Four White Collar ficlets
mini free-write based on ~personal experience; G, Neal/Alex, 67 words
Neal burned his tongue on coffee this morning. He scrapes the raw tip over his teeth because it's a new sensation and weirdly doesn't hurt. He doesn't do this when anyone is looking, though, because pushing his tongue out like that probably does weird things to his mouth. Neal doesn't like having weird things done to his mouth, and that's why he and Alex didn't work out.
for the prompt 'Neal in a blindfold' for Thrice because his eyes scare her; PG-13, Neal/Sara, 555 words
"You're doing this backwards," says Neal, then, "Ow."
"Sorry," says Sara. She loosens the knot and smooths his hair carefully away from the blindfold before she ties it again. "If I had suggested this for sex, you would've made a face at me."
Neal doesn't answer. He really doesn't want to get into a discussion about the distinction between a blindfold and threatening someone with a baton, and he definitely doesn't want to mention what happened the last time he was blindfolded in bed. Sara would probably call him a wimp, just like Alex did.
(Or maybe she wouldn't. Neal won't think about it anymore because it's a moot point.)
Sara slides her finger under the edges of the blindfold, checking that his hair isn't tangled up in the knot or else that it's not too tight, like a dog collar. Then she pats him on the shoulder and presses him back into the pillows again.
"Are we really at the laptop-in-bed stage already?" he asks. They've already had this conversation, though his first rally was more about whether or not he could be trusted to keep his eyes off her super-secret work data (conclusion: no.)
"I don't feel like leaving yet," Sara says lightly. Her knee jostles into his hip as she settles in. The laptop whirs as it wakes up.
Neal turns slightly onto his side-she can't suspect him at looking at the screen; she put the blindfold on herself-and trails his fingers over a body part that turns out to be her belly, then the scoop of her hipbone. He presses down with the edge of his hand, like he's smoothing the inside of a bowl on a potter's wheel. "Because it's so cozy here?" he asks.
"Because I'd have to put on pants," she clarifies.
"Oh, we can't have that," Neal says. He doesn't know if she's looking at his face or not, but he smiles anyway, because it'll be audible in his voice.
"You're distracting me," Sara whispers. She moves his hand over to his own hipbone and lets him tangle their fingers together for a little bit. He strokes the cup of her palm; a sensitive spot on most people, with all the creases. "Neal," she says again.
"I'm not doing anything," Neal says, with obvious faux innocence.
"Go to sleep," says Sara, and pats his belly. The way her fingertips slide along the indentations between his abs is just coincidence, he's sure.
He doesn't sleep but he dozes a little bit, listening to the desultory clack of keyboard keys and the little hums Sara makes when she's thinking too hard to notice.
He notices-albeit a few seconds too late-when she digs out a legal pad and rests it on his stomach.
"Cardboard's scratchy," he mumbles.
"Aw, poor baby," Sara replies, mocking him on autopilot. A second later she pulls the sheet up under the pad. The threadcount is decadent, of course, and she doesn't pull it up high enough that he feels swaddled. Her arm rests along the inner slant of his ribs. Her elbow, a petite and dangerous nub of bone, rests in the hollow below his sternum.
She could stop him breathing, if she pushed down hard enough.
He curls his fingers over her arm to protect himself (or because the skin there is so soft.)
for the prompt of 'non-con haircut' from Stunt_Muppet; PG, Neal + Alex, 442 words
Alex lets out her anger with a sigh and slumps against the fence. "I have a knife," she says sourly, nodding down at the dainty shadow beneath the V-neck of her shirt.
"Give me a minute and I can untangle it," Neal says. Alex's hair is just so long and pretty, even when it's snarled around the hinge of a gate like this.
"We don't have time," she hisses. "And it's-Caffrey, that hurts!"
"Sorry, sorry-" Neal says. He gentles his fingers, like doing a soft upstroke to paint a blade of grass.
"Cut it and let's get out of here," Alex says. She worms her hand inside his jacket and pokes him with her nails until he jumps back to protect his belly. She's probably left welts. Just add it to the black eye he got when they both went to untangle her hair at the same time and her elbow collided with his eye socket hard enough that he nearly doubled over and vomited up all his poutine. Diner food before a heist is always a bad idea.
Alex slides the knife out of her cleavage and holds it out, hilt up.
"Are you sure?" he says.
"Do you see another option?"
He doesn't.
He saws as close to the hinge as possible. Alex cracks a joke before he starts- "It's more trouble than it's worth when it's this long, anyway" -but she moans at the first cut, low and shivery.
"Sorry," he says again, and she snaps something in return, which probably made her feel better than him being nice.
He finally gets her free and Alex falls a little into him, over-correcting for the lost weight when she steps away. They look back at the gate with her hair bristling out of it like a lackluster hedgehog.
"That's a lot of DNA evidence to leave behind," says Neal.
"I got it," says Alex, and pulls out a lighter, a cheap plastic thing that she got at a gas station on their way up. She pops the chamber free and dumps the fuel over the hinges and her hair. The whole tragic mess gleams in the moonlight.
Alex clicks the lighter back together and puts her thumb on the wheel. "This is gonna attract some attention," she warns.
They take one last look up at the estate, a crenelated silhouette against dishwater clouds.
"Thanks for not leaving me," she says, because he had the goods and he could have.
"I'd never let anything happen to you," Neal wants to say, but he cant: the gate goes up orange and they have to run, chasing their shadows down the lane.
for the prompt 'something to do with Mozzie... and SPACE' from Vivi; PG, Neal + Mozzie, AU, 260 words
No-one can see the Devore under this get-up, but as soon as Neal's through the airlock he'll toss the marshmallow puff and get back to the pin-stripe. Until then it's a disguise like any other, prison guard uniform or janitor's overalls, except for being a cushion against death. He hopes it doesn't wrinkle his jacket.
"You're gonna die out there!" Mozzie yells, tinny and strident on the other side of the helmet. "Your perfect skin will slough off from radiation and no-one will hear you scream!"
"Thanks for the pep talk, Moz," Neal says back, not bothering to raise his voice. The helmet is pretty thick and Mozzie can read lips, anyway. Neal leans, watching the shadow from his helmet scoop out half of Mozzie's face. The other half is feathered with greyish-pink and solitary flares of green: the diodes from the control panel, running lights on the ship across the gap, the dying star and its chiffon negligee of cast-off gas. His eyeglasses glint.
"They have a brig on that ship, you know," says Mozzie. "They went to space and brought jail with them."
"They also brought Ethiopian wood carvings," says Neal. "That's kind of the point." His palms go itchy in the gloves just thinking about holding part of a tree, bumbled and grainy and previously alive. He grins and wonders what his teeth look like, refracted by the double glass.
Mozzie sighs and steps back over the lip of the airlock. "Fair winds and following seas, my friend," he says, and salutes as the hatch slides shut.
This entry is cross-posted from http://kayliemalinza.dreamwidth.org/329438.html (
comments.)
Neal burned his tongue on coffee this morning. He scrapes the raw tip over his teeth because it's a new sensation and weirdly doesn't hurt. He doesn't do this when anyone is looking, though, because pushing his tongue out like that probably does weird things to his mouth. Neal doesn't like having weird things done to his mouth, and that's why he and Alex didn't work out.
for the prompt 'Neal in a blindfold' for Thrice because his eyes scare her; PG-13, Neal/Sara, 555 words
"You're doing this backwards," says Neal, then, "Ow."
"Sorry," says Sara. She loosens the knot and smooths his hair carefully away from the blindfold before she ties it again. "If I had suggested this for sex, you would've made a face at me."
Neal doesn't answer. He really doesn't want to get into a discussion about the distinction between a blindfold and threatening someone with a baton, and he definitely doesn't want to mention what happened the last time he was blindfolded in bed. Sara would probably call him a wimp, just like Alex did.
(Or maybe she wouldn't. Neal won't think about it anymore because it's a moot point.)
Sara slides her finger under the edges of the blindfold, checking that his hair isn't tangled up in the knot or else that it's not too tight, like a dog collar. Then she pats him on the shoulder and presses him back into the pillows again.
"Are we really at the laptop-in-bed stage already?" he asks. They've already had this conversation, though his first rally was more about whether or not he could be trusted to keep his eyes off her super-secret work data (conclusion: no.)
"I don't feel like leaving yet," Sara says lightly. Her knee jostles into his hip as she settles in. The laptop whirs as it wakes up.
Neal turns slightly onto his side-she can't suspect him at looking at the screen; she put the blindfold on herself-and trails his fingers over a body part that turns out to be her belly, then the scoop of her hipbone. He presses down with the edge of his hand, like he's smoothing the inside of a bowl on a potter's wheel. "Because it's so cozy here?" he asks.
"Because I'd have to put on pants," she clarifies.
"Oh, we can't have that," Neal says. He doesn't know if she's looking at his face or not, but he smiles anyway, because it'll be audible in his voice.
"You're distracting me," Sara whispers. She moves his hand over to his own hipbone and lets him tangle their fingers together for a little bit. He strokes the cup of her palm; a sensitive spot on most people, with all the creases. "Neal," she says again.
"I'm not doing anything," Neal says, with obvious faux innocence.
"Go to sleep," says Sara, and pats his belly. The way her fingertips slide along the indentations between his abs is just coincidence, he's sure.
He doesn't sleep but he dozes a little bit, listening to the desultory clack of keyboard keys and the little hums Sara makes when she's thinking too hard to notice.
He notices-albeit a few seconds too late-when she digs out a legal pad and rests it on his stomach.
"Cardboard's scratchy," he mumbles.
"Aw, poor baby," Sara replies, mocking him on autopilot. A second later she pulls the sheet up under the pad. The threadcount is decadent, of course, and she doesn't pull it up high enough that he feels swaddled. Her arm rests along the inner slant of his ribs. Her elbow, a petite and dangerous nub of bone, rests in the hollow below his sternum.
She could stop him breathing, if she pushed down hard enough.
He curls his fingers over her arm to protect himself (or because the skin there is so soft.)
for the prompt of 'non-con haircut' from Stunt_Muppet; PG, Neal + Alex, 442 words
Alex lets out her anger with a sigh and slumps against the fence. "I have a knife," she says sourly, nodding down at the dainty shadow beneath the V-neck of her shirt.
"Give me a minute and I can untangle it," Neal says. Alex's hair is just so long and pretty, even when it's snarled around the hinge of a gate like this.
"We don't have time," she hisses. "And it's-Caffrey, that hurts!"
"Sorry, sorry-" Neal says. He gentles his fingers, like doing a soft upstroke to paint a blade of grass.
"Cut it and let's get out of here," Alex says. She worms her hand inside his jacket and pokes him with her nails until he jumps back to protect his belly. She's probably left welts. Just add it to the black eye he got when they both went to untangle her hair at the same time and her elbow collided with his eye socket hard enough that he nearly doubled over and vomited up all his poutine. Diner food before a heist is always a bad idea.
Alex slides the knife out of her cleavage and holds it out, hilt up.
"Are you sure?" he says.
"Do you see another option?"
He doesn't.
He saws as close to the hinge as possible. Alex cracks a joke before he starts- "It's more trouble than it's worth when it's this long, anyway" -but she moans at the first cut, low and shivery.
"Sorry," he says again, and she snaps something in return, which probably made her feel better than him being nice.
He finally gets her free and Alex falls a little into him, over-correcting for the lost weight when she steps away. They look back at the gate with her hair bristling out of it like a lackluster hedgehog.
"That's a lot of DNA evidence to leave behind," says Neal.
"I got it," says Alex, and pulls out a lighter, a cheap plastic thing that she got at a gas station on their way up. She pops the chamber free and dumps the fuel over the hinges and her hair. The whole tragic mess gleams in the moonlight.
Alex clicks the lighter back together and puts her thumb on the wheel. "This is gonna attract some attention," she warns.
They take one last look up at the estate, a crenelated silhouette against dishwater clouds.
"Thanks for not leaving me," she says, because he had the goods and he could have.
"I'd never let anything happen to you," Neal wants to say, but he cant: the gate goes up orange and they have to run, chasing their shadows down the lane.
for the prompt 'something to do with Mozzie... and SPACE' from Vivi; PG, Neal + Mozzie, AU, 260 words
No-one can see the Devore under this get-up, but as soon as Neal's through the airlock he'll toss the marshmallow puff and get back to the pin-stripe. Until then it's a disguise like any other, prison guard uniform or janitor's overalls, except for being a cushion against death. He hopes it doesn't wrinkle his jacket.
"You're gonna die out there!" Mozzie yells, tinny and strident on the other side of the helmet. "Your perfect skin will slough off from radiation and no-one will hear you scream!"
"Thanks for the pep talk, Moz," Neal says back, not bothering to raise his voice. The helmet is pretty thick and Mozzie can read lips, anyway. Neal leans, watching the shadow from his helmet scoop out half of Mozzie's face. The other half is feathered with greyish-pink and solitary flares of green: the diodes from the control panel, running lights on the ship across the gap, the dying star and its chiffon negligee of cast-off gas. His eyeglasses glint.
"They have a brig on that ship, you know," says Mozzie. "They went to space and brought jail with them."
"They also brought Ethiopian wood carvings," says Neal. "That's kind of the point." His palms go itchy in the gloves just thinking about holding part of a tree, bumbled and grainy and previously alive. He grins and wonders what his teeth look like, refracted by the double glass.
Mozzie sighs and steps back over the lip of the airlock. "Fair winds and following seas, my friend," he says, and salutes as the hatch slides shut.
This entry is cross-posted from http://kayliemalinza.dreamwidth.org/329438.html (
comments.)