”

“Good boy. Would you want them to see? Jim? Would you want them to see that?”

Jim’s “yes” hisses through his teeth, his eye screwed up with how much he wants it.

“Good boy,” Neal repeats, and crushes them together.

The kiss is rough, and without finesse, Neal’s hands are everywhere, claiming everything he can.

Jim’s head falls back and Neal sucks wet kisses into his neck, all the way down the column of his

throat, licking his own name into each one.

“Mine,” he hisses, reaching up to bite at Jim’s earlobe. “Mine. Gonna take such good care of you,

gonna make it so good, because you’re mine.”

He feels rather than sees Jim’s resolve break. He cries out, dropping his head to Neal’s shoulder,

rutting helplessly against Neal’s leg pressed between both of his.

“Neal, please, please, god, can—can we—please—“

“Yup,” Neal says. “Now.” He’s already dragging Jim to the door.

“Thank you,” Jim groans, and Neal can’t do anything but smile.

***

Half an hour later he’s got Jim spread out on his bed, three fingers deep in Jim’s ass, slick with lube,

and crooking teasingly. Jim yelps, cries out every time, and every time it’s Neal, his name, his effect.

He’s tied Jim to the bed by his wrists and ankles, not trusting Jim to have the balance to ride Neal

with the handcuffs on yet. They can work up to it. This is suiting the two of them just fine for now.

Neal had been so worried about it, like there wasn’t time for ‘normal’ sex later. Neal had been so

worried, but it was so simple. Jim wants to be his. Jim wants this.

Neal wants this so bad it hurts.

“Neal,” Jim is begging, nearly howling, his cock flushed and leaking against his stomach. Neal licks at

it, tonguing as well at the head of Jim’s cock. Jim thrashes, straining just a little too hard against the

ties around his legs, almost like he wants to kick free.

“Ah, ah,” Neal tuts, voice even and calm despite the rushing inside him. “Naughty. You were trying

to get free, weren’t you? Trying to touch yourself?”

“No, I—“

“Weren’t you, Jim?”

“Yes, Neal,” Jim sighs, still squirming.

Neal loves these bits, the playful bits, the times when you can bend the lines between pleasure and

punishment. He smiles, the animal smile he knows Jim loves.

“You weren’t supposed to do that, were you? Who’s the only one who gets to touch you now, Jim?”

“You, it’s you.”

“That’s right, only me. And you tried to break the rules, so I’m going to have to punish you, aren’t I?”

Jim let out a strangled little moan, something like a small animal. “Please, yes.”

Neal leans in, right next to Jim’s ear, so quiet Jim has to hold his breath to hear. “I’m gonna fuck you

so hard you see stars.”

Jim keens, a high pitched sounds that slides down pitches before it’s cut off by a groan when Neal

scrapes his teeth over a nipple. He’s worked it out, that Jim gets on the sensory overload, the

manipulations of touch, goes crazy when one part of him is restricted and everywhere else is over- stimulated to make up for it. He’s wondering if Jim would go for a blindfold, in the future.

He slides his fingers out of Jim, shushing him when he whines at the loss. “It’s okay, baby, be patient,

you’re being so good.” He strokes a soothing hand from the side of Jim’s neck, all the way down

his chest and torso, before brushing feather light around his cock, just enough that Jim can feel the

tease, without giving him any relief.

When he slides into Jim, finally—god, finally—it’s like nothing he’s ever had. Jim is tight, and

twitching around Neal’s cock, and Neal can see where the pain and the pleasure mingle on his

features. When he bottoms out it feels like he’s complete, like there’s no other place he should be.

And he knows there isn’t, now.

He fucks Jim, hard, endlessly, hitting the sweet spot inside of him every single time, until Jim can

barely articulate words, Neal’s own name sounding like gibberish on his lips. Jim sobs, and in the

back of his mind Neal is waiting to hear the safeword and stop, but he never does.

It feels like they go forever, and Jim is such a good boy. He tells him so, barely able to speak beyond

pants himself, and Jim moans every time he does.

“You’re amazing, such a good boy,” Neal gasps, words broken up by his strokes, increasingly more

erratic. “Are you ready to come now, Jim?”

Jim whines.

“Jim? Are you?”

He lets out a strangled yelp.

“I need you to tell me Jim, I need you to tell me if you’re ready.”

“I—ah—I...” He can see it on Jim’s face, the effort, through the haze of the orgasm that’s so close.

“Come on, baby, you can do it.”

“Yes,” Jim breathes. “yes, god, Neal, I’m ready, I want to come I’m ready, I—“

“Do it,” Neal groans, reaching for Jim’s cock. It takes one, two strokes and Jim is coming, howling

and choking and letting Neal’s name tumble from his lips. He feels the way Jim clenches around him

and he’s coming too, pressing his forehead to Jim’s quivering stomach as his orgasm rolls over him in

endless waves of pleasure. He’s still moving, gasping into Jim’s skin, when he realises Jim is whining

from the overstimulation.

He presses one last kiss into Jim’s torso before slowly pulling out of him, almost on autopilot. He

feels every buzzing around him and inside him, still stuck in the space he goes to—but his mind can’t

focus on it while he knows Jim’s still down.

Whispering nonsense praise he goes about untying Jim, kissing around each wrist and ankle as

he frees it, running soothing hands over each. When Jim’s completely free he curls in on himself.

He’s still sobbing, soft dry things, but Neal can see the smile on his face even as he tries to make

himself as small as possible. Neal pulls Jim into his arms before he can go too limp, and runs the

washcloth he’d left before they started over Jim’s body, cleaning away all the sweat and come which

is currently making Jim’s skin glisten in the light of the bedside lamp.

“You’re amazing,” he murmurs, “So amazing, thank you, Jim. So good for me, always,

“Mmmm,” is all Jim manages to get out, hummed into Neal’s chest, right above his heart.

Neal marvels, not for the first time, and probably not for the last, a how different Jim is like this, how

opposite from the nervous, brash, hurrying guy Neal sees at work. How much Jim changes every

time Neal drops him down. And Neal adores them both.

“How do you feel, love? Are you good?”

He feels Jim’s smile on his heart. “Yeah. So good. Like, just like... every part of me has you in it.

You’re everywhere. Feel so... safe.”

Neal feels so heavy he could cry.

“How do you feel?”

Neal feels like he could fill the room now, feels big and powerful and right. Like he could conquer

anything. Like he has one thing that’s his, and always will be, and that’s honestly all he needs.

“I feel perfect,” he whispers.

***

They go to the office New Year’s party together. It’s not really the same thing when they work in the

same office, but they go together, and they walk in holding hands, and it’s something new.

It’s been five months they’ve been... together, Neal supposes he can call it that. Five months and

now they’re going to parties together, and this is Neal’s life now.

Maggie sidles up to Neal while Jim is getting drinks, rocks back and forward on her heels next to him.

“So, I guess that’s a real thing, now.”

Neal chuckles. “I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t a real thing, to be honest.”

“I just meant you guys haven’t exactly been open about it.”

Maggie’s changed a lot, Neal thinks. Not just since Africa, but in the past few years. She kept her hair

the way she’d cut it, but she’s grown into the look now. She’s less timid now, still with the steely

determination but now she never feels the need to take something back or stumble over herself.

“No, you’re right,” Neal says. “I mean, for a while I didn’t even know we were... you know...”

Maggie nods. “Jim caught on before you, huh? That’d have to be a first for him.”

Neal winces. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, I don’t care. That was... never something that could or should’ve happened, I

think.”

“You probably would’ve been a good Dom to him,” Neal muses, almost uncomfortably, like Maggie

might still try.

She laughs at his face. “Maybe. We would’ve torn each other apart though, y’know. The two of you,

just... you work. You work quietly. You make it look really easy.”

It isn’t always like that, but Neal grins anyway.

“You know, you should have come to speak to me more when you started getting into the scene, I

would’ve loved to help.”

Maggie shrugs. “I know. I guess I kind of wanted to figure it out myself, y’know?”

Neal nods. “Yeah.”

Jim comes back with drinks, then, handing one to Maggie and one to Neal before he crowds right

into Neal’s space and kisses him.

“Hey you.”

“You’re a bit pissed, aren’t you?” Neal laughs. Jim just giggles.

“Okay that’s my cue to leave,” Maggie chuckles. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, unless I’m invited

to watch!” she calls out as she walks away.

***

Sometimes Jim will fuck Neal, too.

Sometimes Jim will press against him in the shower, fingers trailing up Neal’s stomach, and whisper

“I wanna be inside you so bad”. And Neal will sigh “okay”, reaching for Jim’s neck and reeling him in.

Jim will hold him up against the shower wall and Neal will wrap his legs tight around Jim’s waist. Jim

will fuck up into him, slowly, always slowly, and they’ll move together and moan together and come

together before Jim cradles Neal into his chest and kisses him all over, before they dress each other

and head in to work.

Sometimes it’s just about the sex, about their bodies, about sharing space.

***

They do end up trying the age play thing.

“Daddy,” murmurs Jim, head tucked in the space between their torsos, as Neal fucks slowly into him.

“Daddy, please, more.”

“You want more, baby boy? Yeah? Tell me.”

“Daddy, want you, want...” Jim trails off. “Just, ummmmm, Genoa?”

Neal stops mid stroke.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Jim waves a hand dismissively. “Yeah I’m fine, it’s just... I’m not really feeling this?”

Neal slips out of Jim slowly, patting him on the hip when he hisses at the emptiness. “I know what

you mean, I don’t think it’s working.”

Jim gets an odd look then.

“What? Jim what is it?”

“It’s just—“ There’s a moment of silence, then Jim bursts out laughing.

“What?!” Jim’s cackling underneath now, practically rolling around. Neal grabs a pillow and whacks

him with it. “What is it, you shit!”

“It’s just, it’s just,” Jim wheezes, “I’m pretty sure I’m older than you.”

And just like Neal’s cackling too, thwacking Jim again with the pillow, until they’re play wrestling, an

then they’re kind of just fucking.

It’s the things that don’t work, the things they discover together, which keep them grounded

like this. Keep everything from feeling too serious, even though Neal’s basically moved into Jim’s

apartment now, taken up spaces in his drawers and his day and his life, even though it’s the most

serious thing Neal’s ever done, and it all came out of something as silly as Neal’s stupid showy ex.

It’s hard not to laugh about the whole thing, really.

The next day Neal walks into the newsroom to a nightmare.

“Hey Sampat,” calls Sloane, while the room erupts into giggles. “I hear you make Jim call you ‘daddy’

during sex!”

Neal freezes where he’s standing. There’s no on in the world he knows about the thing last night.

Except...

He turns around to see Jim rubbing at the back of his neck.

“Jim...”

“Well you see, the thing is, Maggie and I like to chat about our experiences sometimes, and I was

sending her an email—“

“Please, god,” Neal runs at his temples. This is not happening. “Please for the love of fuck don’t tell

me you pressed the asterisk.”

“HEY, DADDY!”

Neal whips his head around. Charlie Skinner is waving at him from the next floor up.

“He pressed the asterisk,” Sloane says smugly.

“You are so dead,” Neal says, knowing there’s nothing in the threat but needing to make it anyway.

“Yeah,” Jim shrugs, smiling through his fringe the way he knows Neal both hates and adores. “I

figured you’ll punish me anyway.”

He laughs, because he’s so fucking in love, he can’t even get being angry right. He laughs because

everything is so good right now that something like this couldn’t matter less.

He laughs because it’s Jim, and it’s Neal, and that’s always something they’ve been able to do.

He can handle the rest.

#the newsroom #HBO's The Newsroom #neal/jim #the newsroom fanfiction

itsnotanexchangebutitcanbe

Nov 2, 2013

Title: "Hate is a Strong Word"

Author: TheIrishPepper

Gift for: lecroft

Genre: Romance/Drama

Rating: T

Warnings: Mentions of sexual situations

Wordcount: 1,790

Summary: How doth Will hate MacKenzie? Let us count the ways.

Notes: You asked for some smut with your fluff or some fluff with your smut. I have honestly done very little smut in my time, but I did try to include both elements in my story. :) And there are even Sloan & Charlie mentions because I really wanted to incorporate that for you. I really hope you like it!

Hate is a Strong Word

He hates her.

She’s just taken the last stool at the bar and there’s an hour wait and he’s tired and Goddamnit he

just wants a glass of scotch. Scratch that, he wants the whole bottle.

And there she is, swirling her glass of Shiraz as though she has all the time in the world.

Her stylish pinstriped suit jacket hangs lightly over the high back of the seat in question and her

uncomfortable looking high heels are piled on the wooden floorboards beneath her.

It infuriates him, so he does what any self-serving man in his position would after the kind of day

he’s had.

“I will buy your drink,” he grits out, “if you let me have this seat.”

He didn’t say he would be gentlemanly.

“Excuse me?” she says, twisting around in her stool. She sounds English. He hadn’t expected

that.

“Your drink,” he clarifies, laying a large hand on the sticky counter top. “I will buy it. If you let

me have this seat.”

The corner of her lips moves up a fraction of an inch and her thin eyebrows knit together.

She looks as though she’s going to tell him off, but instead she shakes her brunette head

disbelievingly. “Are you mad?” she asks plainly. “What kind of man walks into a hole-in-the- wall like this and tries to take a seat from a lady?”

Will doesn’t have time for this conversation.

“Look, I’m not always this rude–” he starts to say. He tugs at the tie he didn’t quite manage to

get into a Windsor knot that morning and makes a noise of frustration.

Her snort of incredulity cuts him off. She takes another careful sip of her wine and awaits his

next comment.

“I’m not,” he defends. How is this woman getting under his skin? “Look, my mother really did

raise me better than–”

But it turns out that he doesn’t need to finish his sentence. The bronze-skinned couple to their

right has just stood up to leave. Will quickly takes up residence before anyone else can hurry

over.

“Never mind,” he says, tugging the tie off all together and signaling for the bartender. He orders

two scotches to start; he’ll need several more before the night is up.

As the man hurries to fill his order, Will stops to survey the dingy hovel of a bar.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters under his breath. It’s filled to the brim with chatting individuals,

completely unaware of the catastrophe that’s about to hit the nation. “I just needed a place to

watch the ten-o’-clock.”

“Yeah?” the familiar British voice asks from his left. She’s quieter now, much more sympathetic.

“Yeah,” replies Will, after a beat, struggling for a neutral tone.

The woman puts down her glass and lets her brown eyes survey him for a moment. Will feels

unusually scrutinized. But not necessarily in a bad way.

“Me, too,” she says finally.

He hates her.

They’ve only been seeing each other for a few weeks when an odd problem occurs to Will.

MacKenzie (actually, it’s just Mac now) has a dual degree in political science and mass

communications from the University of Cambridge. She’s an American citizen who loves her

country despite its flaws (“Thank you very much!” she laughs over coffee). She’s up to date on

what’s going on in the world. She reads all the major newspapers, watches all of the networks

worth watching, and she debates with an intensity he hasn’t seen since…well, he doesn’t really

know when.

It takes him a while to pinpoint the problem, but before they sit down to dinner uptown one

evening the thought strikes him like an acorn from a very obvious tree.

She’s too perfect.

He has got to stop this.

Just as he’s about to open his mouth to say God-knows-what, she mentions something that

breaks his train of thought completely.

“Wait,” he says, leaning across the white clothed table. “Are you telling me you’re afraid of

jellyfish, Miss McHale?”

She’s as flawed as him.

He hates her.

He hates the way she walks around in those fitted skirts and ridiculous shoes that make her legs

go on for miles. He hates her sheer business blouses and that damn pinstriped jacket she wears

on cooler New York City days.

He hates that hair clip she always has on her to keep her locks from falling into her lovely face.

He hates that she smiles at everyone, no matter how life is treating her on a given day.

Or maybe, more precisely, he hates the way that others get to share in all these things.

For Will, though, it’s all about the times when he gets to peel away the skirt and discard the

shoes. It’s about the days where she’s pressed against his cool sheets and the buttons on her

blouse are coming undone one by one to reveal that striking expanse of skin.

It’s about her hair tumbling over his dark pillows and her smile she’s smiling just for him and her

lips making that smile reach his own.

It’s about the way she makes him feel.

And oh, does she make him feel.

He hates her.

She’s dripping in the apartment doorway and wearing the same clothes she he saw her in

yesterday. Her brown bangs cling to her forehead and her wet ensemble sticks to every inch of

her skin. The droplets sliding down her cheeks mix with the ones that splashed down on her

outside.

She’s explained everything through the tears. Four months of lies, of secrets, of unfaithful

decisions.

The brown eyes that once drew him in so deeply are now red-rimmed with regret. For the first

time since he met MacKenzie, Will looks away in disgust.

“I’m sorry,” she just keeps saying over and over. “It didn’t mean anything. I love you.”

But these words are empty to him. He should have known better than to fall for this woman. This

brilliant, fiery deathtrap of a woman.

Betrayal and Will McAvoy go together like bourbon and sleeping pills. Both are deadly

combinations.

Both are made for each other.

Will closes the door.

He hates her.

He watches the smile slide off her pale face as she stumbles to stop. She’s in the newsroom.

His newsroom.

He should have been prepared for this. Charlie warned him. His agent warned him. And yet the

sight of her standing there – not an illusion holding a sign, but a genuine MacKenzie McHale –

brings back the pain as a freshly and as vividly as if she left yesterday.

“Hi, Will,” she ventures. She stands stock-still. Those big brown eyes blink up at him. “It’s good

to see you.”

Rather than respond, he fumes silently.

This isn’t fair. She doesn’t get to march back into his life with her “Hi, Will”s and act like

everything’s just dandy. She doesn’t get to come play EP to his Anchor and reminisce about the

old days. She doesn’t get to smile at him with those beautiful lips of hers.

She tries desperately to fill the silence by introducing someone outside his line of sight. He

doesn’t care. He doesn’t blink.

“Let’s go in my office.”

“Sure.”

She doesn’t get a say in his life. Not anymore. He’s in charge. He’s going to show her.

But first, he needs a cigarette.

He hates her.

“You forgot for a minute that you’d made a pledge to be mad at me for the rest of your life.”

Every time he moves the gearshift into neutral, she goes and says something that revs his anger

back into drive.

In an uncharacteristic instant, he carefully closes the glass door to her office and in a livid

whisper, voices it. Will unleashes his bitter feelings on the woman who can never understand

how severely she broke his heart.

He will never know how she snuck around for all those months, while continuing to converse

with him every day. He will never know how she managed to crawl into bed with another man

night after night, while kissing him on the cheek every morning.

He will never know whether she actually loved him at all.

“Sometimes,” he says, breathing through his nose and striving to maintain what little’s left of his

control, “you’re not as cute as you think you are.”

He hates her.

He’s out of breath because his heart’s trying to sink down from his throat and his relief at finding

her is overwhelming.

He pulls her aside in the studio and stumbles through the story about the kid who rips paper (or

at least he thinks he does). If he’s being honest, he’s not sure whether anything he’s saying is

coming out coherently.

The expression on Mac’s face tells him probably not.

Nevertheless, Will plows on and suddenly, the Tiffany box is coming out of his pocket and

sliding between his sweaty palms. In a frantic move, he pinches the diamond between his

shaking fingers and out slips a jumbled proposal.

“I– I said ‘Will you marry me?’ and before that, I said, ‘I’m in love with you.’”

She lets him babble for several minutes and as the panic in his chest builds like the number of

drone strikes Sloan has been reporting, Mac says yes.

And suddenly, Will can feel again.

He hates her.

He’s on his third scotch when she comes striding into the crowded bar.

“You’re late,” he says – and she smiles, as though she has all the time in the world.

She’s wearing that beaten up, old pinstriped suit jacket that she insists brings her good luck. (He

insists it takes her sense of style back to early 2005.)

He’s been sitting there for over an hour, but he says nothing about this as he tugs at the stool to

his right-hand side.

“I’ll buy you a drink if you take a seat.”

“Excuse me?” she says, amused, as she shrugs out of her jacket and takes the proffered stool.

This is old hat for them; a tradition of sorts. It’s a reminder that while some things change, others

stay very much the same.

She tugs at the tie she helped him Windsor this morning to drop a kiss on his smiling lips. The

diamond on her left hand sparkles brightly in the light from the overhanging television.

She still orders a glass of Shiraz. She still kicks off her high-heeled shoes. They still await the

ten-o’-clock news.

“I forgot how much I hate this place,” says Will, relaxing and resting his arm on the back of her

high-backed stool.

“Me, too,” says Mac, grinning ear-to-ear.

He hates her.

But that doesn't mean he’s ever stopped loving her.

#the newsroom #HBO's The Newsroom #will/mac #the newsroom fanfiction #the newsroom fic exchange

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