no such thing as romance (pg-13, neal/kate)
title: no such thing as romance
pairing: neal caffrey/kate moreau
rating: pg-13
summary: five things that never happened to neal and kate (but totally could have)
i.
There is no such thing as romance.
But there are hospital waiting rooms and high school girls and cups of coffee.
A textbook lays open across her lap. Elements of Literature. The first two sentences are highlighted in bright purple. But instead of turning the pages she alternates between watching the local news (there was a house fire earlier in the day and two people are in critical condition) and the hospital staff plunking coins into the hallway vending machine (waiting for bags of potato chips and packs of gum and candy bars).
Neal moves to stand beside her. He stands awkward and silent and puts his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt. (Columbia Track and Field across his chest in blocky, white letters that fade with every wash. He wonders if drop-outs still have sportswear privileges, because to him it kind of feels like a cheat.)
“Who you in for?” he asks.
The girl shrugs and doesn’t look at him when she answers, “My aunt. She was in a car accident.” He nods and she lifts her pen to draw a flowery border in a corner of her book. She watches as the closed captioned news anchor breaks a story about some dirty politician and then glances over her shoulder. “What about you?”
He doesn’t say that his mom is sick. He doesn’t say that he’s been in and out of this waiting room for over a month. He doesn’t say that he’s eaten nothing but hospital food for the better part of the week. He doesn’t say that he has medical bills and almost no insurance coverage and that somebody is probably going to need to pay the rent soon or he’s not going to have an apartment.
He doesn’t say that his life is a literal heartbeat away from turning into a movie of the week.
He doesn’t say any of that. He just sticks out a hand and says, “I’m Neal. Hi.”
“Kate.”
He buys her cup of cafeteria coffee. Outside the hospital doors is cold and the steam from their cups mixes with the fog from their mouths as ambulances drive by in a rush of red lights and sirens.
(Somewhere in between sips and smiles, she smokes a cigarette.)
Neal smirks and with a one-shouldered shrug he asks, “How old are you, anyway?”
Kate just sips her coffee and smiles.
ii.
Neal loves how Kate looks in his bed. Coquettish smiles and fishnet stockings. Kate is like every femme fatale from every trashy drugstore paperback.
He likes to think that at least some of the time it isn’t all an act.
There’s the sudden sound of a gunshot. (It echoes so loud that his ears pulse and ring.)
Kate laughs. And she sounds distant and hollow even though she’s close enough that Neal can feel her mouth pressed to the side of his face. Her teeth scrape against his chin when she says, “Let’s get out of here, baby.”
Her finger is still on the trigger. There’s blood on the ground.
Neal huffs out an annoyed grunt. “You didn’t have to shoot him, Kate.”
“And I don’t have to let you play tag-along, Neal. I don’t have to give you any of the cut. And I really don’t have to fuck you.” She says all this with a smile while she delicately wipes her prints off of the gun with the sleeve of her trench coat. “Haves and wants are two very different things. I would learn the distinction.”
When they’re back at the apartment, he notices a perfect red lip print on his left cheek. It looks like a brand. She has him.
“Bought you a present.”
Kate drops the hat on top of Neal’s bed-mussed hair and then arranges herself on his lap so her legs straddle his hips. She’s wearing one of his shirts from yesterday’s laundry pile and a practiced naughty grin.
“Do you like it?” she asks.
Neal nods approvingly and flicks the brim of the felt fedora with his thumb. Kate lets out a low laugh and then leans forward to press a messy kiss on the corner of his mouth. Her hands quickly tug open his belt buckle and then disappear down the front of his shorts as her lips close around his earlobe.
“Very Clyde,” she says in a half-serious whisper.
Neal’s fingers lazily move up her bare thighs and under the tails of his stolen shirt. And when his fingers only find more soft skin (and then hot and wet heat) he says, “No panties? Very Bonnie.”
iii.
She lives with Neal after her dad dies.
(“Neal will take care of you. You trust him with your life and he’ll do the same. Okay, babydoll?”)
Neal gets himself into trouble. Kate gets herself into more.
He finds a new apartment and she skips finals and junior prom. A new life on the run. She trades everything for a smile and a promise. Neal thinks that he gets the better end of the deal.
Blood splashes onto porcelain veneer and then sluggishly swirls down a rusted drain. All he sees is bright red on stark white: Jackson Pollock for the macabre. Neal feels his chest constrict; every part of his body tight and tense and heavy with fear.
Kate spits another mouthful of blood into the sink.
Neal pulls her hair off of her face and into a small knot around his fingers, keeping his other hand low on her back and moving his thumb in slow and concentrated circles beneath the hem of her shirt like she does for him when he’s sick.
“Stop hovering.”
“I’m not hovering,” he says.
But he takes a step back. He lets his hand fall from her back and untangles his fingers from her hair, choosing to twist his hands together into a tight fist instead. Sitting down on the closed toilet seat, he stares at the bathroom floor. There are a few drops of blood nestled in between grout lines and muddy footprints. He sighs.
“How much do you owe?” he asks.
“Not a lot, okay?”
The fact that “not a lot” almost got her back teeth forcibly removed from her mouth makes him want to vomit.
Kate turns on the faucet and lowers her mouth to drink from the stream. When she lifts her head, water drips from her chin and down to her shirt and leaves wet stains next to dark patches of blood. It makes Neal think of ink blot tests. And he’s trying to decide if the combined stains look more like the shadowy curves of a woman’s naked body or a gun about to fire (and those two things are just different enough to be the same), when Kate crawls into his lap. She sits with the backs of her knees touching the tops of his thighs and arms snug around his middle like child asking to be read a bedtime story.
“Kate. How much?”
Kate lets her fingers curl deep into Neal’s shirt until her knuckles fit into the sharp ridges of his shoulder blades. Her head falls to his shoulder and she presses her cheek to his throat. She can feel the vibrations from his skin to hers when he hums disapprovingly.
“You can hover now,” she says.
And she smiles because she knows how beautiful he thinks she is when she smiles.
“Kate.”
“I love that you take care of me,” she says.
Neal holds her hand until she falls asleep. Her hand is so much smaller than his and the largeness of his long fingers wrapped around hers startles him a little. If he squeezes too hard, she could break. (And he knows this is untrue, because she somewhere along the way she got tough.)
He watches her breathing, in and out. Her chest lifts slowly and her ribcage expands. And slower still her chest falls and her ribcage contracts. Her mouth stays closed and her body stays still, but her eyelids twitch as she dreams.
When she’s sleeping, Kate looks her age. She looks like a girl who’s about to graduate and move off to college and start her life off right. Neal isn’t sure if it was him or her dad who took that from her and he wonders if she’s sad about it. (He likes to think that she isn’t.)
And if he puts his head next to hers, so his nose touches her cheek, Kate looks like a girl from a fairytale. Maybe like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White or some other girl with red lips and pink cheeks who’s just waiting to be rescued.
iv.
Neal is only fourteen when Dr. Moreau brings him home.
He gets told to wait in the kitchen while the doctor talks to his wife about Neal staying with them.
Dr. Moreau gently ruffles Neal’s hair and then says with a wink, “Don’t worry. She’s gonna love you, sport.”
Neal nods and sits down at the kitchen counter as Dr. Moreau leaves the room. The barstools in the Moreau’s kitchen are high and Neal’s feet don’t quite rest comfortably on the second rung, so he plants the heels of his sneakers against the legs of the stool. His mom says that he just hasn’t had a good growth spurt yet and before he’s knows it, he’ll shoot up like a weed. But Neal thinks that it’d be okay if he stayed smaller. There’re more places to hide.
His left foot slips and the rubber sole of his shoe sliding down the painted wood lets out a high squeak. He starts at the sudden shock of noise in the quiet kitchen and then scratches at the tops of his knuckles, where the plaster of the cast stops at his fingers.
Over the low hum of the refrigerator, Neal can hear fragmented bits of conversation between Dr. Moreau and the doctor’s wife.
(“Pretty bad.” “Don’t know how long.”)
The kitchen door opens and as it slowly swings back and forth (open, closed, open, closed) Neal catches more of what Dr. Moreau says.
(Open: “Just a kid”. Closed. Open: “Guy had a baseball bat”. Closed.)
A girl a few years younger than Neal stares at him from the other side of the room. She’s wearing a school uniform, the kind with a necktie and a plaid skirt and knee socks. One sock has fallen down around her ankle and reveals a patchwork of band-aids on her left knee.
Neal clears his throat. “Hi.”
“Who’re you?” she asks.
“Um.”
She rolls her eyes at his lack of an answer and walks over to the refrigerator to pull out a carton of juice. When she reaches up to get a glass from the cupboard above the sink she has to stand on tiptoe because she’s just a couple of inches too short, even in polished Mary Janes. Her other sock falls down in the process and she gives a frustrated sigh before she yanks both of them back up around her knees.
“Did you just move here or something?”
“Not really.” He moves his shoulders up in a small shrug and then says, “Well, maybe. I guess.”
She nods a little dismissively and then pours herself some juice and plops down next to him. There are two braids on either side of her face and she flips one over her shoulder and then leans forward and purses her lips.
“Do you, like, have a name?”
“Uh, Neal.” He tries to smile, but his bottom lip is torn up pretty bad, so it hurts to move it at all. He settles for scratching at his knuckles some more.
She smiles for him and holds up her glass and asks, “Want some?”
Neal nods. “Yeah, sure. Thanks.”
“No problem, Uh-Neal.” She stands and grabs another glass, both socks falling down again, and then turns and says, “I’m Katie, by the way.”
On summer afternoons when it’s too hot to even move, they sit with their legs hanging over the side of the pool (the Moreau’s unsurprisingly have a home in the Hamptons) and drink iced-tea out of tall glasses. Neal slowly swirls one leg in the water and watches as the small waves ripple around his knees. Kate is using the tips of her toes to push a half-inflated beach ball back and forth when she turns towards him and slides her sunglasses down her nose.
“You know,” she says, like she has a secret, “I asked my dad to pinkie swear that we could keep you.”
Neal laughs. “Keep me? Like a dog?”
Kate shrugs and Dr. Moreau sticks his head out the back door and calls out, “Hey, sport! Grab the kitten, will you? We’re going for ice cream!”
Kate pushes her sunglasses back up and smiles.
“Meow.”
Kate grows up pretty and spoiled. Neal just grows up.
She sits on the corner of his desk with her legs crossed one on top of the other. Her skirt is bunched up around the middle of her thighs and her socks are somewhere nearer to her ankles than her knees. She uses a ballpoint pen to draw a long and creeping vine of blue ivy that winds up and around one leg. Neal has an advanced calculus final tomorrow and a history paper due next week and Kate keeps accidently bumping her elbow into his every time she adds a new leaf.
“Kate. Do you mind?”
She smiles sweetly and twists her hair into a sloppy ponytail, throwing it over one shoulder.
“Mind what?” she asks.
“I’m trying to study, Kate.”
“Like you’re not a total nerd already.”
“Katie. Please?”
Kate huffs out a sigh and slowly slides off of the desk and then re-pins her skirt together and pulls up her socks. Before she leaves, she bends down and wraps her arms around his neck and presses a soft kiss to his cheek. She touches her lips to his ear and whispers, “Don’t study too hard.”
Sometimes Neal wakes up in the middle of the night and finds Kate curled around him. He sleeps better with her nearby.
“You’ll come back, right?” she asks.
She’s wearing her dad’s old John Hopkins sweatshirt and a pair of navy knee socks. When she moves her leg over top of his, Neal can see a flash of yellow cotton panties. He leaves for Brown tomorrow.
“Neal?” she prompts.
Neal blinks tiredly and sighs. “Katie.”
“Promise,” she says. She grabs his little finger with hers, linking them together. “Pinkie swear.”
“Kate, I’m too old for promises and pinkie swears.”
“Pinkie swear,” she says again.
And Neal can’t help but love her. She’s his family now. He smiles, kisses the tip of her nose, hooks his little finger tighter onto hers, and says, “I pinkie swear.”
v.
Neal Caffrey is a thief.
Kate Moreau is a pickpocket.
Both of them are artists. Neither of them is a criminal. (He’s sure that somewhere there’s a distinction. But probably not.)
He finds her on a diner off of 6th avenue. A turkey club sits on a plate in front of her. She holds a deli pickle in one hand and waves it in the air absently between taking small and distracted bites. In her other hand is a tattered paperback. Catch-22. A book about an impossible situation. Neal can appreciate that.
Neal slides into the diner booth. He takes his hat off and sets it down on the table and then folds his hands together and smiles at her. (And he knows that she can see him sitting there.)
She doesn’t look up from the page as she half-snarls at him, “Excuse me, can I help you?”
“Yeah,” he says. And he can’t help but smile wider. The girl’s got fast hands and a mouth to match. He clears his throat and continues on, “You can tell me how you did that lift in the subway.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She pops the last bite of pickle into her mouth and then wipes her hand on her jeans before she turns the page. Her eyes lift up to his face for about ten or so seconds and then she goes back to her book. “You can pick up your hat and leave now. Thanks.”
“Sure. After you give me my wallet back.”
She snorts. “I don’t have your wallet.”
“Okay.” He shrugs lightly and then reaches into his suit pocket and pulls out a small gold ring. He holds it loosely in his hand and asks, “You missing something?”
Her thumb pushes against the third finger on her left hand. When she finds nothing, she slowly lays her book down on the table and Neal can see panic hidden beneath the smirk that she suddenly flashes.
“What do you want for it?”
“Fair trade: wallet for the ring.”
She pulls her purse out from underneath the table and fishes out Neal’s wallet. Neal happily drops the ring into her other hand and is slightly amused at how quickly she slips the ring back on her finger. He’s fenced enough jewellery to know that that ring isn’t worth anything and it makes him wonder exactly what her attachment to it is.
He grabs his hat and slides back out of the booth and says, “Maybe you’ll teach me that lift some time, huh?”
“Yeah, sure. Maybe.”
As he starts to walk away, she touches her fingers to the small strip of skin between his shirt sleeve and the band of his watch. He stops.
“Hey, what’s your name?” she asks.
He laughs. “Caffrey. What’s yours?”
She smiles and lifts her fingers from his wrist, moving her hand so it fits snugly against his. “I’m Kate.”
It’s the beginning of a very beautiful friendship.
pairing: neal caffrey/kate moreau
rating: pg-13
summary: five things that never happened to neal and kate (but totally could have)
i.
There is no such thing as romance.
But there are hospital waiting rooms and high school girls and cups of coffee.
A textbook lays open across her lap. Elements of Literature. The first two sentences are highlighted in bright purple. But instead of turning the pages she alternates between watching the local news (there was a house fire earlier in the day and two people are in critical condition) and the hospital staff plunking coins into the hallway vending machine (waiting for bags of potato chips and packs of gum and candy bars).
Neal moves to stand beside her. He stands awkward and silent and puts his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt. (Columbia Track and Field across his chest in blocky, white letters that fade with every wash. He wonders if drop-outs still have sportswear privileges, because to him it kind of feels like a cheat.)
“Who you in for?” he asks.
The girl shrugs and doesn’t look at him when she answers, “My aunt. She was in a car accident.” He nods and she lifts her pen to draw a flowery border in a corner of her book. She watches as the closed captioned news anchor breaks a story about some dirty politician and then glances over her shoulder. “What about you?”
He doesn’t say that his mom is sick. He doesn’t say that he’s been in and out of this waiting room for over a month. He doesn’t say that he’s eaten nothing but hospital food for the better part of the week. He doesn’t say that he has medical bills and almost no insurance coverage and that somebody is probably going to need to pay the rent soon or he’s not going to have an apartment.
He doesn’t say that his life is a literal heartbeat away from turning into a movie of the week.
He doesn’t say any of that. He just sticks out a hand and says, “I’m Neal. Hi.”
“Kate.”
He buys her cup of cafeteria coffee. Outside the hospital doors is cold and the steam from their cups mixes with the fog from their mouths as ambulances drive by in a rush of red lights and sirens.
(Somewhere in between sips and smiles, she smokes a cigarette.)
Neal smirks and with a one-shouldered shrug he asks, “How old are you, anyway?”
Kate just sips her coffee and smiles.
ii.
Neal loves how Kate looks in his bed. Coquettish smiles and fishnet stockings. Kate is like every femme fatale from every trashy drugstore paperback.
He likes to think that at least some of the time it isn’t all an act.
There’s the sudden sound of a gunshot. (It echoes so loud that his ears pulse and ring.)
Kate laughs. And she sounds distant and hollow even though she’s close enough that Neal can feel her mouth pressed to the side of his face. Her teeth scrape against his chin when she says, “Let’s get out of here, baby.”
Her finger is still on the trigger. There’s blood on the ground.
Neal huffs out an annoyed grunt. “You didn’t have to shoot him, Kate.”
“And I don’t have to let you play tag-along, Neal. I don’t have to give you any of the cut. And I really don’t have to fuck you.” She says all this with a smile while she delicately wipes her prints off of the gun with the sleeve of her trench coat. “Haves and wants are two very different things. I would learn the distinction.”
When they’re back at the apartment, he notices a perfect red lip print on his left cheek. It looks like a brand. She has him.
“Bought you a present.”
Kate drops the hat on top of Neal’s bed-mussed hair and then arranges herself on his lap so her legs straddle his hips. She’s wearing one of his shirts from yesterday’s laundry pile and a practiced naughty grin.
“Do you like it?” she asks.
Neal nods approvingly and flicks the brim of the felt fedora with his thumb. Kate lets out a low laugh and then leans forward to press a messy kiss on the corner of his mouth. Her hands quickly tug open his belt buckle and then disappear down the front of his shorts as her lips close around his earlobe.
“Very Clyde,” she says in a half-serious whisper.
Neal’s fingers lazily move up her bare thighs and under the tails of his stolen shirt. And when his fingers only find more soft skin (and then hot and wet heat) he says, “No panties? Very Bonnie.”
iii.
She lives with Neal after her dad dies.
(“Neal will take care of you. You trust him with your life and he’ll do the same. Okay, babydoll?”)
Neal gets himself into trouble. Kate gets herself into more.
He finds a new apartment and she skips finals and junior prom. A new life on the run. She trades everything for a smile and a promise. Neal thinks that he gets the better end of the deal.
Blood splashes onto porcelain veneer and then sluggishly swirls down a rusted drain. All he sees is bright red on stark white: Jackson Pollock for the macabre. Neal feels his chest constrict; every part of his body tight and tense and heavy with fear.
Kate spits another mouthful of blood into the sink.
Neal pulls her hair off of her face and into a small knot around his fingers, keeping his other hand low on her back and moving his thumb in slow and concentrated circles beneath the hem of her shirt like she does for him when he’s sick.
“Stop hovering.”
“I’m not hovering,” he says.
But he takes a step back. He lets his hand fall from her back and untangles his fingers from her hair, choosing to twist his hands together into a tight fist instead. Sitting down on the closed toilet seat, he stares at the bathroom floor. There are a few drops of blood nestled in between grout lines and muddy footprints. He sighs.
“How much do you owe?” he asks.
“Not a lot, okay?”
The fact that “not a lot” almost got her back teeth forcibly removed from her mouth makes him want to vomit.
Kate turns on the faucet and lowers her mouth to drink from the stream. When she lifts her head, water drips from her chin and down to her shirt and leaves wet stains next to dark patches of blood. It makes Neal think of ink blot tests. And he’s trying to decide if the combined stains look more like the shadowy curves of a woman’s naked body or a gun about to fire (and those two things are just different enough to be the same), when Kate crawls into his lap. She sits with the backs of her knees touching the tops of his thighs and arms snug around his middle like child asking to be read a bedtime story.
“Kate. How much?”
Kate lets her fingers curl deep into Neal’s shirt until her knuckles fit into the sharp ridges of his shoulder blades. Her head falls to his shoulder and she presses her cheek to his throat. She can feel the vibrations from his skin to hers when he hums disapprovingly.
“You can hover now,” she says.
And she smiles because she knows how beautiful he thinks she is when she smiles.
“Kate.”
“I love that you take care of me,” she says.
Neal holds her hand until she falls asleep. Her hand is so much smaller than his and the largeness of his long fingers wrapped around hers startles him a little. If he squeezes too hard, she could break. (And he knows this is untrue, because she somewhere along the way she got tough.)
He watches her breathing, in and out. Her chest lifts slowly and her ribcage expands. And slower still her chest falls and her ribcage contracts. Her mouth stays closed and her body stays still, but her eyelids twitch as she dreams.
When she’s sleeping, Kate looks her age. She looks like a girl who’s about to graduate and move off to college and start her life off right. Neal isn’t sure if it was him or her dad who took that from her and he wonders if she’s sad about it. (He likes to think that she isn’t.)
And if he puts his head next to hers, so his nose touches her cheek, Kate looks like a girl from a fairytale. Maybe like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White or some other girl with red lips and pink cheeks who’s just waiting to be rescued.
iv.
Neal is only fourteen when Dr. Moreau brings him home.
He gets told to wait in the kitchen while the doctor talks to his wife about Neal staying with them.
Dr. Moreau gently ruffles Neal’s hair and then says with a wink, “Don’t worry. She’s gonna love you, sport.”
Neal nods and sits down at the kitchen counter as Dr. Moreau leaves the room. The barstools in the Moreau’s kitchen are high and Neal’s feet don’t quite rest comfortably on the second rung, so he plants the heels of his sneakers against the legs of the stool. His mom says that he just hasn’t had a good growth spurt yet and before he’s knows it, he’ll shoot up like a weed. But Neal thinks that it’d be okay if he stayed smaller. There’re more places to hide.
His left foot slips and the rubber sole of his shoe sliding down the painted wood lets out a high squeak. He starts at the sudden shock of noise in the quiet kitchen and then scratches at the tops of his knuckles, where the plaster of the cast stops at his fingers.
Over the low hum of the refrigerator, Neal can hear fragmented bits of conversation between Dr. Moreau and the doctor’s wife.
(“Pretty bad.” “Don’t know how long.”)
The kitchen door opens and as it slowly swings back and forth (open, closed, open, closed) Neal catches more of what Dr. Moreau says.
(Open: “Just a kid”. Closed. Open: “Guy had a baseball bat”. Closed.)
A girl a few years younger than Neal stares at him from the other side of the room. She’s wearing a school uniform, the kind with a necktie and a plaid skirt and knee socks. One sock has fallen down around her ankle and reveals a patchwork of band-aids on her left knee.
Neal clears his throat. “Hi.”
“Who’re you?” she asks.
“Um.”
She rolls her eyes at his lack of an answer and walks over to the refrigerator to pull out a carton of juice. When she reaches up to get a glass from the cupboard above the sink she has to stand on tiptoe because she’s just a couple of inches too short, even in polished Mary Janes. Her other sock falls down in the process and she gives a frustrated sigh before she yanks both of them back up around her knees.
“Did you just move here or something?”
“Not really.” He moves his shoulders up in a small shrug and then says, “Well, maybe. I guess.”
She nods a little dismissively and then pours herself some juice and plops down next to him. There are two braids on either side of her face and she flips one over her shoulder and then leans forward and purses her lips.
“Do you, like, have a name?”
“Uh, Neal.” He tries to smile, but his bottom lip is torn up pretty bad, so it hurts to move it at all. He settles for scratching at his knuckles some more.
She smiles for him and holds up her glass and asks, “Want some?”
Neal nods. “Yeah, sure. Thanks.”
“No problem, Uh-Neal.” She stands and grabs another glass, both socks falling down again, and then turns and says, “I’m Katie, by the way.”
On summer afternoons when it’s too hot to even move, they sit with their legs hanging over the side of the pool (the Moreau’s unsurprisingly have a home in the Hamptons) and drink iced-tea out of tall glasses. Neal slowly swirls one leg in the water and watches as the small waves ripple around his knees. Kate is using the tips of her toes to push a half-inflated beach ball back and forth when she turns towards him and slides her sunglasses down her nose.
“You know,” she says, like she has a secret, “I asked my dad to pinkie swear that we could keep you.”
Neal laughs. “Keep me? Like a dog?”
Kate shrugs and Dr. Moreau sticks his head out the back door and calls out, “Hey, sport! Grab the kitten, will you? We’re going for ice cream!”
Kate pushes her sunglasses back up and smiles.
“Meow.”
Kate grows up pretty and spoiled. Neal just grows up.
She sits on the corner of his desk with her legs crossed one on top of the other. Her skirt is bunched up around the middle of her thighs and her socks are somewhere nearer to her ankles than her knees. She uses a ballpoint pen to draw a long and creeping vine of blue ivy that winds up and around one leg. Neal has an advanced calculus final tomorrow and a history paper due next week and Kate keeps accidently bumping her elbow into his every time she adds a new leaf.
“Kate. Do you mind?”
She smiles sweetly and twists her hair into a sloppy ponytail, throwing it over one shoulder.
“Mind what?” she asks.
“I’m trying to study, Kate.”
“Like you’re not a total nerd already.”
“Katie. Please?”
Kate huffs out a sigh and slowly slides off of the desk and then re-pins her skirt together and pulls up her socks. Before she leaves, she bends down and wraps her arms around his neck and presses a soft kiss to his cheek. She touches her lips to his ear and whispers, “Don’t study too hard.”
Sometimes Neal wakes up in the middle of the night and finds Kate curled around him. He sleeps better with her nearby.
“You’ll come back, right?” she asks.
She’s wearing her dad’s old John Hopkins sweatshirt and a pair of navy knee socks. When she moves her leg over top of his, Neal can see a flash of yellow cotton panties. He leaves for Brown tomorrow.
“Neal?” she prompts.
Neal blinks tiredly and sighs. “Katie.”
“Promise,” she says. She grabs his little finger with hers, linking them together. “Pinkie swear.”
“Kate, I’m too old for promises and pinkie swears.”
“Pinkie swear,” she says again.
And Neal can’t help but love her. She’s his family now. He smiles, kisses the tip of her nose, hooks his little finger tighter onto hers, and says, “I pinkie swear.”
v.
Neal Caffrey is a thief.
Kate Moreau is a pickpocket.
Both of them are artists. Neither of them is a criminal. (He’s sure that somewhere there’s a distinction. But probably not.)
He finds her on a diner off of 6th avenue. A turkey club sits on a plate in front of her. She holds a deli pickle in one hand and waves it in the air absently between taking small and distracted bites. In her other hand is a tattered paperback. Catch-22. A book about an impossible situation. Neal can appreciate that.
Neal slides into the diner booth. He takes his hat off and sets it down on the table and then folds his hands together and smiles at her. (And he knows that she can see him sitting there.)
She doesn’t look up from the page as she half-snarls at him, “Excuse me, can I help you?”
“Yeah,” he says. And he can’t help but smile wider. The girl’s got fast hands and a mouth to match. He clears his throat and continues on, “You can tell me how you did that lift in the subway.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She pops the last bite of pickle into her mouth and then wipes her hand on her jeans before she turns the page. Her eyes lift up to his face for about ten or so seconds and then she goes back to her book. “You can pick up your hat and leave now. Thanks.”
“Sure. After you give me my wallet back.”
She snorts. “I don’t have your wallet.”
“Okay.” He shrugs lightly and then reaches into his suit pocket and pulls out a small gold ring. He holds it loosely in his hand and asks, “You missing something?”
Her thumb pushes against the third finger on her left hand. When she finds nothing, she slowly lays her book down on the table and Neal can see panic hidden beneath the smirk that she suddenly flashes.
“What do you want for it?”
“Fair trade: wallet for the ring.”
She pulls her purse out from underneath the table and fishes out Neal’s wallet. Neal happily drops the ring into her other hand and is slightly amused at how quickly she slips the ring back on her finger. He’s fenced enough jewellery to know that that ring isn’t worth anything and it makes him wonder exactly what her attachment to it is.
He grabs his hat and slides back out of the booth and says, “Maybe you’ll teach me that lift some time, huh?”
“Yeah, sure. Maybe.”
As he starts to walk away, she touches her fingers to the small strip of skin between his shirt sleeve and the band of his watch. He stops.
“Hey, what’s your name?” she asks.
He laughs. “Caffrey. What’s yours?”
She smiles and lifts her fingers from his wrist, moving her hand so it fits snugly against his. “I’m Kate.”
It’s the beginning of a very beautiful friendship.